If she thought this was going to be easy, then whoever made her didn’t really know who I was. I figured this was some kind of test for her. Flatline me, bring me back to Caesar, and grab my spot with her own two hands. What would they do with my body afterward? No idea. And I wasn’t in the mood to find out either, and by the time that she found that out, I’d broken her jaw. She’d been grinning, talking, and I had taken my chance and smashed my fist into the side of her face. She’d only moved backward through the air, but then came the bloody teeth on her palm.

  She’d stared at them for a long, silent minute. I stood there looking up at her, glaring and ready. I’d told Rhea to sit this one out and go find my mother instead. Neither Cassie nor Lucas was going to like anything about what was going on, and for all I knew, they’d pump this place full of Ambrosia in just a few minutes. Rhea had tried to argue. Tried to reason out that she could help me, because hell, both of us could feel it: the clone up there felt weird. Like something in the back of my brain was tingling, flooding my body with emotions and heat and anger.

  Almost like my subconscious was telling me to back away slowly and vanish.

  “Go find my mother and she’ll make sure you live long enough to see what I turn her into,” I said quietly. I looked over my shoulder at Frankie. “You better keep your word, because I’m trusting you this once. You make sure my mom gets back home safely, and you can have my blood.” I turned around again. “Just gotta give me a second.”

  “But…” Frankie’s voice faltered as the younger version of me lowered, her boots hitting the floor. She stared at me, eyes empty, barely blinking, fists clenched so hard she crushed the teeth still on her palm. “If you—”

  “I’m not dying to a freaking clone,” I said. “I’m Olympia, who the hell do you take me for?”

  “I’m gonna kill your friends,” Young Me said, slowly starting to walk forward. Her boots echoed. The concrete splintered. I lowered a little, readying myself. “And then I’m gonna kill you, then I’ll hang your body from dear old daddy’s statue using nothing but your intestines.” She stopped. The corridor was silent. Her head tilted and electricity rippled up her arms. “We really, really don’t have to fight. I was made to be better than you. The universe spat you out and, well, just look at you. You can either give up your body for the sake of the future, or you can die.”

  Dust scraped under my foot as I swept it back, facing her with half my body. “Rhea?”

  A gust of wind later, and we were alone.

  But not before my cousin left her a parting gift and slammed her knee into her nose. Her head snapped back and blood spat through the air. She reeled, grabbing her face and swearing. Then I lunged at her, swinging my leg around and slamming it into the side of her raised arm. She flinched. The impact smashed her through a wall and sent a shock of pain through my leg. I winced as I landed and bounced on my feet, and barely even had a second to react when she pile-drived me through one, two, three floors until she stopped, grabbed my neck, and threw me hard against the reinforced floor. I gasped for air and choked on blood. A searing heat stabbed me in the side. Broken rib.

  I gathered myself off the floor, stumbling as I got to my feet. I knuckled blood off my chin and spat scarlet on the floor. She stared at me, then moved. She swung and connected with the side of my head. The world blurred. I got my bearings, grabbed onto them until I could see without the world looking blurry, and aimed right for her—

  She grabbed my fist before it even got anywhere near her chin. She glared at me, her mouth a snarl.

  I sent a shockwave of electricity to my hand, shoving her backward with a terrible bang.

  Silence.

  And then she started screaming.

  Her hand was burnt and black, raw and ugly and twisted. It looked like a claw of emulsified meat, some of it still wet enough to slough in bits and pieces off the muscle of her fingers—some of it so hard her skin cracked.

  I tentatively smiled and looked at my hand, smoke still pouring from my palm.

  They’re not bulletproof.

  Fuck me, now I get it.

  “Wait a second,” I said. She glared, baring her teeth and clutching her wrist. “You’re telling me that all this time when I thought you were stronger than me, it was all, what, some kind of fake?” I couldn’t help but throw my head back and laugh. She shot toward me. I grabbed her blackened hand and crushed it, snapping her fingers like dry kindling and turning stringy meat into watery, slimy red paste that oozed between my fingers. She wailed at that moment. Cried just like I had at her age. Then I slammed my knee into her jaw and shut her up, leaving her at my feet staring up at me. “Let me guess,” I said to her quietly. “The only difference is that you’re immune to Ambrosia.”

  She tried to lunge at me again. I was behind her in a second and slammed my heel into her spine.

  Again, she fell to the floor. Again, she gasped for air.

