I was exhausted. Trish was exhausted. One of my wounds had reopened on the drive in, and the weeping of blood made me even more light-headed. I was in no fit state to drive, much less fight...but compared to Justice, no man or woman was fit to fight. My sacrifice would mean as much as any of theirs, and if Trish was as significant a part of God's plan in this as I hoped, then perhaps mine was merely to deliver her.

I hoped so. I prayed so. So far, she had been the only one who could make him hurt, who had fused his body with her bite in a manner which could not fracture off into fractal reassembling. In the swarm of flesh which was now Justice, that cut remained intact in his center, like a vulnerability he had to protect.

I did not know how we would get close, or how to protect her, but if she was key to it all, she needed first to be present, and that much, I could do.

I stopped us at the periphery, frowning to see the fight in person. I knew it was bad, but witnessing the slaughter with my own eyes felt more actualized, more grim than I expected.

I had never seen so much blood, nor so many bodies, or so little damage. Justice had been precise in his terminations, delving in to kill a select handful, or issuing his powers to do the same, and while there were certainly fissures in the ground, lines of scorch, and boulder-shattered streets, by-and-large, the buildings and infrastructure remained intact. It appeared as though a plague had swept the battlefield, visiting explosive death upon all infected.

That is, if it were not for the macabre spires. Every hundred feet or so, another body massacred with such superfluousness, often the contents of a single person stretched higher than the single-story residences which surround it. Where they were erected, there was a halo around them, clean of other corpses, as though the pinnacle demanded its space and reverence...or more likely, that those who were alive, fighting or fleeing, they avoided the grizzly landmarks for fear of joining them.

I was under no such superstition, and found them actually rather pleasant to drive through, comparatively. The contortions of the bodies offered less resistance than the corpse-lined roads, and the spaces under them were a reprieve from the bumpy, crunchy, fleshy mess we otherwise had to traverse. Easier to drive through a curtain than a carpet, perhaps; disgusting, but practical.

Trish looked ill at the hellway through which we were driving, and I recommended she focus on the horizon. Not that it was any less bloodstained, but it was, at least, further.

"No," she said, her voice set in a growl. "I want to see this. I want to remember these people."

I did not reply, feeling void of the proper reverence, as I continued to drive forward, crunching more of the dead into mulch beneath our tires.

"Every one of them had a family," she continued, shaking her head. "I'm...I'm completely torn up about my husband and kids, I can't imagine what life is going to be like after this...if there even is an after this. But…"

She looked out and bit her lip, which was a bold thing to do given the lurching of the vehicle, but seemed not to mind the trickle of blood from her mouth, or to notice.

"But...and this sounds so wrong, but...they're just three people. I thought losing them was everything but there are...thousands of people here. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Every one of them had a mother and father. Maybe a spouse, maybe kids. That's...millions of people in my shoes or worse. I can't even begin to think about how much pain I'm in, but to think of it multiplied across every single person in America, or on Earth…"

She shuddered.

Silently, I agreed with her. There was a reason I was a hunter. I knew well the pain a single Exhuman could inflict on dozens or hundreds of lives. I had once had this realization which was striking her. I knew, possibly better than she did, the extent of the words and feelings now overwhelming her.

And I had nothing to say to her. When my history had been ravaged by Exhumanity, when I was alone, and holding the seared-off arm of a loved one, appalled and amazed that Exhumans were permitted to exist in God's plan...the only words that had been offered to me were from my father, scolding me for imperiling his heritage, from my new commanding officer, telling me all the things his predecessor had done wrong, and from the crisis counselors, trying to encourage me to agreement, that this was in no way way the military's fault, and I was completely fine, and not the least bit traumatized.

I knew well what not to say, but had no idea what words would actually be of help. Patronizing thoughts and empty assurances flitted through my mind, but none significant enough to lighten her burden. There was so little I could say or do, it frustrated me. Not that I much cared about Trish in particular, but having lived these experiences myself, it felt as though I should have had more, that I should have perspective on this by now.

