I was told, variously, that my idea was stupid, reckless, dangerous, and would never work. The same had been said of many things I'd already done, though when I brought that up as a counterpoint, AEGIS just stared at me disbelieving.

"Are you really arguing that because you've done stupid things in the past, you should be doing stupid things now?"

I didn't really have a rebuttal to that, because she was right. The odds that we'd find Liev -- Cosette had dug up his name in a file from a friend in the archives -- were low. He'd been successfully fighting or evading XPCA in the past, and we were in one of their VTOLs now. No reason to think he couldn't do the same for us. A faster, quieter, sneakier VTOL, but I doubted that'd make a difference.

And even if we did find him, it's not like we had a real compelling argument for him. 'Please stop' was about the jist of it. Odds were even lower that he'd hear us out, and lower still that he'd have a change of heart.

On the other hand, chances were good we'd find the XPCA and even better that they'd try to kill us on sight. They might be spread thin, but out here was where they were spread. If I were a betting man, I'd have bet against myself successfully meeting with Liev, and doubled down against convincing him. Which felt pretty crappy, admittedly.

I wasn't here to argue, though. I wanted to find him and hear him out. I wanted, if possible, to help him find an avenue towards the justice he allegedly kept spouting, without destroying everything else in the process.

Because, hell. Even if this failed entirely, if I could at least understand why he was doing it, I'd feel better. Time and again, that was something I was learning about myself, even if I wasn't sure I liked it. It was irrational just to sympathize with someone just because you liked them...wasn't it?

So yeah. Despite all of that, here we were. Most of the crew, sans Lia, Cosette, and Whitney. I was strapped in between Tem and AEGIS, watching the countryside rip past us in a green-brown blur.

It was the first time Tem and I were going out together since her rescue, really. Things had been so volatile, I hadn't wanted to wave her lit-match-self around and set off any powder kegs. And sitting here, staring past her and watching her silver hair bobbies whip in the wind, I realized, even accounting for invisibility, I hadn't seen much of her recently.

Not that I wanted her volatility on this mission either, but it was kind of a all-hands-on-deck kind of situation.

"Hi Tem, how are you doing?" I asked, only able to hear myself through the wind because of the comms.

She nodded and gave me a little indifferent smile, like I'd interrupted her chewing on her fingernails or something.

"How've you been readjusting?"

The small smile again. "I am fine."

"Doing alright?"

She cocked her head a bit and the smile dropped. "I think I may be confused. Are you...not just...asking the s-same things over?"

My turn to force a crappy smile. "Yeah, I guess so. Sorry."

She shook her head, hair whipping back and forth. "No, don't apologize. I'm s-s-sorry, that must have been rude. I misunderstood."

"Well...I was just asking because you're kinda...quiet. And a little spacey, more than usual. And, well, just...acting different. Thought I'd ask."

She opened her mouth and then paused with it open, seemingly unsure of where to go from there. She had nice teeth. Somehow, no matter how little she thought of herself, or how much she wasn't, she had a hard time deviating from her routines. When we weren't stuck in some shithole and she had the chance, she brushed every morning and evening.

She shook her head and closed her mouth at long last. "No. I don't know. I'm s-s-...I apologize. I don't mean to act different."

"Is it just...things with Ichiro? He didn't hurt you, did he? You seemed fine so I assumed--"

She shook her head even more violently. "No, I'm s-sorry. He didn't! It was...the opposite. He took...very good care of me. I did not understand." She paused, and I paused with her, waiting for her to finish. She met my eyes for the briefest moment before fixing back on the floor, and continuing through a confused grimace. "I was his enemy. Then I learned, I was being used to...how did he put it? I was leverage? I was threatened, if Moon did not...con...com…"

"Comply?"

She nodded once, with the same childlike determination. "Yes. S-s-so I understood. But they said they would never give in to him, no matter what. I was ready for that. I was useless, and you had given up on me, too, and I was going to die."

"Oh Tem, I didn't give up on you." I frowned bitterly at her. "We were coming."

Again that weird half-smile. It felt like Tem didn't know how to disagree, and all she could do was to smile instead. "I know that now, of course. But then, I was ready to die. But then I didn't. He kept feeding me and caring for me. He gave me clean clothes and regular s-showers. I thought it was a trick, but no trick came. I…" she glanced around nervously, as though she wasn't speaking into everyone's ear over comms anyway. "I complied with him as much as he wished. He never had me s-s-say anything or betray you, I would not do that. But I s-stopped frying his people. I s-s...did not keep attacking his house. He treated me very well."

"So what then? You think that him giving you a hand-out because you were his prisoner redeems him somehow?"

