I always hated guns. I never found them amusing or cool or even remotely useful. It was the thugs with the guns that I slaughtered first when I was younger. A way to show the rest of them that no, it didn’t matter what you thought could protect you, because it couldn’t. Not from me. I wanted them to be afraid. So afraid they put down their guns and got to their knees and prayed that I was having a good day. But they never did. They fired out of panic, out of spite—I killed one of their buddies, so now I had to die. Shame. The bullets ricocheted off of me and ended up killing more of them than they ever did me. They only ever stopped shooting when they ran out of bullets. In that moment when the guns went click, they realized it, I saw it in their eyes, that they were totally, utterly, powerless.

  I hated guns, because I knew in my heart that it didn’t work like that for everyone else. I’d seen younger superheroes die—the kind that went out at night, thinking they’d snag a purse snatcher easily and start their career off with a win. Most purse snatchers don’t just come with knives. Most of them already have blood on their hands.

  I didn’t always buy the desperate person doing desperate things act that they always put on.

  But you learn the hard way that lying gets you places, and most teenagers want to think that hey, maybe the guy is right—maybe he deserves to get beaten up a little so he can learn his lesson. As soon as they turned their backs on them, they’d get a bullet through the heart, and drop dead right there in front of the person they had been trying to save. No, I never liked them. I’d seen Emelia, Michael, Grant and Selina get shot when we were younger. I’d seen fourteen-year olds crying to get a bullet out of someone’s stomach, helplessly trying to save them, but none of us had known what we were doing. We only ever made it worse. Michael would freeze the wound and tell them to stay still. I’d get a police officer to come and help, but by then, it was too late—too much blood, too little help.

  Back home, we didn’t have weapons. We had one, and a very big one at that.

  Hand-held weapons, though, were barbaric. Backwards. Savage.

  But when the bullet flew right past me, I understood something—from the moment his hand jerked, from the split second it tore out of its chamber and shrieked through the air, that some humans weren’t worth saving.

  That I was doing a disservice to a lot of them by letting so many of them live.

  The bullet found its target, and tore a hole through Dennie’s side.

  Time seemed to snap back in place. I took a step back, almost stunned. I stared over my shoulder, watched the patch of blood grow and grow, pouring down his side. Then I screamed. I dove to his side before he could hit the ground. I screamed and didn’t stop. A surge of something grew inside of me. A torrent of heat and hatred that gathered around my hand and shot toward Lucas in a blast of golden crackling light. His robot took the brunt of the hit, but they both flew backward, vanishing across the street. I didn’t care to look. I gathered Dennie in my arms and forced him to sit upright. Pressure on the wound. Fuck, what next? I was panicking, shaking. I forced electricity out of my fingers but nothing came. Nothing at all. He was gasping like a fish, mouth moving and lips shining with blood. No. I rocked back and forth, telling him it was OK, it was fine—I just needed him to wait a few more minutes and ten everything was going to be Ok, goddammit, everything was going to be fine, so just stop bleeding, please, Dennie, just stop bleeding, because everything was going to be fine in a few minutes’ time, I swear it. I promise it.

  I stopped myself from wailing and crying. I held his side and grabbed my phone and—

  “Rylee,” he said weakly. He grabbed my wrist, smearing blood down my arm.

  “I’m here, D. I promise I’m here. I’m…I’m gonna call them and…Fuck it. I’ll fly. Hold me and—”

  He shook his head slowly, his breathing labored and raspy. “Oh, Rylee, I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare start. They’ll be here soon, alright? Just keep breathing, okay?”

  I grabbed him bodily. He grunted and wheezed. My legs shook as I lifted him off the floor. I stumbled and tried to fly. I got a meter into the air before I stumbled and hit the ground. Dennie moaned. I gasped for air and reached for him again. Goddamit, Rylee, just do something right for once in your fucking life. I got my arms under his back, soaking my chest in his blood. The bullet had hit something that was spitting scarlet in slow pulses. I tried not to stare as I tried my damndest to pick him up. But my body refused. My muscles just couldn’t, no matter what.

  I just wasn’t strong enough, and I buried my head in his chest, gasping for air, grabbing his shaking hands.

  “I was here before their capes filled the skies,” he said quietly, his head tilted, his eyes staring at the clouds listlessly floating above us—uncaring, slow, not moved by anything below them. “I was here when they smiled at the crowds and kissed their babies.” He chuckled, then coughed. Blood kept gushing through the tight gaps of my fingers, not fucking stopping. “Then the Bronze Age came to an end, and the Golden Age began, and oh, Buck, you shoulda been there. You woulda loved it. So many heroes. So many Capes. All of their stories were mine to tell.”

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  I looked over my shoulder. Two of those metallic things slammed into the concrete at the end of the alley. Lucas still wasn’t there. These things, though, were staring me down, getting closer footstep by echoing footstep.

