Killing Olympia

I tried to give myself a chance to rest, but the costume hanging off the back of my desk chair wouldn't let me. I stared at the ceiling. I put in my earphones and turned up the music. I tossed, I turned, got bored and decided to crack open the document Kincaid had given me. I know I said I was tired, but something kept gnawing at the back of my mind every time I tried to slow down and catch my breath. Hell, I think a part of me liked having too much on my plate, because it meant I wouldn't have to feel that growing weight on my chest. That conversation with Ronnie was great, don't get me wrong, I just… Look, people like me are wired differently, and I'll blame mom for that, but I could also hear the entire city groaning through the night, interrupted by screaming, gunshots, the splintering of pavement and the snap of bones. So, for now, the earphones stayed in as I flipped through the document on my bed.

It almost felt like I was doing homework, except a few of these guys would unfortunately look a lot better dead than they would in a case file. The dossier was thick, almost heavy, and all in alphabetical order. It listed names and places I'd never even heard of before, and not just inside New Olympus. I'd start small, so I grabbed a pen to mark the ones closest to the city, especially the ones who'd been seen wandering around Lower Olympus.

Becca still wasn't back yet. Morning wasn't for another couple of hours. And this need to do something was killing me right now. Maybe I've got some kind of problem, I thought, pulling on my costume. I guess I might be a little addicted to getting my face smashed into the concrete. But if it meant I wasn't lying on my bed, bored out of my mind and trying to ignore the slew of thoughts sliding into my head, then yeah, sure, let's go save the day. Or night. Whatever. Once the boots were on and so were my gloves, I took pictures of the threats classified as supervillains, according to the dossier, and cracked open my bedroom window. I got as far as the sill, then paused.

I slowly turned my head to look over my shoulder. The house was silent, but mom was awake. The sound of her typing something onto her laptop echoed down the hallway. I smiled and turned back around. Same cloth.

Just a slightly different texture.

Let's get started.

Earphones in, music playing, then I was tearing through the sky, bitterly cold wind lashing against my cheeks as I flew over the glowing New Olympus skyline. The bay separating the Upper West from Keystone was alight with restaurants and lit-up walkways full of people stopping to take pictures of dad's statue standing proud on Olympus Hill off into the distance. On the other hand, was a long, dark, jagged scar that reeked of smoke and gunpowder and constantly seemed to be screaming deep in the back of my skull. The power grid was apparently not ready to support the entire city, and according to the mayor, it kinda meant that she had her hands tied behind her back with rationing energy until everything was fine again. You didn't need my nose to smell all her bullshit.

Even before last year, Lower Olympus strode through bouts of darkness every few days.

They now just had a reason to keep the lights off a little longer, but hey, for the millionaires living in the bay area, it meant their penthouse view of the ocean wasn't clogged by Lower Olympus' light pollution anymore.

I sometimes wished I could deal with these kinds of problems like how I usually did. But if I tried to go off and threaten Cassie's mother, I'd probably find out very quickly just how deeply her fingers had sunk into the entire Olympiad. I was powerful, don't get me wrong, but almost a thousand capes piling on me at once wouldn't be fun.

So, just for tonight, and until Becca got back, it was time to do this shit the old fashioned way.

"Attention all units, we've got a 10-89S in progress, I repeat, a 10-89S in progress." I could hear the police chatter from all the way up here on the skyscraper I was perched on, one earbud still in and nodding my head to whatever playlist Bianca had sent me a few days ago. Not bad. 10-89S usually meant superhuman threat, almost like the normal 10-89 bomb threats you sometimes heard. Lucas had drilled these things into my head, and I had studied them more than any algebra equation back in high school. I watched the troop of squad cars tear down the avenue, lights flashing as a distant and thunderous explosion ripped through the Upper West. I felt the ground shuddering through my teeth. Barely a second later, the almighty sound of a buckling skyscraper filled the sky.

I took a deep breath in, put in the other earbud, and threw myself off the side of the skyscraper.

