A series of lights click on down the hall, making a once-dark corridor into a near blinding tunnel of whiteness. Harper raises a hand and her shadow beneath her pulls upwards, taking on a serpent-like form. Rows of large teeth, formed from the same darkness, click as if they were made of keratin and bone, and I shiver. With a single forceful motion, Harper slings it forwards, and it rushes down the hall, breaking every light as it goes.

Dozens of monocolor, stone replicas of people rush out of doors on either side, detailed as mannequins in a store, and between them are the goddamn hands and larger, dog-like forms. My sword glows red and I begin slicing the robots to shreds. Harper, behind me, works her magic with a few curt hand gestures, but it's mainly for spectacle. The real work is going on in her mind, and when the numbers only increase, she places her hands on her temples and closes her eyes. She's little more than a shadow herself, her face and most of her body covered by her navy cloak, and as I watch her work one of her shadows gets sliced in two by an enemy mannequin wielding a broadsword (nice of them to steal my choice in weapons) and she crumples to the ground.

"Are you okay?" I yell back, and one of the mannequins punches me in the face. One of the hands grabs my leg and before I can react, the dog-like robot is on my throat, its mouth springing open to reveal teeth like those of a bear trap. One of Harper's shadows, of which she now has two active, swings over my exposed chest and knocks it aside.

"Are you?" she asks.

"I think so... holy crap." I say.

Harper smiles, a determined expression painted across her features. She's short enough that she looks younger than us by more than the one year that's really there, and with the way she smiles, the effortless conviction with which she falls into this, she almost reminds me of...

I shouldn't be thinking about this.

The dog-like machine is back on me, having wrest free of Harper's shadow hold, and I almost scream before it pauses three inches from my throat. Its eyeless face bores into mine before it crumbles to dust, and the scene dissolves around us to reveal the training room.

"Adam, your utter lack of concentration is disheartening. Other than that, it was good," Anthem says, jumping down from the ledge in the corner of the room, past the edge of our little battle area. "Shame I had to create this on such short notice, but once you've actually scoped the area I'll be able to create simulations with far higher precision."

"Right." I sigh. "And we'll be fighting people, not mannequins."

"Let's hope not." Megan says, her head slumped against her splayed hand.

"I hope I did alright." Harper sighed.

"Alright?" I laugh. "That was so much more than 'alright'."

"Oh. I practiced a few times without you. The courses I'm taking have swung into full gear now, so I don't have much time. I do what I can." Averting my gaze (which isn't hard given her choice of magical attire), she adds, "I'm going to run through that again. Alone."

Anthem nods and without so much as a twitch of her tail, the room folds back into being and Harper stares forwards at a long, bright hallway.

"She's incredible." I tell Megan as Harper goes to work for the second time. I hear the distant skittering of metal and though I've only faced one of these automatons in real life, the sound immediately fills me with unease.

Dazed, Megan responds, "We're lucky to have her. It's nice to get to know her, too. She's really nice- I mean I know that sounds vague but- oh, never mind."

"Mhm."

We watch her for a while, but Megan's attention flits from the hall itself to the light overhead (which seemingly comes from nowhere) to me, and then back at the ceiling again. I drum my fingers on the wooden railing between us and the entrance to the hall, below.

"Something on your mind?" asks Megan.

"To be honest? I was thinking about Will again." I admit.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, he is your brother."

"I was thinking... is it weird that I haven't told him? I know Anthem said no," I look at the white cherub, whose ear twitches at the mention of her name, "and not that I would, but I feel terrible about it. Like I'm breaking some sacred twin bond."

"I have several siblings, a plethora of close friends who no doubt have been worried about me and my occasional disappearances, and parents who I'm going to have to start hiding battle wounds from when this gets going for real. I'm not telling any of them." Megan says, unwavering resolve in her voice. "Look. I'm not saying this will be easy. I'm just saying we're going to do it. That simple."

"Thanks, Megan."

She's twisting her hair around her finger again. "I've been thinking, too."

"About Will?"

She smiles halfheartedly. "No, about our last mission. You know, the one I didn't go on?"

"What's there to think about?" I ask, with a smile I hope doesn't seem too cocky. "We did great."

"I was a little worried about you guys. Evan says you barely needed him, but we can't take that chance every time. We have no way to tell how many of us will be needed in advance, and if we miscalculate, who knows what could go wrong? Not having all of us on call at the same time is going to be a huge risk."

I nod, though I'm not eager to miss classes either. The make up work is tedious and there's only so long the excuses will hold me. "True, but what else could we do?"

At once, we both say, "Serena."

