1:04 pm

"Vicky, Amy, I'm so glad you're safe! We couldn't find you, we thought you were-"

Victoria ignored the enemy's words and studied her new opponent, searching for weaknesses, vulnerabilities. The thing in front of her looked like Mom but it wasn't Mom, not anymore. It was a soulless husk, a ruthless killer. She had learned that lesson the hard way.

The enemy would probably have a new set of powers, like the last time. Attacking in its energy form, altered range on its hard-light constructs, or something less predictable. Worst of all, the enemy had somehow come back after she killed it the first time. Ressurection, or a split mind with two selves, or had some other obscure power with the same effect.

Her thoughts came in a steady rhythm, in time with the faint song of the Simurgh that had become a familiar backdrop to her thoughts. Was that what this thing was? A plot of the Simurgh, a ressurection-themed cape turned into the Endbringer's pawn, to impersonate Mom and lead the heroes into ruin? If she killed it again, there was no guarantee it would stay down-

Victoria set her jaw. It didn't matter. She'd kill the damned thing however many times it took until it stayed dead.

The problem was that the rest of her family didn't realize the danger. The enemy was climbing down from Lady Photon's arms, with Shielder looking on as if nothing was wrong. All the while leering at her with a disgusting expression of fake relief on its face. A liar. A deceiver.

"Mom? Is...is that you?" came a soft voice from behind her.

Oh no. Amy. Even after what the enemy did to her, even after it tried to kill her, her saintly sister was willing to hope for a world where Mom was still the good woman who raised them.

Victoria wouldn't let Amy fall for the enemy's lies again. She would have to end this quickly. Draw the enemy away from her family and kill it before they could come to its defense. Then she would explain everything, tell them the truth, and everything would be fine.

Victoria edged back toward Amy, putting herself bodily between her sister and the enemy. She licked her lips and tried to paste a smile on her face. It felt unnatural, like a death mask.

"Mom! You came!" she forced herself to say. "I'm, I'm so glad to see you. Come here!"

She spread out her arms, her intact left arm and the stub of her right, as though asking for a hug. The bloodstains probably ruined the effect.

The enemy's jaw dropped, a fake expression of sympathy. "My God, what happened to you?"

And then, a stroke of good fortune. The enemy left the protection of her family and came at them in a dead run, arms rising at its sides, preparing to use its hard-light blades to cut them apart. An attack disguised as a preparation for a loving embrace, for the sake of the witnesses.

The enemy had made a severe miscalculation. Did it simply not realize that Victoria had killed its other self? Did it think it could fool her like it had done to the rest of her family? Or had it realized that Victoria was on to her, and charged in a last, desparate attempt to kill her before she could expose its deceptions?

Victoria saw how the fight would unfold with perfect clarity. She knew her own speed, knew the enemy's reaction time. She would wait until the enemy got within ten feet, then lunge forward with a flight-enhanced straight left to the center of the chest. Her momentum would keep her going forward, knock the enemy's body to the ground so she could follow up with a finishing blow to the head, to stop the enemy from pulling any tricks with its last seconds of life.

Just one more second, then-

A wall of blue light flashed into existence, blocking her path and knocking the enemy to the ground. A forcefield. Shielder's power.

"Sorry Brandish, but-"

The enemy was on its feet in a flash, pressing its hand against the forcefield with splayed fingers, desperate to get at them. "Now is not the time, Shielder! They were just in a fight, they need us! Vicky, your arm..."

Victoria clenched her fist. She had wanted to end it quickly. But she realized that this was for the best. Her family was wary of the influence of the Simurgh and was treating her like a ticking time bomb. Shielder was keeping a wary eye on her, the same stance he took toward villains during a stand-off, and Lady Photon was staring at her and Amy like they were ghosts. If she killed the enemy here, her family would think that she was the Simurgh's pawn. They would try to kill her, and probably kill Amy too.

And behind them was Dragon. The world's greatest Tinker, wearing a two-story tall battlesuit designed for fighting the Simurgh. Victoria didn't like the looks of the cannons studding its arms and legs, four of which were pointed in her direction. Whatever they were, they were designed to hit an enemy with the reflexes of a precog and the durability of an Endbringer. If Dragon became an enemy, her speed and forcefield weren't going to cut it.

"I know, Carol, we want to hope, but look at them." said Lady Photon. "They're covered in blood. We can't take any chances."

The enemy pressed its hand again against the forcefield. Tears were welling in the corners of its eyes. It was absurd, how badly it wanted to kill them.

