"Hello, Director," I said, prompting Blackett to look up from the paperwork at the desk he was borrowing. "You seem like you're doing well.”

"Good day, Chariot. You look abhorrent."

"Yeah, I'm about to fix that though."

"Mmm. Have a seat. Tea?"

"No thanks, I'm only here for a minute."

"Well," he said pouring some into a pair of cups anyway, "before you do anything rash, I would ask you hear me out. I have a proposition I believe you may find appealing."

He finished pouring the steaming liquid into the second cup and pushed one across the desk at me. It wasn't the same super post-modern style as Blackett's home or real office, this was just an empty office he was using while he visited. The desk was light black metal with four narrow legs, no drawers or kickboard or anything, basically just a simple, low table.

And, after my swords crashed down through it, a pile of twisted slag.

"Sorry about the tea," I said, advancing on him.

"Yes, a pity. I have no intention of running anywhere, Chariot. If you intend to kill me, the least you could do is hear me out first. Here--" he deliberately and slowly pulled his sidearm from his hip holster and, bending down in his seat, placed it on the floor between us. "A sign of good faith. I am unarmed."

"Yeah. Right. Except both of us know that thing's useless on me anyway unless you were going to club me with it."

"Indeed," he smiled. "You seem busy, so I will get right to the point. I understand you are irate that I captured, harmed, and used your associate to further my goals. Believe me when I say that what transpired was the furthest thing from what I had desired."

"Right. Because you didn't desire brainwashing Exhumans."

"I didn't desire to harm her. However the unfortunate truth of the matter was that she was unwilling to work with me for any price. I offered her anything she could dream of, and she spit in my face for it. I thought it was quite magnanimous of me, all things considered. Considering the power I held over her."

"You sick fuck," I said, advancing another step.

"Chariot, calm yourself. Though you may find my methods abhorrent, we both know we share the same goals. Exhumans are dangerous, even those you think you have a leash on. If you disagree, you need only reflect on your own actions today. Or those of Temperance, all too frequently. A failsafe must be put in place. We need Exhumans to be the new XPCA, but we also need the XPCA to be able to control those Exhumans."

"You're full of shit and you know it. My goals don't involve enslaving anyone. I have full faith in the goodness inside Exhumans to do what's right and protect people, even without cramming their heads full of false loyalty to you, personally. And you're right--my actions today are proof that Exhumans are dangerous to their handlers, when their handlers are corrupt, evil pieces of shit. As it should be."

"I did what I did out of necessity. If your associate had just cooperated with me, none of this purported 'evil' would have been necessary. And that's why I want you, Chariot...you hold a sway over her...hold a sway over many I am not sure I fully understand...if you joined me in this instead of fighting me--"

"Listen to yourself, you fuck!" I screamed at him. There were gunshots in the hallway but I believed in Karu. "You're always engineering fucked-up situations and then trying to blame others for you being caught in them. Whether I helped you or not, whether I had a hold of Saga or not...hell, if I existed or not, it changes nothing about the sick fucking ends you would stoop to in order to force Saga to break. You think if I talked her into it, we'd be anywhere else? You'd just be off on your next goddamn fucking scheme coming up with new ways to be the world's most horrible being!"

I slashed at him, ready to cut that heart full of twisted evil from his body but he rolled his chair backwards with a kick, slamming its back against the far wall.

"Fine then!" he shouted back at me, raising his voice at me for the first time in memory. "If you are so convinced I'm simply a moustache-twirling villain, then I'll act the part. You will aid me in controlling Saga, or I will scourge your precious Exhumans from the world." He banged a fist against the wall and a holo popped to life, cycling through video feeds.

Many of them were just of feeds within the facility. In one, I saw Karu roaring down a hallway on her jetpack with blood running down her. It cut to another feed before I could see how Cosette was faring.

But what Blackett was trying to show me was on the majority of the feeds and made my heart stop.

The resistance, or the majority of them anyway, on their knees, hands on the backs of their heads. XPCA exosuits and Exhumans standing around them, guns and powers at the ready. In another shot, I saw Tower, frozen with a surprised look on his face, entombed in a crystalline sunburst of ice, Moon's spirit still on his back, clawing at the ice and the nearest XPCA without success.

"Lives hang in the balance, Chariot. I am accustomed to leadership, have schemed and worked and clawed to secure my current position, and while I regret the loss of every soldier who has died under my command, I am still willing to throw them away if necessary. It is a price which must be paid, and a bargain for the security and peace of mind their deaths afford."