Megan shakes her head at once. "I don't want to pressure her, though. She's right. She didn't ask for this."

"And we did?"

"No, but it's easier for us. Ugh- maybe we could try to make late night and early morning shifts when we can't do weekends?"
"I don't think that the robot army is going to comply with conventional school schedules." I shrug.

"Is that what it is?"

"I... have no idea." I say. "It would be a lot easier to fight them if they're just robots."

"Oh." Megan's eyes flash with sudden understanding, and she shuffles in her seat. "You don't think we'd have to-"

At that moment, just as Harper turns from her absolutely decimated simulation, Evan Drake busts down the door in uniform, with a disgruntled looking Serena behind him. "Hey normies, the party just arrived. Oh, and Serena."

"Thanks, Evan." Serena snipes back, arms crossed so tightly that it looks like she's trying to give herself a hug. She looks uncomfortable in her outfit, which is a sleek, tight-fitting black suit not unlike a leotard with sleeves. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, laced with a single black ribbon that finishes out at the bottom of the ponytail, where it curls in on itself to tie off the end. "We're ready to go now, right? I have a soccer game in three hours."

"Boo, who cares?" Evan calls, and Serena makes a point of stepping over to stand on the opposite side of the room, arms still crossed.

"Let's lay out some quick conditions: you'll be searching the area to see if the Diosite is easily retrievable. Chances are it won't be, and our enemy will be well barricaded, but regardless

we can gain valuable insight into their nature and formulate plans to stop them. You are to return if any true danger presents itself." Anthem insists. "Once you are within a thousand yards radius of the Diosite, give or take, I will be unable to teleport you in or out. As such, I advise you take caution."

"So where will you be teleporting us?" I ask.

While it's hard to gauge Anthem's expressions, since she looks like a living stuffed animal, I think I see her smirk. "One thousand and one yards away from the Diosite. Give or take." The portal opens to the left of us, and Harper quietly steps up the stairs and passes through first. Serena, Evan, Megan, and I follow and emerge just past a string of barbed wire, which despite how worn the fence that bears it is still looks dangerously sharp.

"Thank goodness we teleported past that." Serena says.

"Dang, I wanted to try out my fire powers." Evan says, snapping his fingers and sparking up a nice candle flame above his index finger. The other fingers of his glove glow with heat.

"I'm sure we'll need them at some point." Megan says, looking up at the gargantuan building overhead. Moss is plastered to the side of the huge smokestacks, and the ground floor is laced with huge buildings shaped like perfect rectangles, stacked in random-looking combinations. They creep up the smokestacks alongside the moss, never making it more than halfway up. "This place is huge. No doubt the interior is going to be creepy... and we're trespassing, too..." She places a hand to her stomach. "Anyone else feel a little sick?"

"Sick of waiting." Evan says, gaze flicking to the nearest building. "Come on, let's go already! You guys are killing the moment."

"Not so fast." Megan puts a hand on his shoulder, and he eases up. "Ground rules, like Anthem said: No using our real names, so they can't track us- even if there are no humans, we don't know what networks the robots could be hooked up to. We retreat if we're being overwhelmed, no splitting the party, and-"

"No fun?" Evan asks, then waves it off before she can say anything. "Kidding. You're being pretty reasonable, Briggs."

"Thank you." Megan smiles. "Well, shall we?"

"Yes!" Serena throws her arms up. "Let's just go already."

She doesn't have to tell us twice. We pass through gravel-covered ground, with few plants despite how long it must've been, and past a parking lot where a singular car sits, watching us behind its dead headlights. The two enormous doors at the nearest entrance are painted red and sealed closed, with no lock nor handle in sight. I unsheathe my sword and cut a hole, and the sword passes through the metal like butter. Megan splashes the whole area, creating a steaming hiss as heat and water collide, and we emerge through the smoke into a building resembling your average warehouse, but there's not a thing in it. The vacantness is almost disturbing, but more so are the red streaks on the walls. The paint drips down the walls like bad spray paint, giving the disturbing impression the walls or crying... or bleeding. There's a single set of stairs in the corner, and they lead to a series of catwalks atop the ceiling.

"Well, someone's been here. Wonder why they're emptying the whole place out?" asks Serena.

"It's not empty." Evan growls, and he flings an orb of fire across the room. It hits a wall, and one of the poles begins to move. It's a slender machine, long and serpentine, with dozens of segmented joints. It's joined by the dog-like machines, which creep out of doors on the left and right near the back of the room just large enough for them to emerge from. Bright red lights flash on and wailing fills the room, and we get to work.

