I come in late.

"Sorry," I say. "Serena still practicing?"

"She's got it," promises Megan.

"Really," I whisper.

"I know, right?" Evan whispers back. Harper is across the room. She gives us a suspicious eyebrow raise, but somehow, our joke makes it past joke airplane security, despite being a tall, bomb-shaped bottle of water that isn't up to flight protocol. The water is making fun of Serena. Sometimes, I think it might be the only thing that can quench Evan's unique comedic sensibilities. "You owe us an explanation for the lateness, by the way. We don't even have time now to stand around and thread our fingers through each other and pretend we're not here to see each other first and fight second."
Chief says, but we are, and Adam's heart, stubborn thing that it is, insists, we are absolutely here to thread hands before we throw hands. I think I'm a little at odds with both sides of myself today. I don't know who that makes me. I'm not keen to find out. "My brother and I got into a bit of an argument. He started yelling at me for not being around, I told him that he's never been around, and he started shaking. Then I told him to stay out of my business."

"You're not capable of making yourself sound like the good guy, are you? Because you sound like an asshole," Evan says, incredulous.

"I am an asshole. What am I supposed to do?" I ask. "I can't tell him the truth."
"Amanda's been edgy, too," Megan says.

"I'm de-e-e-finitely not here to hear about your plus ones," Evan says.

"What do you want to hear about?" Megan asks.

"Given that what we're starting with is dead hamsters, I feel like we can work our way up," he says. "That is to say, there's plenty of room for improvement."
Megan's lips purse. "You mean, I have plenty of room to tell you stories about my infinite number of other plus ones, or my many, many excursions involving roleplaying and cosplaying. Imagine it as what we do now, except everyone involved is even younger, and there's no reality to moderate how far we go off the rails. I'd love to tell you how many women the Siren Queen has seduced--"

"Forget reminiscing. Maybe I could take a kiss for good luck," Evan says with a wink.

"Do you two know how to kiss with two people?" she asks, hands on her hips.

"No," I say. "Let's do it. Let's do it right now."
"PDA," yells Harper.

"Let's do it," I roar even louder, over Anthem, over my worry about my brother, over the sound of the fear rising in the pit of my own stomach. They block out everything. I expect this to be the enveloping feeling as we all lean in, the three of us so close that I think our faces might square up and evenly prevent each other from touching. It's not how things were supposed to be done, but this is our world now, and it's how we're going to do it. In a second, we reclaim normalcy. I reclaim all the shame, all the fear, and it is.

Evan headbutts me. Megan's thrown off. We do not get to lock lips. I think I get a bit of lip, but I'm not sure whose it is. The scent of them still lingers in the air, but I could have gotten that anywhere. My head pulses. My face burns.

It's bad.

"I guess that doesn't count?" Megan says.

"Nope. Absolutely not. Does not count at all," Evan says.

"What are you doing?" asks Serena.

"Funny you should ask! Leaving," Evan hightails it for the portal. Flashing a set of finger guns back our way, he calls, unnecessarily loudly, "Get ready, Ser! Today is going to be the ride of your life."
It's bright out today. I'll take it as a good omen. The woods are trodden down where we've cut them. It's not warm enough or spring enough for plants to be coming out, far from it, but I can sense that around the corner, and here and there, there are glimpses of something to break the chill. I hate to admit it, but I'm excited to come this way in spring. I'm excited to come here afterwards, to hike through the places that thrilled and terrified us as humans instead of puppets. When nothing has any power over us, we will just be stupid teenagers, driven to danger only when we think we are in command of it.

"Are you narrating to yourself?" asks Megan.

"What?" I ask.

"Narrating," Megan says. "Your eyes dart all over the place when we're walking. Are you narrating everything as it happens, in your head?"

"Maybe," I say.

"That's so dramatic," Megan says, fascinated. "I'll admit I do a fair bit of narration myself."
"I've got a soundtrack for us," Evan says. "How do you feel about the song Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun? I've also got some metal, but I like to ease people into my wild side."
"I don't like the sound of it," I say. "Dreams are not great for walking on. Unstable building material. I can't trust a dream to hold up."

