When Bonfire Night happened, the damage truly had been immense. Several blocks flattened, hundreds of lives snuffed out in an instant. What some people didn’t really think about was that a swathe of the underground subway had been collapsed and cut off from the seismic intensity of the blast.

  Somewhere down there, in the remains of the tunnel and in a patch of freshly excavated terrain, that was where Impact was calling home for the time being. At least, that was what Wares told us. To get there one had to sneak through the abandoned Cumber Street station.

  Seeing as it wasn’t that far from where we were, Stretch went to scout ahead and make sure. And, as Wares said, there was indeed a concealed tunnel with what appeared to be a few surly guards outside of it. She slipped away without being seen.

  Cheshire and Foresight bundled Wares into the van and dumped him a few blocks away, satisfied with what he had told us. Part of me wondered if it was a bad idea to let him go at all, but Cheshire said he wouldn’t run and tell Impact that we would be coming along.

  After all, to do that he’d have to admit that he blabbed. And Impact would treat him far worse than we would.

  As we changed into our civvies and went our separate ways, Cassie paused to ask me something.

  “That stuff with the boiling water,” she said. “Were you really gonna do that?”

  I considered the question for a moment and then shrugged. “To get what I want? There’s few lines I won’t cross. But I guess I’m glad I wasn’t pushed to that.” I turned to leave, then paused in the threshold of the doorway. “Thanks,” I eventually said.

  “Huh?” Cass raised her brows, smiling incredulously at me. She cupped one ear and leaned in closer. “Did I hear that right?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” I said, huffing. “It’s just... you came and saved me. And I appreciate that.”

  “You’re my crew. I’d have to be pretty shitty to abandon you.” To my surprise, she held a fist out to me. “Bump it.”

  Slowly, I raised my fist and pressed my knuckles to hers. I smiled just a tad, then turned away from her. “Well, it’s still the early days so far. Rougher times ahead... I fed Rover before I left, so you don’t gotta worry about that. I’ll catch you another day, C. See if we can’t get our foot in the door with our psychic friend.”

  And so I went home, trying my best to ignore the aches in every joint of my body. But with each step the pain got worse, and I felt like I’d been put through the meat grinder. I was damn exhausted by the time I made it back to my foster home.

  It was dark outside as I approached the brownstone, trying my best to suppress the limp in my step. And though I unlocked the door and opened it as quietly as I dared, I could hear Gail’s voice as son as I closed it behind me. “Out with friends?” she called from the kitchen. Her voice wasn’t accusatory but it still had me on edge.

  “I had to move some junk for them,” I said, which was at least partially true.

  “Well, let me know if you’re gonna be running late. You almost missed out on dinner!” Sure enough I could hear something sizzling on a griddle.

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  Eager for a little respite, I made for the living room and plopped onto the couch. Todd was already there, watching a cartoon with rapt attention while Lassie rested on is lap. He leaned into me without taking his eyes off the screen. I would have pushed the twerp off if I had the energy to do so.

  “The Titanium Adventures,” I murmured. “Weren’t you watching this yesterday?”

  “That was the season finale,” he said, eyes unblinking. “They’re looping back around to the first season. It’s the origin story today!”

  I flicked my eyes to the screen, watching the 2D figure of Titanium as he squared up to an Arabic-looking man with a pair of glowing red swords in his hands. “It’s over Tofan!” Titanium exclaimed, the actor giving a pretty decent impression of the man himself. “You’ve done your best to break me down, but you and your cronies have failed! I’ll never build weapons for you!”

  The other man, hulking and leering, some manner of Dreadnought from muscle mass alone, grinned wolfishly. “Ah, foolish agent of the great American Shaitan, you have already given us a great weapon. All I need to is kill you and take your body from it!”

  And so they came at each other, the red saber sparking as it collided with Titanium’s forearm.

  I was familiar with Titanium’s origin, it was very well known when it came to the big names in the Apex community. Jonah Drax, wealthy Artisan industrialist, captured in Afghanistan by some radical terror cell. Tortured to make weapons for them, until he built something that could allow him to break free and fight back.

  And then he spent years annihilating that cell and most of their affiliates. There was a damn good reason a vast swath of Afghanistan was known as the Afghan Crater, after all.

  “This shit sucks,” I murmured under my breath.

  “Language!” Gail called from the kitchen.

  I blinked to myself. Christ, was she an Apex too? “Todd, you mind if we watch something else? All these flashing lights are gonna give me a headache.”

  “Huh? Really? I look at flashing lights all day and they don’t bother me.”

  “Yeah. Great for you. Now, do you mind?”

  He gave a long exaggerated sigh, raised the remote, and flicked to the next documentary. I was surprised to see that it was a documentary about the Triad.

  “... In the years immediately following the trio’s excursion into the Outer Void, after fully acclimating to their powers, it wasn’t long until Thomas Teller and his intrepid team of adventurers took on their new identities. A team of adventurers, adept at fighting crime and solving problems on a global scale. They became the Triad.”

  The screen put forth a montage of still images as the narrator spoke. First were a trio of people in bulky orange space suits, waking toward a steel archway belching streams of red and orange light. A doorway to the Outer Void, where the Visitor was said to have come from. Then it showed the trio in the aftermath, each one hospitalised from intense exposure to E-radiation.

  Two of them, minor burns aside, looked fine. Then, on the furthest and largest cot, was the hulking grey-skinned visage of Jack Graves. Or ‘Dragon’ as he was known these days. Fitting, with that sloping dragon-maw and leathery wings of his.

  The last image of the montage was the Triad in their green and black uniforms, flying into battle against some hulking elephant-esque kaiju from the Saharan Anomalous Zone. Lady Tempest, half her body crusted with frost while the other blazed with flame. Dragon swooping in with his massive fists raised overhead. And then there was Doctor Trinity floating on a glowing purple platform of pure psychic energy.

  The screen shifted to footage of Doctor Trinity himself, giving an interview to the camera. With his slicked-back brown hair, angular face, and thin moustache, he was handsome in an old timey sort of way. If you saw a black and white photo of him standing beside Marilyn Monroe, you wouldn’t think twice.

  “My family have always been interested in saving the world, even before our fateful jaunt. And ever since we gained our powers, my wife and I, and her brother Jack, we’ve devoted much of our efforts here at the Science Citadel to healing the planet.” He gave a wan smile to the camera. “I have the utmost respect for my fellow superheroes, but I fear many of them don’t see the bigger picture. There’s more to helping than merely hitting threats.”

  “And that’s where your philanthropy comes in?”

  Trinity gave a small nod to the interviewer. “Our experiments in terraforming, our deep space probes en route to distant start system, devising new forms of clean energy... I believe that the best way to stop crime is to prevent desperation. To cut out the factors that drive people toward illegality in the first place. Here at the Citadel, whenever New York isn’t in immediate danger, we’re building toward the future.”

  More footage flashed across the screen in a montage. The Triad going up against the likes of the Reptile Ravagers, Mutagen and his army of misshapen monsters, the Space Master...

  “This is boring,” Todd said, huffing and resting his scaly chin on his palm.

  I grunted in agreement. “C’mon. Dinner’s probably ready by now.”