"Had to tick them off. You just had to." Serena announces, sarcasm dripping from every word.

"I don't see you helping." Evan yells back, and I realize that this is way, way worse than the sirens.

Megan, Evan, and Harper seem to know what they're doing better than I do, per the norm, and Harper summons both of her shadow creatures while Megan begins frying circuitry and cooling down the lumps of molten metal Evan leaves behind. Evan himself is on the front lines, reckless ace that he is, and he seems to have no regard for his personal safety, nor that he can fight long range. His clawed fingers ablaze, he runs through one of the walking robots and makes a few snide comments to Megan about keeping up, and I see her crack a smile.

I'm near the back, close to Serena, who still hasn't managed to manifest anything, but not many robots are getting anywhere near us. Two vents near our side of the room open, and the hands start trickling in. "Any time," I warn Serena, my blade glowing like the sun.

Serena has clasped in her hands a long, metal pole.

"I don't understand how much else works." Serena says. "I have to get the machinery to create anything, and I-"

"Can you point the end?"

The pole now has a respectably sharp point. Serena holds it in one hand, which is far from a battle stance, but you know what? I can work with that.

"Good. Let's go stab things." I say.

"When you're done babysitting back there, we could use some help moving onto the next room," Evan yells.

The hands are fast, but we're faster. I grab Serena's pole free hand and we dash up to the others, who are surrounded by robot corpses. Most are lying on the floor, twitching, but at least half have scoured scorch marks in them. Evan and the others run with us to the next room, which is some kind of control panel for this smokestack, and a metal grate slams shut behind us. Buttons alight with color and something hums to life, like the whole room is yawning.

All the screens in the room turn on to reveal a single masked face bearing down on us. The mask is simple, with eye holes with no eyes beneath them, red streaks like tearmarks running down either side, like the streaks in the past room, and two massive, curving horns emerging from the top of the mask.

A voice, not unlike the kind that plays in airport safety commercials, announces, "Welcome, new recruit, to the Sanguine Delegation. We promise a- promise a- promise a-" The voice begins skipping and all the screens display blue, brimming with error messages. A high, whining noise fills the room, more shrill than any siren. I look over to see that Evan has burned a hole on the counter closest to him and is now plugging his ears. The screens turn off- I guess we fried the hardware. Shakily, two doors open, one to our left and one to our right, both heading into hallways with no doors and nothing but long, perfectly white corridors up until a turn.

"We could've used that information, you know." I say.

"I didn't- seriously, I just freaked out, and then suddenly my hand was on fire." Evan admits.

"What were you even scared of? It was a video."

"Yeah, for induction to a cult!"

"Who knows what it was? We haven't seen a single human here." Harper reasons.

"It probably takes a lot more than a single person to make all of this." Evan says. "Whoever they are, they won't be happy to know we're here to steal their shit, either."

"Fine." Serena says. "You admit you're not perfect, we fall back for now, no one is the wiser for it. This place probably goes on forever. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a labyrinth, and either of these doors could lead to a trap."

Megan and I look to Evan, expecting resistance.

"No. She's right. We really should fall back for now." Evan sighs. "Let's just go."

"Hey- Onyx?" asks Megan, a softness in her voice. "Are you okay?"

"Who's Onyx?" asks Serena.

"He may or may not have already discussed superhero names with me. I just wasn't ready to make a decision." Megan says. "Point stands."

"One, I'm fine, two, you need to stop being indecisive and just go with something. It's not like we're pitching something to executives. You can literally make up whatever the hell you want." Evan says. "Let's get out of here."

He carves out a line with one finger and busts down the door for us, this time, effectively stealing my only niche in the group. The robots are displeased by having a huge chunk of hot metal thrown in their face and they come after us, regrouped. Another segmented one with a speaker for a face announces, "YOU ARE ON THE PROPERTY OF THE SANGUINE DELEGATION. PLEASE CEASE CURRENT ACTIVITY OR PREPARE TO BE REHABILITATED OR FORCEFULLY REMOVED. YOU ARE ON THE PROPERTY OF THE SANGUINE DELEGATION. PLEASE CEASE CURRENT ACTIVITY-" It is cut off by Serena jamming her pole directly through its neck. She creates another as the snake swings around, infuriated, garbled noise still coming out of its speaker. "CEASE. CEASE. CEASE."

"OH BOY NOW ISN'T THIS JUST A PARTY. I REALLY LOVE ALL OF THIS GODDAMN LOUD SCREECHING." Evan yells, grappling with several hand robots, with Megan at his back. I join in, and we're fighting a three way battle while Harper, who is currently vying with Evan for MVP right now, does crowd control.