Perhaps that was all there was to say.

"I understand," I said. "I know how you feel."

She continued to stare out at the spectacle, my words feeling insignificant against the view, either unworthy of response, or sufficient that none was needed. She breathed unevenly, and swallowed heavily, but spoke no more.

As we drew nearer to the body of the remaining conflict, I encountered something strange on the road, veering wildly to avoid shadowy figures emerging into my headlights. Bodies, soaked in blood, beneath one of the grim memorials...but upright, moving, alive.

"What the--?" Trish asked, and I swerved again to avoid hitting more of them. They did not move at all, did not even seem to recognize us, merely rocked and stood and kneeled and cradled themselves, their focus upwards, towards the massacre, and towards the sky.

"What are they doing?" she asked.

"From the look of it, praying." There were more of them on the road ahead, first three, and now a dozen. In the distance, beneath the next monument, I saw what may have been another dozen more, not yet in my lights.

"Praying...here? Like, I get the...the need for it, but...why aren't they running? Why isn't Justice killing them?"

"Because Justice is not here to kill humans. He is here to destroy hope. These people do not run, because they have no hope. They are worse than dead, they are defeated, and will remain so for however long they cling to life."

"They're covered in blood…"

"They do not care. They are broken. They do not comprehend that tomorrow will come, or that they are cold, or are in pain, or painted with blood of their comrades. Their minds have shattered, and all that they know, or believe that they know, is that there is no way for them to defeat Justice, and no way to escape."

We were driving slower now, not that I had attained any significant speed while driving amidst the fallen, but it gave her plenty of time to soak in the wails and faces of the defeated. Confusion and concern crossed and recrossed her face, more distressed and baffled here than in seeing the dead. It was good that she could not understand them, because to understand them, to be able to grasp an annihilation of self so complete that one's very existence was forfeit...to even know such a thing was to become one.

Fighting required a thing to fight for. For Trish, even with her family dead, the spirit of vengeance had reawakened her to the front. For many, it was survival -- the self -- a need to see tomorrow, no matter the cost. Others were simply too stubborn to ever change their minds, and perhaps that was the camp I fell into. Even if defeat was absolutely certain, I had invested too much, too long to simply expire without utilizing it.

There were as many reasons as there were fighters, some better than others, some certainly more robust. But the simple truth was, as I had seen in every conflict with which I had ever engaged, robbing a soldier of their reason to fight left them like this, in spirit if not in form. Despair, despondency. A paradoxical depth and narrowing of thought, those who would fall to pieces and cry out 'what is it all for?' while being incapable of processing any answer.

Most of them died. Many were even sent home first, but the trauma still lingered in them like buried shrap. But never had I seen this many, or so completely broken.

"This is horrible," she whispered.

"This is the world he seeks to create. Where humanity exists only to fear him, and his power is absolute. I know not what twisted motivation he has, but the fact that he has left so many broken yet alive...the sadistic spectacle of his works, how he has sought out and ruthlessly annihilated the exceptional in the field, and then toyed with the rank and file...it leads me to no other conclusion but this. Even now, his protracted shepherding and pursuit, it is meant to defeat, deplete, exhaust...but not to kill."

"This is fucked up."

"A much more concise assessment. I agree."

We rode in stony silence for several minutes longer. We were beginning to get close to the fight now, and the roads were positively becoming thick with the broken and the dead. I noted with dismay the number of aid workers unceremoniously murdered, red crosses hanging off of destroyed bodies. There had been efforts to take these people to care, to mend them. Efforts of which Justice, evidently, had not approved.

"What of your motivation to fight?" I asked. "Does seeing the scope of his destruction fill you with hesitation?"

She shook her head. "Makes me want to stop him even more. I can't imagine how many people are hurting right now."

"Good. For me as well. When he turns his eyes on you, remember well this feeling. Confidence is as valuable on the battlefield as sure footing, but just as easy to lose."

"Thanks. But...don't you fly?"

That made me laugh, and the sound of it seemed alien, as though the contents of this car were a visitor from another world. Out there was gore and misery, and here, we had air conditioning, should we desire it.

