"Get down!" Max screamed, lunging over and shoving her out of her chair. They landed sprawled together on the floor, but Maggie barely had time to register the strange swooping sensation in her chest before she was stricken by a much more pressing emotion: acute terror.

Is it him? Flamethrower?

Her thoughts were answered by a roar of fire shooting so close to her body that it suddenly felt like the temperature of the room had doubled. Maggie screamed and instinctively covered her face with her hands.

There was a zing close to her ear, followed by the sound of Max cursing. She removed her hands from her face and saw him lying next to her, his hands shaking as he held the same pen he'd aimed at her the day he'd come into the theater, this time aiming it at…

She did a double take, her fear momentarily replaced by confusion. She recognized the man. She'd seen him a few times before, just in passing, but still… it had definitely been him. And she definitely remembered where she'd seen him.

At Renegade Headquarters.

Had there already been Renegades here, and they'd swooped in to help as soon as they saw the fire?

Or…

The man thrust his palm forward, and another jet of fire shot out toward her and Max. Maggie didn't have time to do anything but scream and wait for the searing heat to hit her.

But it didn't. Instead, it came to a stop right in front of them, then continued around them, encircling Maggie, Max, and the two chairs they'd been sitting on in a ring of fire.

There was a small hiss and then a sensation of wetness on her head as the building's sprinkler system went off, dousing the flames in water. Her relief was momentary as she realized that the water wasn't at all effective in quelling the flames—if anything, they were getting bigger.

She coughed, and started to push herself up, but Max grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. "Smoke rises," he whispered.

She could only stare at him in horror. "So, what, we're just going to stay here on the ground until we die? We're in a ring of fire!"

"If we get up and try to run away, he'll only create more fire wherever we go," Max countered. His terrified eyes flicked to the chairs behind them. "D'you think we can push hard enough on one of those to break the window?"

She wasn't sure, but it seemed like the only viable option they had. She nodded, trying to catch her breath as the combination of fear and smoke made that task increasingly more difficult.

"Max Everhart!" A loud, commandeering voice boomed out from somewhere beyond the flames, and Maggie tensed, feeling Max do the same. He knows who Max is?

It was a dumb question. Everyone knew who Max was. But was Flamethrower targeting him?

"Max, Max, Max," the villain said condescendingly, and by the sound of his voice, it seemed like he was getting closer. "What a pleasure it is to run into the number-one name on my hit list. And at a time when you're not surrounded by other prodigies. How perfect."

Max lifted up the pen again and aimed it toward the sound of the voice. There was another zing as some sort of projectile shot out through the fire, but evidently, it missed again, because Flamethrower kept talking. "Of course, there is one little downside to not having any witnesses around to see me kill you, and that is that there will be no one to explain exactly how it happened."

"We have to do it now," Max whispered, and Maggie knew he was talking about the chair. "On the count of three, let's both stand up and shove it as hard as we can toward the window."

Maggie licked her lips and nodded, already using her powers to assess whether there was anything remotely valuable inside the chair, something she could use her powers to push on, thus adding extra force. She felt nothing. This would rely solely on their combined physical strength.

"Fortunately for me, you brought a friend along," Flamethrower said, his voice even closer now.

Looking like he was straining not to cough, Max got into a crouching position, facing the chair. Maggie mimicked him. Max held up three fingers, then put one down, then the next, and finally, the last. Simultaneously, the two of them stood up and heaved the chair toward the window.

There was a small thud, accompanied not by the sound of breaking glass, but by Flamethrower laughing. "What a darling little escape plan," he cooed. "Tell you what—I'll help you out."

Another wall of flame suddenly shot up in the foot of space between Maggie and Max. Their screams mingled with each other's, as Maggie leapt backward to get away from the heat. At the same time, the window shattered, glass shards raining down into her hair and down her arms. But the pinpricks of the tiny fragments embedding themselves into her skin hardly registered. "Max!" she screamed, unable to even see him anymore.

"Mag—" His voice broke off in a fit of coughing.

Maggie spun around frantically, trying to spot a fire extinguisher, a fire alarm, anything useful that she could possibly control with her powers while she was still encompassed in the ring of flames. And that's when she realized that she wasn't encompassed in a ring of flames. Not anymore. The flames around her had disappeared, leaving a free path to the now-shattered window, or even the door that led to the flight of stairs. Why—

The horrifying realization struck her even before she heard Max's tormented scream rising from the new wall of flames. Flamethrower cackled, his large form a silhouette in the flames a few feet away from where Max seemed to be. "Max Everhart, creator of the Supernova," he mused. "Destroyer of all respect for the true power in this world."

He's going to kill Max. Maggie's entire body had turned to liquid, her heartbeat louder than a freight train. He's going to kill Max, and he's letting me go so I can tell everyone what happened.

