Heaven.

I've lost him. For good or for now, I don't know. And frankly, I'm in too deep to care. I brace myself off the cracking interior, gasping breaths to punctuate my thoughts, flecks of green paper catching under my nails. Dust lifts from the walls and windows, choking the air out of my lungs. But I can't focus on Angel now. Can barely spare him a thought. I have to save who I can, and worrying over him won't help anyone, certainly not Jaylin. If Angel won't kill Owl, then I'll do it myself. I'm like the little red hen of superheroing. Except I don't even get a lousy loaf of bread out of it.

Priorities, Hev, priorities. I grip the window frame so hard straggler fractals burst outward, drywall and piping punching through with my touch. Bits stab into my fingers, motes floating near my eyes and catching the light like butterfly wings. Breathing deep, I decide that by the time I turn twenty I'll be nothing more than a throbbing, miserable scab. I raise my unarmored fists and launch at Owl, who grips the sword in her free fist like a life-raft. Jaylin is limp and saggy in her grip. In the beginning, I knew something like this would happen to her. She betrayed super villains, but with all that happened, the thought slipped my mind.

Owl stabs for me, and I duck. The blade whooshes by my head with a teasing whistle. She drops Jaylin flat on the table, who groans and curls into a quivering ball. Her leg, snapped into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle after meeting Owl's reinforced armor.

I suck in a breath and it tastes like bile. Owl grabs at my skull. Her finger grazes my ear, scraping the skin and ripping a chunk of cartilage. My curled fists smash into her unprotected chest and ribcage. She winks out of existence.

Her illusion powers kick in like a second thought as if she expected to play with me instead of really fighting. Good. I shut my eyes, something Storm taught me to do when fighting an enemy who can fool your vision. To rely on other senses, and most importantly, your gut.

As in the ones I spilled out in front of Owl. All my insecurity about dying, about not deserving the rest. She heard it. I feel like the guy who ticked off Zeus, the guy who had to push that dumb rock up that dumb hill until the end of time only to have it kicked down when he got to the top. And, you know, time doesn't end. But I feel lighter, saying how I feel.

My knuckles find a soft spot that I pound relentlessly, hoping—praying—to cause enough damage that she stops for a breather. Jaylin cries out, and I wink one eye open.

Bad move.

Owl's a puppetmaster, she pulls heartstrings. I refuse to believe her story about knowing my mother, and the thought that my dad died begging won't compute. I know less about him than even about my mother, but I know that us Brooks are stupid. Foolhardy. But cowardly?

That's something I can't bring myself to believe, no matter how Owl may try to make me.

But the illusion she pulls, the one of my mother, that rips my very breath out of my chest. It's only a flash, as quick as she pulls it, as quick as it leaves. Her eyes, as dark and warm as in the pictures, hair as curly and wild as mine, knotted and pulled back as if windblown. Saggy slacks, flowy mustard blouse, stained with sweat and blood. A blossom of red at the chest down the front and back, blue gauntlets at her wrists, the rest of her armor stripped. It only fazes me for a moment, but when it does, Owl pounces. She's not playing Bounce the Super off the wall anymore. She spins the sword in her free hand. It glints in my peripherals, dazzling in the soft glow of morning light. My back hits the hard wall, but this time she doesn't let go. A crushing hand on my throat. Pinned. I wriggle my shoulders. Hot pain washes through me, can feel it pulsing through old aches. The room tilts.

I shoot Owl a sheepish shrug. "I tried."

Her expression changes. The concentration and rage, the look of sheer primal hate. She blinks, and a warmth lights her eyes. She's looking up and away, grinning. Like she can see something I can't. My shot. I squirm my leg and lash a kick at her wrist. The sword wrenches free. Hits the ground. The pressure still, between her strength it mine, it's like I'm being squeezed flat by steel plates. She slams her palm harder into my throat, all the muscles in my neck constricting against the force. Every breath comes out a gasping wheeze, every attempt at speech a spit-gargle.

"You want to die?" She smiles, and it's a smile filled with termites. All I can focus on is breathing, the pop in my jaw as the muscles pulse and squeeze. Her fingers curl into my flesh. Figures move like shadows in the corners of my eyes. My breath is nailed in my lungs, and I can understand why suffocation would be Owl's favorite method of execution. She glances back at her henchmen, who have blurred together in my kaleidoscope vision like a thick black soup. A flash of silver and white catches my eye like an apparition. A mirage. "I thought I'd keep you around, for your mother's sake."