"Oh no! I'm s-s-sorry," she said, instantly flustered. I could see invisibility creeping up her body as she flushed with what I assumed was shame. And I felt like an idiot for reading my own messages in her words.

"Sorry...sorry, Tem. I...I'm sorry for interrupting. Please go ahead."

She stopped at about the ninety-percent invisible mark, her eyes and brow peering at me skeptically from nowhere. When you took away the rest of her, she actually had some very piercing eyes, if she could manage to point them at you. The frosty blue was...kind of dazzling.

"I'm s-sorry," she repeated.

"It's okay. I shouldn't have cut you off."

She gave it another few seconds and then slowly melted back into being as she finished. "Um. No. I do not think he was...redeemed. Or anything like that. I...in my head, of course, I know. He was using me, and trying to get Moon to do things they did not want. That is not good. But…"

Her eyes bored into the ground now, and she vanished entirely. I wondered if she did that by reflex at this point. And then, thinking about how my blades could jump out whenever I felt threatened, I had to assume so.

"I had to wonder. If...my enemy...would treat me s-so well. Better than my family. And...um...maybe even…"

"Better than me. You can say it.

She nodded, but didn't. "...then maybe I do not understand things...even more than I thought."

All of us suddenly winced as Saga shouted in our heads.

[He's THERE!]

She made an effort to stand and point, but the buckles held her in her seat securely.

[(Um, shit)] she leaked, looking around at all of us groaning. "Sorry, my bad. Though, uh. Anything to get us past that Tem story, huh?"

I couldn't see her, but I could sense that Tem was wearing the same little broken smile, though a lot more aggressively pointed at Saga then when she'd worn it before. Saga wasn't right, exactly, but...if I'd understood her shout, this wasn't really the time for chit-chat anymore.

[Hey-o! Mister flying Exhuman guy! Over here!]

"I do not have a reading," Karu intoned from the cabin.

"I see nothing out there. Not in any spectra," AEGIS confirmed. "Saga, where is this thing?"

[We're in the chopper, and we're friendly!] "Um...that way," she pointed vaguely, shaking her head. "Something's wrong."

"With him? With us?" I asked.

"One of the two, I presume," said Moon from the back.

"With...with my connection." She batted at the side of her head like she was trying to shake water out of her ears. "Something's wrong."

"What kind of wrong?" Cosette asked in my ear. "Chariot, if your code-X is malfunctioning--"

"She's not malfunctioning," I barked back, as Saga started throwing thrashing glances around her as though seeing ghosts. "She's fine! You're fine, Saga."

"I don't--aagh!" She held her head, as did we all at the sudden feedback. It felt like a whip crack inside me. Inside my head.

"Fucking God, damn it all, Saga! I am trying to fly!" Karu screamed.

I unbuckled and stumbled towards Saga, when I froze on the spot. I swallowed hard, and could only share a glance with AEGIS to make sure I wasn't just...seeing this.

As hovering right there in the door to the VTOL, there he was. His clothes rippled around him in whatever force held him up, what was probably once jeans and a flannel shirt, but his sleeves and legs were caked with almost-black gore, nearly an inch thick on his hands. It was dried, layered and flakey, and did not carry the smell of death, but the sight of it...well it looked like he spent his time literally ripping out people's hearts.

His hair was relatively neatly kept, like someone who got regular haircuts but had been a few months, and it was windswept and brown. He had the startings of a tangled beard, and close-drawn lips.

But it was his eyes that held me, even more than the caked gore on his hands. They seemed to flicker, more than the stable lighting inside the VTOL or the passing landscape would merit. Like there was something trapped in them, struggling constantly to get out. Something both lighting and darkening them.

Saga thrashed in her seat and AEGIS unbuckled and shot across the cabin to hold her and check on her. She wasn't so keenly in our minds anymore, she was shutting off or...being shut off, and her random lashing felt more like something raking over my mind than through it.

"Um, hi," I said to our visitor. I was no expert on aircraft, but we were flying pretty fucking fast, and he was just hovering in the door like it was nothing.

He cocked his head at me, his face completely void of emotion. "Pleasantries?" he asked. "I've forgotten."

"Yeah, I can...see that's...kind of pointless," I said. I found myself swallowing hard again. It felt like there was too much air pressure in the room with him here. I might think that was a side-effect of his powers holding him up except...that there was another open door right behind me.

"He's there?" Lia squealed. "Athan, talk to him, you dummy!"

"Right." I shook my head and tried to snap out of it. "Mr...Bareletti? Mr. Liev?" I asked. He stared at me blankly.

"Who was that?" he asked, his voice like a whisper, but somehow straight in my ear.

"Um. I said that."

