I was getting better at reacting to sudden attacks. As soon as I saw the boy's body falling, I switched to shadow form and began to lash out, hoping I'd be able to distract the creatures for long enough for the others to escape.

They apparently had a lot of experience in these sort of encounters as well, because the man in the black armor touched the wall and it exploded outward, creating a huge gap that they could all escape through.

On the other side, though, were three naked women. All of them had ugly expressions on their faces, and all of them were on fire.

The girl with the sunbursts on her costume stiffened and I guessed that these were her clones.

I resolved to make sure to never be eaten by the monster woman. Having multiple people with my powers and a desire to destroy me and my family would be a nightmare.

All three women charged forward, swinging their arms. Apparently they were unable to project fire the way she did, although one of them was carrying an axe and that was on fire with no sign of damaging it.

I abandoned my attempts to fight the invisible figures and I lunged intangibly through the others, headed directly for the lead woman with the axe. I became solid as she swung the axe, grabbing it and grabbing for her throat as I did so.

It was like plunging my hands into molten lava, more pain than I'd ever experienced. The flames she was producing were well beyond my bodies limited ability to protect itself, leaving my hands blistered and burned.

She screamed as I touched her. I felt her power entering me and as I did her face began to melt away.

Part of her power was simply existing, and once I removed that she could hold herself together. The flames surrounding her body winked out and the flesh began to slough off her bones in a horrifying manner.

Everyone stopped, staring spellbound. It took her almost a minute to die and she was in pain and agony the entire time. When it was done, all that was left of her was a pile of sludge on the grass.

Before the other two could react I lashed out and grabbed them, and they too began the process of dissolving into nothingness. With their powers being the same as the first I didn't actually gain anything new. The flames I could create weren't three times as powerful and I wasn't three times as immune to flames.

"Get in the car!" I shouted, pointing to one of the cars on the curb. "I'll carry you."

They didn't bother to argue. The man in black armor touched the window, which shattered and a moment later they were all getting into the car even as I was fighting the wraiths. They were leaving the girl's wheelchair behind and carrying her, and the boy was thrown over the man in black armor's shoulder.

Smarter this time, only a couple of them engaged me while the others went after the others. The man in black armor groaned as he was apparently hit.

I abandoned my fight again and rushed toward the car. I ran my fingers over the car for ten seconds even as the others were screaming at me to hurry.

A moment later we all lurched into the air and we were away.

I could hear the sobs coming from the inside. I didn't ask who was crying as I didn't really want to know.

It took five minutes to find a spot across the city to set the car down. I knew that whoever was controlling the invisible things would have watched where we landed and would have tried to estimate where we were from that.

We wouldn't have long to plan what we were going to do, but I had a suspicion that my new powers were going to make a difference.

"What in the hell was that?" the man in the black costume asked.

They'd brought the boy that had his throat cut and had desperately tried to staunch the blood in the car but they'd been unsuccessful. I could hear sobbing from inside the vehicle.

"What?"

"You melt people's faces off?" he asked. He still had blood all over his costume from his dead friend.

I shrugged. "Apparently."

Better they think I was capable of something monstrous than that they realize my actual power. It might make them a little more cautious about attacking me in the future as well.

I tried to help them get the girl out of the car, touching her clothes and levitating her.

We were by the hospital and so it didn't take long to find another wheelchair. The others left the boy in the car. Although they were visibly upset by his death dragging him around wouldn't help the rest of them survive any better.

"We can't keep doing this," the girl in the sunburst outfit said. "They'll find us, or they'll leave us and we'll die of thirst."

"I've got an idea," I said. "Something that should buy us a little time at least."

"Yes?"

"First, who are you guys?"

"I'm Ballistic," the man in the black armor said. "This is Sundancer and the girl in the chair is Genesis."

I hesitated. I didn't want to use the Charon name the PRT had given me, not with this face, but I hadn't really decided on a name for a third identity either.

"I'm new," I said. "Haven't really decided on a name."

"I'll call you Ark then," Ballistic said promptly. He almost seemed to be waiting for me to ask, and so I sighed and obliged him.

"Why?"

"You melt faces off, kind of like the Ark of the Covenant from the Indiana Jones movies," he said.

"Fine," I said. I hadn't seen the movie even if I'd heard Dad talk about it but there wasn't time to argue.

