Super•Villainous

LVII

"Shoot her in the thigh."

The command was directed at Ferrus, and he followed it unquestioningly. Dark metal forced its way out of his fingertips like a reverse splinter to bury itself in the fleshiest part of my left leg, causing me to buckle sideways, only saved a harsh greeting with the floor by Tectonic's expectant grasp clamping around my biceps.

"What? You aren't going to scream for me?" the Constable asked, almost whimsical. His voice abruptly hardened. "Do it again. Arm this time."

Ferrus obeyed, this time releasing the condensed metal from his right pointer finger, and when I didn't react he speared two more into my remaining limbs, another for my hip, then down the hollows of my collarbones. The Constable's only intervening commentary was an order to avoid my neck, because he needed me capable of speaking.

No. Not speaking. Screaming. I caught onto his game early on when he'd watched Tempest expose himself to Atticus's attacks in an attempt to rescue Will-O, and I refused to play into his hands. My pain was only temporary, but the consequences of distracting Atticus would linger.

By the eighth shot, lodged between my lower ribs, I realized Ferrus was embedding his own lead fingerbones beneath my skin. Certain he'd used all his distal phalanges after the ninth and tenth tore into my thighs, I allowed myself a shaky breath. To prevent myself from letting out a sound, I had bit clean through the inside of my lip. Iron filled my mouth, and I felt desperate relief. If I could only hold out a little longer, - just a little longer - Atticus would finish his business and whisk us away into the dark.

But wait too long and we risked the other Super's completing their recapture of the few surviving escaped prisoners. If they joined us, we stood no chance, and my bleak promise to the Constable would find itself my bitter reality. Capture. Death. Revenge. More death.

Facing me, Ferrus threw out his hands palms down in a steady line, leaving Tectonic solely in charge of my restraint. All ten bones buried across my body dislodged at once, retearing freshly healed skin and muscle from the inside as they raced to return to their home in his fingers. I had no warning. No time to brace myself.

The resulting sound scraped over the back of my throat. Too late, I snapped my mouth shut and the scream clawed its way through my clenched teeth.

In between heartbeats, Tectonic's shadow shivered, and Atticus rose out of it behind the earth manipulator's back, a short spear of ice in each hand, clear like glass. I blinked, and then one of them poked out the opposite side of Tectonic's chest. Mouth agape, he stared dumbly down at the intrusion. Releasing me, he fumbled to gain purchase on the slippery, tapering point, failing to pull it the rest of the way free, yet also lacking the strength to push it out the other end. Earth quaked in a last ditch effort to fight off something he didn't wholly understand, a shallow whimper compared to the destruction he'd wrought on the land just minutes previously.

"Run!" Atticus grasped my hand, his shadows carrying us only a few yards in an instant. He indicated his remaining icicle as we stumbled into a beleaguered sprint. "This is all I have left. I've overextended myself and can't manifest any more of my powers. We need to run."

I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, ignoring the pain of my repairing tendons and the furious shouts to our rear. I tried not to dwell on the murder I watched Atticus commit without once shifting his expression out of anything less than a mask of severe, furious indifference.

I dared not look behind us in our mad sprint for shelter. Was it even possible to run far enough and fast enough to outpace most of an entire Superhero Guild without the boon of Atticus's powers? We found out soon enough when Tempest dropped to the ground in front of us, the road cracking beneath the force of his landing.