We are a machine.

The group moves through the forest with the kind of precision I would have liked to have yesterday. It smells familiar, here, like rain. I try to bust myself out of the unnecessary melancholy by revelling in the sick satisfaction I get from escorting Will right up to the gates of the power plant and seeing his jaw drop. The momentary goading is replaced at once by an absolute loathing at myself for feeling it, for dragging my brother into hell with me, and finally, I steel myself away from emotion, in part for what I now I have to face inside. The plan's set in stone. We live or die by the blade today, and hell, I'd die for them. I'm ready to go down. "Are we ready?" I ask.

No objection. From experience, that's a yes. Tesla and Phantom double-team the first machine they meet like they've been cracking the shit out of them for the last six months. By the time we're inside, Tesla is already making disabled mincemeat of every machine in her vicinity. Given the electrokinesis, it's almost too easy for her to force them to obey. She gives my brother and I an inquisitive look.

Yes, Tesla, it is suspicious.

God, why didn't they assign you to our team again? Were you more of a pain in the ass than Serena?

If this is the best timeline, haphazard and unoptimized as it is, I want to know what Tesla would have done on our team that necessitated not having an electrokinetic on the same team as the Delegation mission. "Is there a control panel?" asks Tesla.

"There are some induction materials right up ahead. Doesn't matter. We take the elevator down, usually--" I begin.

"Today's not usually. How often do those elevators collaborate?" Karen shocks another machine dead. They'll be sending people after us, next. Amanda-- no, I'm not calling her CMYK, I still think the name is dumb and unwieldy-- brandishes her brush as if to anticipate the possibility. I can't feel Will's team like I can feel my own, but I can at least sense him at my back, because he's physically there, and I know we'll have each other, no matter what happens next.

Given the way I get in the dark of the Delegation, when I have nothing but fear and my own thoughts to get me through another stomach-turning battle with Onyx, I'm glad for any kind of light source.

Speaking of the devil, they've already sent him after us.

Amanda moves faster than I've ever seen a trained athlete move (and she's not an athlete, I know what she does afterschool when she's not superheroing), and locks herself right into combat. Onyx dodges, trying to break out towards me, on the right, and with a hiss, Amanda says, "I don't think so." A wave of purple paint slams him against the wall, and an orange wave seals him there. Onyx burns through it, but already Amanda has another wave brandished at the end of her brush.

"You going to kill me?" purrs Onyx.

"I considered it. Did I ever consider it," she says back. "You're lucky you still have people who'd miss you, although hell if I'll ever know why."

Meanwhile, Gen has ripped open the doors to the small first-level indoctrination center. No one's used it since the fancy toys were set up in the basement, and it now feels antiquated, like a ghost of the shit we thought was scary when we were starting out, when just the "cult" idea had some kind of mystical novelty to us. Tesla puts her hands against it and all the screens light up. "This goes right through to the mainframe," she says. "This security is garbage! You could probably bang on the machines and they'd spit out the public key. Worse, everything in this place was rigged, even the elevators. How were you even moving around without access to this?"

"We had access," Gen says. "It was just bad, risky access."

Tesla doesn't even look back. "Mhm," she says, speaking in electric tongues as she disparagingly glances towards Gen's mask, fastened around her waist. "Course, we're the ratchet ones. I don't even want to know how most of you are still alive. Business now. Common sense later. Phantom?"

"Tess?" he asks. "Are we going to do something besides engage in thoroughly earned clapbacks?"

A smile curves across Telsa's lips. "Damn, I missed you. Portal down. Five hundred thirty feet, incline of 13 percent. You have that kind of control?"

"One way to find out," he says, summoning a massive portal of darkness. He puts a halberd through, testing it, and then draws it back. The halberd seems to be intact, as hopefully our flesh would be. We can all hear the alarms wailing on the other side. With a wince, he says, "Can't exactly hold it forever."

Onyx flies into the room, nearly hits one of the computers, and as soon as he peels himself off, horns chipped and fingers brimming with fire, Amanda tosses him through the portal with another blast of purple paint, followed by a quick swing of gold. I can not imagine how much that hurts, even if we're likely spared from the worst of it by Diosite-infused durability. I kind of want to smack Amanda around, but somehow we've ended up on the same side.

