Patrolling Chicago from the air is one of my favourite things to do. Its not just a beautiful sight to see - some bits of Chicago are downright ugly even under six feet of snow - but flying over it just brings home how responsible I am for it now. Its not just my home, its my job, my charge, my life consuming monster. Every day I found some new corner of it I'd never seen before, from awful slums I'd never imagined existed here to parks and public spaces I'd never really seen before. I'd drop out of the sky and spend a few minutes chatting to a local pastor working on a drug rehab project in the middle of a street, find a new public art installation in a snowed in park, or help a patrolman who wanted backup on a suspicious building checkup.

I actually saw amazingly little action most days. Very few people were crazy enough to physically attack any superhero, let alone me. Just turning up had ended gunfights several times, the suspects promptly legging it at the sight of the blue cape. Hot Pursuit was often considerably harder that combat - the chaos of a chase with multiple armed suspects though packed city streets was manic. When things got out of control like that, that was when I got scared. I was invulnerable to anything they could throw at me, but the police, the citizens, even the suspects, they very definitely weren't. If I made a mistake, and god knows I do make them, I wasn't the one paying for it.

I was flying the final leg of my patrol route over the eastern edge of the loop, weaving gracefully through the canyons as I worked my way towards my goal - Shelly had found an art gallery that just opened a new restaurant with what was apparently a very good french chief, and invited the B's and me for a girls night out. She'd even rearranged the patrol routing for me, which was unusual but not against the rules. They were supposed to be semi random.

I was taking it easy. It was a gorgeous, fantastic feeling, floating through the darkness and snow while surrounded by lights from the skyscrapers of the loop and the street below. I could imagine I was floating through some magical coral reef in the ocean, on a night like this. I loved it more than I can say.

Shelly called - She'd taken to using the neural implant in my skull for some slightly tasteless new tricks, including some fancy new entrances for her avatar. she materialised in a sudden flurry of snow that wrapped around her and then vanished, leaving her standing in mid-air in a fluffy, clingy, high-legged elf costume. I eyed her warily. Shelly had a streak of mischief in her so wide it put the river to shame.

"...You're not wearing that to the party? Are you?"

"Sure. Why not?"

She was utterly unrepentant, clearly innocent of all crimes. However I'd spent a lifetime translating Shelly-speak into reality. I was not fooled.

"So no, then. Ok. Besides, we've already had Christmas. You'd look like you overslept, or something."

"Humph. You're assuming your dress is going to make it there intact. Maybe there could have been a mistake at the dry cleaners. You'd look great in this."

"I'd look twelve in that. I'm shorter than you, remember? No legs to show."

"you have great legs!"

I rolled my eyes with undiluted sarcasm.

"Uh huh. Andrew practically broke into sweat, giving me legs. I have two and a half inch heels on my knee-high boots and a costume that shows my hips right up to the tip of the curve, and I barely look bipedal. some people get all the height."

Shelly's grin was evil incarnate.

"Sure you have legs. And a great butt. People go on and on about about them. I can show you the faaaaaan sites..."

I shuddered. I'd learned to treat the internet as a rabid beast, all slathering madness at the press of the the wrong key. I never, ever went on the fan sites. The first and last time I had innocently wandered into one I'd found pictures of me, with comments, that made me want to dress like a nun for months afterwards and never, ever go outdoors.

I firmly changed the subject, although Shelley's glinting eyes told me this subject wasn't going to go away for long.

"So how did you find this master chief? I've been to the the Mode Classic Gallery before - Its mostly high end home decorations for the seriously wealthy,all very commercial. Its not exactly the kind of place I'd expect you to visit, Shell."

"I found him on the internet." She pronounced with an airy wave. "Apparently he was very big in france a few years ago. It's quite a catch for them, this guy."

