We went at each other looking for murder. The Ambrosia was dulling my senses, capping my speed and blunting my punches. Lucas, on the other hand, took his chances when they came, punching, kicking, pivoting me around and using me as a battering ram to break our way through wall after wall, floor after floor. My leverage came in the air. Grabbing him and throwing him upward meant I bought a second to crouch, shoot upward, and drive him back through the same floors he’d thrown me through. It almost felt like he was getting stronger. Tougher. Harder to peel away. Less of his skin came away from his jaw when I hit him. Less blood trickled from his mouth when I crushed him. It’s me. I was getting exhausted. My knuckles were split open and weren’t healing as fast any more. I was slow.

  And Lucas knew that, and he revelled in it, not letting me get so much as a second as I rolled, gasping for air from when he’d just kicked me dead in the chest. I was slower getting up this time. He slammed his foot into my ribs, then my gut. Used his heel to turn me over onto my back and stared down at me, blood drenching his white shirt and soaking into his hair. All I could see were his eyes, the faint glint, the angry red veins—nothing else. The rest of him was shrouded in the same hellish scarlet light. No more ringing alarms. Just silence. Groaning. The wet smack of fists meeting meat and flesh and bone again and again until he left my arms limp and myself in the floor.

  Lucas, knelt beside me, breathing steadily as if this was all just training, spat saliva to the side. He said nothing. Just stared at the ground, an arm resting on his raised leg. I barely had the strength to form a fist or get up.

  So for just a minute, neither of us moved. All I heard was my wheezing, labored breathing.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, slicking back his hair. He slowly shook his head, then turned to look at me, at the state he’d left me in—clothes torn, bruised and bloody and struggling to stay conscious. I wanted to get up by sheer willpower alone. But my body felt nailed to the floor. It felt like the universe was crushing my chest. “Give up.”

  I don’t know if he let me, or if some part of him just wanted to beat the rebelliousness out of me, but I summoned the strength to roll onto my shoulder, get my hands underneath me, and push the broken concrete off my face. I breathed hard, shut my eyes, let my body quiver and shake as I dug my fingers into the stone and broke them.

  I was on my feet before I knew it. My shoulders screamed as I raised my fists.

  Lucas got up from his crouch and stared me down, his lips thin and jaw set. “You’re too tough for your own good, Ry,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders. His heart was beating just as fast as mine, banging against his chest.

  “You think…” Stay on your feet, Ry. Keep. Standing. Up. “You think you deserve to kill me?” I laughed. The sound came out flat and died just centimeters away from my lips. My hair, a sheet of blood and concrete grit, hung over my eyes, obscuring him, making him a vague and blurry shadow. “I’m…Olympia. No chance. Asshole.”

  Lucas said, “Two minutes. That’s how long it’ll take five grams of uncut Ambrosia to kill you.”

  “I only need one minute to butcher you.”

  “You’ve already lost this fight.”

  “Me?” I said, laughter rattling up my throat. “Not a fucking chance.”

  Lucas walked forward. To that, I threw myself at him.

  For whatever reason, he stuttered for half a second. A fraction of time barely noticeable, but he paused, his heart missing a beat, then I punched him in the chest, right above his heart, and sent him skidding, tumbling, hitting the ground like a dead body. He grinded against the rubble and slammed into the opposite wall. I ran, not wasting any extra energy. The chamber I’d sent him into was some kind of open arena. A prison area with empty cells and a wide, barely-lit circle in the center with old benches and an abandoned warden’s tower. I found Lucas in the center of the floor. I slammed into the ground in a crouch, electricity being forced to flicker and burst along my arms. It was beginning to hurt. The electricity felt like tiny lashes of pain. My growing body heat a rising agony.

  The air around me rippled as I stood, waves of heat distorting the metal and the benches. I was doing what I used to do before I fought the Kaiju, and that was relying on myself—not the electricity, not that side of my powers, but me. And fuck it hurt. It hurt so bad I grit my teeth as I walked toward Lucas, struggling to pick himself up off the floor. Metal bent and warped as I walked past. The concrete was turning into sludge where my feet landed on it.

  When I grabbed Lucas’ face, the stench of burning flesh filled my throat and surged into my lungs. His eyes bulged as he screamed behind my palm, his heart a failing mess getting faster and faster inside of his chest. Then he got underneath me and used both his feet to slam into my gut, kicking me so hard I almost passed out. I let go, doubling over. He reeled away, stumbling against the benches. His face was scarred, meaty—the skin had melted and some had burnt, and lines of bone peeked through threads of flesh that clung to his jaw. I knuckled my mouth. You look like the devil. We stood facing each other, the hole in the wall far above us shining a dim circle of light onto the floor. But Lucas wasn’t anywhere near it. He was in the dark, his face a mess, clutching at his shirt hard.

  You’re running out of time, old man. Let me help you over the finish line.

