 
### White Sasha

Sasha MacPherson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Sasha MacPherson

Second edition: 2020

ISBN: 978-0-9880954-1-0 (epub version)

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Cover art copyright by Mark Williams (http://marrilliams.deviantart.com/)

The characters "Firebird" and "Code Blue" are being used in this work with permission. They remain the property of their respective owners.

### April 9th, 1910

The young astronomer patted his telescope like an old friend. Together they would live the stargazer's dream of a lifetime, as a rare guest to Earth was about to visit for a spectacular show. Halley's Comet was approaching Earth on its 76 years long round-trip around the sun, and would soon be visible on the sky even with the naked eye. Except for a few lucky people, it was also an event that would occur only once in a human lifetime. At least the astronomer did not expect to see his 101st birthday to observe the comet's next return in 1986, so he planned to make the most of the one chance he would ever get.

And he would have the best available seat on the planet: The Mount Wilson observatory near Los Angeles had recently been fitted with a sixty inch telescope, making it the largest operating telescope in the world. Being a rather recent university graduate, the young man expected more experienced astronomers to take over the telescope as the comet would approach closer, but in the meantime the show was his to run, and he appreciated that.

He peeked through his eyepiece at the bright white spot in the dark night sky. It appeared motionless, but the astronomer knew that this was an illusion. Halley's Comet was racing towards Earth at over 250,000 kilometers per hour. The eleven kilometer wide lump of frozen water and cosmic dust would come spectacularly close to Earth this time, passing it at a distance of only twenty million kilometers - a grazing shot by cosmic standards.

The young scientist removed the eyepiece from his telescope and replaced it with a photo camera. Halley's Comet had been a regular guest to Earth for countless millennia, but thanks to this new technology it would be the first time that lasting images of the event would remain for posterity. Of course the most spectacular photographs would only be made when the comet had reached its closest point to Earth, but the astronomer had decided to take a few practice shots to make sure no mistakes would be made when it mattered. He made sure the comet was still centered in the lens and took half a dozen shots. The astronomer had no idea how to develop the photographs. He would hand the material to a co-worker having the necessary skills in the morning.

***

When the astronomer went to bed, he did not know that he had just taken the only photographs that would ever be made of Halley's Comet. Had he stayed only a few minutes longer and continued looking through his telescope's eyepiece, the young man would have seen the comet suddenly being blanked out by a bright flash of light, as a large asteroid the size of a volcano struck Halley's Comet dead center. The immense blast annihilated the asteroid and a substantial part of Halley's mass in a maelstrom of heat and pressure. Three larger parts remained of the comet, thrown in different directions by the powerful impact. The largest one was set on a course that would eventually catapult it out of the solar system, never to be seen again. Another was headed towards the center of the solar system, where it would be captured by the sun's gravity to meet a fiery demise in a few weeks. The last part - a ball of ice and dust almost half a kilometer wide - resumed a course not too different from the comet's original one.

But instead of going to pass Earth at a safe distance of twenty million kilometers, it was now heading right towards it.

### April 20th, 1910

Routine human everyday life had come to all but a standstill as humanity's eyes were collectively directed at the sky and the glowing object that grew larger and larger in their vision. Astronomers had been calculating and re-calculating the comet fragment's projected path over and over again, but could not seem to agree whether Halley C - as the fragment approaching Earth had been denoted - would be missing the blue planet by a minuscule distance, or impact on the surface, wiping out all life on any continent it might strike.

The truth was somewhere in between.

Followed by a column of blue light, Halley C struck Earth's upper atmosphere at a speed of almost sixty kilometers per second. The air resistance immediately decelerated it, heating the comet's icy core to many hundred degrees in a matter of mere moments and weakening its structure. At the same time, Earth's gravity mercilessly kept pulling on it. The brutal physical forces at work were too much for the weakened comet fragment to endure. Around ten kilometers above the Arctic Ocean, Halley C exploded with a tremendous blast equaling millions of tons of explosives and a flash of brilliant light so intense that many hundred million humans had to avert their eyes in unison to prevent them from getting instantly blinded. The immense shockwave shattered the arctic's ice crust below to pieces and triggered the equivalent of a magnitude ten earthquake, which knocked people from their feet in places as far away as North America and Europe.

***

Despite the devastation, humanity had been lucky on that day. The number of casualties was minimal, considering that a direct surface impact of the comet could have eradicated hundreds of millions human lives, had it struck a densely populated continent.

But what the celebrating humans did not immediately notice was something else that the comet had brought to Earth. The blast had released a form of radiation that scientists had discovered only fourteen years ago: Radioactivity.

The invisible particles were carried by winds all over the planet, affecting every single human, animal and plant alive. Over the next few decades, over hundred thousand deaths would be attributed to the late effects of radiation poisoning. But the most lasting effect was that the human genetic structure had been changed forever. Exactly nine months after Halley C had exploded in Earth's atmosphere, the first metahuman baby was born. Subsequently, one in every hundred thousand humans would be born with extraordinary abilities of some degree. Some were born exceptionally strong or smart. Some had the power to conjure fire, lightning and ice. Others could run faster than an Olympic sprint champion ever could dream of. A few could create earthquakes with a command of their mind or control gravity to make objects float in the air, even their own bodies.

And although only a fraction of all metahumans would develop truly substantial powers, Earth would never be the same again.

### August 16th, 1995

Sasha whistled her favorite tune while she walked home through the city park. The shadowy park was a welcome relief of the mid-summer heat assaulting her hometown of Vancouver. In contrast to the weekends, when this park regularly got invaded by large crowds bringing picnic baskets, BBQ grills, and enough meat to run a butcher's shop for a week, it was eerily quiet now. Other than Sasha, the only other living beings in the part seemed to be squirrels and birds.

The young girl was in a great mood which mostly had to do with the fact that school was over for today, and like most fifteen-year-olds Sasha was long past the phase when she had found school to be enjoyable. Being considered a freak and harassed by her classmates for her snow-white hair and her inability to smell even the most intense scents had considerably amplified her view on that.

But in a few minutes she would be at home, where a large bowl of homemade pasta would wait for her. She could already hear their obnoxious neighbor's two dogs barking in the distance. Which to the dismay of her entire family, the two pit bulls did more or less all day. She suspected that their owner was encouraging his pets to do that, as their families had been at odds with each other for years.

Then something made Sasha stop. The barking was getting louder. Much louder. But she was not that close to home yet. The next moment, Sasha screamed in panic as the two dogs jumped out of a bush and charged right towards her.

The terrified girl dropped her bag, whirled around and ran. But there was no way she could hope to outrun the two furious dogs. After three steps, something hard hit her back accompanied by a dark growl, and Sasha fell to the ground, where she rolled over and ended on her back. She screamed in agony as sharp teeth sank into her exposed leg's tender flesh. Her eyes went wide in panic as the other dog came in fast and jumped on her chest, knocking the air from her lungs. His wide open jaw was aiming straight for her face. Sasha jerked up her arms in front of her face and pushed hard against the dog, trying to shove the animal off her body.

But she could not.

She yelled for help as the strong dog pushed her arms farther down towards her face, its teeth now mere inches away from her throat. But she was all alone in the park. Nobody would help her anytime soon.

Sasha screamed as she realized that if the dog would get hold of her throat, she would die. In helpless rage, her eyes focused on the vicious animal who intended to kill her for no reason at all. But the young girl refused to give up and die just yet. She reached deep inside her body and collected every bit of her remaining strength, focusing it all on the one task that would keep her alive: Keeping the dogs away from her throat. But her arms started to tremble as her physical strength was waning. Sasha was a tall and sporty girl, but she was no match against a hundred pounds of teeth and muscle. The dog's teeth were slicing into her face more and more often, as the growling dog relentlessly pushed attack after attack. And the throbbing pain from Sasha's numerous wounds signaled the girl that her body could not take much more of this. Her warm blood was pouring down her cheeks in small rivers as Sasha's mind reached deeper inside herself, desperately urging her body for more strength.

Just as Sasha wanted to give up and accept that her fate was sealed, her mind discovered something. A source of power, hidden deep within her she had never realized to be there. Sasha did not understand what it was but used the last bit of her remaining mental power to will it to life.

A sudden surge of raw kinetic energy erupted from her hand, blasting into the dogs with the force of a sledgehammer. The two animals were propelled high into the air and yelped as they smashed into the ground, almost twenty feet away from Sasha. One of them rolled over and remained still, the other one limped away on three feet.

Sasha rolled to her side, buried her torn face in her hands and wept.

***

The doctor quietly closed the door to Sasha's room behind him. Outsides, Tom Clarkson stood with a solemn expression, holding his wife close to him while he was gently rubbing her shoulder. Laura Clarkson wiped a tear from her eyes, and looked at the door and then at the doctor.

"How is she doing?" Laura whispered.

The doctor nodded. "Your daughter will be all right, Mrs. Clarkson. Given enough time, that is. However, a few of the cuts in her face are quite frankly gruesome. Sasha will fully recover, but I am afraid the scars will remain."

Laura's hand reached up to cover her mouth and tears were appearing in her already reddened eyes.

"When the wounds are healed, there might be at least a few things we can do about it," the doctor said. "Plastic surgery can do amazing things these days. For the time being, she just needs some rest, though."

Laura nodded sadly and then escorted the doctor to the door.

With an exhausted sigh, she let herself sink onto the sofa next to her husband.

"As if the poor thing didn't have it hard enough in school already. Now she will have a disfigured face on top of it," she said.

"I know. But at least she's alive. That's what matters," Tom said, patting his wife's knee.

Laura nodded. "I know," she whispered.

Both remained silent for the better part of half an hour. Too exhausting the past few hours had been for both of them, after Sasha had weakly stumbled into their home and collapsed just behind the door, covered in blood.

Then Tom and Laura looked up in surprise as they heard a door open on the first floor.

And they stared with wide-open eyes as their daughter slowly descended the stairs and walked towards them with measured steps. Sasha had ripped away the bandages from her face and arms. There was not the slightest visible trace of any wound remaining on her skin.

"Mom... Dad...," Sasha said, a bewildered expression in her eyes. She pointed towards her perfectly beautiful face that looked just the same way it always had. As if the dog's sharp claws and fangs had never torn into it.

"Who or what am I?" the girl whispered.

***

Tom was the first to regain his composure. "Please, sit down, honey," she said. Then he looked questioningly at his wife. Laura nodded.

"There is something we need to tell you, Sasha. And it will be very hard to accept for you. You might even end up hating us after it, but please hear us out to the end, okay?"

Sasha shook her head. "How could I ever hate my own parents?" she whispered.

"That's part of the point, Sasha. Laura and I aren't your parents. Well, legally we are. We have adopted you shortly after you were born."

Sasha wordlessly stared into the man's face, who she had believed to be nothing else than her dad until a moment ago. After a long moment of silence, the girl spoke. "Who were my real parents, then?" she whispered.

Tom drew in a deep breath. "Do you know what a metahuman is, Sasha?"

The girl nodded. "I have sometimes read about them in the newspapers. They are people with extraordinary abilities, right?"

"Yes. A small percentage of humans is different from the norm. Some are extremely strong. Others can wield magic. Some can shape-shift. And some can run really fast. These powers come in all shapes and sizes. Many of them are using these talents to do great things for all of humanity. Others use them for their own purposes or even use them to commit crimes. Some don't use them much at all. Metahumans are rare. And your biological mother was one of them."

"Who was she? And how did she die?"

"Nobody knows her real name. The one she gave herself and we know her as is 'Scarlet Fire'. She was able to use magic with great power, particularly fire-based magic. She was also a skilled bio-engineer."

Tom looked away and paused. Laura reached out with her hand and gently squeezed her husband's thigh.

"And the reason she's dead is...because I killed her, Sasha," Tom finished with a hushed voice.

***

When Tom looked into his adoptive daughter's face, he was sure he could not have any more stunned her if he had struck her with his fist. Sasha's eyes were opened wide and stared at Tom's.

"You know that I am a cop, Sasha. The unit I am assigned to is the RCMP's Integrated Task Force for Superhuman Crime. Hunting metahuman criminals, that's what we do. You can imagine that criminals having super powers are a lot more dangerous than regular ones."

"Are you saying that my real mother was...?"

"A criminal, yes. And she was very dangerous, even by metahuman standards. I was leading the force assigned to arrest her. We finally found out where she was hiding and took a team there. At this time Laura was a part of the force too. We were both in the team that executed the raid. We thought we could surprise her and quickly overwhelm her, but something went wrong. She resisted and killed two of my team members. I had to shoot her or more good men would have died."

Tom swallowed hard before he went on. "One of her illegal activities involved experimentation on human DNA. Scarlet Fire was obsessed with creating metahumans even more powerful than herself. She used her very own DNA as the basis for it and impregnated herself to bear a powerful metahuman child to become her partner in crime one day. At least that's what we think it was all about."

Sasha's gaze went from Tom to Laura and back. "Let me guess...the result is me?" she whispered.

Tom nodded. "After we had to kill your mother, we searched her laboratory and found you there. You were barely five weeks old. There were certain...talks...about what to do with you. Some of the suggestions were cruel and unacceptable, so Laura and I pressured my superiors very hard, and they gave you to us. Laura couldn't have children of her own, and we always wanted to have kids. She then quit the RCMP to care for you."

Tom pointed to his daughter's perfectly recovered face. "We didn't know in what exact way the metahuman powers would manifest in you, Sasha, except that we have always suspected that you would have to have some innate talent for magic. We had no idea that your body can self-recover like that, despite we did notice that those small cuts and bruises that kids tend to get every now and then seemed to heal quick on you. What we know for sure is that your intelligence is artificially enhanced and is far above average. You have an IQ in the mid-180s. That's why you get all those A-grades without having to study hard for it."

"My white hair...? And that I can't smell anything?" Sasha said, pointing at her head.

"Both is likely a side-effect of the alterations done to your DNA, but we don't know for sure," Tom said.

Sasha snorted. "So, those people in school who always said that I am a freak...they were right after all, huh?"

Tom vigorously shook his head.

"You are not like others, Sasha. That doesn't make you a freak. Please don't think for a second that are one. You are a kind, brilliant, beautiful, and charming young lady, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise."

"How about my father, then? My real one, I mean?"

Laura shrugged. "We do not know who he is - or if you even have an actual biological father at all, Sasha. There was no mention of it in Scarlet Fire's documents we found."

"I see," Sasha said. "So I am the product of a criminal who fumbled around with my DNA to make me a better criminal. That about sums it up?"

"That your real mother chose that path for herself doesn't mean that you have to, Sasha. Nobody is born or even created to be a bad person. You are what you want to be. Nothing more, nothing less," Laura said.

"I don't want to be a bad person," Sasha whispered.

Laura nodded. "That's all you and we need to know."

Sasha let her gaze wander between her adoptive parents. "I am glad that you told me the truth, and that I no longer have to wonder why I am the way I am. But as far as I am concerned, you're Mom and Dad to me, and always will be. I don't have any other parents than you. Whoever that person was who...made me - she's not my family. You are. And I couldn't have asked for a better one."

Laura could barely suppress a tear. Then her lips formed a smile, and she moved next to Sasha and pressed her close, burying her daughter's face at her shoulder.

### January 10th, 1998

Sasha did not try to conceal the urge for a healthy yawn, as she put her textbook and pens on the desk and crossed her arms in front of her, waiting for the teacher to come into the classroom and start the class. Another day of school was about to begin. And it was only a Wednesday, so she would have to go through three more of those days in this week. But thankfully, she had only six more months left until graduation. Sasha could not wait until she could walk out of this building for the final time, with her diploma in her hands. The eighteen-year-old girl was looking forward to university. Sasha did not mind studying at all. She only minded school. Or more precisely, she minded a certain aspect of it.

With a sigh, Sasha noticed that the certain aspect was just walking straight towards her.

"Good morning, Sasha," Matthew Finch purred in a tone that gave Sasha goose bumps.

"What? It's 'Sasha' now instead of 'White-haired freak'? How come?" Sasha said to the person who had made her school life miserable from the very day they met in class for the first time. Sasha had never understood what made Matthew harass her at any given chance, but she guessed Matt, being the extremely weak student he was, just needed to vent his frustration at someone. And the girl with the odd white hair who also was the best student in the class was the most obvious target.

"So how is little Miss Einstein doing on this wonderful day? Solved the unified field theory? Or developed a cure for cancer before breakfast?"

Sasha stared hard into Matt's face. "Leave me alone, Matt," she snarled.

Matt's smirking gaze wandered from Sasha's face to her possessions on the desk.

"A textbook? What would you need that for? I am sure you have memorized the entire thing already, with that superior intellect of yours, no?"

Sasha sighed. "Matt, it's not my fault you didn't pass the last math exam. Would you please stop now?"

Matt shrugged and tossed Sasha's textbook over his shoulder. "Oops," he said. "Now I have dropped it."

Sasha let her gaze wander from Matt to the other students. Some were giggling. Some were averting their heads when Sasha looked at them. One other girl looked at her with some trace of sympathy, but said nothing, either. In this class, nobody opposed Matthew Finch. Particularly not to help Sasha.

Slowly, Sasha rose from her chair and trotted to the place where Matt had dropped her textbook. She reached down to the ground to retrieve it.

And Matt's body bumped into her from behind.

The surprised girl had no way to compensate for the unexpected push. Losing her balance, Sasha stumbled forward. She tried to break her fall by reaching for a desk, but her hand could not find enough hold on it. One of her feet slipped from under her. Sasha's body flipped around in mid-air, as gravity pulled her mercilessly down. With a yelp, the girl fell butt-first to the floor before she was showered in pencils raining from the desk her desperate attempt to regain balance had shaken.

Matthew Finch laughed. "Oh, Sasha, I am so sorry. Did I do that?"

Laying on her back on the floor, she pushed her upper body upright with her elbows. And she noticed that Matthew was not the only one taking delight in her misery.

Sasha's eyes narrowed to thin slits. Blood shot into her face, changing her complexion to a solid red. And the young woman experienced an emotion she had never felt before.

Hatred.

With lightning fast speed, Sasha propelled herself back on her feet. Her eyes locked into Matthew's, who was still laughing. But his laughter froze when he stared into Sasha's eyes.

"I am sick and tired of you treating me like a piece of shit, Matt. I have never done anything to you, or anyone else. And now it will stop," Sasha yelled.

Sasha's right arm shot out, the flat palm pointing towards Matt. Her furious mind drew on the hidden magical power inside her and willed it to life. From her palm, a wall of kinetic energy launched towards her target. A split-second later, Matt screamed in agony as the powerful mental blast knocked into him with the force of a truck and lifted him from his feet.

His arms and legs flailing in panic, Matthew sailed over two rows of desks and crashed into the third with a sickening thud. The inertia of his body mass toppled the desk and the chairs behind it, and Matthew vanished under a mass of collapsing furniture, textbooks, and pens.

Sasha was standing still, her arm still outstretched. Then the rage inside her subsided, giving room to logic and reason again.

And Sasha realized what she had just done.

Her eyes went wide in shock as she stared at the entangled mass of Matthew's body under the desk. He did not move at all. Panicked, her hand shot towards her mouth. "Oh, my..." she muttered, helplessly looking around, but her eyes found only the terrified, frozen faces of her classmates.

Sasha charged to the place Matthew had fallen, quickly removing the debris from his body while she intensely begged for him to be still alive.

With great relief, she noticed that Matthew was moving. He groaned as she took the last chair from him. Sasha could see that his arm was angled in an impossible direction and he had multiple deep cuts and bruises in his face.

Matthew's eyes opened. And when he recognized Sasha leaning over him, he lashed out at her with his leg.

"Get off me, you goddamn bitch," he yelled. "You broke my arm."

Like in trance, Sasha backed off. She had suddenly become the main actor in a terrible nightmare. Someone put a hand on her shoulder. Sasha turned around. The hand belonged to Mrs. Turner, her English teacher. "You better do just that," the teacher sternly said.

***

Sasha quietly sat on a chair in the classroom's far corner. Tears were freely flowing down her cheeks as the paramedics rushed into the room and started treating Matthew.

"I didn't want that," she whispered over and over. But nobody paid any attention to her.

The paramedics had just lifted Matthew on a stretcher and hauled him off when two uniformed policemen entered the classroom. They were having words with the teacher and several students. Fingers were repeatedly being pointed at Sasha.

Finally, the cops marched over to Sasha, towering themselves in front of her.

"Miss," the female cop said with a stern voice, and Sasha shrunk a few inches in size, for she knew what was about to happen. "I think you need to come with us."

Sasha looked up into the cop's face. "You're arresting me, aren't you?" she whispered.

The cop nodded. "I am afraid so."

Slowly, Sasha rose from the chair. The female cop reached at her belt and pulled a pair of handcuffs from a pocket. Sasha looked at the shining metal restraints dangling from the cop's hand. She moved back one inch and shivered.

"Please, I will come with you, but don't put those things on me," she whispered.

"I am sorry, Miss. We have to. Please turn around and put your hands on your back."

And Sasha complied, her gaze locked at no particular point at the ceiling. Her eyes clenched shut twice as the cold steel closed around her wrists.

As the restrained girl was being led from the classroom, Sasha's head hang low and her eyes kept fixing the floor, for she was unable to look into anyone's face. But she still knew that everyone in the room had their eyes fixed at her, watching her ultimate moment of shame.

### January 11th, 1998

Tom Clarkson parked his patrol car in front of the police station and cut the engine. Inhaling deeply, he exited the car and glanced at the building where his daughter had been held and questioned for the entire day. It had already been past midnight when he had received the call to come and pick her up.

Getting notified that their child was being held by the police was one of the more unpleasant nightmares for any parent. And it was one of the last things Tom had expected to happen to him personally, for he never had imagined his darling daughter to get in trouble. But it had happened now.

He rushed through the door and charged up the stairs to the second floor, taking two steps at a time. Inside, he was greeted by a familiar face. Inspector Frank Udall and Tom had served together before they were separated by Tom joining the Integrated Task Force for Superhuman Crime. They had remained loosely in contact, sharing the occasional after-duty drink every few months.

The two men shook hands, but neither was smiling.

"Where is my daughter, Frank?" Tom asked, omitting any verbal greeting.

Frank nodded over his shoulder, at a glass window separating an office room from the rest of the floor. Tom peeked through the window. From within, a devastated Sasha stared at him with tears in her swollen eyes. Tom shot her an encouraging smile.

"You're going to charge her?" Tom asked.

Frank's shoulders slumped an inch as he looked into Tom's face. "I am sorry, Tom. We have to. I know that this guy provoked her for who-knows how long, and for all what it's worth I sympathize with her. But there is no way to justify that reaction with self-defense. It was just too much. I know that she didn't mean to do that, but she almost killed the guy."

Tom sighed. "What will the charges be?"

"Aggravated assault," Frank whispered.

"Aggravated? Are you guys crazy? She didn't attack him with a deadly weapon," Tom protested.

"I am afraid her powers will be seen as the equivalent of one, as far as the interpretation of the law goes."

Tom ran a hand through his hair. "Geesh, Frank, she has had her eighteen's birthday just a week ago, meaning she will get an adult-sentence for whatever you charge her with. She will go to jail if you slap an aggravated assault charge on her. Frank...she's the sweetest girl in the world, she doesn't deserve that."

"It's not up to me, Tom, I am sorry," Frank whispered.

Tom shook his head as he regarded the heap of misery that was his daughter, staring into nothingness from her motionless eyes. "Can I take her home for now?" Tom asked.

Frank nodded. "Tell her not to leave the city."

"Of course, Frank. Thank you."

***

The Pacific Northwest winter rain was relentlessly pouring down on Tom's car so hard that the wipers were having trouble keeping up with the watery onslaught. Keeping his eyes staring at the wet road, Tom drove his daughter home through the light early morning traffic.

"How is Matthew?" Sasha whispered from the passenger seat.

"Broken arm, light concussion, two bruised ribs, a few cuts. They told me he will have to spend the night in hospital, but he can go home tomorrow. He will be fine," Tom said.

Sasha bit her lip as another flow of tears ran down her cheeks. "I am so sorry," she whispered.

"I know you are," Tom said.

When he had to stop his car at a red light, Tom looked over to his daughter, giving her a smile and a wink. "Next time, just give the guy a good old-fashioned slap, okay?"

For the first time since the incident, a shadow of a smile appeared on Sasha's face. "I promise, Dad."

"Will I have to go to jail?" Sasha asked in a hushed voice after a minute of silence.

"I don't know, honey," Tom said with a sigh.

### January 15th, 1998

Nelson Vanderbilt's office was neither sparse nor extravagant. It was appropriate for a Crown counsel to have. Being a high ranking policeman, Tom Clarkson had been in the prosecutor's office numerous times before, but of course he had never have to come here to discuss his own daughter's fate with the prosecutor, until this day.

"Nice to see you, Tom," Vanderbilt greeted him.

"Forgive me for saying that I'd rather not be here today, Nelson," Tom said, while he shook the man's hand.

"Understandable. Please, have a seat."

Vanderbilt inhaled deeply. "I have known you for years, Tom, and I know that you prefer to be blunt and open. So I will just be open with you as well. I have looked at the documents very carefully and with the most favorable eye I could possibly read them with. There is really no way I can drop the charges against your daughter, Tom. It would look like an act of favoritism, with her dad being a merited cop."

Tom sighed. "Can you at least downgrade the charges, so she can get away with a conditional sentence? You can't possibly think sending my daughter to jail is the right thing to do. Geesh, she's already punishing herself much harder than you ever could."

"I realize that, Tom. But I still have to treat her like I would treat any other person. The judge will weigh in all of it, including that she got provoked by this guy. If that's any consolation, she will get nowhere near the fourteen years maximum sentence."

"How much do you think she will get?"

Vanderbilt shrugged. "It's hard to tell. Six months, if she's lucky. Two to three years are more realistic, though."

"Damn it, Nelson," Tom spat out.

"I know. Look, I really would drop the charges if there was any justification to. I can see that your girl isn't exactly a danger to public safety unless someone keeps harassing her for a few years straight. I could perhaps argue lack of public interest in prosecution in her case, but only if the victim would agree to drop the charges. But we have already asked Matthew Finch about his stance on the case, and there is no way he will do that. He wants to see Sasha behind bars."

***

Tom shattered the receiver down on the cradle with force. He had expected this call to come sooner or later, but nevertheless he had no idea how to break the news to his daughter. Sasha had not been talking much for the five days since the incident, not even to him or her mother. Most of the time, whenever Tom looked at her, she was staring out of a window. He had no idea how she would react to the news.

He approached his daughter from behind and put a hand on her shoulder. "Sasha...the school board just called."

The girl turned around and looked up to him. Tom strongly suspected she knew what the call was about, but she did not show it.

Tom squeezed her shoulder and drew in a deep breath before he spoke on. "You have been permanently expelled from the school and may not enter the building anymore. They have asked me to come over and empty your locker."

Sasha nodded and turned her head towards the window once more.

***

Tom Clarkson was angry as he threw open the door to Sasha's school building and climbed the stairs. Five days. That's all they had needed to end his daughter's school career, half a year before she would have graduated. They had not even granted her the customary hearing before doing that.

He walked down the locker area in the main corridor, reading the name tags until he had found Sasha's locker. Tom opened it and tossed Sasha's books and other school supplies into a sports bag, then slammed the locker shut with a healthy dose of frustration.

The noise made one of the teachers turn around to stare at him. After a second of hesitation, the young female teacher walked towards Tom and stopped right in front of him.

"I am sorry," Tom said, holding out his hands apologetically. "I shouldn't have tossed it into the lock like that."

The teacher looked at the name on the locker and then back at Tom.

"You are Sasha's dad?" she asked, ignoring his apology.