My mother. Am I really supposed to think I'm following her legacy, that I'm just the shitty sequel to the superhero that changed Starlight forever? Nebula. Is it really true Owl killed her?

All these thoughts, a whirlwind of thoughts. Questions, feelings. Strength comes from ripping your muscles over and over so that they heal over stronger than before. If I do that to myself, to my heart, my gut, would that make things better? Me, stronger?

I lift a finger and flourish at my throat. Her mechanical grip slackens, and I fall limp, swaying in her grasp. I have nothing to say to Owl, nothing to ask, not even about my mother. "Huh," I say, out of puns and one-liners to throw at her.

Her thumbnail hovers over my left eye. Her signature, I realize. "I thought it would be some fun to have the girl she cared so much about." Even after death, I think, a sting of a tear in my eye I fight back. My breath leaves me in a ragged gasp. The pain in my throat has become a long sear, and every nerve pulses with the same, nauseating ache. "But you pose even less of a challenge than she did. At least she had a team. But you're a loner, ay?"

"If by that you mean I don't have an army of mindless drones at my disposal, then maybe." The words leave me in a rush, and I'm a little amazed they leave me at all. I jerk my neck, and the 'pop' is crisp to my ears, only mellowed by the rush of blood under my skin. 

I catch her arm, my hands balling into fists.I throw a volley on autopilot, my body kicked into pure fight-or-flight. Hard metal and soft flesh meet my knuckles equally. But, she catches on quickly, I'll give her that. Fingers tighten around my wrists, slam me back. 

The room is a wreck now, chunks of drywall and burst pipe tossed through space like cheap confetti. Paper hangs in fluttering green strips, the thin layer of carpet torn into sheets. Green, I decide, is a lousy color. My pulse thumps double-time, so fast I just feel the motion in my chest, like a motor ripping away bit by bit and whittling itself into nothingness. That's my freaking heart.

I bite back a yelp, breathing sharp, acrid gulps of air through my teeth. My hands curl and uncurl, my knuckles a mess of blood, black and red. Owl looks at the carnage that's become of my hands and grins. I wait for the skin to seal up, counting the ticks in my head as if counting down the time left on a bomb.

"And of the friends you do have, they're traitors and fools."

"You can't kill me." I smirk, though weak. "You don't have your sword." Sweat trickles down my brow, into my eyes. Burning.

"But I could, say, rip out your organs, one by one, and watch you die over and over. How many lives would you say you have, little girl?"

I swallow. "Well, if I play my cards right, I plan on living at least until I turn twenty-one. Then I can put some whiskey in my Red Bull because I clearly need it." I pause, as if for thought. I'm already imaging her dangling my still-beating heart over my gushing chest. Not a pretty picture. "So, one I think. Well, no. Including you stabbing me in the throat, and then the car crash—"

"Does everyone in your family have the same smart mouth?"

"I don't know." A different type of pain wells up inside me, this time from wounds Owl can't see. "There's only two of us left." The thought sinks in too quickly. Can't deal. So I fill the air with words, enough to drown the silence and the deafening pain. "But you seem to think you know a lot about us anyway. Tell me, was my mother as clever as I am?" I punctuate the question by kicking for her chin. I expect to miss—the whole attack was just too formulaic with the whole pre-leading punchline and everything. But the sound rings out, a clear snap. It's something I'm used to hearing, a layer of bone-crunching into two even parts. I slip lower in her grip, my legs like lead and my loose, dripping guts knocking around my skeleton. A hand slides back to my throat, her fingers ringing my neck like a peculiar sort of noose.

"You're going to die like your mother. A failure." She tips her head back, her features lit up by a beatific smile. Behind her, the broken window and its broken sky flash blue and purple like a glitching screen. Owl truly looks like an angel. "Isn't that right, Felix?" She looks down, flashing Gats smile. He's awake now, sitting up in his ball, staring down miserably at his claws. Angel stands rigid, his eyes rolling back like black marbles in his head. If he's still Angel now. He steps forward and he reminds of a drooling zombie, rigid and dead.

