I wish I didn't derive the sick satisfaction I get from escorting Will right up to the gates of the power plant and seeing his jaw drop. The momentary goading is replaced at once by an absolute loathing at myself for feeling it, for dragging my brother into hell with me, and finally, I steel myself away from emotion, in part for what I now I have to face inside. The plan's set in stone. We live or die by the blade today, and hell, I'd die for them. I'm ready to go down. "Are we ready?" I ask.

No objection. From experience, that's a yes.

I half-expect someone to shy at the first Walker, but Karen and Garrett double team the first one we see like they've been cracking the shit out of them for the last six months, like we have. Amanda charges ahead and meets Evan, whose longer horns have grown until they curl around his ears. He's fleet as ever, with not a second of hesitation, but he's not dealing with me anymore- the other five of us are all ready to take him out. He dives for Amanda first, and she swings him aside with the hilt of her brush before slamming him with purple paint, which, upon impact, throws him against the wall. Another round of pink paint seals him there by the arm and half his shoulder, but that's already beginning to smoulder as he rakes his other hand along it.

People flood the halls of the Delegation, at least twenty, and while most have swords and other typical weapons, at least for this place, I catch the steely barrel of a pistol and my heat drops. A single bullet whistles through the air and Serena deflects it with the tip of her staff. "Cover me." she tells the group, and Amanda, Will, and I start storming the crowd while Karen, Garrett, and Harper handle the robots still encroaching from the other side. Amanda is an agent of chaos, changing paint colors on a dime and disabling whole groups, and Will fights at my back, blocking sword blows and a stray bullet. We're an awkward duo, although I can tell he's trained, and I want so badly to reach out for him, to tell him we've got a handle on this.

For what it's worth, I enjoy the rush.

With catlike reflexes, Serena dips past us, shield in one hand, and knocks the gun-wielding Delegation member upside the chin. He falls, and several more members retreat. The alarm lights are already blaring overhead.

"Onyx is getting free," yells Harper. "I can handle him. Just a warning."

"Got it," I say. "Gen, the mask?"

Serena raises the Delegation mask, more defined in feature than any of the pale imitations lying besides passed-out lesser employees, all of whom are missing that Diosite shard. "This is our ticket in." she slips it on, and the room quiets, save for the clink of halberd on metal and Harper trying to wall Evan in with shadows, which his fire rips through like tissue paper. My hand twitches for my sword.

Karen raises an eyebrow.

"Is that safe?" Will asks.

Serena lets out a cry of pain and Karen knocks it off. "Better idea. Is there a computer anywhere in here?"

Serena, still dizzy, lifts a finger. "I think I know just where to go." She lowers it to the door, behind us.

"Harper!" I yell.

She's not faster than Evan, but her shadows are. She launches herself over to us on the backs of one of hers, and then clings tight to us as Evan comes running. Amanda blows him back again, possibly with a little too much vigor, and raises a hand. "Let's get in there. Leave the rest to me."

"I've got this," Garrett says, and a portal opens beneath our feet, like those of the Veins, spitting us out inside the room.

"That works on people? Can you get us inside the main chamber?" I ask.

"Not unless I can see or visualize it. Otherwise, we might get... stuck." Garrett says. Meanwhile, Amanda seals the door with pink paint, which congeals into a bouncy wall, and Karen runs her hand over the computer interface.

A surge of electricity sweeps the room and Karen presses down, hard, laughing maniacally. "I understand the system--holy hell, it all makes sense now! Damn, are you sure they never planned for this? Because..." her face twitches. "Sneaky little bitches. "

"Cherubs later! Not dying now!" Will suggests. "What's the deal?"

"The deal is their security is awful. You could bang on one of these and probably get them to give up their public key," Karen says.

"We tried that. Several times." Serena says. "The machine caught on fire, but we didn't get into anything."

"Can you open the gate to the inner chamber?" I ask.

"Yes." Karen confirms. "I'd have to stick here to do it, though."

Will tenses. "Are you sure?"

Karen raises one hand to Garrett's shoulder, shocking him. "We can handle ourselves."

"Speak for yourself," Garrett says, dusting himself off and adjusting his obnoxious pointed glasses. "Yeah, we can though."

Will and Amanda look to each other. Amanda mutters, "Oh no. I'm not missing the final battle."

"It'll be five on five," I say. "That's... not quite what I'd been hoping for, but..."

"I can put the mask back on." Serena offers.