"Yes. I am Tom Clarkson."

The teacher extended her hand. "Amanda Smithe," she introduced herself. "I am...was...Sasha's math teacher. I am so sorry about all of that. Your daughter was the most brilliant student I have ever had."

Tom nodded his acknowledgment of the teacher's praise as he took her hand.

"For what it's worth, I was against expelling her, but the decision wasn't mine," Amanda said.

"That won't help her much now, though." Tom snorted.

As soon as he had finished the sentence and saw the teacher flinch, Tom realized the unintended sting of his comment. "I am sorry. That was a rude thing to say," Tom said. "I appreciate your kind words. It is just so frustrating. This guy had been harassing my daughter for how long? Years? And after all this time of taking this crap from him, Sasha finally snaps and does something she admittedly shouldn't have done. But all those years, nobody has helped her. Not the teachers. Not the school board. Not her classmates. Everyone had to see what was going on, and nobody did anything about it. But now everyone is really quick to lay all the blame on my daughter. She won't get a high school diploma. She will probably go to jail for a few years and have a criminal record that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Her life hasn't really started yet, but it's already ruined."

Amanda stared to the floor, her cheeks developing a shade of red color.

"You know what the worst thing is, Amanda? The guy who set all this in motion would have the power to stop it. Matthew could agree to drop those charges and my daughter could at least start a new life, instead of facing jail time in a federal penitentiary. But he's so full of spite that he doesn't even realize his own part in causing this mess."

Amanda locked her eyes into Tom's. "I want you to know that I really like your daughter, Tom. She's a sweet girl. And you're right...we all knew how nasty Matthew had been to her. And most of the rest of her class, for that matter." The teacher nodded at Tom's uniform. "You're a cop, Tom. You know that sometimes knowing that a person is guilty doesn't mean you have enough evidence to arrest them, don't you? It's the same with bullying. There are times when you know that it's happening, but you can't do anything about it, anyway. Matthew was very clever with what he did."

The teacher paused for a few seconds. Then she moved closer to Tom and lowered her voice. "I will tell you something I know about Matthew. This is not his first school. And he didn't change schools because of a move or anything like that. He did because he had to. That's all I can tell you, though. If you can use this information to help Sasha, feel free to do so. Just please don't mention it came from me."

And Amanda rushed off, leaving Tom staring after her.

### January 16th, 1998

Tom Clarkson was leaning far back in his office chair with his legs crossed. He was absently gnawing at a pencil while he kept staring at the computer screen to his side. In all his time with the RCMP, he had never even thought about using police resources for personal purposes - or worse, a personal investigation. He was sure he could lose his badge over it, or at least risk a demotion. But his daughter was facing a much worse fate if he did not take that risk. He would rather look for a new job instead of seeing Sasha go to jail.

Having made his decision, Tom swung himself back at the keyboard and typed Matthew Finch's name into the CPIC police database.

And his jaw dropped.

***

For the second time within two days, Tom Clarkson drove to Sasha's high school. But this time he did not enter the building. Instead, he just waited in his patrol car for the bell to end the last class of the day. A minute after that had happened, dozens of students were flocking out of the building in a constant stream, some alone, some in groups, some smiling, some looking serious.

When he spotted the person he came for, Tom got out of his car and marched up to him.

"Matthew Finch?" Tom said to the young man, who wore his arm in a bandage and had several band-aids covering half of his face.

The student regarded Tom in confusion. "Yes? Who are you? And what do you want?"

Tom removed his aviator sunglasses and stared Matt down. "I am Sasha's dad. And I'd like to talk to you."

Matthew snorted. "If you came here to get me to agree to let drop the charges against Sasha, you have wasted your time, Mr. Clarkson. As far as I am concerned, she can rot in prison for the rest of her life. Look at what she did to me!"

"After you kept bullying her around for years, despite she didn't give you the slightest reason to other than petty jealousy. My sympathy for you is fairly limited."

"If you think insulting me will increase chances of me listening to your request, you are mistaken."

"You're misunderstanding me, Matthew. Yes, I came here to ask you for your consent to drop the charges against Sasha. But not as a plea. As part of a deal," Tom said.

The young man chuckled. "This is getting better and better. You're going to bribe me or what?"

Tom shook his head. "Nothing of the sort. It's more along the lines 'If you agree not to ruin my daughter's life, I will not ruin yours in return.'"

"What the hell are you even talking about?" Matthew said. A shadow of a doubt was creeping on his formerly confident expression.

"Here is my proposal. You go tell the prosecutor you don't want to press charges against Sasha. And I will promise you not to tell this school's parents that your legal last name isn't Finch. Or that you had three prior drug-related convictions and got expelled just as many times from other high schools for that. And that the only probable reason you got accepted into this school is that the principal happens to be your aunt. How about that for starters?"

Matthew's expression froze. "You damn bastard," he muttered.

"I will take a yes or no for an answer, nothing else. What shall it be?" Tom said.

"Yes," Matthew pressed through his clenched teeth.

"It has been a pleasure talking business with you," Tom said, put his sunglasses back on and walked off.

### January 30th, 1998

Tom had no idea how many letters he had opened in his life. But when he opened this one, he was certain that he had never felt any more joy when receiving one.

Smiling, he carried the document into the living room, where his daughter was on her daily routine of hour-long window staring. He wordlessly placed the letter on the coffee table in front of her and left for the kitchen to get a beer from the fridge.

Five minutes later, Sasha stepped into the kitchen, holding the letter in her idly dangling hand. She stared into her dad's eyes in bewilderment, shaking her head. "How did that happen?" she whispered.

"I have no idea," Tom said, barely able to suppress having to burst into laughter about his own lie.

Then Sasha dropped the letter and launched herself into her dad's arms, pressing her head against his shoulders and sobbing uncontrollably.

Tom patted his beloved girl on the back while a tear of joy ran down his own cheek.

Still holding Sasha close, the policeman gazed down to the floor, where the letter had fallen that informed Sasha that all charges against her had been dropped.

### January 31st, 1998

Tom reached for the ringing phone with a smile on his lips. He did not check the caller ID, and the call was not the reason he smiled, anyway. Tom smiled because he had done so for the entire morning, thinking about how his daughter had looked at him last night after she had been cleared of the charges. He knew that he would never forget it for the rest of his life.

From the other end of the line he recognized the Crown counsel's voice.

"Good morning, Tom," Vanderbilt said. "I take it that your daughter has received the letter by now."

"Hi Nelson. And yes, she did. Hell, I can't possibly express how relieved we all are. Last night was the first in three weeks when Sasha didn't cry herself into sleep."

"I can imagine Tom. How is she holding up?"

"It will still take a while for her to get over what she did. She takes it very hard on herself. And we need to think about what she is going to do now. Dropped charges or not, but she won't have it easy finding a new school willing to take her in. She still has the expulsion on her record. It will be hard to convince a principal to give somebody with a violence-related expulsion a second chance."

Vanderbilt cleared his throat. "Well, this is actually why I am calling you, Tom. I take it you have read the notice on my letter. The one on the bottom?"

"That Sasha still might be subject to some conditions as set by the court?"

"Yes, that one. Did you get your office mail today yet?"

Tom reached to his desk, where a pile of unopened letters still waited for him to open them. With one hand he browsed through the stack until he pulled a letter from the prosecutor's office from it. Pinning the phone receiver between ear and his shoulder, he ripped the envelope open. And Tom frowned, for there was no letter in it. Just a business card.

"Ok, what's this all about, Nelson?" Tom asked.

"Sasha's condition is to call the number on that card. That's all. No further strings attached. Just call. What she does after that is up to her. Have a nice day, Tom."

And the Crown counsel hung up.

Tom stared at the business card. It was a standard white cardboard with a large silver circle printed on the left side and a U.S. phone number on the right side. No names of either persons or the organization that had issued the card were given.

Confused, Tom pocketed the card.

***

"What is this?" Sasha asked as she stared at the business card.

"The strangest condition ever ordered by a court? Other than that, I don't know?" Tom said.

"Well, a court order is still a court order, Sasha. And I think making a phone call isn't too much asked for, if that's really all they want you to do," Laura Clarkson said and slid the phone receiver over the table in her daughter's direction.

Sasha shrugged and punched in the number after she had activated the speakers, to allow her parents to listen in.

"Yes?" a male voice said into the other end of the line.

For a second, Sasha did not even know what she was supposed to say, because she had no idea who she was even dealing with. "Umm...my name is Sasha Clarkson. I was asked to call you..."

"My name is Peter Vanderbilt, Miss Clarkson. My brother told me to expect your call, yes."

"Your brother?" Sasha asked in bewilderment.

"Yes, the Crown counsel."

"Right. So..."

"You're probably curious what this is all about, Miss Clarkson. So let me explain. My brother has told me you have certain...talents. And how said talents got you in trouble lately. I believe we can help you prevent this from ever happening again."

"Call me Sasha, please. And I don't think I understand."

"I am the Director of the Silver Circle. Don't be surprised in case you have never heard the name before. We are not a shady organization by any means, but we still like to keep a low profile. In short, the Silver Circle is an organization that aims to expand and collect magic knowledge of all sorts. And help talented individuals such as yourself to control and enhance their powers. We operate a library, conference and research facilities...and the Academy, of course."

"So, what exactly is it you're offering me? An anger management class for mages?"

The man on the other end of the connection chuckled. "Not exactly, although I can promise you that the art of placing your powers under the control of your mind and not your emotions is indeed a part of what we teach. You have barely tapped into your potential so far, Sasha. Your innate gift for magic is actually very rare. Most mages need intensive training to work spells remotely as powerful as what you're able to cast just like that. But great power also comes with great responsibility, Sasha. Forgive me for the comparison, but right now you are the equivalent of a Neanderthal who has found a machine gun. A tool of great power she doesn't understand how to properly use. Sure, she might figure out how to use it on her own. But chances are that someone might get hurt in the process."

"Someone already did," Sasha whispered.

"I know. And the only way to prevent even more serious accidents is proper training, Sasha. That's all I am saying. The offer stands. Think about it. You know how to contact me. I will wait for your decision. Oh, and I am not sure if I have mentioned that, but we are used to teach apprentices from an age much younger than yours. So we also happen to operate a private high-school for our students, to provide them with their more worldly education. You would be more than welcome to finish your high-school diploma here. But regardless of how you will decide, I shall inform my brother that the condition set in your court order is hereby satisfied. Do not feel pressured in any way to accept my offer. It's all up to you and what you think is best for you."

The phone clicked and Sasha sat there, holding the receiver still in her hand.

### February 17th, 1998

The older man stared hard at Sasha. "Concentrate harder, Sasha. I know you can do it."

The white-haired girl bit her lips and nodded. Using her talents in an extreme or life-threatening situation was one thing, but she found it frustratingly difficult to control the more subtle aspects of her powers. Sasha closed her eyes once more and drew a deep breath. In contrast to what many people believed, spell casting did not necessarily involve muttering guttural words in an abstract language or drawing paintings in the air with one's fingers - although some mages would do just that to help them focus on the actual task. Which was opening one's mind to the ambient arcane energy surrounding all living and dead objects in the universe, drawing power from it and shaping it into a spell.

Sasha outstretched her arms to the side and turned her open palms toward the ceiling. She tried to empty her mind, which she found to be a challenge with her teacher's attentive presence next to her and the expectations he placed on her to succeed with her task. Eventually she felt the faint presence of the arcane energy around her. She opened her mind and let it flow through her body as if it would be an electric current. Directing and shaping the energy inside her, she collected a magic potential in her right hand and allowed it to build up. It was a very different experience from when she had used her powers in the past. Where she formerly had just opened a floodgate, allowing the raw magic energy to hit her intended target in any way it wanted to, she now shaped the build-up until it had reached the exact desired level. When she was satisfied, her mind issued a command. Sasha opened her eyes and glanced at a bright blue ball of pure light floating a half inch above her palm. Keeping her eyes locked onto the humming globe, she directed the ball to move up her arm, across her chest and then down the other arm until it was resting in her left hand.

Only then did she look up at her teacher. The man nodded and clapped his hands. "See, I told you it's not hard at all!"

Sasha smiled at him. "It's glorious. It is so hard to believe that we can do things like this just because a comet exploded in our atmosphere," she said.

The man shook his head. "That's a common misconception people have about mages, Sasha. Magic didn't come with the Halley event. It created the portion of metahumans we call mutants. But magic has been around forever. There are records of arcane masters dating back as far as ancient Egypt. Merlin has taught magic at King Arthur's court in the 5th century and founded what we consider the modern school of magic. At this time magic was a widely practiced art. Mutants do not draw their power from magic. Their powers are innate and related to changes the radiation from Halley's comet did to their bodies."

"I had no idea that mages even existed," Sasha said. "Until I found out I am one, that is."

"That's not very surprising at all. Although every now and then some word is getting out, the public at large isn't really aware of our presence. And we prefer to keep it this way. Which is also why you won't exactly find our institution in the Yellow Pages. It's also one of the reasons why we picked Seattle to place our headquarters in. Most people wouldn't expect an organization as ancient as the Silver Circle to be based in a city that was incorporated less than 150 years ago. We also do our very best to prevent reports about us becoming headlines in mainstream media for overly long. You'd be surprised if you'd know how many newspapers and TV stations are owned or otherwise controlled by mages. It's really helpful."

"I am not sure I understand that. Why all the secrecy?"

The teacher shrugged. "People don't trust us. Never have. Never will. We have been outcasts throughout history. Which as you have experienced yourself, people tend to become if they are just different enough from the majority. People turned on us whenever they needed a scapegoat for anything bad happening anywhere in the world. King Charlemagne declared magic to be devil's work in 794 AD. Starting with that date, narrow-minded people have tortured and killed tens of thousands of magic users. They hunted us for almost a thousand years. After they executed the last witch in Switzerland in 1792, they thought we'd be extinct, so they celebrated their victory over the ungodly darkness we supposedly represent. Thankfully, that assessment was premature, for our kind prevailed. But to survive we had to go into hiding. We formed secret circles to practice and teach our art to the next generations. The Silver Circle is one of these organizations. The Halley event of 1910 has made humans having special talents more normal for most, but most magic users still prefer not to advertise their talents too openly. Some also never forgave the non-mages for the witch hunts and don't want to have anything to do with them. Unfortunately some mages' actions aren't exactly helpful in conveying a more positive image about us to the public, so I am afraid our status is unlikely to change anytime soon."

"Like my mother? My real one, I mean?" Sasha whispered. "Dad told me she did bad things, didn't she?"

The teacher nodded. "Being a mage makes us neither good nor bad persons. It's up to us what we do with our powers. Your mother...believe it or not, but she was a good person. But she had a hell of a temper and she was also fairly ambitious. It was her undoing."

Sasha frowned. "You make it sound as if you knew her?"

The teacher looked at her long before he answered. "Come with me," he said.

***

When the heavy metal door fell open with a creak, Sasha could not help but gasping. She had seen libraries before, even huge ones. But when she peeked into the endless rows of bookshelves inside the cavernous hall, her eyes could not even make out the far end.

"Woah," the young woman uttered, drawing a chuckle from her teacher.

"Impressive, isn't it? We're keeping around ninety million books here. I am proud to say they represent most of the knowledge humanity has ever produced. Don't tell the Library of Congress, though. They have less than thirty million, but they still like to believe that they are the world's largest library. And we wouldn't want to take that illusion from them."

The teacher led his student to a sturdy wooden door in one of the library's side walls. From his pocket, he produced a key that looked ancient enough to have seen the crusades. A faint yellowish glimmer told Sasha that it was no ordinary key, though - and that the lock it was meant to unlock was much more secure than it appeared at the first glance.

The teacher turned the key in the lock and the two inch thick wooden door opened all by itself. Sasha peaked into a second, much smaller room. Like the main library, it was stuffed to capacity with leather-bound volumes and document binders, filling a good dozen shelves seaming the walls.

"That's where we're keeping the more sensitive material," the teacher explained. "Like the records of the first alien landing on Earth, or the complete history of the Illuminati after they went underground in 1785. Rather fascinating read, I must say."

"Right," Sasha said, eying the teacher curiously.

The teacher chuckled. "But what I really wanted to show you is this," the older man said, while he opened a drawer and took an inch-thick document binder from it. With a faint smile, he handed the documents to Sasha. "I take it that your foster parents didn't tell you a lot about your heritage, if anything. But I think you deserve to know," he said and turned for the exit. With one foot already through the door, the teacher turned around to face the white-haired girl once more. "Take as much time as you want, but please do not attempt to read anything else in this room. The documents might burn your hands if you did. As in literally."

Sasha tilted her head and nodded, a shiver running down her spine. Then the teacher was gone, closing the door behind him. She put the binder on an oaken desk and opened it. On the top of the stack, Sasha found a photograph of a blonde woman in her early thirties, wearing a black business suit. She was stunningly beautiful, had blue eyes and a radiant smile that could melt male hearts in mere instants. The caption on the picture read 'Elizabeth Gregor - Newly appointed professor for Applied Magic, Academy of the Silver Circle, Seattle WA, 1973.'

As Sasha browsed the documents, she learned how a brilliant young mage having extraordinary talents gradually morphed into Scarlet Fire, one of the most dangerous super-powered criminals of her time. She read how the ambitious Elizabeth developed a grudge against non-mages for rejecting and distrusting her kind. How the grudge evolved into hatred. And how hatred developed into a total lack of respect for other people's lives and well-being. Being dismissed from the Silver Circle after various clashes with her fellow teachers and students, Elizabeth had turned to crime, first to fund her life, then to build and expand her power. Blinded by her near limitless hatred and thirst for more power, she ended up being gunned down in her hideout by Tom and Laura Clarkson in 1980 - the year of Sasha's birth. At that point, Scarlet Fire had murdered almost thirty men and women. The last document in the stack was another picture of Sasha's mother - and if not for the name on the portrait, Sasha would have never guessed it was the same person she had seen on the other photo only minutes ago. The woman on the photo was no longer smiling like she did on the first picture. Her stern and cold glare was rather suggesting that she had never learned how to smile at all, even if Sasha knew that it wasn't the case. Elizabeth's hair was now dyed red. And instead of a business suit she wore a black and red military-cut jumpsuit.

Sasha placed the two photographs next to each other - the warm, smiling teacher and the ruthless, cold criminal the woman had become only a few years later.

The white-haired girl shook her head. "Whatever has happened to make you become like this, Mom, but I swear it will not happen to me," Sasha muttered at the photographs, a tear forming in her eyes.

### April 5th, 1998

Tom Clarkson's plane set down right on time on SeaTac International airport, after an uneventful and boring fifty minute hop from Vancouver. He was happy because he would see his daughter for the first time in three months. Sasha did not have a chance to visit her parents since the day she had started her training at the Silver Circle Academy, despite Seattle was located only a relative spitting distance away from her Canadian hometown. But the double curriculum of her magic training and completing her high school diploma took its toll on Sasha's available spare time.

The one thing Tom was not sure about was why the administration of the Silver Circle had asked him to come to such an odd location to see his daughter. But it was their rules to make, so he did not question it.

Tom exited the taxi and marched up the short footpath leading to Seattle's most famous tourist attraction. Making a prominent appearance on a vast portion of all Seattle postcards, the 605 feet high Space Needle used to be the tallest structure in the western part of the continent at the time it was completed in 1962. While it got surpassed by five skyscrapers in its hometown alone by now, it still drew in very large crowds at any given time of the year.

As instructed by the Silver Circle, Tom did not queue up for the elevator to the observation platform, but instead headed to a security guard wearing a red uniform posted at the far end of the main lobby. From his pocket he pulled the business card sent to him by the Silver Circle – a blank white card with nothing but an engraved silver circle printed on it – and handed it to the guard. The guard inspected the card, nodded politely, and handed it back to Tom. Then he opened a cordon and waved Tom into the room beyond. A woman appearing to be in her thirties looked up at Tom from her desk at the other side of the room.

Tom smiled at the woman. "Hi. I am..."

"Tom Clarkson. You're here to see your daughter. I know. One minute, please."

Tom shook his head in bewilderment. "How did you know that?"

The woman giggled. "Because I can read your thoughts, Mr. Clarkson." She blushed and raised her hands before speaking on. "I know... I know... It's invasive. I am sorry. I wish I could shut it off, but I can't. I guess that's why I got placed down here, where I couldn't unintentionally eavesdrop too much on the rest."

"Down here?" Tom pointed upwards. "You mean the Silver Circle building is...?"

The cheerful woman nodded twice in rapid succession. "Yes, of course. It's on the top floor of the Space Needle. Where else would it be? Just take the door to your side and step into the portal, please."

Shaking his head, Tom turned around and opened the door in question. The room behind it had the less than generous measurements of a broom closet and featured neither a window nor any artificial light source. It was not needed. A humming, bright man-sized oval of white light illuminated the entire room. There was nothing else inside the room at all. No furniture. No accessories. Just the white orb of light.

In his line of work, Tom was used to being exposed to metahuman abilities, but mages had a certain tendency to strike him as a combination of odd and alien. With an uneasy feeling, Tom stepped into the light. A moment later, the surrounding room dissolved in a flash and Tom felt as if he was being sucked up into a giant vacuum cleaner.

A fraction of a second later, the light was gone and Tom was standing in a large ante hall full of people. Tom looked left and right, not sure what just happened or where he was. He was standing in the middle one of a row of three similar looking teleporters. Across from him, a long receptionist glass desk stretched itself down for the better part of the wall. Three female receptionists in silver uniform dresses were seated behind the counter. Their stations were labeled with 'Information', 'Student Office' and 'Library'. All three receptionists were talking to clients, so Tom queued at the Information counter and patiently waited for his turn.

The receptionist smiled at him when Tom approached the fairly attractive young woman. "How can I help you?" she chirped at him with a call-center voice.

"Do I need to tell you, or can you just read my mind like the other girl on the ground level. Or wherever that was where I have been until half a minute ago?"

The woman giggled. "Oh, you mean Libby? No, I am afraid you will have to use old-fashioned verbal communication with me. I can't read minds. My specialty is fire." She lifted her hand and snapped her fingers, making a tiny flame appear on top of her thumb, looking at it for a few seconds and then dispelling it with another snap.

Tom tried his best to hide his rolling eyes and chuckled. "Right! My name is Tom Clarkson. I'd like to see my daughter. She's enrolled here."

The girl gleamed at him in a way that would have made the actors of most toothpaste commercials jealous. "Oh, you're Sasha's dad? It's so great to meet you! Sasha keeps telling me about you. If you hold on for just one second, I will call someone to take you to her. You can have a seat over there if you like." the receptionist said, pointing at a lush armchair to Tom's side, which the cop could swear an oath had not been there one second earlier. He decided that he did not want to know and placed himself in the comfortable seat.

The 'someone' the receptionist had called to take Tom to his daughter turned out to be the director himself. Surprised that the highest ranking person in the entire organization would personally come to greet a visitor, Tom shook the hand of Peter Vanderbilt, who looked every single bit like his brother.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Clarkson. My brother kept telling me about you and your unit, so I just had to meet you in person. And yes, we are obviously twins. Please, come with me. I will take you to your daughter," the director said, motioning Tom down a brightly illuminated, wide corridor bustling with activity. Tom stared in amazement at the diverse pot-pourri of people scurrying through the halls. Males and females of every race humankind had to offer, clad in everything from casual street wear to genuine wizard robes that looked as if someone had transplanted them straight out of a fantasy movie. Some carried books and writing utensils. A few took sips from coffee mugs while they strolled down the corridor and chit-chatted with their peers. For the most part Tom suspected the crowd could as well have fit into an airport terminal without looking out of place.

When Tom looked out of a window, he gasped.

The director smiled. "Nice view, isn't it?"

"Um...yes, very nice. Isn't that how Seattle looks from the Space Needle Observation Deck?"

"Yes, it is. And why wouldn't? It's where we are, after all."

Tom shook his head and waved with his hand across the endless halls that comprised the Silver Circle headquarters. "How can we be on top of the Space Needle? I have been up there dozens of times, and this structure would never fit into it. All I have ever seen there are tourists."

"We're not exactly occupying the same space, Mr. Clarkson, or have necessarily the same body size we'd have outsides," the director patiently said.

Tom decided to drop the topic as the director opened a door and ushered Tom through.

To describe the chamber beyond as being huge would have been the understatement of the year. It measured at least a hundred yards in every direction and appeared to be a giant arboretum, complete with trees, bushes, flowerbeds, a finely groomed lawn and an artificial lake with several picnic sites along its shoreline.

Not for the first time today, the policeman shook his head in amazement. Then his jaw dropped as he looked up and spotted the lone figure floating high above ground, between two trees, performing an airborne somersault in slow motion with closed eyes. Sasha looked in complete control as she stretched out her arms and let her body spin around, sailing back and forth, like a wingless bird.

"Sasha can...fly?" Tom said to the director.

The smiling mage nodded. "Among things, she can use telekinetic powers to lift and move most objects with her mind, including herself. Your daughter is very gifted. But what is interesting is that she seems to have a less broad spectrum of spells she can use than some mages do. However, the ones she can wield, she can use with extreme power. I have rarely ever seen something like that. It's almost as if some had picked a few powers for her to possess and tuned them to maximum efficiency."

_You have no idea how close to the truth your guess is_ , Tom thought.

The policeman smiled up at his daughter who still hadn't spotted him yet. Sasha looked calm and serene as she performed her art. His daughter had finally found a place where she could be herself and explore her potential without other people belittling her for what she was. She appeared like a happy little girl who had at last found a playground large enough for her.

"She's an amazing girl," Tom said, full of pride.

"Yes, she is. And by the way, she has made great progress. You might like to hear that nobody here believes that there is any danger of this incident in her old school ever repeating. She is in complete control now."

"I am glad to hear that. To be honest, while I think I understand what made her do it, I never understood why she had to put all of her force behind that blast."

The director's head turned to Tom. "Mr. Clarkson...she didn't. Not even remotely. She used a tiny fraction of what she would have been capable of doing. If she had used her full power for that spell, she'd have leveled the entire building."

A slight shiver ran down Tom's spine as he regarded his daughter. Of course he had always been aware of Sasha's talents. He had never thought of his sweet little girl as the human equivalent of a doomsday weapon, though.

"Her true talent isn't even the offensive line of spells, did you know that?" the director asked.

Tom shook his head. "No, I did not. All I have ever seen her doing until today was the pressured air blast, or whatever it's called."

"She can create a force field that absorbs energy and reflects objects being thrown against it."

"Like a magic bulletproof vest? Is it powerful enough to deflect bullets with it?"

"More like artillery shells," the director said. "As I said, your daughter can cast her spells with remarkable power."

"Right," Tom said, shaking his head once more.

"The most intriguing thing she can do is channeling her own life energy into other living beings."

"I have to admit that I am not really familiar with what magic can or can't do. What would that be good for?"

"Sasha can heal people. Mend wounds. Align broken limbs. You name it. She could heal most non-fatal wounds that way, I guess. If you don't have a mobile hospital with you, your daughter would be the next best thing."

At this moment, Sasha opened her eyes and smiled when she recognized her father standing below her. She propelled her body into a steep descent and glided down. At the last possible moment, she erected her body upright in the air and gently touched down close enough to Tom so she just had to extend her arms to embrace him.

"I missed you, Dad," Sasha whispered.

"It's been way too long, honey." Tom said and pressed his daughter close.

"It should become better soon. Three more months and I will have my high-school diploma."

"That's awesome, honey! Have you decided what to do afterwards? I guess we'd have to start looking for a university, if that's what would like to do."

"How does Mathematics and Astrophysics at UBC sound to you? They already said they'd take me in."

Tom smiled. It would mean that his girl would return home to him and Laura to stay with them for a while longer. And UBC was a fairly prestigious school on top of it.

