VI

Sally went through one more equipment check at the edge of the entrance to the Red Roamer Transportation Depot, still facing the hustle and bustle of Nirvana’s Great Gate.

The armour the quartermaster had fitted for her was almost comfortable, perhaps a tad more lightweight than Sally would’ve liked, but it also came with two bandoliers and a hard-pocket for essentials. She carried four clips for her rifle—which had been taken in, and now slung over her shoulder with its folding and travel mechanisms engaged—and two for her sidearm, plus one clip of Warlock rounds for each. She’d taken a short blade in addition to a survival knife: both sat secure in their sheaths.

Sally took the fifth deep breath after her fifth equipment check, and at last found the will to turn away from Nirvana, from the Gate she’d spent her entire life behind, and face the vast, empty expanse of Bat Country between her home and its sister-city.

From Red Roamer’s lot, Sally could see the vast lanes of the Great Highway stretched before her, disappearing into the horizon like a great, broad dragon of the most durable materials known to humanity laying its indomitable length over the land. To either side of the stone-scaled dragon lay flat plains, which gave way to rolling hills, which gave way to slopes dotted by lone trees or copses, which in turn thickened into an ocean of dark red canopy. The sun hung low in the sky, casting everything in its dying orange glow, and for a breathtaking moment, Sally’s fear gave way to a wistful sense of wonder. She’d never been struck by the same itch, the same urge to wander beyond Nirvana’s walls and further still, where maps and roads had either failed to catch up or been long abandoned, the horizon-lust that highway crews like Red Roamer and their competitors were positively feverish with.

In that perfect moment, though, she understood it in her core. Perhaps the stirring of that feeling startled Sally so greatly that it was limited to scarcely more than a minute before the wheels of her mind began to turn, and process the fact that the only borders or walls or boundaries left out here were at her back.

The Bat Country that lay around the Great Highway between Nirvana and New Salem was limitless, and terrifying. Sally almost turned around again, reflexively falling into equipment checking, when Amara walked over.

Sally still saw the blood and the spriggan’s spikes impaling her for half a second.

“Hey, chief,” Amara shot Sally a finger-gun by way of salute, her shoulders and torso bulky beneath her jacket as she sauntered away from the transport vehicle.

“Is everything all right, Amara? Is the supplies loaded, engine batteries checked, turret stocked…?” Sally jerked her head in Amara’s direction, running through another list of details, of comfortable protocol to fall back on.

“Yep, yep, and yes.” Amara said. “Is everything all right with you?”

Sally blinked. Her stomach churned. “Why wouldn’t it be? I can’t wait to get out there.”

Amara nodded, her lips raising into an almost-smile. “Alright.” She stood next to Sally, and looked out onto the Great Highway with her.

Everything had been perfect- No, everything was still perfect, running smoothly and as planned. Creeper had relinquished her signature, Henri and Mal had gotten their approval for squad-consolidation and Hotel transfer signed and co-signed by Icepick operatives and the reform board, Ira and Amara had moved their belongings to Epsilon, and they’d spent today at the quartermaster’s. The excitement running through Sally’s veins had only iced over with anxiety when she’d stepped through the Great Gate.

“It really is beautiful out there, you know.” Amara said, cocking her head to one side. “Sure, there’s a bunch of things that’ll try to kill you. But I always find myself wanting to go back.”

Sally looked at the black-haired girl. “You’ve been to Bat Country before?” She’d never been further than Red Roamer, and only thanks to those few sessions at the Academy to prep them for outreach.

The corner of Amara’s mouth curled up. “Four times.”

Four? Sally couldn’t find any words.

“My family moved from New Salem to Nirvana, when I was little. Before they moved to the Core, mom and dad took a few detour hauls off the Highway. There was no one to watch me a few times, so I came along.” Amara’s dark brown eyes seemed to drink in the setting sun.

“That’s… A difficult job.” Sally said.

“A lucrative job, if your convoy makes it.” Amara shrugged. “Now the Maki residence is three stories of prime Core real-estate.”

Sally’s parents could only ever afford an ultraplex condo a few miles outside of Nirvana’s Core district.

“My point is,” Amara continued, “we’ve got more training, better gear, and our assignment’s at a Wayside, anyhow. It’ll be easy, right, chief?”

Sally swallowed, then forced herself to nod. “Right.” She turned to look at Amara—Amara didn’t look away from Sally’s eyes, even met them with casualty. “So  why didn’t you go for better armour?”