I saw movement ahead, more than the shuffling or prostration of the broken, though equally blood-soaked and muddy. A man, not in XPCA black, though clutching one of their guns, running towards us while looking backwards in equal measure. He was screaming for the broken to get out of his way, sprinting directly for the car.

"Help me! Get me the hell out of here!"

As he passed, I saw the broken turning away from him, as though ashamed of themselves for not being him...or him him for not being them. To my estimation, he had hidden, and upon hearing our approach, was making his move to run.

I had no use for the vehicle after this, and would be content to let him have it, to take back as many as would fit, and with God's blessing, they may find themselves once more. But that was only if they made it back.

Which would not happen. His fate was sealed as soon as I heard him yelling, and Trish began screaming uselessly at him the moment we saw the glint in the dark.

Justice landed with a crack, the pavement shattering under his mass, a maelstrom of blood, a black hole of darkness ringed in an unearthly light, shadowy tendrils emerging in every direction like a dozen crab limbs, stiff and articulated. Glimpses of what looked like arms, legs, a torso appeared in the haze, forming and dissolving and reforming out of the cloud of flesh. A human head, shuddering, eyes bulging and boiling, mouth dripping blood and froth, constantly muttering words from its lips while an unearthly screaming keened from the dissolving neck.

"What...the fuck...happened to him…" Trish asked, opening the car door and fumbling with her seat belt. I brought us to a halt before she hurt herself, and the poor bastard kept running towards us, kept screaming for us to save him.

Right up until his lungs inflated to bulge out his mouth, a huge swollen sac, black and blue like a fresh bruise, his eyes staring down at the alien presence, his entire body distended from the pressure.

He kept swelling and more of his organs began to appear out of his orifices. His eyes screamed and went bloodshot, before popping in a cascade of bile and phlegm. A trail of feces ran down his legs, dripping into the street as his anus swelled larger than his buttocks.

All the while he kicked and thrashed and tried to scream through the guts in his throat, going blue from asphyxia, white with pain.

And then at once, red with blood, mercifully still and silent, putrid violet gasses escaping his swollen form through the new hole punched through his chest, where Trish's spear had punctured his heart.

Justice looked up at us, his eyes seething, his mouth unhinged with lips still moving despite being too far from each other to make words. The intensity of his screaming made my teeth vibrate in my skull, my skull vibrate in my head, my wounds feel as though they were close to reopening again, to burst with all the blood screaming in my veins in unison with his voice.

Trish had spears in both hands, the headlights of the stopped car throwing long, sharp shadows across the two of us. I had a half-functioning jetpack which would help me move at perhaps a quick jog, and half a dozen near-depleted weapons, perhaps thirty shots left, if that.

And a house. It tumbled through the air, ungainly, not so much pulled from the ground as taking the ground with it, small bits of concrete foundations and metal pipework peeking out from the island of soil upon which it sailed. And on its roof, broad teeth bared, face cut up, but still whole, a huge man with dark skin and a short-cut afro, both hands planted on the rooftop as he steered it towards our adversary with a yell of his own.

Justice barely turned, lashing out one-two, metal chains, red-hot, tearing through the flying house. Tower let it go, drifting up and away and letting gravity carry the meteorite towards his mark. One of the chains slashed at him, but when it touched him, it stilled in the air, and sent Tower flying at the ground instead, stealing its momentum to fire himself like a rocket.

The explosion of his landing was greater even than Justice's, echoing with the house crashing, which Justice dodged with ease, and the debris hung in the air like a smokescreen. Through which, Tower came charging through it, fists at the ready, as though punching Justice in the jaw would turn this conflict.

"WHERE. IS. JACK?" he bellowed.

Before he was eviscerated in Justice's reply, Trish was there, slashing out, one-two, just as Justice had, her long lances biting deep into the cloud of gore, and where they cut, the blood congealed and splashed to the earth, and Justice howled in fury. He turned towards her, and there was a purple flash.