"That sounds great," Tom said with a bright smile on his lips.

"On the danger that your father might not like to hear this suggestion, but you could also always stay here with us if you want," Vanderbilt said. "As much as I admire and respect science as a career choice, but I don't think you could make much use of your magic talents there. There is still a lot for you to learn."

Sasha smiled. "I know. And thank you so much for the offer, Mr. Vanderbilt. I really love to be here. But I think what I really want to have is a plain, regular, normal life."

"That is of course up to you, Sasha. I will respect your decision either way. Just keep in mind that you aren't a normal person. I wish you will get what you want, but please don't be disappointed if your life will turn out not to be normal. Because chances are that it won't be."

### January 17th, 2008

Sasha's office was small, but it was all hers and came with its own door and a window. That was more than most young professionals could say about their workplace, most of whom had to work in tiny, impersonal cubicles at the start of their career - and sometimes for the entire rest of it. The much nicer work environment was one of the benefits of working at a university.

Sasha loved her job. As a younger girl, she had never dreamed of becoming a professor one day. But after completing her two summa cum laude Ph.D. degrees in record time, she had been encouraged by her teachers to apply for an open position, and gladly jumped at the chance. At first, the prospect of having to teach students had given the shy girl the creeps, but after she had to lecture in front of an audience of four hundred people one day, the stage-fright had vanished, never to return. She had grown to actually enjoy public speaking and got regularly complimented for her ability to explain complex matter in clear and simple words.

Her true love was still the research side of her job, though. It allowed her to bury herself in a pile of books, brooding over algorithms and numbers for endless hours, and contributing in a small way to increasing human knowledge. Sasha did not think of her work as ground-breaking or even important - but every bit of new insight, no matter how small, still might allow others to step on and develop greater things with. The science community was not too different from other professions in the way that only a few select of its members ever reached a state of fame and public recognition. But it still took many more researchers than a few Nobel Prize winners to advance human knowledge, and everyone working in science had at least a small part in that.

The one thing about her job Sasha could not stand at all was the administrative red tape that sometimes came with the position, too. The finer aspects of assembling and managing project teams, trying to squeeze a bit more funding out of various tight-pocketed stakeholders, or the seemingly endless variety of over-complicated forms regulating all aspects of any imaginable university work process sometimes made Sasha want to smack her head into the closest wall in frustration.

With a sigh, Sasha opened her e-mail client and checked her inbox, expecting to see more of the unwelcome overhead sort of assignments that tended to invade her office by this specific route of communication. It was the usual mixture of mildly interesting "FYI" type of mails some people tended to send to half-random colleagues to make themselves look more important, calls for papers for low-profile conferences Sasha had never even heard about, and the occasional spam mail the university's filter had not managed to catch. One particular subject line made her raise her eyebrows, though. Sasha clicked on the mail to open it and then smiled as she read in the official announcement that she had been chosen for the university's annual honorary award of "Most promising young scientist".

Sasha had been an assistant professor for only one and a half years, and the sheer thought to be already lined-up for praise like that had not occurred to her. Not that she would complain. Smiling, she glanced at the photo of her parents she kept on her desk, next to her screen. Sasha knew that they were proud that their daughter had become a professor, the first in either Tom's or Laura's family. With the award backing her up, Sasha might eventually even get the tenure track position she was dreaming of.

Humming a tune, she went to the kitchenette to get a coffee. She was way too excited to concentrate on her math right now, anyway. Shirley and Danielle - two of the other assistant professors in Sasha's department - were standing in the small room, sharing a cup of the bitter brew and chatting. Their smile froze when Sasha entered the room and they fell silent as the newcomer poured herself a cup.

And the two other women turned and left as one, in the same moment as Sasha tried to place herself at the coffee table next to them.

Sasha tilted her head and stared after them, uncertain of what was going on.

***

With a disappointed sigh, Sasha looked into her office mail in-tray in the department's mail room. She had been waiting for a notice from a jury selecting contributions to one of the most important and prestigious annual conferences in Sasha's field of research. The young scientist hoped to be picked as a speaker for the conference, and could not wait to get an answer if her proposed paper had made the cut or not. She was optimistic that it would, considering how much work and passion she had invested into it. She was convinced that some of her findings were of a decent enough caliber to warrant the invitation. But it seemed she would not get her answer today. It often seemed to be this way with things people were anxiously waiting for. They always seemed to be able to find an extra detour to put people on edge for a while longer.

Sasha trotted back to her office. Through an open door, she spotted Shirley typing away at her keyboard. Sasha peeked through the door and knocked at the door frame. The typing stopped and the other woman looked up at the newcomer by peeking over the rim of her glasses. Shirley was Sasha's senior by five years and had been working in their department for just as much longer than Sasha. They had occasionally collaborated in various project teams, but Shirley's research focus was slightly different from Sasha's, so their work relationship was not too close either, as this put a natural limit on how much the two women could work together.

Shirley raised an eyebrow when she noticed her white-haired coworker standing in her door. "Anything I can do for you, Sasha?" she asked.

"Hi Shirley, I was curious if you had ever heard back from the conference we both submitted papers to?"

Shirley shrugged. "As a matter of fact, I got a response a few days ago. My paper got accepted."

Sasha smiled at the woman and clapped her hands together. "Hey, congratulations, Shirley. I am so happy to hear that," Sasha cheered.

"Thanks, Sasha."

"But yeah, I didn't get a reply so far. You put both of our papers into the mail back then, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did, Sasha. I carried both letters to the mail room that day. Yours should have been mailed at the same time as mine."

"Oh well. Maybe the reply letter is still stuck somewhere in the mail system, then. It can't take too much longer now, if they have already notified some contributors."

"Yeah, I guess so," Shirley mumbled, then looked back at her screen.

### January 19th, 2008

Sasha frowned when she checked her mail tray again and still found no notice from the jury. Letters sent on the same day sometimes could get separated in the mail system and arrive on different days, but this delay seemed to be unusually long.

Puzzled, she turned to the team assistant, overseeing the office mail room. "Nancy, I am waiting for a letter that should have been here for a few days now. Any chance it got placed into someone else's tray?"

The other woman shrugged. "I don't think so, Sasha. I have to admit that it occasionally happens, but if someone gets a misplaced letter, they'd just put it back into the correct tray."

"That's strange," Sasha mumbled and inspected the metal tray that served as her office mail in-tray once again, shaking her head. There was no way she could possibly overlook a letter in an open metal cage barely larger than letter format itself.

The department's office mail distribution system consisted of around twenty identical metal cages mounted on a wooden cupboard containing their stock of office supplies. Each metal cage carried the name tag of one employee and would hold their mail for them to pick up. Sasha checked all her coworkers' trays in case the letter was still somewhere in the mail room and nobody had noticed the misdelivery yet. No luck. Out of a sudden thought, Sasha moved the rack of metal trays a few inches away from the wall and checked the area behind the cupboard. She noticed something thin sticking in the small gap between the cupboard and the wall. Bending low and stretching her six feet of length as far as she could, she pried a large envelope out with two fingers.

Sasha recognized the envelope all too well. It was the unopened letter with Sasha's paper in it. It had never left the mail room and never reached the jury.

Sasha stared long at the unstamped letter. Her gaze went back to the metal trays, examining them carefully. And Sasha cursed as she realized what had happened.

***

Sasha stormed into Shirley's office and did not bother to knock her door this time. She slapped the letter on the desk in front of the older woman and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Why, Shirley?" Sasha demanded, staring daggers at the other woman.

Shirley stared at the letter and then at the furious white-haired woman. "What do you mean, Sasha?"

"I just pulled this letter out from behind our mail trays. It never got sent out at all."

"Oh, Sasha, is that your paper? I am so sorry about that. It must have fallen out of the outgoing mail tray somehow."

"Don't play innocent, Shirley. The out-tray is at the other end of the shelf. There is absolutely no way the letter could have accidently dropped to where I've found it. You put it there on purpose, didn't you, Shirley?"

Shirley coldly stared into Sasha's face but said nothing.

Sasha shook her head as she suddenly understood the bigger picture behind what was going on. "You sabotaged me, so that your own paper had a better chance of succeeding. Is that what this is all about?" the younger scientist whispered.

Shirly shook her head. "Heck, Sasha. Do you really think you're the only one who wants to get a small dose of the limelight every now and then? Sasha, the university's 'most promising young scientist'. After just one and a half years of working here. Just for your information, because it seems to have eluded you: Nobody else ever got this award so early in their career. Sasha, the girl who, according to office rumor, will get the next available tenure track position. You know what? Until you came in, I was in line for getting it, since I have been here for a lot longer time than you and earned it. But thanks to you, I will probably have to wait for another four or five years now. Sasha, the brilliant one who has been at nine out of ten conferences our department sent a speaker to last year. Do you realize that you're not the only one in this department submitting papers to prestigious conferences in the hopes to get an invitation? How high do you think my chances would have been to get my paper accepted if your paper would also have been chosen? If you think these high-profile conferences will accept two speakers from the same department, you haven't been working in this field for long enough yet, Sasha. It was either you or me. And it's goddamn hard to compete against someone having an artificially enhanced IQ."

Sasha's eyes opened wide, as Shirley had spoken the last sentence.

"Sasha, did you really think we wouldn't find out, and that you could keep this stuff secret from us forever? These charges you faced ten years ago for what you did to that guy might have been dropped, but you still made it into the newspapers back then. The internet doesn't forget anything. It all popped up when I googled your name. Including the sort of talents you have," the older woman spat.

Sasha could barely hold back her tears. "I thought we were on the same team, Shirley," she whispered through a tight knot forming in her throat.

Shirley shook her head. "Sasha, I don't know which team it is that you are on, but it's definitely not mine. I, for one, prefer to work with actual humans. Not with someone who makes me feel inferior and unworthy all the time. And don't think for one second that I am the only one in this department who feels about you like I do. I guess we pretty much all do."

"What have I ever done to you to deserve that much spite, Shirley?" Sasha whispered.

Shirley shrugged almost apologetically. "Nothing, I suppose. Except being your metahuman, enhanced, superior self. Which I guess is the entire root of the problem here."

Dumbfounded, Sasha backed up and out of the room. Shirley's comment felt like a knife in her heart, particularly since she had not seen it coming. She ran back into her own office and slammed the door shut behind her. Then she let herself sink into her office chair and buried her face in her hands, suddenly feeling very tired.

***

Sasha did not know for how long she had been sitting there, staring into her palms when she lifted her head again. Her gaze fell on the wall where she had placed her two Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics and Astrophysics. She stared long at the two degrees she had been so proud of. But that was only how she personally felt about them. For the first time Sasha realized that to other people she might be the equivalent of a cheater who had used an artificially enhanced intellect to achieve her goals the easy way. Goals people like Shirley had to work much harder for.

But there was nothing she could do about that. Artificial or not, Sasha could not just shut down her metahuman abilities and pretend they were not there. They were a part of her. They were what made Sasha the person she was. And they were the reason she kept being rejected by others.

There was only one way out for Sasha, if she ever wanted to lead a normal life: She had to look for a profession where her metahuman abilities just did not matter.

***

"Are you sure that's what you really want, Sasha?" Laura Clarkson asked.

Sasha nodded. "It's the only way. I don't want to be an outcast anymore. I want to be a normal, regular person. You know, the sort of person who can make actual friends."

"I thought you loved being a professor, darling."

"I did, very much so. But I can't remain one. Not after today. They won't ever accept me. I am just not like them."

Laura's shoulders slumped an inch. "It makes me sad and angry how even educated people can be so narrow-minded and jealous that they keep doing these things to you. I think I can understand you, though. But why don't you want to join your father and become a crime fighter? They need people with your skills there. He would be so proud and happy to have you follow his footsteps in the RCMP."

"Mom, I don't want to have anything to do with my metahuman abilities anymore, as in not ever. If there was a way to purge them from my body, I'd gladly do that. But I can't. So I will do the next best thing and make no use of them anymore."

Laura sadly nodded and then took Sasha into a firm embrace. "Your father and I will always stand behind whatever you will decide, Sasha. The only thing that matters is that you will find happiness."

### March 7th, 2008

Sasha used her key to open the building's side entrance and headed straight to the office room in the back of the building. Her boss sat at his desk, brooding over a stack of forms. "Hi Marc," Sasha said, while she retrieved her utensils from her locker. Her boss threw her an appreciative smile and cheerfully waved to her before he returned his attention to the paperwork.

Sasha checked her appearance in the large mirror to make sure she looked all right. She chuckled when it occurred to her how very out of place her attire would have been for her last job. But here, the skin-tight black mini dress, stiletto heels and generous makeup were more or less regarded as a part of the corporate identity.

Setting up her best smile, Sasha walked out of the office and headed straight for a large table where a family with two giggling kids was seated.

"Hi! My name is Sasha. I will be your waitress tonight," she said to the family, while she handed them the menu.

### June 17th, 2008

Jennifer Myers put on her best smile when she recognized the man walking towards the restaurant long before he stepped through the opened door. Roger Brooks was a regular guest who usually dined here at least once a week - and always left a more than generous tip to the lucky person serving him. With a silent sigh, Jennifer realized that she would not be the one getting it tonight. She was on reception duty and had to escort the patrons to their tables.

"All alone tonight, Mr. Brooks?" Jennifer asked the good-looking man in his early thirties. Roger Brooks's pitch black hair was short-cropped in military style. His face was clean-shaven at a level of perfection that most men did not even try to achieve. He wore a black designer suit that complemented his dark tan just perfectly and probably had cost more than Jennifer made in two full weeks.

"Yes, just a table for one this time. Thank you, Jennifer."

As the dark-skinned hostess was leading him inside the restaurant, Roger stopped for a second when his gaze fell towards the counter and on the girl waiting for the bartender to hand over a tray full of opened beer bottles and glasses.

His hand motioned to the white-haired female. "Is she new here?" he asked, keeping his gaze locked at her.

"Who? Sasha? No, she has been here for a few months now. She usually works the day shift though, so you probably just haven't seen her yet."

"She's gorgeous. And I don't think I have ever seen a girl her age having snow white hair already," Roger said.

Jennifer giggled. "Sasha is a one of a kind in a lot of ways. Is there any particular table you would like to have tonight, Mr. Brooks?"

The man nodded towards the curvy, white-haired waitress. "It doesn't matter, as long as it's one of hers," he said without taking his gaze away from Sasha.

***

When Jennifer passed Sasha on her way back to the reception, she playfully bumped into her with her hip and gave her a wink. "It seems one of our more sought-after bachelors has set an eye on you, Sasha. Good luck!" she whispered to her coworker, who she had befriended soon after she started working for this restaurant.

Sasha raised a curious eyebrow, took a menu from the stack, and walked towards the table where Roger Brooks was waiting for her.

***

A short glance at her wristwatch told Jennifer that her shift was almost over. Guests were now going home at a much faster rate than coming in, leaving her out of work for most of the time. It was a boring hour to work the reception, but tomorrow she would get to serve guests again. Jennifer glanced over her shoulder. Roger Brooks's table was filled with little extras and the remainders of a plethora of side dishes he had kept on ordering all evening long, in a more or less clear attempt to keep Sasha coming to his table, so he could flirt with her. Now he was paying the bill while chatting to Sasha.

And Jennifer gasped as she saw Sasha taking a small piece of paper and writing something on it before handing the note back to Roger Brooks.

Jennifer had witnessed her share of male patrons hitting on the beautiful white-haired waitress, but Sasha had given none of them her phone number until today.

Jennifer smiled. "You've earned it, Sasha," she muttered to herself, feeling happy for her friend, who had told her a while ago that she never had a date in her entire life.

### May 15th, 2009

Tom and Laura Clarkson stood arm in arm at the curb, watching the scene unfolding. Tom was wearing a black tux, which he could not remember doing at any other occasion in the past twenty years. He would have preferred his uniform, but Laura had persuaded him not to. His wife looked gorgeous in her blue satin dress and carefully crafted hairdo that had cost her enduring a multiple-hour-long session in a hair studio to have created.

"I don't think I have ever seen her so happy," Tom said, nodding towards the small crowd and the two persons in the center of its attention.

"Neither have I," Laura said. "She has finally found the life she wanted, I guess."

"Sometimes, happiness can be found in strange ways. I didn't think she made the right choice back then when she left the university, but it seems I was wrong," Tom said.

And Tom and Laura cheered with the others, as the pink-clad bride tossed her bouquet into the crowd and Jennifer Myers caught it with an excited shriek.

Then the gleaming Sasha Clarkson-Brooks took her groom of five hours by the hand and led Roger to the decorated stretch limo waiting for them, which was sporting a colorful 'Just Married' sign on the rear.

### March 3rd, 2010

Sasha stretched her arms and yawned before she crawled out of the bed. It was almost 9 am already, but she still had last night's late shift in her bones. Like she did on every day before doing anything else, she trotted to the large window and gazed out. She could see the entirety of downtown Vancouver and the ocean behind it from their 2,500 square feet penthouse suite, and to her, there was no way she would ever get tired of the glorious view that never looked the same on any two days. The apartment was nothing Sasha had ever dreamed of calling her home one day - her sorry excuse for an income would not even remotely have allowed her to afford it. Even had she remained a professor, she would never have accumulated the necessary wealth.

She walked out of the bedroom and spotted her husband sitting at the table, typing away at his laptop. He looked up when she trotted into the kitchen and poured herself a coffee.

"So my sleeping beauty has woken up?" Roger teased her while he longingly stared at Sasha, who was wearing nothing but a short satin nightgown, which did not even try to hide her features. Roger had bought her an entire wardrobe full of similarly cut gowns, for he really enjoyed Sasha wearing them for him.

"It was a long night yesterday. We had somebody's birthday party in the restaurant, and those people drank as if Canada would introduce the prohibition today. I can barely feel my feet anymore."

Roger chuckled and shrugged. "You know that you wouldn't have to do this, Sasha. I am making more than enough money for both of us."

Sasha smiled and gave her husband a peck on the cheek. "I know, but still I want to," she said.

Roger stood up, took Sasha in a firm embrace and kissed her, running his hands down her spine all the way to her butt, while his tongue was probing for hers inside her mouth.

Without looking, he took the coffee mug out of her hand and placed it onto the table. Never stopping to kiss her lips, cheeks, and neck, he gently pushed Sasha back into the bedroom.

***

For the second time today, Sasha swung herself out of the bed and took a long shower before she dressed for the day.

When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed a closed envelope leaning against her nightstand lamp. The words 'For Sasha' were written on it in Roger's handwriting. Sasha concluded that her husband must have placed it there while she was in the shower before he had left for work. At least Sasha could not remember having noticed it before. Curious, she opened it. There was a banking card and a note in it. The note read 'I know that you want to continue working, but just to take any imagined pressure off you that you might have to, I have set up a bank account for you. It's yours and yours alone. Love and kisses, Roger.'

Sasha shook her head and smiled. She knew that Roger hated having to 'share' Sasha with other people. He had kept trying to persuade her to quit her job since the very day they got married. Sasha had to admit that her job was contributing a negligible portion to their combined income, but she wanted to put in her share anyway, no matter how small.

Out of sheer politeness towards Roger's well-meant gesture, she put the banking card in her wallet, but Sasha had already decided not to make use of it.

Suddenly noticing her growling stomach, she went to the kitchen. She still had an hour left before she would have to go to work, so it was not yet too late to get a snack. Sasha had to giggle sheepishly when she saw her coffee mug standing on the table where Roger had left it. The brackish cold liquid inside was now undrinkable, so she emptied the mug into the sink and poured herself a new cup.

Trotting back to the dining area, Sasha noticed that Roger had forgotten his laptop on the table. It amused her when it occurred to her that she was the reason he had done so. And Sasha knew that it took quite something to distract Roger from his laptop. Roger was obsessed with his computer. His most cherished tool was always with him wherever he went. But he allowed no one other than himself to use it or even look at the screen, not even Sasha. He would engage the screen lock every single time Sasha was even remotely near it. She could not remember him ever leaving it behind before.

She placed herself on the same chair where her husband had sat earlier and gave the laptop a gentle push to make some room for her coffee mug.

Sasha had not noticed that the laptop was still powered on. The screensaver had just put it to sleep. Sasha's push had unintentionally woken it from its digital slumber. The laptop's screen went from black to displaying an e-mail client Roger had been working with before Sasha's appearance had distracted him away from it. When Roger had been distracted by Sasha's curves, he had forgotten to engage the screen lock. The latest e-mail was still opened. When Sasha's eyes fell on the odd text, she frowned. Her curiosity sparked, she pulled the laptop closer to her and started reading.

The mail body comprised just one line: 'The problem in Kerrisdale has been sorted.'

Sasha did not recognize the sender's name. When Sasha scrolled down, she discovered a quoted mail that had been sent from Roger's laptop. It was also just a one-liner: 'Oliver is still causing trouble in Kerrisdale. Please take care of it at the earliest convenience. Regards, Black Vortex.'

Sasha did not understand who Black Vortex was, or Oliver. The confused woman checked the mail client's settings. The active mail account was indeed named 'Black Vortex', not 'Roger Brooks' as she would have assumed her husband to name his mail account. Sasha also knew that Roger's business office was located in Richmond and not Kerrisdale. The latter was an upscale Vancouver residential area, and she could not remember Roger mentioning recently being there or doing business with someone from there. But then again, Roger never talked much about his business at all. All Sasha knew about it from the few bits and pieces Roger had told her was that he conducted import and export trade with some firms in China. Which was not an unusual business in Vancouver to operate, which maintained close trade relationships with Asia.

Still pondering the odd e-mail, Sasha's gaze fell on the opened newspaper laying next to the laptop.

Her jaw dropped when she read the local headline, written in thick bold letters.

"PUB OWNER DIES IN KERRISDALE GANG SHOOTING."

Sasha snatched the newspaper and started reading. It was a report about a pub owner named Oliver Miller, who had been shot in the head by a yet unidentified shooter. Police suspected the so-called 'Stinger' gang behind the targeted shooting. Notorious for its brutality, Stinger tried to get a foothold in the western part of the city of Vancouver, pressing pubs for protection money and expanding their territory for drug business, money laundry and human trafficking.

A shiver ran down Sasha's spine when she read the underground pseudonym of the Stinger gang's leader: Black Vortex. The real identity of the person was unknown to the police. Nobody had ever seen him or her. Not even a vague description existed. The leader of Stinger was just a phantom to police.

In that moment she heard the apartment door going, and she flinched, almost dropping the newspaper in surprise.

"It's me, Sasha. I guess I forgot my laptop," Roger shouted from the front door.

And Sasha's husband walked into the kitchen where Sasha was staring at him from the table, the running laptop in front of her. One of her trembling hands was still holding today's newspaper.

Roger Brooks' eyes narrowed when they wandered between his wife, the opened mail on the laptop's screen and the newspaper.

"Roger...?" Sasha whispered. "What is going on here?"

***

"I see you have been sniffing around in my life," Roger said.

Sasha shook her head, and her voice was near breaking point when she spoke. "Not intentionally, but that's not the point, Roger. Have you...done this?" she said and held the newspaper up, with the gang-shooting article for Roger to see.

Roger crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Why are you asking me this, if you already know the answer anyway?" he said.

"Because I want to hear it from you, Roger," Sasha whispered.

Roger's hand motioned across the expensive apartment and the pricey luxury furniture and accessories assembled in it. "Did you really think a small import business would generate enough revenue to pay for all of this, Sasha? This is a four million dollar apartment. You knew that, yes? And the designer dresses you're wearing? The trips to Europe you loved so much?"

Sasha hung her head low and stared to the floor. "So it's true... I am married to a gangster," she muttered more to herself than Roger.

"I am a businessman, Sasha. Nothing more, nothing less. I am doing business in an area that has very specific and very harsh rules. This guy there...," Roger said, nodding towards the press article about the dead pub owner. "This guy broke them. I did what I had to do in the sort of business I am doing. That's all."

"Roger, you killed him. Or at least you had him killed. Whatever you call it, but it was murder," Sasha said, giving her husband a hard stare.

"You know very little about me, Sasha. I have killed dozens of men. I served in the army long before we met. Special Forces. I used to be a sniper. One of the best there were. Some of the wars they sent me into were mentioned in the news and some didn't appear there at all. The army just told me who to shoot, and I did it, no questions asked. I am still doing the same line of work now. The only difference is that this time I get to keep the profits. I consider that only fair, after all these years I have done their dirty work for a lousy pay."

Sasha stood and walked to the window, staring at the city below. "You're right, Roger. I guess I don't know you at all. Because this doesn't sound like the man I believed you to be," Sasha said, her back turned towards her husband.

After a long moment of silence, Sasha turned around, her eyes locking onto his. "Did you ever love me at all, Roger? Or was I just a convenient part of your disguise as an honest, hard-working small-business owner?"

Sasha kept staring at Roger, but no answer came.

"I thought so," Sasha whispered after a few seconds.

Like in slow motion, Sasha reached for her purse and walked to the door.

"What the hell are you doing?" Roger demanded.

"What does it look like?" Sasha said, without turning around to him.

"You can't honestly think about leaving, after all I have done for you, can you?" Roger shouted. "I gave you a much better life than someone like you could ever have hoped for. Money, dresses, jewels. You have it all. Are you forgetting where you're coming from, Sasha? You are nothing but a cheap waitress who'd still rot at the near bottom of society if not for me. What is your damn problem?"

Sasha turned around, a single tear running down her cheek. "That's all I am to you, isn't it? A stupid, pretty girl you picked up from her restaurant to shower her in money so she could be your trophy wife. Well, I will tell you what my problem is: I don't enjoy expensive apartments, designer dresses and jewels when they're paid for in blood. If you have believed that, then you don't know me very well either. Goodbye, Roger."

"If you close this door behind you, you won't be able to come back," Roger said.

Sasha stopped for a second. Then her hand reached for the door handle.

"And if you tell anyone about who I am, I will kill you," he added.

Sasha opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind her.

***

When the police knocked down the door to Sasha's former home a few hours later, Roger Brooks was nowhere to be found. But they had now a name and face to associate with the phantom formerly known only as Black Vortex. He would not be able to live under a civilian disguise anymore.

### January 3rd, 2011

Sasha was happy, as most people tended to be on their birthday. She went down the stairs to the ground floor, whistling her favorite song when the doorbell rang. Sasha shot a glance at the clock. Jennifer was half an hour early, but that did not surprise her. Her best friend had a habit of always being too early, so Sasha had made sure that everything was prepared ahead of time.

Sasha opened the door and looked into Jennifer's bright smile before her friend took her into a firm hug. "Happy birthday, sweetie," Jennifer said and handed her a huge bouquet. They were of course pink, as well as Jennifer's dress. Whenever Jennifer had to choose a color for anything, the result was pink. Without any exceptions, Sasha would know of. To say pink was Jennifer's favorite color would have been an understatement, as it was more an obsession to her. But Sasha had to admit that the dress looked great on Jennifer, nicely complementing her coffee-brown skin and pitch black hair.

Sasha bade Jennifer in and poured her a glass of champagne from a bottle already resting in a cooler on the coffee table. The two women toasted to Sasha's thirty-first birthday.

"Thanks for the invitation, Sasha," Jennifer said, giving the exquisite liquid an appreciative nod before letting her gaze wander around the room. "I see you're finished moving in to your new home?"

"After four months of shuffling around furniture to find the perfect place for each piece, I better be finished," Sasha chuckled.

"It's a cute little house," Jennifer said.

"Thanks, Jen. My parents helped me a lot with it, including taking on a part of the mortgage. I wouldn't have been able to buy it without them."

"Anyone else will be coming today?"

Sasha shook her head. "No, it's just the two of us. You know me. I am not a fan of big crowds."