"What the hell?" I ask.

"We can handle him down there, and I don't want him to bother my team while they're working. He's your problem. We deal with him downstairs," Amanda insists.

Tesla snipes, "Good to know you're just as reckless as ever. You could have endangered the whole mission if he'd hit one of the computers."

"You don't trust me to handle myself?" Amanda teases.
"We know Luna doesn't," Tesla retaliates. My brother flushes under the mask.

"Guys? Portal?" Phantom whines from his corner.

As the others pile through, I begin barking orders they would have followed even if I hadn't actually bothered to verbalize them. "Hold Onyx until we're all down, then we take the main chamber and knock out the whole thing."

"This is where you make a joke about being the only one who smacks him around, right? Seems sufficiently misogynistic for you." Amanda teases.

"No, I treat my lovers right," I say. "I mean, clearly, at least a little better than wherever the bar was set with you."

"After this is over," Amanda says, staring into the darkness. "Before we have to give our powers up, I am going to kill you and then your boyfriend."

"Why don't we start by ending this?" I ask her.

She nods. I'm going to pretend it was respectful.

"Good luck holding down the fort," I say.

The Phantom Loop, who is holding his halberds at the ready, and Tesla, who is probably wrecking all levels of hell on the transport system both nod. See, there's some teamwork I can get behind. I want to salute, but that would be stupid, so instead, I just follow my teammates into the dark.

The bottom floor of the Delegation is still hell on earth, or, given its location in the deep, merciless dark, just hell. The others are already in action, surrounded by those bright-clad officers. Amanda is still up against Onyx, who is by now flecked in a rainbow of paints, and Gen and Umbra are giving their all for a last stand. Umbra has both shadow beasts sweeping the field, smothering strangers who can barely scratch its viscous, mutable flesh. Gen is not yet bold enough to fight with a gun, but whoever she fights is outmatched by an arsenal of constructs. Meanwhile, Will and I are back-to-back, sword and shield. He's trained well enough that he's not a liability. No, there's definitely strength in there I'd never given him credit for. No matter what he says, to some extent, Anthem was always right.

I would never have appreciated this until I was backed up against a wall and forced to.

No narrativizing, says the echo of a familiar voice.

Fortunately, I know by now how to shut everything else off and give myself over to the fight. The pair of us, turning in the dark to cover each other's weak points, are a perfect pair of offense and defense, one burning, one freezing, incapacitating but going no further. I sense his eyes searching for Onyx through the crowd, and past that, looking through masks to find our father. No one else has shared the fear with me, the whole time I've been here.

He understands.

"Take the chamber," I say, as most of the old guard falls. We've taken out no less than fifteen people, not minor recruits either. It would be an ambitious feat on our best days, and we're just getting started. "Cee--" Yeah, just C. "You too. Let him go."

"I can burn through this all day." Onyx warns. "I told you, you had to hold me back, but something's keeping you from making the right call--"

"Listen up," Amanda says, pinning him back against the wall while the sirens sound, "Whatever part of you is in there, I hate you. Whatever this is, the thing controlling you, I hate that too. I don't think there's one part of you I don't loathe on a deeply personal level. Now, I'm giving you one chance, because I'm showing a lot more restraint here, and I want to knock your teeth out- you sit here, stay caught, and we pick you up later, or you follow and I give you the green paint." Her eyes narrow. "For the record? That's acid."

Onyx laughs quietly. "Not my choice."

Amanda storms past me. "He'll be back. Tesla, if you can hear us through surveillance, I need you to close the door behind us."

We pass through to that white chamber, where Nineve is surrounded by her guards in battle position, expecting us. The door does not close. There's no time to analyze what that might mean for them, but it means one thing for us: we need to watch our backs.

The machine is open, awaiting the next victim. Luna, Gen, Umbra, CMYK, and I ready our weapons. Nineve holds aloft a black metal sword, the white robes billowing around her like the vines of Ignatius.

I hate cinematic parallels.

My team surges into battle with our usual gusto. Amanda has more than enough spark in her to take out several of the white-armored guards herself, now that she's not dealing with Onyx. I begin to realize that there had to be more people out there like Megan and Evan, people born for this, and I'm looking at one of them. Some people, like me, must just be easy to control. I'd imagine there are people out there who are so powerful that it doesn't matter how hard they are to keep on a leash.

