I don't think I have ever moved as fast as I did when I raced back to Brockton Bay during Shatterbird's scream. Everything seemed frozen in time as I finally arrived in town, whether it be a leaf falling from a tree or the sparking of neurons in a person's brain. It was so... surreal, seeing the city like that. People were walking down the street or in their homes, blissfully ignorant of the catastrophe that would happen in a mere few seconds.

A pang of terror crawled up my spine as I realized just how much a threat it posed. There were thousands, no, millions, of pieces of glass in the city, most of them within arm's reach of someone. Computers, windows, plates, glass cups, they were all time bombs. Already I could see cracks running along some of the windows, sluggishly separating the glass at supersonic speeds.

There was no way I could get everyone to safety in time, even I wasn't that fast. At most, I could get a few dozen people away from the debris, but that would still leave more than three hundred thousand people injured or worse. I tried to calm the panic rising in my chest at the thought of Dad or Amy or Emma getting hurt because I wasn't there to save them because of mere curiosity.

Suddenly, an idea struck me.

Glass doesn't have a uniform frequency; some are higher or lower than others. Obviously, Shatterbird's attack ranged up in frequency as it progressed, otherwise she wouldn't be able to make every piece of glass and silicon fracture. If I were to produce a frequency that could counter hers, I could prevent a total disaster. There would still be a lot of people hurt, but it was better than nothing.

I took a deep breath, and I screamed. I started at infrasonic frequencies, too low for humans to hear, then slowly began to ramp my way up, keeping an eye on the glass around me as I did so. The sturdier windows rattled slightly, but otherwise remained intact. Satisfied, I moved to the next part of the plan.

There were already some shattered windows nearby, their shards hanging in the air as they slowly began to fall down towards the pedestrians below. I sprang into action, scooping up as many people as possible and moving them away from the glass, maintaining the scream all the while. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I saw that some of them already had cuts from when their glasses fractured, peppering their eyes with a veritable flechette storm.

I swept the city street by street, trying to spare as many people as possible from the Slaughterhouse Nine's attack, but it wasn't enough. Already there were severe injuries from the larger shards as they lacerated into soft human flesh, slicing through skin and muscle and blood vessels like they weren't even there. One man was in the midst of bleeding out, a fine arterial spray twinkling in mid-air as his throat was neatly cut open. Heat built up behind my eyes as I focused my vision on the gash, cauterizing it shut. It was a rough job, and there was a high chance that he would die anyway, but it was better than nothing.

In less than five seconds, I managed to clear the main streets of the city. That still left the suburban areas of Brockton Bay, though, where Emma and Dad-

My chest tightened. Dad. Amy. Emma.

In less than a second I was back home, painfully taking note of the fact that all the windows had exploded inwards. I peered upward at his room and saw that he was leaning against the wall, his face covered in blood. For the briefest of moments, I thought the worst had happened, then I saw that his aura was still shining. I dashed up the stairs and flung the door open, ripping it out of its hinges in the process, then knelt by him.

There were shards of glass peppering him from his shoulder down to his knee, and a large gash was on his forehead. He was okay otherwise, thankfully. The glass had missed any large blood vessels or organs, and the pieces still in his flesh were plugging his wounds shut. It was painful, but he would survive.

His eyes creaked open, and he coughed. "Hey, sweetie," he said weakly.

"Oh thank God," I whispered, gently taking him into my arms. "Come on, we have to get you help."

I extended my hearing, sweeping the city for Amy's heartbeat. Much to my relief, it appeared that she was just startled by what was going on. I stepped out of the house, surveying the chaos before me. Already the air was filled with the sounds of sirens, and a thick cloud rose in the distance where Shatterbird's power had pulverized the beaches. I took a deep breath, trying to get the images of what I saw out of my head, then took off.

S

As it turned out, Amy had been taking a nap in one of the little nap rooms found in the hospital when Shatterbird attacked. The only glass nearby had been a small alarm clock on the far end of the room, as well as a sole light fixture. Aside from a few scratches on her hands, she was physically unharmed.

Emotionally, on the other hand...

"This is bad," she mumbled to herself. They had set her up in one of the operating rooms, bringing in wounded from nearby wards for her to treat. Many patients, already struggling to stay alive, had been maimed when the equipment around them exploded into countless daggers. Some had lost the struggle. It was disconcerting to see their lifeless bodies as I entered the wing she was in, the auras faded away to who-knows-where. Could I have saved them if I hadn't left?

I didn't need fifty different kinds of vision to see the fear behind Amy's eyes as I walked into the room with Dad in tow. I had already removed all the bits of glass in his side, but there was still an uncomfortable amount of blood oozing from his wounds.

Amy looked up at me, relief in her face. Her arms were painted up to the elbow in blood, and the man she was attending to appeared to be the source of it. "Thank god you're here."

