“Hard-Light.”

Erich took some small amount of pride in the fact that he managed not to stutter.

If the man in question heard him, no indication was forthcoming as he stood over the sparking remains of Erich’s drones and the rapidly cooling corpses of Zig-Zag’s goons.

It seemed neither of them had been Zig-Zag in disguise. The violence was as sudden as it was one sided.

Even if Erich had planned to shoot at the man, he doubted he would have been able to so much as scratch the guy’s paint before getting perforated by one of the villain’s blades.

The agonizing silence stretched. “You don’t seem too surprised to see I’m still alive?” the man finally said.

Erich shrugged nervously, even as sweat beaded on his forehead. “I am. A little,” he lied. “We never found a body though… so part of me thought you might still be running around.”

“I might be tempted to say that was smart.” the villain said. He strode over, pressing a single energized blade into Erich’s sternum, sending warning claxons firing off in the engineer’s HUD. “If it weren’t for what you did next. Pulling away from my little girl? Getting thoughts about striking off on your own?”

Erich didn’t move. Paralysed by fear as much as good sense. Trying to fight Hard-Light would just be an elaborate form of suicide.

“Not smart, kid,” the villain continued. He drove his weapon a few more millimetres into Erich’s suit, metal crackling where it touched the energized blade. “Not smart at all if you thought there was even a chance I was still alive.”

“I figured the Queen would keep me safe enough,” Erich said quickly. “Didn’t think you’d risk running into her just for a chance to kill me.”

“Well, I must admit that her presence stopped me from doing anything too obvious,” the villain admitted. “She’s not here now though, is she?”Erich had no response.

“So that begs the question,” Hardlight continued. “What’s to stop me from killing you here and now?”

Erich’s answer was immediate.

“You still need me!” He most definitely did not shriek. “Kill me and you’ve got no way of getting the Ball and Chain offline.”

“I suppose that’s true,” the villain acknowledged. “How fortuitous for you.”

Nothing fortunate about it, Erich thought. It’s by design you overgrown thug.

Still, he wasn’t dumb enough to voice that opinion. Instead he simply sighed in relief as the incredibly deadly energized blade pulled away from him.

“I hope you bear in mind that this is just a stay of execution,” the villain said. He leaned against the wall. “I’m not much a fan of traitors, so I’m still deciding whether or not to keep you in one piece when this is over. How useful you are is a big factor.”

Erich returned to the control panel. “I thought Bronte was still trying to win me over,” He resisted the urge to run a hand over the deep gouge in the front of his suit. His HUD had already displayed the extent of the damage.

Mostly superficial, he noted with some small relief.

“My girl’s greedy like that. Never one to throw away a tool when she could still get use out of it. I’m different. Defective parts go in the trash. To make way for functional ones.”

“She’s not going to like that,” he pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter what she likes,” the villain retorted, a bit of heat in his voice. “Christ, I go to ground for a few months and all you people forget who’s in charge. You run off to play king of the scrapheap. Olivia just drops off the grid. Even Sarah’s got some strange new ideas swirling round in that pretty little head of hers.”

Erich had no idea what to say to that. So he said nothing. Which seemed to be enough for Hard-Light as he shifted his attention away from the engineer.

“How are things going down there Olivia?” Hard-Light said as his finger flicked up to the comm-bead in his ear.

“Dad!?” Olivia shrieked. “You’re— What? How!?”

Seems that Gravity didn’t know her old man was still kicking around.

“Went exactly according to plan, Daddy.” Bronte’s voice cut in, cutting off her half-sister. The blonde woman sounded just slightly out of breath, but there was no disguising the glee in her voice. “Electricity fucked with Zig-Zag’s shapeshifting ability, just like we expected. Gravity managed to push her into the cryochamber without too much trouble.”

“She's contained then?” Hard-Light spoke over Gravity’s loud shouting.

“An ice cube,” Bronte confirmed. “I’ve got Gravity floating them over to a storage pod now. Well, at least she was doing that before she found out you were here. Now she’s throwing a tantrum.”

“It’s not a fucking tantrum!” Gravity said. “You knew!? Wait, what am I saying? Of course you fucking knew.”

Unfortunately for her, Hard-Light was unmoved. “Get her into a pod Olivia. We’ll talk later.”

The note of command in the man’s voice was crystal clear, and even though Erich wasn’t the one it was aimed at, he felt a shiver shoot up his spine. Silence hung in the air as tension rose in the room.

“…Ok,” Gravity said finally. An audible click indicated that she’d turned off her communicator.