Shelly didn't make eye contact and shifted her non-existent weight from one foot to the other as we flew through another flurry of snow. Oh no. Warning, warning, warning lights are flashing. I really had known Shelly her whole life; I could see this particular lie written in big red crayon across her face. This was slightly guilty Shelly - she'd done something and now she was trying to work out how to confess without getting blamed. The last time I'd let Shelly fool me it was when she'd gone to work for the government and ended up in a high tech Brigadoon. I'd been so distracted I'd missed it, as well as missing two of my other best friends from school falling in love with each other. I'd kicked myself into orbit for ignoring so much and doubled down on all of them - I wasn't about to let any of my circle drift away from me just because my life now crammed about 25 hours into every 24.

"...SHELLY!" Was a full voiced yell. Bordering on a bellow.

She startled and looked back at me. I was glaring at her, and I was about ready to wring the truth out of her now. I was not going to let her blindside me again. She'd blindsided me before. Shelly had jumped off a roof at sixteen years old believing she'd develop superpowers, and I never seen it coming. I was through getting nasty surprises from Shelly.

"Truth. Right now. Or I will drag you and all the B's back to the Dome and lock you down in it until you tell me, I swear to god."

Shelly just looked shocked at me, like she was surprised I was angry with her. "jjjjeeezus, Hope. It's just. Well, I kinda carn't tell you. Can we just relax a little bit, please? I just wanted us to go for dinner, and maybe hang out in the loop for a little while, ok? Just trust me?"

That was it for me. I sped up and abandoned my patrol route, accelerated vertically up the face of the black glass surface of the Citibank building and barely avoided clipping the edge of the roof at about three hundred miles an hour. I was rapidly heading for transonic as I crested the high ballistic course and yanked myself back down in a vertical drop to the north side of the river and the gallery roof. Shelly was going frantic.

"HOPE! Stop panicking! I said stop! Hope!"

I landed on the roof and had to struggle to restrain myself from just blasting through it. Instead I hit the door of the stairwell, forced it open so hard it ripped out the frame in my hands and I tossed it behind me as I hopped the railing and dropped down the center of the stairwell, cape streaming up behind me. Shelly's hologram was desperately yelling at me but I wasn't listening any more. I hit the third floor with the restaurant, stopped in mid air, dashed forward, grabbed the handle of the fire door ready to rip it out the frame -

I froze solid. Completely. I couldn't move. I was panicking and then suddenly I wasn't, my heart rate steadied, my breathing stabilized. I barely had time to realise I was trapped when Shelly threw her arms around me and hugged me.

"its Ok, its Ok Hope, don't panic, I've got you, just stop panicking. Its fine, I'm fine, the B's are fine, and you really can trust me, Hope. I just want you to stop panicking, Ok? Just listen to me for a little bit. I shut you down, but you're ok and I'm letting go now..."

I could move again, slowly, and my heart rate rose a little as Shelly cut her override, but I was still on a hair trigger. what the hell...

"Hope, I just wanted to have you stay near here for tonight, ok? Its a government thing, I'm not supposed to tell you about it, but I was worried it might go wrong and I wanted you to be nearer than the dome if it went bad. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm really sorry. but its not dangerous, not for me or the B's or anyone here. Please."

I was sitting on the stairwell by now. My legs wouldn't take the weight. I was shaking and curling into a ball as the panic attack passed over. God, I'd been so scared. I didn't understand it. The door thumped open and Shelly came through it, physically here. I lost it completely and started crying, and then we were hugging on the floor of the stairwell, me in my superhero costume and Shelly in a classy red cocktail dress with white fur scarfs, both of us now covered on dusty concrete and wet snow.

I'd had a panic attack. I'd had them before, when I'd gotten post traumatic stress disorder after the fight for LA, but I was supposed to be over this. I had no idea what set me off. Shelly's attempt to keep a secret had triggered so many memories of her insane jump of the roof, and then the funeral, and the five years without her believing she was forever dead. I had no idea I was still so damn raw about that, but last year she'd fooled me again. So had Julie and Megan, who were a couple now. I'd missed it. I'd missed everything and I was so scared. I thought I knew them all and they just kept surprising me, shocking me. What else was I going to miss?