There's something almost exhilarating about being at their side right now. Evan darts out, leaving just Megan and I. Her shoulder brushes mine and my heart skips a beat, or at least, picks up from its already insane pace. Could it even be working any faster than this? Am I about to pass out?

No, I think, I've got this. It sounds too confident to be my own inner monologue, but when I see Megan holding a robot in the air with an orb of water and I manage to slice the leg off one of the walkers, I know that it's true. We're fighting and we're winning, damnit, and next time we come back the Sanguine Delegation had better be ready.

If we stick together, we're going to be alright.

Speaking of sticking together, Evan is struggling off to the side, stuck beneath several angry hands. One of them aims a laser right into his eye, and he yells, "Hey uh- kind of in a bind over here... er, Water Girl?"

Megan immediately drops her robot, staring at Evan with a look of pure disappointment.

"Who do you think you're talking to?"

"Just get rid of the robot."

Megan drops a raincloud's worth of water on Evan and said robots, which collapses across him. While she's distracted, the brother of the 'bot whose leg I chopped off tackles me from the side, and I trip over the corpse of its fallen comrades. The sword slides from me across the floor, and I don't have time for it to return to my hand right now, damnit.

I'm trapped beneath one of the four-legged robots, but this time Anthem's not here to switch off the simulation for me. Hell, if I can't get up now, I'm probably dead. Really, absolutely dead, and I won't graduate high school or go to college or-

God, do I even have plans after this? What am I doing with my life?

I don't realize how hard I'm hyperventilating until Evan punches the robot in the face, fist on fire. "Get up. We need to run."

"Thanks," I say weakly, and Evan hoists me up onto my feet. The sword returns to my other hand. Close to us, Harper slices her hand across the room and a wave of darkness rises from the ground, sending the fastest of our aggressors back. We race through the door and out into the outside world, where the air has never been so sweet or fresh.

"We're right outside the radius. Anthem?" I yell, still clutching Evan's hand.

A portal emerges in the air and I hustle through, teammates in tow. My heart rate jumping from 'panicked' to 'somewhat less panicked', I sigh with relief as I enter Anthem's library room in the Veins and Anthem shuts the gate behind me.

"That didn't last long." Megan sighs, already sitting in a chair. Her legs are crossed and she's staring at the table.

"No. But let's be real? We had no idea what to expect. We functioned as a team, got some experience, didn't die. That's a victory." I say, sheathing my sword.

"We put a dent in 'em." Evan says, collapsing onto one of the chairs, smiling with fake confidence."That was fucking awesome."

Serena is silent, lips pursed. She looks like an irritated PTA mom at one of those awful meetings they do- not happy. Not pleased in the slightest. "Yep. It was so awesome that you insisted we turn back."

Evan frowns.

"Alright! Let's not fight, guys?" Megan continues, "On another note, I think we've skirted around every way possible to avoid giving our names up without just using code names. Thanks, Evan, for that especially eloquent save."

Evan winks, shooting Megan with his terrible finger guns. "You're welcome, Water Girl."

"I suppose it was inevitable you'd need code names. Consider that homework." Anthem says, "In human terms."

"More homework?" Harper asks, distraught.

"No, it's like fun homework. If you want we can just call you-" Evan gestures dramatically, "-Silent but Deadly."

"I'll have my name back to you tomorrow." Harper promises Anthem.

"Speaking of that." Serena says, grabbing a bag from one of the nearby chairs. She clicks open her phone, her lips purse further, up to 'just swallowed a lemon levels', and she states, "I need to go. Now."

"Alright, Commander Killjoy, you have fun at soccer. The cool kids will be chilling here, saving the world and whatnot. You know, just one of the few billion things that are better than recreational sports."

"I don't know if I can stick around, either. I've got a ton of homework." I admit, partly out of pity for Serena.

"Mmmm, Naval Brigade meeting at 4." Megan shrugs.

"You guys are lame," Evan complains. "I'm going to train anyways. Not like I have much to do at home."

"We'll set something up some other time." I promise him, getting to my feet. Anthem's setting up individual portals for all of us- there's a great one in the church near my house.

"Whatever," Evan calls after me. "Not my fault you all have lives."

Do I really, though?

I see my house around the corner when I step out into the sun, out of the Veins, and I see Will sitting outside with a comic book, up in the tree we used to climb together when we were little. His legs are long enough now that he can balance perfectly between the two branching limbs of the tree, precarious as the position is, and something twists inside of me. The Sanguine Delegation... a cult... who even knows what's in store for us.

All I know for certain is that he'd be better at this. So much better.