Poison.

I wake up first, eyes squinted, earlier aches leaving a knot in my jaw. My nose throbs. The side of my mouth pounds, dry blood flaking off my face when I touch it. Every nerve in the back of my neck screams. Luce has a good swing. He should've joined the baseball team while he had the chance, then maybe the Cosmonauts wouldn't have sucked so much.

I roll my head back. Bits of glass stick out of my neck like quills. They ooze blood and I hiss under my breath, the blackened ceiling fading in and out of vision. Giant lights shine down at me, and at this angle, they look like the eyes of monsters, like the building itself will gobble me up. I swallow up a laugh. This, this is hell. For me. For Luce.

But hey, who said power would come easily?

Animals bark and growl as I shift on my side, piercing my eardrums in a way that makes me wince. "Shut up, shut up, shut up," I say. "You don't know a damn thing about pain. Not a thing." I run my fingers down the thread of my jeans, the blood flaking there, too. Hot lights burn, pouring down on my skin. 

A sweet and flowery smell masks the worst of the room's stench, like the strongest, cheapest perfume that can be bought at the Dollar General. My head spins. My stomach clenches, lunch sloshing around in there waiting to be thrown back up. Ugh. I hold my forehead, easing to my feet in a way I hope won't make my knees give out under me. "Stupid Lucy, stupid father, stupid Ceres..." I curse everyone that lead to my being here, with a bunch of lab animals and a dumb, passed-out half-brother. 

Swiping the glass away from my neck, I stride toward Luce. He's easy to spot, slumped on the floor, his black wings spread. I fluff mine out and comb the dust out between the feathers. His look all wrong, the bones curved all the wrong ways to make them look like two little crescent moons. The bottle lies half-shattered a few feet out by of his hands, his palms open toward the sky, his fingers half-curled as if they were about to ball into fists but didn't quite make it. His chest rises and falls with a drugged calm, one eye sealed shut, his patch crooked, the strap tangled with a loose strand of hair. It's a lot shorter than it was, his hair, I mean, cut to taper down to the back of his neck, but it's still pretty long for a guy.

 I grunt and yank the patch off, easing his head off the floor and untangling the little strap that keeps it intact. I've seen enough of the stupid patch on Owl. I'd rather see whatever gore is left of his eye than that thing. "Besides," I tell Luce with the tiniest hint of a shrug. "That's not gonna help it heal. You need to get some light in there." Which probably isn't true. There's probably a reason for the ugly patch, why he'd keep the eye covered, but if I blind him for a good, well, I'm not gonna be the one crying over it.

The sweet smell clings to him. The wolf, the experiment, whines and noses my shin. My fingers twitch to slap the thing away, but I let the animal sniff at me. Hell, I even talk to it. I never liked silence much. I never liked being alone much, either. "What are you looking at, project?" 

I grab Luce by his wing, digging my fingers around the bladed bone for grip. Mine jolt, tingling just a little as if out of sympathy. If there's one thing I can say about my precious, dainty angel wings, it's that they're tough. They've grown strong and sinewy over time, powerful by long flights and nights spent out on the lam. 

But his? His are fresh. Rows and rows of new nerve endings unprotected by much. Every touch will hurt. Every bruise will ache for weeks. The skin beneath the feathers is as fragile as a baby's, and even the feathers themselves are pretty brittle. I yank one out and roll it through my fingers, running the soft bristles over my fingertip. It snaps in half like a crisp, dead leaf. I grip his opposite wing. The kid needs to eat more, to keep up his strength. And he's gotta fly. Or else the wings will wilt and crumple up like dead petals on frostbitten flowers and the feathers will all fall out. 

Wings aren't like other limbs, like arms or legs. Arms and legs don't unfurl out of you in seconds. Arms and legs don't come from experiments and sharp needles and scientists. Arms and legs are natural.

Unlike us.

"But I'm not a project," I tell the wolf whose yellow eyes gleam like Catalyst's did before she  switched sides. "My Dad was. Luce is. But me? I'm not. I'm real."

Her fluffy gray tail whips and she paws Luce's limp hand as I drag him along. He starts to twitch and convulse, jerking like a corpse shocked back to life. He mutters, garbled words that come out half-choked. When I look down, tears leak from both shut eyes, dark skin nearly colorless. He thrashes and cries. Perhaps the sugary sweet isn't so sweet in sleep. That kid really does have the worst luck. 

The guy he hung with, that guy deals with drugs. Particularly the type supervillains use to knock out their prey, and as a supervillain myself, I can testify that some of the effects of those things are nasty. Vivid hallucinations, paralysis, convulsions, and the type of pain that makes people scream and beg the ghosts and demons that haunt them to stop playing wishbone with their joints. 

With the chemicals come from harvested auras, drug-making has become an art form. An art form to trick the body into feeling the ultimate pleasure or the ultimate pain, and us supervillains? We deal in the pain side. As the rows of cages narrow, dragging the tall guy almost becomes impossible. I drop his wings and listen as they plop on the floor. Closed-eyed and groaning, every bruise, every cut, every welt on his skin apparent, the kid looks tortured. Tortured. Like someone after one of Dad's guys got to him, blubbering, hurt.

Like Ceres. Like Ceres in that little white room, crying and crying and crying until he had no more tears left in him and he had to sit there, quiet, to get a glass of water so he could make some new tears and cry some more. I can't remember how old I was when I caught him. Eleven, maybe? Twelve? And even then I was a smart kid, imaginative, a little spacey sometimes, but I had all my marbles in line. And I swore to help him out, to never, ever become my dad. To never hurt someone who couldn't fight back.