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "No need to remind me. I tried for how long to persuade you to come clubbing with me? A year?"

Sasha laughed. "More like two, I guess. You tried to convert me into a barfly since we first met. You just paused for a bit, while I was married to Roger."

"Oh well, you're just denying yourself a lot of fun. The boys would swarm around you like bees around honey, as beautiful as you are."

"I can do without that. I have had enough failed relationships for the time being."

Jennifer sat her glass on the table and sighed. "Look, I know your marriage was a mess, Sasha. And it must be terrible, finding out that your husband is a gangster boss and a murderer. Nobody of us daily serving this guy in the restaurant had the slightest idea who Roger really was. He even threatened you when you found out and divorced him, did he?"

Sasha nodded. "He's gone since the day I left him and reported him to the cops. The court divorced us in his absence, given the circumstances."

Jennifer put her hand on Sasha's shoulder, squeezing it gently. "I can understand why you would feel about men and dating the way you do. But, let's face it...you will not stay young and beautiful forever. You've got to secure a good guy for you while you still can, Sasha. Girls like us...we have to use our looks as a bargaining chip on the market, you know? We are both neither rich nor smart, but we sure look damn good. Don't waste your chances, ok?"

Sasha knew that Jennifer regretted her lack of education. And that she hated to be a waitress and wished for another life whenever they would talk about the topic. On these occasions, Sasha wanted to tell her friend she has never been happier in her life than she was now, after having exchanged her former life as a university professor for this simpler one - which had made her both Jennifer's coworker and her friend. She wanted to tell Jennifer about her secret: That she had two Ph.D. degrees hanging in a locked den on the upper floor of her house. That she had an IQ over 180 and a self-regenerating body. And that she had magic powers so strong that she could topple a battle tank just by concentrating hard enough on it. She wanted to tell Jennifer that being smart, in Sasha's case, meant that she had been ridiculed and rejected all her life by high school bullies and jealous coworkers who could not accept that Sasha was much smarter than they were. And that only now, after Sasha had completely left her old life behind, making use of neither her intellect nor her magic anymore, she was happy and had found her place in society.

But of course she could not tell Jennifer that. And thankfully, the oven beeper offered Sasha the perfect excuse to end the discussion. "I will be right back," she said, winking at Jennifer, and then strode to the kitchen, relieved about the convenient escape.

A quick glance into the oven confirmed her fear that she had to give the Shepherd's Pie a few more minutes of time. Her grumbling stomach urged the pie to finish baking, but she knew that like with all things cooking, it would be done when it was done, not a moment earlier.

Bored, Sasha looked out of the window. On the street, she spotted a black pickup truck driving down the road towards her house. She could swear that she had seen this same vehicle passing through her neighborhood earlier today, but she was not aware of any of her neighbors owning a car like that. But then again, she was not that much interested in what possessions her neighbors had, either. Sasha was hardly materialistic to begin with, and her marriage to Roger had done its own part to reinforce that view.

Sasha's curiosity turned into mild suspicion when she saw the vehicle slowing down and coming to a halt right in front of her home. The passenger door opened and a muscular figure jumped out. An oddly familiar figure, although Sasha could not quite place him. The man jumped on the truck's bed, removing a cover from an odd, barrel-shaped object that seemed to stand on a tripod.

Then Sasha recognized the man, and cold shivers pulsed down her spine. She had seen the face before - on a police mug shot, a while back when the police had interviewed her about her ex-husband's gang and had shown her photos of a few of his lieutenants, to see if Sasha would recognize any of them. Pietro Zampano was working for the Stinger gang and was Roger Brooks' best assassin.

In the same moment, she instinctively realized what was hidden under the cover and what was about to happen. But it was already too late. The man squeezed the trigger of the Browning M2 heavy machine gun mounted on the pickup's bed. A split second later, dozens of 0.5 caliber explosive rounds tore into Sasha's home.

Sasha shrieked in panic, but possessed enough survival instinct to throw herself down to the floor, moments before the machine gun rounds shredded her kitchen counter to pieces, showering her with wooden debris and pieces of destroyed appliances. Sasha covered her ears in a futile attempt to shield her ears from the deafening concussions, and screamed in pain as hot shrapnel from the machine gun rounds tore through her thigh and hip, ripping her flesh wide open.

Only in that instance did it occur to Sasha that she still possessed magic powers.

Drawing on the dormant, unused magic inside her, she conjured a protective shield around her. Not a moment too soon, for she felt multiple impacts of the 0.5 caliber rounds assaulting her shield that would have killed her for sure if they had directly hit her body instead.

The barrage seemed to last an eternity. But Sasha knew it could not have been going on for more than a few seconds when it stopped and she heard the pickup speeding away. Still dazed from the mini-grenades exploding all around her, Sasha removed pieces of debris from her and pulled herself up, barely able to suppress another scream as her wounds sent jolts of agony through her body.

The devastation was complete. The explosive rounds had torn off most of the outer wall. The gaping hole to the outside was almost as wide as the entire room. Her kitchen had ceased to exist. Shattered furniture was mixed with broken glass and shards of dinnerware, distributed almost evenly across the entire floor. Where the sink used to be, a fountain of water was spraying uncontrolled over the debris, forming a large puddle on the floor.

Other than that, it was eerily quiet. Too quiet. A sickening thought hit Sasha when she gazed through the remains of the kitchen door to the other side of her house. Where the living room had been, and where she had left her guest.

"Jennifer?" Sasha called out. One time. Two times. Three times. Each time louder and more desperate than before.

But there was no response.

Holding her bleeding hip, Sasha staggered into the living room. She could no longer feel any pain though - any trace of which was suppressed by the mind-numbing concern for her friend. She worked herself through the shattered furniture, shoving broken chairs and wooden planks aside, until she spotted the sofa where Jennifer had sat on when she had left her. The impact of multiple machine gun rounds had toppled it over. An iron fist clenched around Sasha's stomach as her gaze wandered lower, discovering the pink-dressed shape on the floor behind the sofa. A pool of blood had formed under Jennifer's body. Her lifeless eyes were staring right at Sasha.

Devastated, Sasha let herself sink down to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Tears were running down her cheeks, while she began to realize the sickening truth that Jennifer was dead.

Sasha did not hear the sirens of the approaching police cars. She did not notice the cops storming into her home, or the paramedics who treated and bandaged her wounds. She just absently nodded when a cop asked her if she would feel able to make a statement. Sasha was then escorted to a patrol car and taken to the police station for questioning.

Sasha would not remember the next four hours of answering questions. She would only remember politely declining the cop's offer to take her to a hotel when they were done with the questioning, walking the long way home in the dusk instead, lost in thoughts about what had happened. And what she would do now.

The decision came about halfway there.

When she reached her house in almost complete darkness, Sasha knew that she could no longer live in the house she had barely finished moving in. With its entire front side gone and half of its rooms reduced to rubble, her home was destroyed beyond repair. In addition to her home being gone, Sasha realized that her ex-husband would eventually learn that his assassin had failed to kill her - and send someone else to finish the job.

Sasha entered the remains of her home, careful not to stumble over the debris or to look into her living room, where she expected she would see the chalk marks on the spot where Jennifer had died.

Sasha ascended the stairs to the first floor and stopped before the door to the den which had escaped the barrage undamaged. She had not unlocked the den since the day she had moved in, but she did so now. When she switched on the light in the small windowless room, Sasha gazed at the memories of her past. Her Ph.D. degrees were hanging on the wall, next to pictures of her and her parents taken on her graduation day. With disgust, she stared at the photo taken on her wedding day, showing a smiling Sasha in a pink wedding dress, standing next to the man who had sent the hit team after her today. How could she ever have been so blind, marrying a guy just to have to find out he was in fact a gangster boss? Having an IQ over 180 did not seem to prevent people from doing stupid things.

In the corner, Sasha found the chest she was looking for. She opened the lid and took out a wrapped package. It contained a dress her mother had made for her a few years ago, when she had quit her university job, and Tom and Laura Clarkson tried to persuade Sasha to join her father's police force's superhero detachment. They were both very sad when she had turned down their offer and chose to be a waitress instead.

Sasha unwrapped the costume and looked at it. She remembered trying the dress at her mother's request and joking to her that it looked seductive enough on her that she was not sure whether she was supposed to use her magic or her looks as a weapon.

Without further hesitation, she removed her worn clothes and the bandages that were no longer needed. She had never needed them in the first place, as her body was able to regenerate from all but the most lethal wounds, but of course she had not told the paramedic that. Her wounds were already no longer visible. Then Sasha squeezed herself into the dress. The shiny black leather mini-skirt still fit just as perfectly as the purple strapless cropped top. She slipped her feet into the black heeled leather boots and put on a pair of fitting opera gloves before she slipped two pairs of silver bracelets bearing arcane symbols on her upper arms and wrists. The last item she retrieved from the bag was a glowing purple choker, which she put around her neck.

Satisfied with her dress, Sasha took an empty sports bag and put her university degrees and photos in it. She did not want to leave the items behind, and she knew she would not ever return to this place. The one picture she left hanging was her wedding-day picture. She did not want to see it again for the rest of her life.

Closing the den's room, Sasha looked down the stairs for a final time. "I will avenge you, Jennifer," she muttered to herself. "I will no longer accept innocent, good people getting harmed and killed by criminals and me standing aside idly, despite having the means to do something about it. And I will come for you too, Roger. There will be no place in the world where you can hide from me. I will not rest until the day when I will have brought you down, no matter what it takes."

Her transformation to a superheroine completed. Sasha stood up, slung her bag over the shoulder, and took the stairs up to the roof. Up there, she could see the city's lights all around her, brilliantly shining in the darkness. Sasha reached out for the magic power within her and willed it to life. She closed her eyes and spread out her arms like wings, while she lifted her own body up into the sky, opening them again only when she was floating high above her house. She inhaled the fresh night air and gazed towards downtown, where she could make out police sirens penetrating the silence.

That was where she was needed.

### January 5th, 2011

Zig-zagging through the urban canyons of downtown Vancouver, Sasha soared around skyscrapers, keeping her eyes fixed on the packed streets below. It was an early evening, typical for the winter season. The sun was long gone, but the streets were still bustling with activity, as workers flooded out of the office towers and started their commute home on the congested streets, while shoppers swarmed over downtown's street malls.

Sasha had made this evening patrol a daily routine. It was the equivalent of what a person able to fly would consider an evening walk, anyway. Even if it turned out that her help would never be needed, she still enjoyed the view and the fresh air.

She smiled as she gazed down at the antlike crowd on Robson Street and wondered how much money Vancouverites were spending during an average evening on the city's busiest and most exclusive shopping street.

Sasha frowned as she spotted a black SUV driving down Robson Street at a speed that was not covered by any legal speed limit. While speeding was just as common in Vancouver as it was anywhere else in the world, it was a dangerous thing to do in this particular place, with so many people crossing the street, and not always doing so using the official pedestrian crossings.

Just as Sasha wanted to let her gaze move on, as she was not in any legal position to hand the speeding car a traffic ticket, she gasped as the vehicle took an unexpected turn towards the curb and bounced itself onto the crowded sidewalk a second later. Screaming pedestrians jumped aside to safety as the SUV shot towards a jeweler's store and came to a screeching halt just in front of it. Three men wearing black trench coats jumped out and stormed into the store with drawn guns, while the driver stayed behind the wheel.

Sasha could see one of the men grabbing a female shop assistant by her hair and roughly pulling her down to the floor, while his accomplice pointed a gun to the owner's head and handed him a large empty bag, motioning wildly at the bag.

Sasha was witnessing a robbery in progress. Her heart was racing. She had been consciously looking out for situations like this - to help if she was needed - but now that she had found one, she was scared and frightened. A myriad of possible scenarios unfolded in her head, many of which ended with her failing to save the shop owners, or with her having a bullet in her head.

Banning the pictures from her head, Sasha went into a wide loop and aligned her flight path with the beleaguered shop when she came out of the arc. Her eyes narrowed as she accelerated downwards in the direction of the street level, the chilly winter air now stinging her face at the greater speed. She drew on her magic to conjure up a protective shield in front of her and devoted all available power to making it as strong as she could.

When the jewelry shop filled her entire field of vision, Sasha closed her eyes.

A split-second later, Sasha smashed into the shop window like a human artillery shell. At 150 pounds Sasha was hardly a heavy woman, but she was flying at near jet fighter speed when she hit the window, giving her body considerable mass inertia. The impact shattered the reinforced glass to thousands of pieces with a thundering bang. Sasha's energy shield absorbed most of the blow and deflected the razor-edged shards to the side - but the white-haired woman still gasped as the air was being knocked from her lungs by the collision.

Her forceful approach had the desired effect, though. The goons inside were frozen in shock and in no position to think of doing anything harmful to their hostages. Safely landing on her feet inside the shop, Sasha dropped her energy shield and freed up her magic potential again. She locked her concentration on the man threatening the show owner. Or rather, on the weapon in his hand. Reaching out with her mind, Sasha formed an invisible magic hand around the gun and pulled hard. The gangster's eyes went wide as his weapon was torn from his hand by an unseen force and flew aside, clattering on the floor at the other end of the shop, far out of anybody's reach.

Sasha had already switched her gaze to the pair of gangsters holding the female shop assistant. She pointed one of her hands at each of them and released a kinetic burst that threw the two goons backwards and into the display cabinets behind them. With a shattering crack, the two black-clad men knocked into the glass and were buried in a mass of shards, metal and jewels.

Only one thing left to do now. Sasha whirled around to face the shop front. The SUV's driver was staring at her from wide-open eyes, as he had to helplessly witness his accomplices getting overwhelmed in mere seconds.

The man desperately fumbled around with the gear shift until he had finally found the reverse setting. But Sasha had no intention of letting him escape. She reached out with her mind and locked her telekinetic powers onto the car. With a command of her mind she lifted the vehicle up high into the air, just in the same instant as the driver floored the gas. But the tires had left the street already and spun wildly in thin air, accompanied by a desperate howl of the engine. With an enraged snarl, Sasha gave the hovering vehicle a final push and the heavy SUV flipped around in the air. In the same moment, Sasha released her mental lock on the car, subjecting the vehicle and its driver to the normal laws of gravity again. The SUV crashed back into the street upside down, with a shattering bang that sent a shockwave as far as to the interior of the store and knocked a few pedestrians from their feet, who were too nosy to have realized that standing so close to an ongoing crime was a bad idea. The toppled SUV would not drive anywhere, anytime soon.

A noise on the ground behind her made Sasha whirl her body around, just in time to see the last standing gangster rushing towards her, wearing a hateful grimace of a face. She had disarmed him earlier, but he was not yet completely disabled. The man had grabbed a metal rod from the debris and charged at Sasha with a dark growl.

The gangster swung the impromptu weapon at Sasha's head with enough power that the blow would have broken her skull if it had hit her. But it never did. At the last moment, Sasha recalled her protective force shield around her. The rod hit the invisible barrier with so much force that the impact tore the weapon from the gangster's hands, drawing a pained yell from him. Sasha shrugged at him and pointed her fingers at the man. A blinding arc of multi-forked lightning shot out of Sasha's hand and tore into the gangster's upper body. With a primeval scream, the gangster staggered back a few steps before he collapsed unconscious on the floor, his senses overloaded by a jolt worth many thousand volts of electricity.

Only then did Sasha relax with the comforting knowledge that the danger was over. She looked at the show owner and his assistant and smiled.

"You're both ok?" she asked.

The man kept staring at her, unable to say anything, but the girl smiled at Sasha and nodded. "Thank you, you have saved our lives," she said.

"You're very welcome," Sasha said and pointed to the disabled gangsters on the floor. "I think the cops should be here in a second, they can take care of them."

Sasha turned to leave and took a few steps towards what was left of the storefront.

"I think I have read about most superheroes protecting our city, but I have never read about you," the young Asian woman said. "Who are you?"

Sasha stopped. Until this moment, she had never thought about how to answer that question. After a second, she turned around.

"I am White Sasha."

### January 11th, 2011

Tom Clarkson's head peeked out from behind the newspaper he was holding in both of his hands. He cleared his throat, making Sasha start who had been sitting in an armchair across from him, absently sipping a coffee. "So when were you planning to tell us you have become a crime-fighter after all?" Tom Clarkson asked his daughter.

Sasha's cheeks blushed a notch towards the pink scale of color. "I am sorry, Dad. I wanted to, believe me. I lacked the strength to do so. I thought you'd be mad at me."

Tom put the newspaper back on the table. Sasha could not read the upside down letters from where she was sitting, but she still recognized herself on the large photo of last night's event on Robson Street. She hadn't quite made the lead headline, but the report about a previously unknown white-haired heroine stopping a robbery in progress still occupied a prominent place on page one of the newspaper's local section.

"You did a nice job there. Four arrests, no innocents harmed," Tom complimented, drawing a smile from the still embarrassed Sasha.

"I guess I did quite some damage to the shop though, didn't I?" Sasha whispered with a trace of guilt in her voice.

"It's all right, Sasha. It's much preferable to an innocent losing their life, and nothing that their insurance won't cover. Believe me when I say that I have seen much worse when metahuman crime fighters were involved. The result tends to look like a war-zone more often than not."

Tom leaned forward to look sternly into his daughter's eyes. "There is another issue at hand, that's far more important than a few shattered displays in a store, though."

"What do you mean, Dad?"

"Sasha...I know you mean well, but you have no mandate to fight crime. You're walking a very thin line when going after criminals without having a badge, you know? In my experience, eventually all unsanctioned heroes will do questionable things that bring themselves in conflict with the law. Actually, you can't fight crime as a civilian at all without violating at least a few rules. This is of course putting us into an awkward position, because cops are supposed to enforce all the law, not just the parts of it we want to enforce. Just between you and me, many of those little transgressions committed by civilian crime-fighters we ignore and look the other way when they happen. We are still on the same side, fighting for the same goals. But if you cross the line too much, I might be put into a situation where I have to hunt down and arrest my own daughter, and you can imagine that I really wouldn't like to do that."

"I know that, Dad. But I have no idea what I can do about that issue, though. I want to help, and I can no longer tolerate myself standing aside and watch innocents suffer under people like Roger."

Tom crossed his arms in front of his chest. "The solution should be obvious, Sasha. Join the force and get a badge. We would be more than happy to have you in the RCMP. I told you that before. More than once."

Sasha nodded. "I know, Dad. And a part of me would like to. But I can't," she whispered.

Tom frowned. "And why's that?"

"Because every single time I have been part of a group, someone had to suffer. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it were the people around me. I am meant to be alone, Dad."

Tom shook his head. "No human is meant to be alone, honey."

Sasha shot up from her seat, tears forming in her eyes. "As you and many others pointed out so often, I am not a normal human, Dad."

And Sasha ran up the stairs to her room and closed the door behind her.

### January 30th, 2011

Sasha kneeled on the factory roof, watching the delivery truck pulling into the small warehouse's parking lot through a pair of binoculars. She knew that the warehouse was a part of the Stinger gang's shady operations, and she knew what exactly it was the gangsters were doing inside. But even if she had not known, the activity looked suspicious enough, considering that small businesses rarely processed any deliveries in the middle of the night.

The white-haired woman watched a pair of muscle-packed workers walking out of the warehouse with cigarette butts dangling from the corner of the mouths. Never stopping to puff at their smokes, the two brutish looking men started to unload unmarked boxes from the truck right away. One minute later, an expensive sports car approached and shot into the parking spot next to the truck at break-neck speed, before it came to an abrupt halt, only inches away from the building's brick wall. Sasha rolled her eyes in the realization that the driver likely performed this dangerous maneuver habitually, as an attempt to show off his driving skills to whoever would feel impressed by it. The driver's appearance matched his driving style. Methodically chewing on a gum, he wore a pair of dark sunglasses despite the moonless night did not warrant such eye protection. The out-of-place accessory fit his black leather jacket and gelled hair, though.

Sasha watched the man following the workers inside the building and patiently waited for five minutes. Then she launched herself into flight and swooped down from the roof, landing right next to the warehouse's main entrance. The lone goon guarding the door was a rock of a man, at least six feet and five inches tall, and had biceps that looked more like tree trunks than human upper arms. He looked Sasha up and down with a glance that did not strike Sasha as being overly intelligent.

"T'is private property, so swing your ass out, slut," he snarled at Sasha, taking a step towards her.

"Now aren't you a charming one? Is that how you're treating a lady around here?" Sasha said, offering him a bittersweet smile and an eyelash bat.

The next moment the brute slammed backwards into the wall and slid down, after a kinetic blast from Sasha's hand had wiped the heavy man from his feet.

A second pressure wave knocked the heavy metal door wide open and shattered it into the wall behind with a deafening bang that loosened a few bricks from the wall. A dozen eyes locked on Sasha, standing in the doorway with her hands resting on her hips.

Sasha let her gaze wander across the room. Three muscled men were in the process of carrying large plastic bags containing a white substance from a huge pile of similar looking bags towards a pair of empty transport boxes. Two others were clad in laboratory coats and safety goggles and had been bent over a large desk filled with laboratory equipment when Sasha charged in. And the sunglassed guy was standing in the middle of the room, looking important but not taking part in the actual work. Sasha was not surprised about that.

"Nice operation you guys have here," Sasha teased.

"What the hell are you thinking you're doing here, bitch?" one of the strongmen snarled in a dark baritone.

The answer came in the form of a kinetic blast shattering into the man's chest and knocking him to the floor where he rolled over and groaned in pain.

"Like your friend at the door would have phrased it: Swing your asses out! And I will say this only this one time," Sasha said.

The leather jacketed guy removed his sunglasses.

And Sasha gasped, for she recognized the man's face. Despite she had not seen Matthew Finch in a very long time - since the fateful day when she got arrested by the police, after he had provoked Sasha into assaulting him.

"For some reason I knew we'd meet again, Sasha," Matthew said and pulled a gun from a hidden holster under his shoulder.

Sasha reached out with her mind and tore the pistol from Matthew's hand before he had any chance to point the weapon at her.

"And for some reason I am not surprised that you have chosen to become a gangster either, Matt," Sasha said, casually catching Matthew's pistol from the air as it flew towards her.

"Right, so you will finish the job now and kill me this time?" the disarmed Matthew said through clenched teeth, staring daggers at Sasha.

Sasha shook her head. "I didn't want to kill you back then, and I have no desire to do so now. And I guess I still owe you one for what I did back then. So, get out of here, Matt, and if you want to do something smart for a change, go look for a new employer. This business is about to go downhill from here."

"You do not understand who you're messing with, Sasha."

"Oh yes, I do. I used to be married to your boss. Give Roger my best regards. And tell him I will destroy the rest of his organization too, piece by piece, until there is nothing left of it. This is only the beginning."

Matthew shrugged and motioned to his goons. The six of them left without another word.

As soon as they were gone, Sasha drew on her magic and fired a dozen lightning strikes from her fingers in rapid succession, obliterating laboratory equipment, raw materials and many kilograms of pure heroin - which Black Vortex's hidden processing lab had been producing here on a daily basis.

When Sasha left the building and launched herself back into the night sky, the warehouse was fully ablaze, the fire consuming everything Sasha's lightning bolts had not yet destroyed. Roger Brooks had just lost a laboratory and drugs worth a few dozen million dollars.

Sasha smiled as she soared back home.

### February 2nd, 2011

Raul cursed as he marched the short distance to the heavy truck, for the relentless rain was pouring down hard on him. When he climbed into the driver's seat, his clothing was completely soaked, and he ran his hand through his hair multiple times in a futile attempt to dry it. The constant wet weather conditions in the Pacific Northwest unnerved the Mexican man, but having an outstanding arrest warrant waiting for him in practically every country on the continent south of Canada, he could not be overly picky about his home anymore.

Raul started the engine, switched on the headlights and wipers, and drove the truck towards the exit gate of Port Metro Vancouver. Customs had never inspected this particular load, so he had no official permission to get this truck out of the harbor area. A huge bribe had made sure the customs officers would look the other way when the truck would roll out of the port, regardless. There would have been no way to get the thousands of automatic rifles, handguns, and assorted ammunition legally into Canada, anyway. Canada's gun control laws were a lot stricter than in its southern neighbor nation, but of course this did not mean that the demand for guns was not there. People still wanted to buy them. The Stinger gang was more than happy to step in and provide their customers with what they wanted, from handguns to assault rifles and even mobile grenade launchers, including ammunition in any desired quantity.

All Raul had to do now was getting this truck safely to their distribution center on the other side of town. And despite the bad weather, Raul was still happy that Black Vortex had personally picked him to carry out the lucrative operation, knowing that his boss would handsomely reward him for completing it. A few more years of doing this and he could retire to a sunny Caribbean nation where winter was just a myth.

Raul approached the port's outer gateway and slowed down. Two customs officers stood at the gate and raised their hands to signal the truck to stop. Raul complied and opened his window. He knew that this was a charade, so he did not feel uneasy at all. The customs officer regarded Raul with played official sternness before he acted as if he would be reading through an assortment of forms, which in fact were not there. Finally, the officer gave Raul a concealed wink, and took a thick envelope from Raul's hand, which the truck driver knew contained ten thousand dollars in cash. Quickly pocketing the money, the officer signaled the uniformed man at the gate. "All clear, he can leave!" he shouted.

With no delay, the gate opened, and the truck left the port, taking a right turn. Two pickup trucks were already waiting in a dark alley one block away and started their engines in the very moment Raul passed them. Soon after, the two vehicles maneuvered themselves in the front and rear of the truck. Raul felt a lot more comfortable now, since he knew that the four men in the pickups were heavily armed and would keep any trouble away from him.

The three-car motorcade turned onto Cambie Street, which would take them all the way across the city, to the industrial area in south Vancouver where the Stinger gang operated their hidden weapons storage and distribution center. The load from this truck alone would keep the entire operation running for the better part of a year.

Late night traffic was thin enough to allow Raul and his escort fast progress on a road that was otherwise not known for its fast flow of traffic. The heavy-laden truck now crept up the hill around beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park, which meant Raul had covered around half of the distance between the port and his destination. Only around fifteen more minutes of driving, and he could go home, counting the fat wad of money this effort would earn him.

The truck reached the end of the slope and picked up speed again as the street leveled out. The area Raul was now passing was the most expensive neighborhood in all of Vancouver. In this part of town, the police was usually a lot more occupied with break and enter than gang activity. He did not expect any trouble from the cops.

All the more surprised Raul was when he peeked into the mirror and saw a blue streak of lightning coming down from the sky, striking the rear pickup truck with a thunderous crack, and sending a shower of sparks flying across the entire width of the road. The massive blast of electric energy cleanly blew out the rear tires and sent the vehicle veering left and right, while the driver frantically tried to regain control. But only a master driver could have hoped to do so, and the man behind the wheel was not one. The pickup went into a full spin and ended its trip by crashing into a lantern pole.

Raul was stunned and frightened, for he had no idea where the massive bolt of lightning had come from. Sure, it was raining. But there was no thunderstorm going on out there - just the season-typical rain, and that condition did not tend to produce any lightning. But then Raul spotted the human figure shooting by his truck from behind, flying at low altitude. And he realized what was going on.

Raul stared at his remaining escort and noticed that the crew in the leading pickup had also realized that their convoy was under attack. They had lowered the windows to point their weapons at the white-haired female. A moment later, the usually quiet neighborhood woke up to gunfire as the machine guns spat out a hail of death at the woman.

