Chapter Text
“I-I, fuck, hold on!”
I wasn’t conscious, not yet. Something was subdued, a piece of me ripped away. Irreversible, devastating. My fingers twitched, not of my own accord. My eyes weren’t open, but I could feel my body struggling to survive. Muscles swelled, ballooning in my body to replace what had been sheared away. Bone grew beneath it, the spongy mass racing to keep up with the red, irritated flesh. Skin stretched around it, my whole body creaking and groaning in protest with the effort. I was whole, or at least, whole enough. Inside of me, I could feel something snap.
I rolled onto my side and vomited black, brackish blood. It was painful, my lungs forcing out everything that had remained inside. I sucked in a raspy breath, my eyes finally fluttering open. My senses returned to me. Dulled, but present. Someone was screaming, sobbing. Was it me?
I pushed myself to my hands and knees, spitting out another chunk of what I could only assume was my own lungs. No, it wasn’t me that was screaming this time. I was healing, but I couldn’t remember from what. Headhunter, Gemstone, were they here? No… My heart sank. the sensation of being stabbed rocked through my entire body. They were gone, Spectra was too. Momentum and Shell?
I raised my head, blinking away the blurriness that remained in my vision. It only took a few moments, but I finally gained my bearings. I was in the basement of the hideout, a deep red stain soaking the carpet that I had walked across so many times. Nobody else was here, nobody else had made it.
Another scream, a desperate, wailing sob that rattled me to my core. I pushed myself to my feet, stumbling as I leaned against the wall. My clothes were torn, ripped in half almost directly down the middle. My entire body was caked in blood, only partially dried. How long had I been out?
I took a stumbling step towards the stairs, but my leg gave out from under me. I collapsed onto my knees, my eyes closing. I could feel something ebb inside of me, my own heart beating inside of my ears, inside of my skull. I felt hot, burning up, as if I was boiling. I sucked in a deep breath, the heat slowly receding as I breathed. Another scream, another wail.
I pushed myself to my feet again, careful to steady myself against the railing as I placed my foot down on the stairs. One by one, I ascended them. I could hear ragged breathing, wheezes and sobs that were accompanied by something fluttering, like a million tiny wings.
I reached the top of the stairs, my feet padding inaudibly against the concrete. I looked to the source of the noise, my eyes squinting against the sudden light. The duffel bags of the money. My heart leapt up into my chest, the sight of bills scattered on the ground instilling the smallest spark of hope in me.
Egressa stood in the middle of the training area, the bags of money laying at her feet. I wanted to call out, to say something, but I was still struggling to breathe. She was screaming, her limbs jerking in a movement that I almost took as dancing. Graceful, powerful, but violent. Bills fluttered through the air, half torn and scattered like confetti. Egressa was tearing them up, throwing them into the sky for them to come down around her.
She collapsed to her knees, her hands clutched to her chest. She let out another wail, a desperate scream of someone that had lost everything. The girl reached up and ripped her mask off, throwing it across the room.
“E-Egressa…” I croaked, taking a shambling step towards her. My voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper as the words forced themselves out of my blood-caked throat.
“Couldn’t save them, couldn’t save them…” She was repeating herself, her chest shuddering. In an instant, she was standing again, scattering bills through the air like she was trying to send them as far away as possible. She reached down and grabbed a duffel bag, throwing it across the room. It slammed into a training dummy, the stacks of paper scattering out all over the floor as the dummy clattered to the ground.
“Egressa…” I repeated, but she didn’t hear. She was screaming again, bent in half with the exertion. I was only paces away from her now, but I was helpless to let her know I was here. I cleared my throat again, sucking in a much needed breath.
“Fucking fake!” She screamed, scooping down and grabbing a handful of bills. She shredded them, and scattered them into the air. “All dead for a bag of fake fucking bills!”
I reached out, grabbing her shoulder with the last of my balance. Egressa screamed, jumping away from me and whirling around. Without her for support, I collapsed to my knees, wheezing.
“O-Oh my god, Roxy!” The recognition clicked in my head, her face finally connecting the dots together. Zayna reached up, wiping tears away from her face. Her eyes were red and puffy, her hands stained with blood. “Y-You… You were dead!”
“Not dead.” I gasped, falling forward onto my hands and knees. “Regenerated.”
“I-I… Headhunter and Gemstone... “ She started, her voice raw.
“Dead.” I nodded, my vision pulsing. I could feel my blood rush through my veins, pumping through newly formed vessels and supplying oxygen to fresh muscle. “Leah’s gone?”
“I couldn’t save them…” She sobbed, falling to her knees. “The money, Roxy… it’s fake, it’s all fake. He knew we were coming, it was a trap. He sent us there to kill us.” She was barely comprehensible as she spoke, her words rushed and slurred as she sucked in uneven breaths.
My insides twisted, something seeming to coil around my heart and squeeze.
“Just us now…” I groaned, reaching up to hold onto her. I was healed now, but something was still off, still hurting. My chest was tight, and my eyes burned. “G-Gonna find them, gonna fucking kill them.”
Zayna nodded, her chest rising with a slow, deliberate inhale. She was crying, and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t. I should have been, but I couldn’t. I wrapped my arms around her, and she buried her face in the crook of my neck. We sat there for a long moment. We didn’t speak, we just sat there together. Hurting. Breathing. Holding each other.
“Roxy…” Zayna finally spoke, her fingernails digging into my back. “They know who you are. They’re already swarming your house.”
I nodded solemnly. There wasn’t much back home for me right now anyways. A mother who wanted me dead, a father who I hadn’t seen in months. No, what stung more was that my real family, the only people who had ever wanted me, lay dead, halfway across the city. The PRT had to be there by now, stuffing them into body bags and moving on without a care.