An act which elicited a frustrated sigh from Hard-Light.

“Is she doing it?” he asked.

“She’s not happy about it, but she’s doing what you asked,” Bronte said. “Want me to tell her to turn her comms back on?”

“No, leave her be for now. We’ll have a long discussion about obedience when this is all over. A discussion I think that is long overdue given the current circumstances.”

Erich didn’t miss the way Hard-Light’s helmet slowly turned in his direction as he spoke. Erich in turn glanced at his HUD.

Fifteen minutes.

“Alright Erich, now that we’re all one big happy family again, how long until you can turn off the Ball and Chain?” Bronte asked as she sauntered into the control room.

Erich nervously glanced at his HUD.

Six minutes.

Gravity shuffled in, and Erich didn’t miss the way her eyes remained fixed on Hard-Light as she did.

A lot going on in that girl’s head.

“I could have it undone any minute now,” he lied. “Though, given that my ability to turn it off might be the only thing keeping my head attached to my shoulders, I’m wary about finishing the job.”

“Daddy didn’t give you the recruitment pitch?”

Erich eyed the older supervillain, who was leaning against the wall at the back of the room.

“He gave me a pitch of sorts,” Erich said.

“Do as I say or die?” Bronte guessed.

Erich nodded.

Bronte’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Then he summarized it quite nicely. Do what we want or we’ll put a bullet in your brain. That’s going to be the ongoing contract by the way. Keep doing what we want, keep living.”

Erich frowned. “Your last offer of employment was much nicer.”

“Yeah, well that was before you got the crazy idea into your head that you could go it alone,” Hard-Light said. “Seems all that carrot made you forget the stick. So, this time around we’re going to be keeping a closer eye on you. No more of my limp-wristed daughter babysitting your ass. Instead it’s gonna be people I can trust, with orders to do what they have to if you get any ideas about your standing in life.”

Bronte rolled her eyes. “Not exactly how I would have put it, but essentially correct.”

“So basically, you’re going to cuff me to a workbench and tell me to work.” Despite knowing it was never going to happen, he still felt his pulse quicken and his gut sour at the idea.

Idly, he glanced at Gravity to see if she would say anything, but the young woman was still staring at her father. That hurt a little. Once upon a time he knew she would have leapt to his defence. Out of moral outrage or a simple sense of camaraderie.

No longer it seemed.

Not that he blamed her. He’d done nothing to earn that loyalty, and he’d done nothing to maintain it.

Two minutes…

“And the kids? My factory?” he asked Bronte, stalling for time.

“You feeling ok, Erich?” the woman asked. “Because for a second there, that almost sounded like concern for someone else?”

“Hardly.” Erich scoffed. “I sunk time and resources into the Block Party. To see it abandoned due to a… change in management strikes me as inefficient.”

Bronte moved to speak again, but Hard-Light cut her off. “Well suck it up princess. The only thing we’re doing with your little clubhouse is stripping it for parts and acquiring that little drone army of yours. The kids can scatter to the winds or die. Makes no difference to me.”

Despite knowing the entire situation was hypothetical, for him at least, Erich couldn’t help but feel at certain level of umbrage at the man’s callous wastefulness. “You’d just get rid of them?”

Hard-Light moved to speak but this time he was cut off by Bronte, drawing a resentful glare from the man.

“You’ve spoiled them. We aren’t going to waste time and money the way you did. Street urchins are useful because they work for next-to-nothing. Yours won’t though. Not any more.”

One minute…

“So you’re going to disband a skilled labour force because you can’t be bothered paying them the bare minimum of what they're worth?” He asked in disbelief.

“In a word? Yes.” She shrugged. “We can always find more urchins to occupy your factory.”

“And this time we won’t ruin them with your pansy-ass humanitarian bullshit.” Hard-Light growled. “We’re a gang, not a charity. All you did with those kids is make them greedy. Uppity. Ruined them for any future work. No one wants street urchins with an inflated ego.”

“So what’s it going to be Erich.” Bronte asked. “Put that well cultivated sense of self preservation to work by falling in line, or have your grey matter splattered over that monitor?”

Ten seconds…

If he were someone else, he might have used the moment the timer clicked down to zero to make a quip. An insult. Some witticism about how the family of psychos could take their offer and shove it up their ass.

He didn’t do any of that because he wasn’t a fucking moron.

“You win,” he said. “I had a good run, but I’ll pick survival over freedom every time.”

