Many thanks to BeaconHill, Assembler, and ShadowStepper1300 for betareading.

Wildfire 9.4

"The PRT perimeter has closed," Fume radioed from the console. "M/S protocols are in effect. Everyone's ready when you are, Annatar."

Búrzashdurb clanged on my pauldron as I hefted it onto my shoulder. I stood up from where I'd been kneeling in an alley, about a block from the suburban house where Heartbreaker had been staying. We'd arrived just in time, going by the three cars assembled outside the house. "Oh, I'm ready," I growled. "Ring-Bearers, you have your orders. Move in on my mark."

I stepped out of the alley. My booted feet clanged forcefully against the cement of the sidewalk as I turned to face the house. Someone ducked behind a hedge as I emerged—they knew I was here.

Good.

"Attack." The order wasn't loud, complicated, or eloquent. It simply was—a statement of intent and of fact.

I didn't bother to run. Why end this any faster than I needed to, after all? I just slowly walked forward as the Wards emerged from their hiding spaces around me and began to charge the house.

"One of the vehicles is tinkertech. My grenades aren't working on it. I'm disabling the others," came Kid Win's voice over the radio. A moment later, there was a burst of light and sound as an engine exploded. A woman started screaming.

"Shit," Kid Win said breathlessly. "I injured a civilian."

"There are no civilians here," I said flatly. "Only his thralls. We can't let him get away, Kid Win. Don't hurt anyone you don't have to, but above all do not hesitate."

"…Yes, Ma'am," he said, with a mix of resignation, grief, and determination. A moment later, another car exploded. The screaming stopped.

For an instant, I saw a blur of red emerging from the cast-iron gate of the house's yard, and then Velocity was in my face, his fist driving at my eye. My hand snapped up and caught his wrist in midair.

I met his wild, frenzied gaze. Feverish zealotry slowly gave way to mounting horror. Then horror turned to agony as I flexed my fingers, snapping the bone beneath. He crumpled to his knees. I kicked him once in the head, and he was out. "Velocity is down," I reported. "Injured, but not maimed."

"Good," said Fume. "One enemy cape down, I guess."

I kept walking forward. Thralls began to emerge from the gate—women, mostly, armed with anything from kitchen knives to pitchforks. Even as they emerged, however, space stretched around them, and they found themselves running into walls and lampposts all over the street. From there, the other Wards dispatched them. I didn't have to do anything.

"Thanks, Vista," said Gallant, even as I saw him hit a girl with a blast of some emotion that sent her reeling.

Vista offered no reply.

I continued up the sidewalk for a few more paces before anything changed. A boy, perhaps a little younger than Shutdown had been, stepped out of the gate, still half a block ahead of me. He turned his gaze on me, and stretched out his arms in opposite directions, as though pushing the air away from him.

Suddenly a great terror over me. Run away, some deep instinct seemed to tell me. Don't take another step forward! Don't come any closer!

The next step I took was like pushing through mud. The one after was clay. Then Gallant was lifting his Ring of Power in the air, and its orange light passed over me. Courage rekindled in my heart, driving back the dark voice, and my chest loosened somewhat.

"Thanks, Gallant," said Vista, with an odd roughness in her voice.

"Happy to help," answered Gallant, and there was a smile in his tone.

Courage warred with fear. Pressing on was easier, but still hindered. This wouldn't do. "Vista," I ordered. "Get him close to me."

I gestured with Vilya, and a gust of wind pushed into the boy's back. He stumbled forward, just as Vista shortened the space between us. Suddenly, he was barely a foot from me. The terror in my chest grew almost insurmountable, drowning out Gallant's power.

I ignored it. Búrzashdurb swung out, fast as lightning, and struck the boy across the side. Blood erupted from the wound, bone shattered like glass, and his ruined body flew across the street and smacked wetly into the wall of the house next door, leaving a smear of gore on the brickwork as it slid to the ground.

"One of Heartbreaker's kids is down," I reported as I continued on. "Dead."

"Very dead," agreed Fume weakly.

Just as I passed the beginning of the hedge which lined the house, a shockwave burst from the other side. It blew through the greenery and passed over me, shrieking and grating and loud as an airplane. Triumph followed behind me, a baseball bat aimed straight for my face.

Using sound against a Maia? Unwise.

He'd expected the shockwave to at least stagger me. He was disappointed. I reached up, grabbed the bat, and snapped it in two before swinging Búrzashdurb in a low arc which swept his feet out from under him.

I took one step and placed my foot on his throat. Then I pressed down—not hard enough to crush him, but hard enough to close his windpipe.

He struggled, and I met his eyes and watched. I ignored the bursts of sound he sent my way, ignored the scrabbling of his fingers clawing at my boot, ignored the growing blue tint to his face, and the way those struggles grew weaker and weaker until they stopped.

Then I lifted my foot, kicked him onto his side when he started coughing, and kept going. "Triumph is down," I said. "Unconscious."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're one scary motherfucker, Annatar?" asked Clockblocker.

A faint grin touched my lips. "Flatterer."

