Angel.

I hit the ground with a cry in a kicking, rattling heap. "Ugh." The pain is fresh once more, and I decide I ought to keep count of my injuries. Like in a scrapbook or something, so I can tell my kids about my reckless teenage years. I'm a walking PSA. If I had just resisted peer pressure and stayed off that roof. . ."Can I go home now?"

"Shut up," the drug guy says.

"Okay." No sass to be found here. When I blink up and the ringing clears from my ears, my vision is still splotched with black, blurred by a red and green afterimage. In a breath, my father coils into a ball and springs up from the ground. It happens so fast I think I imagine it, but he kicks up flecks of dirt into my eyes and I know I can't at least be making up that. He curses and leaves me on the ground to squirm, my head tucked into my wrists. Flashes of white light sweep the floor like lighting and I can't help but duck.

"Fallout, sir?" the girl asks, staring at the torn patches of her sweater as if she can stitch them back together by looking at them. After one last tug on her part, the sleeve drooping over her wrists slides free and plops to the floor. "Your health?"

"I'm fine," he says. His boots drag on the ground as he paces. Click. Click. Cliccck.  I narrow my eyes and watch as the long white scratches bobble up and down his shoes in the dark. He holds his head high and clasps his hands behind his back.

 My neck throbs. I have to tilt my head to watch my father move, though I'm learning to see better one-eyed. 

"Happens sometimes when you get up in age," he continues. "You would know."

"The first life cycle is always the worst," the drug guy says as the voices echo above our heads. They come in savage screams and hisses that make me chilly inside. Metal clangs on metal. Glass shatters. I hear it all as if it were in a distant dream, soft and murky. The drug guy whistles as he preens his fingers through his wispy black hair. When he tilts his head to smirk at my father, I notice a pink scar drawn down his chin. His wrist flicks as if he is drawing a lance and offering to dual. "Health is always frail for a super. Madeline?"

The round-faced girl with the orange hair grunts. Standing cross-legged between the men with a polite smile forced on her face, she gives up tugging her sweater and lets the crumpled pieces slide down her lanky arms. The skin around her eyes crinkles, and she looks like she's in pain. "Yeah, yeah. Lots of dizzy spells and arthritis." With a toss of her hair, she sinks to the floor beside the drug guy. He's propped up on his side, a fist punched on his hip. All the while my father continues to pace. The two supervillains glance up and shoot each other knowing smiles. They don't even try to hide them from my father, their eyes half-lidded like lounging cats looking out a balcony window.

"You are so young," the drug guy says, tapping his temple with a spindly finger.

"Agreed," the girl says. When she rubs the corner of her lips her fingers return bloody in the low light. She spits over her shoulder and I wince as a red glob splats the wall behind her.

My father punches his fists into his jacket pockets and says nothing to his allies' claims. Instead, he stands tall as they shift on their elbows to make themselves comfortable on the cold concrete. "Suggestions?"

The drug guy makes a 'pfft' sound from the side of his mouth, his eyes rolling back like marbles. "You're the leader, here." He throws up his arms and slams them on the floor, his back cricking into a perfect bow. "Your wish is my command, sir."

My father's jaw twitches, his balled hands trembling in his pockets. My eyes flicker back toward the stairs. The cuffs leave bitter cold traces on my wrists, digging at the touch. Fallout paces in deliberate strides as he closes around the perimeter of the room.

Our prison is unimpressive. No bigger than a hallway foyer, no smaller than a walk-in closet. The floor is cold and dirty, the sheets of white wall oddly clean as if some poor housekeeper has to wipe them down every couple of days. I shift, my socked toes wriggling on the floor. There's no escape here, even if the stairs are awful close, but I don't want to give up hope. Not yet. My friends and I fought so hard to escape these people, I don't want to believe it's over just yet.

My father closes his eyes and bows his head. He looks older than the others somehow, his shoulders sagging as if they hold an invisible weight. Juniper said he was tortured. Gritting my teeth, I decide I hate myself. Hate that I care. And yet, stifling a groan, I can't help wondering what happened.

