The floor below Blackout began to rumble. Jangling noises filled the container as countless metal surfaces bumped each other gently. Gravel crunching beneath wheels and a slight jerk of inertia told Blackout that the truck was now moving. Through the pitch black, Blackout could see Flash Bang, hanging in his pod, lifeless.

In Blackout’s head, when he drew up this plan, he saw himself standing up as soon as the truck was in motion. However, now that he was actually in the thick of it, he realized that the ground beneath him was much less steady than he’d first imagined. All around him, jagged pieces of metal stabbed outward into the air. Getting impaled in the back of a truck after hitting a bump would surely go down as one of the dumbest ways a hero ever died.

Instead, Blackout sat behind his cabinet, and waited. Waiting for what? He didn’t know exactly. The truck would have to stop eventually. If it was at the Isakov’s destination, then he’d wait for them to busy themselves, and slip away, sending up a help beacon. However, this was the city. Stand still traffic was inevitable. Blackout took notice of the wires and circuitry all around him. Much of the equipment appeared to be quite delicate. There were two options: stick to the original escape and rescue plan, or try to sabotage the Isakovs’ device.

The former was simpler, but came with the risk that even the rescue team wouldn’t be able to do much for Flash Bang. The latter was promising, but could backfire in a number of ways. First, this device-whatever it was-was designed to be deadly. If Blackout accidentally set the thing off, he could kill himself, Flash Bang, and anyone in the general vicinity of the truck. It could potentially kill the Isakovs as well, which may actually save more lives in the long run. That was not the moral calculus Blackout was prepared to tackle in the back of a truck. Second, even if the device didn’t kill everyone, it was possible that messing with it could cause some sort of loud commotion. That would alert the Isakovs, who would kill Blackout, then simply proceed with their plan.

In his down time behind the cabinet, Blackout idly checked his phone with the hope that the jammer was off. It wasn’t. The time said it was only an hour and half since he’d left Phan’s. Grace would not yet have called the community rep to send a rescue team. He was kicking himself for not telling her two hours. It never took longer than two hours. He was so stupid. The only reason he said three hours was on the off chance he’d get into a protracted fight, he didn’t want the rescue team showing up to steal his glory. It was a moot point, as he was no longer where the rescue team would be sent to.

It was not long before the awkward position Blackout was in began to take its toll. Cramps shocked his ankles and knees. There was not much room to adjust, but he did the best he could. In his new configuration, he had a better angle on Flash Bang. The wires digging into Flash Bang’s insides made Blackout queasy. If he was in pain, it did not show on his face. There was a small fear that Flash Bang could be dead. Blackout promptly waved it off. The Isakovs spoke as if he were very much alive. Additionally, it didn’t make any sense that they’d go through all this trouble just to blow up a corpse. That wasn’t their MO. If they killed a hero, they wanted everyone to witness it.

So, Flash Bang was alive. That was good, right? It meant that there may be a chance to actually save him. Heroes had been saved from the Isakovs before. More often, though, they died in agony. Blackout knew it did no good to think that way. There was only one way to slow down the process. He had to start fucking up the device. It would have to wait until he felt they were far enough away from the factory that it would be a serious problem to abort their plan and turn back around.

So Blackout waited, and plotted. He settled on a hybrid plan. As soon as he could feel the stop and start of city traffic, he’d rush the door. Along the way, he’d pull out every wire he could, stomp every delicate apparatus he passed, and when he reached it, smash the control panel and disconnect the power source from the pod. Then, he’d try the door. If it didn’t open, he would likely be a dead man. The Isakovs would know they had a stowaway the moment they opened the container. At least, if that scenario didn’t result in blowing everyone up, perhaps device would be so badly damaged that Flash Bang could survive.

The gravity of the situation began to dawn on Blackout. His life hung in the balance of the door he now stared at. The control panel was undoubtedly where all those damned batteries had ended up. Selfishly, Blackout allowed himself to indulge the part of himself that wished he’d listened to Chunk and just forgot about Phone Phixers. At least, he told himself, Chunk hadn’t listened to him. If the full team had come along, Chunk would have rushed in, all bluster, like he always did. That would have resulted in a massacre. It was unlikely that the Gecko and Blackout would have made it out alive after the Isakovs had finished with Chunk. If he hadn’t spilled about the situation to Lancelot, Lancelot would never have pushed Fuega on Blackout’s behalf. A thousand different decisions could have led him anywhere other than the back of this truck. It was not worth regretting them, they couldn’t be changed now. Now his options had been narrowed to one: wreck the device, make for the door.

When the trip started, Blackout made a halfhearted attempt to plot an approximate travel route based on turns. He quickly lost track. Best he could guess, they were headed east, though even that was a coin flip. It was close to rush hour, so it was only a matter of time before the truck got caught in the molasses of traffic. If they were planning to leave Manhattan, chances were even better, because that meant going over a bridge. Best case scenario was New Jersey. If they had to traverse the GW, Blackout would have more than sufficient time to get buff enough to tear the door off the truck, locked or not.