"You okay?" I asked softly, gently setting Dad down. He made a grunt, but was otherwise quiet.

"It's fucking pandemonium going on right now. Any nurses and doctors who didn't get shredded are bringing in guys with their eyes torn up and worse. I don't think I can handle all of this." She took a deep breath, then set about to healing the man. As she knitted his wounds together, her gaze fell on Dad. "Is he-"

"I'm fine," Dad said, wincing as he touched a hand to the gash on his forehead. "Just got cut up a bit. Handle the other guys first; I can wait."

"There's still a risk of infection," Amy replied, clamping a hand down on Dad's hand. A few seconds passed, and the cuts disappeared. "That's better."

"Thanks," Dad said, rubbing his face wearily. He shot a smile at me. "She's a keeper."

That elicited a small chuckle from Amy, only to be followed by a sigh as she continued to work. "The others aren't so simple; they have thousands of tiny little pieces inside them, dangerously close to blood vessels or organs. I have to actually push the shards of glass out, and there's so many of them. This is just the hospital, too. How many others are out injured in the city?"

"Too many," I replied quietly, watching her. Should I tell her the truth, that her power, her burden, was just part of some terrible experiment?

"What are you going to do?" Dad asked.

"I'll go check out the other hospitals, see what I can do." I rose to my feet and dusted my suit off, numbly taking note of the dried blood on my hands. Just as I prepared to leave, however, a PRT officer practically burst into the room, fresh blood spattered on his uniform.

"We have wounded coming in from Headquarters," he panted.

As soon as he said so, more officers and capes came barreling in, almost none of them unscathed. Miss Militia nursed a sizable cut on her arm, while another cape held a hand to his eye as he strolled in. Despite the blood, I managed to recognize him.

"Dennis?!"

He looked up at me with his one good eye. "S-superwoman? How the hell do you know my name? No, scratch that; it probably involves bullshit."

"What happened to you?"

Despite himself, he managed to crack a grin. "I was studying over with my girlfriend at her place when the attack happened. I managed to freeze her in time, but I wasn't so lucky." He pointed to the hand clamped over his eye. "Guess it's time to become a pirate."

"Is your girlfriend safe?" I asked. I didn't know what I would do if Emma had gotten hurt.

"Yeah, she's fine."

Miss Militia stepped between us. "You're wounded the worst out of the Wards, Clockblocker," she said. "Get treated ASAP."

My brow furrowed. "Where's Armsmaster?"

Before Miss Militia could reply, I got my answer when they wheeled him in. The front part of his breastplate had been carefully removed, revealing a broad chest crisscrossed by deep gashes. Thick blood dripped from his face, and I realized that he had been slashed across the face. A peer at his insides revealed that one of his lungs had been punctured.

Amy rushed over to his side, having finished with Dennis's injury. "Oh, fuck," she muttered to herself as she placed her hands on Armsmaster's chest. Already I could see as his wounds began to seal themselves shut, his circulatory system working into overdrive as it produced more red blood cells to replace what he had lost. "What happened? Was it the glass?"

I shook my head slightly, still fixated on Armsmaster's prone form. "The cuts don't match up; it's like they were inflicted with a knife or something."

"It was Mannequin," Miss Militia said, wincing. "He somehow managed to break into Headquarters and assaulted Armsmaster in his lab. Shatterbird's attack came while we were attempting to contain the situation, and he got away."

"Shit, so it is the Slaughterhouse Nine," Dennis muttered. "I hoped I wouldn't ever have to meet those crazy murderhobos, I really did."

"The Nine?" Amy asked, pulling back from Armsmaster and attending to Miss Militia. "Why the hell are they here?"

"Maybe they got suicidal?" Dennis offered.

"It wasn't that," a voice said from the gurney, followed by a cough.

Armsmaster rose to a sitting position, putting a hand to his head. Amy rushed over and pushed him gently back towards the sheets. "You have to rest," she insisted. "I fixed your wounds, but you lost a lot of biomass. You'll have to let your body do the rest."

"Fuck that," Armsmaster snarled, pulling away from Amy. "There's something important I need to say about why the Nine are here."

"What is it?" I asked.

"At first, I thought Mannequin was just there because of his M.O.," he replied. "But when he was retreating, I saw him grab something. I think it was that Kryptonian battery you gave Dragon and I."

"Why would he want that? He specialized in ecosystems; I don't see how he could make any sense of the battery."

"It's not the battery, Taylor. It's what's on the battery. You handed that to me personally, remember? It has your fingerprints on it."

"Uh, why would the Slaughterhouse Nine want her fingerprints?" Dennis inquired. "And did you say Taylor?"

The realization of what Armsmaster said hit me like a freight train. "Oh, fuck," I said to myself.

The Slaughterhouse Nine had my DNA.