"They'll know you tried it once. There's a chance the whole thing was a trap the first time, and if it didn't snare you once, it might now." The pink wall is beginning to sizzle. "Get out of here. Now." Karen yells.

Amanda tackles Evan like a linebacker as he lunges through, brush and all. The two tousle, his burning claws closing in on her nose, but Amanda bounces back, sealing Karen and Garrett and managing to smack Evan in one blow. He punches her in the back, and she goes down, but Will enters the fray just as fast, cutting him off from his next attack.

"We know you're in there, fighting," Will says, and I feel my eye twitch, not because it's stupid, which it is, but because I've tried it before.

Evan cuts him off with a snap, followed by a spray of fire, and the whole group braces as half the room floods with it. Harper shields Amanda and I, along with herself, and Serena retaliates with a wall of metal that disappears when she folds her hand, but the implication is clear. We need to go.

The group dashes through the halls, for old times sake, and Evan disappears behind us. I keep expecting to see Megan at my back, or to hit up a few Walkers, but Amanda is on front guard, with Harper, who is navigating, and there's not a robot the two can't handle. The back door, as promised, is open before us when we get there, though Delegation members crowd the overhead walkways. Some jump down from above, while others file in the right side, with Evan near the front, eyes lifeless.

The door slams shut behinds us, and I hear the crack of bone. Serena's breath catches in the darkness, an arm falling at her feet, and my heartbeat kicks up into overdrive. We're through. Most of the Delegation is... out. Next to us, I hear a click of fingers and Evan stands, slumped against the door, in the haze. His expression is so familiar he almost looks free. "Nice," he says. His hand convulses towards us, and pain twitches across his face. "Last chance to run."

He hits Amanda's brush, which goes up in flame just as more paint manifests atop it. She strikes the burning bristles across his side, where it seals his limbs against the wall, and he struggles beneath it, teeth grit.

"I can burn through this all day." he warns. "Told you to get out once. Trying to be nice here."

"Listen up," Amanda says, "Whatever part of you is in there, I hate you. Whatever this is, the thing controlling you, I hate that too. I don't think there's one part of you I don't loathe on a deeply personal level. Now, I'm giving you one chance, because I'm showing a lot more restraint here, and I want to knock your teeth out- you sit here, stay caught, and we pick you up later, or you follow and I give you the green paint." Her eyes narrow. "For the record? That's acid."

Evan laughs quietly. "Not my choice."

I reach out for him, and Amanda slaps my hand away. "We're going. We're getting this over with. Now."

I follow her into the darkness, and up that last, rickety set of stairs into the light. The five officers are there, waiting, and the machine is open, awaiting the next victim. Will, Serena, Harper, Amanda, and I ready our weapons. The officer at the head, that same woman from before, readies her sword, and Amanda twirls her brush and dives for it.

Harper rides one shadow beast, attacking with the other, while Serena summons two staffs. Everything might have changed, but here we are, still unable to fire more than blanks, or at least she is... and they'll know, this time. Will offers me a hand and we begin the final battle together, side by side.

Two officers come for us, seeing as we don't have much in the way of flashy powers, and the former is surprised when his arm becomes encased in a block of ice. I parry a blow from one sword, holding my brother's back. He's not just good- he's incredible. He can block, sure, but he's also surprisingly effective at using the shield as an offensive weapon, whether it be the sharp edge for impact or just ramming someone with it to blow them back. The ice powers help, too, especially since I can't indiscriminately wave a flaming blade around. The other metal blade finals gives beneath the heat of mine, and with both of the officers disarmed, I kick one aside and Will hits the other over the head with a shield knocking him out. The masks clatter to the floor, Diosite-rich.

Evan bursts back into the room, blazing, and I look to the girls. Their officers are keeping up well, even Amanda's, who had no way to prepare. There has to be some way to take them out without turning this into a risky stall-based battle... and then it hits me.

"What are we waiting for?" I ask. "We know how to end this. Gen, shoot up!"

Serena summons a real gun and shoots straight up, into the eye of the chamber, and the glass shatters. Harper's two shadows pile into a singular, long and thin beast that shoots skywards in the path of the bullet, and with a click of its mouth, the Diosite core comes loose, the shards heavy in its mouth. Will and I run to cover for the two of them, and I fling my blade forwards, hitting someone in the hand. They yell, the burning metal hitting flesh, and fall down, and Harper gets a second to recover. One of the remaining officers stares up long enough for Will to knock him out cold with a blow to the back of the head, and the other slips where Megan fell on a stream of dark red paint. Amanda binds one arm and rips the shard out. The final officer, while down, is hit by more paint. Amanda taps the brush against the ground, wearily enthusiastic.