Dragon took a step forward. Smooth and graceful, not the lumbering gait she would have expected from the massive battlesuit. Her voice came from a speaker on the suit's lizard-styled head, faintly accented and with a mechanical echo to her words.

"Panacea, Glory Girl. We need to confirm that you're below threshold exposure to the Simurgh. Step away from the phone."

"What?" said Victoria.

Dragon pointed with a talon. "The phone on the ground, identifying itself as property of Amy Dallon. The cell network is down but I can use the accelerometer logs to estimate your time-position data for the last hour."

Amy scrambled back from the phone, and Victoria followed her like a shadow. Shielder's forcefield changed shape, curved to put them on one side and the phone on the other. Dragon took two long steps forward and tapped the phone with one of the talons of her feet.

"What happened to you?" repeated the enemy.

Victoria rested her hand on Amy's shoulder, and spoke for the benefit of the heroes. "The Simurgh attacked Arcadia, we got trapped in the gym. Amy healed me and I flew us out here. Then..."

She looked at the bloody pulp embedded in the street. The last enemy's corpse.

"Oh God. You were attacked by the clones." said the enemy. "You won. I'm proud of you. That can't have been easy, to kill someone you thought was human."

"Clones?" said Amy. Victoria felt her sister tense under her hand. She knew something?

"There's a crazy Case-53 fighting the Simurgh, they're calling her Echidna. She's a monster regenerator, won't stay down, and if she touches you she makes clones. Evil beasts, twisted, they want to kill everyone. She got me, Mark, Sarah, we got away but she, she ate Crystal, she's been spitting out dozens of evil things."

"Clones." said Amy. "These...clones. They have the same memories as the original person? The same-" Her voice cracked, broke. "The same personality?"

"Oh no." The enemy's face shifted into a mask of pure horror.

"Mom? It's really you, right?" said Amy, her voice wavering. "You came back, you came to save us, and not, not to-"

Victoria tightened her grip on Amy's shoulder, felt her heartbeat speed up at her words. For a moment the cold certainty loosened its grip on her mind and a splash of color returned to the world. She could almost believe the outrageous lies the enemy was telling to cover up its ressurection. In front of her was Mom, her real Mom, come back to save them from the Simurgh. The expression of horror on her face showed her sympathy for the trials her daughters had been put through at the Endbringer's hands-

Victoria shook her head to clear it. No. Couldn't let herself be fooled like the rest. Of course the enemy was horrified, it was realizing that it had been found out, making up desperate lies to save itself. She had to expose it quickly, put her family on guard before it could strike.

"Liar! Sarah, Eric, watch out! That's not Carol, she's going to kill you!"

Her family simply stared at her, didn't react. Victoria glanced at Dragon, but the Tinker's cannons were still aimed at them, hadn't turned to face the real threat. Fuck, they were going to get killed!

"Get away from her! The last one acted right, fed us some convenient story about mutations and said it loved us, all up until it turned into a bitch from hell! That thing tried to make Amy kill herself, said the most evil disgusting shit I've ever heard! Tried to kill Amy, an agent of the Simurgh, forced us into her range so I had to kill it. Should have fucking killed it as soon as it opened its fucking mouth! I, I had to fucking kill it and now it's back and it won't fucking die! Don't just stand there. It's not Mom, it's an enemy and it's going to kill you unless you kill it first so move, hurry, hurry, kill it!"

Victoria's voice rose into a scream and she stood trembling with rage, pointing at the enemy with the stub of her right arm. The enemy stared back at her, eyes wide, a tear falling from its cheek. Mouthing silent denials.

"Holy fuck, Vicky." said Shielder. He started to say more, but Lady Photon stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Victoria, I'm sorry you had to go through that." she said. "This is your mother. The real one. She's been with us the whole time."

"You don't know that! Don't let her fool you!"

The enemy babbled, desperate to keep up its front. "No, Vicky, please, you're not thinking-"

"I'm sorry, Carol, but she's not listening to you. Let me handle this." said Lady Photon. She turned back to Victoria.

"No, Victoria. She's your real mother. The one you saw looked wrong, didn't it? You can tell the clones at a glance. They're deformed, mutated, and they come out naked. They don't have uniforms. They might be wearing stolen clothes." Lady Photon glanced at the corpse on the street, the bloody scraps of a white tee shirt and khaki pants. "I know it's hard. I had to kill clones of my own daughter, before there were too many and we had to run. Don't let it break you. Please. We've lost enough today."