Amara rolled her bulked-up shoulders back. “Armour doesn’t really matter to me. Plus, anything with a higher rating wouldn’t fit under my jacket.”

“And style is the top priority, of course.” Sally’s face went deadpan.

“Looking cool’s always important, chief.” Amara flashed Sally some teeth. “Why do you think I joined the Corps?”

Sally resisted the urge to roll her eyes, then started when a horn’s honk tore through the gentle rumble of the Great Highway’s traffic.

“Let’s get this show on the road, Sally!” Henri leaned out the window of the vehicle’s driver-seat. Ira sat on the roof, in a simple t-shirt beneath crossed bandoliers, her eyes closed, the wind running through her hair. Sally almost thought it was blowing in the wrong direction, but started towards the transport instead of dwelling on it.

She opened the door to the passenger seat, ducking her head as she swung in. Sally looked back to check on Mal as Amara slid in beside him. The horned boy sat in a thick brown jacket a size too large, shifting uncomfortably in Corps body armour devoid of insignias or logo.  The quartermaster had found a helmet cut for a pair of horns, but it sat in Mal’s lap. He preferred to keep a hood up.

Sally stopped just shy of pounding on the roof when she caught Ira’s legs hanging through the turret hatch, kicking gently.

“Alright,” she said as she secured her seatbelt, “are we set?”

“All set,” Henri replied, adjusting the mirror.

“Yeah.” Mal said.

Amara gave a thumbs up that Sally caught in the mirror.

“Are we leaving yet?” Ira’s voice drifted down into the rest of the vehicle’s interior.

“I think we’re-”

“Wait.” Henri raised a hand, cutting Sally off. “There’s one more thing.”

Sally looked to her driver, rolling through a dozen lists in her mind, searching for the empty checkbox. Shit, shit, shit…

“Does anyone have any music requests?” Henri looked over her armoured shoulder. “Once we’re on the road, I’m not gonna fiddle around with buttons while people complain.”

Sally let out some air. “No.”

Mal shook his head, while Amara shifted into a reclining position. “Surprise me.”

A smirk streaked across Henri’s face when she faced forward again. “No regrets.”

“I’m going to start regretting letting you behind the wheel if we don’t get going.” Sally sighed.

“Yes, ma’am.” Henri revved the engine, then pulled out of Red Roamer’s vehicle lot, and accelerated towards the transport company’s on-ramp to the Great Highway.

* * *

The transport vehicle sped away from the Red Roamer depot, and further still, past the lots and motor pools of the transport companies who couldn’t afford property so close to Nirvana’s walls. It wasn’t long before Henri descended the entrance ramp to Nirvana’s outskirts, and entered the Great Highway proper.

A few hours of perfectly maintained, unnaturally straight roadway passed, then the vehicle’s interior rumbled as the wheels found a rough patch of pavement, or a pothole—Henri adjusted the lever beside the handle to remove cruise control.

“We’re officially into the woods, folks.” Henri tossed a glance to the back seats with minimal struggle thanks to her heavy armour, grinning Mal’s way.

Sally’s fingertips brushed over her sidearm holster.

The Great Highway began to turn and wind around large landmarks rather than plow through them. The immortal road began to show its age, out here, where maintenance crews were increasingly infrequent the further into Bat Country the Highway stretched. On occasion, Sally spotted off-ramps, or sections of highway that simply ended. Concrete branches of a vast tree laid down by the first generation off the Ark terminated, either collapsed into Deliverance’s earth and turning to roots, or cut off, clipped away to spare the main trunk from blight.

It was typically near these terminals—though there were a few other notable curiosities and ruins along the Highway—where walls sprung up, where electrified fences crackled in the growing darkness. Smoke rose from these encampments, points of refuge still guttering in defiance of the tempest of danger and monster territory each Waystation floated in.

Amara named a few as they drove by.

“There’s Folly. There’s Ten-One. Oh, I didn’t know Spine was still standing.”

Some of the Waystations struck Sally as remarkably large for places where majority of the population were supposed to be travelling to and from Nirvana or New Salem. They could almost be called towns, if towns weren’t an ancient concept long laid to rest—forced into retirement by the hostile territory Sanctum claimed as its nation. Everybody learned about how Bat Country had swallowed every spontaneous settlement attempt whole.

The stars and moons had settled centre-stage in the sky by the time Henri began to slow down, heading for the blinking lights of their destination. Sally rubbed her eyes, and tried to stretch in her seat.

