It was dark and cramped in the dirt dome. Jamie had been trying for what felt like hours to use her abilities—to open it, crack it, to do anything—but she’d failed to even move a grain of sand. Controlling the earth, she was finding, was much harder than the air. She still had reservations about using powers she had long neglected, but she knew who she was up against. Like her mother told her: using anything less than her full ability could prove fatal.

  From what Jamie remembered, aside from her primal rage and extreme focus on wanting to beat Karen and then Simon half to death, they were on an island somewhere in the Atlantic. She knew this was no mistake. As she was hurled toward the beach, she’d spotted a shack positioned in the center of the island. This was undoubtedly where her father had been hiding all these years, off the grid. If she could escape this prison and capture them, or at the very least call for backup, she knew The Division would honor their previous arrangement despite the current circumstances.

  Jamie felt her left wrist and noticed that her power inhibitor had been destroyed sometime during one of her conflicts, either with Simon or Karen. This was welcome news to her, and quite possibly fatal news to her attackers. It was only a matter of time until she was at her full strength, and when that happened, she would make her move. she admitted to herself,

  She sat there in the dark and waited, thinking about her mother’s strange behavior when Simon showed up. Jamie had always thought her mother felt indifferent towards her father, as she did with most things, but the look in her eyes when he appeared was something Jamie hadn’t seen in a long time. It was almost like a controlled rage, fury with focus, but something else was there too. A sadness, or maybe even some kind of twisted joy? She didn’t know, but something had truly unsettled her mother because despite her furious face, she'd had to watch tears roll down them.

  The dome began to move, and Jamie took a fighting stance, ready for anything, but most of all to escape. To her awe, though, the dome only reformed itself into a larger square box.

  The four walls of the newly formed cage each had a single small port window that let light in but wasn’t big enough to see her surroundings or get a grip on. A table, a bed, and two chairs had also formed from the dirt below. Her father, she knew, would be there shortly.

  Despite the girl’s raw hatred for him, she couldn’t help but give her father credit for the flawless reformation she had just witnessed. She walked around the single-room structure, looking for a flaw or a grabbing point for her ability, but she could find none. In all her time witnessing superpowers, she had never experienced someone with this much control, or on this level of power. She thought for a moment that maybe all the old hype might have been deserved, but then she punched the wall to let the pain of the impact snap her back to her senses.

  The wall didn’t budge under the force of Jamie’s punch, but she knew from the thud of its reverberation that her plan was already starting to show results. A little while longer, and she would be close to her full strength and make her way out of this box. She wouldn’t be staying any longer than she had to, which made her grin.

  She finally decided to sit on the newly formed chair closest to her. It was by no means what she would call comfortable, but at least it beat sitting on the ground. As she leaned backward, she felt the once-solid piece of dirt sink in the middle unexpectedly, and before she knew what happened, she was trapped. Sections of the girl’s arms, thighs, and chest became pulled under and submerged. The re-solidified earth held her tightly in place.

  Despite the junior agent’s best efforts, she couldn’t break free with her strength or manipulate the earth encasing her. She let out a cry of rage as she continued to resist her bindings to no avail. While this was happening, an archway formed where one of the windows had been, and there was her deadbeat father, Simon Hurricane, with the sun at his back, casting a long shadow into the room.

  “I know, you’re pissed,” he said to her, some grief evident in his voice.

  “Hell, I would be too if I got tricked into this old mud hut,” Simon added, taking a seat across from Jamie. He leaned back in his dirt chair.

  Jamie had a better view of him now. His aging features showed heavily in his face and around his eyes. He was still of a large stature, but not nearly what she remembered him having been as a kid. It was a revelation that could work to her favor; put against him in an endurance test, she might be able to take him down by herself. “I’m going to kill you, you know,” the girl threatened, her voice a low growl.

  “That’s not just the anger talking either. I’m going to punch you in the face until you die and drag your corpse back to the Division along with Karen.” Her eyes, though still furious, darted towards the archway, as if expecting to see Karen there.

  Simon’s gaze held hers. “So you plan on killing Karen along with me, is that your plan?”

  Jamie felt her heart ache at his words. He knew what he was trying to do, though, and it wouldn’t work on her. Her jaw clenched. “If I have to, then yes,” she answered coldly.

  “You don’t mean that. No daughter of mine would slaughter her friends in the name of anyone, government or otherwise. I feel your mother’s handiwork about you.” Simon’s voice softened, almost a plea.