  I ran toward him. Lucas turned at the last second, swinging on me. His fist met my face, smashing my nose. I stumbled back. He lunged forward, grabbing my throat, lifting me up, and slamming me down through a table. I groaned and kicked outward, catching his ribs. Crack. He gasped, blood filling his mouth. I flipped off the floor and grabbed a bench, ripping it from its bolts and swinging it hard into the side of him. He went flying, skidding, then hit a cell door and crumpled it, going right through. I followed him like a bullet. My shoulder met his jaw and we both went through the wall and, like a fist to the face, like lightning to my senses, a gust of cold wind and snow washed over the both of us as we spiralled through the air. For a moment, we hung in the darkness, moonlight a silvery outline of our contorted bodies. Blood danced through the air. Rubble followed suit. Then I grabbed him.

  And we both plunged into the frothing black ocean below, smashing into it with so much speed it might as well have been concrete. The water shocked me numb. We fell deeper into the black depths, fists of stone plunging into the water around us. I hung motionless, floating, my hair loose and the water hissing and boiling around my body. Then something hit me, and hit me hard. Lucas grabbed my throat with both his hands and squeezed. Air shot out of my mouth in a moment of panic. A rush of bubbles rose from his flesh and the icy waters met together with my skin. His teeth were bared. His eyes were wild. Shrike had his fingers digging and digging deeper into my throat as I clawed and struggled and squirmed and kicked. Then the water began to swirl around us. A torrent of rushing waves that spun and spun until I let it all go and blasted upward. The surface broke and we erupted in a super heated geyser. Back in the air, I kicked his gut. He still held firm. I grabbed his face and sunk my thumb deep, deep into the gooey flesh of his eyeball. He screamed bloody murder. Screamed so loud it was all I could hear. My fist went for his ribs. Not once, not twice—again and again, my superspeed churning his gut into a gristly red mess.

  Until Lucas caved into his innards being torn apart, then I grabbed the broken meat of his side, and dug my fingers inside of him. He raged, saliva and spit flying from his mouth as he shrieked my name. I forced my hand deeper. He spat blood on my face. The stink of Ambrosia rushed down my throat. I recoiled, but that wasn’t going to work. Not when I was this close. I grabbed hold of his ribs and used them to swing him around and throw him as hard as I fucking could high, high, high into the sky. He tore apart the clouds. I blinked, my vision swimming. I shook my head. A voice in my mind told me to stop it. To find the heart not to do this. But I looked up, my fists balled, and swore as the air around me churned. Dennie, I thought, carving my way through the sky, following Lucas as he slowed, his arms windmilling, his organs a trail hanging loosely out of his body as he crested. I know you’d expect something more of me. I hit him in the chest, a super-sonic clap of sound that shot him higher up. And I know I’m probably the biggest mess of a superhero you ever got to see in the flesh. Lucas tried to fight back. I broke his arm. His body was failing on him. He was weaker—he’d always been weaker. I’d held back against him because I was afraid I’d hurt the only person who’d even pretend to be a father to me. But I have to do this. He can’t stay alive. The next punch broke his skull. Misshapen, bent, the meat of his brain a thing I heard squelch and press against the shards of bone fragments up there. Now we were above the clouds. So high up the moon and the stars were the only things witness to us. And that’s my burden to bear, my life to take—but she’s dying here tonight, too.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Olympia, the one he knew, the one they all knew, was dead the moment I shot past Lucas.

  I turned around mid-air, my body suspended, and gathered electricity around my fist, the air warping, burning, flickering with heat so brilliant and light so violent the clouds reeled away and night briefly became day.

  When my fist connected with his body, it’s as if the Gods themselves struck him down out of the heavens. The flash of light was blinding. The energy that gushed out of my body was an agonizing tidal wave of emotion and frustration and an all-consuming surge of pent-up exhaustion from countless months, as if my soul was being split in two so whatever was watching over me could see every single ounce of me, bare and naked and vulnerable, shot through his body and sent him back down to Earth—the smoldering corpse of a man who’d defied the odds one too many times, and the universe had sent me along to correct one of its biggest fuck ups. He hit the prison yard like a meteor, a plume of dirt and gravel erupting with a hollow thud. I landed on the edge of the crater, floating above him, like I was always meant to do. I waited, straining to listen to a heartbeat. To any breathing. For a fight.

  When the dust cleared, his body was a charred, blackened mess of emulsified meat and bone.

  The meat on his face had been burnt so badly it had pulled back from his teeth, as if he was grinning. His eyes, though, slowly tracked me. Fuck me. Bloodshot. Dark. The sparkle of Ambrosia was missing entirely. I slid down the side of the crater, stumbling until I fell beside him. Exhaustion was creeping in. My body wanted to quit.

  But I had one last thing to say to him. The last voice he’d ever hear. The voice of everyone he’d gotten killed in his endless war against supervillains stronger and smarter than any teenager he’d sent to their deaths.

  This wasn’t just for me. It was for all of them.

  And for a moment, as I struggled to raise my hand to his face, it was almost like I wasn’t the only person here in the yard. My hand raised almost on its own, forced toward his face by the chattering souls in my head.

  For once, they were all in unison, and they were screaming the same thing: Kill him.

