Killing Olympia

The old Rylee would've gone in there guns blazing, threats flying, and Dominion's throat in her hands as she beat his head against a wall until he talked. But I was on the backfoot here. A Cape from the Olympiad had personally kidnapped some girl's dad, and this all reeked of something a lot bigger than I would like to admit. The sun was still slowly burning through the sky, and on my way across the city, Bianca had texted me saying: There's a free campus tour this evening, wanna come? We can watch a movie afterward, too. How about it, a totally not-date? Don't text and fly, kids, because I ended up getting so distracted I hit a billboard and startled a flock of pigeons.

Sure, I texted, landing on the antenna platform of a nearby skyscraper. The wind threw my hair into a frenzy, but the cell reception was awesome. You pick the movie, and I'll be there by five, six latest. It's a not-date. I hit send, and felt a rush of heat go through my gut. I slid my phone away and breathed out, because that meant I had a deadline to figure out what happened to this guy—not that I was going to prolong it in the first place. I stood up, hanging off the side of the flashing antenna, and shaded my eyes from the sun. The Glory was a square mile full of the most expensive apartment buildings in the Upper West. That was the street name, anyway, because it had a tendency to glitter because of all the glossy windows. It was the kind of place I didn't need to trash in a super fight.

So I'd go in there and talk to him nice and calmly, and if he didn't want to spill, we'd take this outside and somewhere far away from cars and stores and paved brick footpaths that would very likely get billed to my house. It also wasn't too far away from the Olympiad, and a fight with Dominion would mean a fight with anyone they could send, which I wasn't planning on doing. Not today. Adam was the warning, and if they wanted to send that clone of me, hell, even that Cleopatra look-alike, then I'd put up my hands, back away slowly, and tell them I was kidding.

"Stupid doesn't even describe this," I muttered to myself. "You've done worse, so let's get it over with."

Before I could even start flying, I heard the sound of heavily beating wings. I first thought the flock of disgruntled pigeons was back to give me a piece of their mind and avenge the birds that splattered onto my suit. Instead, when I looked up into the sky, a woman was in the air above me. Her wings were angelic, flourishing and white and almost glowing in the sunlight. But all I could focus on was the Olympiad badge hitched to her belt, the sword strapped to her back and the white shirt and no tie get up she had going on. Her sleeves were rolled up, and as we stared at one another, I was slowly starting to get the feeling she didn't want me going anywhere any time soon.

Didn't know who she was, didn't really care either way—must be a new recruit, judging by the face. Still young enough to have reddish cheeks. Hair too blonde, almost unnatural. And she was making me blind myself on purpose as she beat her wings right in front of the sun, the draft so strong it almost shoved me right off the antenna.

"Nice weather up here, right?" I said over the wind. Her eyes narrowed.

"You're in commercial airspace," she spat, a hand on the hilt of her sword. Yeah, sure, like that's gonna give me a hard time, but whatever floats your boat lady. "Leave before you're forcefully removed. And quickly."

"Since when did airspace become commercial inside the city?" I asked. "I fly here all the time."

"Don't make me have to use force," she said. "I've given you one chance already."

I stood up on the platform and said, "Fine, I'll leave. I'm sorry for intruding."

And I did just that. I let myself fall from the skyscraper, hurtling toward a ground almost a hundred stories below. The wind screamed in my ears as I tucked my arms close to my body, then I shot toward The Glory, because if she really thought I was gonna listen to what someone else had to say about where I can and cannot fly, then she—

Down the expensive avenue, over the palm trees shading the footpaths along the jewelry stores and car showrooms, she caught up to me. Right there to my left, and just as suddenly, everything seemed to stop moving.

How did she…

A thin film of something glossy and black vanished from her body, and then she grabbed my wrist and jerked me to a dead stop so painful it almost felt like my arm popped clean out of its socket. The whumph of wind sent shoppers and pedestrians stumbling. Then they started looking up at us, especially at the angel and her wings.

"I said"—she yanked me closer, so close I could see the veins in her eyes—"I will use force."

"Hey, it's Sentry!" someone yelled excitedly, and then came the clamoring and a strange smattering of applause, because when was the last time I got some applause? Never, tell you what. "Get her out of our city!"

"Yeah!" a woman shouted. "What's she doing here, anyway? Lower Olympus is that way!"

And I'm the bad person if I punched the superhero in the face.

"I'm not getting detained," I said, looking at her dead. "You know that as well as I do, so let's cut the crap and you let me off with a write-up and maybe a fine, because I'm not here to cause problems. I just need answers."

"Anything you say can, and will be, used against you in the court of law," she started, then came the cuffs.

Not regular old cuffs, but the kind they used to discipline superhumans. We've all seen the superhuman sections in the prisons. Videos of guys and girls that looked ghastly and thin, barely strong enough to shuffle along.

But I really, really wasn't looking for a fight today.