  “Fuck you! Fuck you, Simon!” Jamie screamed, her voice hoarse, straining against the earth that held her. A tremor ran through the chair, but it held firm. “You don’t get to talk about Mom that way! Maybe the reason I am this way is because I’m not your daughter. I don’t claim your sorry ass, and I never will! At least Mother was around, at least she didn’t completely abandon me for some stupid island in the middle of the ocean!” Jamie shouted, then fell silent, her chest heaving, furious at the outburst she had just given. He had gotten to her.

  Simon sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I suppose… I can’t argue with that. Listen, I’ll make you a deal. I just need you to listen to me, hear my side of things. I need you to understand why things had to be this way.”

  Jamie scoffed, turning her head away, her shoulders stiff. “I’ve heard all this before, Simon. You visited three times already to try and get me to live in the gutters with you. Why can’t you just accept that your way of life is over? That no matter what you do, your sun has set, your day is done. Me and Mom and a handful of others are the only ones trying to make this new way work. The only ones who aren’t locked up or on the run. Do you honestly think my life would have been better if I had left with you all those years ago? I would be living on this godforsaken island with no company other than you. Sounds like a wonderful life.”

  “Do you want to hear my deal or not?” Simon asked, his voice low and firm, cutting through her tirade.

  Jamie slowly turned her head back, meeting his gaze. “Not really, but you’re going to tell me anyway.” Her eyes narrowed, daring him.

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  “Jamie, this is our final crossroads.” Simon leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “From this point on, when it comes to us, it’s going to be all or nothing.”

  Jamie let out a short, cynical laugh. “Well, the nothing part has my attention.”

  “I will release you from that chair under the condition that you sit, listen, and take to heart what I have to tell you. Don’t attempt escape or try to harm me or my guest on this island until I have finished.” Simon watched her carefully, gauging her reaction.

  “What’s in it for me, old man? Why shouldn’t I crack your skull the moment you let me go?” Jamie challenged, a glint of defiance in her eyes.

  “Because if you do what I have asked and still want to pursue the course you’re on, I will willingly give myself up to you and fly us back to the mainland. I know I haven’t been any kind of father to you, so it’s the least I could do for my daughter, if you will it. Do we have a deal?” Simon’s voice was steady, holding her gaze with an unwavering intensity.

  Jamie stared at him, a myriad of emotions crossing her face—disbelief, suspicion, a flicker of something she couldn't name. “Unconditional surrender? I’ll take that deal, if it’s not a lie. What about Karen and Nick, though? I assume you have them both outside?”

  “I don’t know where Nick is, and Karen will be permitted to escape. If you chase her down again with the intent to kill or capture her, I will not stop you. She will leave this place a free person, though.”

  Jamie considered this, a faint smirk playing on her lips. “Touching… Okay, Simon, I’ll bite. Say what you have to say so I can go down in history as the agent that brought you to Monticello.” She shifted uncomfortably in the mound, a subtle reminder of her bound state.

  “Very well. I won’t waste your time with a play-by-play history lesson of the past, but you need to know what happened that last day. The day before the world became a hero hellscape.” Simon paused, gathering his thoughts, his gaze distant, lost in memory.

  “We had been waiting in The Guild’s secret stronghold, or at least we thought it was secret. We had been watching the news, waiting for the senators to stop debating so the vote could begin. There were four of us: Abraham, Tonya, your mother, and I.”

  “As we watched the debates rage back and forth, our faith in the government of the people, by the people, that we had fought so hard to protect, was shattered into nothingness. We saw that we had reached a turning point, and little could be done to turn the tide back. That’s when your buddy Wilton dropped in on us with his armed goons.”

  Jamie frowned, a line appearing between her brows. “So, you’re telling me before the law was even officially on the books, the government was making a move to bring you in?”

  “Yes, Wilton didn’t have his fancy armor that he does now, but he and his soldiers were armed with high-tech weaponry that not even the Guild had seen before. Weaponry designed with the sole purpose of bringing us down.”

  “What kind of weaponry?” Jamie pressed, a hint of genuine curiosity in her tone despite herself.

  “Bombs that made the air molecules vibrate at fluctuating speeds, making it hard for me to control. Tonya was fitted with cuffs that drained her power, and so on. They had planned it, you know. If the vote had come out any differently than it did, that raid on us would have taken place regardless. They wanted us out of the picture.” Simon’s voice grew colder with each detail.

  Jamie tilted her head. “Maybe they were right. If you had shown any hostile activity in response to a vote, I would have sent a team to place you in check.”