Waystation Two-Ditch was nestled, as it turned out, at the bottom of a collapsed section of one of the Great Highway’s offshoots, sprouting up right at the mouth of an accidental off-ramp. The highway crews who’d founded it had set up steep barriers that forced all traffic through one narrow lane, which included gantries and walkways in case vampire raiding parties—or more human marauders—wanted to try their luck. An electrified fence, maybe six-feet tall, ringed the whole perimeter, reinforced by guard-towers of salvaged plast-iron and corrugated titanium.

Henri only spent a moment radioing in to the Fury Corps outpost before the segmented gate rolled open. They rode down a kind of street, straight towards a cluster of buildings surrounded by solid Guard-standard walls. Roulette Station had its own gate, which opened well before their vehicle approached, though two sizeable turrets remained trained on the road before the gate.

Sally also noticed buildings. Not just mechanic pits, or chop-shops, or taverns, or trading posts, but fortified structures that couldn’t read as anything but paramilitary or residential.

Once they found an empty berth in Roulette Station’s motor pool, Henri hit the brakes, and turned the engine off.

Sally stepped out first, found herself on the verge of yawning, and tried to shake that and the dull ache in her head off by stretching. She was definitely un-used to Highway travel, but she was relieved she didn’t get any vomit-worthy motion-sickness. Taking outreach assignments with that kind of reaction was almost a zero-sum game.

By the time the rest of Stepsister piled out of the transport and began unloading supplies, a short Corps operative with thick hair and dark skin entered the garage.

“You’re Stepsister, in with supplies and on assignment, right?” He was very careful in emphasizing the “supplies” part of the equation.

Sally offered him a handshake. “Callsign Gorgon, yes to both.”

The man’s stern regard melted around the edges. He clasped Sally’s hand with a heavily-sealed mitt. “Best news all week. Welcome to Two-Ditch, and welcome to Roulette. I’m Vise.”

Sally smiled at him, finding no hesitation in his eyes as he met hers. “Great to be here, Corporal.”

Vise released her, then swept both hands—swathed and sealed up to each shoulder—over the garage. “Sorry for the mess. Things haven’t exactly been the most orderly around here, but we’ll get you rooms right away. Once the sun’s up, I’ll give you the sit-rep.”

“That’s not necessary, Corporal,” Sally looked to him, then past him and the door, “we can get a look at the perimeter of the ruins right now.”

“Can’t do.” Vise shook his head. “No one’s allowed near the old town once the sun goes down.”

“I don’t remember settlement curfews being part of the Fury Corps outreach mandate,” Amara straightened up after putting a crate of supplies down. “What if some scavenger or off-road crew get attacked at night?”

“It isn’t, and there aren’t any.” Vise said, and Sally caught the fracture in his left eye—the blackness from his pupil spilled into the amber of his irises, the cracks were small enough that anyone else wouldn’t notice.

Vise held Amara in that quiet, broken gaze. “There’s no one out there that isn’t already dead.”

V

A red flashlight beam from Amara’s scattergun swept across what would become the lobby of the unfinished ultraplex like a murderbird’s eye seeking corpses along the Great Highway.

And what a corpse the lobby was: fixtures for a front desk, numerous cavernous spaces for whichever franchises had paid for shop-space, two still-occupied elevator shafts, all beneath a ceiling six stories high, with a sizeable square in the centre of clear heavy-load plast-iron, so the light from Deliverance’s pallid sun could drift down through the top of the building all the way down to the lobby.

Sally lead with her sidearm as she peered around every corner, her naked eyes comfortable in the gloom so long as Amara’s light didn’t stray too close. Sally checked corner after corner, behind bundles of beams and smaller materials the construction crews had left behind. Dust motes caught in the light from the clear ceiling-space cascaded down in spiralling arcs, collecting on the roughed-out floor tiles.

“How do we know it’s here?” Mal’s whisper drifted over the comm, and Sally winced.

“Only one floor.” Henri said. “It needs to be where people are.”

“…Does it know we’re here…?”

Sally opened her mouth to quiet the chatter, then closed it, and found the breath of paint-dense ultraplex air she’d taken in stolen away when she checked the shape she’d caught behind the reception-area fixtures.