The girl's still bleeding from the edges of her mouth, blood and saliva mixing in goopy red strings down her chin. I drag myself to my knees, my body throbbing and creaking in an achy sort of protest. My chain clinks on the concrete, brushing against my chest with a harsh 'thump.'

"Um." My voice is as sneery and punk-little-cool-twerp as ever. I hold my hands out, yanking my neck along with it. I bite the inside of my cheek to draw my attention away from the taut chain and its thick, heavy links. Looking at them makes me feel like an animal. "Do you need any help? I'm not a healer or anything superpowers wise, but you look hurt."

The girl whips her head in my direction, her glowy amber eyes so wide at first I think she looks like an owl, and then I remember I hate owls and decide she looks like a cat instead. The drug guy squints at me with narrowed eyes and even my father lifts his head to look at me. It's as if they just remembered I can talk.

"What?" My skin prickles. "It's true. She's bleeding." I jab my thumb at the red dribble before I remember pointing is impolite. And so, I uncurl my fingers and motion with my full hand. "Are you okay?"

She blinks a couple of times. Brushes a strand of hair off a bruised cheek. "What type of trick are you playing?" Her eyes narrow into slits like a snake's. I shirk back and try to hold my hands up flat in a surrender motion, but they won't spread that far. My eyes flit to the stairs, my wings bristling against the ropes. The hall is dark and each step sags. 

"I'm just—"

"No," my father says, resting his chin on his knuckles. His face is narrow and the features sharp. Though his black eyes are blank, they glow with reflections from the hanging bulbs, which look like little white halos. I freeze like they're the headlights and I'm the deer. I want to say so much and ask him so much. He's my dad. The flesh-and-blood one, not the raised-and-fed-me one, but that can't be helped. Maybe he cares about me for more than my powers. Maybe he actually thinks of me as a son and not just an experiment swatched from his DNA. 

He snatches my arm and drags me toward the girl. All I hear are my chains clanging. Even the banging and shuttling upstairs melt away before they meet my ears completely. This is what I am now. This is what he made me.

He shoves me against the wall, the pulse of his powers thumping in my fingertips like a second heartbeat. "What are you—" My voice is a whimper. He tips a calloused hand in the girl's direction, a polite smile playing across his face that doesn't match the gleam in his eye.

 "He should help," my father says, "if he has all his powers intact."

My mouth quivers open to say something, but I'm too woozy. "Dad..." I don't even call Storm my dad, and he raised me. But my brain hurts and Fallout called me his son and I hate him, I do, but all the same, I want to believe him when he says he doesn't want to hurt me. And now my back aches, and I'm shaking, shaking because I'm scared I've become the lowest form of all things imaginable: not an animal, but a toy.

The girl flicks an appraising eye over me, a single manicured eyebrow raised. I'm still frozen when she reaches out and touches the side of my cheek. Her fingers are warm.  I shrink back not because the touch hurts, but because the wall is cool and she and my father are making my skin fry. I glance at the stairs. I want to imagine Heaven and Gatsby busting down the sagging steps, swords and lassos in hand, but they feel all but distant dreams now.  Tears threaten my burning eyes, though I can't understand why. My very emotions feel as physical as soap bubbles. When I try to grasp them they pop, so I let them float through me in an unscrutinized drift.

"Hmm." When the girl touches me she feels hot and tingly, so I let her pull me against her. "That does feel nice." Her gloves lie in a silken puddle at her feet, and her hands are under the sleeves of my shirt. My veins warm like my blood is made of soda bubbles. The drug man chuckles under his breath as the girl squeezes me. I tense in her grasp.

"He isn't a teddy bear, you know," he says, an ear tipped to the ceiling. The people above have settled, quiet now. I squirm against my chains. Gats must have it a lot worse than I do. Him and Heaven and even Jaylin all need my help, and who am I to let them down? "And besides," the drug man continues. "We have to figure something out, right, Great Leader?" He smirks,

Fallout rubs his temple, knocking a strand of hair behind his ear. He shoots the man a long, deliberate look like he's planning the guy's death in front of him. "Get up." His voice echoes on the walls like the low rumble of thunder. "You're being disrespectful."