"Who was that?" he asked again, and in the words I suddenly felt his emotions flare. Not any specific emotion but...kind of...all of them. Like he was just expanding all the sudden, and yet his face changed not at all.

"This is a bad idea," AEGIS whimpered from over Saga, who was glassy-eyed and out. "This was a bad, bad, bad idea."

"Who...was that?" I asked, trying to understand, trying to block out AEGIS' panic, because maybe if I could do that, I could block out my own. "Mr. Liev you mean? That's you, isn't it? You're Liev Bareletti?"

"I'm...Liev," he said. He looked at his hand and then touched his chest, dried blood flaking off his fingertips and vanishing in the wind. "Liev."

"Yes. And we wanted to ask you something. Something very important." He didn't respond, but those terrifying, flickering black eyes did fix on me again, so I continued. "Um...we don't know why...you're flying around killing people--"

"I am justice."

I stared at him, but no more seemed to be coming. "--but...um...I was...wondering if there was any way we could...convince you to...not?"

"I am justice," he boomed, and I had to hold my head this time as the voice slammed into me. It felt like the wind just poured through the side of the ship with his words but...but my body didn't move at all somehow.

"What does that mean?" I asked, realizing I was shouting.

"I am not Liev. I am Justice." Again, like a punch to the head. But after this, he paused. He looked around, as though in thought. "I am...Justice. I destroy the unjust. Liars and parasites."

"Great, really. I'm all for that. Ask anyone, I don't lie. I absolutely suck at it. Uh, not...not that I suck like a parasite or anything. Not one of those either."

He didn't respond but I'd earned his gaze again. I swallowed and realized, I really did have to just keep talking, even if my brain froze, because otherwise I might just say nothing ever again and get lost in the nightmares in his eyes.

"Um. Yes. Bad people...we've killed many of them ourselves. We try to do good, too. Try to uphold justice, yeah? But the thing is...your form of justice...it's hurting a lot of innocent people as well. The XPCA--"

"Are corrupt."

I held myself. It wasn't like he was a code-X assaulting my mind. It was like...it was like seeing inside the sun somehow. Hearing him, when he spoke like that, it was hearing something which was too intense for a mind. Not loud, just...beyond. It hurt a hell of a lot, and glancing back, I noticed Saga with her eyes rolled back and drool seeping from her mouth, completely unresponsive to AEGIS. If just hearing his thoughts hurt like this…

"AEGIS, unstrap her and both of you jump. She won't survive with him."

"Jump?" she echoed.

"Land on her if you have to. Just get her out of here. I don't know that she repairs brain damage. Not...of the psychological sort. Go!"

She gave me one decisive nod and undid the harness. "Don't do anything stupid, Athan. I will kill you when I get back if you do."

"Love you too. Go!"

She jumped, and I was reminded of how fast we were going by how quickly she vanished behind us.

Somehow, Saga safe let me breathe a little easier. Until I turned back and met those eyes again.

"The XPCA are corrupt. And believe me, we're working on that. The last two directors...I'm not trying to brag I'm...this is the justice I'm talking about. But we were the ones who...uh...deposed them. They were corrupt and we cleaned up. But...even if they are corrupt, they still do good. They still do something hugely important, they protect people, and more critically, they make people feel protected."

Again, he said nothing. It was nothing like when Moon did that. Hers always seemed a pensive pause. This was just...like...yelling at a swarm of hornets and waiting for them to do anything to indicate they understood. Except he fucking could understand. He was standing...well...floating right there, all human-looking and human-sounding, speaking English just like me.

Minus the blood caked on him. And the deafening, blinding voice. And the unmoving face. And those fucking eyes--

"Um, so...can you...I don't know, can you be more sneaky when you kill people? Can you like...take out your targets without creating a huge panic? The problem really is that you're so visible that the public--"

"Attack from the shadows?" he asked.

"Yes. That. Shadows and subterfuge and--"

"Do you do these things?"

I was about to say yes when Lia screamed in my ear. "SAY NO. ATHAN SAY NO. SAY NO RIGHT NOW."

"...no?"

I'd say his face relaxed except it hadn't changed at all. Nothing had changed, and yet I felt as though the spectre of death had just passed right in front of me. He said nothing to confirm it of course, as I just swallowed hard and tried to stop sweating at an inexplicable chill.

"Heads up everyone," Karu said, before I could put together some other way of phrasing that this guy might get. "Military's coming up on us."

"On us how?" I asked.

"Not entirely certain, lest I would have evaded it," she said with some frustration. "Some concealed SAMs, it would seem. A trap for our new friend, I presume."

"Nothing from XPCA," Cosette added with obvious alarm.

