“Stealth field is holding steady.”

  “Energy transfer holding stable at 82%. Heat bleed within safe environmental parameters. Capture modules in the green. Converters yellow. Projecting potential issues in 15.”

  “Glowy, please slow down radiation funneling by 20%.”

  “That’ll buy 10 minutes.”

  “Relentless has engaged Ekraiades.”

  “One less problem.”

  “I need an update on the rabbit people hordes.”

  “Specifically?”

  “The ones closest to civilians.”

  “Copy that.”

  “They’re about to deploy Pandora’s Box.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I, uh, um, I don’t know. I just had a thought pop into my head.”

  “Tell me you have a location.”

  “I don— do. Sending coordinates to your station.”

  “Get us over it right now. Weapon readiness status?”

  “We have enough energy for a 35% power discharge.”

  “I want targeting ready to go before they unleash that thing. We’ll only have a few seconds before it’ll be too fast for our systems to lock on to.”

  Hayden was a tightly wound coil while she listened to the experimental skyship’s bridge crew do their thing.

  She’d rather be elsewhere.

  Whether down on the streets of D.C. or back home on the west coast, she could take either as long as she was actually fighting.

  Unfortunately, there was a job on the skyship that only she could do in case of an emergency.

  The key to preserving tens of thousands of life.

  At least that’s what Cal had said and she had no reason to tell him he was wrong despite really wanting to.

  She felt useless just standing there hooked up with more cables than she thought necessary. They snaked from the back of her armor, disappearing into the wall to run all the way to the weapon’s power battery room.

  The floor rumbled underneath her boots.

  She felt the vibrations run through her armor to her body, which was annoying since it triggered random electrical discharges.

  The closest way she could describe her power activating without fully conscious thought was akin to a muscle twitching.

  Normally, there wouldn’t be any random discharges, but she hadn’t released in nearly a month. Close to her record, which meant she was very close to bursting.

  A glance at her HUD told her that her armor still had plenty of battery space.

  She checked the cables’ connections for the tenth time in the last thirty minutes. Checked feeds from a variety of sources all over and above the D.C. war zone.

  Thoughts drifted to the Mist Spekters.

  Her last check with the Raynanaut hadn’t been good.

  The ranger captains had gone in using Mouthy’s switching Skill.

  They had vanished from the skyship and were replaced by a lot of the captured Mist Spekters with several notable absences.

  No little Boy.

  No Galen.

  Stupid kids thinking they were invincible.

  She would have to tell Ms. Daniels if Galen didn’t make it out of wherever he was. She didn’t allow herself to think that he and the little boy might already be gone.

  “I have eyes on Pandora’s Box!”

  “Put it up on the main view screen. Keep tactical on the projector. Let’s not fumble at the goal line.”

  The bridge crew were calm and professional sounding, which was good considering the experimental nature of the skyship.

  Hayden had read the specs.

  One read the specs when one was going to be on it, especially when one was connected to an experimental weapon that had a chance of blowing them all up.

  Sure, it was less than a percent, but she figured anything over zero was something one had to pay attention to.

  The main view screen showed an empty street, well, empty except for an old military truck.

  The kind she had seen around over the years that all sorts of people used to transport fighters.

  Its large bed usually had a canvas cover, but that was missing because of the large box taking up most of the space.

  She noted the lack of escort.

  “Where are they going with that thing?”

  “Scan the surrounding area. Look for large numbers of living things. People and monsters.”

  It didn’t take long for the crew to do their jobs.

  “Here! Projection tracking says there’s a 90% chance probability they’re heading here!”

  The tactical projection high-lighted an emergency shelter a few klicks away from the speeding truck.

  It was surrounded by one of the rabbit people hordes.

  Hayden’s lips went dry as she observed the furious frenzy as the rabbit people killed, fucked and ate anything they got their claws on. Even monsters.

  Multiple varieties poured in from the surrounding area. Drawn by the orgy of bloodshed.

  They actually helped the people in the shelter by drawing some of the rabbit people’s attention.

  Still, it didn’t look good from what she could tell.

  The defenders appeared to be running out of everything from ammo to people.

  As she watched, the rabbit people built a living ramp as they clawed their way up one side of the five-story building only to be blasted back by a mage-type spraying fire from her hands like water from a pressure washer.