  “We didn’t show any hostile activity! We were heroes! Public servants of the people of all nations, creeds, and races! Not some gang out to dominate the world! We had proven ourselves countless times inside the armed forces and outside!” Simon’s voice rose, a raw edge of old indignation creeping in, his hands clenching into fists on his knees.

  Jamie rolled her eyes, though the defiant gesture lacked its usual conviction. “Okay, Simon, I get it. In your head, you’re the hero. I fail to see the stunning revelation in all this posturing. Does your story have a purpose, or can we get to the part where I bring you in for federal crimes?”

  Simon took a deep breath, visibly reigning in his frustration. “Okay, I’m going to break it down like this. Of the people that were in the building that night, they got the Immortal and Karen’s mother, The Atomic Nurse. The Atomic Nurse has never been found; I assume she’s dead. The Immortal is still out there, but your friend at the Slayer Division thought it would be better to drug him up, so he’s worthless, rather than waste taxpayer money to hold him in a prison. I escaped only because your mother punched me out of the building, away from the devices that were handicapping me.”

  Jamie’s expression hardened. “I know. Mom has told me this. They offered her a job or imprisonment, and since you abandoned her, with me, she chose the Division. Why didn’t you ever go back for us? Not that it matters at this point. Mom probably wouldn’t have gone on the lam with you on this dirt island.” Her voice was laced with years of resentment.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Jamie! I did come back!” Simon leaned forward, his voice intense, pleading. “I gathered what heroes I could and launched an all-out assault on Division headquarters. Everyone who went with me onto the grounds died or was captured for the sole purpose of getting your mother. Flyer, Vapor, and Ghost all got forced into the Division after that, leaving me with no allies to carry on the fight.”

  “So, they stopped you before you could reach Mom?” Jamie asked, a flicker of something akin to worry in her eyes.

  “No, Jamie. I told you. I was going to get you and your mother back or die trying. I almost wish I had died there, though, because your mother wasn’t the same when I finally found her. They had influenced her mind somehow because as soon as I went to embrace her, she gave me a punch to the gut so hard that it tore my stomach. I honestly don’t even know how I made it out of that one. It was by sheer luck because between your mother and the Division forces breathing down my neck, I was way outmatched. It took me six months to recover, and knowing that I was now a wanted criminal, I had no choice but to lie low and study them. Find their weakness so that one day, maybe, we can make it like it was again. A safe place for us and our people.”

  Jamie stared at him, her defiance unwavering. “I don’t believe you, Simon. Are you in that desperate of a situation that you must make up outlandish lies? I’ve studied Mother’s file. You’re talking about her first official mission, where she defended the Division from a hero rebellion. That wasn’t you who led it, though; it was the Immortal trying to find Karen’s mother. All testimony from the assimilated heroes says the same thing. I’ve read them.” Her voice held a note of genuine confusion beneath her feelings, a crack in her armor.

  “It was me, damn it! Abraham was so hopped up on junk he couldn’t see straight, let alone lead a raid. They’ve forged the official documents because they don’t want the public to know about me, and they don’t want them to know because I’ve seen the truth.” Simon leaned forward further, his eyes locked on hers, a desperate plea in their depths.

  Jamie shook her head slowly, a deep frown settling on her face. “You sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist. The Slayer Division is a tough place, and they have their fair share of secrets, but I refuse to believe that any of this took place. It’s just not possible.”

  “Forget about that for a minute, okay? Just think about your mother. I know you were young back then, but you remember how she was, right? Fiery, passionate, but also kind. What did she become after she joined the Division? Cold, detached, and only inclined to fulfill her mission. Jamie, you know I’m telling the truth; think about it—the answers are right there.” Simon’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, trying to bypass her defenses.

  Jamie looked away, her gaze unfocused, a tremor running through her. She remembered. The vibrant woman who had once been her mother, slowly replaced by the unfeeling agent. She fought against the dawning realization, shaking her head again. “Look, Simon, as pathetic as all this is, I am a little touched you would conjure up such a story to win my approval, but it’s too little, too late. Let me go. You are a liar and a criminal who must pay for What you've done. If you want my respect, honor our deal.” Her voice was weaker now, lacking its earlier conviction.

  Simon sighed, a sound heavy with resignation and weariness. He leaned back in his chair, seemingly conceding. “My sweet child, when will you ever come to your senses… Very well. We will leave in one week; I must make preparations.”

  “That wasn’t the deal, Simon!” Jamie yelled, her voice raw, snapping back to fury. She struggled against the chair, her muscles straining.

  Simon merely offered a faint, sad smile. “According to you, I’m a liar, remember? You’re lucky I honor the deal at all, but I have faith you will see the truth in time."