  You didn’t give me a chance when Dennie lay there bleeding, so don’t start begging now.

  I grabbed her hair and twisted it around my fist, then yanked her head to the side and looked her dead in the eyes. She was shaking. Maybe with anger and hatred. Maybe because of pain. Hell, it didn’t really matter, did it?

  “The Kaiju that attacked the bay,” I said, making her flinch. “It smelt funny. It smelt sweet. You fucked me over on purpose so you could look great. Gods! All this time I thought you were gonna actually be a threat to me!”

  She spat blood on my chest. “Fuck you,” she snarled. “One hand or neither, I’ll rip out your throat.”

  I shook my head slowly and used my free hand to cup her cheek. Now she was frozen solid. No more shaking or trembling or frothing at the mouth. “You know,” I said. “I know your hand is healing right now, and I know you’re gonna be a problem for me regardless, but I’m gonna do you one better.” I let go of her head and stomped on her face. She fell and writhed on the floor, her face half-caved in, some of it gushing with blood as she roared and wailed and kicked around. Like a baby throwing a tantrum. Up into the air by her throat, I shook her until she had eyes on me—I had to snap my fingers to make sure she was paying attention. “I promised I’d wear you like a fucking cape.” I brought her closer, staring into bloodshot golden eyes. “And that’s the closest you’ll ever be to greatness in your short, pathetic, worthless little life.” I lifted her, slammed her onto the ground, then stepped on her back. And for a moment, everything almost seemed to freeze. Stop. Catch its breath as I stared down at her.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It was the silence, long and lasting and painfully loud. It was the dull fire in my heart, hot and red.

  I wanted to put my foot right through her chest and end this here like it should have been done so, so long ago too. But as I pressed and I pressed and she begged and she cried and the false persona she’d worn slipped away, I paused in the hellishly lit hallway and looked up. Left. Right. Upward through the holes in the floors above me.

  I shut my eyes and breathed through my nose and then out of my mouth. Fuck me, not now.

  Slowly, I lifted my foot off her spine and quietly sighed. I massaged my eyes and put my hands on my hips, not wanting to look down at her. But I forced myself to because I had to; because if I didn’t, I’d be just like her.

  The kind of superhero Dennie never wanted me to end up being. The kind in the comics.

  The kind that saved the world and split the clouds and chased the stars.

  It’s just a shame that sometimes you’ve got to make hard decisions.

  “Wait!” she screamed. I was a second away from breaking her in half and hanging her over my shoulder. At some point during her begging, I figured Frankie could use all these juicy body parts for Rhea and the others. But now I waited and watched as she rested on her elbow, arm out, eyes red, and face slowly fixing itself in real time. “I give up, alright? You win. Caesar isn’t even my boss to begin with, and come on, I’m just here because of the—”

  I kicked her in the ribs. She convulsed and vomited. “Shut up,” I said. “We’ve got the same voice, I know when we’re lying. You came here because you wanted me dead and gone, right? So stand up and prove that you’re worth the test tube they made you in, but lemme guess, you’ve got a boo-boo on your hand that’s stopping you.”

  Her eyes flared with anger. Then she breathed and said, “You want the truth?”

  I folded my arms. “A minute before I snap you in half and drape you over my shoulder. Go.”

  She sat upright, a hand to her side as she spat blood in between her legs. It took effort, but she finally tilted her head upward to face me. She swayed a little, almost as if she was exhausted to the core. She breathed slowly. She swallowed even slower, almost struggling—hating the taste and leaving her mouth open afterward, as if she wanted to spit it all out again. “I don’t like you much. Not because you’re a bad superhero—I really do just hate your guts.”

  “Pick a number and join the line.”

  “But fuck me,” she whispered, before I could stomp her out again. “You beat the shit out of me and you didn’t even stop. Like, I begged you to stop stomping on me, and then you smashed in my face! You’re crazy.”

  “You would’ve done exactly the same to me.”

  “Ha!” She laughed dryly and shook her head, then turned and spat to her side. Blood and spit and another loose fragment of tooth. “As if. I’m stronger than that weakling look-alike, but you? Christ. They’ve got a training facility with equipment that can hit you harder than anything, but when you slammed your knee into my nose, I actually thought I was gonna die.” She knocked the side of her head. “Guess it pays to have a really dense skull.”

  “You’re wasting my time,” I growled. “Where is this going?”

