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“What do you mean ‘Wyatt is down’?” McCallister MacReady, AKA “OverDriver,” asked over the radio, sounding confused. “What happened to Wyatt?”

“ I MEAN HE’S FUCKING DOWN! ” Oz shouted at Mack, temper snapping.

Beside them, Holly pin-wheeled through the air from another energy blast, crashing through the glass window of one of the offices.

Mull swore.

Oz ignored it, remaining focused on his goal.

“Just go!” She waved him away. “I’m dead anyway, you need to…”

“ We leave this hospital together or not at all .” Oz snapped, showing a remarkable team spirit despite his complete dismissal of his two other newly critically injured teammates.

Ahead of them, the last bank of elevators finally appeared. Oz slammed his fist repeatedly into the button, apparently trying to get the elevator to somehow arrive faster.

To their right, one of the weird super-suited people rounded the corner, holding some kind of weapon.

Mull opened her mouth to scream a warning at Oz, but in that moment, Natalie’s panic crashed into her, leaving her gasping for breath and unable to make any sound but a small squeak of fear.

Fucking Natalie.

Oz moved to stand in front of her, as the other man prepared to fire.

And for the briefest of moments, Mull felt completely safe. Like Oz could somehow stop all of this and protect her.

No one ever tried to protect her from anything. She found the idea deeply, deeply appealing.

Then that emotion was overshadowed by the realization that Oz was about to be killed in front of her, and sheer terror filled Natalie’s mind.

Before the attacker got the chance to fire at Oz though, there was the sound of a gunshot and something struck the soldier in the head. He stumbled to the side.

Mack barreled down the hallway towards them, shooting the man several times with a .

38 special, causing their assailant to stumble backwards a step as each round from the revolver impacted him, but he stayed on his feet.

“Oh, give me a fucking break!” Mack shot him one more time, with similar effect.

His gun clicked empty. Mack swore viciously and finally simply tossed the empty handgun at the man’s helmeted head, not slowing down his charge.

He used his powers over machines to open up the door behind the man.

“ Just go down you son of a biiiiiiiitch! ” He crashed into him, knocking them both down the open elevator shaft and out of sight.

Mull could tell she was just about reaching the end. Natalie’s panic had raised her heartrate and now she was bleeding out from a hundred wounds.

That fucking bitch.

It wouldn’t be long now.

“Just… go…” She breathed softly, hoping that Oz heard her.

He didn’t appear to, or if he did, he was ignoring her order. His gaze slid around the corridor, obviously trying to plan an escape.

To their right, Holly smashed the glass cabinet on the wall with her elbow and grabbed the fire ax inside.

She paused at the open elevator shaft and turned to face them.

“I’d take the stairs if I were you. Because this won’t end well.

” She took a deep breath, looking tired and uncharacteristically bruised.

“YOLO, right?” She stepped backwards into the darkness and plummeted down.

Oz started pushing the bed again… And Mull lost consciousness.

****

Surprisingly, she came to an unknown number of minutes later, in what appeared to be the lobby of the building.

It wasn’t a gentle wake up call.

She was tumbling onto the cold tile floor.

The entirely different hospital bed she’d apparently been lying in, having been knocked over by a blast from one of the unknown attackers.

She could only assume that Oz had simply lifted her from the heavier bed and physically carried her down the seven stories, then found her a replacement bed and made a break for the exit.

Instantly she started to feel around for the infants who had shared the bed with her, but she saw no sign of them. Which meant that someone else must have rescued them from the scene while she was out cold.

In the waiting area of the lobby, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The attacker was leveling his energy gun at Lexie. He pulled the trigger… and nothing happened.

Mack held out his hand, controlling the weapon with his powers. “Yeah, you’re not going to shoot any more of my friends today, asshole.” He wheezed, doubled-over in pain from earlier rounds of a fight Mull had missed.

Lexie smiled, unsteady on her feet from the battle. “Not so tough without your…”

The man smashed the butt of his weapon into her face and Lexie went down .

Mack straightened, bracing his feet. “Poll?”

The digital form of Polybius, the Consortium’s artificial intelligence appeared beside him. “His suit is not accessible by any conventional electronic means which I can find. The signal it is receiving is randomized and I am unable to break into it at this time.”

“Fine. I can’t get a handle on the suit either, powers can’t nail it down.

So we’ll have to do it the ol’ fashioned way then.

” Mack slipped on a pair of brass knuckles and looked over at Mull, face somber.

He knew what was about to happen. “Might want to git while the gettings good, sweetheart.” He warned.

“I can give you… maybe thirty seconds.” He glanced at his digital partner, voice tight.

“Ready to do somethin’ really stupid, darlin’? ”

Polly shook her head, looking concerned. “McCallister…” She began worriedly.

But Mack wasn’t listening.

And Mull wasn’t going anywhere. Not in thirty seconds, not in thirty days.

Every single movement was an agony she had never before known, and she’d been hurt a lot in her life.

It took everything she had not to just start screaming in hysterical pain, just sitting perfectly still, there was no way she was going to drag herself to the door before she died.

Below her, the tiles of the floor began to feel warm and slick, as she bled out.

But that didn’t stop her. She didn’t know where Oz was, but she knew where he’d been headed when she last saw him. And she knew that wherever he was, he’d be better off if she was there to protect him.

