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had a defiant expression on her face under a mess of unkempt
blonde hair.
    "Have you come to take us?" she
asked.
    "No," replied Magpye. With a
smile, Dorothy receded into the strange and etheric regions of
Magpye's mind and, unbidden, a small fragment of Able Quirk took
his place. It was one of the few pieces of Able that had survived.
It was the part that remembered the fire, the part that remembered
his friends dying. Perhaps it was the best part of him, the part
that knew only grief and loss, not revenge and hate. "No, I'm not
here to take you."
    "Are you going to kill us?"
    "No."
    "Are you going to kill
him?"
    Magpye followed the girl's
gaze. Piotr had rolled himself onto his back and was awkwardly
trying to pull himself away like some strange crippled fish,
floundering in the shallow pool of gas. He was a long way from the
unconscious guard's gun, and he knew it.
    "Yes," replied Magpye. "I am
going to kill him."
    "Good," replied the girl. "He's
a bad man."
    "So am I."
    One eye on Piotr's progress
across the floor, Magpye pulled a thin piece of metal from his belt
and got to work picking the padlock on the door. Piotr probably had
the keys, but Magpye didn't want to get within reach of the Russian
giant's arms again, even if he was crippled. Besides, picking locks
was the first thing that Marv had got him to do, after he'd found
him. He'd said it was therapeutic, that all problems were a type of
lock and he just had to learn to open them. He'd found the leap
from lock picking to marshalling the voices of ghosts in head to be
very different, but Marv was still a good teacher. The lock popped
off before Piotr had made another yard across the floor.
    Magpye squatted down, bring his
masked face level with the little girl's own. She didn't flinch. It
wasn't the drugs, somehow she was not desensitised like the others.
She had simply seen far worse things than a man in a gas mask,
covered in blood.
    "Get out," said Magpye. "Take
the others with you."
    The little girl didn't need to
be asked again. She yanked on the collar of the boy next to her and
led him out of the cage. The boy behind him followed. Then a girl.
Then another boy. Whatever had been done to them here, it had
prepared them to follow orders. Magpye wondered if their minds were
even blanker than his had been, before the ghosts. Maybe there was
nothing there anymore, just a blank page. For the sake of those
that had gone before, he hoped so.
    The girl deliberately led her
parade past Piotr, spitting in his face as she went. Magpye
unbolted and unlocked the rear doors of the warehouse, then pulled
them open. Cold air rushed in, a refreshing change to the sickly
stench of the warehouse. The girl stopped, looking up at the starry
sky.
    "Where should we go?" she
asked.
    "Not far," replied Magpye.
"There are people coming, good people. They'll take care of
you."
    "What about you?"
    "I take care of myself."
    Magpye stalked back into the
warehouse, watching the last of the children go. He did not dare
count them. He had stopped counting the casualties a long time ago.
The number didn't mean anything anymore. Instead, he measured the
balance in victories like this one, and in the bloody acts of
revenge that the ghosts demanded.
    Standing over Piotr, blocking
his reach to the unconscious guard's loose gun, it was Dorothy's
voice that Magpye heard next. "I recognise him," he said. "He was
at the circus."
    "You watched them burn," Magpye growled. "You watched us burn ."
    "You're crazy," Piotr spat
back. "Just hurry up and fucking kill me if that's what you're
going to do."
    Magpye reached into his coat
and pulled out a cellphone. Owen had given it to him, said it
wasn't traceable back to either of them. Magpye didn't care. One
day soon he was going to write his name across Cane King's face and
tell everyone what he'd done. Righteous fury knew no bounds and no
quarter, that's what the ghosts said. Magpye hit the speed
dial.
    "It's us," he said flatly.
"It's done. You're going