I did not know what the flash was intended to do. I only fired myself at full speed and collided her out of the way in time to avoid it. Justice howled again, a voice magnified a thousand times, and the whole world seemed to echo his scream, air pressure beating on my head and my injuries. Even the stims were having a hard time keeping the pain at bay, and I wondered how it was that Trish was still even conscious without them.

But conscious she was, and dancing like a kite in Justice's wind. She was easily the fastest of all three of us, and I noted, moved like a trained fighter. An ameteur one, certainly. But one who was no stranger to it. Her breathing was controlled and even, and her blows came out staccato, sharp punctuation to her movement, each attack buying her distance or threatening a hit.

Tower capitalized on Justice's focus on her by bellowing twice as loud and lifting a shattered chunk of now-weightless road, bringing it crashing down like a discus, flattening where Justice had only just been floating.

As for me, I waited. I stayed near enough Trish to give her support, and took my shots carefully. When he suddenly lunged, lurching at her with a wave of flame, I was ready and waiting, and a canister of ice detonated at his fore, extinguishing his attack and sending many of his chunks of flesh dropping to the streets like droplets of red hail. When he turned to me to rebuke, I found my skin aflame, nausea forcing vomit through my teeth. It felt like I was boiling from within.

Just as I thought myself truly dying, she slashed at him again, biting in with her shadow lances, and as she did, his powers seemed to waver for a fraction of a moment, long enough for whatever affliction he'd put on me to fall away, for his body to fall to the ground, for the keening to stop, and for the pained moans of a man to be heard from the now-human lips.

But it was only a moment. In the next, he rose up again, the black fire within him flaring with radiance like a dark sun. The air around us filled with ten-thousand near-invisible wires, and the ground beneath us fragmented into sunder which shifted underfoot. The air became painful to breathe, and I was not certain my body was breathing it properly, becoming lightheaded...or perhaps it was the keening starting anew, burrowing into my mind like a maggot.

Only for it all to dissipate again in an instant as she lashed out. She was sweating and shaking, her veins livid with her pounding pulse and her rattling breath, and I knew, whatever I was feeling, she was suffering ten times worse. Yet still she assaulted him, spears jabbing further and further towards the center of Justice, the tips of them prodding at the black-wreathed heart.

One spear was struck and shattered by a sharp electric cleave that left the air smelling of ozone and the hairs on my neck standing straight. She reached for the ground for another with her off-hand, the remaining spear seeming to jump to her main, and lashing out at the same moment. Twenty feet long, and flicked through the air with a whip-crack, weightless and substantial as death. The lance-tip dipped under the arc of light, striking at him again, but missing the core.

And then the earth itself turned against her, spires of rock erupting from under her unstable feet, and harpooning into the air. One after another, needles reaved the sky, and while she staggered backwards, away, I heard a crack, and saw her falling backwards, her eyes tear-streaked as a spire of rock and bone shot through her femur, her knee swinging uselessly under her, held on by skin and meat alone.

I dove and mostly caught her, and she stifled a scream, lashing out with her lance desperately as Justice regained his footing. He seemed to coalesce, to surge, a thousand more needles of stone boiling from everywhere to pin us in, to tear her apart.

I jumped as hard as I could, adding what force my legs had left in them to the thrust of my jetpack and got the two of us clear, a dozen feet in the air, but only inches away from the ground collapsing in on itself under us like a hundred sets of teeth closing, one after another. Then more burst from beneath, launched skyward like sea-spray, while we drifted defenseless, my jetpack no more capable of redirecting the two of us than moving the earth.

Tower was there for us. With an ungodly bellow, he appeared directly under us, the thousand needles crashing into his body, blunted by his power, but still cracking and shattering on his skin, as he arrested each of them as best he could. The impacts of them pushed him up into us, and the three of us began to fall and tumble, directly towards Justice's burning black form.

"STEER!" Trish screamed at me. "INTO HIM!"