Raul expected the high caliber bullets to shred the woman apart in the air. Instead, he gasped as he witnessed the white-haired girl waving her hand and a transparent field of energy appeared around her, deflecting the incoming bullets left and right with them, causing no damage to her at all. Their only visible effect was a shower of sparks exploding at her shield from the bullet impacts. Shaking his head, Raul estimated that his team had fired at least two hundred rounds at the woman, but instead of dying she was still hovering there, matching the convoy's speed with her own. Raul's eyes went wide as the white-haired girl pointed at the leading pickup with her hand. Another blinding arc of lightning shot out of her fingers and struck into the pickup, blowing out all six of its tires and scorching the vehicle. Raul knew that the only reason the car's passengers were not instantly killed by the multi-million volt strike of electric power was that a car functioned as a Faraday cage when struck by lightning, shielding anyone inside from the immense electric current.

But the damage done was more than enough to take out the pickup truck. Having lost all of its tires and its entire electric system while driving at high speed, the car went into a full spin, missing a deadly hit from Raul's speeding truck only by mere inches. Gasping at the near collision with his teammates, Raul looked out of the driver's side window, just to witness the pickup truck bumping over the median strip and flipping over, sliding upside down across the opposing road's three lanes and coming to a screeching halt at the far side.

Before Raul could recover from the shock, he flinched another time as his truck's passenger door was torn out with a load crack and flew wide into the darkness, opening the way for a chilly breeze of winter air to blast into the driver's cabin and assault his skin.

The white-hard woman appeared in the open gap and swung herself into the driving truck.

Raul growled and drew his handgun. Before he had any chance to fire a shot, an invisible force grabbed his gun hand and smacked it into the wheel so hard that Raul dropped the pistol with a yelp, and had to concentrate hard not to lose control over his truck.

"Please don't try this again," the white-haired girl said, while she made herself comfortable on the passenger seat. "There are two ways we can do this: The easy way, or the hard way. The latter would include me shoving you out of the truck through your closed door. Take your pick!"

"What's the easy way?" Raul whispered, realizing that he was no match for the metahuman woman.

"Drive to the nearest police station."

***

The heavy truck pulled into the small parking lot right in front of the police station and Raul cut the engine, handing the woman his ignition key as instructed by her. Raul looked at his captor, uncertain what she expected him to do now. All that he knew was that this situation was unlikely to end well for him. With a vicious smile, the white-haired woman pulled a pair of handcuffs from her belt and snapped one cuff shut around his right wrist, then closing the other one around the steering wheel.

"Hey, you have no right to arrest me! You're no cop!" Raul protested.

"Oh, I am not arresting you," the woman said with a shrug, and nodded towards the police station's front door. "They will do that."

Raul desperately pulled against his restraints and cursed.

"Have a nice day," the woman said, and jumped out of the truck.

Raul could see her lifting herself into the air in the same moment as the door opened and four cops marched out, staring at the strange, unexpected truck parking in their lot.

Raul sighed as two of the cops came walking towards him, while the other two opened the truck's loading doors, where the smuggled weapons were stored. He realized that he would need to spend much more time in Canada than he had hoped for. But at least it did not rain in prison.

### February 15th, 2011

Barney's Club was a stereotypical gangster hangout. Located in a dark alley in a run-down industrial area in south Vancouver, it was not the sort of place where law-abiding citizens would feel either comfortable or safe at dark night. The hammering bass of the club's stereo equipment could be heard from at least two blocks away, and the ridiculously over-styled customized sports cars and motorcycles left no doubt about the kind of patrons the establishment attracted.

Sasha realized that if she would enter that building, she would be on her own. This was gang territory and most cops would not dare voluntarily wandering into it, unless as a part of an invasion force complete with air support and battle tanks. The law was not only unenforced in this place - it did not apply to Barney's Club at all. The pub was subject only to the law of the mob. If anything went wrong in there, they would likely find Sasha's broken body in the sewage in a few days. Or maybe even never at all. Gangsters could be fairly creative when it came to making dead bodies vanish forever.

Sasha did not know if she was shivering more because of the chilly winter night or the good chance not to survive the endeavor. But when she entered the den of thieves after being scrutinized and waved through by an ugly bouncer who seemed to have biceps thicker than her waist, she knew that there was no way back now.

Sasha tried her best to ignore the deafening sonic assault coming from the speakers, but it still felt to her as if the bass was trying to give her a cardiac massage rather than play music. She slipped out of her coat and hung it at the wardrobe. At this very moment she could almost feel the dozens of male heads turning towards her, their eyes going wide and staring at the newcomer from inside the pub room. Sasha silently giggled. She had a role to play here, and she had dressed accordingly for it. The strapless and shiny black rubber micromini-dress seemed to be tighter than her skin and ended barely one inch below her butt. It left nothing about her curvy body to imagination. And her looks would be her weapon tonight, to bring down the man who had killed her best friend.

Sasha made a point of catwalking herself to the bar with accentuated swings of her hips, keeping the male eyes locked on her. She had already made out her target. Pietro Zampano was nursing a drink at the bar, surrounded by two women wearing dresses similarly skimpy as Sasha's, but who in contrast to Sasha apparently did not know when to stop applying more makeup. The gangster was obviously enjoying himself. Sasha had no idea if the two giggling girls were aware that the guy buying their drinks was a killer for hire - but she did not dilute herself into assuming they would care about it much if they knew. As long as he kept money, drinks and drugs going their way, they would be happy.

Sasha had pulled a few favors for getting her hands on Zampano's police record, including sweet-talking her dad - who had been the hardest to convince to help her of them all. Zampano had a typical gangster career. He was not a dumb person by any means. He was just the type of human who was too lazy to work hard for anything, but wanted to have it all, anyway. Which in his case meant parties, cars, drinks and girls. Zampano had started his criminal career as a stereotypical high-school bully, blackmailing physically less strong classmates for money or their branded clothes. He was notorious for his brutality and got expulsed from high-school after he broke a sixteen-year-old girl's arm when she refused to pay him for his 'protection'. The school drop-out had then joined a local gang, quickly rising through their ranks and enjoying the fast and easy lifestyle of a gangster. He had served a couple years worth of jail time, but the cops were never able to stick anything major on him, particularly none of the over twenty assassinations attributed to him.

Zampano felt safe from the cops. So safe that he did not bother to hide from them or anyone else - which was the entire reason Sasha had found his favorite hideout without too much effort.

Placing herself at the bar in the direct line of sight of Zampano, Sasha ordered a drink and counted the seconds. She did not have to wait long.

"Whew, wait a second there. No beautiful lady will ever have to pay for her drink while Pietro Zampano is there. That drink is on me!" the gangster told both Sasha and the barkeep who just nodded and added Sasha's martini to Zampano's mile-long bill. Sasha took the glass and turned towards her host, toasting towards him with her drink. She offered him a seductive smile that cost her every bit of discipline to conjure up - for affection was the very last thing she felt for the person who had murdered Jennifer.

Zampano took it as the intended signal of encouragement and waved his two female companions off with a dismissive gesture. The two girls threw Sasha an icy gaze that did not try to conceal their contempt for the unwelcome newcomer who had just stolen the highest ranking shark in the pond from them. But they also realized that their own rank in the pack was determined by looks and nothing else - and in that regard, the stunningly beautiful Sasha was clearly playing in a different league than they were. With an audible snort, the two girls walked off, already screening the pub room for another financially solvent mobster who would buy them their next round of drinks.

"I have never seen you here before," Zampano said, as he moved closer and thoroughly inspected Sasha's impossibly tight dress. From the direction of his stare, Sasha could tell he really liked her enormous breasts, which the dress somehow managed to make appear even larger than they already were. "And I am certain I would have remembered you if you had ever been here before. So what's a beautiful babe like you doing here?"

Sasha giggled. "Looking for entertainment, I guess."

"You have come to the right place and the right person then, lady," Zampano laughed. "My name's Pietro." He nodded in the direction of the gangsters sitting at the tables. "Most of those jackasses work for me. But don't waste your time with them. You're too classy for them."

Sasha chuckled. "Good to know."

"So what's your name?"

"It's Stacey," Sasha lied and emptied her drink.

"Right, Stacey. Are you up for a real drink, perhaps?"

"Sounds exciting."

Zampano grinned, then whispered something to the barkeep and escorted Sasha to a table in a corner. It was occupied by two men drinking beer, but after a curt nod from Zampano they wordlessly took their glasses and trotted off. A few minutes later, the barkeep brought them a cooler containing a bottle of champagne - the sort of which would have cost Sasha the better part of a week's payment, including the tips.

They toasted and small-talked, all the while Zampano drew closer and closer to Sasha until she felt his body rubbing against her hips. She wanted to punch him hard into his grinning face, but Sasha knew that tolerating a slimy murderer within her personal space would be the price for bringing down Jennifer's killer. So she kept smiling even when he wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her close.

***

Zampano gave his empty glass a sad gaze. "How about we go to my place, baby? I have got even better drinks there. And a hot tub, too," he whispered into her ear.

Sasha conjured up her best seductive look. "I thought you'd never ask," she breathed into his ear.

Sasha had gotten what she wanted: An invitation to Zampano's house.

***

"You're not afraid that the cops might pull you over?" Sasha asked from the passenger seat out of genuine curiosity, while the white Lamborghini sports car was shooting through Vancouver at about twice the legal speed limit.

Zampano laughed and shook his head while casually running a red light, cutting off a compact car's right of way. "It happens from time to time. I just give them a hundred each and they let me drive on. No biggie. The law is for poor people. It doesn't apply to you when you have money."

Sasha clenched her fist. The only reason she refrained from slapping Zampano hard was that the man was sitting behind the steering wheel of a car driving at 70 mph. That and because a part of her realized that there was some truth to his words, regardless of whether or not she liked it.

After a few more minutes of breaking various traffic regulations, Zampano steered his car into the courtyard of what a realtor's listing would label a 'detached single family home', but the word 'palace' described it a lot more fittingly. Judging by its size, the three story brick house had at least seven bedrooms. It stood in the middle of a park-sized lawn, was surrounded by a seven feet iron fence, and came complete with the best electronic security systems money could buy.

Zampano cut the engine and jumped out of the car to gallantly open the door for Sasha. He helped her out and wrapped his arm around her waist, then tossed his car key to a waiting guard, who caught it effortlessly from the air. Another guard opened the front door for the pair and nodded a salute to Zampano and his newest conquest.

He did not waste much time and ushered Sasha right into his bedroom. She cringed when she saw the tasteless arrangement of red and purple furniture that she would rather have expected to see in a cheap brothel instead of a multi-million dollar villa. She placed herself on the plush bed, watching her host fixing two stiff drinks at a bar cabinet and handing her a glass containing a generous helping of what looked like fairly expensive bourbon. At least this will buy me a few more minutes before I will have to fend him off me, Sasha thought when she toasted to Zampano.

Zampano downed his drink in one go and put his glass aside. He threw Sasha a gaze full of lust and desire before he rose and trotted to a large cabinet. When he opened it, Sasha could see a medium-sized safe hidden inside the cabinet. Zampano reached down his neck with his hand and pulled out a key-chain he wore around it, which he used to open the safe. Sasha smiled. Now she knew where Zampano was likely keeping the secrets she came for. She just had to make sure first, before making her move.

Zampano reached inside the safe, retrieved something from it, and slammed the safe shut again, putting the key-chain back over his head. With a quick flick of his hand, he tossed a small item towards Sasha. It landed on the bed, just next to her legs. It was a money clip. Sasha picked it up, flipping through the stack of bills - all hundred-dollar bills. The clip contained at least a thousand dollars, probably more.

_I never asked you for money, but you still assume that no woman in her right mind would ever sleep with you unless getting paid for it. You're a sad person, Zampano_ , Sasha thought, as she nodded a silent thanks to her host.

She had to play her role for a little while longer, so she had to accept the wad of cash no matter how much she wanted to toss it back into his face. Her mini-dress had no pockets, so she stuffed the money clip into her purse instead, which also gave her a few more seconds to think. Sasha realized that the most likely thing going on inside Zampano's head right now was figuring out the quickest way to rip her clothes off her - which of course Sasha had not the slightest intention of allowing him to do.

_Stall, Sasha_ , she thought and held up her empty glass. "That's great stuff. Could I ask for another one, maybe?"

Zampano chuckled as he accepted the empty glass from her hand. "You're a tough lady," he said, while he refilled both their glasses.

"I hope you don't mind strong women," Sasha teased him, neglecting to tell him that her body's regenerative powers had the welcome side effect of absorbing alcohol quickly. She could drink almost infinite amounts of it without even getting tipsy.

"The sort of strong women that's wearing tight rubber dresses in my bedroom I certainly don't mind," he said and chuckled.

"Strong woman or not, I still love being in the company of powerful men, and want them to find me attractive," Sasha purred, surprising herself by being able to deliver this line without even blushing. She despised power-hungry people more than almost anything else in life.

"Ah, baby, we're a perfect match then. My organization pretty much owns this city."

"You're a gang leader?" Sasha asked, well aware that he wasn't.

"Well, not quite," he admitted. "But I report directly to the boss. He values me very highly. That, and I have a few dirty secrets about him, he wouldn't want the cops to know about. So, my position in the organization is strong enough, let's phrase it like that."

Sasha laughed. It was just the backstabbing attitude and intrinsic distrust she expected from a mobster. "That is always a good thing. I hope for you that all these little secrets are...well documented?" she probed.

He nodded towards his safe. "Indeed, they are. That stuff's my life insurance."

Sasha smiled. Although she was sure that she did so for very different reasons than Zampano probably thought she would. He had just told her what she wanted to know.

And this meant she could end this charade now.

Sasha's expression became very hard and cold. Before Zampano could inquire, both her hands shot up, fingers pointed at the gangster. Sasha drew on her magic powers, creating a strong electric potential within her body. A split second later, a multi-arced lightning worth tens of thousands of voltage shot out of Sasha's hands. The electric energy struck the surprised Zampano into his chest, knocking him up from the bed and into the air. The strong jolt tossed him all the way to the opposite wall, where he crashed hard against the wooden panels and slid down.

Sasha stood up and walked towards the unconscious man, who had received the equivalent of a very strong taser shot. She reached down and tore his key-chain from him with a hard twist of her hand, then inserted the key into the safe's lock and opened it.

Inside she found a few stacks of money in different currencies, a loaded handgun with extra ammunition, three passports issued by three different countries - and a letter-sized metal strongbox, which she took out and put on the bed. Sasha opened the lid and peeked inside. The box contained a few unmarked binders. She opened them one after the other. Each of them contained written orders to assassinate a different person. Her hands trembled when she opened the third to last one, looking at a photo of herself. It was the order that had caused the fatal shooting at her house, where Zampano failed to kill Sasha, but shot dead her best friend instead.

What she was holding in her hands was a serial killer's idea of a diary. Zampano kept a tidily organized file on every single person he had ever assassinated, including photos of the subject, observation notes and the methods he used to execute them. And every single time, the order for the killing had originated from Roger Brooks himself. It was the very first time that serious crimes could be directly linked to him.

Sasha smiled as she pulled her cell phone from her purse and called her dad. What she had found was court-proof evidence and would earn her unconscious wannabe lover several life sentences worth of prison time.

***

Zampano's villa was no longer a quiet place to be. Cops were swarming all over the place, looking into every nook and cranny inside and outside the building. With Sasha's evidence backing them up, they had no trouble obtaining a search warrant for the entire villa. Sasha looked out of the bedroom window, her arms crossed in front of her chest, while she was observing the cops rounding up Zampano's goons and leading them to the waiting patrol cars. Behind her, two strong officers dragged an awake but still shaky Zampano to his feet and handcuffed him. Sasha turned around, meeting his confused gaze with the coldest stare.

"Why?" the killer asked. "I would have given so much to you."

Sasha did not answer. Instead, she walked around the bed, to where Zampano's files were still piled up. She picked up her own file and retrieved a photo, holding it up just next to her face, for Zampano to see. The smile she wore on the photo showed an innocent happiness she no longer possessed, lost on the day Jennifer had died. But there was no doubt that the woman in the picture and Sasha were one and the same.

"Sasha Clarkson?" Zampano half asked, half stated as he realized the truth.

"To be honest, I am amazed that you didn't recognize a person you were supposed to kill. But then again, you didn't look at my face much, did you?"

Zampano uttered several mixed Italian and English cuss words that described Sasha in a fairly non-favorable way, as the cops dragged the struggling killer out.

Another cop entered the room when the group was gone. One she knew very well.

"Hi Dad," Sasha said to Superintendent Tom Clarkson.

The older cop mustered his daughter intensely.

"I am not sure what scares me more: That you pull a stunt like this without backup, or that you have clothing like that in your wardrobe," Tom said, shaking his head at Sasha's dress.

Sasha just smiled and shrugged innocently before she gave her dad a firm hug. Then she handed the files to Tom. "It was worth it, though. This person will murder no one again, will he?"

Tom nodded in agreement. "On top of what you got here, we have found the machine gun that killed Jennifer, and his fingerprints are all over it. Not even Roger's money will be able to bail him out this time."

"Then my job is done here. I shall see you, Dad," Sasha said, grabbing her purse.

She slipped back into her coat and walked out of the compound and down the street. At almost two in the morning, it was dark and quiet. Sasha could have asked her dad to give her a ride, or used her magic powers to fly home. But she needed a walk and some fresh air right now.

***

Two blocks down the road, Sasha spotted a sleeping homeless man laying on the cold ground in a dark side alley, next to a garbage bin. Sasha stopped and looked at the man for a few seconds. Then she reached into her purse and retrieved Zampano's money clip. Careful not to wake the sleeping man, she let slide the money into his pocket.

Shooting the sleeping man a smile, she turned and walked away.

### April 7th, 2011

The coffee had just finished brewing when Sasha retrieved the newspaper from the mailbox and put in on the kitchen counter. The headline made her smile, which rarely occurred whenever she read the dire, catastrophic and sad events making up the vast majority of daily news. She finished reading the article and then carefully cut it out with a pair of scissors. Then Sasha finished dressing, snatched her car keys from their hook on the wall, and drove to the central cemetery.

***

Sasha stood in front of the grave and gazed down at the tombstone, like she had done dozens of times before. And as always a knot formed in her throat when she stood in this place, next to the resting place of the cheerful young woman who had to die long before her time, for no other reason than her being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sasha put the news article on the stone and placed a pink rose on top of it.

"I hope you can rest a bit easier now, Jen," Sasha whispered to her dead friend - the only friend she ever had. Then she turned around and left, wiping a tear from her eye.

***

Two hours later, a graveyard worker walked by Jennifer Myers' grave and wondered why anyone would put a newspaper snippet on a tombstone, reporting that a gangster named Pietro Zampano had just been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

### April 9th, 2011

Matthew Finch shrunk by two inches when his boss shattered his fist so hard against the tabletop that the two glasses standing on it toppled and spilled all their contents.

"I want her dead, dead!" Roger Brooks screamed. "How can it be that one woman, a waitress, to add insult to injury, is allowed do so much damage to this organization? Do you have any idea how much those weapons she delivered to the police were worth on the black market? Or the drug lab that was your responsibility to protect?"

Matthew paled at the last line. Black Vortex was famous for two things. The first was generously rewarding people loyal to him. The second was an absolute intolerance for failure. People who disappointed Black Vortex usually ended up in the ocean, with a bullet hole in their head or two.

"And now she did this," he yelled, pointing at the newspaper article covering the arrest and conviction of Pietro Zampano. "He was my best guy, my number one. Great assassins don't grow on trees. He was much better than the rest of those clowns working for me combined. And now I have to look for a new one, because of this damn bitch."

"Leave her to me. I'd be delighted to kill her for you. I hate this slut at least as much as you do," Matthew said, both because he meant it, and because he hoped that his enthusiasm would earn him back a portion of his lost karma in Black Vortex's eyes.

The gangster boss snorted. "Don't be silly. You're no match for her. She'd eat you for breakfast with those powers of hers. And besides, you're not a trained killer, Matt. No, we need a metahuman for this."

Matthew Finch nodded. "Want me to look out for one?"

"Indeed, I do. And make sure to recruit one powerful enough to break the little bitch in two halves," Black Vortex snarled.

### April 11th, 2011

Roger Brooks smiled when Matthew Finch led the giant of a man into this office. He had never seen the metahuman before, but he had to acknowledge that the man looked impressive. The dark-skinned man stood at least at six feet and four inches tall and had muscles Roger had suspected until this moment only regular steroid abuse would ever grow. The bald man had only one good eye left - the other one was covered by a black eye-patch. But Roger knew from Matthew's description that this disability wouldn't hinder him much, for he did not draw his strength from physical prowess at all, despite he possessed plenty of that.

Richard "Frostbite" Jones was able to breathe clouds of air so extremely cold that it would instantly freeze any living beings it touched and create solid layers of ice on or around pretty much any object affected by it. Frostbite needed no muscles to harm and kill his enemies. He just froze them to death.

With a flip of his hand, Black Vortex slid the large man an envelope over the desk. Frostbite opened it and examined its contents. It contained a check worth five million dollars and a photo of White Sasha. He looked long at the number written on the check and then nodded towards Black Vortex. "The amount is satisfactory," the metahuman said in a dark voice.

"I am sure you noticed that it's more than we agreed on. In return, I expect her to die within the next three days. And if you can, make her suffer in the process," Black Vortex said.

Frostbite regarded the photo and grinned, showing two rows of perfectly white teeth. "When I am done with her, her skin color will nicely match her hair," he growled while pocketing the money.

### April 12th, 2011

Sasha roamed through downtown's Pacific Centre Mall, enjoying the window shopping and the thought of the new pair of shoes she had bought a few minutes ago. The shiny black pumps would add another three inches to her six feet of body height, but she did not mind. It was not that she would wear them to a ball anyway - or to a date, for that matter.

Sasha preferred open shopping streets to the enclosed malls, but she had chosen to shop here today to escape the endless rain outsides, which she begged to give way to nicer summer conditions soon. Like most Vancouverites, Sasha appreciated the positive effects the wet climate had for the region's lush vegetation, but she could not deny that she preferred the dry and warm summers.

With its one hundred stores, Pacific Centre was not the largest mall in the city by a wide margin, but Sasha liked it for its convenient location, particularly appreciating that she did not need to brave the crazy downtown traffic to get here, but could use a convenient public transport link instead.

On this Tuesday morning, the mall was not as stuffed as it could be during weekends or afternoons, but Sasha still had to zig-zag herself through the crowd to avoid bumping into another person.

Sasha was just examining the display of her favorite boutique, pondering about whether the sorry remainders of free storage space in her tiny closet would allow for the addition of another summer dress, as her eyes noticed something odd behind her. In the window reflection, Sasha noticed a large figure walking up straight towards her and stopping around seven feet behind her. She did not know what exactly it was what made her realize the danger, but her instincts saved her life as she drew on her magic and created a protective shield around her in the same instant the cold blast struck her from behind. A portion of the frigid air still hit her a split second before her protection was fully in place - striking her into her back and left side, and knocking her down, while she was screaming in pain.

The larger portion of the blast hit the shop's window, freezing the glass and shattering it to tiny pieces of frozen shards flying wide in all directions.

The chill gnawing at her body was nothing Sasha had ever experienced before. Her entire left side went numb, leaving her unable to move her left arm at all anymore. When Sasha glanced at her arm, she cringed as she realized that the skin was blistered and partially frozen solid.

People around her were screaming in panic. A few bystanders had been grazed by the cloud of cold and were now running off, holding their frost-bitten arms, hands and faces.

Holding her paralyzed left arm in an instinctive, but futile attempt to warm it, Sasha staggered back to her feet and locked her eyes at the person who just tried to kill her and almost succeeded. She was sure that she had never seen the tall, dark-skinned man before, who now stared at her with a smug smile on his lips.

"Who are you and why do you want to kill me?" Sasha managed to squeeze through her clenched teeth.

The man shrugged. "The name's Richard. But I usually go by 'Frostbite', for reasons you have probably realized by now. And I've got five million good reasons to kill you. Your former husband is very generous and very annoyed at you."

"A killer for hire...I see," Sasha said, and nodded towards the panicked people running away from them, trying to clear the area that had just turned into a war-zone. "Let them go first. Your quarrel is with me, not them. No reason to harm innocents."

The man crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Fair enough, I have got all the time in the world to kill you," he said. "Don't move until they are gone, though."

Sasha stood still until the last civilian was safely out of range. Then she nodded her silent thanks to the man who wanted to kill her, but at least possessed enough honor not to endanger innocents in what was now to come.

An instant later another, much stronger icy cloud struck Sasha's energy shield, but with her protection in place, Sasha was shielded from most of the effects, and felt only a very faint cold breeze around her body. Still realizing that she couldn't keep her protective shield up for an indefinite time, Sasha pointed her good hand at the man and drew on her magic. The searing bolt of lightning struck Frostbite's body dead centre - or would have, if the man hadn't flexed his own hand upwards, creating a solid shield of ice in front of him. The lightning shattered into the shield, instantly destroying it, but also consuming its power in the process, and reflecting most of the remaining energy to the side. The man staggered back two steps from the heavy blast delivered to him - but then he grinned at Sasha again, shaking his head and wiggling his index finger at her.

"That light-show of yours won't work on me, lady," he chuckled.

A double blast of frigid air shot in Sasha's direction. In horror, Sasha realized that the first wave of the twin blast wasn't even directed at her body – but at the floor under her feet. The cold air froze the tiled floor solid and created a thin layer of slippery ice on it. The second blast knocked into Sasha's energy shield a split second later. Its energy almost exhausted, Sasha's force field flickered under the assault, but still absorbed most of the cold. The blast still knocked Sasha backwards – and her feet lost grip on the slippery ground that might as well have served as a hockey rink now. Falling hard on her behind, Sasha slid over the floor until her uncontrolled slide was stopped by her bumping backwards into a concrete wall, just in time for a third wave of freezing air rolling in at her.

After absorbing the newest assault, Sasha's shield folded, for its power was exhausted.

Sasha gazed at the laughing man as he raised his arm, the palm of his hand inverted and pointing towards the ceiling. A solid spear of ice formed in his hand, at least five feet long and ten inches thick, featuring a razor sharp tip. Without her shield, the icy missile would kill Sasha if it hit her \- and the ground was too slippery for Sasha to hope to walk on it in any controlled fashion without wearing skates.

With a snarl, Frostbite threw the spear at her.

Sasha reached for her magic and propelled her body into flight, taking the only escape route left to her – the air. The ice spear missed her by mere inches, smashing into the wall Sasha had been leaning against and shattering into a thousand pieces upon impact. Razor-sharp shards cut into Sasha's unprotected arms and legs, sending waves of agony through her body. Some larger parts shattered multiple shop windows and destroyed the displays behind them in a hailstorm of ice.

Ignoring the pain, Sasha whirled around in mid-flight, aimed her right hand at Frostbite and launched a strong kinetic blast at him. Like he had done earlier, the man conjured up a shining barrier of ice to absorb most of the blast, but after shattering the icy shield to pieces, a portion of Sasha's pressure wave still sent him flying, knocking him backwards into the already destroyed remains of a shop window display.

"So you can be hurt after all, huh?" Sasha muttered more to herself than to her opponent, as Frostbite staggered back to his feet and advanced on her again. But whatever damage she might have done to him did not seem to bother him greatly, since has was still grinning.

He inhaled deeply and Sasha was glad that her magic energy was replenished enough for her to recast her protective shield for at least a short while, for she knew what was going to come. With a flickering flash of light, the transparent bubble of energy sparked to live and encased Sasha.

The immense blast of cold air rolling through the mall was not even aimed at Sasha though, for Frostbite seemed to have realized that he could not harm the woman directly, as long as her energy shield was up.

Instead, he breathed the frigid air at the entire width of the mall, freezing floor, ceiling and walls, covering it all under a multiple-inch thick layer of ice. When he was finally done exhaling a miniature equivalent of an arctic storm, the entire mall looked like a giant ice cavern and its temperature had almost instantly dropped to around minus fifty degrees Celsius.