Two officers charge Luna-- Will-- and I, expecting, rightly so, that the ones without flashy powers are an easy target. We would be almost liabilities, if we were fighting individually, and we are not. One officer's arm is encased in ice. The other's blade is cut in two by a swift streak of fire. Neither can land a hit between parries and blocks, both of which are done at lightning speed, my brother and I covering like the other will judge us for every single failure. (We might.) I admire, between blows, my brother's effectiveness with the shield as an offensive weapon, whether it be the sharp edge for impact or ramming someone with it to blow them back. I suppose he had to adjust to using it that way.

I kick a weaponless officer down and Luna knocks out the other with a shield. Two Diosite-encrusted masks clatter off. Luna bends down to turn the body over. "You know it's not worth it," I warn my brother, holding him by the shoulder. "Even if it's him. What would we do?"

Will closes his eyes. "He'll be okay, right?"

I can't hug him on a battlefield.

Onyx bursts into the room. "I warned you," he snarls.

Amanda is deeply locked in combat with Nineve and holding her. Somehow this doesn't surprise me at all. I have no idea how she managed to not knock Ignatius out there first go-around and have it all over with, but I'm going to take what I can get from her and not ask too many questions. I suppose the last battle with Onyx falls on me. "Chief," Will promises. "You don't have to do anything alone."

A sword would come in pretty handy when dealing with firepower. I don't want it. "Take the machine out while Nineve's occupied. I'm going to distract him." There are still officers standing, but Umbra and Gen can take them. I rush across the battlefield, towards him, bracing for final contact, one way or another, and a burst of fire rushes towards me. I dodge.

"Why are you fighting, Chief? You know there's nothing after this for us."
"There's everything," I promise him. "Come on. Let's go home."

Another blast of fire collects in his claws. I can't deflect that with my sword, and he knows it. He aims it directly at my head. "I told you to run, Adam. I keep telling you to run, and you just won't let go." He twitches again, jerks his arm down. All of Anthem's energy strains against him hitting me. All of his own energy races against the machine.

"I have a lifetime of caring to catch up on," I say. "Do your worst."

Every second I'm standing here, the chances rise that it overcomes him and kills me. I don't know why I'm standing against it. Am I prone to the same mistakes, the same narrative Megan was? Do I want to meet her in her fate? No, this time, I think it's just trust, because this is the full minute or so we need for a dull thump to sound out as Will's shield hits the machine. Behind us, there's a rough crackling noise as the entire wall becomes encased in ice, fully wrecking the machine, wires and all.

All the noise in the world goes silent.

"I think it's stopped! Are people still fighting?"

My brother, everyone.

Onyx blinks. He seizes up for a second, like he's been hit, then drops to the floor with a choked sob. I rush forwards to embrace him and do not receive a burning hand through my chest. He shivers on the floor, slumped against me, and something else burns inside me even brighter than the desire to hold me against him.

Anthem's power animates me before the better half of my human nature can. "Nineve." My voice booms across the room, my sword brandished.

Nineve rises, ripping herself free from Amanda's sticky paint. Hair clusters around her neck, framing her tired eyes. Something about her countenance reminds me of Serena and myself, maybe something in the mouth, a harsh sadness. I raise my sword a heartbeat in front of her face, close enough that her features shake under the heat.

"I'll be gone in a few days," she whispers. "You know that much."

"I can shorten up that schedule a little," I warn.

Serena whispers something, but none of my teammates move. "Why?" I ask at last.

"When I first picked up the Diosite, I was hit by all fourty-seven cells of power. It overwhelmed me... I recognized, at once, an overwhelming need to spread and grow, so deep it felt like an endless pain, and when I came to the plant my grandfather once worked at, just to give it room, it told me what it needed of me. It had an affinity for emptiness- it could seek out the people who would take this, just for the thrill of being part of something larger, built our bodies into a temple. I always felt that twinge of guilt, but it was drowned by... it insisted... I wanted this. I wanted to be on top of this empire. There is no rush like what this thing can offer you."