After all his little timer was only the estimated flight time between the Hannold prison in Alaska and here. Any number of factors could result in a deviation of minutes to—

The security console pinged, drawing everyone’s attention. Which was fortunate, because Bronte looked like she’d been about to start gloating. But also unfortunate because Erich realized what it meant. He resisted hysteria.

Seems she came straight here without delay. How just like her…

Another ping went off. Then another.

A fourth ping rang out in rapid succession before Hard-Light got to speak.

“What’s all the racket?” he asked. “You finally got the Ball and Chain offline?”

Not even close. Why the fuck did I ever think this was a good idea?

Because he was desperate, but that did little to assuage the fear that rose up as he spoke.

“No,” he said, throat unreasonably dry. “Those pings are security drones going offline.”

“We’ve got intruders?” Bronte asked.

Her brow furrowed even as Hard-Light ignited his blades.

Erich didn’t answer as he pulled up the facility map dotted with a handy overlay of drone locations. Even as he first laid eyed on it, he saw another dot wink out. The path the intruder was and had taken was clear.

“They’re heading straight for the control room,” he said.

One minute and thirty seconds at current pace, he mentally calculated.

Christ, he always known she was fast, but…

He’d hoped to have more time.

“How many,” Bronte asked. Her gauntlets ignited with electricity.

“It seems it’s just one person,” he said with deliberate calm. “The drones are going down in rapid succession, but always one at a time. Given how fast it is, I’d say they’re a speedster.”

“Get a picture,” Hard-Light ordered. “Give me some idea who we’re dealing with?”

“Given now fast they’re moving,” Erich said,“By the time I capture a decent shot you’ll be meeting them in person.”

As if to emphasize his point, a crash echoed through the halls. Still relatively far away, but the second that followed was louder and closer.

“You don’t want to fight in here.” Erich said, unflinching even as Hard-Light turned to glare in his direction. “Can’t damage the consoles. Otherwise all of this was for nothing. Hell that’s probably their objective. To buy time.”

The old man looked like he wanted to argue, but after a quick glance at Bronte he relented with an angry growl.

“Fine, take them in the hall,” he said turning to march out. “Bronte stay here with the kid, make sure he gets the fucking Ball and Chain offline. Gravity you’re with… Where the fuck is Olivia!?”

The yellow clad heroine was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?”

Despite herself, Gravity found herself more than just a little awestruck by the sight in front of her. Sure, she’d been speaking with the woman almost constantly via phone and message since she’d received that text out of the blue all those months ago. She’d thought it a ruse at first, and if she was honest, right up until a few moments ago a part of her had still believed it to be a ruse.

But here she was, in the flesh. The Paragon of Justice herself.

Blur.

Then she noticed the sheer intensity in the other woman’s eyes, and the trail of destroyed walls, doors and drones, in her wake.

“He’s moving to meet you in the hall just before the main control room,” she said. How the hero across from her knew of Hard-Light’s survival she didn't bother pondering. “Bronte’s hanging back in the control room.”

Despite the fact that she’d left the control room before Blur had even entered the prison complex, she was still keeping tabs on her ‘family’ via their communications.

At least until they figure out what’s happened and lock me out. Her gut churning with complex emotions. Though by then… well, it won’t really matter will it?

As it was, Hard-Light was cussing her out over the radio, demanding she meet him in the hall. It seemed the idea of her double crossing him hadn’t even crossed his mind.

She felt a small thrill of vindictive happiness at that, even as her heart pounded with nervousness that bordered on hysteria. Only the presence of the woman in front of her was keeping her from a full-blown panic attack.

Blur’s lips had creased into a frown, presumably at the knowledge that Hard-Light was going to meet her in the hallway. Still with her question answered, the heroine looked like she was about to dash once more… before she paused.

“Does he know it’s me?”

A bit surprised at the sudden, almost tentative, question, Gravity answered. “No, of course not.”

She hadn’t breathed a word of what they’d planned.

Why would she?

Her strange, out of nowhere question answered, Blur shot off again, sprinting in the direction of the main hall. Gravity watched her go, before jogging behind, her mind aflutter with nervousness at the coming confrontation with her family.

As she ran, some small part of her wondered what Erich would be doing during all this.

Probably hiding and waiting to see who won.

Still, with any luck his pragmatic nature would get the better of him when he saw both Bronte and Hard-Light in cuffs. Blur seemed interested in what he knew, so he could probably negotiate some sort of plea deal if he surrendered without a fight.

At least, that was the small hope she held for her one-time friend.

Then the sounds of another doorway being shattered erupted up ahead, and any thoughts beyond the coming confrontation fell away.