Megan's face is a flushed mural of stained glass, like the day in the trendy outlet store.

"You won't find if I hold up or not until you take me to bed, buddy."

"Oh, not in the uniform," Megan says.
"Some people like men in uniform," Evan says. "Or costume."

"Stop," I say, images of various internet subcultures flashing through my mind.

"I concur," Serena says.

The Delegation is just up ahead. I draw my sword. There are larger robots on guard than usual. That's at least one sign we've actually hit the goldmine: a huge welcoming party of giant robots. I attempt to stop myself from narrating, because Megan is smiling at me, staring out wistfully at the robots, like the whole thing is the most amusing spectacle she's ever seen, and then I just push her face away with a hand. "Be serious."

"I'm always serious," Siren says.

We all sense the shift. It's moments before a deluge of water hits the nearest robot in the face. IT's a giant, wormlike structure, no easy to destroy legs in sight, plated so that we can't fuse vital parts together, but nonetheless, there's a huge mouth full of metal teeth, and therein lies the critical weakness. I'd aim for it, but I prefer to slide it down the middle, leaving a nice, big opening for Siren to short-circuit. Onyx takes the other. Gen clutches the mask in her hands as huge robot worms fall around us. We look like the stuff of legends. I can sense them light up around me, like twin suns.

Brilliant.

I live to be part of this.

The elevator's close enough. We descend the usual sentry levels. A few times, the elevator jolts to a stop, and Umbra's shadows punch Delegation members out of the entryway and pull the doors back closed. At some point during our descent, not long after we start punching people with shadows, the entire building begins screaming. This isn't unheard of, but we usually come after hours. It's supposed to intimdate us.

It was better off warning them.

Onyx puts his fingers in his ears. "Don't I just love screaming!"

He is louder than the sirens.

"Does anyone just want to yell? We should yell. Hey, whoever's up there, we're going to fuck you up! We'll fuck Nineve up! Throw me at robots. Send me into the pit! I'll fight anyone. I'll fight the abstract concept of sound. I will break sound waves over my knee. Who wants to go?"

"No one wants to go. Onyx, calm down."
"Don't tell me what to do, Dad!" whines Onyx. If we weren't in a public place, he'd bite my ear off. I might let him.

"That's Freudian," Gen remarks.

"Congratulations on taking Psychology I," I tell her. Onyx is practically in my arms.

"Or watching Evangelion," Onyx says. He winks to Siren. "Hey. Hey babe. Want to see me get in some robots?"
"Onyx," Siren says. "Tone it down."
The doors open. There are no less than a dozen humans in there, and all of them are armed in the same fashion as Mr. Gray. Onyx asks, "What if we toned it up?"

Umbra is ready to shape the room with shadows. Gen blocks us as a wall of water is set ablaze, and the room fills with heavy steam. Devices do not quite choke, but it stalls them long enough. Siren's water begins taking care of the rest in the now hazy room. The whole world seems to stop, fading into a red glow.

"Your turn," says Siren.

I think of Mr. Gray in the hospital with burns. I think of what we must look like to them, impervious to heat, to cold, to any kind of damage, as far as I'm concerned, like a dozen grown men rolled into one, and still so young. I want to feel sympathy for them, but what I feel right now is fear and a cold, burning sensation at the bottom of my stomach. I have never given a name to it. As figures move in the mist, I use it without knowing it, letting it guide me into a grace that anything short of us will only learn to approximate.

A few hits on the top of the head and most of them are out. I want to assume passed out. Umbra and I have discussed the merits of suffocating someone using her shadows, given that they would be less likely to sustain permanent internal damage of any kind, but we agreed to abstain based on how able we'd be to stomach them kicking and screaming until they passed out. I hate that most of our decisions, tactically, revolve around the limitation of us being children instead of hardened soldiers with powers.

"Narrating again?" asks Siren, approaching me as I stand over the last body.

"No," I lie.

"Hey, me too," she squeezes my hand. With a wave of the other, she clears the steam.