I found strong arms holding us, and our tumble became a gliding descent as Tower oriented us with his powers. She got the lance under us, pointed directly at his heart, and I stabilized us, veering us slightly left, slightly right, my jetpack so much more capable when we were weightless.

We skimmed across the ground, building up more and more speed, the ground still exploding beneath us, as Tower reached out and touched the incoming attacks, converting their thrust into ours, until we outstripped the raging earth, until even through my visor, I felt tears streaking my vision, and my body threatening to give out. Rarely had I flown this fast, and never without consequences.

But the consequences today would not be ours to pay. Justice was limping away...still at incredible speeds, but nowhere near his fastest. His flesh was frozen, sundered, a wake of blood and discarded body parts trailing behind him as he drifted sideways, my jetpack correcting us towards him no matter how he fled. I reached over and gripped Trish's arm tight, keeping the spear pointed level, even if she blacked out from the speed.

We were a bullet, fired at his heart, unerring. Pursuers, closing the distance between death and victory. Tower was still bellowing, and I found my voice adding to his, despite myself. Trish's scream resonated in my ears, fueled by her misery and grief, her anger and vengeance. All of the pain she felt, all of the canage we had witnessed, we were poised to strike it down, here and now, to end it all.

Realizing that he could not evade, Justice planted and turned, walls of fire and blackness cropping up in our path. But where the lance hit them, we punched through, the touch of blackness sending ripples of reality through them, through which we passed.

Razor-wire sprang up, and that would have worked. The lance could not cut enough of it, and it would shred us to pieces if we passed through. We were too fast to stop, it was too plentiful, impossible to see except through my visor, and my jetpack could not steer us with enough precision.

A sword, tall as a skyscraper punched through the earth, mere feet ahead of us, and when it fell away, missing us by inches, it had cut clear a path through the wire. I thought I saw Justice's eyes widen at seeing it, his mouth still agape, more and more of his body and his powers falling behind as the core of him tried to escape.

But then, a huge, golden hand erupted from the ground in an explosion of rock and asphalt. Before he could twist away, it seized him, gripping him in the air, the fingertips clenching hard against the black flames as though they were solid, the knuckles turning white from the force of the titan's grip.

[Fuckin' do it! End him!] I heard Saga scream, her voice cutting through the keening which was slashing at my mind. Tower pushed with an extra burst of speed, and my vision went streaky as the lance jumped forward, a dozen feet away, then ten, then five…

It was maybe three feet away when I felt my heart soar, when the tears in my eyes and the fire across my body seemed realized, when the thought we were actually going to do this! played unbidden in my mind.

Three feet away. Some matter of inches. It felt like time had slowed down for the dramatic, final blow.

But something had gone wrong. This wasn't like other times when I had seen the world slow for my absolute focus, or for my use of stims. We weren't moving at all. Nothing was moving, my eyes were locked forward, but I could see flashing in the periphery of my visor. I could see the flames of darkness and light crashing from within Justice, could see his face still moving, still twitching, although I could not make alter my expression in the slightest.

We were inches away, but we were not moving. We were frozen, the three of us. The hand, the city…

[What the fuck?]

I could not answer, could not ask that very same question myself, no matter how much I willed it. I was simply trapped.

[NO! THIS IS BULLSHIT. NO!]

Justice spent long minutes putting himself back together. Like watching a snail's slime recede back into it, his flesh scraped itself off the swathe of destruction we had carved, pieces of his body reshaping, reassembling, thawing, solidifying, returning back to the whole.

More of him was missing now. More of him had been cut away by the lance which still was mere dozens of inches from his face. He knew we were watching, I realized. He wanted us to be this close to victory, wanted us to taste that hope.

For the same reason he'd erected the monuments. For the same reason for toying with the soldiers, for fighting them in such cruel, inefficient ways, for hunting down the deserters with senseless malice.

He wanted to destroy our hope. And so, he reassembled himself, his body now intact again instead of a seething mass of gore, yet filled with a great number of voids where new gashes had been cleaved, the black fire still spilling through him in them. And after that, slowly, painfully, he drifted over to us, keeping in our line of sight the whole while, his body floating alongside the lance which had nearly reached him.