Jaylin's out cold, strewn shivering and sweating across the table. One mouse exchanged for another. At least, until Owl finishes playing with me. The thought makes me sweat, not because I'm such a lamb that I can't stand the thought of my sacrifice going to waste, but because the thought Owl can tear two girls into gore while her henchmen watch, emotionless as footstools, is a sickening one. "Should I tear your trachea or your tongue out first?"

In truth, both sound pretty gruesome, but my cold superhero mind calculates the better option in half-a-second flat. "I don't know." The latter is preferable because, between all the choking and bleeding, my throat needs a break. And breathing's nice. "Why don't you ask Gats?"

I hate to put him on the spot—actually, no, I hate that I have to put him on the spot. Have to know if he belongs to Owl if he's just pretending. My fault, again. If only I had been taken, maybe I could've stood up against her. But him? He's just a kid, a kid cursed with cat ears.

"What an interesting request." I've amused Owl. It shows in her relaxed expression, all the rage and hatred drained as if I flicked a switch. She's grinning, a default show of a good mood. I press my head back as far as it can go and roll my eyes up to the ceiling. Breathe in, out. Improv. Play off Gats, that's what couples are supposed to do, anyway, play off each other like complementing colors, a hat and coat, mustard and ketchup. "Felix, what do you think?"

I glance back down at him. He backpedals on his heels, stumbling as he grasps a chair for support. A lock of unkempt of hair falls into a single blue eye, framed by thick lashes. And again I think how young he looks, how scared. Purple splashes off his skin, giving him a soft, almost ethereal glow. He looks at me, like looking at a stranger, one long, gauging stare, sizing me up. "Hmm." Sweat glistens on his face, and I notice the streaks down his cheeks, tracks of blood and grit. I like Poison, really do, can feel his grip tightening around my heart as the minutes tick by, but Gats is my friend. I picked him up and brought him to his room when The Cat Ear Excursion took place, cuddled him with my arms around his waist, hummed him a lullaby I heard when I was little.

The same tune Fallout was whistling.

Huh. Whaddaya know.

I feel like I'm being squeezed into a box. I feel like I'm dying, even now, under the pressure of Owl's gloves. One beat goes by, then two.

I squirm at Gats' silence, the world coming undone around me as I wait.

"Ma'am," he says, and he mulls the word over his tongue almost reverently. A whisper. Doesn't match the boy who swaggers into any room and steals the eyes of its occupants with an unnamable charm and suave smile. "It sounds, to me, like you want to silence her." He looks dead at me, his face suddenly as blank as if he slid on a mask.

"Yes?"

"Stab her in the stomach," Gatsby offers, one cat ear flicking.

I shrug, though my veins have grown shards of ice. For a second, I forget how to speak. And then I decide I don't want to. That she wouldn't listen, that this whole charade is useless. My mask is slipping. I draw up a painful breath, try to think of a way out, but my brain has become a brick wall.

Owl snorts, a sound I hope I never hear from her again. Her cool calm, the feeling that she's a lot older and a lot smarter, it all seems to zap in that single moment she lowers her hand from my wrist. She rolls her fingers down at her side with a flourish. "Fetch me my sword."

"Yes, ma'am."

Any fighting I do can be ended by a quick squeeze on Owl's part. No breathing, no muscle movement. Any brain damage could reverse itself, sure, I am a super and a pretty powerful one at that, but the thought of dangling there, body screaming for air, makes me shudder. But I gotta try.

I lash out. Curl my knees to my chest and explode outward, heels connecting with her stern. The hard bone moans from the contact; I can hear it with my tingling ears. Nails dig into my skin, stars and twittering birdies dancing around my head. I roll my crushed knuckles, jags ob bong clicking and popping into place. In a thunderclap of a moment, all sound leaves. Fuel low, gears slow, warm, bleeding hands thrash out and catch the strap of her eyepatch. Silky and thin, like the thread of spider web. Raw pain flows up through my hands, new heartbeats hammering in my bleeding knuckles. They won't roll up the right way.

The sky falters. I see Angel at the side of the room, his eyes shot open wide, frozen rigid. His lips tremble, pale. I'd expect them to be blue, he looks like he's suffocating. Like the air itself is choking him.

Both eyes are black now, a thick mucus spread over what once was bright and white. It gives me an idea.

