Killing Olympia

Ares was never much of a diplomat—that was always someone else's job, someone else's white-collar, document carrying-duty. He was the reason you scribbled your name along the dotted line and pretended you weren't getting your t-shirt soaked with sweat. At the end of the day guys like him would've fit right into the Empire. Except he really just loved the government for some reason. He was never a media darling, but come the Fourth of July, and he'll be the guy saluting off the tanks as they rolled through Washington for the entire world to see. But right now?

I kinda needed him to talk things out with me, and if he could just relax for a second, I'd really appreciate it. Sentry and one other flier above me, a guy coated in a thin blue electrical field. The Capes surrounding Ares were nobodies as far as I was concerned. Nobody important enough for me to know, or maybe they were fresh from last year's recruiting class. Would've been my class too if things didn't go so South so quickly. So that meant Ares was my main priority, and as he stared me down, a thought passed through the back of my mind: How is he even here?

How were so many of them here in the first place? Superhumans always smelt a little different from regular old Normals, but the building wasn't exactly packed full of them when I got here—I would have known that even before I got here. And suddenly, just like that, several more fliers joined Sentry, and a thin, dark-skinned guy made several clones of himself that circled me, ready, tense, and clutching onto a silver handgun. I sighed through my nose and rolled my shoulders, then slowly took a step back, accidentally kicking a bottle of beer into the pool.

"You know," I said, breaking the rigid silence. Wind blew through the tension, but this high into the New Olympus sky, and everything was stiff and just a little bit cold. "I'm not even the one in the wrong here. I'm tota—"

"Aggravated assault on two Capes," Sentry said from above, her voice echoing. "One of them off-duty, and one count where you resisted arrest for breaching private air space. We have every right to arrest you and take you to court for not just those charges. By the President's own conclusion, you're too high a risk to be let free anymore."

Fugitive in both the country I grew up in and the planet I was born on. Awesome!

I kept my hands up and spoke to Ares directly. "Look," I said. "If any of what she said actually held any kind of weight, then you guys would've come straight to my house and gotten me from there. Heck, you would've kidnapped my mom or something and made me turn myself in. So how about we take a deep breath and just talk?"

"Veronica Addams has her immunity," Ares said, which…now that I thought about it, made me question what else she got up to working underneath Cassie for her to be pardoned for literally everything else she's done. "It's you we're after, and it just so happens to be that you made yourself available for surrender. On your knees, hands in the air, and we won't have to nationalise your capture. Make a fight out of this, and everything that happens from the second an inkling of aggression comes from you, I'll teach you a government-mandated lesson."

I sighed quietly, then said, "So I guess that means you won't tell me why you kidnapped a father?"

Ares' jaw tensed. A few of the other Capes frowned and glanced at him. "Terrorists are fathers. Villains have mouths to feed. You can attach labels to anyone." He stepped forward. "Down on your knees and arms in the air."

Whatever Sam's dad got up to, he has most of the government freaked out.

"Look at you, Ares," I said, stepping back again. Sentry's beating wings shoved air onto my shoulders, making my hair even wilder. "Zeus would've been pretty disappointed with you. I mean, taking orders from above? Wow, dude, I just expected more from someone who should have been leading the Olympians when he retired."

I only realized I shouldn't have said that when Ares, no gauntlets, just his raw knuckles, smashed into my stomach and dropped me. Just…there. Suddenly. As if I'd blinked and he'd closed the gap in a heartbeat. I wheezed and clutched onto my gut, blinking through tears as I looked up at him. The sun was behind his head, making his hard jaw and even harder eyes deep shadows. Fuck. I tried to breathe. Oxygen trickled into my mouth through the straw pretending to be my throat. A flicker passed over his skin. A momentary blink of static and darkness. But then he grabbed my bicep and yanked me onto my knees, which meant I was more focused on getting his hands off me.

My head, though, was too woozy, my mind too blurry, to even get my body underneath me. Gods, he hits hard. I spat saliva on the ground as both my hands were painfully wrenched behind my back. Two thick silver gauntlets were forced onto my hands, encasing them in frigid metal that almost stung when it touched my hands.

Ares got down on one knee, then grabbed my chin with his fingers. I looked at him. He looked at me, his eyes narrowed and head slowly shaking. "You could have been useful," he said, then flicked my head the other direction. Then he stood. "But you bleed rebellion, and that's not what our country needs right now. Conform. Learn. Adjust. Adapt. Good superheroes know when to do their job. Good superheroes work for the greater good."

I focused on breathing in and out, shutting my eyes as broken ribs cracked back into place, sending shards of hot pain stabbing through my sides. "Funny," I muttered. "I thought good superheroes didn't kidnap civilians."

"You'll be reformed and readjusted," he said, waving his hand for Sentry to come and use my hair to jerk me onto my feet. "You'll become an asset to the US government. Once you've been tried and found guilty first."

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I swallowed, then opened my eyes to look at him. "And I thought I was the disappointment."

Ares' jaw tensed, then he jerked his head. "Take her to the Olympiad for questioning."

"Yes, sir," Sentry said. Then she yanked my hair, trying to get me to move. "Let's go. You're done."

As my vision slowly cleared, and I could breathe without having my lungs forcing their way into the very scarred and tender flesh of my lungs, I looked at Sentry from over my shoulder, looked her dead in the eyes and figured, no, it wasn't worth the fight. I didn't know anyone who was a fan of these guys. I never saw a single soul print out posters or scream for autographs. And as I looked around, their faces looked so…bland. So dull. They were sweating, some of them were so nervous I could hear just how quickly their hearts were beating from across the penthouse top floor, but some of them, like Sentry, like Ares, had barely any light shining in those eyes of theirs.