It was a construction golem. The construct lay—no, it was pinned to the ground by sharpened rods of rebar driven through its poly-plastic limbs, one piercing each servo-joint. The golem made the faintest whirring sound. It was still twitching, and Sally could imagine its operator yanking off the pilot headset with a scream as the crude nerve-circuits sent pain which belonged in an ancient Christian art fresco straight to their brain.

The golem’s face-plate only bore crude impressions of a face, but that made the twitch seem all the more excruciating to Sally. A scrap of the operator’s pain would be trapped there forever, because the golem didn’t even have a real mouth.

Sally shook herself back to the present. “Got an impaled construction golem here, behind the desk fixtures.”

“Copy- Huh, there’s another one in the corner of this shop.” Amara responded over the comms.

“There is another inside the service elevator,” Ira chimed in, “it is bleeding. Not a golem, sorry.”

Sally drew another breath in through her teeth. “Fatalities confirmed at one so far. Let’s keep close, everyone—”

Something plummeted from the ceiling and crashed to the lobby floor, sending up a ripple of dust and shards of fractured tile.

“Contact!” Henri bellowed, then raced towards the crash-site.

“Moving in,” Amara raced across the lobby with her scattergun up, and Ira drifted after. Sally broke out into a sprint, adjusting and readjusting her grip on her sidearm as the wreckage grew closer in three steps, four steps, five steps.

Henri’s large frame was silhouetted in the fading light trickling down from the ultraplex’s exposed top. She stood before the rubble, fists raised, and a ripple seemed to move through her that set her shoulders rolling, that sent a twitch down her spine. A series of dull pops filled the lobby in the echo of the impact.

“Henri, wait-” Mal moved directly behind her, one hand outstretched.

Something from the shadows collided into Henri’s left side. She didn’t have time to shout before hurtling across the lobby.

Sally skidded into sidearm range in time to see a shape shudder to its feet, then loom over Mal, now dead still.

Sally gave up trying to follow the way the twisting coils of titanium and plast-iron wove together with aberrant flesh the moment she laid eyes on the spriggan, and instead focused on breaks in the sinuous pattern as it took a step that sent Mal tripping backwards onto his ass.

Sally fired at the spriggan’s uneven shoulder as it raised a thinner, spike-tipped limb over Mal. The shard of metal shredded more metal than sickly flesh—Sally had one clip of Warlock rounds for emergencies only—but the spriggan turned to gnash a misshaped maw of pincers and jagged metal pieces Sally’s way.

Her eyes sought the spriggan’s as it shrieked and thrust another limb Mal’s way, and she found them, tiny pools of emptiness at the centre of a maelstrom of sharp things. The buzzing from the back of her head flooded into Sally’s pupils, then hurtled out in a heartbeat.

The spriggan’s entire body seized up, wracked as Sally worked on crippling whatever the imp-class threat passed off as a nervous system. Its strike struck tile a few inches from Mal’s head, and to his credit, the horned boy rolled away, retreating the second he got to his feet.

The edges of Sally’s field of vision began to blur and shake as she let more and more power into her eyes. Bits of plast-iron and titanium rebar began to fall from the spriggan’s agony-wracked form, coated in dark liquid.

To the monster’s credit, it managed to tear itself from Sally’s gaze, leaping for the walls of the ultraplex still shrouded in shadow.

Sally hissed, tried to call the lethal hum back away from her pupils. When it tugged back at her, she took a knee—smaller target—then forced her arm over her eyes. The goggles would make her low-light vision useless.

“It is melding with the titanium.” Ira said over the comm.

“Engaging,” Amara replied, and the harsh implosion of the air itself searing filled the lobby. Even as Sally’s power still shook her now-blackened vision, the light given off by Warlock-grade weaponry firing was still prominent in her memory.

Something big clattered to the tiles. The spriggan’s shrieks became weaker, and weaker…

And then they redoubled, as what sounded like hundreds of steel pieces scratching and grinding into another metal surface rose above the sear of Amara’s scattergun.

“It’s getting big, again.” Amara’s voice rose in Sally’s ear.

She crammed the hum back into her head, then looked up to watch Amara advance on the spriggan, firing round after burning round into the spriggan’s torso, lining up each shot towards the vortex that sheltered the imp’s head.

The spriggan’s bulk surged forward, and it drove two of its six spiked limbs straight through Amara’s guts, lifting her off the ground.

Amara made a noise like a wet paper bag collapsing. Something wet spilled onto the tiles below her twitching feet.