Onyx picks up one of the masks from a downed body. I can see how red the skin is anywhere the mask and suit don't cover. In the Delegation's credit, this time, there's a lot more coverage, but the back of the necks are ugly. "No chips in 'em," he says. "Don't think they're on the juice. Probably came for their next hit, maybe people who've lost it before. No wonder they went down so easily. Yikes."

"Thank goodness we bought a spare," I say.

Gen approaches the door. She moves the mask towards her face, hand trembling. "I can hear it," she says. "You all know what you'll have to do, right?"

"Don't be so sure you'll fail," Umbra says.

Gen just sighs and draws the mask closer to her face. For a moment, she hesitates, but something outside of herself makes the last, jerking motion. Anthem turns in the back of my mind like eyes rolling in the back of someone's head. I feel someone sticking pins through my lungs. Gen, in awkward motion, spreads her hands to part the doors. White, beautiful doors swing open into a steady descent of stairs, which give way to an arena, complete with seats. Everything is immaculate. Nothing tarnishes the snow-white, save for a crypt at the center, as archaic and ugly as everything else in this building. It is a ribcage spread open, surrounded by wires.

"Bingo," Onyx purrs. "Let's fucking trash it."

Fire booms through the arena, a single, perfect shot, and Nineve appears in the cloud of smoke it leaves, wearing a sharp, adorned mask, surrounded by white robes. The smudge on the floor is wiped below her boot. A flickering blue shield surrounds her.

A gun cocks behind us.

"The best offense is a good defense," she says. Her voice is two-toned: the heaving sound of the machine imitating man (like metal bars clamping together in the rhythm of clicking teeth), layered atop Siri's semi-robotic automated drone. "Watch your back."

Just as shots ring out, Siren manages to jump out of the way. On either side of the arena, doors open and several more Delegations rush out wielding weapons. I see a man with a broadsword to match my own, although it is white with blue veins of energy running through it. He has the armor to match. The others' weapons are equally outlandish, ranging from a shoulder-mounted cannon to what looks like shurikens. All of them glow with different-colored Veins. It looks like us, done by a robot.

Nineve orders them forwards. I'm still looking around wildly for the gunfire when Evan's hands get around Gen's gun, melting it, and Siren pulls the mask from her face. She gasps in surprise, as Umbra says meekly, "Incoming."

"Go," I say. "Everything you have. Everything you can give. Go, go, go, it does not matter if it hurts them or not."

My team springs into action.

The man with the broadsword runs at me like he was meant for this moment. I know him in every strike, even though my father has never fought in his life. Never a soldier. Barely even did sports. Like father, like son. He swings with an intuition. I think about dad jokes. My heart rate has never been this high. I am trying to jump upwards in a waterfall, and he is the crashing weight pressing down. I try to see past the mask, always hesitating a second too long. He keeps parrying.

Onyx surges his way through the field. He has eyes only for one, no matter who tries to engage him, and she's on the other side, waiting in a mass of white that makes her almost invisible. Siren is always following behind, every time my wild eyes get a glimpse of the battlefield. Between clashes, every time I look away (and suffer for it-- I can't pin him), I see them getting further away.

"Did you think you could just throw me into the Echo Chamber? Tempting, I know," Onyx calls out with pure glee. "Hey, I know I'd make a nice member. People want me for my body. What can I say?"

I can hear her response between parries. My eyes lock back on the man, sword heating until it burns even my gloved hands, and yet the metal he's working with does not give. I can't stab him in the helmet. I gave the order to do anything. I have to trust everyone else is working off it, but I can't follow through. If I kill him, and it is... if it is... if I even kill him...

Nineve replies, "Do I want you? No. Not really. You have been a huge impediment. Primarily, I want you dead and out of the way. You have cost us so much time and money, and yet, it was because of you that we have learned to perfect everything. Whenever you come, we listen to the broadcast your suits emit. We have memorized the frequency. Whenever you kill our robots, we devise stronger ones. When you greedily rob our Delegation members, we learn about you. We watch. We listen."

"What are you?" I ask. "Why are you doing this?"