Eventually, the stop and start of red light, green light gave way to the steady acceleration of the highway. It wasn’t long before the deceleration of rush hour brought the car to a stand still. This was it.

Blackout was done wallowing, now was the time to act. He popped up, and translated his visualization of his plans into reality. All along, he planned his steps to land on the most delicate doohickeys he could spot. At every opportunity, he yanked wires free of their connections. At one point, he wrenched out a heavy metal pipe, and began swinging it into anything he could reach. Then, he was at Flash Bang. One try with his metal club told him, he was not going to smash it. However, the control panel was a different story. He clobbered the interface, shattering it. Next he tried to pull loose the thick power cable that connected the pod to the power source. It was no use.

Satisfied with his legacy of destruction, Blackout decided that it was time to try the door. Locked. He jostled it desperately, but to no avail. So that was it. This would be the end. The only hope he had was the minuscule chance that there would be an opening for Blackout to run. Pavel had superhuman speed, but perhaps they’d decide they should stay with Flash Bang, and let Blackout get away. Unlikely, but it was all Blackout had, other than a deep feeling of sadness.

Since he’d first seen the Isakovs, Blackout had been confronting his own mortality. The entire time in the truck, he’d played it round and round in his head. He visited all the memories he wanted to ruminate on, did all the self grieving he could stand. Eventually, he ran out of tape. Now that he was at the door, and it was locked, exactly how he’d feared, there was nothing left to contemplate. The memories and philosophy inside of him were spent. All that was left were the raw emotions bubbling in the core of his being.

Blackout manifested his frustrations in beating up on the control panel. Everywhere he could strike bore some dent. His grip began to falter, as he found himself sweating so profusely, it made his hands slick and his costume heavy. Overexertion set in, and Blackout had to take a moment to regain his wind.

As his diaphragm heaved, Blackout heard a whirring noise. At first it was so soft, it was almost imperceptible. The noise only grew. It was coming from the control panel, at the base of the power source. What was left of the screen began flashing red. The whirring soon got so intense, the entire container was shaking. The sound level was incapacitating. All Blackout could do was lift his hands to his ears and wince.

A new noise invaded the soundscape. A twisted, agonized howl. Blackout turned to the pod. There was Flash Bang, face contorted into a a bottomless pit of pain. His eyes were open so far, they seemed like they were going to fly out of their sockets. He was disoriented, wordlessly begging Blackout for some sort of relief. The wires that were buried in his flesh sparked. A sizzle of smoke flowed from their contact point with his skin. As he screamed, he emanated a harsh light.

Flash Bang’s powers were light based, known for expelling powerful energy blasts from his hands. Now, the energy was radiating from every inch of his body. In his pod, he writhed, as he pulsed light out into the world in increasing intensity. The light singed everything it touched, superheating and warping the metal walls of the container. Blackout was frozen in place. Rushes of shock, horror, and guilt jockeyed for dominance within him. Then the right wall of the container buckled around the melted strip that had been compromised by Flash Bang’s light. It didn’t create an opening, but perhaps it would lead to one. Either that, or the container would implode, crushing him.

Thinking quickly, Blackout threw up his shroud. The light didn’t penetrate, but the heat did, which was a first. The pandemonium was such that Blackout didn’t notice the engine cut out. He certainly noticed when the door opened. The light from the pod competed with the light pouring in from outside.

“You’ve done it now, you worthless beast! Your reckless driving has set off the device! All of our equipment is destroyed!” Ilya yelled frantically.

“No! Look!” Pavel snarled back.

The Isakovs had spotted Blackout’s shroud. Pavel didn’t hesitate. All over his body, his muscles began to bulge. He reminded Blackout of Chunk. It was almost as if someone was blowing Pavel up with a bicycle pump. At full size, Pavel was easily over ten feet tall, and nearly as broad as the the opening of the container. He looked directly at Blackout and roared.

Seeing Pavel transform shook Blackout even more than he was expecting. All the numbness he’d experienced about dying had been jolted out of him. It had been one thing to accept his fate, it was another to come face to face with the monster who’d be responsible for it. Blackout began backing away, deeper into the container. The entire truck dipped as Pavel stepped in, and put his weight on it. He shoved himself into the container, hunching over to fit inside. Blackout felt very much like the last Pringle at the bottom of the can, watching a hand reaching in.

“No, you mindless imbecile! Leave the shadow! Back to the device! Back to the device!”

Pavel ignored his brother’s demands.

“If I don’t begin the shutdown procedure, we’ll be among the casualties!”

A ray of Flash Bang’s light fell upon Pavel’s arm, searing the skin. Pavel growled. Due to some primitive, confused response, this made Pavel even angrier at Blackout. Anything caught beneath Pavel’s feet was instantly flattened, as his steps brought him ever closer to Blackout. Blackout stumbled on a loose sheet of metal, sending him tumbling into the back wall. He slid to the ground. All he could do now was wait for Pavel.