Sally meant to yell Amara’s name, but the shout became wordless as she rose and squeezed shot after shot into the Spriggan’s form. Again, shards of flesh and inorganic material flew from its form, but more and more rose up in its place.

The rest of the spriggan’s limbs now lurched towards Amara, and Sally could swear the pulp beneath the metal maw was grinning as it turned the short-haired girl to face the rest of the operatives in the lobby. The spriggan held Amara aloft like a sacrificial animal, or a martyr on execution day.

“What is your current emotional state?” Sally heard Ira’s voice murmur over the comms.

“Fuck,” Amara breathed, her throat wet. She jerked in the spriggan’s grip, and another spot of wetness bloomed on the front of her jacket. A metal spike burst through her sternum, slick with gore, and Amara spasmed.

Sally kept her power in, though it buzzed in her brain and made the already-risky shot she could take at the spriggan’s leering head impossible. She couldn’t do anything except watch Amara die. The pistol shook in Sally’s hands.

“Helpless,” Mal whispered, “I can’t do anything…”

Amara gurgled on a mouthful of blood into the comm, trying to jerk her scattergun up as another spike punched through her leg.

“PISSED.” Henri’s voice roared above every other noise, snapping the shake right out of Sally’s hands. She leapt to one side of the spriggan, then the other, trying to find a clearer shot, but even as Henri’s footfalls drew closer and closer, Sally still couldn’t-

“I will take it away.” Ira said.

-couldn’t nothing. The ice-cold freeze of inaction fell away. Sally fired at the spriggan’s fifth limb as the spike sat poised above Amara’s neck. The wicked point jerked away, and the spriggan snarled, and shook Amara.

Henri rushed past Sally, two heads bigger than she’d stood before they’d entered, some distorted strength about her limbs there wasn’t time to place.

Amara finished turning the scattergun on herself, shoved the barrel into her sternum, yanked the trigger back.

Even as the spriggan yanked a larger limb out of her body, facing Henri’s oncoming charge with effectively two three-foot pikes, a blast of searing plasma tore through Amara, and lanced into the spriggan’s maw.

It reeled, flinging the punctured girl off its spikes and away, but Henri was already upon it.

Henri’s skin was stretched too tightly over malformed muscles and bone as she punched through plast-iron, through titanium and other scrap besides, as she rent any spike that cut her flesh asunder. The spriggan shook and staggered, trying to get away, but Henri latched on like kill-hound’s jaws over the neck of a wounded pack beast.

The spriggan raised more and more of the metal suffusing its body in arcs to cover its face.

Sally side-stepped and brought her sidearm up, aiming through the buzzing in her head and firing into the exposed flesh of the spriggan’s midsection.

The spriggan howled, its back was almost to the wall, almost ready to meld back into it structure, when Henri let out a roar of her own, and ripped all the metal covering its head clean away.

A lump, an oversized tumor-esque structure crammed with cruel features and too many teeth, screeched in what Sally liked to believe was terror as Henri’s distorted fist came crashing down.

The spriggan’s head popped in a rain of dark fluid and aberrant flesh, and the whole wretched thing came crashing down in a screaming heap of metal.

Henri landed on her feet before the wreckage, streaked in gore, her back still turned to Sally and the others.

Henri hauled it up, then smashed the spriggan’s corpse into the ultraplex wall.

Then she did it again.

“I think it’s down,” came a wet voice over the comm, and Sally turned to see Amara on her feet where she’d once lain in a bloody heap. Her jacket was full of holes, as were the rest of her clothes, and Sally saw—and smelled—a lot of blood, but there were no open wounds to speak of.

She ran over to Amara, who waved Sally off as she leaned on her scattergun for support. “I’m fine.”

Sally was about to insist when a wave of bone-crackles and pops filled the air once more. She turned, and found Henri back to her original size, more or less.

Henri brushed some gore-slick strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail back, grinning.

“Sound off,” Sally found her voice a moment later. “What’s everyone’s status.”

“Whole.” Ira was almost sing-song.

“I’m…I’m fine.” Mal said.

Amara offered Sally a thumbs up and the barest pretence of a smile. “Un-holed.”

Sally was still tingling with adrenaline, but she did her level best to give Amara a murderous glance and an eye-roll.

“Whole,” Henri wiped her face with the back of her forearm, “and hungry.”

“Right, well.” Sally checked the safety, then holstered her sidearm. She managed it on the second try. “That was…”

“Great teamwork.” Ira said, suddenly beside Sally, who nearly jumped out of her skin.