Dinner was better. I spent most of it recovering from the panic attack, but Shelly covered valiantly and carried my weight in the conversation. The dresses had cleaned up in the bathroom and I'd packed makeup anyway, But the B's could still see I was fragile and didn't press for why. I really needed time to think about all this. I was hyper alert for whatever "government thing" Shelly had manipulated me into covering for the night, but whatever it was she kept it secret. It was weird, realising that Shelly was halfway to being a government agent now. More than halfway, really. She was getting responsibilities now, trusted with secrets and hard choices. Stuff she couldn't, shouldn't share with me. So why didn't I trust her?

Because she'd died. Because I was still half convinced she was going to go too far, risk too much, and get herself killed all over again. Shelly had jumped off a building in the pursuit of superpowers. She'd downloaded herself into a gynoid robot with no way to back herself up and nearly died, would have died, if I hadn't used a priceless gift from Ozma to bring her back. I'd trust Shelly with my life, but I'd never trust her with her own. She valued it far too lightly.

It all kept banging around my head, back and forth, round and round, all while I tried to listen to Annabeth's latest gossip about the Dane or Julie and Megan talking about moving in together. I had a hellish time just coming up with supportive things to say in the middle of my funk. I was exhausted by the time the coffee came round and gripped it gratefully, sunk into the chair and sipping lightly while I let my friends pick me up.

We'd moved to a deeply padded sofa well after we'd eaten and I was dozing off when I saw Shelly startle. The look of sudden horror on her face killed my mood completely, and I started to get up.

"... Get in the air, now! 911 Red, west, two blocks, Sheldon Brick, top floor."

I was still dressed in a black evening dress, but Shelly's warning didn't leave time for debate. The last warm feelings of the night dropped away as I took off and simply headed for the window. 911 Red meant lives in immediate danger. It meant don't bother getting dressed. Or stopping to open a window. I hit the glass with a wince - not because it hurt at all, but because I'd already had to explain to the maitre de why he needed a new door to his fire escape. I was not getting invited here again.

I accelerated and followed Shelly's VR directions. She was dumping information to my heads-up display while she briefed me.

"DSA and CIA had a first contact meeting with a foreign broker arranged for the top of the Brick. The hotel's restaurant. They were posing as South Americans. The meeting was ambushed and our agents are under fire. Multiple civilian casualties."

"Didn't they have backup?"

"One DSA team down in the Hotel. They're out of position and seriously outgunned."

No time for anything else. I followed the river and found the Sheldon Brick, a ten storey hotel made of solid black glass on the north shore of the river, sitting between ribbons of bright traffic and streetlights that illuminated the base of the edifice. I didn't bother contacting the DSA team or asking permission - this was my city. They could damn well work around me if it came to that. And then answer for bringing this mess to my hometown without telling us.

Shelly didn't bother trying to brief me further - she was already tagging targets in my virtual sights. The implant really came into its own in situations like this - with direct access to every sense I had, Shelly could act as a third eye, monitoring hundreds of data streams simultaneously and feeding the digest in real time, a digitally omnipresent backup. I could see the hotel and already Shelly was creating a tactical analysis, digging up building plans, the hotel camara network, even finding people's cellphones and turning them on, tracking civilians and hostiles as she spotted them and feeding their locations to me and my incoming backup. In an urban environment packed with bystanders, targets and DSA operatives this kind of situational awareness was utterly priceless.

The meeting had been in the top floor restaurant under a sloping glass roof that offered fantastic views of the city. It was one of the most popular, and expensive, places for business meetings in the city. I remembered eating there at least three times. Mom had held Foundation events there and I realised I was utterly furious with the DSA for using it like this. This was my home, damn it. The hostiles - shelly had red-tagged them for us - were clustered around one end of the giant glass hall and throwing serious energy at the far wall. It looked like at least one high level pyrokinetic, possibly two of them, and a one hostile ominously tagged as "strong". Scratch that, definitely two pyrokinetics, Shelly was updating her map from the video feeds as she wrung more data out of them.

Shelly showed four DSA agents in the hall, all already down, but the fire coming from the other side was so intense it looked like they hadn't noticed they'd already hit them. Shelly had tagged another grouping of red dots descending through the stairwell but they weren't the ones throwing fireballs around in a crowded restaurant. I ignored them.