"SAMs?" Lia echoed. "Missiles? Missiles? After my brother?"

I leaned forward, at the risk of getting closer to the man, and sure enough, in our wake I could see the white trails of missiles curving inescapably towards us from far away and on the ground. They were trailing, but gaining. The cockpit blared with warnings.

"From the shadows," Justice said, staring at me. "You strike. Liar."

"No, they're not with us," I shouted. "They're shooting at us!"

"Liar and parasite. I am Justice."

Whatever I'd felt when he spoke, when he acted, it was like the gates holding that back were thrown all the way open. Despite having just last week stood in the presence of a god, this was the first time I felt like I'd experienced one. My swords came out by reflex, but even as they did, I knew they were pointless. I was stumbling backwards, in slow-motion it felt like, any step I could take away from him was a fraction of a second that divine wrath wouldn't incinerate me.

I saw Tem scream without hearing her. Moon's book flew across the cabin as she struggled to unbuckle herself and rise. I could hear the confused crackle in comms as Karu, Lia, Whitney, Cosette, and AEGIS didn't quite yet know what was going on.

Justice turned and one missile chasing us was cleaved into six unequal parts, lengthwise. Pieces of it tumbled and exploded in the air, looking like toothpicks splintering. The second one just disappeared, a hole in space ripped where it had once been, and only a void beyond it.

And then all of that, all of them, I saw as though from a distance, as though through a window which was shrinking. Another hole in space, except I was looking into space from the wrong end. There was just blackness here, and winds which cut like fire, and in the distance, a tiny speck which used to be so close and so massive, that it had contained my whole world.

There was no air here, either. So that when I tried to breathe, finally separated from Justice, even if it was by death, I felt and found nothing. My lungs were empty, and I drifted, ungainly, painfully, slowly.

Just me and this missile drifting in an empty, starless void, slower than I thought possible. Colder than nothing should have been. My breathlessness, inexplicably, somehow not the death of me yet. It was cold, yet the wind burned.

It made very little sense, and that just...frustrated me. Because that's not how I'd wanted to die. Despite my efforts, that was something I'd given a lot of thought to since turning Exhuman, and my opinion of it had ever-gradually shifted from some inglorious and pointless insignificance to possibly being a martyr to maybe being able to achieve something with my life, and my death being the keystone of it all. Some blaze of glory that I couldn't live through but could expend everything in the pursuit of. Something lofty, like universal rights for all, or bringing understanding or protecting someone I loved.

And now we were back to this. Inglorious and pointless and insignificant. Lost in the void, where I tumbled in slow-motion, where my breath held longer than it should have. Next to a live missile, still blazing away and going nowhere.

AEGIS would have a hard time coming here to kill me. But she wouldn't need to spend the trouble. I felt the first pangs of my empty lungs burning, my instincts to draw breath and to hold my breath against the alien vacuum beginning to rise in the form of panic, as my labored thoughts and projections ceded to my stupid, freaked-out lizard brain, and death became less of a contemplation and more of a thing staring me in the face.

I'd really done it now. Should have listened to everyone. I knew this guy was danger, but I didn't think he was literally kill-you-with-a-thought dangerous. Didn't even know he could shove you into a black void with his mind alone, though Cosette said that many of his attacks left behind little black-hole riftlets that never seemed to close ever again. Just another fuck-up in the life of Athan Ashton, to skip the wrong detail and think I could achieve too much.

Last one, though, I thought with a grim smile. Learned my lesson good this time.

I closed my eyes and tried to shove down the panic welling up. I'd always heard that suffocation...or drowning, more specifically, was actually kind of a peaceful way to go. I guess once you got past the desperation of not being able to breath and actually reached the oxygen deprivation part, you just went out like sleeping.

I guess whoever came up with that never dealt with this time dilation or whatever it was, because it'd been minutes now and I still wasn't suffocated, or breathing, or finished panicking about those two. It was starting to hurt a lot, and my head was getting foggy.

And then it hit me, a serene weightlessness. A welcoming stupidity. Pain became distant and less distracting. It did feel like falling asleep. What do you know?

I didn't mind spending the next few minutes like that. Floating. Drifting. Just empty blackness and me, calm and still and sleeping for all eternity. Next to that missile. And that blazing light. The one attached to what looked like an exosuit. The glare of it shined in my eyes, and I was irritated with them for a minute, wondering just who the hell was trying to ruin my death here? I'd just gotten comfortable.

Even though things were getting lighter, they were also getting darker, and it was just when blackness was falling all around me that I felt an unfamiliar lurch, and then the nostalgic embrace of gravity punched me in the gut, my face hitting the floor just as consciousness left me.