I pushed through the ruined hedge and was met with a sight that came as no surprise.

The last remaining car had an exposed tinkertech mechanism where its hood plating should have been. It was an eight-seat SUV, and all but the shotgun seat were full, mostly with children. One woman sat in the driver's seat.

The passenger side door was open, and there he stood. Heartbreaker. I recognized him from the photographs I'd seen online and in his file. He wasn't unattractive—it almost would have been easier if he had been. At least then things would have made more sense. But his thick blond hair was cut into a fine curtain which framed his angular face, and his lean form was wiry and muscular. His blue eyes, almost the color of a lightning bolt, met mine.

In one hand was a knife. In the other, he held Battery's waist. She leaned against him, baring her throat for him, glaring at me with frenzied hate in her eyes.

"Annatar," he said, and his voice was oily and smooth. "Not quite how I imagined we'd meet."

I stepped forward.

"Not another step," he said sharply. "Or Battery here gets it!"

I stopped. I felt the faint flickerings of his will on the edge of my mind, trying to bend me. I ignored it.

"Good," he said, a grin coming to his lips. "Now, let's negotiate terms."

"No," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Hmm?" His power pressed harder on my defenses, trying to force its way through.

"No," I repeated, and now I responded. I seized the reaching hand of his power and crushed it in my grip before casting it aside. "There will be no terms. I won't accept surrender."

The smile slipped from his face with a wince. "What?"

I raised my left hand and pointed. Lightning lanced forth from Vilya. It struck Battery, passed through her into Heartbreaker, and then passed into the car. For a moment, the windows glowed from within with a blue-white light, and then that light faded and all that was left inside the car were seven faintly smoking bodies.

They weren't dead yet. I hadn't hit them hard enough for that.

Heartbreaker and Battery crumpled. I came forward, grabbed Battery's wrist, and roughly pulled her off of him. I cast her aside, reached down, and closed my gauntleted hand around Heartbreaker's throat. His pained grunt was cut off with a squelch as I squeezed. His eyes opened rolling and slowly found their way to my face.

I raised him up, lifting him into the air above me, staring into his face. Our gazes were locked, and the fear in his was palpable. "There will be no surrender," I told him, my voice level and quiet. "It's over."

I threw him to the side. He hit the ground hard and rolled a short way, landing on his back. He struggled feebly, trying to sit up as I approached again.

I grabbed his hair and pulled him up, kneeling down myself so we were almost level. His eyes were wild now, though his gaze was unfocused. "Please," he wheezed. "You can't—you're a hero—I'll do anything—"

My eyes narrowed. Another memory broke upon me, of another pale, desperate little creature, exposed to something too powerful and too tempting for his frail will.

"They hurts us, precious! They hurts us, please!"

That creature had proven troublesome. I had thought it less than a worm, even less than Heartbreaker was now. I had spared it, amused by the idea of making it crawl on my behalf. I remembered little of its fate, but I knew that mercy had doomed me. It was a mistake I would not make again.

I nodded. "Yes. You will." Búrzashdurb dropped to the ground, and I shifted my grip on his hair to my right hand. My left hand cupped his cheek in a macabre parody of affection. "The punishment, after all," I said quietly, "should suit the crime."

Vilya shone, and I bent my will upon him. His face froze, muscles standing out and twitching. I was not gentle—my mind burned down his resistance like raiders burning down the walls of a castle. His eyes glazed over, the light leaving them.

Until today, I thought, there was no escape for your victims, save one. Let it be the same for you.

I broke through his defenses and had control in moments. Then I went further, and further still, until there was little enough of Nikos Vasil left that I could never again have released him if I'd wanted to. That he could never again resist me. And deep inside, I found his connection to that thing which gave him his power. I found the tendril of Silence anchored to his Fëa like a harpoon buried in the flesh of a whale.

I grasped the tether, and my gaze followed it outward. For a moment, my eyes met the thing's millions.

In the physical world, I spoke a question aloud. "Can you undo your own power?"

Slowly, like a child, the shell that had once been Nikos Vasil nodded.

I pursed my lips. For a moment, my grasp on the bond between the parasite and its host tightened. I felt it straining under my grasp, struggling to hold itself together.

Then I drove it deeper. Vasil's body jerked, and a gasp of pain escaped his slack lips.

Reluctantly, I let go, and allowed the tether to remain. I released Vasil's hair and stood up. For a moment I looked down at him as his eyes closed and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Then I reached down, picked up Búrzashdurb, and walked away.

"Our heroes were all recovered safely," Miss Militia reported. "No casualties."

The four of us—Piggot, Alexandria, Miss Militia, and I—were seated around a PRT conference table. It was the first moment of peace any of us had gotten in hours. First there had been the planning and execution of the assault, and then there had been the cleanup, but at last that was mostly done. The remaining thralls were rounded up and in M/S confinement, and the site of the battle had been quarantined.

"Good," said Piggot with a sigh. "The civilian casualties aren't ideal…"

"Heartbreaker's a master 9," said Alexandria evenly. "This was a pretty damn good outcome, all told. No one's going to hold a few civilian casualties against your department for this one."