And when he came to us, he reached out, took hold of Trish's neck, and without any senseless brutality or theater, broke it.

As though a spell was broken with it, her body fell from our grasp and collapsed onto the street below, which my eyes could not follow but my ears could hear. It was the thump of meat on pavement, a lifeless body making no effort to arrest its own fall.

Tears welled in my unblinking eyes. I felt rage and hatred seething with my hot blood. All of this, all that we had just gone through, and he could end it like that?

It was not just rage. It was frustration. It was exacerbation. It was acceptance of a truth that I knew, by all accounts should be possible, but not one I could ever accept. Not in my line of work, not in who I was, but there it sat, the hideous truth, staring me in the face with shuddering, unsettling eyes.

Even in her mind-speak, Saga's voice had such a tone of misery, of complete, exhausted defeat, I knew she had pulled it from my own mind.

[We...can't beat him...can we?]

I thought back my response at her, a confused mess. All of the platitudes I had ever spoken, all of what I had just said to Trish just minutes ago, about fighting for something, about holding onto one's confidence, surefootedness, and strength. The pithy replies and God-fueled hellfire I'd always spouted. Righteousness and good, confidence and training, effort and justice. All these words.

But they were only words. Empty breaths of air. What was in my heart was exactly what she'd said.

He turned to Tower, and lowered his body until the two of them were eye-to-eye. And then he faced me.

"I told you...I would break you."

Tower dipped in the air, hands flailing as Justice abruptly released him from his hold. Tower sniffled, swallowing hard, looking down at Trish, at her broken body and our broken hope.

"Hit me, parasite," Justice said.

Tower tensed, frozen on the spot, his breathing shallow, his arms hanging at his sides, useless. He wouldn't. He couldn't. It was pointless, it was just...Justice showing off again, how complete his control over us was. It was pointless to try, pointless to resist. If he wanted, he could just stop us all again, break our necks one-by-one, unceremoniously as Trish's death.

It wouldn't even work to run. If Justice gave me the chance like Tower now had. I certainly couldn't hit him. I couldn't run. I did not know what there was to do. Would I truly just...do nothing?

Was that it?

Was that all I could think of?

Was that all I had left?

To be like those broken, just...trudging in Justice's wake, too keenly aware of how powerless I was in this new world?

I watched Tower with bleary eyes, expecting him to go limp as I felt, for his mind to reach my realizations, the realizations of those blood-stained bastards we'd driven past. Why did I considering myself above them? I was broken. I had given up. We'd never even had a shot, all we had was false hope, stripped from us again and again.

Even in this, even if she had managed to punch through his heart, he would have another trick, another play. He was simply too powerful. He was unbeatable, and if he desired a death, he had only to take it. What was the point?

Smack.

I blinked, and felt hot tears pooling in my visor. Tower was grinning, beneath a set brow, his fists raised as he dangled in the air from his powers. He wound up for another punch.

Smack.

It barely turned Justice's cheek, but he took it all the same.

"That's for Jack, you piece of shit."

He wound up to throw again, but his body froze in the air, the small grin frozen on his face. Justice turned to me as he put his hands around Tower's neck, as though asking me if he should go through with it.

I wanted to cry, to shake my head, to beg to spare him. But I couldn't. And even if I could...it would do nothing. I could do nothing. Nobody could. Justice was the ultimate arbiter of death.

Or so I thought.

"Hey," I heard a familiar voice, but couldn't look up. It sounded...like AEGIS. But why would she be flying?

Why would Athan be flying? Or Lia? I didn't know, but...as they descended like gods into my view, there the three of them were. Faces serious, arms crossed. On the girls, anyway...Athan seemed...dazed. Though that might have just been my condition.

[ATHAN!]

"How about you leave him alone and come pick on someone your own size?" AEGIS quipped.

And to my surprise, Justice left the two of us floating in the air, rising to float eye-to-eye with Athan, discarded like the broken, useless pieces of meat that we were.