I didn't like killing people. I tried to avoid it. But I had two pyrokinetics going wild in there, and the rules of engagement were to put them down as quickly as possible. Alive or dead simply didn't matter right now. There were people being burned to death in there.

I came in through the glass ceiling at about two hundred miles an hour and simply landed on the first target. Being hit with three hundred pounds of armoured superhuman traveling that fast was roughly equivalent to being trapped between a racecar and a wall. I barely felt him crumple under me as the floor cratered around us. It didn't give way, though, probably reinforced concrete underneath it. Half a second to re-orientate myself and aim and I launched off at the next one, hit him with an open armed body tackle as he tried to flame me and smacked him onto the hardwood floor. Most energy projectors weren't physically tough and I wasn't gentle with him. He hit the floor as a bag of broken bones, but he was probably still alive, at least for a while.

I was still on fire but I was pretty much immune to it, and Shelly's situational awareness meant I hadn't lost track of the next target while I dealt with the human flamethrowers. I actually had time to turn and brace for the impact of his charging bull-run, which I wasn't expecting to be able to do, but he was slow off the mark and I'd trained against professionals. An Ajax type, he was a ground pounder strongman. They tended to be stronger and tougher than Atlas types class for class, but they couldn't fly, and I was one of the highest rated Atlas types around. He grappled me and tried to strangle me, but he'd let me counter grapple and block him. Idiot. I took him up. First rule of superhuman combat - take it outside and keep it there. And Ajax types were all but helpless in mid-air.

We shattered the glass roof again while he tried to twist my head off. He was only a B class, however. It wasn't pleasant, but Watchman did far worse every day in the training room and I used one hand to keep him from breaking my neck while I gained altitude rapidly. He wasn't a very good fighter, frankly, but I wasn't about to get into a long wrestling match with him. Once we were about five hundred meters up I broke his hold and kicked off. He started to drop, but he'd just run out of time - a solid bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky smacked into him and fried him. My boss had just turned up.

Lei Zi was standing on a metal disk held aloft by her electro-kinetic power, and that was impressive as all getout - not just because of the spectacular effect of the cracking ball of ionised air around her, but the skill she was showing in keeping the tiny metal disk balanced under her. She was one of the best, possibly the best, energy controllers on the planet.

She also hadn't bothered to get changed, and she'd been off duty as well. She was in a sparkling silver and white ballgown and her hair was down, well past her shoulders. I'd never actually realised she had long hair. She still managed to look like she was wearing a uniform instead of a dress though. Lei Zi was army to the bone, even six years after getting out and going Cape.

She pointed down, and I realised our Ajax was still dropping. I nodded and went after him - he was out cold, another casual demonstration of Lei Zi's skill. Most Electrokinetics would have cooked him completely, just to be on the safe side. Ajax types can take a ludicrous amount of damage and just keep right on coming. My earbud popped and Lei Zi started taking control.

"Take him to the sidewalk, please, Astra. Rush is bringing restraints, but he carn't reach the roof in hypertime."

Because he couldn't open doors in hypertime, right. We didn't advertise the fact, but Rush's superspeed time stopping power ran into real problems when he had to navigate tall buildings. Dropping into and out of hypertime every time he encountered a door or a blocked route rapidly wiped him out. Plus he always had to climb the stairs.

"Copy that, ma'am. Going down."

I grabbed my Ajax type by the collar and guided him down, just him slowing down enough to make sure he didn't make another crater in Chicago's much abused sidewalks. The street was busy but Chicago was getting a little too used to this - the crowd backed off fast, less interested in watching superhuman combat up close then they were aware of how much collateral damage it could create. I could feel the fear in the air. This was happening way too often for anyone's tastes, I was pissed all over again at the DSA for allowing yet enough superhuman brawl to start in the middle of a crowded city. God alone knew what I was going to find back up in the restaurant. Pyrokinetics opening up in a crowded restaurant, for mercy's sake...