Ira smiled. The green in her eyes was vibrant, far less faded than it had been in Epsilon Hotel’s courtyard a half-hour ago.

“It was feeding on helplessness,” Ira continued, “that is what it sought to create. If it was not for Mal, I would not have known what to do.”

The serene operative turned her head to look at the horned boy, who was still shaking, and offered him a nod. Sally thought it seemed a little closer to the less-graceful movement she’d seen from Ira in the library, but Mal shied away nonetheless.

He only stilled when Henri strode over to clap a hand on his shoulder, but that only lasted until the gore from her flingers spilled onto his coat.

“Right,” Sally took a deep breath, and found the dregs of giddiness still within her grasp. “Good work, Stepsister. Let’s call clean-up, then go get that clearance signature.”

IV

“Alright, you pack of fresh murderbird guts,” Creeper looked over Sally and the others while leaning on the wall beside the door of Epsilon Hotel’s courtyard, “let’s have a sound-off. I need to know how I’m gonna set this up.”

Sally shot glances from the corner of her eye at the other operatives—her team-mates—assembled beside her while standing at attention.

“Eduardo, Henrietta,” Henri broke the silence before it lived to see another second, “but unless any of you are long-lost relatives, call me Henri. Icepick Hotel, callsign Lycan.”

“You a Shifter category?” Creeper spoke up.

“Dionysian, actually.” A grin creased Henri’s lips.

“Huh. That’s a rare cat.” Creeper gestured for the rest of the group to continue.

“Meran, Ira.” Ira’s voice was mostly wind-chimes as she took a slight step forward. “Alpha Hotel, callsign Preta. Spectre category.” Ira was still in her tank-top. She gave not so much as the slightest sign of discomfort when the chill wind washed over her, ruffling her hair.

Sally watched Creeper nod.

“Uh, Lockheed, Mal.” Mal shuffled forward, the only person present whose shoulders remained slouched. He tugged the loose brown jacket tighter around him. “I’m… I’m not really-”

“Right now, you’re one of us.” Creeper interjected. “You ever had your Abnormality categorized?”

Mal nodded once, twice.

“What’d you roll up?”

He took a step closer to Henri, casting his eyes down. “I don’t think…”

Henri put a hand on his shoulder.

Mal sighed, then folded his arms. “Faust.”

Sally blinked despite herself. Her eyes roved over the modest horns that broke through the skin of Mal’s brow with a new appreciation—which almost became caution, before she quashed it. That wasn’t fair of her, especially considering the looks and whispers she herself attracted.

Creeper whistled, low and long. “Rarer still. You really can pick ‘em, Nolan.”

Sally inclined her head, then tried to offer Mal a smile. His eyes never left the ground.

“Maki, Amara,” said the young woman to Ira’s left. Her black hair was cropped short, and her dark brown eyes struck Sally as almost bored. Amara’s Corps jacket hung open on her shoulders, revealing a stocky frame, and knuckle tape that extended all the way up her forearms. Her right hand was encased in a black glove.

“Alpha Hotel, callsign Grateful. Revenant category.”

“I’m Revenant category, myself,” Creeper gave Amara a thumbs-up, which Amara returned in an instant. Creeper’s mottled face broke out into a smile. “Quick moves, Maki. Rare in a freshie, I like that.”

Out of everyone here, the only person Sally couldn’t say she liked was Amara, probably because Ira’s weird fervour had led to Sally’s only introduction to Amara being this morning, when they’d walked through the doors of Epsilon Hotel.

“Theodora-Nola, Sally.” Sally said, completing the roll-call. “Epsilon Hotel, callsign Gorgon. Hex category.”

“Yeah, yeah, Nolan,” Creeper waved her off, “this is your show, we should all know who you are.”

Sally suppressed a chuckle as Creeper peeled herself off the wall, and began to walk a circuit of the assembled operatives.

Sally, after years of being keenly aware of the reflection in the mirror that others faced when she went out, had no fear or hesitation when it came to meeting Creeper face to face. Her single reservation was that Epsilon’s exceedingly casual veteran’s collage of facial scars, callouses, mottling, and other Abnormality-generated quirks made it incredibly difficult to discern any expressions that weren’t overt or obvious, such as a smile.

Creeper didn’t flash any teeth as she went over Sally’s squad-mates, and the pit of Sally’s stomach began to gnaw at her with baby teeth. Creeper completed one pass, then another, and then a third pass around Sally and company, before coming to a stop with her back turned to the newly graduated Corps operatives.