Victoria tensed, like a trapped animal. They were all against her. She looked back and forth at her aunt, her cousin, at Dragon, all staring at her sadly as if she was the one who was mistaken. And at the enemy, the enemy they said was not an enemy, the, the...the woman they said was Mom, with grief on her face that she had never seen before, but she couldn't be Mom, she-

"Vicky, please. They're right." came Amy's soft voice from her side.

Victoria turned to Amy, eyes wide. Amy's face was scrunched up with guilt. Not quite meeting her eyes. "I could tell something was wrong, when I touched that thing, but...but I was so afraid for her, I thought it was because of a power that hit her, and she acted like Mom at first, so I, I...I was wrong. I fucked up. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That thing you killed, Vicky, it wasn't her. It wasn't. You're not a murderer."

The chill in her thoughts thawed at her sister's words, the colors slowly returning to the world. Two streaks of orange leapt out in her sight, the crossed blades in bright orange on the woman's chest. Mom's emblem as a hero. She wanted so badly to believe it was true, but...but if it was true, that meant that Mom was alive, that she was safe and free, while she and Amy were...

"I'm sorry, we have to cut this conversation short." said Dragon. "Panacea, Glory Girl. Your exposure is far beyond threshold. If you had joined the fight with a standard Protectorate kit your armbands would have self-destructed fifteen minutes ago. For your family's safety, as well as your own, I need to ask you to be silent and remain in the quarantine zone. New Wave capes, your exposure is close to the limit. If you fly at maximum speed you'll make it out with minutes to spare. Go now."

Victoria felt Amy shudder at her side. The final nail in their coffin. She should have reacted to that, too, but she felt nothing at all. Too much emotional upheaval, to little sense of what the hell was going on, of who was a friend and who was an enemy. She was as tense as a live wire.

Besides, she had already known that it was too late for her and her sister. All they could do was be glad that some of her family had survived. Her dad, her aunt, one of her cousins, and...

"No!" cried the woman. The one who was supposed to be Brandish. Her Mom.

Lady Photon roughly grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air. She called out from over her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Victoria, Amy. We love you. Stay strong. Do us proud, okay-"

"No, don't, don't go!" Brandish struggled in Lady Photon's arms for a moment, then finally gave in and waved to her daughters. "My girls! I love you! Mark loves you! Stay stafe! We'll, we'll see you again! I promise!"

"Shielder, come on. Let's go." called Lady Photon.

Shielder didn't move to follow. He kept his forcefield in place and looked up at Dragon. "Dragon, you coming?"

"I have duties on the battlefield. Go now, Shielder. You need Lady Photon's help to make it out in time."

Shielder gestured. "Shouldn't you be going then? The fight's that way."

Dragon glanced at him, then turned back to Amy and Victoria. "My suit is calculating an efficient path. Go."

"Oh yeah? Hey Mom, you think she's calculating a path? You believe that?"

Shielder raised his head to Lady Photon. She pursed her lips and didn't respond. Shielder gave her a sharp look, then turned back to Dragon. "'Cause I don't think so. I seem to remember a briefing about Endbringers that says you're lying."

Brandish's eyes widened. "Oh God. No! No no no! Not when I just found them again!"

Brandish struggled free of Lady Photon's grip and fell to the ground, flickering into her energy form for an instant to cushion her fall. She ran to the forcefield, in front of Amy and Victoria, and faced Dragon, summoning blades of light to her hands.

Dragon let out a sigh, the voice modulation in her suit making it come out like a low, electronic crackle. "I'm sorry, Brandish. I didn't want you to have to see this. Stand down."

The blue forcefield shifted in place. Victoria, Amy, and the rest of the New Wave on the same side. Dragon on the other.

"Stand down, Shielder." said Dragon.

"What the hell is going on?" shouted Victoria.

"I'll ask you to cooperate willingly." said Dragon. "Amelia Dallon, a.k.a. Panacea."

Amy flinched in place, stared up at the battlesuit. Victoria hugged her protectively with her good arm.

"I'm sorry, Panacea. Your power is an A-class threat with greater than ten percent potential to escalate to S-class, and you have been compromised by the Simurgh. Pursuant to the Federal Disaster Response Act and the Preservation of Civilization Treaty, Article 22, clause 4b, the PRT has designated you as the subject of a kill order. Protectorate members are required to use lethal force to end the threat."

Dragon raised her battery of cannons, each weapon moving independently, tracking their targets with a machine's speed and precision. The weapons on her arms tracked the members of New Wave, Brandish and Shielder on the ground and Lady Photon in the air. And the two largest cannons at her side were aimed directly at Amy and Victoria.