Flash Bang shrieked. It was the loudest sound he’d made since Blackout had awoken him. Pavel’s attention was diverted, as he turned to the source of the noise. An enormous flare of light lashed out from the pod. The upward angle caught Pavel’s head, burning right through the ceiling. The first thing Blackout noticed was the smell. He was reminded of the time one of his foster families held a barbecue on the Fourth of July. It was halfway through grilling burgers that they realized the meat was bad. The smell burned itself in Kevin’s memories. He’d never before encountered another smell that came close.

Pavel slumped to the ground, limp. His head no longer had a discernible face. It was all a black, bubbled, melted mess. The rest of his body convulsed as it shrunk back to regular size. More flares of the same size or larger shot from the pod, punching out more holes in the container. All the while, Flash Bang screamed in pain.

“Get up! Get up, moron!” Ilya begged.

Ilya was smacking his brother’s inert body. Blackout allowed Ilya to do the work of figuring out if Pavel was indeed gone. He’d never been around a dead body before, and this had been a gruesome demise. He pushed himself up, shell shocked, and wobbly. Ilya was still preoccupied with his brother as Blackout approached. He skirted around the villain, and headed toward Flash Bang.

Blackout dissolved his shroud. Flash Bang was close enough for Blackout to cast a shroud on his body. The shroud wrapped around the pod, as Blackout made for the control panel. Instead, Flash Bang’s light burst the shroud like a bubble. That had never happened before. Without the shroud snuffing out the light, disaster was imminent. Blackout would be able to save himself, but anyone nearby would die, including Flash Bang. That was not an acceptable outcome. If Blackout was that intent on preserving his own life, he never would have gotten on the truck in the first place.

There had to be something Blackout could do. Ilya had said something about a shutdown procedure. He’d seen the state of the control panel. By what he said to his brother, the procedure must have still been possible. Ilya had gone from castigating Pavel’s corpse to quietly weeping over it. Blackout approached tentatively.

“Uh…Mr. Isakov?” Blackout said, at a complete loss for how to break ground on the conversation.

Ilya’s head snapped up at Blackout. All the pictures he’d seen of the Isakovs focused on Pavel’s monstrous figure. Even in the factory, Blackout didn’t get a good look at Ilya’s face. Now that he was right up next to the mutant, the full extend of Ilya’s ugliness was appreciable. His skull was lumpy and misshaped. The proportions of his facial features were all off and completely asymmetrical. It was further gnarled by the grimace of pure hatred he wore, eyes streaming tears, snot dribbling from his nose. There was something very infantile about him, with his petulant expression, round cheeks, and sparse wisps of hair.

“You…This was all your doing!” Ilya eked out.

“How do I do the shutdown procedure?”

“Why would I tell you anything?!”

“Because otherwise we’re going to die…”

“Correction: I will die no matter what! I am the parasite. My brother was the host.”

“The guild has all sorts of doctors that work on supers. I’m sure they can do something.”

“And even if they could? What then? Spend life in prison in this feeble form? No; I will sit here and burn to watch you burn as well.”

Blackout was getting frustrated. He was never anything close to a bruiser. However, as Ilya had already said, he was feeble. Bad cop was worth a shot. Blackout grabbed Ilya by the shoulders and began shaking.

“Tell me how to shut down the device!” Blackout demanded as Ilya’s head lolled back and forth.

A loud bang. Agony. Blackout’s side. He instinctively reached for the pain point. A warm liquid leaked though his fingers. Raising his hand, he saw a fresh, glimmering coat of crimson. He looked down. Ilya was jabbing a handgun into his ribs. There was something incredibly unbecoming about a villain as inventive and feared as Ilya Isakov holding a mundane handgun.

“A g-gun?” Blackout asked in a daze.

“The great equalizer, as they say.”

Ilya drew the gun up, pointing it at Blackout’s face. Blackout’s instincts kicked in. Muscle memory from his combat courses. He grabbed Ilya’s wrist, and twisted. Not only did the gun come loose, but the torque shattered Ilya’s brittle hand. Ilya yelped. Before he could stop himself, Blackout’s instincts had him completing the technique with a punch to his opponent’s face. A split second of helpless fear in Ilya’s eyes, then contact. Blackout’s hand pushed right through Ilya’s face, his skull crunching like a potato chip. Ilya’s head caved around Blackout’s fist. Blackout immediately dislodged his hand in horror. Ilya flopped over, dead.

Once the adrenaline dissipated, agony returned. Blackout tried to take a step, but instead sank to his knees. He clutched his side as the world got cloudy and faded around the edges. Everything felt so far away. The world was oversaturated with Flash Bang’s harsh light.

An explosion out past the door. Screams.