She was free to leave. Flamethrower didn't want her dead. He was going to let her just walk out of that building unscathed, and he probably wouldn't even be interested in tracking her down and dealing with her later.

But she couldn't leave. She couldn't let Max die.

Her eyes fell on a small coffee table several feet away. She ran over and picked it up, hurling it with all her strength toward Flamethrower. The flames flickered ever so slightly as the table made contact, Flamethrower stumbling forward upon impact. Just as quickly, though, they were back as strong as ever, the wooden table catching fire and assimilating into the inferno. "Little girl, I'm giving you a free pass," Flamethrower growled. "I suggest you get out of here before I change my mind."

She looked around for other items she could throw. Most of what was in the room was heavy furniture, but there was another coffee table over by the far wall. If she could just get there in time…

As if Flamethrower had predicted her actions, the table she was looking at suddenly burst into flames. It was followed by several more combustions, as every piece of furniture in the room lit up one by one. No… what am I supposed to do now?

Again, she scanned the room for a fire extinguisher, finally spotting one right next to one of the flaming armchairs. Recognizing the value of a fire extinguisher in a situation like this, she didn't even bother going over to it, but rather ripped the device off the wall telekinetically, already aiming it toward the spot where Max was and pulling the trigger.

The white foam sprayed out, but its effect on the flames was just like that of the water that was still raining down from the ceiling sprinklers—absolutely, positively nothing.

"I'm telling you, little girl. There's no hope for your boyfriend. Get out and save yourself while you still can," Flamethrower taunted.

With a frustrated scream, Maggie hurled the fire extinguisher toward him, putting all the strength of her power into that throw. The extinguisher made contact—not with his head, as she'd been hoping, but at least with his shoulder. Once again, the intensity of the flames died down, this time enough for her to catch a glimpse of Max's terrified face.

"Max, RUN!" she shouted, even as she fought to take control of the fire extinguisher again. She could feel it resisting her telekinetic grasp, her body still recuperating from the force of the last throw, but she managed to pick it up and smash it against the side of Flamethrower's head, praying it would be enough to knock him out.

She didn't have time to check if she'd succeeded. She found the trigger again and pushed down hard on it, spraying out more of the white foam in Max's direction. Max started to move forward—toward her, out of the flames. And then—

Max let out a howl of agony as Flamethrower grabbed his wrist. Maggie quickly used her powers to grab the fire extinguisher from the floor, but no sooner had she started lifting it up, then Flamethrower bent down and snatched it up with his other hand. In single swift motion, he pitched it out the shattered window.

"No!" Maggie wailed, her one weapon gone. What did she have left to fight with? How much longer would it be before Max was burned to a crisp? And for all the powers, in a city with Renegades and vigilantes and thousands upon thousands of superpowers, why wasn't anyone coming?

It was hopeless. Max was going to be killed, and it would be her fault again, just like Callum's death was her fault. She was the one who'd come to see Max today. She was the reason they'd been in this abandoned building in the first place. It had been her papers they were looking at, and maybe she would have heard Flamethrower coming if she hadn't been so engrossed in reading useless old facts about something that had happened all the way back when she was a—

Her nerves tingled. She did have one more weapon, one more thing she could try, at least. Something she never would have considered using as a weapon before, but it was her only shot, and she had to save Max…

Clenching her teeth, she used her mind to pull the bullet out of her pocket and fire it at Flamethrower's head. She knew she didn't have the velocity to actually kill him with it, but if she hit him in the eye she could at least inflict a lot of pain, and even if she hit him somewhere else it would still distract him.

Sure enough, the moment the bullet made contact with Flamethrower's skull he jumped, the hand that had been clutching the struggling, coughing Max instinctively flying up to his own head. Maggie reared the bullet back and slammed it into his head again, and again, and again, and again, each time causing Flamethrower to yelp and look around, trying to see what had hit him.

"Max, come on!" Maggie shouted, seeing that Max hadn't moved a bit since Flamethrower had released him.

Max's head lifted, but rather than stepping forward, he simply launched into another coughing fit and stayed put.

Because he's still surrounded by flames, Maggie realized in dismay. Unless I can get Flamethrower to put out those flames entirely, he'll have to walk through the fire to get out of it.

It was better than the alternative.

She ran forward, still bombarding Flamethrower's head with the bullet time and time again. "Stop, drop, and roll," she coaxed Max, reciting what she'd learned about fire safety back at the Children's Home. "Just step forward, and as soon as you're out of the fire, drop to the ground and roll to put the flames out. Come on, Max, please."

Max stepped forward at the same time Flamethrower shot up a new wall of flames right behind Maggie.

A moment later she heard the gunshot.