  The woman sagged and was almost pulled over the edge by a charred rabbit person if not for an axe-wielder cleaving head from neck and pulling her back.

  Hayden did a quick mental calculation.

  Probably a few thousand people inside the shelter based on population numbers in the surrounding area, which was almost all housing. The Americans pushed a three kid policy. So, more kids than adults.

  The defenders blasting from the roof and windows weren’t all wearing Combined Armed Forces gear, which meant civilians were fighting too.

  They were her enemies, but Hayden admired the will to live and protect.

  There was a sense of tragedy in the fact that despite all their efforts their own government was going to sacrifice them to that thing in the box.

  “Pandora’s Box is stopping.”

  Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

  Well, not the devil, but something worse, maybe?

  She only had Cal’s description to go by and it had sounded terrible.

  As terrible as the most terrible things she had ever seen, fought or ran from?

  Yeah.

  Top three at least.

  Maybe even number one when she factored in the whole picture.

  “Get me that target lock! And ready the weapon! I want to be able to fire as soon as they open that thing.”

  The box looked too plain for the nightmare it contained. Black stone that almost shined like metal. One dulled and tarnished by ages of decay and neglect.

  Cal had said that looking at it in person was different.

  That one saw in its surfaces their worst nightmares etched with life-like fidelity and precision that was indistinguishable from reality.

  That if one looked too long the scenes drew them in until their mind broke.

  Which begged the question why wasn’t he handling it?

  She figured he trusted that the brand new skyship with its experimental weapon would be enough.

  American soldiers brought their truck to a halt less than a thousand meters from the battle around the emergency shelter. Four emerged and hurriedly began the process of opening Pandora’s Box.

  Only four.

  “They have no idea what’s about to happen to them,” she murmured.

  Either that or they were willing sacrifices.

  She couldn’t discount the possibility.

  Fanaticism tended to make people do things that weren’t in their best interests.

  They opened the box and immediately fell to their knees and wailed like children.

  What emerged from within startled Hayden even though Cal had prepared her for what she’d see.

  Which was a human baby.

  Not some twisted, misshapen mockery of a baby, but a perfectly normal baby with cute chubbiness and fresh, pinkish skin no different from the soldiers writhing on the street.

  Except, human babies didn’t tend to float, nor did they sit in a perfect lotus position.

  He, for the baby was clearly a he, opened bright eyes down on the soldiers.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  They ceased wailing and tearing at their armor and hair and turned their attentions on each other.

  Two fell on a third, tearing at her pants and forcing her to bend over while tearing at their own pants.

  The fourth began slamming his head into the asphalt until it was pulped mess of crimson with lighter flecks mixed in.

  Brain and bone.

  Hayden knew.

  The human-appearing baby began to grow.

  Years in an instant until he looked at least five or six.

  Calling it Pandora’s Box might have been too on the nose, but Hayden decided it couldn’t have been called anything else.

  The thing it contained created, inspired and fed on the worst aspects of a thinking being’s existence. The worst thoughts and acts. And the suffering they generated.

  As it did so it grew in apparent age and strength.

  Given time it could engulf an area the size of a metropolitan city.

  There was one thing that made it different from the original myth.

  Hope.

  When it was around there was none to be found.

  Seconds had passed in stunned silence on the bridge until the captain remembered.

  “Fire!”

  “Captain, but—”

  “That thing isn’t a real baby! Remember! Fire now, damn it! Captain’s Orders!”

  That did it.

  The bridge shook like the skyship had been grabbed by a giant child who wanted the candy inside.

  Hayden kept her eyes on the screen as it went white.

  The energy beam turned night into day, drawing eyes from every direction as a blank patch of air suddenly shot a bright pillar straight into the city.

  “I want info on the target.”

  “One moment, captain. There’s too much energy in the area for our sensors.”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The view screen cleared quickly, though the seconds felt like an hour.

  The captain cursed.

  It was still alive, though it was no longer floating, nor whole. It crawled in the center of a hundred meter diameter of glassed ground. Its pinkish flesh was charred black, making it look like a piece of charcoal.

  The energy strike had drawn the attention of the rabbit people and monsters fighting around the emergency shelter. many began to peel off their battles with the defenders and each other drawn by the wounded thing.

  Monsters sought to kill. It was their number one imperative.

  “It’ll heal if it can get to them,” Hayden said to no one in particular.