"Have any of you seen any evidence that those things can fly?" I asked.

They looked at me and shook their heads.

"So when it comes time to face them we need you up somewhere where they can't reach," I said. "I'm the only one who can fight them and I can't do that if they are just going around me to get to you."

"We could go to the top of the parking garage and destroy the ramp that leads up to it," Genesis said. "If they can't fly then they'd have to climb up which they might not be able to do if they are intangible."

I nodded. "You should all be waiting in a vehicle up there; that way if we're wrong I'll be able to move you somewhere else and we can try something else."

Between my harness and the vehicle I'd only be able to manipulate one or two other things with Rune's power. I'd have to make it count.

We made our way up the parking garage. It was filled with cars and I wondered if the power created these objects whole cloth or if everything here was some kind of illusion. I suspected that only a limited part of the city had been duplicated and that was why there was no water or power; the water towers and power plants hadn't been duplicated and so there was no water available.

There had been water in the toilet, which meant that there was water in the pipes, but if it was all illusory it wouldn't nourish the body and might do actual harm if the body tried to integrate it.

While the others were busy using their powers to make the ramp collapse, I concentrated on healing the blisters on my hands. They were bad and I doubted that I'd be completely healed by the time the specters arrived, but at least I'd be able to hold onto things.

I tagged the vehicle they were planning to use, a pickup truck and then I went down to the level below to wait.

Fighting an invisible enemy was frustrating. I pretty much had to wait until they were attacking me, and had I been less tough it would have been the end of me. I'd read that the PRT hated Masters and Strangers most of all, probably because they were the hardest to defend against.

After all, even with a Brute as powerful as an Endbringer all you had to do was bring a lot of firepower to bear. Sooner or later something would get through. With a Master or a Stranger you might not even know you were in a fight until it was over.

Other than my ability to change my face I didn't really have any stranger abilities, something I wanted to remedy as soon as I could. Being able to sneak up on people would be invaluable in what I had to do.

Before I could reminisce I heard a shout from above me. The truck was at the edge of the hole above me, nine feet above the pile of rubble created from destroying the ramp, both so I could see it and so the Travelers could help me if there were more clones instead of just the invisible specters.

Before I could react I felt a stabbing sensation at my throat. Apparently they'd decided that if slitting my throat didn't work they'd use the point of whatever they were using to see if it worked better.

I felt stabs at my face, at my throat, at the insides of my elbows, and although none of them did any appreciable damage they hurt more than I was accustomed to. I pretended to be hurt more than I was; I'd warned the Travelers I was going to do this. As I did I grabbed for the chain I'd taken from the Home Depot. I wrapped it around my hand, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

A moment later I was on fire. Fire covered me head to toe, and as I went into my shadow state I swung the chain around me at chest height, controlled by Rune's telekinisis and lit by a mutant version of Sundancer's flames.

The chain flew through the bodies of the wraiths and they screamed as the fire that had been enough to badly burn me was enough to burn them to the core, even muted by being in a slightly different frequency of being intangible.

Six naked men appeared around me, looking stunned. I grabbed the one closest to me and pulled at his power. He began to scream and dissolve, and I swung the chain again.

The other five men were dead before they had a chance to slip into the real world.

I wondered if they had to wander around the streets of real world Boston in the nude. If so did that mean that the Endbringer sirens hadn't called the all clear yet?

"You steal powers!" Sundancer gasped from above me.

I looked up at her, my body still blazing brightly with the flames taken from her clones, and for a moment I considered leaving them behind in this place. I could bring them food and water and they'd be able to survive easily.

All I had to do was slip away and there would be nothing they could do. It would be only temporary, until I was outed in the real world. Considering what I'd done to the biokinetic kid it might already be out in the public and known.

I shook my head. I hadn't become a hero to imprison innocent people because they were inconvenient. It wasn't like these people were villains. From what they'd told me they were mercenaries, and they'd been forced into that because they needed help from their monster friend.

I sighed and floated up through the hole.

"I'm not saying that it's true," I said. "But if it is, what do you intend to do about it?"

Sundancer pulled her mask off. Underneath was a face identical to that of the clones I'd seen. She was an attractive young blonde woman with delicate features and a long neck. Instead of the fear or revulsion I'd thought I'd see, I only saw excitement.