I grimace. A moment passes between us, a single breath, as my sword shivers. Ignatius's shocked face as he bled onto the floor of his pathetic basement runs through me, but deeper, I'm thinking of every good moment in the last six months.

"It got you too, didn't it?" she whispers.

I draw the sword away from her face.

---

"So it's over?"

Serena waits for orders in the dark, long after even Harper is gone from the Veins. Karen and Garrett are home, Amanda and Will are with Shiloh, in their little corner, and Evan? Evan ran for it. I really should have grabbed him, but some part of me really just wanted to run someone through for Megan's sake. Unfortunately, there was no one to grab there but an idea, and it was one I ripped from her face as Amanda helped defrost the Echo Chamber to grab the Diosite from behind it. I want to believe she'll be dead in a few days, so I don't have to feel guilty about not killing her myself, but some part of me wonders if I really care what happens to her.

"Yes." Anthem paces in our lair, for possibly the last time we'll ever see it. "I'll need to retrieve the final shard from Evan, but he will be compelled to come."

"That simple." Serena says, offering up her stone. She seems to flicker as she does so, and Anthem takes it from her hand with her teeth and eats it. She looks at her hand, which is beginning to waver out. "I won't miss this. Thank you for ending it properly. I'll see you tomorrow, Chief."

I wave back. I'm not sure if she disappears before she makes it to the door or not. In this light, it's hard to tell. Anthem tracks me with a resentful glare. Even now, when I'm ostensibly beyond her control, it viscerally bothers me.

"She won't miss me."

"Not at all," agrees Anthem.

"You're the one who can see the future. Does she forgive me? Does Evan get better? Do my brother and I stay good?" I ask.

Anthem's gaze narrows to a thin beam of light. "I don't control your future going forwards. I have no doubt that you will make many, many mistakes I would have been able to prevent." With almost slight irritation, she adds, "Is that all? Are you ready to depart?"

I had never imagined this moment. Maybe an earlier version of me had never seen it coming, even feared the end, but I had also imagined ending with them. I breathe in the air one last time, paper mixed with... well, of course it smells a little like home-cooked goods. I don't even think Anthem does it on purpose, because what could the smell mean to her? It's what I want to experience. In some ways, I hate this place, but for as alien and deliberately psychologically manipulative as it is, it binds together some of my fondest memories of them.

Not true. I still have Megan and I, buying presents; the night at Megan's house; several times we hung out following that, alone together. I have scented chapstick in my human pocket.

Anthem's gaze is wide enough to see two Adams, myself and Chief, but neither of them are the 'better' version of me. I'm coming to terms, slowly, with the fact that there might not be one at all, and regardless, any new version of me will be human... but perhaps not powerless. "Not yet. In a second, I won't have powers, but you also won't have a mental grip on me. So, since you never really explained your terms to me when you started this, even if you didn't lie, I'm going to explain mine. I'll let you free. I'll keep your secret. I'll live out the rest of my miserable human life, some insignificant blip in the cosmos that you'll never understand, but you? You are never, ever going to touch anyone in my family again-- and yes, I mean both you, Shiloh, and every other cherub, and yes, I mean everyone in my family. If I ever sense so much as a snitch of cherub power on the corners of the lives of anyone I care about, from my brother to casual acquaintances, I will murder you."

Anthem's dead eyes bore into mine. "Harsh demands."

"You called me a manipulator. Expect me to twist your hand. It's a little nicer than filling it full of bullets."

Anthem takes the Diosite from my hand, gingerly, and holds it in her mouth. I think, in the light of her bonfire, I can almost see what she truly is. The whole place is an illusion, but there's nothing horrible or grotesque behind it, just a darkness that only we gave form. When we disappear, she will be unthinking, unknowing, until her next victims come along. She can not even fear her unexistence. It means nothing to her. As she takes the Diosite and swallows it, she says only, in a low, emotionless voice, "As you wish."

I manage to storm out of the Veins before I can disappear, wake up before I can convince myself this is all a dream, and spend the night typing a message to Evan. He doesn't answer. I'm going to have to find him soon. I promise myself this as I sit alone in my room, waiting for my brother.

Even our room has changed, now that I'm looking at it without the Veins bleeding into it. I'm going to leave for college before things settle in my mind again.