  “I know!” the captain snapped. “Time to fire?”

  “Five minutes to 1% power, ma’am!”

  35% didn’t kill it.

  Hayden didn’t think 1% would finish it off even with how badly hurt it was.

  The captain turned to her and nodded.

  “Switch to emergency battery, now!”

  Hayden chuckled.

  Way to make her feel important.

  She waited for the techs down at the weapon to give the go ahead before she dumped everything she had been holding in.

  The electricity traveled down the cables to the batteries faster than what was, perhaps, safe.

  But, needs must, as the saying went.

  “5%, 10%, 15%…”

  Hayden tuned the voice out as she focused on pushing her power out.

  She’d never tell anyone, but it reminded her of that one time she took part in a spicy pepper eating contest.

  It had been for a good cause, but she’d always regret it for what she had to endure on the toilet that night.

  But, hey, at least the kids had a fun festival.

  “33% power!”

  “Is that it?”

  Hayden glared at the captain, but didn’t have the energy to speak.

  She felt as drained as after going all out in a training session.

  “That’ll be enough. Fire again!”

  The view screen went white a second time in as many minutes just as Hayden’s vision did.

  Her part in the battle was over.

  Ended by unconsciousness that led to a strange dream that was equal parts happy and devastating.

  They had all been too late, after all.

  Glowy or Lucy Vela was giddy with the excitement of being close enough to a titanic clash to feel the shockwaves generated by Mr. Tezuka and the demigod hitting each other, hitting buildings and hitting each other with buildings.

  Though, she guessed it wasn’t quite the same as some of the stories she heard about Mr. Cruces and his brother using buildings to hit monsters with since it was more Mr. Tezuka hitting buildings with the demigod and vice versa.

  Darn.

  She realized that her story wasn’t quite as impressive as the others.

  It was tough feeling like an impostor amongst all the hardened badasses even if none of them ever made her feel unwelcome or like she didn’t belong.

  She didn’t want to be in battles, but at the same time she wanted to be like the others. Not afraid of anything, let alone themselves.

  Which she didn’t need to be as long as she had her radiation absorbing armor to keep herself from killing every living thing around her in a brutal, ugly way.

  Not that killing monsters bothered her too much.

  She mostly felt bad about the people and normal animals.

  A sudden pillar of light in the distance which could only be the secret stealth skyship firing its experimental weapon turned night into day.

  She held her breath for what felt like a long moment, waiting for a fireball to explode in the blank patch of night sky.

  When there was none she exhaled.

  “Yes! They didn’t blow up!”

  Momentary horror filled her until she checked to make sure that her comms to said skyship weren’t currently open.

  A second pillar of light put to rest the possibility that the weapon was going to explode.

  Two shots in quick succession had to mean that it was okay.

  A minute passed then the skyship called her to let her know that they were on their way to deal with the demigod prisoner.

  A few more minutes and the demigod was restrained in the best magitech coffin they could make and transported via portal stones to somewhere she didn’t know.

  “Is, um, Sparky okay? She, um…”

  She hadn’t said anything on the comms. Nor had she been the one to come down from the skyship, which was odd.

  “Yeah, she’s alright. Just out for awhile. Had to power the second shot. That Pandora’s Box monster thing took the first shot. Only 35% power though. We could’ve killed it in one at around at least 70%. Probably.” Celia said.

  The older woman reminded Lucy of a grandmother.

  Not that she had one or even remembered having one.

  She remembered her mom vaguely and maybe siblings or maybe they were cousins. Those memories weren’t ones she wanted. Not really. Mostly, because it ended with everyone in her small community dead of radiation poisoning shortly after she turned ten or eleven and killed her first tiny monster like all the kids did to see what class they’d get.

  There were good times buried there, but she couldn’t think of them without bringing up how she killed them all and the way she did it.

  Mr. Cruces had offered to help her process them and they’d done some work along with her therapist, but she still wasn’t ready to really face them.

  She supposed part of her didn’t want to move past them because doing that felt like she was absolving herself when she didn’t have the right.

  The murderer shouldn’t be able to find forgiveness for herself. Only the victims had that right. And there had been no survivors.

  “Hurry up and pack those stones away!” Celia snapped at her team. “And make sure to scrub the spell traces. We don’t want anyone tracking it.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened.