She started clawing at the floor with her broken fingers, trying to draw her bleeding body towards the automatic doors.

To her left, Mack moved to cover her escape, marching straight at the unknown man.

The attacker swung at him with a heavy fist, but Mack dodged to the side, and the blow instead hit one of the support pillars of the building and knocked a huge chunk of concrete free.

Mack punched the unknown man hard enough to crack the clear faceplate of the power-suit he wore…

but it wasn’t enough. He grabbed Mack by the neck…

Mull was on the verge of losing consciousness again, she could feel it. From her position on the floor though, she had a good view of the large clock above the entrance to the building.

It showed 11:59.

And for the first time in as long as she could remember, Mull spoke to God .

“Come on… come on… gimme something…” She watched the digital numbers count up, heartrate increasing in terror and anticipation, which was just quickening her imminent death. “Gimme something I can use… Please , God… Please …”

The clock showed 12:00:01.

Her entire existence shifted into a new version of herself, like the spinning rolls of a slot machine clicking into place and stopping on…

A brick.

A fucking brick.

Yeah, that would do…

Mack weakly hit the man again, but the attacker’s robotically enhanced grip wasn’t going to budge.

The fight was over. Mack would be dead in a few more seconds and he knew it.

But even on death’s door, the man looked rather surprised as Mull calmly got back to her feet. She twisted her neck to the side, popping newly healed bones and tendons back into place. She put her fingers to her now healed lips and whistled loudly to get the attacker’s attention too.

The man turned to look at her, then frowned behind his broken transparent facemask.

“You wanna brawl? That it?” Mull asked him, stalking forward.

“You look at me and you see a little girl in a paper hospital gown, all broken and bloody. Easy pickins’ for a big tough man like you, yeah?

” She yanked out her IV and absently tossed the tube aside.

“Well, mister, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you haven’t seen angry until you’ve seen a clinically insane, trained assassin, super-villainess, with PMS and a missing boyfriend!

” She slapped her palm against her chest. “You wanna see angry? I will SHOW YOU fucking angry!”

The man pulled his energy weapon again and fired at her.

She simply turned to the side, meeting the blast with her shoulder and tearing through it with her newly invulnerable body.

“Ehn-ah-ah.” She shook her head. “Now you wanna start shit with ME!?! With my friends!?! And you think I won’t stop you because you’re a big scary man in a metal suit!

?!” She pointed at the clock, which showed that it was 12:02.

“Sorry, pal. You’re two goddamn minutes too late.

” She closed the distance between them and the man dropped Mack to the floor, preparing to fight her.

“You wanna step in the ring with me?” She challenged, then absolutely leveled the attacker with a right straight punch, just about breaking him in half and sending him flying down the hall like a leaf in a breeze. “Ding-ding, motherfucker!”

The man slammed into the far wall, dislodging his helmet and making it skid away. He lay still for a moment, obviously hurt.

Good.

Mull calmly stalked after him, her healing powers now working on returning her hair to its normal length, after her doctors had shaved it to suture her wounds.

“My powers sucked yesterday, but today I’m a goddamn Brick House .

” She growled at the man. “Hazard level of strength and durability, with some useful accelerated healing to take care of the rest. Which means no one pushes me around today!” She planted her foot on the center of the man’s neck, pinning him to the ground.

“For the next 23 hours, fifty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds, I CAN PUNCH A WHOLE IN THE FUCKING SKY!” She smiled cruelly, pressing downward on him with her newfound tremendous strength.

“And guess what that means for your skinny ass?”

The man’s neck snapped.

Mull stared down at him in silence, trying to decide if she had any idea who the hell this guy even was.

She didn’t hear the second attacker as he came up behind her, the sirens and fire alarm were too loud. She did, however, hear the man’s screams.

She spun around to face him, only to see the man withering away to nothing inside his armor, like an ant under a magnifying glass.

It was like… something was eating the man away.

Making him decay in fastforward. The man’s body…

melted, like something from Raiders of the Lost Ark .

His mostly empty armor landed by her feet, and Mull looked around the interior of the lobby, searching for a cause.

She didn’t have to look hard.

Laying on the ground a short distance away, Oz was glaring at the man with creepy black eyes. His whole body was shuddering, then he stopped. His eyes cleared, then he pulled his legs up to his chest and started shaking again.

Which was… odd.

Mack got back to his feet and staggered towards the door. “Have… to… get out…” He whispered through bruised vocal chords, bending to grab Lexi’s leg and start pulling her towards the door.

Mull didn’t need to be told twice. She missed the middle part of this particular fight, but was willing to accept her teammate’s warning without asking too many questions. She grabbed Oz, who was still shuddering, and ushered him towards the exit .

They reached the parking lot, where an assortment of other broken and battered Consortium members were scattered in the rain.

Above them, Poacher dove from a third story window, just as the building rocked from an explosion.

Mull reached up to shield Oz from the falling debris, as half of the hospital looked like it came down in front of them.

Poacher held one of the newborns from the maternity ward in his arms, then held it aloft like a football player in the end zone, showing everyone that he’d managed to rescue them all.

For one terrifying moment, Mull thought he might actually spike the baby in a celebratory dance. But, thankfully, he refrained.

She looked back at the burning rubble of the building where she’d just almost died.

Mull hated hospitals.