I backed off and let the air around my capture blur for a few moments. A second later, the Ajax type was a ball of black metal restraints and Rush just appeared on the street, dropping out of hyper time and handing me my favorite weapon with a lazy salute. I grabbed my battle-maul gratefully and took off again. The two hundred pound hammer was a handy close combat weapon I'd grown very attached to over the last two years. It'd been slightly modified - it now had my sigil star built up on one, side, which was useful both as personal branding and for adding a pointed tip to the otherwise blunt weapon. The handle was a little longer now too, with some verne-tech modifications by our pet Mad Scientist, Vulcan. The weight felt reassuringly solid in my hand as I hopped about eighty stories and landed in the restaurant again.

"Astra, clear the floor and start triage and search. Rush, Galatea, clear the path of our remaining targets and let them get out into the open. Variforce, Watchman, and Harlequin, I want you standing on perimeter as soon as you arrive. Once our hostiles are clear of the building, move to contain them while the speedsters clear the area. All speedsters are on deck for this one."

"A1 copy's." I said, while the rest of the team confirmed their orders. We had no idea what the remaining hostiles were capable of, and we were in a building with maybe two thousand people in it. If they were retreating, we were fine with that. Our job was to minimise civilian casualties. Period. Trying to fight them here would endanger everyone in the building.

The restaurant's giant glass gallery was burning, but it had been less than two minutes since the first fireball had been thrown and it hadn't had time to spread much yet. Which meant I could see, very clearly, the human wreckage the pyrokinetics had created. They'd been standing on the highest of three levels of eating areas that descended in long sweeping curves towards the glass panels overlooking the city, firing down through the middle level onto the lowest, right by the glass walls and the elevators. Which meant they been firing right through the crowd. At a rough guess, they'd hit anywhere from fifty to a hundred people. The restaurant was still packed. The staff members and a few other brave souls were getting people out through the kitchens and the back rooms, but the dead and wounded were everywhere, and a lot of dazed and confused people were wandering around in shock.

These people needed help, right now, but my first job was to check for threats and prioritise wounded for evacuation when the other flyers turned up. I got to work.

I made a quick scouting flight around the room, letting Shelly tag the critically wounded and the dead. She could use my own enhanced senses far better than I could, examining the wounded with my boosted eyes and ears and logging it for the others. The second pyrokinetic had bled out, so I focused on spotting anyone who looked too collected or ready to take a shot me. Then I checked the kitchens, snatched a few words with someone who might or might not have been the head waiter but who was at an rate directing the evacuation, and got back to the main floor just as the first Cape came in to land.

It was SaFire, and I felt the tension dropping off me when her totally over the top pink and purple skintight latex catsuit landed in the wreckage. SaFire was a B-Class Atlas but a first rate medic, and she had a hell of a lot more experience with trauma than I did. She was a West Side Guardian but we needed everyone we had tonight.

"Rooms clear! Staff are evacuating down three levels! Three hostiles down, two confirmed dead, one restrained on the street."

SaFire nodded.

"Got it. Take the left side."

And that was it. I picked the closest group, a distraught family clustered over three burned bodies, and got to work.

It was brutal. I had two hands and a room filled with dead and dying men, women, children. I worked each body for a few dozen seconds at most, patching gaping wounds and directing any survivors I could grab with basic first aid instructions while Shelly directed me. Our job was to keep the wounded alive until enough medical support arrived that we could start to evacuate them, and it was like trying to hold back a river of blood with our bare hands. We worked like crazy and I probably saw another dozen people die in front of me over the course of ten hellish minutes.

It was just check them, stop any bleeding, put them into recovery position and draft anyone nearby to watch them while I moved on. More flyers landed and got to work, but there weren't more than two dozen flying heroes in the entire city. Some of the slower ones brought in medical supplies and we all fell on them like locusts, distributing burn kits and painkillers as quickly as we could. We'd just agreed together it was time to start evac operations when Shelly yelled in my ear.

"The DSA team is engaging the second group - they're not waiting for them to clear the building. Those idiots are going to level the place!"

The DSA backup had been following the meeting from a hotel suite three floors under the resteraunt block. While the second group of suspects had fled down the fire exit the reinforcements had been heading upstairs to deal with the massacre in the restaurant block, and now I was wondering about the timing of that. Had those guys been a deliberate distraction?