“So.” Creeper’s armoured jacket-collar obscured the back of her head.

Sally squeezed her thumbs to prevent any nervous cheek-biting.

“Anyone have any squad-name ideas,” Creeper turned on her heels, “or are we going to stick with the official designations?”

Sally barely stifled a whoop. She looked to Henri, who winked at her, then over to Ira, who was absolutely beaming.

“I was thinking Stepsister.” Sally said, as Creeper withdrew a tablet.

“It’s just, in a lot of the stories from Ancient Earth, there’s always a stepsister,” Sally began explaining when Creeper’s calloused brow rose, but her face grew flush with embarrassment. It sounded childish out loud…

To Sally’s surprise, Amara snorted, then offered her a tired smile. “I get it. Good name.”

“I mean, I was thinking something more along the lines of ‘Praying Mantis Antichrist,’ or ‘Death-reaper,’ but Stepsister works just fine.” Henri shrugged, and Mal stifled a chuckle halfway behind her.

Ira nodded her own quiet encouragement, though her eyes were glued to the tablet in Creeper’s hands.

“Stepsister it is, then.” Creeper entered the name into the ranking database, and Sally’s brief shame fell away in the face of anxious excitement. Creeper slipped a stylus out from a pocket in the tablet, offering both to Sally.

Sally signed on her profile, now listed under the squad readout entitled “STEPSISTER.”

She passed it to Henri, who signed in a neat hand. Henri gave it to Ira, who marked an ‘X’ over the line, then Amara added her messy scribbles to the rest. Creeper took the tablet, scrawled something below the squad, and slid the stylus back into the tablet’s niche.

When Epsilon’s ranking vet handed it back to Sally, STEPSISTER was a fully signed, formal squad listed in the Fury Corps’ team roster.

“Thank you so much, Corporal.” Sally offered Creeper a salute, which the older woman waved away.

“You kids have fun out there, be safe.” Creeper smiled her snaggle-toothed smile. Sally returned it, then looked down to scroll through the available assignments tab-

“Uh, Corp- Creeper?” Sally slid the stylus out from the niche. “You forgot to sign us for outreach clearance.”

Creeper tapped her chin with one finger. “Mm, nope. I didn’t.”

“There’s no signature here though, ma’am.” Sally blinked.

“There sure isn’t, freshie,” Creeper tapped the edge of the tablet, “you catch on quick.”

The world fell out from beneath Sally’s feet, though she remained upright and still.

“I don’t understand,” she began. Henri was at her side in an instant, as was Ira, whose happy vagueness was now crystal-clear concern. Amara kicked at some loose stones in the courtyard.

Creeper shrugged. “You’re a brand-new team. Can’t throw you to Bat Country when you’ve never worked as a unit before, it’d eat you alive. It’ll do that no matter what, but a cohesive team stands a chance of sticking in its craw, at least.”

“But we’ve all done unit-training at the Academy.” Sally said.

“Corporal, I assure you, I placed eleventh overall in the Academy’s cooperative exercises, while Operative Maki placed twelfth,” Ira’s gaze was steady, her face expressionless. “We are more than capable of performing as a functioning unit.”

“My callsign’s enough, Ira.” Creeper met Sally’s pale green gaze easily. “I know your placement in boot camp. I’ve also read your psych evals, personality profiles, you name it.”

Amara flinched. Sally didn’t see Ira move so much as a hair.

“You’ve never worked as a team in the field, and believe me, you can’t ever replicate the feel of fieldwork at the Academy, no matter how hard they try,” Creeper continued. “You don’t even know what each other’s powers are, or how they fit together.”

“Please, Creeper, I- We really need this. Squads cleared for outreach get preferred over others for big assignments.” And assignments in Bat Country always meant better rankings, but Sally kept that to herself.

Creeper sighed. She rolled her shoulders—drawing a chorus of cracks and pops into the cold air—then stretched her neck from side to side—producing yet more of the same—then pinched the bridge of her nose.

Sally waited for Creeper to look up again, resisting the urge to blink. The buzzing threatened to crawl into the back of her eyes, but she fought that back, too, fingers an inch above the goggles hanging around her neck.

“Aw, freshie,” Creeper groaned, “don’t fix me with those big eyes and think I’ll give in.”