But then I grew up and learned what I meant to be a true villain. It meant putting yourself and your family, your people, first. It meant that some people had to suffer, and that was okay, as long as it wasn't you. You wanna be a failure? You wanna never make a difference, never be happy? Then throw yourself into sacrifice and let other people take the fruit of your labor, the sweat on your damn brow. No, no matter what Dad did to Ceres, it was justified.

But still. Looking down at my little brother, that same disgust that rose up in me all those years ago, that ache to end the kid's pain and let him be, well, it's back. He thrashes. His wings jolt. I sigh and cup my arms under his shoulders, to pick him up and carry him to the machines that will strip all the power out of him and leave him half-insane.

But he looks so young and hurt and that I just sit there a second, toes sunk into the squishy film on the floor, him half in my arms, the kid shaking like an animal left to die in the cold. "Shut up," I hiss at him. And in that second, my fists are balled "Shut up kid brother, you don't know a damn thing about pain, you don't..."

Except he does. He knows a lot about pain because I'm the one who put him in it. The wolf cocks her head at me. I sigh and rock on my heels, awkwardly patting Luce on the head. "I hate you," I tell him, right in his ear, "I hate you so much. You're not a human. You're just a weapon, and you don't even act like one. You act, you act like mush." I swallow hard. I used to have a little cousin, and I used to hold her and rock her and tell her everything would be okay. Back when I lived with my uncles. Back before I came to Starlight with a dad who wishes I were never born and a half-brother who was created to tear down the US government before that doomsday mission became obsolete. My knuckles tremble before I realize how tightly I'm holding him, that I've started to nervously undo the tangles in his hair because my fingers are shaking so violently I can hardly hold my hands straight.

I'm not this mushy. I snort. I'm not. I cup my arms around his midsection to lift him, about to dump him over my shoulder, but his body seizes with tremors. He slams his foot on mine, kicks me once, twice in the Achilles Tendon. The pain smolders up my calf and shin. I cry out, lose balance, and hit the ground. By the time I'm up on my feet Luce rolls out of my grasp, crouched down with his elbows pressed into my shoulder blades, his head at a tilt, fingers dug into the collar of my jacket. I look up and scream.

I'm not a screamer. Not usually, but when he blinks his injured eye it's black. Blacked over. All of it. No white at all, like the demons in the TV show. It looks unnatural, so unnatural, and wrong. I shake my head. He isn't human. He's a weapon and I shouldn't have waited so long. I should've dragged him back to the machines and let them rip. Heck, the ground is covered in a film of broken glass. His wings are baby meat. I could've sawed them off in a few seconds if I had just sucked up that yes, he is my kid brother and yes, I have to destroy him. That was my plan.

His arms tremble, blue and black with bruises, his lip curled in a snarl. He has a nervous tick, a twitch of his fingers. I yank out of his grasp, preparing for another fight, when his aura explodes. A brilliant, brilliant violent that burns my eyes and makes me swing for him. He yawns, a smirk twitching on his lips. I bolt.

"Don't leave so soon," he calls after me, and it's grandiose. Elegant. He usually grunts and speaks under his breath, but the words come out loud and smooth. Animals howl. I scramble between the cages, trying to find my way to the door, a way out. My wings yank back, jerked as if a hand pulled them, and that hand happened to have the crushing force of a tank. I dig my heels into the ground, struggling and thrashing and calling for help. That dude. The drug guy, he should be here, floating around. Where is he?

It's useless. It's all useless. I'm sucked back, knocked around like a leaf in the wind. My wrist jerks up, my back slammed against a cage. Luce's eyes are closed, his hands squeezed together at his chest. Focused. Concentrated. He grins. A bar snaps, the animals howling and crying so loud I want to curl into a ball and squeeze my eardrums out. The gleaming metal bar, rusty at the tips and a flash of gray before my eyes, swings through the air, and I wince, holding up a free hand to protect my face. 

It does nothing. The bar hits my raised wrist, slamming it back against the cage. I squirm, blistering white hot crawling up and down my skin. The metal twists with an ear-piercing shriek, wrapping around my arm, sliding and squeezing like a hungry boa constrictor. I don't know what I say, exactly. Except I know I'm shouting. And cussing. Lots of cussing. He bows his head and a shard of glass slides from down the row, shrieking as it drags down the concrete as if tugged by an invisible string.

 It flies into Angelos' hand and he smiles, crossing his arms over his chest, the shard dripping in a yellow film. He looks like a genie, standing with his eyes closed, chin buried in the collar of his shirt, flames crackling from his body. It's insane. Insane. Genies are shut up in bottles for a reason. Too much power throws off the balance of the world. And telekinesis? That's simply too much.

"Shut up," he says, cracking one eye open, his good one. His voice, once smooth and cool, like it usually is when his aura is out, shakes.

"You don't tell me what to do, Luce!" I tug at the bar, but it's metal. I'm stuck. Stuck with this psychopath who has a grudge against me. It feels cool against my skin, but my forearm tingles from being held up so long.

"Shut up. I'm the one asking the questions now, okay?" He draws in a long, shuddering breath, both eyes open now. I stare at the blackened one, trying to accustom myself to it. Not to flinch. Not to shrink away. I tug at the bar. "You aren't going anywhere, Poison. Not until I know what happened to Gats."

And for a second, he looks in control. Like he's the one pulling the aura's strings, not the other way around.

The aura flares, sprinkling my face with heat. And with a flourish, he smirks, jabbing the shard at my neck. "So start talking, pal."