I hurtled toward the ground, then shot above the police cruisers until I was met with a wall of concrete dust and the raw, tangy stink of explosives. I slid to a stop on the street, and a few seconds later, the police cars behind me caught up, screeching to a halt. Officers climbed out, guns raised. The building in front of us stood slightly raised on its own platform, but that didn't stop the pillars holding open its entrance from collapsing. I cursed, then looked up. Fuck me, why're so many people still at work? I heard screaming come from the building as bodies hit the windows and the lights died inside the building. For a moment, the skyscraper shuddered, groaned, then fell.

My heart leaped into my throat, and then it was all instinct.

Seventy floors worth of steel, of glass, of thick concrete and gods know what else slumped to the ground.

I met it halfway to the asphalt before it could. The impact sent a shockwave through the building, cracking windows and splintering the floor I'd slammed my shoulder against. The impact knocked the wind out of my chest. I grinded down my own teeth fighting against the weight of the skyscraper, my head pounding, my heart fast. I groaned and pushed harder. The building shoved me back down. But slower. Not enough. I shut my eyes and forced my fingers to dig into the concrete, then I pushed. Pushed with every muscle down my back until it burned to even breathe. C'mon, Ry. C'monc'mon'cmon. The entire building groaned and complained. Concrete cracked. The spiderwebs of breaking glass expanded as more bodies in suits and dresses thudded against it. My chest felt like it would explode, and then, suddenly, someone was beside me. I opened my eyes. Sweat stung them as soon as I did.

Sentry, not in any kind of uniform, had her shoulder against the building, teeth gritted, face scrunched.

If we had anything to say to each other, we saved it for later—for now, the building was still coming down, and the people below us were only now starting to run and run as fast as they could. But too many people were inside the building. Too many to count. Too many to save, however fast either of us was. The concrete against my palms gave, turning into rubble the harder I pushed. The entire building felt weightless, motionless, frozen in time.

The windows shattered, throwing bodies into the air.

Then the building, with all its choking dust, its screaming rebar and shattered concrete, enveloped me.

Panic rushed up my throat first, but I was on autopilot by the time the choking dust strangled me of air. Through a hail of glass and stone and darkened debris, I shot out of the collapsing building, snatching as many people I could out of the air. What started as desperate became something so terribly exhilarating I vomited in my own mouth from the sheer fucking terror of getting smashed into by an entire building. Because I'd survive it. The people screaming through the air wouldn't, and it was like what I said—promises, gotta start keeping 'em, and this costume meant the biggest kind of promise I'd probably ever made. I grabbed people however I could. Wrists. Hands. Legs. Feet. Grazing fingertips and grabbing collars. I dropped them in bushes and fountains as gently as I could, but didn't stop—I shot back through the air, smashing through boulders of concrete to get from one person to the next. Something burned inside of me. My entire body felt like it was ablaze. My throat was raw, dry, hurt to swallow as I darted and grabbed and shot back and forth until my head pounded and I felt like passing out. Sentry was a quick flyer. Not quick enough. She was the last I found in the air, the last I grabbed and threw far, far away.

And when the building did come down, it felt like the Earth itself had grabbed me by the throat and smashed me deep into the asphalt. So deep I tasted dirt and blood as water mains ruptured and tonnes of stone slumped on top of me. The building didn't fully settle. It sat on my back, pinning my chest against something that dug through my ribs and made me wheeze. Broken rib. Several. I smelt dirt. Tasted blood. Darkness sat around me, and the crushing pounds of concrete didn't let me go. I shut my eyes. Tried to calm down. It's so dark. It was cold. So, so cold in the dirt. Distant noises echoed, sounding harrowing through the earth underneath my body. Ok. Come on. You can do this, Ry. I gritted my teeth. My jaw ached from being clenched so tightly. Nothing. It didn't move.

Sparks of electricity erupted from my fingers the harder I shoved and pushed and shook to stand up.

Nothing doing. The skyscraper would re-settle, get heavier, feel like it was shoving me back down.

"The one day I actually save a bunch of people," I said through gritted teeth. Soil spilled into my mouth. I choked and coughed, gasping at the feeling of bones digging into my lungs. I tried again, this time, I didn't move.

I sunk against the dirt, panting hard, air wheezing in and out of my throat. I swallowed. Then spat.

Gotta dig your way out of here somewhere. Nobody's coming to hand you a golden ticket.

Hard way, just like usual.