I slammed my palm into her throat, then shot toward the sky, leaving her gagging and clawing at her neck as her face turned bright red. Now every single person down the avenue was paying attention from below, pointing at the sky and pulling out their phones. Barely a minute and I've already pissed someone off. That's gotta be a new record. I flew for Dominion's building a little faster than I first did. The penthouse wasn't any different from the ones surrounding it. Tall. Obnoxiously shaped and had a pool and a gym on its rooftop right beside a bar serving cocktails, and that's exactly where I found him, lounging on a towel beside the pool and using his powers to massage sun lotion onto the supermodel lying beside him as he lazily scrolled through his phone. I blocked out the sun, and he frowned, paused, lowered his phone and nudged down his sunglasses to look up at me, then he swore.

Dominion lay back down on his beach towel as the woman beside him stared at me, then quickly grabbed her belongings and ran, just like the bartenders, just like the people too tipsy to run in a straight line. In seconds, the top floor was empty. The bar kept playing music. The pool water glistened. And Dominion kept scrolling.

"Thanks," he muttered. "Now I get to have this place to myself. You can leave now."

I made a finger gun and sent a burst of electricity shooting toward his phone. Smoke spewed out of the hole I made through it, and now I had his attention, at least partially. "You kidnapped somebody last night," I said.

"Strong opener," he replied, reaching for the leftovers of his cocktail. "What comes after that?"

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"Where did you take him?"

"I'm drunk, kid," he said, sliding a hand behind his head. "I can't even remember what I ate for lunch."

I was between him and his cocktail before he had the time to finish blinking, a knee on his gut and my hand on his throat, because Sentry was probably on her way here with backup, and this had to get done before the end of the day, and like I said, I wasn't gonna fight other superheroes. Not anymore. "Listen," I said quietly, pulling his head off the towel. He tensed his jaw and wheezed as I dug my knee into his gut. "Let's make this quick, alright? I got a call about someone's dad getting kidnapped, and after a little bit of digging, I figured out pretty quickly who exactly was right there when it happened, and you just so happen to reek like the kind of guy I'm looking for, D."

He flicked his hand, and a glass full of beer shattered against the side of my head. I bit my tongue and looked away. Restraint. Restraint. Fucking restraint. I looked down at him again, and saw the smile on his face.

"C'mon," he wheezed. "If you're gonna kill me, then just do it already, you little bitch."

"Where is he?" I said, getting closer to his face, heat crackling in my hair.

Dominion grinned. "How the hell should I know?" he grunted.

I let go of his throat. He gasped and coughed as I got off his chest and walked far enough away to pinch the bridge of my nose and breathe through my mouth. Then I paused, and stuck my hand out to catch a pitcher of ice. I watched Dominion stand up as I tossed the pitcher over my shoulder. "For someone who's playing innocent, you really do like throwing things at people." He was shirtless and in nothing except board shorts, and that meant I had the full pleasure of seeing his fake tan glisten under an increasingly hot sun. "Tell me where he is, and I'll leave."

"Why do you care?" he said, stumbling a little. He really is drunk. "You don't do house calls."

"You're a second-rate Supe," I said. He froze, like someone had hit pause. "Why send you?"

"Second rate?" he repeated, pushing his sunglasses onto his forehead.

"Just answer the question," I said, facing him. "Why did the freaking government kidnap someone?"

Dominion stared at me, slick-backed hair dripping wet with pool water as he tensed his jaw and tilted his head. He stared at me for a long time, then his eyes narrowed, and a sick smile crossed his face. "Oh, shit," he said quietly, then he laughed hard enough to make him double over. "You made a deal with that? Fuck, kid you're one hell of an idiot! No wonder your old man kept you a secret." He kept laughing. And something inside me flickered. Something cold and fiery and painful inside my gut as he wiped fake tears off his cheeks. "Oh, man, you are so well and truly fucked. Sold your soul and expect to get it back, I'm guessing? Christ, you're dumb. Get out of here."

I glanced over my shoulder and looked at my own shadow. He can see It? I looked back at Dominion, but that wasn't what I was here for right now. That was tomorrow's problem. I stepped closer. "Just answer me already."

"No," he said, then waved his hand. "Look at the kind of life I live, and I saved the city yesterday. Unlike you, real superheroes do their jobs and don't get sidetracked into doing meaningless tasks. This could be you, you know, but you blew it, and now your daddy's gonna come back someday soon, and he'll be so, so disappointed."

"Shut up," I spat. The words shot out of my mouth faster than I thought they would. "Answers. Now."

"Oh?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "You usually would've hit me by now? New therapist working out?"

I breathed out through my mouth, then swallowed the hot lead in my throat. "There's a girl out there," I said quietly, "who really misses her dad, and I don't know what kind of superhero ruins a family then celebrates."