"That's it," I say, a manic grin gracing my face. "That's..."

This doesn't feel real.

Evan staggers forwards, and Amanda's brush quivers with black paint. With a flick of her wrist, she demolishes the Echo Chamber, sending shards of glass across the room. Evan seizes up, like he's been hit, and he drops to the floor with a choked sob. I see him shiver on the floor out of the corner of my eye, looking at his own hands in pure panic. It's him, it's him, it's him-- and these are the people who hurt him.

Anthem's power takes me before the better half of my human nature can. "Who here did this?" My voice booms across the room, my sword brandished. "Which one of you was the first to pick up the Diosite?"

From the officers, one of the two women rises, the one whose hair reminded me of a mane the first time we fought her. It was a trivial detail, but it sticks with my now. It clusters around her neck, framing her tired eyes. Something about her countenance reminds me of Serena and myself, maybe something in the mouth, a harsh sadness. I raise my sword a heartbeat in front of her face, close enough that her features shake under the heat.

"You'll see me in the news besides the other missing persons in a few days. My sentence to life is short," she whispers.

"I can make it a little shorter." I respond.

Serena whispers something, but none of my teammates move. "Why?" I ask at last.

"When I first picked up the Diosite, I was hit by all fourty-seven cells of power. It overwhelmed me... I recognized, at once, an overwhelming need to spread and grow, so deep it felt like an endless pain, and when I came to the plant my grandfather once worked at, just to give it room, it told me what it needed of me. It had an affinity for emptiness- it could seek out the people who would take this, just for the thrill of being part of something larger, built our bodies into a temple. I always felt that twinge of guilt, but it was drowned by... it insisted... I wanted this. I wanted to be on top of this empire. There is no rush like what this thing can offer you."

I grimace. A moment passes between us, a single breath, as my sword shivers. Ignatius's shocked face as he bled onto the floor of his pathetic basement runs through me, but deeper, I'm thinking of every good moment in the last six months.

"It got you too, didn't it?" she whispers.

I draw the sword away from her face.

***

"So it's over?"

Serena waits for orders in the dark, long after even Harper is gone from the Veins. Karen and Garrett are home, Amanda and Will are with Shiloh, and Evan? Evan ran for it. He could be anywhere, and my face flushes with unresolved emotion just thinking about it. The two of us, though, Serena and I? Somehow it's hard for us to say good-bye to this.

"Yes." Anthem paces in our lair, for possibly the last time we'll ever see it. "I'll need to retrieve the final shard from Evan, but he will be compelled to come."

"That simple." Serena says, offering up her stone. She seems to flicker as she does so, and Anthem takes it from her hand with her teeth and eats it. She looks at her hand, which is beginning to flake off. "I'll see you tomorrow, Chief."

I'm not sure if she disappears before she makes it to the door or not. In this light, it's hard to tell. I look back to Anthem, whose resentful glare is tracking me. Even now, when I'm ostensibly beyond her control, I am bothered by it in a visceral way.

"You don't have anything to say to me, I guess." I say.

"Do you really wish to talk to me, Adam?" Anthem asks.

I had never imagined this moment. Maybe an earlier version of me had never seen it coming, even feared the end, but I had also imagined ending with them. I breathe in the air one last time, the paper and bizarre hint of flesh, which, odd as it sounds, isn't entirely unpleasant. I don't think I could describe it- the sensation is well and truly alien, but it binds together some of my fondest memories of them.

Not true. I still have Megan and I, buying presents; the night at Megan's house; several times we hung out following that, alone together. I have scented chapstick in my human pocket.

Anthem's gaze is wide enough to see two Adams, but neither of them are the 'better' version of me. I'm coming to terms, slowly, with the fact that there might not be one at all, and regardless, any new version of me will be human... but perhaps not powerless. "Yes. Yes I do. In a second, here, I won't have powers, but you also won't have a mental grip on me. So here's one last deal for you. I let you free, I keep your secret, I live the rest of my miserable human life, but you? You never, ever touch anyone in my family again- and yes, I mean everyone in my family. If I so much as get a snitch of that, ever again, I will murder you."

I shed my costume, for the last time, and Anthem takes the Diosite from me. As she swallows, she says, "As you wish."

I make it out of the Veins before I can disappear, wake up before I can convince myself this is all a dream, and spend the night typing a message to Evan. He never answers. I'm scared for him.

Even the room is changed. I'm going to leave for college before things settle in my mind again.