The intense ambient cold was nothing Sasha's energy shield could fully protect her from. While a portion of it was still being absorbed by the magical protection, the chilling cold relentlessly bit into her exposed arms and legs, and Sasha was hardly wearing any sort of winter clothing to begin with.

Three other, more directed blasts struck Sasha's shield dead centre in rapid succession and threw her back and around in mid-air, her body spinning out of control from the constant onslaught. Having to cancel her flight under the brutal attacks, Sasha landed on her feet on the slippery ice, barely able to keep her balance. Her protective shield was exhausted again, and despite Sasha's best efforts to keep it up just a little bit longer, it collapsed just as the next wave of super-cold air rolled in.

And only then did Sasha realize what Frostbite had been planning.

His previous attacks, vicious as they were, had no other purpose than exhausting her shield. The cold air from the newest wave was the actual attack – now that he had forced her back on the ground. The icy blast was now breezing around her unprotected feet, forming a solid layer of ice around them and freezing them in place as if glued to the ground. Sasha would no longer be able to evade any further incoming attacks by stepping aside or flying off. She was now an immobile target, impossible to miss. And she had nothing left to protect herself. For a brief moment Sasha thought about launching a kinetic pressure wave into the ice and shatter it to pieces - but the force necessary to free her legs would also be harmful enough to incapacitate herself in the process. Either way, the result would be the same: Sasha would have no way to escape the following attack, and her shield would be down for at least another minute before she could cast a new one.

Frostbite chuckled. "I give you that, it was a lot harder than I thought," he said, as he took slow measured steps towards his defeated opponent. "It's also a shame to kill a hottie like you, but hey, the things you do for money!"

Sasha's mind worked frantically, playing through a dozen of different things she could try to avoid dying within the next few seconds. But Frostbite had shrugged off all her attacks more or less effortlessly, and another lightning or pressure blast would delay the inevitable only by a few seconds. Sasha knew that the strongest kinetic blast she could cast would blow the walls out and collapse the entire building, probably killing both herself and the attacker in the process, but she had no way to know whether all civilians had cleared the huge mall by now, so even that would not be an option.

The man stopped around twenty feet away from her. And he still laughed at her. Sasha was maybe ten seconds away from meeting a cold, frigid end. She let her gaze wander across the ice cavern that would become her tomb and onto the man who would take her life.

Frostbite inhaled.

As she already wanted to close her eyes and accept her fate, Sasha had one last idea. Frostbite had overcome her defenses by attacking her indirectly...and so could she.

Her one good hand shot out, its palm facing towards a point slightly to the side of the man. With a snarl, Sasha released a strong pressure blast into the thick layer of ice covering the walls. The kinetic wave shattered the ice to a myriad of razor-sharp shards, showering Frostbite in a hailstorm of icy bullets. Without even watching for the results, Sasha aimed her hand subsequently at the ceiling, floor and far side of the wall, firing blast after blast into the ice, resulting in a continuous inferno of icy shrapnel raining down at Frostbite. From the corner of her eyes she saw him trying to deflect the murderous onslaught by rapidly creating shields of ice, but there was no way he could create them fast enough to cover all angles. Sasha narrowed her eyes and continued launching kinetic blasts at the general area her opponent was standing in until she had no energy left at all.

Heavily breathing, Sasha stood still, her hand sinking down, while her eyes remained locked at Frostbite. His eyes stared into nothingness, and his body trembled.

And like in slow motion, Frostbite slid down to the ground and collapsed, blood pouring out of dozens of gruesome wounds, ripped open by the sharp ice shards.

Exhausted and shivering from the still freezing temperatures in the ice-covered mall, Sasha let herself sink down as well. She was no longer able to stand.

She opened her eyes only when the cops and paramedics rushed in, freeing her feet from their icy prison and treating both her and the badly injured, but still alive attacker.

One of the paramedics wrapped a blanket around the shuddering Sasha and examined her blistered and frostbitten left arm. He cringed at the extensive injury. "I guess we better take you to a hospital, Miss. I am not sure if we can save the arm, but we will try our best, ok?"

Sasha smiled and shook her head. "It will be fine. Just give me something for the pain."

***

Sasha could not remember ever to have lit the fireplace in mid-April, but after today's events, the cozy heat made her comfortable and helped her body to warm up again. She glanced at her left arm and was satisfied that her regenerative body had taken good care of the frostbite, removing blisters and chilblains, and allowing her usual skin color to be restored. She opened and closed her left hand a few times to make sure it had regained its full mobility and smiled when she could not notice any remainder of her injuries.

Sasha nipped at a glass of brandy her dad had brought her earlier and enjoyed the imaginary but still very comfortable warmth the drink created in her stomach.

She stared into the fireplace, watching the flames dance. And for the first time it became painfully clear to her that if she would not end the conflict between Roger and her very soon, one of his attempts to kill her would eventually succeed.

### April 26th, 2011

Sasha had to admit that her ex-husband's lair was well hidden, and that she would have never found it without the help of an informant. At first glance, the cannery looked perfectly normal, and she could even remember buying this exact brand of canned beans in a supermarket only a few days ago. But she had no doubt that Black Vortex was in this building, coordinating the Stinger gang from this very place in a hidden area below the production plant. Her informant had been rather clear about that. The man had been a windfall gain for Sasha - a disgruntled member of the Stinger gang who had approached her a few days ago, telling her where and when to find her ex-husband. Sasha had decided to make the best possible use of the information. This was going to be the day when she would put an end to his crimes.

Sasha snuck up to the fence, making sure that no security camera was pointing in her direction. Then she negated her own body's weight and floated over the fence, coming to a safe landing on the other side. A few men were busy loading cans into a truck on the other side of the yard, but they were facing her with their backs, so Sasha used the opportunity to sneak into the building through a half-opened gate.

Sasha suspected that not too many actual gangsters would be on the production level. She did not even think that the factory workers were necessarily aware of what was going on beneath their feet. They were likely just an oblivious part of Roger's disguise, playing the same part Sasha herself had once played when she had fallen for his false love vows and became his wife.

Making sure that she remained undetected, Sasha nimbly snuck to the backside elevator. She cursed when she discovered the electronic card lock attached next to the elevator access. She would not be able to call the elevator without the proper key card. Frustrated, she hid behind a stack of boxes and waited, hoping that the problem would solve itself. Thankfully, she did not have to wait long before a man in a lab coat approached the elevator. Sasha watched him swipe his card, and shortly after, the doors slid open allowing the man to enter.

Before the elevator doors could close, Sasha called upon her magic to launch herself out of her hiding place. Soaring one foot above the ground, she flew right into the elevator, landing next to the surprised man.

"Hi there," she said, winking at the man's frozen face. And she released a blast of mental force from her raised hand, lifting the man off his feet and slamming him into the wall. He slid down to the floor and remained still.

"Sorry about that," Sasha said to the unconscious man while taking his key card. "But I need to borrow this."

She swiped the card through the access panel's card-reader and selected the lowest floor. When the elevator came to a halt, and the doors slid open, Sasha could not help but being amazed at the sight that opened to her eyes beyond the elevator door. The well kept and lit metal-walled corridor looked as if someone had misplaced an entire military HQ and put it under this canary.

To her great relief, there were no security cameras attached to the corridor's walls, since she would have no way to avoid getting spotted by them. Sasha could see numerous doors to the left and right of the corridor, some open, some closed. Sasha knew from her source that the first room was a changing room, where Roger's hirelings could shed their factory worker disguise when coming down here. With a quick peek around the corner Sasha made sure that there was nobody else in the room, before she dragged the unconscious man into the room and put him behind the last locker row, where he wouldn't be easily spotted.

According to the informant, Roger's office was located in the last room on the far side of the corridor. Sasha would have to make her move quickly if she wanted to keep the moment of surprise on her side. She glanced into the corridor to make sure it was still empty and then hurried through the corridor. When she reached the door, she suspected to be Roger's she paused and listened - but she could not hear anything in the room behind.

_Oh well, let's get it over with_ , Sasha thought and kicked the door in.

And Sasha's eyes went wide. The room was empty. No Roger. No desks. No office equipment. There was nothing in the room at all, except a single source of light at the ceiling, which was switched on. Sasha was confused for one split second. And then she understood what the light in an otherwise empty room likely meant: The Stinger gang had been expecting her. Sasha whirled around, realizing that she had been fooled and that she had run into a trap. But it was too late. She barely saw the grinning face of the goon in the corridor behind her, holding an oddly shaped weapon in his hand, before the taser projectile hit her, flooding her body with many thousand volts of electrical energy and overloading her senses. Sasha did not feel collapsing to the floor anymore.

***

Sasha woke up with a throbbing headache. Her body was cold and still felt rigid. At first she attributed it to the stun weapon's effects. Then she realized that the chillness came from the cold metal floor she was lying on. She tried to push herself up. But she couldn't. Her hands were firmly locked behind her back with heavy iron shackles. An attempt to move her legs told her that her ankles were shackled as well. She forced her eyes open. Her sight was still blurry, but she figured that she was in a metal cage, barely wide enough for her to fit in. The metal bars were at least an inch thick.

"Ah, my sleeping beauty is waking up," a voice said over an intercom. Sasha recognized both the line and the voice all too well. Roger had said it to her in the mornings often enough.

"You're so afraid of a bound woman that you can't even show your face, Roger?" Sasha said.

"I have no intention of letting you play any tricks on me, Sasha," Roger said. "You know what's funny? You were so furious about me not telling you about my...business. At the same time, you have been just as dishonest with me, neglecting to mention those metahuman powers you have. Playing the cute, innocent waitress instead. That's priceless, really."

"I was never dishonest with you, Roger. I didn't want to be anything else than a waitress. That's why I never told you about my powers. I didn't want to have anything to do with them anymore and just be myself, that's all."

"You do-gooder types bend truth as you please, just to get the moral high ground and paint the world in that simplistic black and white view of yours. Fact is that we both kept a few things secret from the other. We're not that much different."

"You're wrong. There is a difference between you and me, Roger."

"And that would be?"

"I am not a murderer."

Roger sighed. "I am tired of this debate. I hope you like your accommodation. It's specifically constructed for keeping super-types in. Well, most of them anyway. At least I am certain you don't have anything at your disposal to break out from there. Not that you can use your magic while being tied up anyway, but even if you could, neither lightning bolts nor kinetic blasts can do much to a cage."

"I am curious. Why didn't you just kill me, Roger? Isn't that what you wanted to do all along?"

"Who says that I won't do just that in the end? But you, my dear, have caused me so much trouble that I can't just put a bullet through your head and be done with it. That would be too easy for you. I really miss the civilian life I have lost because of you. It was great being able to just go to the mall, or a restaurant, or see a ballgame. Thanks to you, I have to keep in hiding all the time now, since the better part of all Vancouver cops is looking for me. And this little vendetta you have started against me and my organization. Do you have any idea how much this has cost me so far?"

"Whatever it was, it wasn't enough."

The answer came in a different way than Sasha expected. An electric jolt shot through her body, originating from the cage's metal floor. She shrieked out loud in pain and surprise.

"This was the lowest setting, Sasha," Roger's voice said. "It has nine higher ones. I plan to test them all on you. I am sure you will love it. And I hope you won't die on me before we reach the last one. But I guess that's the good thing about your regenerative body. I can harm it as much as I want to – unless I outright kill you, I can just wait for you to regenerate and then hurt you some more."

"How very charming. You are a true gentleman, Roger," Sasha said and paused shortly. "I don't know how I could have fallen in love with someone like you."

"As you know, I can't say that I made the same mistake. Although I have to admit, I was fairly content with our arrangement while it lasted. And the benefits weren't so bad either. The whores I now have to pay for their services are a lot more expensive than you ever were."

"I hate you, Roger," Sasha whispered.

"When I am done with you, I would be disappointed if you wouldn't hate me. Oh, and before I forget: Feel free to scream your lungs out, Sasha. Nobody will be able to hear you down here."

The next thing Sasha knew was her body convulsing in agony, as the electric current came on again, but much stronger than before. The pain was nothing like anything she had experienced before. Her entire body felt as if it was burning from the inside out. The powerful electric jolts made her thrashing against her restraints, ripping open the skin on her wrists and ankles.

Sasha did not want to give Roger the satisfaction of hearing her scream, but she could not prevent it. She screamed. And then she screamed louder when Roger increased the setting on his torture machine another notch. And another.

***

Tom Clarkson was a tough and seasoned cop who did not easily feel desperate. But it was the second week his daughter was missing. And from his experience he knew that most missing people are either found by this time, or they never are. He knew that Sasha went after her ex-husband's gang. And that she did so alone, despite his urging her not to and to work with his team instead. Or at least ask some other superheroes to back her up. But Sasha's stubbornness almost counted as a superpower itself.

Tom sat down at his desk, sighing and taking a sip from his oversized coffee mug, when his office door flew open and Inspector Brewster stormed in.

"Tom, I think we've got something."

The older cop raised an eyebrow. "What is it, Dave?"

"We snatched a crook from the streets this morning while he was trying to break into a few cars. He was high on all sorts of stuff. He just told us his entire life story. It seems Black Vortex paid him to help him lure a metahuman woman into a trap two weeks ago. The description of the girl he had set up matches your daughter. And we know where he sent her to."

Tom sprang up from his desk, spilling his coffee in the process. "Get all the superheroes you can possibly get a hold on and meet me in the garage. Now!"

***

Five minutes later, Tom stood in front of an impressive force. Dave had assembled sixty policemen in heavy combat gear, twenty armored patrol cars and two helicopters. Tom smiled. If a fellow cop's loved ones were in danger, there was nothing that could stop his or her comrades from doing everything they could to help out.

His gaze fell on a pair of costumed metahumans standing next to the policemen.

"Dave, I thought I'd know all local heroes, but those guys I have never seen before. Who are they?"

"You mean the two to the right? They were in the area when we sent the general call for assistance and volunteered to help out."

Tom walked up to the pair, nodding appreciatively at them.

The deep blue skin color of the young man gave him away as a metahuman of sorts, although the rest of his appearance could as well have jumped straight out of a seventies Western movie. The man shaped his lips into a bright smile and tipped against the rim of his black western hat with his right index finger. Then he removed his dark, rimless sunglasses, revealing a pair of dazzling blue eyes.

"Howdy," the man said, and only now Tom realized that even his hair had a distinct blue color.

To his right a tall blonde woman stood with one hand resting on her hip. Her bangs were flowing loosely around her head and face, the golden strands ending between her shoulder-blades. The girl appeared to be in her late twenties and was dressed in plate-reinforced red tights and thigh-high white boots. But Tom thought her most striking feature were her gleaming golden eyes.

"Glad to have you guys aboard," Tom said.

"No problem. And don't worry. We will get your girl out in one piece," the blue-skinned hero said while shaking Tom's hand.

"If I may ask, what's your name?"

"They call me Code Blue," the hero said, and motioned to the woman next to him. "My companion here is Firebird"

"Nice to meet both of you," Tom said.

"We're ready whenever you are, Superintendent," Inspector Brewster called from behind.

"Let's move, then!" Tom said, nodding to the heroes once more before he rushed off to a waiting patrol car.

He just hoped they would not be too late to save Sasha.

***

It was late afternoon when they arrived at the cannery. Most of the workers had already gone home. Tom did not mind. It would make their job a lot easier, not having too many innocents around in what was probably going to end up in a major mess. He put down his binoculars and gave the signal.

A second later, hell broke loose over the cannery. The patrol cars came down on the factory from all sides at once like a swarm of birds of prey, closing off every possible escape route within a few seconds. Policemen jumped out of the cars, quickly overwhelming the surprised workers and dragging them out of harm's way. The two helicopters fired several rounds of tear gas and stun grenades into the building. After the ammunition had gone off inside the warehouse, Tom's people stormed the building. Orders to stand down were yelled by the policemen, but the law-enforcement officers were instead greeted by several shotgun rounds, fired by a few gangsters hiding behind a stack of boxes. The cops answered the challenge by launching a hailstorm of bullets in the gangsters' direction, their assault rifles set on full automatic mode. A few agonized yells told Tom that their rounds had found their targets. One wounded gangster fell from behind the boxes, holding his bleeding thigh with one hand and wildly waving the other in surrender. The others were lying still on the concrete floor, in puddles of their own blood.

It took all but half a minute until the factory floor was declared secured. More workers and a few gang members were hauled out of the building. Tom walked over to a handcuffed man lying face-down on the floor and took a key chain holding his security card from his belt. He turned around to where the superhero group was waiting for the cops to clear them for the next part.

"Here, you're going to need this!" Tom said and tossed the key card to Code Blue.

The superhero effortlessly caught it with one hand and nodded. Followed by Firebird, he stormed off to the elevator.

***

When the elevator door opened, the two heroes were greeted by a threesome of gangsters standing in the corridor, pointing handguns at them.

Code Blue laughed and shook his head. "Pistols? Is that really all the firepower you got?" he teased the mobsters. With a snap of his hand, he tore the firearms from their owners' hands as if an invisible rope had pulled them off. The weapons dropped to the metal ground behind Code Blue and slid out of harm's way.

Firebird pointed her hands in the mobsters' direction and released a massive wall of fire that engulfed the entire corridor, searing the gangsters and stinging their exposed skin. She kept the fiery onslaught going until she heard three distinct bumps, indicating that the three goons had dropped to the floor and would no longer be able to offer any resistance.

Needing no communication to coordinate their moves, the pair of heroes swept into the corridor, wordlessly splitting up, each charging into a different room. They both knew they had to work quickly.

***

Black Vortex cursed when he heard the noise of battle coming from the corridor outsides. He had no idea how the cops could have found him here. He had used this facility as headquarters for a long time before moving Stinger's base of operations to another place, and not once in all that time the cops had shown up here.

Not that it mattered. He did not need this compound anymore, which is why he had used it to set up Sasha in the first place. The cops would not arrest him today, either. This facility came fully equipped and included an escape tunnel for an occasion just like this.

But there was something Roger would still have to finish before he left.

He half opened, half kicked the door to the room where his ex-wife was held. He briefly looked through the one-way mirror separating the room in two halves. Sasha was lying motionless on the floor inside the cage, her flickering eyes half opened in semi-consciousness. Roger knew she was more dead than alive, after he had tormented her with electric shocks for almost two weeks. Her regenerative powers could not keep up with the pace he had kept on destroying her body with. And he would finish the job now, before the cops had a chance to free her.

He rushed to the control console, setting the power level on the torture machine to maximum. Then he pressed the button. He was instantly gratified with Sasha's terrible screams, as the strong electric jolts lifted her body from the ground, throwing her around in agony.

He smiled wickedly, reveling in the thought Sasha would not survive this treatment for more than a minute or two. The cops would find only her dead body. He gave his suffering ex-wife a final mock salute, then turned around and headed to his escape tunnel.

***

Firebird stood in the change room, looking down at the body of a defeated gangster who just had tried to sneak up on her - and paid for the attempt by having to stand in the epicenter of a concussive blast of fire. A noise coming from the far side of the level made her halt and listen. It was something she had not heard in the facility until now. A woman's screams.

_Tom's daughter_ , Firebird realized, and launched herself into the air. Like a red bullet, she soared through the corridor towards where she could hear the screams coming from.

Rather than pausing to open it, Firebird simply tucked her head and leveled the door at the hall's end by flying directly into it. As she passed through the doorframe, the heroine swung upright to check for the source of the cries - and a fist clenching around her stomach halted her. Firebird could not believe what she was seeing. That any human, even a gangster, could be so thoroughly and completely evil to be able to treat other human beings like this was beyond her. The bound and caged woman inside was still convulsing in pain, but her screams had reduced to a mere whimpering. Firebird knew that she was just moments away from dying.

Firebird examined the cage, but she could not even see where the lock was, much less had any idea how to open it. Her gaze fell upon the control console at the far side of the room, but there was no time for figuring out how it worked. Drawing on her powers, she conjured up a massive ball of fire and launched it at the console, where it exploded in a tremendous blast that sent bits of metal clattering to the room's four corners.

When the concussive blast had subsided, Firebird looked at the result, and for the first time since the operation started, smiled. She had completely fried the console, destroying the wiring inside and shutting off the power. The smile was short-lived and vanished when she looked at the woman inside the cage.

The Superintendent's daughter was no longer moving.

***

Firebird's head whirled around when Code Blue rushed into the room. The blonde heroine was bent over the still figure on the floor. She had managed to pull Sasha out of the cage after the loss of power had automatically unlocked it.

Without turning to her arrived companions, Firebird's golden eyes filled with tears. "There's no pulse," she said.

Code Blue gazed at the white-haired girl who stared at them from lifeless eyes and clenched his fists. "I think we need to tell the Superintendent," the blue-skinned hero whispered.

Firebird pushed herself upright. She lingered there a few moments, and just as she thought to join her companion and leave the room, she looked down at the girl at her feet once more.

And she froze when she saw that Sasha's eyes were blinking.

Code Blue's head turned at the sudden exclamation from their compatriot, focusing the white-haired woman. The message they would take to her father would be a happy one, after all. Sasha's regenerative body had managed to pull her back literally moments before she would have crossed the point of no return to life.

***

Sasha sat on a recliner in her parents' lawn, enjoying the day's last rays of the sun shining down on her. She turned when her father approached, handing her a drink. He was still dressed in his uniform and looked concerned, as he had done all day long.

"Thanks, Dad," Sasha said.

She took a sip and looked into her dad's eyes. He was not saying anything, but he did not have to. Sasha understood very well what his gaze was telling her.

"I know, Dad," she said, looking towards the ground. "It was an idiotic thing to do."

Tom nodded. "Yes, it was. But what counts is that you're alive."

"I had to do it, Dad. And you know why."

"Yes, I do. I am very well aware of what Roger did to both you and Jennifer. And that you want to bring him to justice. That's not the problem at all. Hunting criminals is what we all do, Sasha. But I am doing in a team where we can watch each other's back. Your magic makes you strong. It doesn't make you immortal."

Sasha averted her head. Having almost died today, she could hardly argue this point with her dad. Her regenerative body could not heal her if she was dead.

"They still hurt much?" Tom asked, pointing at Sasha's bandaged wrists that her involuntary thrashing against her restraints had ripped wide open.

"A little. But it will pass. A few more hours, I guess."

Tom looked over his shoulder as he heard steps approaching.

"I guess there is someone you might want to talk to, Sasha," he said, giving his daughter a wink.

"Hi Sasha," a smiling Firebird said. "Good to see you so well already."

"I guess I have to thank you for saving my life," Sasha said.

"Ah, no worries. Happy to," the woman said with a big smile.

"Dad's telling me you are a metahuman, too?"

The woman tilted her head to one side, as if in momentary thought. "I...guess that's as good a description as any."

"You're the first one I have ever talked to who's not a mage. Well, in a peaceful fashion, that is. The only other one I ever met wanted to kill me."

Firebird folded her arms and shivered slightly. "I overheard a bit of your discussion with your dad," the red and white clad heroine said, changing the topic.

Sasha's expression darkened. "You're going to chime in with him in saying that I am beyond stupid?"

"That's not how he said that, you know? But yes, the guy you're up against is no joke. I have seen and fought his type before. They have dozens upon dozens of men available to them. Truck loads of money. And they have a lot of powerful friends in high places. Sasha, I am not sure how to phrase this best, but there is a reason why most of us aren't fighting crime all alone. Because more often than not, one of us just isn't going to cut it, superpowers or not."

Sasha sighed. "Trust me - I think after I got dragged half-dead out of that holding cell, I have realized that by now."

Firebird extended a hand towards Sasha and smiled at her. "So how about a little friendly backup for your troubles?"

The white-haired girl stared long at Firebird. And at the opened hand she held out to her. Then she smiled and took Firebird's hand, shaking it. "Deal," she said.

Sasha would be no longer fighting alone.

And hidden behind a hedge, but well inside earshot of the two women, Tom Clarkson smiled.

### April 28th, 2011

Roger Brooks smiled as he admired the completed work. "It's awesome," he said to his engineer, who was gleaming at him in pride. "It was expensive, but the result is amazing!"

"Thank you, sir," the engineer said. "We squeezed everything into it you wanted to have, and the total weight is still less than 500 pounds. It comes with twin machine guns, six rocket-propelled grenade launchers, can easily withstand bullets and grenades, and is still very maneuverable. And it has all the other tricks you requested, regarding being able to deal with this...person."

"I think it needs a field test," Roger said, unable to take his gaze away from his newest toy. The black suit of powered armor had cost him a fortune, but when looking at the shining marvel of technology, Roger did not regret one dime he had spent for it.

### May 5th, 2011

Tom Clarkson waved to his daughter, who had been sunken into a book in their living room. "I will get your mother from the airport, honey. It shouldn't take too long," he said to Sasha.

"Sure thing, Dad!" Sasha said, briefly looking up from her book to raise one of her hands to wave her dad goodbye. "Heather will come over for a cup of coffee soon. I hope that's ok?"

Tom raised an eyebrow. "Who's Heather?"

"Heather is Firebird, Dad. You know...Firebird isn't her real name," Sasha said and winked at her father.

"Oh...right. Have fun then, you two!" Tom said and closed the door behind him, silently relieved that his daughter seemed to pick up some resemblance of a social life again.

***

Sasha listened with interest as Firebird recounted countless stories from her work fighting dangerous, super-powered villains as a member of a high-profile group of superheroes. Despite being a metahuman herself, Sasha found the stories almost to be unreal, as if they had originated from a Hollywood movie instead of real life. Sasha had no idea about how life was like for other metahumans and was fascinated by it.

Sasha poured the blonde heroine another coffee and pushed a plate of home-made coconut cake in front of Firebird, but otherwise took great care not to interrupt the narrating girl.

Firebird absently devoured the cake while she kept on recounting stories to a smiling Sasha, all the while the radio was playing Sasha's favorite classic rock music station in the background.

Then Firebird stopped speaking, and both heads turned to the radio in unison, as the speaker announced a breaking news broadcast.

Sasha's face went pale as she learned that Vancouver International Airport had been taken over by gangsters, who demanded a hundred and fifty million dollars in exchange for releasing their hostages.

***

Sasha stared into Firebird's eyes, covering her mouth with one hand. "My parents...they're at the airport," she whispered.

Then the white-haired girl's expression hardened as she jumped up from the table and marched to the door.

Firebird tilted her head. "What are you doing, Sasha?"

"What does it look like? I am going to the airport, of course. I have to help them."

Firebird propelled herself out of her chair and rushed to Sasha, placing a hand on her shoulder. "What happened to us being a team?" she said.

Sasha turned around to gaze at Firebird's face and stared into her eyes for a long moment. Then she smiled and nodded. Without another word, Sasha opened the door, and both women rushed out of the house and launched themselves into the air. The residential homes below them were soon reduced to a blur as Firebird and Sasha were soaring over the rooftops towards the airport at jet fighter speed.

***

Leaving behind the last homes of Vancouver's southern suburb of Richmond, the two women shot into the airspace over Sea Island. Located in the Fraser River delta, right at the ocean, the home of Vancouver's international airport had less than 1,000 permanent residents, since most of the large island was taken by the giant airport itself and a large environmental reserve.

Thundering over the runway at low altitude, Sasha and Firebird were not in any danger of crossing into the path of any plane, as all air traffic going in or out had been halted due to the situation on the ground. Firebird signaled to Sasha – and despite they had never worked together before, Sasha instinctively read what Firebird had in mind. With a nod, Sasha veered to the right, mirrored by a similar move by Firebird in the opposite direction.