"You send dozens, hundreds to their deaths without a fucking second thought. As fodder!"

"No, Chariot, I think of them often. Even the most senseless of deaths serves a purpose...increasing the mortality numbers and reducing our standing strength was a necessary sacrifice to get the council to accept the plan of using Exhumans as soldiers. More foolish, brutal loss of life simply because of the stubbornness of others…"

He paused, his eyes looking dark and haunted for a moment before turning them back to me. "And now here you are, yet another who refuses to see the greater picture, who forces my hand yet again, wasting the lives of more people out of your own damned stubbornness. "The burden of these deaths is my job, Chariot, and it is one I do gladly and do well, but it is not a role you could ever fill, and we both know it. Even now, when you have me cornered, you will not strike me down because if you do, those Exhumans will die, and even when you think you have everything to gain...you will never pay that price."

"You're wrong," I said. Blackett's eyebrows rose as he scrutinized me. I reached into my chest pocket, pulled out AEGIS' boot drive, and with a gentle kiss, put it on the ground beside me.

And then, with as much force as I could generate in an instant, I EMP'd the fuck out of the room.

Blackett looked between me and the sparks shooting out of the dead holo in the new darkness of the room, the only light coming from the frosted window in the door behind me and the deadly, constant glow of my swords.

"You can't have them killed if you can't issue the order. And you can't issue the order if all the electronics around you are out." I felt a twisted grin growing on my face. "And if you're dead."

I began to advance on him again, stepping through the slag of the table as my dozen swords glowed white with the fury of a dying star. The uneven light cast long shadows on his face, but even here in the dark, he did not look afraid, just tired, just resigned.

"I invested so much into you, Chariot," he said. "What a waste. I always hoped you would become more than you were."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"As am I."

We both waited for a minute in the dark and quiet.

I hadn't imagined avenging Saga would be like this. I thought he'd be laying down scheme after scheme, running and hiding behind bodies he considered valueless except for how long they could delay an Exhuman. I thought I would be tearing through plans and devices and at the end of it all, he'd look at me with the same fear of death that he'd put into Saga's heart.

Instead he seemed mildly troubled at best. It infuriated me, on top of the hate burning inside me.

"The FUCK is wrong with you?" I screamed at him. "Do something!"

"Why? So that you can feel vindicated in striking me down? Murder is the cost of death, Chariot. If you want me dead, you have to kill me."

"And...what? You've got some stupid trick up your sleeve that requires me to act first? Is this room rigged to blow if your heart stops?"

He smiled, which just pissed me off ten times as much. "Please. I did just explain I'm no nefarious moustache-twirling villain. My schemes have been for the betterment of the XPCA and humanity, and you know it. Or perhaps that is why you are hesitating to strike me down?"

"So that's it then? Your plan is to guilt me out of killing you?"

"Do you honestly wish to know my plan?"

I blinked hard at him in the dark. Would he actually fucking tell me, or was this just part of his plan?

"Tell me, then. And then I'll kill you."

He chuckled. "If I am to be totally honest, as I said, my plans are all for the improvement of the XPCA. You are many things, if a little young...confident, possessing a clear vision, and an unshakable, if sometimes erroneous sense of right and wrong. You act with purpose and strength, and as I mentioned before, you have an unexplainable magnetism to the eclectic of the world. And you are cunning, as you demonstrate by somehow being in this very chamber."

"Yeah. Okay. Flattery, I got it. Great plan." I moved forward but he spoke again.

"No, Chariot. I am testing you. While your strengths are many, you have one weakness I despise, one which holds you back from success in my field or any other where teeth must be bared."

"Let me guess, I don't like torturing people enough?"

He smirked. "Close. You put too much emphasis on the value of a life. You refused to play my game of choosing between striking me down and throwing away the lives of Exhumans, so I have no more lives to put on the table but my own. If you can, in cold blood, stay true to your values and murder me where I sit helpless...true, I will die, but I will do so knowing that you are capable of doing what must be done. And with that knowledge, I will have few fears of what will happen to the XPCA without me."

"And if I don't kill you?"

"Then you are not fit to someday lead it, and I will still be here to do so."

"Are you fucking kidding me? You think...you honestly think I'm supposed to believe you don't care about dying because you think I'd run the XPCA? You are insane."

"Mine is just another life I'd throw away if necessary, Chariot. To fix the world, that is all it can be to me."