"Olympia!" I squeezed my eyes shut. The echo was distant and garbled. Maybe not real. I pressed my knuckles into the ground and tried once more. My right arm gave out. A slab of stone slammed into the pile already on my back, pinning me even harder to the dirt. A water pipe was gushing not too far away, turning the soil muddy, almost sludge-like. It was getting harder to breathe. The stench of mud was filling my nose and my lungs and started to get over my hands. Frigid. Filthy. It reeked of the sewers. "Olympia!" Again, that voice. "Olympia!"

I sputtered in the growing pool of water, trying to turn my head enough to breathe. I opened my mouth to yell. Water and mud spilled down my throat. I coughed and gagged, and did the only thing I could think of doing.

Whatever little energy I had left, I spent it all on burning away the shadows with golden light.

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Barely a handful of seconds, barely long enough to evaporate the mud.

The light around me died, and the water came gushing back.

I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath as the water level rose above my head. Now everything I heard was dull and distant, quaking in my ears. My lungs burned. My chest started to ache. I let out a tiny gasp of bubbles to relieve the pressure on my lungs, but that wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough. I let out more. Then I panicked.

I didn't want to die. I did not want to die.

Not here. Not like this.

I thrashed, throwing my legs and arms onto the stones around me, muddying the silt-filled water until i couldn't see a fucking thing. Rock cracked. Something hard and heavy and jagged pressed into the side of my head. Couldn't turn now. Skull to the dirt. I tried to grab the thing and break it. Even tried to use my skull to do it.

Then, almost suddenly, I could breathe.

The jagged slab of concrete pressing against my skull vanished, and a pair of hands wrapped grabbed my arms and hauled me upward. I vomited muddy water and soil and dirt and fuck. Tears streaked down my cheeks, cutting through the filth on my face. I didn't stop coughing until Sentry carried me into the open night sky, where she gently dropped me onto the pavement, where I could hack and cough and retch into a bent sewer grate until I almost passed out. I shook so badly the ground trembled, and only stopped when someone ran toward us and threw a reflective silver blanket over my shoulders. I blinked through the silt in my eyes, trying to wipe away the mucus filling my throat. A firefighter was standing above me, barking something at someone else and waving his arm.

I tried to stand up. Sentry forced me back down onto my butt, where my head suddenly felt heavy. I pitched forward and hacked up a lung, then held my aching ribs and flopped onto my back. I stared at the sky. At the blanket of stars winking at me, at the surrounding buildings coated in a sheen of dust. I shut my eyes, one hand still on my stomach. I wanted to curl up and cry. I'd been close to dying so many times before, but that? I always thought it would be a fight. Something to the death. Not trapped underneath a building, water and mud filling my lungs as my broken ribs tried to tear them open. When I breathed, I shuddered. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up and… Stop it, Ry. Breathe. Relax. Swallow what air you can. I spat saliva, sloppily wiped it off my mouth, then reached my arm into the sky. I made a grabbing motion at Sentry. She frowned, then took my forearm.

She slowly hauled me upward so I could sit properly. This time, I leaned on my hands, not letting my aching chest or agonizing rib cage force me back down. I shut my eyes again. My ears were still ringing. I ran a hand through my hair, and mud sloppily splattered onto the concrete around me. I felt dizzy. Maybe with exhaustion. Maybe from the adrenaline pouring out of my body so quickly. Whatever it was, I hated the feeling.

I dragged my arm across my nose, then craned my neck to look at Sentry. The fire department and the police filled the street. I wasn't used to being around so many people who, on your average day, would hate me. I almost wanted to get out of here to save myself from the criticism. Instead, quietly, I spoke to Sentry. "How many?"

The fireman beside me answered. "None." His hand was on my back, the other on my shoulder. I guess he was the reason I could even sit upright, or maybe he was trying to force me to lie down. Dunno. "You saved a lot of people," he said, breaking into a smile. His face was covered in dirt, but his teeth shone through. "Great work."

"Are you sure?" I asked. My voice was hoarse and cracked. I wanted to pass out. Not yet. The night was still young, and there was a supervillain somewhere in the rubble that caused all of this in the first place, too.

"Very," Sentry said, folding her arms. But her face wasn't hard, and neither was her voice.

