Adam lay in bed, an arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling. The after party had left an even more sour taste in his tongue, one that stuck to the roof of his mouth like gone-bad peanut butter. All everyone wanted to talk about was Olympia. Not the one who failed the city twice in a row now, but the one that had gotten booked for every late night talk show for the next month straight. The only questions he got were, Mind getting me a refill? Oh, Adam, I was wondering if you really needed to bother with the allowance I gave you this month. Things are a little tight right now and I hope you can understand. He scoffed to himself and looked at the other side of the bed. Empty.

  He sat up and swung his legs off the bed, pressing his fingers hard against his temples as he walked out of the spacious bedroom, through the dark hallway, and into the living room of Velocity’s penthouse. Her parents had given her this place once she’d graduated from college, but the truth was that her folks just wanted her out of the house. And ever since her injury, she just wasn’t the same. Not quite as fast. Not as sharp. Couldn’t keep it going for longer than a few minutes without stumbling on her own feet because the pain lancing up her leg was just too bad.

  Adam stood behind the couch, watching her play some new video game. She picked her way through a bag of corn chips until it was done, then she tipped the packet into her mouth and played with one hand, eyes still glued to the plasma tv sitting in front of even larger windows. The lights were off. The hazy color from the tv was all that illuminated the room. She swore as she missed a jump and died, tossing the controller onto the couch as she licked her fingers clean and reached for a tube of painkillers sitting on the mess-filled living room table. He had the tablets in his hand, all three that were left of them, in the blink of an eye. She startled as he stood in front of the tv.

  “Jesus,” she said, hand to her hammering heart. “Do that again and I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

  “You need to sleep,” he said, grabbing the remote and turning the noise off. “We have training tomorrow.”

  She groaned and sunk into the couch, throwing her arms up in the air. “Training just means I get to suffer some more. My leg hurts like hell right now, anyway. Think I’ll skip the morning sesh and go in the afternoon.”

  “That’s what you’ve said for the past three months.”

  “I’m sorry that not all of us heal so quickly.”

  He was bare-chested right now, only wearing sweatpants, and he was more than sure she could see the pink scar tissue from when they’d grafted a new arm back onto his body. The bones still clicked when he moved it a certain way and a jab of pain kept him from lifting what he used to. If Cassie hadn’t made sure the Kaiju wasn’t at its strongest, then he would’ve been the one with a golden statue on Olympus Hill, but who was he kidding? The way things were going, he’d be lucky to get a wooden plaque that said, Here Lies Adam, Zeus’ Biggest Imposter.

  Adam sighed, then crushed the tablets in his hand. She swore and sat straight. “That’s all I had left!”

  I know about the ones you keep in your handbag, and in the shoe boxes, the empty cereal tins and the ‘mints’ that you always pop into your mouth when we’re going into a debrief. Normal people were bad liars.

  He could always smell it, this sour chemical that oozed from their pores.

  Adam sighed and sat on the couch, patting his thighs. “Come on.”

  “Fuck no,” she said, sliding away from him. “You hurt me last time.”

  “Well I learnt how to do it properly,” he said. “Poseidon said you need the physio.”

  Velocity stood up, trying not to wince as she stamped her foot. “See? perfectly fine.”

  He looked at her and she looked at him. Eventually, she sat down again and put her legs on his lap. He wanted to say, See, was that so hard? But she’d folded her arms and started staring out of the window, signalling that she wasn’t in the mood. The hardest thing about being made was learning emotions. Veronica tried her best but she was a scientist at the end of the day with a child who was already drawing lines under her eyes. He’d observed the guards and he’d watched movies and shows, not really caring about the stories but trying to learn signals that people gave that weren’t simply said. Sometimes it was too much and too annoying. Cassie was great at that, not really meaning what she said. Velocity was different—she was grumpy most of the time, then she’d curl up beside him in bed, slide her hand along his stomach, and fall asleep with her face nuzzled into the crux of his neck.

  Those kinds of nights usually came after the ones like this, when she was stubborn and angry.

  Sasha was hard to understand. Very hard to understand. But slowly, like the way he ran his thumbs up and down her calf, gentle, not using even a pinch of his strength, he was getting to know her better. To understand her.

  “What do you think’s gonna happen to us?” she muttered. He looked up at her.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “The Initiative,” Sasha said, still looking at the city and its glimmering lights. “After it gets greenlit.”

  He shrugged. “What’s there to worry about? We’re still contracted supes at the end of the day.”

  “Yeah, but who’s gonna care about us when the Olympians come back?”

  Adam paused, his hands cupping her foot. “Someone will,” he said quietly, then slowly continued.

  They remained silent, his fingers running up and down her leg, gently moving her foot. It was stiff and awkward, not willing to move like it used to. Her family had paid for the surgery, the best of the best doctors that generational wealth could buy, but something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her weight on her foot properly and when she skidded along in her skates, she’d lose her balance, slip and fall, and hit the floor hard enough to leave her with a twisted ankle. The more she seemed to want to go faster, the more it seemed her body wanted to give up.

  Look at us, he thought. I guess two halves make a fucked up whole.

  And all because of Olympia.

  “Hey,” she said, turning to look at him. “You wanna go on a date?”

  Adam nearly choked on his saliva. “How much did they pay you this time?”