Within a minute Sasha left Sea Island behind her and reached one of the Fraser River's many arms, where she turned left and shot over the water, skimming over the waves by just a few inches. She followed the river until she reached the open ocean and went into a wide arc to the left, while gaining altitude. With a smile she spotted the faint dot against the horizon, telling her that Firebird had circumvented the airport to the other side of the island.

Arcing downwards again, Sasha gained considerable speed as she approached the airfield-facing side of the terminal buildings. She scanned the vast rooftop – and after a short moment she spotted what she was looking for: The sentry post was not very well concealed, or did not even try to be. The pair of men was idly standing on the roof, holding binoculars and an assault rifle each. Sasha smiled when she noticed that the two gangsters were not looking in her direction at all, but had their eyes fixed towards the city instead - from where they obviously expected an attack rather than from the ocean-facing side. Which of course was the entire reason Sasha and Firebird had chosen it as their angle of attack.

Sasha's eyes narrowed as she sped towards the unsuspecting pair, drawing on her power as she approached them with blinding speed. In the last moment, one of the men turned around and his eyes went wide. Sasha could see him desperately reaching for his weapon. But it was too late. Sasha released the spell and a crackling pair of lightning bolts seared through the air and struck both men in the chest. Sasha watched their bodies sailing through the air, but she had soared past them before they even hit the ground. They would be knocked out for long enough.

The sound of a small explosion to her right told Sasha that Firebird had found a target of her own.

Sasha went into a sudden steep ascent that slowed down her forward flight and waited for Firebird to approach her.

Flying in close formation, they soared toward the air traffic control tower.

As Firebird started to descend towards the tower's ground level entrance, Sasha shook her head and motioned her companion to follow her instead.

"I don't think we can disable those guys from the outside, no?" Firebird said when Sasha floated upwards towards the tower top.

Sasha smiled as they approached the windowed upper section of the tower. "Perhaps we can."

Floating steadily next to the tower, the white-haired girl carefully peeked inside the control room through the thick glass window. One gangster was standing next to the instrument consoles, fixing his eyes towards the city through a pair of binoculars. The air traffic controllers were nowhere to be seen. Sasha assumed they had been escorted out to be held together with the other hostages.

Drawing a surprised expression from Firebird, Sasha reached towards an opened window with her hand and knocked against the glass.

The gangster whirled around, dropping the binoculars in shock.

Sasha's hand reached inside the window, as her mind called on her magic potential. Her magic required her to have a clear path from her hand to her target, but the opened window gave her that. Her mind locked on his body in the same instant as the man reached for his weapon.

And Sasha instructed her magic to pull hard.

Propelled by an unseen telekinetic force, the gangster sailed through the air and towards Sasha. With a loud thud, he crashed into the reinforced window from the inside, just a few inches away from Sasha. She apologetically shrugged at him, as the already unconscious man slid down against the window and collapsed on the floor.

The blonde heroine nodded at her, trying to maintain some professionalism through the moment of surprise. "I didn't know you could do that...huh. I see no more lookouts...that should be it," she said.

"Time to storm the fortress then," Sasha said.

"I'm not familiar with this airport. Are there any obvious places where the hostages might be held? Food court? Baggage claim...?" Firebird asked with her head tilted to the terminals below.

Sasha shrugged. "It's a huge airport. And I am still new to this 'think like a criminal' business. Until today, this was just a place to get into planes for me, you know? They could really be anywhere."

Firebird peeked back up with a veteran's grin. "Don't worry. We'll just improvise a little. You start with the international terminal, and I'll check out domestic in the meantime?"

"Sounds like a plan."

The two women separated, each heading to another end of Canada's second largest airport. Sasha was wondering how the two of them were supposed to search the gargantuan complex in just one lifetime.

***

Keeping her head low, Sasha sneaked through the rows of cars in the otherwise deserted short term parkade, making her way towards the international terminal building's ground level access. She walked the remaining distance instead of flying, to avoid her being spotted from the inside. The short term parkade was located right in front of the terminal building and would conceal her approach well enough. She would need to cross only one access road to reach the terminal building from here, so chances that she would be spotted from one of the building's many windows would be small.

Taking her time to make sure no more sentries were posted outside the building, Sasha rushed across the street when she was satisfied that nobody was watching this particular approach, and passed through a side entrance into the building. She had used it often enough in the past. The automatic door would take her into the end section of the arrival level waiting area, just across from the baggage services counter. This particular area came with the advantage that it was closed off by walls on three sides, so she would not accidentally end up being surrounded by gangsters and their guns from all angles at once.

Drawing in a final deep breath and trying to ignore her pounding heart to the best of her ability, Sasha stepped through the door. A part of Sasha had imagined the next thing to happen would be guns being pointed at her and bullets fired in her direction. But nothing of that sort happened.

With great surprise Sasha realized that she was the only living being in the waiting area at all.

Sasha had been in this building countless times, but she would have never imagined that an airport terminal could be that quiet. No antlike crowd scurrying back and forth through the halls, pushing bags stacked five feet high on trolleys too small for that sort of load. No bored people waiting in the semi-comfortable plastic chairs for their loved ones to clear the annoying immigration and customs procedures, staring at their watches every ten seconds. No long lines at the fast-food restaurants and coffee shops. No security guards scanning the crowd for any possible or imaginary trouble with their radar eyes.

Just silence.

Sasha took the first step into the building and thought her shoes caused the equivalent of a thunderclap on the tiled floor when her foot touched the ground. She flinched and cursed herself for not exchanging her pumps for a pair of rubber-soled sports shoes - or something else producing less noise.

As catlike as she could with her less than ideal footwear, Sasha sneaked through the waiting hall with slow, measured steps, scanning the building for possible threats as she advanced towards the main arrivals lobby.

The main reception area was just as deserted as the rest of the arrivals level. Where usually hundreds of people were expectantly staring at the automatic one-way gate, that normally spilled out hundreds upon hundreds of newly arrived travelers per hour, not one living soul was to be seen anywhere now. Sasha noticed dozens of abandoned bags scattered all over the place, though. She guessed them to be the belongings of the unlucky people who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and thus became Roger's hostages.

Sasha let her eyes wander around, thinking about where all the people might be now. Something did not feel quite right, but she couldn't place it. Her gaze fell on the large double escalator leading to the building's upper floor, which was housing the departure area. There was no hint of anything out of the ordinary on the ground floor, other than the abandoned luggage. Sasha thought about whether she should rather check out the public areas of the departure level, or force her way into the customs and immigration section instead – but to do that she would have to break through the one-way gates from this side. Sasha would easily be able to smash through the gates, but she would also be alerting everyone in the building by doing that.

She decided to try the upper level first before she would have to create a level of noise that would be impossible to overhear in the dead-silent building.

Sasha ascended the still operating escalators, keeping her eyes scanning the upper level as it gradually entered her field of vision. It seemed to be just as quiet and deserted as the arrival area.

But as Sasha stepped from the escalator, she noticed the huge statue-like figure that she really could not remember being a part of the airport furniture.

And only then she recognized that it was no statue at all.

It was a person wearing a full-body suit of powered combat armor.

"Hello Sasha," a robotic voice said from inside the helmet.

And Sasha's blood froze as she recognized the electronic voice as belonging to Roger Brooks.

***

"Do you like my new toy?" Roger said, performing what looked like a mock curtsy to Sasha.

Sasha could barely hide a gasp as she stared at the metal apparition towering in the center of the shopping rotunda, blocking off the way to the security checkpoints separating the airline check-in counters from the departure gates.

The pitch black steel armor made Roger even taller than he already was. He towered at least a head over Sasha's six feet now and appeared to be three times as wide. From head to toe, every single bit of skin was covered under inch-thick layered metal plating and technical components that allowed its operator to actually move in the heavy suit. The helmet enclosed the entire head, but instead of eye slits, it featured two camera pieces that were menacingly glowing at Sasha in a deep red color.

"Impressive, is it not?" Roger taunted.

"Where are my parents, Roger?" Sasha demanded, as she was staring daggers at her ex-husband.

"Ah, they are safe and sound, as are my other guests. For now, that is. And by the way, I kept only a few of them, anyway. I couldn't possibly take everyone hostage who was running around in this airport when we arrived. The rest of them I sent running towards the city. Don't worry about them. They should appear at the police perimeter around Sea Island soon."

Sasha's eyes gazed coldly at Roger from thin slits. "You will set them free. All of them. Right now. Or I swear I will make you regret it," she snarled.

Roger chuckled. "Did I hear that right, and this is really a threat? Sasha, Sasha, I am surprised. When did you grow an actual backbone?"

Sasha put both her hands on her hips. "I won't say it another time, Roger. Release them!"

"Release them!" Roger aped Sasha's voice, wiggling his metal-encased head in mockery. "Release them...or what? Sasha, my dear, do you really think you can win against me? You remember that I almost killed you the last time you tried coming for me, yes? You are still every bit as naïve as you always were. Do you think this suit of armor is just for looks or what? It does more than just protect me. Let me show you its best feature: The guns!"

Roger lifted his steel-encased arm to point into Sasha's direction. With a metallic snap, a cover panel on his underarm piece flipped open, revealing the barrel of a nasty-looking Gatling machine gun.

A second later the silence in the airport was ended by the hammering staccato of a steady stream of gunfire, as the Gatling gun started spitting bullets at Sasha at a rate of 3,000 shots per minute.

Sasha brought up her arm and drew on her magic. A shimmering globe of energy appeared around Sasha just in time to be in the way of the bullets heading for her. The globe repeatedly flickered and crackled as the rounds hit the force field in rapid succession, only inches away from Sasha's skin. But instead of tearing the woman apart, the bullets were deflected left and right by the impenetrable force field, shattering into windows and decorations instead.

The steady onslaught of the bullets against her protective shield still shook Sasha's body, as the force field could not completely absorb the kinetic energy of the projectiles. As she was staggering back under the rapid onslaught of the projectiles, Sasha drew on her magic once more. From the fingertips of her extended right hand, a bolt of searing lightning shot out and struck Roger's armor right in the chest. Sparks were flying wide from the point of impact, and small electric arcs danced back and forth on his armor as the jolt of high-voltage power discharged on the steel plates.

The machine gun stopped firing.

But Roger laughed from inside the helmet.

"Oh, my sweet little Sasha...you have to do better than that if you want to harm me. This armor is very well protected against your lightning."

"Right. Then let's see how well protected you are against this!" Sasha snarled and pointed the flat palm of her other hand at Roger, releasing a powerful wave of pressured air in his direction.

The kinetic wave blast struck into Roger with the force of a railroad engine, lifting more than 650 pounds of metal and flesh off the ground as if weightless. Man and machine were thrown more than thirty feet through the air until the metal colossus slammed into a fast-food restaurant at the far end of the rotunda with a tremendous crash. The sheer mass of the armored man crushed tables, chairs and kitchen equipment underneath him, as he sailed all the way through to the far end of the restaurant where a concrete wall stopped him with an impact shaking the entire building. Shaken loose by the shattering blow, half of the restaurant's ceiling came down one moment later and buried Roger under hundreds of pounds of metal, wiring and debris.

Sasha lowered her hand and released her breath as she gazed at the scene of destruction.

And her eyes went wide, as chunks of rubble flew wide and Roger rose from the pile of debris like a metal phoenix and stalked back towards her, each of his steps sending small tremors through the floor.

"Nice attempt," he said and extended both his metal arms to point at Sasha, while he kept waltzing in her direction. "My turn now," Roger snarled - and several small clouds of white steam shot out of his arms as he fired three pairs of rocket-propelled grenades at Sasha.

There would be no time for Sasha to get out of harm's way fast enough, so she collected every bit of available magic energy in her body and reinforced her protective shield with it, hoping that it would be enough to withstand the incoming missiles. The swarm of rockets knocked into Sasha's force barrier and a combined fifty pounds of high yield plastic explosives set off in a giant ball of fire. The multiple blasts almost blinded Sasha, despite she had her eyes closed for the anticipated explosion. She felt her magic energy reserves being sucked out of her, as the brutal force of the exploding grenades drained her protective shield fast. The next thing she noticed was her body sailing through the air, knocked back by the immense concussion her energy shield was not able to completely shield her from.

Sasha reopened her eyes just in time to witness herself being thrown into a souvenir store located a good thirty feet from where she had originally been standing. Her protective shield saved Sasha from being instantly killed, as her body smashed into the shelves with enough force to send stuffed pets, T-shirts, and other souvenir items flying in all directions, but it exhausted Sasha's final bit of magic energy. With a desperate groan, Sasha had to let go of the protective shield which then promptly collapsed around her, together with the better part of the souvenir store. A shelf crashed down on her an instant later, knocking the air out of the flailing woman and burying her under heavy wood planks and dust.

Coughing, Sasha shoved the wooden debris from her body and staggered back to her feet.

When she looked up, Roger stood right in front of her. Sasha could not see his face under the steel mask, but she was certain that he was grinning at her.

Her magic energy only slowly recovering, Sasha guessed that she would need at least two minutes of rest until she could create another energy shield. And her offensive powers had not done anything to Roger's armor.

Breathing heavily from exhaustion, Sasha defiantly stared at Roger, while she realized that she was likely going to die.

"Ouch, that looked as if it hurt, my dear," Roger chuckled, as he raised his machine gun arm to point at Sasha. "Don't blame yourself too much. This armor is designed to counter your powers, Sasha. I am afraid that you never had the slightest chance."

"Is it designed to counter mine, too?" another female voice said, making both combatants spin around.

Sasha smiled briefly when she saw Firebird floating just above the escalators, holding her arms out at the armored Roger. A split second later, a welding beam of fire shot out from Firebird's palms, directed at the villain's head.

Sasha was standing over fifteen feet away from the point of impact, but the searing blast of heat still stung her skin as the intense and focused fire exploded right into Roger's face. Out of sheer survival instinct, Sasha jumped aside just at the same time as Roger released a burst of machine gun rounds at the very point she had been standing at a moment earlier.

And then something made Sasha stop.

Roger groaned.

"Firebird," Sasha yelled, realizing what had happened. "The heat, it hurts him!"

"So you're not invincible after all, are you, bully?" Firebird quipped as she maintained the two steady lines of flame at Roger. "Let's see how you handle this tin can of yours turning into a pressure cooker!"

Roger screamed as Firebird intensified her fiery onslaught against his steel armor and took a few steps backwards in a futile attempt to get out of her range.

But then he overcame his short moment of surprise and confusion and refocused. An invisible fist clenched around Sasha's stomach as Roger extended his arms towards Firebird and Sasha could see the rocket-propelled grenades pointing at her companion, ready to fire. Sasha remembered Firebird telling her about her body being able to repel small-arms fire. But RPGs definitely did not count as small-arms fire. And Sasha had still not yet recovered enough power to cast an energy shield around Firebird to protect her from what was to be thrown at her. Sasha had enough power for just one small spell. She had to make it count. And there was only one thing coming to her mind what she could do to prevent the RPGs from hitting Firebird.

Sasha pointed both her hands at Roger's steel-encased feet and locked her mind on them.

With a snarl, Sasha pulled hard.

Roger yelped as Sasha's telekinetic powers wiped his feet from the ground they were standing on, and his 650 pounds of total weight uncontrollably toppled backwards - in the very same moment as he had triggered the RPGs.

The sudden fall made Roger's arms instinctively flex upwards - and the missiles were no longer pointed at Firebird.

Instead, Roger's arms now pointed straight up.

Six RPGs tore into the airport's glass and metal roof and set off in a giant ball of fire. The resulting pressure wave wiped Sasha from her feet and sent Firebird sailing backwards mid-air, as all three were showered with shards and metal debris from above.

A bone-shattering creak from above made both women look up in horror.

Weakened beyond the point of no return by the explosion, the roof's central support pillar gave in.

***

Looking up at the ceiling, Firebird's lips formed a silent 'Eeep' as the entire roof started to come down on them.

Using her metahuman abilities, the blonde heroine propelled black on her feet and launched her body into flight, urging it forward as fast as she could. Soaring only inches above the floor, she shot towards Sasha with enough speed to cause the debris on the floor to scatter to the sides in her wake.

Firebird guessed that Sasha's magic potential was still too weak to cast any major spells, and that she would have no way to escape the incoming apocalypse. The white-haired girl was still on her knees, staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes. But Firebird was not going to let her companion get buried by the falling debris. In the last moment before she bumped into Sasha, Firebird reached out with one arm and looped Sasha at the waist.

From the corner of her eyes, Firebird saw the first parts of the roof falling towards them. The ton-heavy glass windows would crush both of them like ants if they would hit them. With a defiant narrowing of her eyes and a dramatic increase in velocity, she launched herself towards the balustrade overlooking the arrival level one floor below and propelled herself over the railing and into the air.

Still firmly holding on to Sasha, the two women cleared the balcony and Firebird spun her body around in midair, one moment before they crashed into the large glass front beyond. Hitting the window with her back first, Firebird shielded the unprotected Sasha with her own body as their impact shattered the window to pieces.

Accompanied by a shower of razor-sharp glass shards, Firebird and Sasha cleared the window and sailed out of the building a mere second before the roof smashed into the floor with a thundering crack. As the building collapsed behind them, one heroine carried the other to safety. Firebird set down on the roof of the parkade opposing the terminal building and let go of Sasha.

Both women turned around and looked at the smoldering ruin that moments ago had been the front section of Vancouver airport's international terminal building.

***

"What a disaster!" Firebird said, looking at the half-collapsed building. "Do you think he's...?"

Sasha shook her head. "I don't think Roger's dead, no. I tossed him into a concrete wall earlier, and that barely seemed to have shaken him. Perhaps his armor is dented and scratched, but I am certain it's not over yet."

"Nobody was in the other terminal. We still have to find the hostages," Firebird said.

"They are not anywhere at the airport," Sasha said.

"What makes you think so?"

"Other than I couldn't find a trace of them there when I checked out the building? A hunch. And I tried dabbling in that 'thinking like a criminal' thing a bit more. Would you try to barricade yourself into a building that has more doors than there are holes in a colander? A location you'd need an entire army to defend? That, and Roger told me he kept only a few of the hostages. Why would he release most of them unless he planned to move the rest to somewhere else?"

While Firebird was still pondering Sasha's words, a dark shadow rose over the airfield behind the terminal building with a rattling noise.

Firebird turned to Sasha, raising an eyebrow, while she pointed at the fast ascending aircraft. "People can buy attack helicopters in your country? I thought we were the one with the lax gun controls!"

Sasha gazed at the Russian-made Mil Mi-24 gunship and shook her head. "I don't think he bought that one in a home hardware store."

"You're recovered enough to fly?"

Sasha nodded. "Yeah, let's go. I think he will lead us to wherever he took the hostages."

***

"Where's the Canadian Air Force? No mounted police on flying horses?" Firebird teased, as the two women tailgated the helicopter with just enough distance to make them unlikely to be spotted from the aircraft.

"In contrast to some popular stereotypes about Canada, we have got an air force, all right. But I guess this guy is flying at a too low altitude for the radar to pick him up. They haven't noticed him yet."

"Where do you think he's heading to?"

"From the direction I'd say it looks like as if he's going to downtown."

"Wonderful," Firebird said with a sigh. "So the hostages could be anywhere in the city?"

Sasha pointed at the SkyTrain tracks below them, connecting the airport to downtown with an automated rapid transport railway. "No, actually I think I know how he got them out of the airport with no one noticing. And I have an idea where he is holding them now."

"Public transportation? Well, where does the line end?" Firebird asked.

"Near Canada Place."

"What I don't get is...why did he even wait in the airport, when the hostages were long gone?"

"It was a distraction, I guess. Half of VPD was busy setting up a perimeter around the airport, but they had no idea that he removed the hostages from the building before they even arrived. So, a large portion of the police force is nowhere near where they could pose any danger to his real operation. That and because he was waiting for me, I guess. Roger knew that I wouldn't stand aside while he is holding my parents hostage. I would actually think he made sure that my parents would end up being among his hostages. He wants to kill me, Heather."

"Charming guy? And you were married to him?"

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Don't remind me."

***

The Mi-24 circled around downtown Vancouver's skyscrapers as if they were slalom gates. The need to stay out of sight in combination with the chopper's camouflage painting made it difficult for Sasha and Firebird to follow the zig-zagging aircraft in the urban canyons, but its noise at least indicated the general direction where to look for the helicopter. That and they had a good idea where it was ultimately headed for, anyway.

In a wide arc the helicopter circled around the Shangri-La tower - Vancouver's tallest building at more than 200 meters - and vanished out of sight for Sasha and Firebird once more, like it had done at least half a dozen times.

But this time, when the two women passed the building, the helicopter was nowhere to be seen. They stopped in mid-air to look around for it.

Sasha frowned. "Where did he go this time?" she asked, only to earn a shrug from Firebird.

Then both women's eyes went wide as they picked up the helicopter's noise again.

From behind them.

"Blast it, they must have spotted us and circled around the building," Firebird spat, as the helicopter raced straight towards them like an angry bird of prey.

Sasha's gaze focused on the huge helicopter and zoomed in into the nasty 30mm machine gun mounted under its cockpit. She drew on her magic and conjured two force barriers around Firebird and herself in the same instant as the pilot fired the gun, and the 30mm Gatling cannon spat out high-caliber bullets at the two floating women at a rate of 4,000 shots per minute.

Sasha and Firebird were shaken through as the bullets assaulted the energy shields, deflecting left and right in tiny explosions of sparks and fire. Both women flinched as a salvo of stray bullets struck into the Shangri-La tower behind them, obliterating the glass windows and the rooms behind them.

Realizing they had to keep the fire away from any civilians in the densely populated city, the two women launched themselves away from the building, gaining altitude fast. Another spray of bullets struck their shields from behind as they soared towards the harbor area, where the Burrard Inlet fjord separated downtown Vancouver from the North Shore communities, creating the natural deep-water harbor that was arguably the most important reason for Vancouver's very existence.

"What's the maximum range of your shield?" Firebird screamed over the continuous onslaught of bullets and the staccato of the helicopter's Gatling cannon behind them.

"Five meters, no more," Sasha said. "You have got to stay close to me. If you get too far away, I won't be able to keep your shield up."

"We can hardly coordinate any sort of counter-attack if we're glued together like that."

"We might not have to. He wants to kill me a lot more desperately than you," Sasha said, after a short moment of pondering. "Let's go sharp to the right on three, and then you break off. Just make sure to get away quick, ok?"

"You're sure you can handle the helicopter alone?"

"Forever? No. For a while? Yes."

Firebird nodded and Sasha counted down from three, all the while the 30mm gun fired more shots at them.

When the countdown reached zero, both women went into a sharp turn to the right in unison, making the stream of bullets slice through thin air. Before the pilot had any chance to compensate for the girls' sudden change of direction, Sasha ascended upwards in a sharp angle, while Firebird broke off in a diving loop. The pilot would have to decide to follow only one of the women now.

The helicopter swung upwards and sped after Sasha.

***

Sasha glanced over her shoulder. Thanks to her unsuspected maneuver, the attack helicopter had lost a bit of distance on her, but it would be hard to completely shake the aircraft, at least if she wanted to retain any hope of finding it again later. Another salvo of 30 mm bullets struck against her energy shield, and Sasha realized that her protective shield would be exhausted long before the gunner would run out of ammunition. And a glance at the helicopter's wings told Sasha that it had another, even more fearsome weapon it had not even used yet.

As if the pilot had read her mind, Sasha witnessed two white streaks of smoke appearing from under the helicopter's wings and extending fast towards her. Sasha went into a sharp left turn, just in time to evade the first of the two anti-tank missiles the helicopter pilot had fired at her. But the second one struck her dead on.

The missile exploded on Sasha's energy shield with a tremendous fiery explosion that knocked Sasha through the air like a tennis ball. Her protective shield flickered, for the blast had sucked most of Sasha's remaining magic energy out of her. Dazed from the close-by explosion, Sasha tried to regain some control over her flight path as she spiraled down towards Canada Place.

Cold sweat appeared on Sasha's forehead as she noticed from the corner of her eyes that two more missiles were launched at her from the helicopter. Probing her magic reserves for more power, Sasha abruptly changed her direction and propelled herself upwards and to the side to escape a deadly hit by the missiles. A lump formed in her throat as she managed to get off harm's way in the last second to save her own life, but the missiles passing her mere inches away instead slammed into Canada Place below, obliterating one of its world-famous sails and setting two more on fire.

Sasha and Firebird would have to put an end to this, before innocents would get hurt or even killed.

Turning around in mid-air, Sasha let her body float downwards while facing the helicopter. Watching the aircraft coming closer, she drew on her magic power and conjured a mighty lightning. With a snarl, she launched a billion volts from her hand at the hovering gunship. The blue streak of electricity struck the helicopter right at the cockpit with a thundering crack.

And Sasha cursed as the helicopter continued on his path as if nothing at all had happened. But she had been afraid that the military aircraft would be well protected against lightning strikes. Most aircraft were.

An instant later, a large ball of fire smacked into the gunship from above and exploded in a huge globe of flames, engulfing the entire aircraft. Sasha turned her head and spotted Firebird coming out of the sun and soaring right towards the helicopter.

But the helicopter's armor shrugged it off just like it had shrugged off Sasha's lightning and delivered the response in the form of two more anti-tank missiles fired at Sasha.

This time the white-haired woman had anticipated the attack and positioned herself between the helicopter and the ocean, to make sure the missiles could not cause any damage if she evaded them. Sasha accelerated vertically and watched the two missiles passing underneath her at a safe distance and hitting the water below, disintegrating in two giant balls of water and fire.

Firebird attempted to switch her fiery assault to a more precise, concentrated beam directed at the craft, but the attack continued to deflect off the gunship's thick armor, doing no apparent damage.

Sasha's eyes narrowed. She had one more spell in her arsenal she did not yet try against the chopper. But that would mean having to get closer to the helicopter. Much closer.

Reinforcing her protective shield, Sasha propelled herself towards the helicopter. A hailstorm of 30 mm bullets greeted her, bouncing off left and right from her shield. To offer the gunner the smallest possible target, Sasha zig-zagged herself towards the helicopter in wild and abrupt maneuvers, evading a good portion of the machine gun rounds, and conserving precious power for her protective shield.

The helicopter grew larger and larger in her eyes as she soared closer to it. And then Sasha was in range for her spell.

Drawing on every bit of power she had, she focused on the gunship hovering less than fifty meters away from her. It filled her entire field of vision.

Sasha abruptly stopped her forward flight and went into a full spin. As she came out it, both of her hands were pointing at the helicopter. She released the energy, conjuring the most powerful kinetic wave blast she had ever created, and hurled it at the gunship.

The concussive blast would have been strong enough to reduce a multi-story building to tiny pieces of rubble – but the helicopter was heavily armored and also absorbed a part of the blast's kinetic energy by being able to be shoved backwards.

It was still more than enough to do considerable damage to the gunship. With a sharp crack, a part of its tail rotor came off and sailed away - in the same moment as the pilot fired another anti-tank missile at Sasha from point blank range. A split second later, the helicopter went into a slow spiral, as the pilot of the battered chopper could no longer hold the aircraft steady, having lost its primary means of keeping it stable.

But the missile still came in at Sasha. At this short distance, she had no means to get out of harm's way fast enough to escape the hit. Instead, she did the only thing she still could do and reinforced her energy shield with all energy she still had left and desperately hoped it would be enough.

The missile hit her dead on and exploded right into her face.

Sasha gasped as her vision went momentarily blank by the flash of light, the following concussion, and the extreme drain the immense blast inflicted on her magic energy. Her protective spell flickered and dropped, and Sasha found herself in the perilous position of not even having enough magic power left for her flight spell - while still floating in mid-air, 500 feet above ground.