I hung my head, then massaged my face. I could feel my ribs forcing their way back into place, and man did it fucking hurt. Instead, I used the fireman to get onto my feet, only after I bent over and waved him off to give me a second to ride out the worst of the pain. Shards must've come loose, because it felt like shrapnel was in there.

I slowly straightened, then said, "Why'd you save me? I thought you wanted me in prison."

"I still do," she said, her wings wrapping themselves around her. "But without you, this would've been worse. I don't know if you know this, but the Olympiad really does appreciate any help it can get most of the time."

"Right," I muttered. "Most of the time."

Sentry smiled, then patted my back. "Thank you. I mean it. You're a fast flier, and an even faster thinker."

"I don't think much," I said, looking around the street. Rubble. Smashed cars. People with minor injuries being treated by ambulances screeching to a halt not too far away. A lot of property damage, but right now, I was looking for something. Someone. I know you're still here, I can hear you running away. "Just gotta do the job."

Sentry's eyebrow rose. "I never took you as someone who particularly cared about saving lives."

"And I—" I paused, then spun around. There you are.

Fucker.

I lunged at the guy sprinting down a busy street of people who'd managed to get away in time. He was shoving his way through the crowd, but I got to him the moment he spun around to check over his shoulder, backpack bouncing against his spine as he pelted forward. I punched him into a street light, bringing the thing down. He collapsed onto the ground, groaning and clutching his side. I grabbed him by the shirt and raised my fist.

"Wait!" he yelped. I didn't. I slammed my fist into the ground beside his head. The leak that sprung from between his legs nearly forced my pounding head away from him. "Okay wait, hold on, please, don't hurt me, please, I'll tell you whatever you want just please don't kill me, oh, God, please!" He was crying. Crying so hard you would've thought he was the one that got crushed by a skyscraper. I stood up as Sentry landed beside me, then I kicked him in the ribs to the slight cheer of the people around us. "I didn't do anything, I promise! It wasn't me!"

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Sentry muttered.

"He reeks of piss and his heart might stop if it keeps beating so quickly," I said. "Besides, I saw him."

"Really?" she asked. "When?"

"The moment I caught the building. He was watching from the curb." I grabbed his shirt and hauled him onto his feet. "Or I'm wrong. Depends on you, pal. Gonna tell me how you did it, or should I just figure it out."

"Shockwave!" he said. "I can create shockwaves. Explosions. That sort of thing. Please don't hurt—"

I raised my fist. "And what the fuck were you thinking bringing down an entire building?"

"Yeah!" someone from the crowd surrounding us yelled. "What the fuck was that, man?"

"We could've died!"

A kid closest to us, fists balled and covered in concrete dust, said, "Olympia nearly died!"

Someone smashed a bottle against the back of his skull, dropping him like a sack. My excuse for not being able to stop the woman who did it from swinging was because I still felt like a sack of concrete myself. Limbs barely working and throat still raw. Sentry was closer to her than I was, but if she was fazed, she didn't show it. But I needed answers, and these guys wouldn't let him talk, probably because they'd either stomp him out, and being New Olympians, we've got a bad habit of letting actions talk a lot louder than anything we could say to each other.

So I picked him up and flew into the sky. His head lolled from side to side as I snapped my fingers.

"Muh?" he said, as blood dribbled down the side of his face.

Sentry joined me, starting to feel like she was waiting to see what I'd do to him first.

"I was talking to you," I said. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I told you," he begged, almost moaning the word. "It wasn't me."

Sentry cut in before I could get at him, because I'll be honest, I wasn't doing fine, and I'd probably hit the ground in a few minutes and not get up for a while. I was soaked and shivering, and had a bunch of pent up energy ready to unload. Sentry, though, put her hand on my shoulder, then spoke to him. "If that's actually true," she said to him, her voice a lot steadier than mine. "Then who put you up to this? We'll compensate you if we're wrong."

"Compensate?" I hissed. "He nearly killed me."

She gave me a look that said, Relax, I know what I'm doing.

At least, that's what I hoped she was saying, or else I didn't like how she just looked at me.

"I can't remember," he whined. "My head is so fuzzy. I…I don't even live here. I'm not from this city!" He looked around, panting now. "Oh, man. Oh man oh man oh man. I didn't do anything wrong, just believe me!"