"It's a shame it was necessary," said Miss Militia, glancing at me. "I can't help but wonder if we could have done better."

"Probably," I shrugged. "But we could have also done far worse. We needed to win, Miss Militia. We couldn't allow Heartbreaker to carry on. Without our intervention, those people would have all been effectively dead—or at least, dead to their loved ones, and the rest of the world. We won today, unequivocally."

"I know," she grimaced. "It just… doesn't seem right."

"War never does," I said dryly. "And yet it is sometimes necessary."

"Heartbreaker hasn't woken up yet," Piggot said, glancing down at her computer. "He's in a holding cell now, with electronic surveillance."

"He sleeps and wakes at my pleasure," I said, smiling slightly. "He'll be ready whenever you need him."

Piggot shuddered. "I don't want to know."

"He's able to free his thralls?" Alexandria asked.

"Of course." I bared my teeth. "Let him be the instrument of his own undoing."

The corner of Piggot's mouth turned up. "Poetic," she muttered. "And what happens when we're done? Just straight to the Birdcage with him?"

"If not worse," said Alexandria dryly. "The PRT has a kill order waiting for a single signature on Heartbreaker. I doubt they'll much mind anything."

I shrugged. "This is a conversation for another day, after we've used him to fix what he's broken."

"Right," said Piggot, leaning forward. "We're on a roll, and I don't think we can afford to stop, with Valefor still at large, Coil in possession of Narya, and Shadow Stalker possibly captured. What's our next move?"

"Shouldn't Armsmaster be here to discuss this?" Miss Militia asked. "Why isn't he here?"

Piggot frowned. "I asked Dragon to tell him we were meeting. What's taking so long?" She reached for her keyboard, but before she could tap so much as a single key, the room's speakers came to life.

"I'm sorry, Director," said Dragon, and I instantly recognized the wooden, flat voice from my conversation with her earlier. She had shut down again.

"What's wrong, Dragon?" I asked, sitting up straight. "What's happened?"

There was a pause. "It's Armsmaster," she said, still with that perfect, artificial poise. Something inside me told me that behind the audible mask, she was crying. "He's—he left a message. I'll play it back."

Then the familiar voice kicked in. "This is Armsmaster." He sounded bone-tired, and worry gnawed at his voice like rats. "Director Piggot, I'm sorry that I've failed to give my two weeks' notice. You can consider this my resignation from the Protectorate ENE."

"What!?" Piggot bellowed, her hands slamming on the table. "What the—!?"

"Quiet," I growled. The recording was continuing.

"I was watching the Wards' helmet cams during this mission—the assault on Heartbreaker," Armsmaster continued. "I saw Annatar's behavior. I'm going to the Chief Director and Legend about it—and I don't feel I can do it from inside the ENE branch right now."

I glanced at Alexandria. Her eyes met mine, and I saw the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"Annatar engaged in behavior that I would call villainous, except that I've seen few villains who were so ruthless," Armsmaster continued. "Maybe the mission could have been better executed, maybe not—but if not, it's certainly no thanks to Annatar holding back. She did nothing of the sort, despite civilians and fellow heroes in the way."

I leaned back in my chair and let the words wash over me. Hopefully he's nearly done. Long-winded, isn't he?

"Annatar, since I know you'll hear this, I'm speaking to you now," he said. Now his voice was hard and angry. "I know triggers are hard. I can only imagine what a second trigger is like. I'm willing to grant a lot of leeway. But there's a limit, and you crossed it today, and I'm not sure I can trust the Director to be circumspect in dealing with you. Human life is valuable. But then, you claim not to be human, so you might disagree." Then he sighed audibly. "I'll be honest: I liked you, Annatar. I hope we can put this all behind us, one day. But I have to do what's right, and I don't think anyone else is going to right now. So long."

There was silence for a moment. Then I stood up. The first thing I said was, "Dragon, I'm so sorry."

She didn't reply.

Then I looked around at the rest of the room. "Anybody else want to leave the Protectorate in protest of me doing what was necessary?" I asked evenly.

"This is ridiculous," muttered Piggot, massaging her temples. "Could he have been mastered, too? Seems like masters are popping out of the woodwork right now."

"It's worth putting out an alert," I said, nodding at her. "We'll put him on the list of heroes we need to recover, and hope it doesn't extend past him and Shadow Stalker."

"Do you think it was a master?" Miss Militia asked. "Oracle again, perhaps?"

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe his pride was hurt because I wouldn't give him Narya, when we were fighting Leviathan. Or he really does think I'm a monster. It could be a combination of all three. Either way, we can't let this stop us. We need to press on."

"Agreed," said Piggot grimly.

As the conversation continued, I allowed myself to withdraw from it for a few minutes. I sat back down and looked down into my lap. My fists were clenched tightly in it.

I had known Armsmaster was a potential danger, but I had misjudged its severity. I hadn't acted fast enough. It was a mistake I would be sure not to repeat.

This was just a minor setback, in the end—just another objective to complete. I had time. One way or another, Armsmaster would fall into line.