"You can save Noelle," she said. There was a look of hope on her face, a dawning excitement at a possibility that had only been academic before.

"What?" I asked flatly.

"You steal powers...that's why the clones vanished. If you take Noelle's power she'll go back to normal. I don't even want my power. You can have it if you'll just fix Noelle!"

I landed and stepped back, precariously close to the edge of the pit.

"I can't," I said.

"Why not?" Ballistic asked aggressively, climbing out of the truck. "Noelle is a good girl...she never asked for any of this! If she'd known what was going to happen she never would have drank that vial..."

"What vial?" I asked, desperate to get the conversation away from the idea of me becoming a hideous centaur woman with literal horrifying things sticking out of me.

"We got our powers from vials we found," Sundancer admitted. "There weren't enough for all of us, and so Noelle and Oliver split a vial."

"People don't get powers from vials," I said. I hesitated. "You mean there are people who can give out powers?"

"There were instructions that came with the vials," Ballistic said. "They looked pretty professional. The powers weren't meant for us, which means somebody is handing them out."

I felt a sudden stab of pain in my head. I had a sudden vision of my being let out of my locker...of a woman in a fedora?

As soon as the memory flashed to my mind it slipped away. I shook my head. Even if it was true I had no way of finding these people or doing anything about them.

"There's no reason for you not to help us," Sundancer said, stepping down and reaching up and grabbing my hand. The fires had died down but I suspected that she wouldn't have been burned anyway.

Considering what she'd seen me do to the clones I thought it was brave of her to even allow me to touch her. She didn't know that I had to touch skin after all, and I was probably fast enough to touch her face before she could pull back.

"I can't turn these powers on and off," I said gently. I pulled my hands away from hers. "If I take them it's the same for me as it is for the original owners."

"So if you take her power..." Ballistic said.

"I'll become her," I said. "And I'm sorry, but there's no amount of money that would be worth that."

Sundancer scowled and her shoulders slumped.

"However, that doesn't mean that there might not be a combination of powers that might help her," I said. "And I would be happy to do anything that didn't have me vomiting out clones of people."

They were all quiet for a long moment.

"Have you considered Panacea?" I asked. "I was healed by her once, and I used to be nearsighted. She repaired my eyesight permanently."

"Changing the lenses in your eyes is a pretty small thing," Ballistic said. "I've never heard that Panacea could change people in a big way."

"Capes hide their real power," I said. "It's possible she is too. If people knew she could change people into whatever she wanted they'd be a lot more reluctant to let her heal them."

"Do you know that she can?" Sundancer asked.

I shook my head. "Asking her might not work either, because she probably doesn't want people to know."

"It wouldn't work anyway," Ballistic said, his voice grim. "Noelle tends to pull people into her whenever she feels threatened. You start changing things and she's likely to have a panic attack and once Panacea is inside of her, her powers wouldn't work at all."

"So you get a master, or someone able to paralyze her, or a Trump able to temporarily neutralize her powers," I said. "I don't think this is something that can be done by any one person. Even if whatever changes Panacea does are temporary, you told me it took a while for her to grow this large. Wouldn't you be better off starting from scratch?"

"We'd have to be careful," Ballistic said. "If Panacea is as dangerous as you say, I'd hate to see an evil version. She'd be worse than Bonesaw."

We were all quiet for a long moment at the thought. It felt wrong to even bring up the name of one of the Slaughterhouse Nine, as though naming them would somehow invoke them like a ghost at a childhood party.

"So are you able to get us out of here?" Ballistic asked.

I nodded. "We need a reflective surface to enter or leave this place. If I make a mirror clone here and it gets killed I'll automatically be pulled in like those guys were but otherwise I need a reflective surface."

"There wasn't a reflective surface in the room we were sent here from," Ballistic objected.

"There were shards of glass all over the room," I said. "I imagine some of the clones were stepping on them when they touched you."

"Would a truck mirror do?" Genesis asked.

I nodded.

"Everybody touch me," I said. "We're going home."

I touched the mirror, and a moment later the reddish moon around us vanished. In its place was a beautiful ordinary moon.

The truck vanished and Genesis fell to the floor with a cry. We'd moved the truck and its original was back where we'd found it. The wheelchair she'd been in on the back of the truck had vanished as well.

Apparently I couldn't create mirror images of objects and sell them.

Despite everything we were home.