Unable to keep her body afloat, Sasha spiraled down towards the hard concrete ground around Vancouver Convention Centre. Sasha's eyes fixed on the ground below. Her flight spell required only a minimum of power, and she would need only a few seconds to regenerate enough magic energy to recast it and stop her descent. But a few seconds could be a long time for someone dropping like a rock towards a concrete floor. Sasha's analytical mind calculated that she had only around five seconds left until she would find a sudden but violent end in a large puddle of her own blood when her body would smash into the ground at terminal velocity, breaking every single bone inside her. She closed her eyes and counted the seconds, closely monitoring her energy levels, constantly probing if she could again recast her spell.

When her count reached four seconds, Sasha's magic came back to life. With a quick command of her mind, she re-cast her flight spell and brought her body to a sudden halt with an abrupt snap that sucked the air out of her lungs. Only then Sasha opened her eyes again.

The concrete floor was filling her entire field of vision, as Sasha's body was horizontally hovering in the air, face-down. She breathed heavily as she fully realized her literal close encounter with death - which she had escaped by less than five feet.

"Um...you scared me there a little, you know?" Firebird's voice said behind her, as the blonde heroine caught up with her and floated by her side.

Sasha wiped a few drops of sweat from her pale forehead as she brought her body back upright. "You're not the only one."

"You did a nice job with that helicopter, though," Firebird said, pointing at the aircraft in the distance.

Sasha looked into the direction indicated by her companion and spotted the chopper as a black dot against the blue sky. Her spell had not caused enough damage to outright shoot down the gunship, but it could not use its weapons with any sort of accuracy again. And she had condemned it to land soon, as helicopters could not be safely flown with a damaged tail rotor. She witnessed the pilot struggling with the controls for a bit longer, and then smiled as the gunship went into a steep descent, as the pilot could not compensate for the damage she did to his aircraft and finally gave in to the need to land.

As one, Sasha and Firebird shot into the air once again in pursuit of the attack helicopter.

After less than a minute of semi-controlled tumbling in the air, the helicopter sat down on the large open plaza in front of the burning Canada Place building. And Sasha's eyes narrowed as she spotted an iron-clad figure jumping out of the cargo hold and running away.

"Where is he running to?" Firebird asked, pointing at the armored man.

"Waterfront Station. That's where the SkyTrain line from the airport ends." Sasha said and set to pursue the fleeing Roger Brooks.

Then both women gasped in unison as two VPD patrol cars sped towards the scene with blazing lights and formed a road block right in front of Roger with screeching tires.

Any attempt to warn the cops at this range would be futile. One cop jumped from the passenger seat of each patrol car. They both positioned themselves behind their vehicles, pointing their handguns at Roger over the car roofs.

"Freeze!" the policemen shouted in unison.

Unable to intervene from this distance, Sasha and Firebird had to watch in terror as Roger lifted his arms and launched an RPG into each patrol car from point-blank range, long before the two women could close the distance.

Not designed to take this sort of punishment, the twin explosion lifted both patrol cars off the street and knocked back the two cops standing behind the vehicles. One vehicle flipped around in mid-air as its tank exploded and crashed back onto the pavement upside down, folding its roof in almost all the way down to the wheel. The other car got thrown back and aside by the impact, ending up standing vertically on its passenger side.

Not stopping for a second, Roger charged through the devastation, his armored boots clanging on the pavement.

***

"This...is not good," Firebird muttered, shaking her head.

The two women sped downwards and towards the scene of destruction, splitting up without having any need to coordinate their effort. Firebird landed on top of the vertically standing, lesser damaged patrol car. She pulled the stunned and bruised but otherwise unharmed driver from the vehicle, putting him gently on the ground, in a safe distance of the fire. A quick glance at his groaning partner rolling back and forth on the pavement told Firebird that he was shaken and in obvious pain, but otherwise not life-threateningly injured.

***

Sasha peeked into the other car and flinched as she glanced at the badly injured driver inside, and the raging fire gnawing its way towards the female cop from the rear end of the vehicle.

Her partner had fared much better and had already pulled himself back to his feet, stumbling towards the car.

"Help me!" Sasha yelled at the male cop, who nodded and rushed to Sasha's side.

Together, they managed to pry the door open and pulled the female cop out, dragging her to safety, before the fire consumed the remainder of the car's interior.

Firebird joined the duo and cringed as she looked into the unconscious cop's badly burned face. "She needs EMT, quick," she whispered.

The cop's partner sadly shook his head. Sasha realized that he had likely seen this kind of injury often enough to know that people suffering such extensive burns usually have no chance to survive.

Sasha placed her hands on the cop's most gruesome wounds and closed her eyes. Calling on her magic, she opened a transcendent conduct to the female cop and let her own life energy flow into the other woman's body. Her mind reached out to the policewoman, scanning for injuries on and inside her body, closing damaged veins and repairing burned skin alike.

The white-haired woman sat unmoving and silent while her magic worked.

Sasha had no idea how much time had passed when she finally removed her hands and let herself sink down to the pavement with an exhausted sigh.

When she opened her eyes again, she stared into the stunned female cop's face - which did not show the slightest trace of burn marks. The woman was awake and shook her head at Sasha in disbelief.

Firebird stood next to her, motionless. "Incredible," she mumbled after almost a half-minute of silence.

"Try to keep out of harm's way for a while," Sasha said in the direction of the cops. "I can perform this trick only once every so often."

Firebird nodded at Sasha. "Ready to go after our friend?"

Sasha dragged herself back on her feet, still panting. "No major spells for a while, but otherwise yes."

***

Waterfront Station used to be Vancouver's transcontinental railway hub until all long-distance operations were moved out of downtown in the late 1970s and relocated to Pacific Central Station. This meant in no way that the impressive station was longer being used - quite the contrary. Serving as the largest public transportation hub in the city, Waterfront Station connected Vancouver's rapid transit lines to various bus routes, the regional commuter railway and the SeaBus ferry connecting downtown to the north shore parts of the city which were otherwise only reachable by bridges. On most days, Waterfront Station easily rivaled many airports in terms of pedestrian traffic, but today it was more silent than a graveyard. Sasha could not remember it being that deserted on any given day she had ever been here - but when she gazed at the lone metal figure standing in the middle of the great hall, she understood why.

"Like a bad dream you always come back, Sasha?" Roger said, his sonorous voice echoing in the vast interior hall.

"Where are the hostages, Roger? We know that you brought them here," Sasha said.

Roger laughed out so loud that Sasha thought the sonic assault from his speaker-amplified voice might collapse the building. "What? My little beer wench figured that out all by herself? Incredible! Or did Miss Firefighter here assist you with that?" he said, pointing at the red and white clad heroine standing next to Sasha.

Her eyes reduced to mere slits. Sasha reached out with her arm, pointing at him with her fingers. "I mean it, Roger."

Roger shook his head. "After our earlier episode in the airport, you should know better than thinking you can hurt me, Sasha. All you will do is wreck another building. And it would be a real shame in this case, no? But nobody should ever say that I can't grant a beautiful woman her wish, particularly if she's looking at me in such a cute, angry way. I will tell you where they are."

Roger opened his right hand for Sasha to see his palm. A tiny electronic device about the size of a pack of cigarettes lay in the center of his palm. With a flex, Roger closed his hand. Three beeps echoed through the main hall.

"You know what that is, Sasha?" Roger asked.

When Sasha shook her head, he spoke on. "It's a remote detonator, Sasha. I am afraid the poor hostages are sitting on a bomb. Oh, and this is a release-activated trigger, which I just armed. It has a range of 400 meters. If I open my hand again, they will die. If you kill me, they will die. If you try to wrestle it out of my hand, they will die. Clear?"

Sasha bit her lips as she nodded. From the corner of her eyes, she could see Firebird clenching her fists.

"Fine. So, you two can officially consider yourselves to be my prisoners now. If you make the slightest move against me, or try to use any of your powers...ka-boom! Hostages gone! I think you're getting the picture by now. So, would you please come with me now? I shall you reunite with your parents, Sasha."

***

With hanging heads, Firebird and Sasha trotted after the waltzing iron behemoth that was Roger Brooks. Two of his goons had taken the rear, pointing assault rifles at the two women.

To Sasha's genuine surprise, Roger didn't lead the group downstairs to the SkyTrain platforms, but walked down the long gangway towards the Seabus ferry terminal instead.

More armed gangsters were waiting for them at the end of the gangway, throwing hateful glances at Sasha and Firebird.

"After you, ladies," Roger said and ushered the two women onto the waiting ferry through the only opened one of its six double doors.

Sasha gasped as she boarded the ship and stared into the horrified faces of around 150 men and women sitting in the passenger seats, all of whom were bound at their hands and feet - and under the guard of three more armed gangsters pointing automatic weapons at them. In one of the far rows, Sasha spotted her parents, who opened their eyes wide as they saw their daughter being escorted in.

Sasha and Firebird were told to take two seats in the front row.

"Want me to tie them up?" one of Roger's goons asked him.

"I am afraid that would be futile in their case, but watch them closely. Just shoot them if they don't behave," Roger said, and turned to Firebird and Sasha. "Here is the deal: Your government is to wire 150 million dollars into my account within the next fifteen minutes. One million for each hostage. I think it's actually a steal! If they don't comply, I will detonate the explosives and sink this ship in the middle of Burrard Inlet - and I think you have noticed that we have made sure that none of them will be able to swim. You two will sit here and enjoy the show. You wanted to be part of this, so be a part of it."

And Roger turned his back to them to speak into an intercom.

Sasha's gaze never unlocked from Roger's right hand holding the bomb trigger as the SeaBus left the terminal, heading for the open water.

***

"The government will never agree to it," Sasha whispered to Firebird. "About the ransom, I mean. They will not give in to his demands. Meaning Roger will kill them all."

"I know. No government ever would," Firebird whispered back. "This is up to us. Any ideas?"

Sasha stared out of the window, having no answer to Firebird's question. They had crossed almost half of the distance between downtown and North Vancouver. Roger was probably going to stop the ship in the middle of the waterway and wait for an answer from the government that Sasha was sure would never come. Sasha's gaze fell on Roger's hand once more. The remote detonator was the key to it all. If she could take it out of the equation, they would likely be able to free the hostages. But there was no way to forcefully take it out of Roger's hand without triggering it.

Sasha's gaze wandered around the ship. She looked into the frightened faces of the hostages and into the indifferent ones of the gangsters. And she stared long at Roger Brooks, who had caused too much grief to too many innocent people.

There was no way Sasha would allow him to harm any of the passengers. And most certainly she would not allow him hurting her parents.

She thought about luring Roger away from the bomb and then wrestling the trigger from his hand while it was out of range, which with the help of her magic would not be all that hard to do. But according to Roger, the detonator had a range of 400 meters. The entire ferry was not that long, so there was no place on the vessel where that idea might work.

The only logical conclusion was that the trigger had to leave the ship, but it had to stay in Roger's hand as long as it was in range of it.

Sasha's eyes narrowed when her mind solved the logic puzzle and realized what she would have to do to save the hostages. It would come with a hefty price, but Sasha was willing to pay it.

She leaned in closer to Firebird's head. "Think you can take out the goons before they do any harm to the hostages?" Sasha whispered barely audibly.

Firebird nodded ever so slightly. "Easily. But there's still the issue of the bomb trigger. He'd just blow us all up, no?"

"Leave that to me," Sasha whispered, and gazed once more at the hostages - and very long at her parents. One hundred and fifty people who depended on her. "Please tell my parents I love them."

Firebird's eyes narrowed. "Sasha..."

But it was too late. Sasha had waited until Roger was standing exactly where she wanted to have him – a few steps away from one of the ship's exit doors. Exploding out of her seat like a lightning, she propelled her body into motion, partly running, partly flying towards Roger. One gangster yelled a warning at his boss, but it was too late. In the same moment as Roger turned around to her, Sasha's left hand grabbed Roger's fist holding the bomb trigger and firmly closed around it. At the same time Sasha locked Roger's fingers in place with her telekinetic powers, so he could not open his hand, even with his superior physical strength. Sasha knew that this was only a temporary solution though, as Roger would eventually find a way to break her grip, shake her off him, and trigger the bomb. The detonator still needed to leave the ship, and fast. With a snarl, Sasha drew on her magic and launched a kinetic blast at the center of the door behind Roger, blasting the entire door out. A chilly ocean breeze assaulted Sasha and she could hear the waves of the ocean clashing against the ship's side just behind the gaping hole.

***

It was time for the blonde pyromancer to hold up her end of the bargain. With the sort of precision only diligent training could have provided, Firebird threw her hands out and bathed the two closest guards' rifles in fire without endangering any innocents close to them, making the goons drop their weapons accompanied by simultaneous screams. As a third mobster at the ship's far end leveled his automatic rifle at the passengers, he dropped it only moments later. Firebird's powers had turned the weapon's grip and trigger glowing red, making it impossible for any bare hand to hold on to.

***

Clinging on to Roger's body and his trigger hand in particular, Sasha propelled her body forward using her magic, driving Roger towards the door. To her great relief, he was still too stunned to offer much in terms of physical resistance. With the moment of surprise still on Sasha's side, she broke the much stronger man's balance, making him stagger further backwards. His free hand was furiously flailing for some support to hold on to, but not finding any. One of his feet was already stepping into thin air outside the door, as he got hold of the door frame, stopping the momentum for one brief second.

But it was too little and too late to enable him pulling his armored body back into the ship. Sasha coldly stared into his red camera eyes.

"Is this suit of armor waterproof, Roger?" Sasha snarled, her eyes having reduced to thin slits.

A terrified growl from inside the helmet told Sasha the answer. She quickly threw one last glance at her parents, giving them a final nod.

***

"Sasha!" Firebird yelled as she realized what was about to happen, but before she could attempt to run to Sasha and help her, more guards came from topside, forcing her to focus on them, and protecting the civilians aboard the vessel. The white-haired mage had asked her to do that, and she would not let her down now.

***

Sasha uttered a primeval roar as she finally pushed Roger out of the ferry with the full weight of her body and her magic.

Still firmly clinging to his armor and holding his right hand shut, preventing any thought he might have had about triggering the bomb, Sasha and Roger splashed into the chilly ocean water and immediately submerged, dragged down by many hundred pounds of steel.

As they rapidly sunk down to the bottom of the ocean, Sasha concentrated hard on keeping her telekinetic lock on Roger's hand intact, and not allowing him to shake her off. He violently thrashed and kicked at her, but Sasha ignored the blows and the pain they caused, putting all her focus on Roger's hand. Keeping his fingers from opening was the only thing that mattered now. All the while, Sasha counted the seconds and calculated. The SeaBus traveled at roughly twenty kilometers per hour, meaning it would take slightly over one minute for it to cover the 400 meters needed to leave the maximum range of the remote bomb trigger.

That's how long Sasha would need to keep Roger's hand closed.

Sasha's count reached twenty seconds when she and Roger hit the seabed, twenty-five meters below the surface. Their combined weight blew a large eruption of mud and slick up from the ground, temporarily clouding Sasha's vision. The water pressure was immense, and in contrast to Roger, she had no protection against it. But Roger's armor otherwise did not do him any good in the water. There was no way he could resurface while wearing the heavy suit. And neither would he be able to shake Sasha off - the soft seabed offered him not enough leverage.

At the forty second mark, Sasha felt the first effects of oxygen deprivation. Her survival instinct urged her to resurface. But she could not do that. One hundred and fifty lives depended on Sasha overcoming her own body's will to live. Defiantly, Sasha held on, even as she felt her strength waning. She looked up to the surface, where she could see the daylight reflecting on the water. Sasha realized that she would never breathe fresh air again. But she had known in advance that this would be the price she would have to pay and accepted that exchanging her life for one hundred and fifty innocents was not so bad a deal.

Having barely any magic energy left, Sasha thanked the circumstance that Roger's armor was more a hindrance than an asset under water, where it added to clumsiness rather than strength, and more or less immobilized him. His kicks still hit her, but Sasha's numb body did not feel the pain anymore.

Shortly after the minute mark, Sasha's hand began to tremble as her magic was exhausted, and Roger's fingers started to gradually open. Sasha felt the last weak kick of Roger's leg against her thigh before he stopped resisting and went limp. Sasha glanced at Roger's motionless figure and although she could not see his body inside the suit of armor, she knew that he was dead. But Sasha still needed to keep his hand closed for a few more seconds. Her hazy brain could no longer count the seconds, though.

Desperate for air, Sasha's mind urged her lungs to inhale. She knew that she was about to reach the breath-hold breakpoint, where she could no longer resist the breathing reflex, no matter how hard she tried. With one last act of will, she pressed against Roger's hand once more and held on a little bit longer.

Finally, Sasha's strength left her. Her feeble hand slid away from Roger's and his dead fingers opened. Through her blurred vision, Sasha watched the bomb trigger sliding out of his hand and dropping to the muddy seabed.

Sasha's mouth opened, and cold, murky water shot into her lungs. The drift tilted her head slightly upwards. In the far distance, Sasha spotted the shadow of the SeaBus on the surface. No explosion had happened. No fire was visible. The shadow was still moving forward. It meant that the ship was intact.

Sasha closed her eyes with the comforting thought that thanks to her 150 innocent people would continue to live.

***

Traversing the line between life and death, Sasha did not notice the red streak shooting towards her like a torpedo. She did not feel the bump as Firebird grabbed her body and propelled back to the surface, breaking the waterline with a thunderous splash and lifting her into the air. She could not hear Firebird's pleas to hold on to the thin fiber that still connected her to the world of the living, nor did she feel the temperature change of the soothing aura Firebird had conjured up, trying to restore her body's warmth. She could not see the paramedics swarming over her as Firebird placed her on the ground next to Canada Place, or even noticed them pressing the water out of her lungs.

But when she opened her eyes and stared into the relieved faces of her parents and Firebird, Sasha smiled.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Firebird said, shaking her head, a bright smile upon it all the while.

### May 7th, 2011

For the first time since her newest close encounter with death, Sasha had left the house and now strolled through the neighborhood. Her regenerative body had long taken care of the physical aftermath of her endeavor. It would not of course help her much with still having to digest what had happened - and thinking about what she planned to do now, after the sole focus of her existence was no more.

The Stinger gang was believed to be all but eradicated, and with having lost its leader nobody expected them to be back in business anytime soon. Sasha knew that multiple new gangs were already fighting over the vacant territory left behind by the Stingers. In the war against crime, there would never be a final victory - only a few won battles every now and then. But even those were worth fighting the good fight.

Sasha had watched a live TV newscast the day before, when police divers had recovered Roger's body from the bottom of Burrard Inlet. Previously, she had been uncertain about what sort of emotion she would be going to feel when seeing the pictures: Remorse for having taken his life - or perhaps even satisfaction for having avenged Jennifer. But when she watched the metal armor that had become Roger's sarcophagus being pulled out of the water, she did not feel anything at all.

She was just glad that it all was over.

***

Sasha passed a small neighborhood mall, when a male pedestrian bumped into her from the side. The impact made Sasha stumble and her purse slid from her shoulder in the process, clattering to the ground and spilling its contents onto the sidewalk.

"Oh, blast it! I am so sorry," the young man said and pointed to a bus waiting at a stop around twenty meters away. "I wanted to catch that bus and didn't pay any attention at all."

As the man knelt down to help Sasha pick up her belongings, she smiled at him and shook her head. "Don't worry about it. Go catch your ride," she told him.

"You're sure you're all right?" the concerned man asked.

Sasha waved him off. "Yeah, don't worry about it. I am not in a hurry."

"Thanks, and again, I am truly sorry about this mess," the man said before he charged off to the waiting bus, while Sasha collected her belongings, putting her cell phone, makeup-case and lipstick back into the purse. She was grateful that she was not the type of woman who carried around half of her household in her purse.

Her wallet had opened, spilling her entire assortment of plastic cards all over the sidewalk. Sasha collected her driver's license, credit cards and some grocery store customer cards, making sure that none was missing. She stopped when she picked up one particular card she had forgotten that she still even had it: The banking card Roger had given to Sasha on the fateful day when she had found out who he truly was and left him.

Holding the card in her hands, Sasha stood up. Her gaze fell on a waste bin next to the bus stop and she thought about just dumping it there and getting rid of the last physical remainder of her marriage to Roger Brooks. But then her curiosity got the better of her and she walked into the mall instead, sliding the card into an ATM. She punched in the PIN Roger had conveniently written on the backside of the card and waited. It surprised Sasha that the ATM accepted the card and PIN. Roger had most likely forgotten about the account just like she had and never revoked her access.

When the screen showed her the account balance, Sasha gasped.

Roger had left her a multiple millionaire.

### May 12th, 2011

Matthew Finch chuckled in satisfaction. He had not expected this outcome at all, but things had certainly been going his way. With the death of Black Vortex, the Stinger gang had dissolved. Like vultures, the remaining Vancouver gangs had swooped into Stinger's territory, quickly taking over Stinger's business and customers alike. They were already fighting each other for the juiciest pieces of the cake, resulting in even more work for the cops, who had their hands full with a rapidly spreading and very violent gang-war in progress. Not surprisingly, the homicide rate in Vancouver had gone up through the roof, putting the city on track for a new all-time high of annual murders.

But not all of Stinger was gone. The organization no longer existed, but the people who had made it remained. While many of Roger Brook's hirelings had been going to greener pastures, there were a great many for whom changing loyalties was not an option for one reason or another. But that did not mean they would return to a civilian, law-abiding life, either. The ex-Stinger mobsters needed a new home and a new perspective. Matthew Finch had given them both.

His gang was still small and had kept only a fraction of Stinger's former glory. But it was all his. He, Matthew Finch, was calling the shots and nobody else did. For the first time in his life, he was the top dog in the house. And while the other gangs had at first attempted to put a quick end to the new competitor, Finch's gang and its veteran members had been proven strong enough to withstand any attempt by its rivals to wipe it from Vancouver's underground map.

Matthew Finch would make sure it would grow in members and power - and be profitable enough to buy him all the things he had ever dreamed about having. One day, they would be able to settle a score with a certain someone, too. Matthew Finch glanced at this desk, where a photo of the person in question was lying in front of him.

With a wicked smile, he took a red marker and drew a crosshair over White Sasha's face.

### May 25th, 2011

Sasha excitedly rushed to the door when she heard the bell ring. There were only a handful of people aware of the fact that Sasha was living in this house located in one of the quieter neighborhoods in North Vancouver, and Sasha did not expect anyone else to come, so she knew very well who was standing at her door right now. She just wondered why Firebird had not just flown in and landed on her deck as she had instructed her to. Sasha had not seen her since the day they had rescued the hostages from the SeaBus and was excited about meeting her again.

When Sasha opened the door, she was surprised to see not one but two visitors. They were both familiar to her, though.

"Hi Sasha! It's great to see you again. I hope you don't mind getting another guest, but Blue really wanted to meet you again," Firebird said.

Sasha regained her composure, smiling at both newcomers as she ushered them inside. "Of course not! Nice to meet you again, Code Blue!"

The blue-skinned hero tipped his hat when he passed his host. "Just call me Blue," he said.

Sasha led her guests through her home and out to the deck, from where there opened a glorious view on the downtown peninsula located just across Burrard Inlet. She pointed them at the set of four deck chairs arranged around a round table, and then rushed back into the house to return one minute later, expertly balancing a tray with three filled drink glasses on her inverted palm.

"Ok, that looks professional," Blue said.

Sasha gave him a wink. "It'd better. I do that for a living."

Blue choked. "Wait a second! You are a...?"

"...waitress, yes," Sasha said, nodding twice, as she planted two glasses of what looked like Piña Colada in front of Firebird and her own seat.

"I thought you'd care for a less girly drink," she told Blue and handed him a glass containing a golden liquid. "It's Canadian Whiskey. I gathered from your accent that you're a southerner, and I take it you'd probably prefer Bourbon, but my bar isn't that well equipped I am afraid."

Blue sniffed at the drink, tilted his head, and smiled. "I know the brand. Plenty good enough, and I thank ya for thinkin' of me. While in company lovely as this, though, I'd drink whatever's put in front of me, even vodka."

Sasha turned around to hide the slight blush shooting into her cheeks. She let herself slip into her own deck chair and raised her glass to toast to her guests. For a long moment they all three just sat there, enjoying the view and the last warm sun-rays of the early summer day.

"I love what you've done with the place," Firebird said, after taking a dainty sip from the drink, in an obvious test to verify that she had gotten the non-alcoholic one. It drew a giggle from Sasha, who had obliviously given Firebird an alcoholic drink once - and for that reason was now well aware of her body's extremely low tolerance for alcohol, which had earned her the nickname 'Lightweight'.

"Thank you," Sasha said. "And yes, I love it here. About time I got my own place again. And since Roger had my old home destroyed, I thought it was only fair that he'd pay for the new one."

"Any plans what to do with the rest of the money?" Firebird asked.

"That's already sorted. It would seem the city just received some unexpected funding for a new homeless shelter."

Firebird smiled with approval. "They know where it's coming from?"

Sasha shook her head. "They never will."

"So what's White Sasha plannin' to do now that the deed's done? Goin' back to your civilian life?" Blue asked, making Sasha turn at him, her wide-open eyes betraying her surprise at the unexpected question.

The white-haired woman shrugged and sighed.

"Had you asked me that question a month or two ago, I'd have answered with 'Yes, of course!' But I guess I have finally accepted what and who I am. Vancouver is not exactly a crime-haven, but keeping the streets safe for everyone can still be a challenge. Roger is no longer at threat, but others will step up and take his place, there can be no doubt about that. Who will stop them if not people like us?"

Both Firebird and Code Blue smiled at Sasha and nodded their approval.

"Are you going to join your dad's RCMP force then?" Firebird asked.

Sasha winked. "Yes, and no. Given my past experiences, I am still hesitant about joining organizations of any kind, but Dad and I have reached a deal we both can live with and that will satisfy the requirements of the law. I have been deputized by his department, which gives me some rights and obligations that regular cops have. I will mostly work alone, still. Except when they will need me for a particular case, which is just fair enough. I am happy to help, as long as I can remain independent."

Code Blue laughed. "For some reason, I expected somethin' like that from you. But if you ever need someone to have your back, you know where to find us, right?"

Looking into the sunset over downtown Vancouver, Sasha smiled and toasted to Code Blue and Firebird. "It is great to have friends."

###

### Acknowledgements

White Sasha was born as a role-playing character long before I thought about writing a novel about her (which might also explain the slight oddity of her sharing the first name with her writer!) The latter happened not until I met a very special group of like-minded writers and artists that drove me to develop this character far beyond the depth I formerly considered normal for a role-playing character. These people I want to thank for the inspiration that made a writer with no particular connection to the world of comics (where superheroes tend to exist in) write a novel about a superheroine. I hope you like the result!

Joshua and Brandon: I want to thank you for your feedback and fruitful discussions about my character and superheroes in general. White Sasha would not be White Sasha without you!

Jeff: Thank you so much for helping me with designing Sasha's outfit and for introducing me to Mark, who created the amazing cover art of White Sasha.

And Richard: I hope you like the character I named after you despite he is a bad guy, while you are anything but.

### About the author

I live in beautiful Vancouver, BC with my family and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Other than writing, my favorite pastimes are spending time with my family, traveling, Asian/Italian/Greek and super-spicy food, cooking in general, summer, the beach, sitting on the deck, and good wine. Like most writers I love to read, but at the same time I am happily oblivious towards anything TV that's not basketball or hockey (got to live up to at least some Canadian stereotypes!)

As for my background, I taught classes in economics and related things that would likely draw healthy yawns from most people, but left the university a few years ago to become a stay-at-home parent and writer. And no, I never regretted it. My daughter is keeping me busy enough these days, as does my writing.

Discover other titles by Sasha MacPherson at Smashwords.com

Project Blackcomb - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/175136