“I’m not, ma’am,” Sally said, as she continued to do just that, “I would never, ma’am.”

“Damnit.” Creeper took the tablet from Sally, then looked around at the other operatives before thumbing the screen. “Fine. You think you’re really ready? Fine. Just one condition, first.”

Creeper handed the tablet back to Sally: an assignment dominated the screen, green and confirmed for STEPSISTER.

“If you can handle this one, as a team, I’ll sign off.” Creeper put her hands up in mock-surrender.

It was Sally’s turn to grin at the corporal as her team clustered around to get a look at the tablet.

* * *

Sally looked up from the sat-view and street-view pics of the construction site displayed on her phone to get a look at the ultraplex in its infancy. Not even into the second month of its construction, and the thing could’ve easily been mistaken for some plast-iron and metal behemoth’s skeleton clawing its way up through the earth.

The Core was still miles away to the south, but Sally still thought this neighbourhood didn’t need another ultraplex. Its fully-formed brothers and sisters loomed in relatively even distances; this would be the first ultraplex to cut those patterned spaces short.

She slipped her phone in her pocket, then started approaching the perimeter Nirvana City Guard had created around the construction site. The N.C.G. officers stood behind their barricade of titan-foam and support vehicles, weapons at the ready—none of them were Warlock-grade guns, so Sally assumed they’d been waiting on the Corps.

Sure enough, the officer in charge waved them through the perimeter without any conflict over jurisdiction or authority, even despite their apparent age. Sally didn’t let the relief that washed over her at having avoided the horror stories and PR nightmares that often arose between N.C.G. and new Corps operatives show, and strode into the ultraplex’s grounds, the rest of Stepsister in tow.

“We’re dealing with a spriggan,” Sally said as she keyed up her earpiece. “Imp class, sixth circle. It’ll use the environment to its advantage, it’ll meld with it if things go sour. If it formed here or somewhere similar, that means it can co-opt plast-iron and titanium.”

“No problem.” Henri cracked her neck.

“It’s after an emotion, so let’s keep this low-to-no contact.” Sally looked for less obvious entrances as her team fanned out. “Quick run-down on our toolbox, ladies and gentleman?”

“I hit. I can break plast-iron and titanium,” Henri spoke into her comm. “so melding won’t save it.”

“I can take however many hits,” Amara piped up, “but I’ll slow down if I take a headshot. I’ll reset if there’s any decapitation.”

Reset? Sally didn’t have time to ask, moments away from an entrance to the building too small for construction-golems—the surveyor’s entrance, then.

“Ira?”

“I am invulnerable for now. If you figure out what emotion it is feeding on, let me know. Then I will become more vulnerable, but the spriggan will likely become easier to eliminate.” Ira’s comm bore the faintest hint of crackle and hiss. Sally tapped at her comm, wondered of Alpha Hotel’s reputation for preparedness if their new operatives didn’t get clean comms.

“Alright. Mal?” Sally hadn’t been sure of Mal accompanying them on this mission, but he’d signed the deputization forms, and Creeper had insisted. Sally chanced a look over her shoulder to find the horned boy sticking close to Henri, as usual.

Silence reigned over the comm channel.

“Mal, what are you bringing to our toolbox?” Sally repeated.

“Come on, it’s okay here, it’s okay with them…” Sally caught Henri’s whisper in the background of Mal’s mic.

“I can see it,” Mal hesitated in the middle of words, stumbling over others, “where things are weak, I mean. I can see where it’s weak.”

“…Okay, good.” Sally said after a moment. That’s all he could do, and he was in Faust category? Sally’s estimation of the Lockheeds’ cruelty and fanaticism grew. “That’s actually really useful.”

Sally stopped before the surveyor’s entrance to the bowels of the unfinished ultraplex, and drew her sidearm.

The rest of Stepsister converged on the entrance behind her, and drew their weaponry.

“I’ll take point. I’m always point-woman.” Amara said, and Sally moved aside to let her pass. Amara carried a scattergun, though Sally didn’t know whether she’d modified it for Warlock rounds, or was content with standard flechettes. An axe-blade hung where a bayonet might be mounted.

“Entry on my mark,” Sally whispered. She could almost feel the air tighten around her as her squad tensed in preparation.

“Three. Two. One.” Sally counted one heartbeat, a second heartbeat, a third heartbeat. “Go.”

Amara plunged into the dim of the ultraplex, and Sally, Henri, Mal, and Ira hurtled in right after.