I was a mess, but I'd rather be a walking disaster than any of these guys any day of the week.

So I shrugged one shoulder, and said, "Sorry, but you'll heal up soon enough. Hopefully."

I launched my shoulder into Sentry's stomach, punching the wind right out of her chest. She spiralled back through the air and finally found her balance, coughing and wheezing and glaring hot death at me. I hovered back. The other Capes shifted on their feet and glanced at one another, then at Ares, almost as if they were waiting for his orders. I took the pause to try and break the cuffs on my… I tensed my hands and tried again. Then bit down on my own tongue so hard I tasted blood as I used every ounce of strength I have in my shoulders to rip the metal apart.

Nothing. They didn't even groan under the pressure. Not the heat. Not the strength.

Barely even a hint of movement.

"What the hell?" I whispered, my face sweaty. "What are these things?"

"Courtesy of Aegis Tech," Ares said. "Your ego is so inflated you thought you could surprise us with an attack, as if we weren't expecting you to do just that. Hundreds of hours of your fights, your styles, your habits, we've all learnt it. We've all studied it. You either hit first, or you wait, and then hit when your opponent is least expecting it. It's basic and it's rudimentary, and Shrike plateaued your combat IQ to such a level that I'd barely even bother having to put my hands on you more than I already have. Stand down. Your fight ends here. And trust us, if you attempt to fly away, we will be there, we will be ready, and you won't make it five meters before getting hit."

"Yeah?" I said, keeping the panic out of my voice as best as I could. "You think that's all I can do?"

"Yes," Ares said, then folded his arms. "Go on, impress us."

My heart was in my throat, and I would have stepped forward, but that's what they wanted, right? More footage, more information. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't. I chewed on my tongue and looked around, the cuffs on my hands digging painfully into my forearms. Sentry knuckled the spit and the blood off her lips, then put a hand on the hilt of her sword. I stepped back. Then stepped back again. Think, Ry. Ares wouldn't bluff. Besides, he moved too quickly for a guy who's only superpower is converting kinetic energy. Sentry moved fast, too. Too fast for a Kaiju. Something was going on. Something that hummed through the air, making the back of my throat taste like static and blood. Someone else is here on the rooftop. My skin felt it first. A harsh shiver that clawed down my back. I glanced around, my eyes searching empty spaces. A Normal? No. This was different. A lot different, too.

It almost felt violent, and I couldn't even see it.

No, wait.

There.

Standing behind Ares.

A shimmer of a figure. A blur that couldn't focus. The harder I squinted, the worse it got for my brain to figure out. I almost gave myself a headache trying to get my eyes to stare down the person standing behind him.

And I could hear them speaking. Not with my ears but, and it sounded weird, but my skin.

Just like the SDU had done with that costume they gave me.

Except all I could hear was muttered jiberish in a language I couldn't understand.

"The hell?" I said quietly. The figure stopped shifting behind Ares, then stared right at me. Silent. No more muttering. No more mumbling. They slowly tilted their head and stood a little taller. A mouth opened, and it—

"Holy shit," one of the clones beside me whispered. "Olympia can see her."

Sentry didn't give me any time to react. She shot backward and pulled a tiny black remote from her pocket.

And then it felt like my head exploded.

I screamed and fell to my knees as sound raged in my ears, tearing through my thoughts and scrambling my brain so badly I puked on the ground. The air warped. My vision unfocused and sent the world into doubles. The figure vanished. And then Sentry stopped holding down the button, but the ringing wouldn't stop. It couldn't stop. I shook my head and breathed hard through my mouth. I tried to get up. Collapsed onto my knees again. Something wet and hot slid down the side of my face from my ears. And everything was silent. Numb. As if the entire world was happening behind a concrete wall. Ares grabbed Sentry and said something that made her recoil and hand over the remote. The other Capes backed away as I screamed swear words and bloody murder at them as soon as they got close. I flung myself forward, deaf and mind whining with pain, and tripped over my own feet.

But I still managed to get a mouthful of a Cape's ear, and then I sunk my teeth deep enough to feel them slam their fist against my chest to try to get me off. Panic. Hot and acidic and vile spilled into my veins and made my teeth meet through the flesh of his ear. He was screaming. Couldn't hear it. My mouth tasted like vomit and blood and my ears were blown out so badly that I could only hear things through my cheek when Ares slammed his foot against the side of my head. The world flickered, and this time didn't get any clearer. My jaw unclamped. I rolled and stopped beside the bar, my head banging and Ares' footsteps reverberating through my entire body.

And for just that moment, as he walked toward me, I could feel the city through the side of my face. Through the tears and the blood coming from my ears. Through the hot agony blazing along the side of my head.

New Olympus was a groaning mass of bodies and machines that shook so violently it almost hurt to hear. I wanted to get back up again. I had to get back up again. Sam was waiting across the city for me to come back with her father, safe and sound and away from the danger. People didn't give me the chance to save them, to give them even a flicker of hope, and that was the kind of hurt that simmered in my gut so painfully I had to swallow it when my stomach rushed back into my mouth. I gagged on puke and rolled flat onto my face, then pulled my legs underneath me. The world was still muted. Still screaming underneath my face. Then a shadow loomed over me.

And I glared up at Ares, then spat blood onto his shoes. I don't know how loud I said it.

But fucker came out just fine to me. Fine enough to make him scowl.

He brought his foot down, and the bottom of his spit-covered shoe turned everything dark.