I shook my head. I knew Blackett was fucked in the head but this was too much. He was outright crazy if he honestly believed this stuff. And talking about me succeeding him in the XPCA? That was outright laughable. If word ever got out that the head of the XPCA was killed by an Exhuman, I and all of Blackett's little experiments would be torched, not promoted.

But while I thought his words were just insanity, I couldn't shake the fact that his face, his eyes never faltered. He looked calm as anything, even with a homicidal Exhuman standing in the ruins of his desk. Maybe he did honestly believe it, maybe he was ready to face his own death. Or maybe it was a brilliantly act to get me to stay my blades.

But either way, he'd still made one fatal mistake. Whether I believed him or not, whether I agreed with him or disagreed, whatever my opinion on the XPCA and the cost of a life, there was one fact that he could never change, no matter how he argued, no matter how persuasive or true.

Nobody hurts my friends.

I rammed my swords home, my eyes closing shut.

But as soon as I did, something felt wrong. I opened my eyes again, only to see darkness. There was no...pain, no spray of blood, no burning embers of the body writhing on the floor…

Blackett swept my legs from under me and the side of my head met the warped metal of the desk. Stars popped in front of my eyes as I felt the spray of blood I'd been expecting before. I felt him pulling me to my feet and summoned my swords again, stabbing them into him again and again.

It was like he was made of the same shadows that Trish commanded. When the blades hit him, they just went out. I didn't, couldn't understand.

And the new concussion and pain I got as he slammed my head into a wall didn't help. I'd never really given it much thought, but he had a whole gym in his house and he used it. He wasn't exactly beefy, but if my powers didn't work on him, he'd throw me around like a toy.

And that's exactly how I felt as he handled me bodily, introducing me to a new level of pain as he systematically broke both of my arms and added several more blows to the head.

"Damn idiot," he said, barely breathing hard as he disassembled my body. "As though you could ever lead anyone. Head of the XPCA...my damn ass."

"You...lied…?" I gasped at him. I don't know why that seemed important now, given everything else that had just turned around on me, but my brain was spinning, reeling, screaming, and desperately reaching out for anything to grab ahold of. Of course he had lied. He was Blackett. I was such a fucking idiot to even hear him out.

He laughed as he threw me to the ground again and pinned me under a black boot. "I lied. How can this be a surprise to you, you damn idiot? Do you think I'd ever see the XPCA in the hands of an Exhuman? The only reason we're even having this debate is because I know Exhumans can never be trusted without mental persuasion. And you think I'd be happy with one in power?"

"...f-fuck...you…" I got out before he broke something else, and the pain made me black out for a second.

"No, I have much bigger plans for you. As much as I will never understand why, the Code-X does have a fondness for you. If she remains obstinant, we'll have it taken out of your flesh instead of hers. That would likely prove much more effective motivation for her, and wouldn't risk her dying."

I managed to make another sword, even unable to tell which was was up now, and thrust it at where I thought he was. It must have worked because it fizzled out on touching him as well.

"...how…"

"Curious why your powers don't work? I admit, so am I," he said, and crouched next to my body, talking in a conspiratorial tone. "Since we're being honest, and since you're spending the rest of your life on a meat hook...I suppose I can share. It may help you keep your sanity intact, and we can't have you falling apart, or you'll be of no value to the Code-X, now will you?"

Unconsciousness threatened at the edges of my mind, but I had to hear this. I tried to will myself back, but it didn't work that way.

"I'm an Exhuman," he said with obvious delight. "But not like you. Not like any of you filthy, destructive monsters. My powers are special, beautiful, perfect. A sublime gift to aid me in my job to save the world from your kind."

He drew even closer and I could feel his breath on my ear.

"Exhuman powers don't work on me. With a touch, I can banish them. Your unnatural abilities can never do me harm, no matter how much you wish they could. I can put out an Exhuman's flame, still the quaking of the earth, even--" he brushed a finger down the back of my neck "--even circumvent an Exhumans barriers or regeneration. So long as it's with my own two hands."

He rose and I felt the world very distant and heavy on my mind.

"So keep that in mind, and behave. If you should wind up dead, I'll simply have to pay more visits to your friend. It's been such a pleasure working with you, Chariot. I do wish you'd not forced my hand...but what could I really expect from--"

With what strength I had left, I flicked my fingers, sending a tiny lightning bulb flying into him. It exploded into arcs up and down his chest, and he screamed at clutched at where it burned him.

Unlike my swords, not all Exhuman powers were unnatural. Some were just natural forces, once loosed.

I slipped into unconsciousness, regretting that I didn't have enough strength to fire a bolt big enough to finish the job.