Leah was out there too, somewhere. House had taken her. Max was dead, and so was headhunter, but Leah wasn’t.
“They’ll fucking pay...” I exhaled, my chest shuddering.
Minutes passed, and neither of us moved. The only thing anchoring me to this world were the arms around my body, clutching my half-naked and blood soaked form. I wanted to speak and offer some sort of comfort, another vow of revenge, but nothing quite felt right. I didn’t want to break the silence, to force us back into the reality that had so harshly ripped everything away
#
I paced the floor of the hideout, my anxiety providing me a manic energy that I just couldn’t seem to get rid of. Zayna was still asleep, having passed out on one of the couches downstairs a few hours after we returned. She had barely said a word since we had arrived back, seemingly catatonic after her original panic attack had faded. The money still lay in shreds on the ground, the fake bills peering back up at me.
My costume had all but fallen off over the night, the sheared fabric barely clinging to my body. I was still dressed in what remained of it, but I held a blanket tightly around me as I paced.
I stooped down, snatching one of the intact bills up. In the place of the portrait that should have been in the center of the bill, an icon of a masked man was printed onto it. A dark visor covered their entire face, a gilded frame wrapping around the visor and providing contrast to the rest of the helmet. At the top, the bill read PROPERTY OF HIGH ROLLERS. Underneath, where the denomination of the bill was supposed to be, there was only the phrase Better luck next time.
I crumpled the bill in my hand. Fake. Just like Zayna had said.
It didn’t seem real. My friends… My family. I had only spent a week with them before they were gone. And now, I had nothing. No home, no friends save for Zayna, no money, no reprieve from the thoughts pounding in the back of my head.
You should be dead too. You deserve to be. They should still be alive, you should be the one with her head caved in. You should be the one with her skull split open, brain leaking onto the ground .
The sound of a helicopter made me flinch. I could hear the faint chop of the rotors, slowly getting louder and louder. Here for me. Here for Zayna. Here to kill us, to finish us.
I waited, my fists clenched. The sound faded into the faint purr of the city. Sunlight streamed in through the skylights, the faint morning sun streaking through the motes of dust.
I collapsed to my knees, releasing a breath that I didn’t know I was holding. My hands were trembling, I realized. I pressed them together between my knees, trying to stop the shaking of my fingers.
Turn myself in. The thought burst forth like a gunshot, tearing forwards to the front of my mind.
“No.” I muttered, shaking my head. I can’t turn myself in, there would be no point. They would send me to jail, and I would be just as fucked as I was now. Plus, I didn’t deserve to be there. I hadn’t done anything wrong, the High Rollers were the ones that did.
I’m going to pick apart Shell like a fucking lobster, rip out his limbs one by one until he’s nothing but a bleeding husk of a man. My hand ached where the chitinous spike had ripped through it, pinning me to the ground. I’ll wear his fucking skin like armor, I’ll use his own bones to bash his skull in.
I rocked back and forth on my knees. Rampant, if he’s still alive. He’s going to suffer too. The PRT probably has him, fuck. No point in going after him. Momentum… My breath caught in my throat as I remembered the sound that his fist made as it collided with Leah’s skull. I’m going to let Leah kill him. Maybe I take his hands first, just to make sure he feels what I did. Helpless, forced to watch. Leah can do what she wants with him afterwards.
“Roxy?” Zayna’s voice startled me, her voice hoarse as she called out. I whirled around, turning to face the stairs to the lounge as she ascended towards the main room.
“I-In here.” I called out, my voice trembling. Zayna reached the top step, and started to walk towards me. She was still in her costume as well, the dried bloodstains contrasting harshly with the blue of her costume.
“Roxy.” She exhaled, kneeling down in front of me. Her voice sounded close to breaking, the hoarseness from her screaming last night only making it worse. “I was worried that you left. Are you okay?”
“No.” I huffed. “You?”
She paused. “No.”
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the sound of each other breathing.
“What do we do?” I looked down at my hands. “We… We’re fucked, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, barely exhaling the words.
What would Headhunter do if he were here? He’s not here, he’s fucking dead. You watched it happen . I stared down at the carpet of fake bills, the masked figure leering up at me through the monochrome visor.
“We need to get Leah back.” I exhaled, my chest shuddering. “We get her back, and then we kill them. Momentum, Shell, and House.”
Zayna didn’t respond. She rose to her feet, her arms wrapped around herself against the cold warehouse air. Her cape hung behind her, deflated. No breeze in here.
“Zayna?” I stood as well, shifting the blanket around my shoulders.
“I… Have to go home. My parents are going to be worried about me.” She muttered, eyes glistening with tears.
Her words seemed to rip through my chest. She’s abandoning you, she’s cutting ties and leaving you here to die. I shook my head again. No… She wouldn’t do that to me. Would she? How much did I even know her?
“Zayna.” I repeated myself, trying to keep my voice from wavering. “You agree with me, right? We need to get her back.”
She nodded in response, but didn’t speak. Her eyes were locked on the floor, staring off somewhere into the middle distance. I didn’t want her to leave, but I knew that I couldn’t stop her. Without Zayna here, I would be alone, left to my own thoughts and memories.
“I’ll be back tonight.” She mumbled, her hair hanging around her face as she looked down. “I’ll… I’ll bring you some food, and some clothes. We can decide what to do from there.”
“Promise you’ll come back.” It wasn’t a question.
Zayna nodded, her cape fluttering as a rift opened behind her. “I promise, Roxy.”