The drug guy's face reddens. He nods once and rises to his feet, swooping another silent bow. This time, there's no tell-tale smile on his smug face. "Sorry, sir. What will we do?"

Fallout sits down, criss-cross applesauce, and when the drug guy sinks to copy him, Fallout holds up a hand. "You're going upstairs. They're destroying your shop, after all. You might as well tell them off."

Sweat beads down the drug guy's  forehead. He opens his mouth, but Fallout silences him with one harsh look. The girl's fingers trail up my neck, stopping just under my chin. It tickles, but I stay quiet even when her sigh touches my ear. I don't want to draw attention to myself. I want them to forget I'm even here.

"Sir—"

Fallout palms the girl's silk white glove. She doesn't even look up. Her head rests against mine, and even I have to admit, the chemical flood under my skin feels awful nice. I haven't felt it in awhile, either. Heaven told me I can amplify powers. When I first felt the warmth it was with Jaylin and I thought it was love. Now I know better.

"We surrender." Fallout tosses the glove over his shoulder. He ducks his head, poking at his smartwatch crooked finger. "As long as they don't come down here guns-a-blazing."

The girl snaps her head up. "Sir?"

The door creaks behind us. Poison pads out rubbing his wrist, Kepler whining at his heels. My heart leaps. Her mouth curls on her snout, grin-like, and I can't help but grin back at her. "Kepler!" Her eyes are glowing gold. She barks like a pup as she bounds toward me and I start giggling, actually crying with a stupid sort of happiness that wells up from deep behind my ribs.

My father glares in my direction, but I smile anyway. I squeeze my arms around the wolf, squirming my neck so the chain doesn't choke her. She buries her snout against my wrists. "Hey, buddy, hey." Her eyes draw up my neck, fixating on the metallic gleam with a tilt of her massive head. She whines as if to ask, "What's that for?"

"I thought you knew." My fists clench and unclench her chest fur, catching matted tufts between my fingers. "You and I are one and the same, experiments and all. Except you get a cage and I get chains."

"Oh, look who's gone around the bend," Poison says. His wrist is pink and chaffed. I glance back at the stairs, brushing Kepler's fur in long, sleepy motions. She steps up on my lap and plops down in a ball. She must weigh over a hundred pounds, even if I can feel her ribs, and with every muscle overworked and strained beyond capacity, I bite back a yelp.

Fallout refuses to look at Poison, his head lowered as if he finds shame in his son's presence. He waves a hand. "We'll wait for Owl. She's up to something bigger than this. Mathias, do you know what to say?"

The drug guy with an actual name  grunts. Then, he smiles. It looks odd on his face, but he wears it proudly, shoulders rolled back and head tilted. "We've surrendered to Owl's glorious army, but we will only speak to glorious Owl herself. Is that it, Great Leader?"

Fallout mutters into his watch. It's big, bulky, and hangs off his wrist. It reminds me of Heaven's before it went missing in action or destroyed in her fight with Owl like the rest of her scrappy armor. My father says tech jargon and sprinkles in a few code words for luck, the only part of which I understand is, "Surround them. She's the one who started the attack. All protocol is off." He nods to the drug guy, Mathias. I can't nail the name to the wolfy face. To me, he'll stay The Drug Guy. "Hmm. Add that if anyone comes down to threaten us, I'll have the boy killed. Gruesomely."

Poison laughs quietly, rubbing his wrist. I roll my eyes, but a cold drizzle of sweat runs down the back of my neck. That's all I seem to be doing lately. Sweating. There's probably more water on me than there is inside me.

Fallout doesn't even look at me. He stretches and glances up at the stairs. "Don't be scared, boy. It's all for show."