Nineve answers my friends blow for blow, blue light and metal clashing ringing out of the battlefield. Chamber's not taken out. Onyx is probably focusing on her. Get your shit together, Onyx. My adversary answers me in synthesized, electric voice, "We are the future. It is one where humans will not be replaced by machines. Humans will become machines, capable of working forever without tire or the devastating raging tide of emotions that so shackles us."

"The emotions are the only good thing," I say.

There's a sad laugh under the mask. It's familiar. I don't want to believe it. The man knocks my sword away. "It all weighs out to hurt."
He kicks me down. I see him overhead, beneath the lights, crowning him so that he is the sun. I squint into the light of it, hating it, hating him. "You're wrong." My fingers settle around the sword.

He uses the blade of the sword, just under my chin, to roll my head. "Look up," his voice hums. "She wants you to see this."

Onyx gets his fingers under Nineve's mask, and in a tide of white, she swings him right, where he hits the back of the chamber. Siren, who is preoccupied with strangers, screams as bars of a ribcage shut and glass swings up around them. The Delegation members already on the floor (I had to be the only one who was evenly matched, but I already knew this) are silent. Even though the fighting continues, I can hear all the noise fade out to a dull roar, like the light went out when we filled the room with fog.

If I jolt my head up now, if I scream, the blade will pierce my throat, but Anthem compels me and I grab the sword with a hand. The man does not expect me to. He does not expect me to be up on my feet. He does not expect to be on the floor, but he is. "Onyx!" I call. "Onyx!"

Evan's fist hits the glass. It does not shatter. It hits the glass again. The machine humbs. Siren slams torrents of water, more than I've ever seen her summon, against the machine, and Nineve raises her hand to meet the torrent. The cold expression of her mask stares out at all of us. She lowers the mask, and as I run, my leg is suddenly grabbed by the sword man's.

I lift my sword, struggling to get free. "Let go." I trip. We can not fight on the ground. I can not bring myself to pierce his flesh. "Let go let go let go let go let go--"

The chamber opens. Onyx staggers out.

Siren cries, "Onyx!"

My heart rends. I'm yelling his name through the chaos, too, which is all happening too fast and too slow. He walks forwards, twitching and disoriented, and Siren stands right in his way. No Delegation members touch Onyx as he moves forwards. His eyes dart dangerously. It doesn't even look like Evan. His pupils are so blank. I rush forwards, this time, taking a hit of the sword to the side, and find myself too far, again, stopped by the man. All I have to do to get to them is kill him. If I can get him to stop moving, he will not get up again. That's it.

"Snap out of it," begs Megan. "Snap out! Onyx! Evan! Evan!"

Onyx almost catches her in the face with a swing of his claws. Megan meets it with her own hand. It tears through flesh and feather and lace, but she stands strong. Fire meets water. Blow after blow is exchanged, and I'm always too far, still wrestling with my fa-- with a man of the Delegation. He has me. I'm so close. He has me. "Siren, get away---" I call. She looks back for a second, and then, her expression hardening, she drives him against her with water, and the two of them lock into a passionate embrace, mouth to mouth.

They are going to have the first real kiss without me. For a second, it strikes me as a joke. The funniest joke in the world. I'm just going to miss out on a kiss.

Evan draws back, sputtering blinking back into his own body. "M-Megan." The whisper should not carry over the battlefield, but it does.

Megan tries to draw him back in, reaching out to put a hand around his waist. "I am always going to save you, Evan."

A white-hot hand goes through Megan's body and out the other side as a blade of light. Her eyes are wide, but everything slackens before she has the time to react. The air smells like burning dress and burnt human, the fabrics of the dress dyed purple, all the viscera I never wanted to know were inside of people spilled out of her and across Evan's glove. He draws it back, a mechanical motion, and out of eyes that are the only part left of him that he owns, stuck, unexpressive, in the body, he fixes me as if marking me for death. With the mouth that has kissed her, now flecked by blood, he closes time and possibility into a single moment of the present, a fracture that rolls all the way through reality as I know it into the rumble that follows lightning: "Run."