  “When you see my old man,” I snarled, grabbing his throat. “Tell him his mistake said hi.”

  I dug my fingers into Lucas’ throat, then tore his head clean off his body.

  Because the hero he’d created was dead. The one I’d make would be better. And if that was the last thing Lucas ever saw, the dangling golden necklace that hung from my throat, the glittering pendant that Cleopatra herself gave me as a promise to be better, no, the best, then so fucking be it—he could tell my dad all about it.

  I couldn’t bring myself to stand up. Snow danced through the air, carried by a breeze that was swift and slow, that tousled my hair and bit into the wounds and gashes all over my skin. Lucas’ body wasn’t repairing itself, and for the first time in my life, the sight of a corpse made me sick to the core. My stomach tensed but there was nothing inside of me left to vomit. It’s over. His head was beside me, staring numbly at the sky. His mouth was moving slowly, teeth gnashing together in tiny repetitive clicks. He was nothing but a skull, his skin mottled, his eyelids gone. Nothing.

  My limbs felt like they weighed millions of pounds as I tried to stand. I fell again, a little drizzle of snow collecting on my back and in my hair. I panted, my breaths steaming tendrils pouring from my mouth and nose. My wounds were healing, but slowly—I felt my skin pulling together, felt my bones trying to find their place. I need to catch my breath. I need to rest. But I was almost at the finishing line. All I had left was one more man. One more thorn in my side. I coughed, the bite of the wind grazing down my back. Blood littered the snow around me. I spat. I shut my eyes. Come on. Just a little bit more. I crawled my way to the edge of the crater, hand over hand, dragging my body up the side of it until I was back on even ground. Then I lay on my back, arms spread, staring at the sky.

  I shut my eyes, and for a moment, the burning agony that was my entire body almost faded away. For just a little while, I was the girl who’d seen snow for the first time—snow that didn’t mean training or suffering or enduring the winter’s ferocity. The snow that meant peaceful, silent nights. The snow that was like powder. That was soft. But it wasn’t that time right now. So I got myself to one knee and didn’t move. My body was shaking. I felt like I was either going to puke or my head was going to implode from the pulsating headache. My vision swam.

  And then a soft crunch of snow met my ears, as the darkness of night pooled, gathered, and opened like a gateway in the ground. I steeled myself, biting down on my tongue until I tasted blood. On your feet one more time.

  By the time I was standing, I found Ava standing in front of me. She was in the same exact clothes as we’d first met—a suit with a trench coat hanging from her shoulders. The afro was gone and in its place were long thick locs of hair that ran down her back. I stared at her, squinting my eyes, trying to clear the blurry haze in my vision.

  “I’m either in hell,” I whispered. “Or you’re actually here, and I don’t know which is better.”

  “You look like a mess,” she said quietly. Ava stepped closer, looking down into the pit. She looked back at me, her face resolute, her lips thin in a smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here any sooner. It turns out a lot of people don’t like working with me after that summertime cluster fuck.” She caught me before I fell. She nearly fell, too, under my weight. We staggered, she steadied. I almost told her to leave me alone, just because it was instinct at this point. “Rylee,” she said, holding me by the shoulders. “You can stop now. You don’t have to keep standing. Rest, Ok?”

  “You know I can’t do that yet.” I stopped leaning on her. My blood had gotten onto her shirt, staining it a deep lick of red. “I need to get to Caesar. Everything ends tonight. He’s dying, and nobody else has to suffer.”

  “You don’t look like you’re in any state to fight. Let Rhea do it. Frankie is unstable but she keeps—”

  “No,” I said, knuckling away the blood that had crested on the corner of my mouth. One of my eyes was swelling, and charges of pain shot into my chest. “Ava, I want to do this myself. I need to make a statement.”

  “To who?” she asked, curiosity glimmering behind her glasses.

  “Everyone.” I swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “The whole world needs to watch, because after tonight, Lower Olympus is mine until I fix it. The Mayor won’t like it. The President is probably gonna call me a terrorist, or some kind of supervillain—but I’m not going to kill Caesar, just for all of it to go back to the way it used to be.” I glanced into the crater, at the body being covered with snow and the skull with its dull eyes and clicking teeth that was staring up at me. Can you hear the words I’m saying now, Lucas? Can you read my lips?

  “We already tried that,” she said. “And it didn’t go too well the first time.”

  Silence passed between us, drifting on the icy wind that made her coat snap and my hair dance amongst the drifts of snow. It was deathly silent here. The prison was a ruin, not just because of Lucas and I but because of the ELS as well. Whatever they’d come here to get, they’d made damned sure I had a chance of getting out.

  Bloodforge was still out there with samples of my bones, my muscles—my blood.

  Cassie Blackwood had gone scot-free.

  “Yeah,” I said quietly, then met her eyes. “But this time, whether the world likes it or not, Rylee Addams is going to fix New Olympus. No costumes. No bullshit. No secret identities. Let them know who saved them all.”

  Ava smiled a little. “What if this goes horribly wrong?”

  “It won’t,” I said. “I’ve failed enough. It’s time I won for a change.”