  I hugged him tighter to my chest, baring my teeth. Why? Gods, why?

  Where are the sirens?

  Slowly, Dennie turned his head, his glazed eyes staring at me, into me—through my chest. My necklace hung over him, grazing his chin. “When it ended, everyone thought superheroes would never be the same.” Closer. Their heavy feet cracked the pavement. They wanted to take their time. To make it feel like the air was getting squeezed out of my lungs the more they forced me against the dumpster. I didn’t know where else to hide. To go. I shook with agony and fear and wanted to cry so badly. So, so badly. “But I always figured there’d be another.”

  Then came the sound: the shriek of the SDU’s sirens filled the nighttime air.

  Dennie coughed blood onto my chest, dashing scarlet on the golden lightning bolt necklace. He wheezed, struggled, and looked back into the night. “They’ll fill the sky again soon,” he said quietly. “And I always thought that you would be the one they’d all be following.” He grabbed my t-shirt, his hands shaking violently, his eyes a teary mess. “But you gotta promise me, Buck, that you’ll be the best they’ll ever be. That you bring back the Capes.” He panted, breaths weakening, heartbeat stuttering and stammering. “Bring back the Golden Age, and you promise me that it makes your father’s period look like the Dark Ages we’ve been in for so long. You be the best goddamn superhero—” He choked. Blood poured from his lips. I held him closer, shaking and shuddering, my nose a mucusy, bloody mess as I bit down on my teeth, trying to stop myself from crying. The sirens are getting louder. Just a little bit longer, Dennie, and I promise you’ll be there to see me do it—you’re gonna see two Golden Ages.

  Just please, Dennie—just stop fucking bleeding.

  “You be the best goddamn superhero I know you can be,” he said, teeth shining with blood as he smiled. “I never got to write your story, and…hell, Ry, I wasn’t meant to. It’s yours to write, and make it the greatest ever told.”

  I heard the click of his lighter, then smelt the pungent odor of his cigarette. I looked over my shoulder. His face was fine and his body was, too. He stood there, gun in his hand, cigarette in between his lips, as Dennie relaxed in my arms, the smile still on his face as his body sank deeper into my arms. I stayed silent. Barely moved. Then I screamed and wailed, clutching his blood-soaked shirt with one hand and beating his chest with another, demanding that he woke up, that he got up and kept talking and fuck me, not like this, not like this. Not in an alleyway. Not in the dark. I buried my head in his chest, his body cooling, his shirt muffling the rambling words I spat at him to not die this way. My head pounded. Ached. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. I hyperventilated trying to shake him awake, to make his eyes flutter open just one more time. He wasn’t meant to die this way.

  He wasn’t meant to die knowing I couldn’t even save him. Not cold in the darkness, dreaming of a time when superheroes would’ve flooded the skies and made sure things like this would never have happened to him.

  He’d died a boy staring at the sky, still seeing heroes that had long since died as well.

  I turned and roared his name. Lucas only tilted his head.

  The robot closest to him lunged in front of him before I could slam my shoulder into his chest. I grabbed its arm and ripped it clean off its body. Blood and oil, black and red and greasy, gushed from its body. I stuck my hand through its fleshy gut and tore out its mechanical, blood-soaked innards. I stood in front of Lucas, the thing’s body slumped to the ground. I breathed hard through my mouth, my head ringing and my body burning hot and painful. I spat. The others came for me. They fell, one by one, into gutted pieces of metal and slabs of flesh. Then I got him. I grabbed Lucas by the neck, looked him dead in the eyes, and raised my fist to put it through his heart.

  He didn’t fight me. He only spat out his cigarette and said, “You could have stopped this. Dennie didn’t have to die, but I guess all things have expiration dates, and the old bastard cheated death one too many times.”

  A hand grabbed my wrist before I could bury it inside his guts.

  I looked over my shoulder, then froze.

  A pair of golden eyes stood behind me, attached to my face.

  “Hi there,” she said, twisting my arm until I let go. I fell to my knees. She put a hand on her hip as she held my arm above my head, painfully turned until my fingers were rigid and I was screaming. “Capes don’t kill, BTW.”

  I tried to stand. She forced me back down. I panted, gasping and crying between each breath.

  All I could smell was Dennie’s blood. All I could stand to see were his limp feet beside me, his body leaning against the dumpster, a rat already nibbling at his ear, chewing through his flesh, looking for an easy meal.

  I glared up at her through my hair, through the blood in my eyes and the tears swelling in them.

  She looked down at me, contempt in her thin smile. “Now then,” she said. “Let’s get you out of the cold. I mean, all these icky dead bodies lying around give me the creeps. All this gore, too? Ugh. It’s just so disgusting.”

  “I’m gonna kill you,” I whispered. No more tears. No more crying. Gasping breaths, hot and sharp.

  I’m gonna fucking kill you.

  “Looking forward to it,” she said. Then she punched me, and everything went black.