  “Can they do that?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “I don’t know, but I’ve been around long enough to not assume anything is impossible. It’s not that big a leap to think that someone’s got a portal tracking spell or Skill. If there are an infinite number of possible abilities out there than there’s got to be a portal tracking spell or Skill. Hell, there’s probably an infinite number of varieties.”

  “That’s true—”

  The next thing Lucy had been about to say was driven out of her mouth like the air in her lungs by a sudden and violent impact that made the world spin.

  Fireworks in the sky. The ground. A wall. The inside of a building. The ground. The sky. Another wall. Another interior.

  She finally came to a stop inside a mall.

  A dark mall.

  Not empty.

  Nope.

  Filled with monsters.

  Spawn zone.

  She would’ve bounced right off an encounter challenge.

  Unless its inherent protections were weaker than her personal power level as measured by the spires.

  What was hers again?

  Her head was a little fuzzy.

  Hard to remember the last time she checked her page.

  Plus, it felt like she had more important things to worry about.

  Like, for example, the monsters her HUD was screaming alarms into her ears about.

  The cobwebs cleared quickly.

  Her body wasn’t normal, at least by human standards.

  She still had bones, muscles and organs, but everything absorbed and generated radiation similar to what came out of a nuclear power plant. It was why she had lived at one or another for years until Mr. Cruces and the Threnosh built her absorbing tech.

  Damage done was repaired quickly as long as she had radiation and she had a lot, way too much.

  Her dream was to get rid of it all and just be normal.

  But, at times like the present.

  She supposed it was good to be abnormal.

  After all, she didn’t want to die.

  Let alone die by being eaten.

  The monster swarmed across the mall’s dark floor and scampered on the walls and ceilings.

  Classic gremlins.

  Small ones, medium ones and big alpha ones.

  Enhanced visual mode in her helmet meant she could see them all as clear as day. Which, honestly, was a double-edged sword if one subscribed to the idea that sometimes it was better not to know how fucked one was.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  She calmly acted as she trained, locking on to multiple gremlins with frantic eye movements.

  Micromissiles streaked out of recessed shoulder launchers.

  Their bright engine lights sparkled, leaving trails in the darkness as they killed gremlins by the dozen in powerful explosions that belied their finger-length size.

  “Ahhhhhh!”

  She cooly repeated the attack that Mr. Cruces called the Itano Circus until she was out of micromissiles.

  Why he called it that? She didn’t know, nor had she asked.

  What did missiles have to do with the circus?

  Which she knew to have clowns, acrobats and animals from the circus they had in the fairgrounds.

  They definitely didn’t have missiles.

  Unless that was part of another act elsewhere.

  The fairgrounds were huge and she hadn’t seen it all yet.

  Her barrage took out most of the gremlins.

  Their bloody and charred remains carpeted the area around her.

  Small flames danced, casting eerie shadows that seemed to reach out for her with clawed tendrils.

  Shattered glass rained down on her, heralding the arrival of real threats.

  “Ahhhhhhh!”

  She calculatingly opened up the palms of her armored gloves to fire a pair of thin, concentrated and controlled beams of radiation at the eidolons.

  Or that was what she had intended to do.

  Rather, she opened up most of her armor and sprayed sickly green radiation indiscriminately like a broken fire hydrant sprays water.

  The mall burned, everything from the plants to the gremlins to the cartoon animal rides spontaneously combusted.

  The floor tiles melted, running like viscous rivers around her feet.

  As for the eidolons?

  The less said the better.

  Another nightmarish sight to talk with her therapist about.

  Most of them lasted long enough to land. Their enchanted golden armor providing just enough protection before they failed.

  Gold wasn’t a good metal for armor.

  Too soft and flexible.

  Unless enchanted.

  Then one had soft and flexible armor that provided protection equal to steel or even tougher metals depending on the enchantment quality.

  These eidolons must’ve had good ones seeing as how they lasted way longer than she though they would.

  Three didn’t die at all.

  They—

  Oh shit!

  Her armor responded to her thoughts thanks to cybernetics, closing just in time to block a beam from a spear.

  The impact punched her through a store.

  Felt and fluff scattered around her, providing zero cushion.

  Poor teddy bears.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!”

  She cunningly blasted radiation in a wide cone large enough to fill the entire storefront. This time her body obeyed her thoughts and the armor only opened at her palm.