I tensed my jaw, then glanced at Sentry. "Mind control?"

"Maybe," she muttered. "We'll have to get him evaluated. I'll take him to the Olympiad for questioning."

I moved him away from her. "Slow it," I said. Her brows screwed together. "I don't trust you guys."

"Don't spend what goodwill I now have on you so quickly," she said. "Hand him over."

"Your boss is a parasite," I said. "Cassie Blackwood is the reason everything is falling apart."

"I don't care about her, or whoever runs the Olympiad," she said. "What I care about is my job."

He flinched. Something so minor, so tiny, you wouldn't have noticed it. Not until blood dribbled down his nose, and then slumped in my hands. The hell? I shook him. No heartbeat. I sent a surge of electricity into his body.

Nothing. I was jerking a corpse.

I lowered my hand, then quietly sighed. "Fuck," I muttered.

Sentry echoed my thoughts a little louder.

"Regardless," she said, bumping my shoulder with her fist. "You saved a lot of people tonight. You can do a lot of good. I've never seen anyone fly so fast either. Think about being better, it'll pay a lot of dividends soon."

"Funny," I said. She smirked a little. I pushed his body into her arms. "See what you can find out."

"I thought you didn't trust us."

"I don't," I said. "And if you come back with nothing, or his body suddenly goes missing, then I'll know I was right, and let's be honest, birdie, you're too proud to admit that I was right and someone like you was wrong."

She tensed her jaw, but smiled. "I'll be in touch. Unfortunately."

I watched her leave, then floated my way back onto the pavement, where I could sit on the curb and look at the mass of stone and glass slumped onto the street. I rested on my palms, watching firemen and police officers, listening to radio chatter and waiting for my body to gather enough energy to stand up. However much it hurt, my night wasn't over yet. Still had a lot of other crimes to stop, people to beat into submission, you know how it goes.

"Excuse me?" I glanced to my right, where a woman in a pencil skirt was standing beside me, a camera guy not too far away from her shoulder. Microphone ready, peppy and pretty and dolled up with makeup. I vaguely knew her as one of the dozens of anchors who usually told me to pack it up and leave, but she was suddenly a lot meeker than I thought she'd be. "Sarah Millener. RedLine News. We're live right now, and would you mind telling us what exactly happened here tonight? And why weren't you able to stop so many people from getting hurt, too?"

I stared at her. Really, really stared at her. She shifted on her feet, swallowed, but didn't back down.

"Nobody died," I said. "Everyone made it."

"Actually," she said, checking her phone. "Dozens of people have broken arms and sprained necks. One woman shattered her leg after you threw her into a rose bush. Olympia, do you not care for the wellbeing of the people you try to save? In any other case, your father would've made sure everyone barely had so much as a scratch on them, and even now, as efforts are being made to clear up Banker's Street, you're just…sitting here, watching."

Parasites, that's what these guys are.

But fine, New Olympus wanted an answer, right? Here's one.

I smiled at her, then stood up. I grabbed the mic and looked into the camera. "I'm not Zeus. He's dead. I'm all you've got, and I'm trying my best. Things are gonna get better, I promise. But we've gotta stop looking over our shoulders for something to save us. My old man's statue is pretty, but it gets older everyday. At some point, we need to figure things out for ourselves, and if anyone think they can do it better than me, then fuck what the government has to say, and go out there and save the day. Even if it's small, even if it feels like it doesn't even matter, just do everyone around you a service. Trust me, it matters." Because I've met so many shit people recently, it would be awesome to bump into someone nice. "But if you do, take care of yourselves out there. It's a rough and tumble city that hurts to get used to, but if we didn't keep standing up, we wouldn't be New Olympians, right?"

I handed her the microphone and hovered.

She hurried forward and said, "So you're calling for a revolt against international law?"

I paused and thought for a moment. She looked up at me as the wind picked up, throwing her tightly pinned hair into a mess. The camera guy looked past the block equipment in his arms and stared at me, almost gaping. I glanced at the sky, at how empty it was, at the billboards that blocked out the stars and the buildings that caged in everyone on the ground. Then I shrugged. "Sure," I said. "The world could always use more superheroes."

It's what Dennie would've wanted, and a dead man's promise is a promise you just couldn't break.