Antoni hated the London Underground. It was too crowded, and as soon as you descended below ground, it became stuffy and claustrophobic. And all the tunnels and a dozen of different tube lines were utterly confusing. So, of course, his dear sister chose to run deeper into this hell trap. He jumped off the busy train as soon as the door opened. Gritting his teeth, he pushed through the mass of people heading for the way out.

"Hurry up, Toni," Yuliya's voice insisted. "I lost contact with Aleks. I think she's in trouble, but I have no visuals." 

Toni's fist clenched as he waited for the train to close the door and start moving unhurriedly. When it finally disappeared into the tunnel, he jumped on the tracks. A few people cried out in surprise, but he ignored them and ran into the dark tunnel. When he left the train station behind, he raised his hand and conjured a small ball of fire to illuminate his way.

Luckily for him, the maintenance tunnels were much more simplistic than public infrastructure. It took him just a few moments to find the maintenance door with a ruined padlock, and he dashed inside. A scream echoed through the walls, followed by a distant glimmer of white light. Fear and anger flooded him, and stray sparks started flying off his fingers. It was Aleks. She was in trouble, and he wasn't there to protect her.

He became one with the fire burning inside of him, forcing his mind to let go of focusing on the physical form of his body and instead letting instincts take over. The borders between him and the flames blurred, and the surge of fire burst forward faster than any human could. Though it was a very potent way of transportation, he couldn't keep it up for too long. As he focused more on instinct while turning himself into the blaze, he also quickly lost a sense of purpose and direction, as, like fire, the only important thing was to move forward and consume all on his path.

As soon as the narrow walls disappeared, he let go of the flames and took a second to reorient himself. He was now standing at the entrance to the spacious bomb shelter.  Not far from him stood their target, his hand raised above his head and pure despair on his face. Antoni couldn't even remember his name, though Aleks seemed oddly taken with him. And then he spotted his sister. She was on her hands and knees, her whole body trembling, while the deviant crouched next to her and grabbed her chin with his big hand.

"Hey! Hands off my sister, you creep!" Toni growled before any rational thought could enter his mind. His hand shot forward, and a fireball surged straight at the deviant.

Aleks immediately fell flat on the ground and rolled away. His sister knew that the safest action was to stay away from him once he came into the fight. They trained together all the time and understood each other without words.

The deviant wasn't as lucky. Caught by surprise, he didn't dodge in time, and his leather coat ignited with bright red flames. He fell on the ground and rolled, dousing out the fire and removing the jacket. With an angry scowl, he got up and brushed off the dirt from his arms.

"So, you finally decided to show up, fire boy. I was beginning to think you were too much of a coward."

"That's rich coming from you, considering you were threatening a helpless civilian," Toni taunted.  "How about you fight someone your size, eh?" He threw another fireball, but the deviant was ready this time and jumped away, sending a bolt of lightning in counterattack. Antoni turned into fire and surged to the right, appearing a few meters closer to his opponent. "Too slow, mate."

The deviant nodded appreciatively and slowly strolled to the left, sizing up his new adversary. "I've heard a lot about you, fire boy. The newest shiny acquisition of GSO. Rumour has it you are one of the most powerful among the gifted." He scoffed. "To think you would waste such talent to be a government lapdog."

"I serve society, not the government." Toni raised his hand, and a circle of fire surrounded both men. He noticed that Aleks joined the nerd guy, and they were slowly withdrawing towards the shelter exit. Taking out a deviant on his own was not an easy task. What's more, according to their intel, this one was also one of the more troublesome Rioters. However, it would suffice if he only held him off till reinforcement came.

Toni would lie if he said he wasn't excited by the challenge. His power was a very dangerous weapon; he knew it, so he was holding back most of the time, afraid to hurt others unintentionally. But the fire burning inside him was far too eager to get out. He constantly felt the urge to let it all out, so the flames could consume everything. That's how powerful he was. He understood why so many gifted fell victim to Rioters' schemes. They promised a life without restrictions, a place where using your potential in full was expected.

It only led to ruin and pain. Every single time.

And so, Antoni was contented working for GSO and helping to keep the deviants at bay. After all, Rioters and other criminals gave him the best opportunity to use his powers without restraint. He threw one fireball after another, avoiding furious lightning surging one after another. It was like a duel; they were partners, seizing one another and looking for weak points, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

"You are a fool," spat the deviant. His chest was heaving, and sweat pearled on his face. The skin on his right arm was pink after a too-close encounter with one of Toni's fireballs. He might not have been so powerful after all. Or maybe the fact that he was over a decade older than Toni also impacted his endurance. "Do you think you will keep this little public servant charade for long? Sooner or later, humans will turn on you and every other gifted. They will say you are too dangerous to be part of society, and if you're lucky, they will cast you out. If not... well, you can guess the rest." He shot another lightning bolt, but Toni sidestepped without a problem. The deviant's movements were getting sloppy.

"The only reason people fear us is because of you and your band of Rioters. If you keep antagonising them, it's only fair they strike back." He lowered his hands, the flames around them diminishing. "It's not too late to surrender. They will give you a fair trial, I promise."

The deviant laughed bitterly. "Naïve fool!" The lightning crackled on his fingers and shot at Toni, who fell flat on the ground.