  She put her hands up in the air. “I tap out.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I tap out,” she said, climbing onto her feet. She wobbled, then shook her head and faced me. It was pretty uncanny looking at a younger version of myself, especially one with blood on her face, right alongside a smile I used to wear right after I got done putting a purse snatcher halfway through a rain gutter. “You’re too strong, O.”

  “I don’t know if anyone’s told you this yet,” I said. “But grudges don’t work like that, not here.”

  She shrugged. “I was born four months ago, what the fuck does ‘how it works here’ have to do with me? I killed a Kaiju that was gonna die in the next hour if I failed, anyway. All I’ve ever done up until a few days ago was media training, learning basic math, history and science, and how to smile for the cameras. So, goldie, I tap out.”

  I stared at her, looking her up and down. This has to be some kind of joke, right?

  “What the hell do you really think is gonna happen right now?” I asked her.

  “You let me go and it’s water under the bridge, of course.”

  “You watched one of the only people who cared about me die. You ripped him from my hands and his body might still be out there in the cold next to that fucking dumpster!” I snapped. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “You could have made it easier and did what Lucas said, then he’d be alive. He’s always right, y’know.”

  An icy finger ran down my spine. I rolled my shoulders and looked over my shoulder.

  She’d been buying time.

  “She’s right,” he said, several feet behind me. His sleeves were rolled up and his shirt was speckled in dry flecks of blood. His hair was a wet mess, not from sweat but from rain. In his fist, a handgun. In his pocket, an open packet of Ambrosia that stank as he clutched it tightly in his fist. “I’m willing to give you a proper send off, Ry.”

  “You’re sick,” I snarled, facing him. “You couldn’t control me, so you made another one to be your dog?”

  Lucas shook his head and took a step forward. “Now you’re making me seem like a psychopath. I’m not the one who made her, that’s got nothing to do with me. Does it help that she listens more than you do? Maybe.” He stopped walking. My nose wrinkled, pinched by the smell coming off him. “But at the end of the day, all she really is to me is a clone. She’s gonna be sold to the public as the better version of you, and as you’ve been stuck in here for days on end, she’s been out there saving the city in your place and making sure the world watches.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled. The strangest thing about him had always been the smell of his breath—the tiniest amount of rot coming from his lungs. Cancer, probably, but now? Nothing. Clean as could be. “But I want the real Olympia.”

  “If you want the real me I can put my fist through you so you can see how real I am.”

  “Enough with the threats, Rylee. I’m offering you a second chance.”

  “Go to hell,” I snarled. “Why the fuck would I ever listen to you? You murdered Dennie. You got in between me and my mom. You’re the reason my entire life has fallen apart this year, and now you want back in?”

  “I still know what you’re capable of,” he said quietly, almost somberly. I tensed my jaw as something swelled in my chest. The silence was getting to me. Being here, facing him, was getting to me. “I still know that you’re probably going to be one of the strongest superheroes this planet has ever seen, but you need guidance for that to happen. You think I want to work with clones? With puppets wearing skin that’s not even really theirs?”

  “You were always great at selling the part,” I said. “Always great at acting like you’re not a piece of shit.”

  The cigarette hung from the corner of his lips, his eyes hooded by darkness. “We want the same thing.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that?”

  “Peace. Stability. A New Olympus that can let go of the old and rely on the new to save her.”

  “Bullshit,” I whispered. “You want me to be your slave. Do everything I’m asked to do.”

  “You accomplished more with me than you have by yourself in the last six months.”

  My fists tightened. I felt the clone glance at me as she folded her arms. “Some days I thought you were the best thing to ever happen to me.” I turned to fully face him. “But now I think I should just do everyone a favor.”

  He scoffed and dropped the cigarette. “We both know you don’t have it in you. Drop the bravado—”

  I caught the clone’s fist before she could punch me in the back of the head. I twisted her wrist in one quick motion and slammed my elbow into her forearm, snapping the bone clean in two. She screamed and reeled back.

  “You can make as many versions of me as you want,” I growled. “But they’ll never be me.”

  “And that’s what I tried to tell Cassie,” he muttered. “But I guess we’ve just got to fix you.”

  My first mistake had been letting him get into my head. I’d given him too much time. Too much emotion. My heart had been beating and my breaths had been deeper, and all that really meant was more Ambrosia inside me.

  As for Lucas, all it meant was a split-second chance to pour the bag of golden powder down his throat.