The campus was quiet and cold under the moonlight.
Students were asleep, unaware of anything that had happened.
Los, encased in the first-generation titanium alloy armor, engines dimmed, came to a stop at the entrance to the underground facility.
The door lock had been melted through.
He pushed it open without effort.
No security personnel waiting.
The staircase leading down was silent and dim, with only the low emergency lighting running.
Los had hacked into the school’s surveillance network well before any of this.
He had known the moment Golden Boy slipped into the underground facility while he was occupied in the Dean’s office.
The melted lock was Golden Boy’s work, burned through with his fire ability.
After Golden Boy got inside, though, the lab’s cameras had been badly damaged.
What was happening down there was no longer visible.
Los activated his X-ray Vision and scanned downward to get the picture before he descended.
Security personnel down, two and three at a time, lying in pools of blood throughout the stairwell.
Some of them had been burned down to the metal frames of their weapons and nothing else.
Golden Boy was the school’s recognized best for a reason.
But.
Los’s gaze stopped moving.
The expression behind the armored faceplate went still.
He went down the stairs, stepped over the bodies, and came to the corridor leading to the lab level.
He stopped at a corner.
Leaning against the wall in a pool of blood, sitting on the floor: a figure in a gentleman’s suit, face drained of all color, the golden hair matted and dark.
Godolkin’s number one.
Golden Boy had a hole in his chest the shape of a fist, and the blood was still coming.
At the sound of Los’s approach, Golden Boy forced his eyes open.
He looked at the damage-scarred armor standing over him and was confused for a moment, then put it together.
“Is that…
Los?”
Los looked him over and said plainly: “Your internal organs are damaged.
You’ve lost a lot of blood.
You don’t have long.”
An ordinary person would have been dead already.
Only someone at Golden Boy’s level was holding on at all.
“I know.”
Golden Boy gave a short, worn-out smile.
“It’s Sam.
He’s been injected with experimental compounds.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
There was no accusation in it.
Something closer to relief.
“I didn’t think the last thing I’d see would be you.”
He looked at Los with the effort it took.
“Los.
I used you.”
He paused, and the next words came with difficulty.
“But my brother didn’t do anything wrong.
Please.
Get him out of here.”
Blood at the corner of his mouth.
The light going out of his eyes.
He slid down the wall and went still.
Dead.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Los didn’t promise and didn’t refuse.
He kept walking down the damaged corridor toward the lab.
Boom.
Boom.
The closer he got, the more the floor shook.
The rhythm of something enormous hitting the ground repeatedly, like a giant working through the walls with a war hammer.
The security personnel along the route had been reduced to scattered pieces.
Sam’s work.
All of it.
As Golden Boy’s younger brother, Sam had a physical capability that went far beyond anything a normal supe could manage: could lift a car, could clear a building.
A smaller, younger version of a certain green rage monster, except what had driven Sam out of control wasn’t anger.
It was whatever they had put in him.
Los walked into the wrecked facility interior.
Several researchers had locked themselves into the lab rooms for protection, reversing the usual arrangement.
In the corridor ahead, a curly-haired young man in a hospital gown was hammering a reinforced metal door with both bloodied fists.
The door was already beginning to cave.
Sam noticed Los approaching.
A pair of hollow, red-threaded eyes turned toward him.
“Come on, Sam.”
Los took a slow breath and crooked one armored finger.
Sam dropped into a stance and launched himself forward, accelerating hard, hitting like a compact truck driving at full speed.
Blinding light flared from the palm thrusters.
Los sidestepped in a high-speed lateral burst and narrowly avoided the full impact, getting both armored hands onto Sam’s left arm and the back of his shoulder, pressing down to force him to the ground.
Sam’s bare feet hit the floor and he drove hard in the opposite direction.
The raw force of it sent Los, still hanging on, straight into the corridor wall behind him.
The wall caved.
Cracks spread outward in every direction.
Even inside the titanium alloy armor, Los felt it like a truck hitting him.
“Not going to be easy.”
Lodged in the wall, Los looked through the armored visor at Sam winding up for another punch.
This was a first-generation armor.
Close-range fighting wasn’t where it performed.
And Sam was the real strongest person at Godolkin.
His combat capability exceeded Golden Boy’s even before the compounds.
Sam’s punch hit Los’s crossed forearms.
The armor sang.
Los was driven another few inches into the wall.
The hand section had a visible fist-shaped deformation, and a crack had opened across it.
This couldn’t continue.
Los brought the palm repulsor up fast.
The energy built visibly at the emitter.
Sam was out of his mind, but some survival instinct was still running.
He grabbed a sheet of metal from the debris around him and held it up as a shield.
The energy beam burned through it in a fraction of a second and grazed Sam’s curly hair as he ducked.
At the same moment, Los’s armored right foot drove up and forward with the thruster behind it, connecting with Sam’s jaw.
Sam went airborne.
Los didn’t follow.
He tore himself free from the wall, activated both hand and foot thrusters simultaneously, and flew away from Sam down the lab corridor at speed.
Sam’s body hit the opposite wall, the clothes on him shredding like paper on impact.
He got up like it hadn’t happened and went after the retreating armor.
The two of them moved through the corridor, Sam closing the distance despite Los having a speed advantage from the thrusters.
The corridor wasn’t wide enough for Los to open a gap.
The darkness ahead came up fast.
A dead end.
Los slowed and dropped to the floor.
Sam came in without slowing, no hesitation.
Los raised the repulsor and Sam’s body-memory from a moment ago kicked in on reflex.
He flinched aside.
His own momentum drove him into the wall at the end of the corridor.
“Game’s over.”
Los moved to a panel on the side of the corridor.
Sam looked around, dazed, and realized he was lying on top of a nest of electrical cabling.
Los had hacked the surveillance system, knew every corner of this facility, and had X-ray Vision running throughout.
The idea that he had panicked himself into a dead end was not something that had ever been likely.
He pulled the breaker.
Electrical arcs snapped and crackled.
The current ran through Sam’s body in one sudden, comprehensive surge.
Los held it for five seconds, then cut the power.
Sam dropped to the floor, unconscious.
His curly hair stood in every direction.
Residual current played across his skin.
His muscles were still twitching.