"You gave me no choice then." He planted his palms on the floor and let his fire out. The fire ignited not as a fireball but rose from the ground, scorching white tiles black and engulfing the deviant. The man screamed in agony and dropped to the floor, rolling like mad, to finally freeze motionless after a few moments. The shelter filled with a sickly sweet odour of burned flesh, and Antoni forced a wave of nausea down his throat. He slowly returned to his feet and took a tentative step towards the smoking body.              

And then, the deviant started laughing. A horrible hysterical laughter made all Toni's hairs stand on ends. „You think you won, fire boy," he croaked, dragging himself to his knees. Half of his face was burned, red and blistered, and his eye closed under his swollen brow. "You have no idea who you are dealing with!" He reached into his pocket, and something silver glistened in low burning flames.

Toni only recognised it as a syringe when the deviant slammed it into his burned neck. He grunted and bent over as his body convulsed violently. A scream broke from his mouth, a deep guttural scream of a wounded animal. The deviant straightened back, spreading his arms wide, and when he opened his eyes, they were burning with pure white light. The air filled with a heavy stench of ozone, and the crackles of electricity crawled on the deviant's body as if he couldn't keep them in anymore.

With a curse, Antoni started slowly backing away towards the exit. He had no idea what was happening to his opponent, but all his instincts screamed to run. The deviant cried out again, and lightning bolts started to shoot out of him in all directions. His body was covered with glowing lines as if all the electricity inside was trying to get out.

When a flash of lightning seared his arm, Toni threw the caution to the wind and dashed towards the exit. The deviant was going to explode any second now, and he didn't want to be anywhere near him when it happened. He let the flame take over as the lightning bolts furiously shot everywhere, impossible to dodge. Toni dashed through the door into the narrow tunnel and had to force himself to stop abruptly not to burn people gathered there.

The backup finally arrived.

"We need to get out of here, quick!" Antoni urged, trying to outshout the agonising screams of the deviant and the crack of thunders behind him. "He's going to blow up!"

"Move back, everyone," a gruff voice ordered, and all officers in antiriot gear stepped aside to let a short but muscular man through.

"Sir! You can't stop him." Toni insisted, refusing to move. Regan West was his direct supervisor, but he would not let him walk into the death trap behind him. "This surge of power... I've never seen anything like this!"

"I did." Unphased, Regan took a cigarette bud from the corner of his mouth, threw it to the floor and crushed it with his heavy military boot. "If I don't shield the shelter, the lightning will fly all the way to the tube tunnels and strike the trains. Now step aside, Antoni."

A stray lightning shot over their heads, and the captain of the assault team rushed him back behind the wall of high shields. He could only watch helplessly as his supervisor took off his leather jacket, threw it on the floor and raised his arms. The air in front of him shimmered and turned blue as if someone had put tainted glass covering the entrance to the tunnel.
As more and more electric bolts thundered at the barrier, Regan's brow pearled with sweat, and he grunted. When Toni thought it would never end, all sound cut off. It was not silence, but a void of all sounds, as if a giant vortex sucked all the noise just before...

Antoni held his breath and dropped to a crouch covering his head with his arms.

The explosion shook the whole tunnel.

Other bodies smashed at Toni and were thrown back in a heap of limbs and wrapped ballistic shields. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the ringing in his ears. Everything around him was muffled as if all the sounds came from a deep well. Suddenly someone tried to heave him to his feet, shaking his arm. Toni blinked several times, and when his vision cleared, he recognised the worried face of his sister.

"...are you alright?"

The sounds finally made their way to his ears, and he stood up, touching a painful spot on his head. "Yeah, still in one piece, it seems." He looked up over the assault team, slowly getting back to their feet and spotted his supervisor leaning heavily on the wall with one hand and wiping the blood from under his nose with the other.

"Are you alright, sir?" Alex asked, already making her way to the short man.

"I will be as soon as you stop your yapping, girl," he sarked and then made a gurgling sound and spat more blood on the ground. "Now stop gawking, and let's see if anything is left from that deviant."

Toni and Aleks followed him back into the shelter. The place looked as if it had been bombed. Previously white tiles were now a mixture of black, grey and brown, the stones upturned and broken. And in the middle of it all, where the deviant stood, was now a deep crater. They carefully approached the edge of the hole, but inside there was only a body charred so badly that if they didn't know the deviant, they could never recognise it.

"What the hell was that?" Toni asked, breaking the heavy silence.

Regan fished a cigarette out of his pocket and raised it, looking expectantly at him. Antoni rolled his eyes and raised his finger, igniting a little flame and touching it to the cigarette's end. Regan took a deep frag and poofed out a cloud of smoke.

"The new drug Rioters are developing," he explained. "They try to enhance gifted's powers. So far, all their test subjects died in excruciating pain, just like this one."

"They are experimenting on people?" Aleks asked, appalled.

"What did you think they kidnapped all those people for?"

Toni cursed. It was bad. They heard about the recent growth of missing person cases, but they didn't have a clearance to learn all the details. Only the most experienced agents were working on those cases. The fact that they happen to encounter the Rioter on what was supposed to be a simple first-contact mission was pure coincidence. But now, when they saw what happened to that deviant, there was no way the agency would try to keep them in the dark. It was a messed up case, but the thought of working on something this huge excited him.

"Where's the target?" Regan asked Aleks.

"He's outside with a medical team."

"Don't you need medical assistance?"

Aleks straightened and raised her chin. "No, sir."

"Good, because we have much to do. Come along."