  A thump slapped her palm like a high five, cutting her blast.

  A quick glance showed a white, sticky glob over her hand.

  “Ewwww!”

  She shook and fired, but the sticky stuff only began to melt.

  One eidolon rushed into the store.

  Damn! she thought.

  They were way too big to be real.

  The guy had to duck a lot to get through the storefront and his shoulders seemed to be as wide as she was tall.

  A huge shadow blotting out the dancing fire light from outside.

  He was on her in a rush of wind, grabbing her left wrist and twisting her hand out of line with his face.

  Her radiation blast went wide, punching a burning, melting hole through the ceiling.

  He snarled down at her, then jerked her up roughly, lifting her off the floor and holding her like a prized fish.

  She gagged at what she could see of his face through the thin, T-shaped slit in his helmet.

  One eye ran down in oozing rivulets of pink liquid.

  Missing teeth in the snarl.

  Charred skin with only a few bits peeking out from what had been fair.

  He squeezed her arm.

  His remaining eye, flecked with gold, widened.

  She giggled.

  She couldn’t help it.

  He was probably used to being able to squeeze iron or steel armor.

  Threnium was, like, way stronger.

  “Eugh!”

  She gagged again, remembering what his face looked like.

  That made him mad, so he started punching her in the chest with his ornate-looking spiked glove.

  The weapon glowed faintly with an enchantment, but, once again… Threnium.

  Rapid punches hit with the speed and sound of a machine gun.

  All he accomplished by swinging her like a heavy bag was make her gagging turn into actual puking.

  Instinct opened her faceplate.

  Everything in her was laced, if not saturated with radiation.

  The contents of her stomach were no different.

  Sickly green glowing projectile vomit drenched the eidolon’s face.

  It would be akin to him diving face first into a nuclear reactor.

  He dropped her then fell to his knees with a soundless scream.

  Soundless because everything in his mouth and throat were melting into a liquid slurry as their cellular structures broke.

  It didn’t matter that they were laced with the power of his class and divine energy from the blood of his fake god.

  They were fake gods, but their power was real.

  The eidolon stopped clawing at his helmet and toppled forward.

  Right on Lucy.

  He was big and tall enough to end up face to face.

  She screamed.

  His face liquids dripped on her faceplate.

  Oh my God! she thought.

  This wasn’t what she had in mind about wanting to have a story to share with all the badasses around her.

  Maybe, she wondered, having such stories to share wasn’t a good thing?

  “Get off me!”

  She pushed and kicked.

  Eidolons were heavier than they looked.

  Her armor’s artificial muscles and boot thrusters helped her kick him off.

  She guessed he might’ve weighed the same as a small bull.

  The armor’s systems would record all that stuff if it could and the tactical people would pour over the information and type up a report.

  She’d find out then.

  In the meantime there were still two more eidolons.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

  She tactically sprayed radiation from her non-goo covered palm out of the store.

  It took her thirty seconds to realize that her HUD wasn’t showing any hostiles in its threat detection system.

  Nope.

  No red dots.

  Nothing at all on the minimap.

  No eidolons.

  No gremlins.

  She didn’t move from the ruined store and the dead eidolon for awhile. She kept her hand aimed forward at the storefront and the shadows dancing around the fires.

  “Glowy, do you copy?”

  Celia’s voice.

  “I’m here. Alive! I’m alive! I mean, I copy, over?”

  “Good. Stay put. Tezuka’s on his way.”

  “He’s okay. Good! I mean, are you guys okay?”

  “Banged up. I lost some guys and the skyship took some damage. Stealth’s out of the picture. We’re vulnerable, so we’re heading into the upper atmosphere. Enemy can’t follow us up there.”

  “Um…”

  Wait?

  Did that mean they weren’t going to pick her up?

  Upper atmosphere?

  That was definitely too far for the portal stones in her possession.

  “Don’t worry, Tezuka’s bringing stones strong enough to portal the both of you up here. Just sit tight. Boss man’s watching you and he says you’re out of danger.”

  “I, uh, I— I killed eidolons. I think… a lot?”

  “Hell yeah, girl! You can tell us all about it when you get up here. See you soon. Over and out.”

  Lucy didn’t look forward to that.

  She cut the comms and dry heaved for a bit.