I felt the faintest tremble under my feet and heard the distant sound of an impact, a thick wall blowing out somewhere down below. Oh god. They were brawling down there, and I knew better than most how much damage superhuman fighting did to the surrounding area.

All the Capes in the restaurant floor had frozen now, listening as more thumps and distant explosions rose from below. We could hear the team chatter as Lei Zi led Watchman and Veriforce into the engagement, order barked out as she had them try to drive the fighting out of the building. I felt the cold air blowing in, concrete dust at the back of my neck. I found myself wondering what it would feel like if the building collapsed under me. Shit shit shit. With massive effort, I got a grip of myself.

"Come on, move. Move move move, these people are bleeding to death here! Robin, SaFire, you're the best medics here. Give us ten of your priority cases and we'll send them out to Memorial right now, then ferry some supplies and medics back with them. When the ambulances turn up, we start playing elevator. Trust the team to handle that! This is our problem!"

We got back to work. But we all had one ear listening to the fight below. I was struggling to bandage up a few of the wounded while the seconds dripped by, desperately trying to keep my attention focused on what I was doing. I couldn't stop following the chatter in my ear, though. Watchman had punched into the building with Harlequin, throwing our two most resistant team members into the fight. Shelly could track the DSA team, but she'd lost track of the hostiles when they started taking out the cameras in the fighting. Getting those two in had given us eyes in the brawl. Veriforce and Lei Zi were backing them up, using area denial tactics, flooding the floor ahead of them with his forcefields and her electrical discharges. The goal was to drive the DSA team back and get the hostiles running again, halt the fighting and keep the building intact. As far as I could tell, it was working. Things went quiet, at least. I was counting seconds while my imagination tried to parse the terse little comments between the team. I couldn't tell what was happening.

I moved to another victim, found his bandages had slipped. Hadn't I asked someone to watch him? He'd lost more blood in the meantime, and quickly patched him up again. Two minutes since the last contact below. How fast could you get out of a skyscraper, anyway? They'd used the stairs... They must have been worried the elevators would trap them. Where would they go now? Did they have a backup plan, some teleporter waiting somewhere? Unlikely. But that was the trouble with these kinds of superhuman fights, you just had no idea what the enemy was going to do next. It could make you really jumpy... Why had the DSA team gone after them? We had jurisdiction here, damn it. They weren't even supposed the enter the city without at least giving us a heads up, let alone just ignore us and go after a hostile superhuman team in the middle of - Booom.

I didn't need superhuman senses to pick that up. Dust drifted down from the roof, shell shocked people all around us startled and started talking to each other, and my nerve broke. I stood up and called Shelly.

"What the hell was that? Shelly, what's happening?"

"They've got an energy manipulator... I think the DSA team is still trying to follow them, I think they triggered a booby trap. Goddamn amateur idiots are so far off the reservation I carn't even say. This is an utter Charlie Foxtrot. Morons."

"Astra, what's the status of the restaurant deck, please?"

Lei Zi, and her voice sounded so unbothered it was like she was asking about my last shopping trip. I fought off a manic urge to say something flippant and just stuck to the formula.

"No hostiles. We now have..." - I checked around - "Six Capes on site, nine on medical evac. Fires are under control, no apparent threat remaining on this level."

"Copy that, no hostiles no threats. Can you break off?"

Could I leave? We needed more help up here, not less, but I wasn't a proper medic... just a pair of hands, that was all I was up here. I looked around for pink latex. SaFire was surrounded by victims on impromptu stretchers, covered in blood and directing half a dozen civilians in basic care for the wounded. God, she good at this. I called over.

"SaFire? Can you take over?" She looked up at me. Tired, wound tight, but holding together. She could do it.

"They need you down there?"

"Yeah."

"Ok. Go kick their asses, honey."

Getting out of the charnel house of the top floor made me feel about a million miles better. I was doing something I good at again, not pretending to be a doctor to people who believed a woman in a cape could save everyone. I fought off the guilty feeling I was running away and breathed deep in the clean air.