The sword gleams, heavy in Gats' hands. His eyes are low and he moves with small, shuffling steps. I raise my thumb. It shakes. The skin's shredded, the joints underneath bashed flat. Souvenirs from pounding away at reinforced armor and a reinforced Owl.

Phantom edges show on phantom images, moving and shifting like ghosts in my vision. Her good eye moves, black and white blurring. The sword snakes closer, a sharp white sheen. Gats holds it as if he'll do the stabbing himself, tip pointed at my hip. Somehow, the thought of him initiating my torture is worse than the thought of torture at all.

I plunge my thumb down, aim as best I can into the socket. Hits. Digs into something soft and squishy. I dig hard, even when she screams. It takes a minute for her to rip my hand off, eye squeezed shut, and all I see is her rage. The grinning, the playful prods at my mother and me, gone. I've blinded her. Completely. 

She squeezes. "You stupid little girl." I feel the bile rising, my air cutting off, my vision growing dark and spotty. Her eye flies open, and it's gone all black like Angel's. "I'm going to kill you like I had your parents killed. Then I'm going to kill your traitorous villain friend. And I'm going to take over your city. If this experiment goes well, I'll neutralize all the other cities in the vicinity."

I wheeze. Something's cracking in my neck.

"I'm going to use my son, your friend to do it. And your boyfriend?"

She smiles a killer's smile. I lift my hand again, the pain raised from 'ow' to the type that makes you scream. Go down fighting, Hev. Maximum damage. Maximum impact. But there's something breaking inside me, bleeding, and it's not just my neck. I slash her cheek. She rams me back, that eerily sweet smile still intact. Piping and wire cut the base of my neck, trunk, legs. My strength seems to drain along with my blood.

"I'm going to use him to get Storm and Juniper to work for me, but I think I'll keep him after that. He makes a good pet, don't you think?"

I'm choking too hard to spit at her. The sword comes up, glowing now, flickering with flames Tiffany Box blue. I've only seen one once, at the bottom of my mother's dresser, but it matches, so rich, the deepest shade of blue I've ever seen.

"Anything you'd like to say?" Her hand loosens, but not enough. I breathe in deep gulps, the air a luxury to me now. Gats nudges her wrist, the sword leveled at me. His eyes are hidden by the glow.

I shrug, the gesture brings hot bile to my throat. "Look out behind you."

Owl crushes my neck flat, vein bulging from the side of my head. Tendons, snapped. Bones, broken. My mind spinning from the pain, the blood, delirious. So delirious I almost don't hear her scream, something so sharp and haunting it feels pulled out of a dream. Her hand loosens. Her blackened eye bulges, her face written with the closest thing to fear I've ever seen on her. And for a moment, she looks human, so vividly human and scared and alive.

My eyes travel down her chest, where the sword's gleaming blade pokes out, just a little left of center. I squirm free and hit the ground on my feet, my head swimming with blackness, my throat pounding with the shrieking pain. I'm not sure if her bright, dripping blood is a hallucination. Not sure if everything else is, too.

Though I've bled out a lot, it still surprises me how much red there is in people.

I roll out of the way when she crumples forward on the sword. And it's Gats I see, one hand gripping the sword so tight his hand has gone white. The other, farther up the glowing blade, his fingers still pointed in a guiding gesture toward Owl's chest. Amateur swordsmanship. Blood red drips down the blade, onto his hands. It's so bright it looks like paint, and it doesn't compute, not at first. Stains on his arms, creeping down onto his chest. Blood splatters his shirt in patterns like a Rorschach test. His eyes, two discs, his twiggy little body shaking with nervous energy. Yet, he doesn't look so young to me anymore. The only thing I see in his sweat-slicked face is shock, the blade flickering with its blue flames.

He swallows, rigid. Perfectly rigid, like I'm looking at a photograph. The only movement comes from the drip of blood, which runs down his arms in teardrops. There are gasps amongst the henchmen, but they, too, are perfectly still. Silence as they stare at their glorious leader, impaled on Gats' sword like a chicken on a stick, her blood as bright as theirs. "Hev." His voice breaks. I touch my throat, each breath a wheeze. The flames fade, put out like the stars in his eyes.

And it hits me, all at once.

Owl is dead.

And Gats killed her.