"It's called a mission bonus," he said. "Two hundred grand a pop in my new contract. Nothing wrong with enjoying my hard earned cash, especially because the last time we met, Tempest, you almost agreed to join us." He must've seen the lock flash across my face, because he smiled that little bit wider. "What? You think we didn't figure it out pretty quickly? We're the fucking government. We know everything. So back down, chill out, and take a cocktail to-go whilst you're at it, because you're way too high strung for a kid that's got so much dirt on her file. You keep this up and stand there all dumbfounded, and you're giving the Capes on patrol enough time to arrest you. We have daily briefings about your file, you know, so you're probably looking at five life sentences by now. I mean, working with a supervillain to fight a gang war?" He shook his head. "Man, it's a good thing Zeus isn't around, because he probably would've taught you a pretty hard lesson, but we can do just that if you don't leave."

Everything he said hung in the air. The breeze was stiff, the air much heavier and more solid.

"You think that scares me?" I asked. "Go on, do it—say my name. Say it, Dominion."

"Unlike the gangsters you slaughter, we're not afraid of knowing who you are. You're a killer, plain and simple, and I'm not gonna pretend that all of us in suits are clean. Heck, turning that old man inside out was—"

"You did what?" I whispered.

Dominion paused, then slowly whistled and ran a hand through his hair. "A little too much to drink." Then he shrugged one shoulder. "Eh, shit happens. But we're not afraid of you. Even the mighty Olympia wouldn't tear apart an entire country just because we've got your full name, height, weight, date of birth, BMI, school grades—"

Telekinetics can't fly, not without help, and dangling him off the side of his penthouse building shocked the liquor right out of his system. I had both his wrists in my hand, crushing them just enough to make his fingers spasm and go rigid. He screamed through his teeth and watched as his sunglasses fell off his head, and fell, and fell, and didn't stop spiralling until they hit the very, very distant ground below. I stared at him, at this thing in a meat suit whose mouth just couldn't stop moving for his own fucking sake. They knew everything, down to my damned school reports. But they hadn't pressed that button. They hadn't even threatened me with it. Cassie knew who I was. She knew exactly who mom had been married to and had a kid with. The US government knows my name.

Either Dominion had stupidly slipped up, or they wanted me to know. My money?

The fucker was a liability. One I was gonna help them deal with.

"You killed him?" I asked. He didn't answer. Too busy kicking his feet and panicking and trying to rip chunks of rubble from the building, but his hands were too rigid, his body too in pain and too panicked to do that.

"I had orders!" he said, panting heavily. "He was a whistleblower! The guy was gonna fuck the entire—"

"You killed a girl's father," I said. Something went crunch in his wrists. He screamed. I didn't care. Not really. Not enough for me to notice the Capes that had both rushed onto the upper floor behind me, and Sentry, who led a trio of Capes hovering above me. "And all because someone told you so. What kind of superhero are you?"

"Olympia!" Sentry barked. "Stand down, and unhand Dominion. You will be taken into custody, and—"

"Who made you do it?" I asked him.

Dominion opened his mouth, panic and liquor blurring his eyes. "I—" He swallowed, because suddenly he wasn't so witty anymore, right? Suddenly he didn't have a two hundred thousand dollar murder cheque to save him from falling to his death, right? "I— I don't know. I got the orders. I'm not in the operations department. It came from above. You've got to believe me. Please, fuck! You've gotta believe me!" Then he started crying, and a beat later, came a stench from his crotch. I looked at him, my upper lip curling with disgust as even Sentry frowned.

And Suits wondered why I didn't ever buckle and work for these fuckers.

I threw Dominion over my shoulder and into the swimming pool. None of the Capes behind me bothered to help him out, meaning he floundered and spluttered, his shattered wrists forcing his hands to slap against the water. Look at that, I thought. He can't swim. A guy wearing the same old Olympiad suit and a full black cowl swooped low and scooped him out of the water, then told the others he was going to evac him to the hospital.

Dominion left the stench of cologne and urine and something more pungent in his wake.

But if someone higher up gave the orders, then that meant I didn't have to go all that far.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was terrible luck.

Ares was standing at the entrance to the top floor, his sleeves rolled up, his heavy bronze gauntlets hanging off a thick, industrial-sized belt. He was handsome. Rugged. Terrifyingly intense, with a kind of glint in his blue eyes that made you want to look away. My heart was in my throat, but Ares was an Olympian, someone who dad had worked with and nurtured and that gave me no hope whatsoever to talk him down from smashing my head in. Making him understand was like trying to teach an Arkathian empathy. It just fundamentally wasn't inside him.

There was a reason he never officially joined the Olympians and got stuck with the kids.

If the stories were right, he fixed his problems permanently.

Because safety for all, always, forever, was just his way.

"Are you willing to stand down?" Ares asked me, his voice like gravel.

Something about being able to escalate situations, it's such a talent, Ry.

"Only if you're willing to talk to me without all the muscle," I said. "I'm just eighteen, chill out."

Ares' eyes narrowed. "We conversate once you're in a holding cell. Not before. Not after."

"Fine," I said, landing beside the pool. "I surrender. Take me away."

None of them moved.

I snorted, then I sipped an icy blue drink that left my nose scrunched up. Not bad, I thought, then wiped my mouth across my forearm. "You blew your shot," I said, then slammed a fist into my palm. "Let's talk it out."