"I have a name," I growl. "And I'm not scared." I'm trying to sound bristly, but I have a fluffy animal in my lap and a small girl cuddling my arm. Albeit, the fluffy animal is a wolf and the cuddling girl is a supervillain, but I'm not coming off intimidating either way. "Besides, Owl already tried to kill me. She doesn't care."

Fallout looks me up and down, and I force myself to hold his gaze. He flicks a hand at the Drug Guy and Mathias twirls on his heels in a little girly spin, pounding up the stairs like a knight into battle.

Fallout finally turns to look at the girl. For metaphor's sake, I feel like, like a soda can, like I'm all shaken up brown fizz cooped inside my veins, and if I'm not careful, I'll explode. "If you're feeling better, follow the poor man. He could use the backup."

The pretty girl yawns in my ear, hair tossed over my shoulder and cool against my neck. "Aye, sir." She pats me on the head and winks. "Call me in a couple of decades," she says in my ear, and I realize with a cold sort of shock she's a lot older than me. Like sparkly-immortal-vampire older than me, I mean. She scampers up the stairs and I gawk as Kepler licks my hands.

"How old is—"

"About three-hundred, give or take," Poison tells me over his father's shoulder. He scoots across the floor and sidles next to me. My mind's racing in thousands of different directions. Three-hundred? I guess it's possible, rapid-healing and all. But I can't imagine anyone living that long when I can barely dodge the attacks on my life day to day. I press my wrists flat against my chest in an awkward attempt at crossing my arms. "But she's pretty cute, I'll admit. Mean sometimes though."

I shoot him one long glance. My father's glare makes him sweat. "Poison, go away. I'll deal with your disobedience later."

My brother's jaw twitches. His hands tremble and I realize how similar his mannerism are to our dad's. "If it wasn't for me you'd—"

Fallout flashes a short knife from his belt that makes me shiver and Poison flinch. "Don't test me," he says. His tone is low and I can't help but hate him for threatening his son, even if that son is the worst kid in existence. "Go or I'll clip your wings so you never leave home again."

Poison whimpers and scuttles away. Fallout shakes his head and I stare at the knife. My reflection is pale. Kepler whines and presses her nose into my hand, thumping her tail. But my shakes have started again. They rattle my chains. To calm myself, I breathe deeply and listen to the shouts and snappy comebacks from the girly voices above. Oddly familiar to me, but my brains are scrambled and all I can focus on is that knife. 

"This will be hard on you, Angelos, but I have a request," my father says. My calves cramp from sitting on the floor so long, and my ankles throb. "You—"

"Take me home," I tell him. My body quivers with rage. He didn't want me as a kid, and now he thinks he can use me for my powers. No way. He let my friends get hurt and I won't forgive him. "Or drop me off at a bus station or something. I can't help you—"

"Stop acting like a child!" He makes a grab for my collar and snatches the chain instead. I wheeze and make a sound between a cry and a squeak as he pulls. "This is serious. Starlight City is in danger. You're a weapon, not a kid. Get that through your head and you won't get hurt."

"You're supposed to be my dad." I'm shivering, but I'm too weak to try to fight. No one should have to go through this. And he shouldn't be allowed to hurt me. "I didn't ask for this."

"Toughen up."

I'm tempted to tell him he's more mood swingy than Jaylin, but that feels disrespectful. Then I remember I'm supposed to disrespect him. He waited for Heaven to bleed to death and tried to trade Gatsby with my mother for me. "You're more mood swingy than Jay—"

He drops the chain and yanks me up by the collar. Kepler yelps. So do I. She tumbles out of my lap and I force my hands up against the chain to protect my face. Fallout raises his fist and I squeeze my eyes shut, scrounging to put up my aura and bracing for the blow.

"Fallout," The drug guy calls. "These girls! We can't—"

"Drop him!" a girl shouts, and her voice makes my heart rocket through my throat. "Drop him right now, Fallout. He's mine until you and Owl sign on it. Neutral guy. Orders."

I blink. In the dark, I see her round eyes, blazing gold like a wolf's.

Jaylin's come to save me.