The sixth floor hallway was lined with rooms, each with tinted glass walls identical to the floor below. It was like a fancy office space, except all the workers were locked inside their offices. I spotted two or three people in the rooms as I rushed down the hallway, but none of them were Sera. Room 629 was at the very end. I pressed my face to the door, and to my astonishment I spotted her, lying on a bed in the room with her eyes closed.

My heart stuttered in my chest. Was she dead after all, and they were just keeping her here to study? I fumbled with the lock, dropping two lockpicks before I finally got the third one into the keyhole. It was amazing at a high tech facility like this they still used ordinary keys.

I kept my focus on the lock so I wouldn’t look up and see if Sera had opened her eyes. At last the lock clicked open and I stepped into the room.

Sera was now standing beside her bed, eyes open, alive.

"Delphi?" Sera turned dead white and sat back down with a thump.

"At your service," I said, giving a little curtesy, which probably looked ridiculous in the oversized track pants Fireball had lent me. I was grinning like a lunatic. This was no carefully created insane Death's Dancer grin, but pure joy. It was probably a good think I didn't have superpowers anymore, because otherwise I was pretty sure the entire room would have caught my excitement and we might have drowned in a suddenly liquid floor.

Sera was still staring at me, no smile, just pure shock on her face. I began to feel a bit uncomfortable, the grin fading from my face.

"So, did you want to get out of here?" I said at last, just as something to break the silence.

"You're dead," Sera whispered, which wasn't really a response, but I could understand the sentiment. After all, I had thought she was dead for a while too. "They told me you were dead."

"Almost true," I said, walking forward a little into the room. Sera scooted back on her bed away from me and I stopped, my stomach dropping. I forced a carefree smile back on my face. "Your pal Fireball fixed me up."

"It's really you." Without warning, Sera leaped from the bed, crossed the room in two steps, and threw her arms around me.

I staggered backwards, instinctively wrapping my left arm around her in return, although all the painkillers in the world weren't enough to beat back the throbbing in my chest. Still, I gladly withstood the pain because it meant Sera was alive and real and hugging me.

“Not that this isn’t great,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and not full of pain. “But we should probably get out of here before the Rubes realize Fireball’s only a distraction.”

“Fireball’s here too? You’re working together?” That made Sera pull away from her hug and stare at me in utter astonishment. She looked me over from head to toe, seeming to notice the cast on my arm for the first time. “Your arm!”

“Yes, to all of that, and my arm isn’t the worst of it,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the still empty hallway. “But I can explain later maybe when we are not in the middle of Rube headquarters.”

Sera nodded, and we left the little room. I carefully closed the door behind us so a quick glance wouldn’t reveal that something was amiss. Sera followed closely on my heels, almost stepping on the backs of my shoes, as I led her to the nearest staircase. It was a concrete rectangle, stairs leading down and up. I gave the stairs up to the roof a longing glance before heading down. Normal Delphi couldn’t be running over rooftops anytime soon.

I paused at the fifth floor, but I wasn’t about to risk wasting time for the sake of that one lady’s peace of mind, even if she had told me the truth. Besides, I didn’t have anything that could pass as an antidote. So I walked right past that door, not bothering to mention it to Sera.

No one waited outside the door to catch us. Everything was in fact dead silent, so different than the last time we had left a large gathering of Rubes that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sera followed me to the car Fireball had driven there, identical to the black model with tinted windows that she had used to rescue me from the Rube fiasco earlier.

“You should probably drive,” I said, tapping the cast on my arm with what I hoped was a self-deprecating smile.

“Aren’t we waiting for Fireball?” She froze with one hand on the driver’s side door.

“Like hell we are,” I answered. “He can get a new car. We’re leaving now. I needed his help to break you out, but there is no way I’m waiting around for him to come back and put me in prison, or worse.”

“You don’t really think he’d do that, do you?”

I gave her a look. “The guy hit me in the chest with a fireball, I don’t think he would have a problem clapping me in irons, metaphorically speaking.”

“He what?”

Sera’s shocked face almost made getting hit by a fireball worthwhile. I bit back a grin. “To be fair, he probably thought I would dodge. You were passed out at the time, I thought you were, well, I didn’t think I’d be talking to you ever again.”

“But can we talk about this when we are in the car making our timely getaway?” I continued.

Sera nibbled on her bottom lip, eyes darting from me back to the RUBE headquarters, back to me. Just when I was about ready to hop in the car and leave without her she gave a decisive nod. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Finally.” I wasted no time sliding into the passenger side, before she could change her mind.

The engine roared to life, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we left RUBE headquarters behind and headed out into the vast warren of the city itself.

We didn’t speak as Sera took us deeper into the city. I didn’t know where she was going, nor did I really care at this point. I slumped back in my seat, my chest burning. The painkillers had started to wear off, and my body was protesting with a vengeance.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Hmm?” I startled when Sera spoke, having been lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the car. She had pulled over to the side of the road, some side street in a residential district that appeared completely empty of anyone but the two of us.

“Last time we talked, you didn’t believe a word I said,” Sera said hesitantly, the words being dragged from her mouth. “Has that...has that changed?”

I struggled upright in my seat, undoing my seatbelt so I could face her. “Yes. I don’t know why, I guess I was being stubborn. Obviously.”

A corner of her mouth twitched upwards and I continued, heartened.

“I was so focused on being Death’s Dancer I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that. But now...”

“Now what?” Sera prompted after I had been silent for several moments too long.

“I’m not Death’s Dancer anymore.” The words weren’t as difficult to say as I had thought they would be, although they still cut down to my heart, which couldn’t quite give up on my childhood dreams of supervillainy. “The Rubes took that away from me like they tried to take everything else.”

“Oh, Delphi, no!” Sera reached out to touch my arm then hesitated at the last second, as though afraid my lack of powers might be contagious. I was unspeakably relieved that she had understood what I was saying without having to actually say the words out loud. The Rubes took my powers. They shut me off like a faulty robot, leaving me as a shell of a girl. Plain old Delphi. I didn’t even know who Delphi was anymore.

“Yes.” I didn’t want to explain anything more, and Sera seemed to understand that. She tucked her hand into mine and squeezed.

We sat there for a while, staring out the windshield of the car, holding hands.

“So what now?” Sera finally asked, flashing me a little grin. “I saved you, you saved me. Do we go our separate ways and forget this whole thing, or what?”

“No,” I said, returning her smile. “Now we take down RUBE.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” We sat there grinning like maniacs in a stolen car. I might not have been a supervillain anymore, but in that moment, with Sera’s hand in mine, I felt more powerful than I ever had as Death’s Dancer.