  “My parents own two football stadiums and three basketball franchises,” she said, pulling her leg off his thighs as folding it underneath her so she could be a little closer. “Nobody’s paying me to tolerate you. I do ‘cause you’re sad and vulnerable when we kiss, and you have this puppy dog look in your eyes when someone hurts your feelings.” She moves a little closer, putting her hands on his thighs. “Besides, it’s Christmas and we’re still working. We’re not getting our bonuses up until New Years and then what, more work? More nights in this freaking place moping around wondering if we’ll even have jobs in a few months’ time?” She scoffed. “I say we go and have fun.”

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  “The Olympiad—”

  “Can kiss my ass,” she said. “Come on. When was the last time we did something that’s actually enjoyable, you know? Something that wasn’t a corpo cocktail party where we’ve got to kiss a senator’s ass all night long.”

  “We went on a walk the other day,” he said. “Remember, on the beach?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We were on patrol and I begged you to go down there.”

  “That’s because I’m busy,” he said, standing up. Her hands slipped off his body as he headed for the kitchen. “I’ve got duties and obligations. A lot of people are putting a lot of money behind me to do my job, V.” He opened the fridge and grabbed a tub of ice cream and a spoon. He came back to the couch and gave them to her. “Here, that’s fun, right? Ice cream at two in the morning? Squirt some chocolate syrup on that and it’s a party.”

  She sighed and flopped onto the couch, her braids splayed out and her shirt halfway up her stomach, nearing her breasts. “Did they make you to be this boring?” she asked. “Or do you just choose to be white bread?”

  “White bread is pretty great. A good all-rounder, you know.”

  “I can’t believe you sometimes,” she muttered. Then she spread her arms wide. “Come on.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Come ‘ere,” she said, grabbing at him with her fingers. “You look so worried all the time and it’s bumming me out. We don’t even have to say anything. We can just lie here until everything fades away for a little.”

  He sighed and folded his arms. “We’ve got training in the morning, Sash.”

  She said nothing, arms still parted—waiting.

  Adam, looking around the penthouse, sighed again. He rubbed his eyes, then somehow managed to get himself in a position where Sash had her arms wrapped around his shoulders and his head was resting on her chest, like he’d tripped and fallen and the next thing he knew, that’s just where he was. She stayed true to her promise. They said nothing and did nothing. He lay there staring at the windows, at the people he could see all the way from up here with his eyesight. New billboards were being put up about tonight’s biggest reveal. The second biggest talked about event this century, right after Zeus’ death, and it was fitting, he guessed, considering he was on his way back. Then Sasha ran her fingernails along his scalp and kissed his forehead, and it felt like whiplash having his mind getting forced back to the here and now. On this soft couch with her heartbeat pulsing against his ear, thudding softly like the beat of a hammer. He shut his eyes, not intending to fall asleep, but like always, it came.

  And for once, not with nightmares.

  It felt like a second later when Sasha shook him awake again. He blinked and groaned and got off her, his hair a mess as he knuckled away drool. What time is it? Only been forty minutes. Sasha shook him even harder.

  “What?” he asked, massaging his eyes.

  She pointed to the armchair.

  Olympia had her feet on the table and the ice cream on her lap. She was scrolling through her phone and swallowing spoonful after spoonful of rocky road into her mouth. It felt so strange that he thought he was dreaming for a second. Then she looked up from her phone and swallowed, put the spoon back into the tub, and said, “Hey, you guys are finally up. You guys looked adorable sleeping so I decided I should give you a few minutes before I got one of you awake.” She turned her phone screen to face both of them, showing them a picture that would have the press paying her thousands for rights to it. Adam had her throat in a heartbeat and her back against the windows a moment later. She’d brought the ice cream and her phone along with her, even as they made a dull thud against the heavy glass. Olympia stared at him, one brow raised as she looked at his hand, then at the pink grafted flesh.

  “How did you get in here?” he snarled, fist raised, ready to put it through her.

  “I knocked on the door and it fell off its hinges,” she said, shrugging. “Probably need a better door.”

  “Velocity,” Adam said. “Get HQ on the line. Tell them—”

  Olympia shook her head as she spooned more ice cream into her mouth. “Wouldn’t do that if I was you,” she said, then winced and held the side of her head. “Brainfreeze. Fuck. That’s never fun. But like I was saying, you should keep this between us, because I only came here for one thing, and it wasn’t to catch you guys cuddling.”

  “I should kill you,” Adam said quietly, eyes narrowing.

  “But you can’t and you won’t,” she said. “‘cause we’ve both got the same issue right now.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Me,” Olympia said. “Not me, but her—the new girl.”

  “That’s why you broke in here?” he asked her, forcing her harder against the windows. “To talk? To think that I’d side with you out of, what, pity? Pride? She’s all the parts of you the world needs without the rest of you.”

  “Right,” she said, “because that means she’ll rip you in half instead of taking your arm like I did.”

  “She doesn’t have a reason to do that.”

  Olympia sighed. “You don’t really get it, do you? She’s me, but young, and I was a mess when I was younger and didn’t need half a reason to do anything. She might be a clone, and she might do what she’s told like a dog that’s got a shock collar around its throat, but let’s be real with ourselves, Adam.” She leaned in closer, almost pushing him backward, making his feet skid across the floor as she took a step forward. How? She’s not meant to be this much stronger, is she? “One day she’s going to realize that you’re better off out of the picture than standing in her spotlight, and when that day comes, she’ll either stop listening to orders, or she’ll follow them to the T. If that happens, then both of us are fucked, dude. I didn’t come here because I wanted to. I came here because I had to.”

  Adam let go of her throat and stepped backward, directly in front of Velocity still on the couch. “You expect me to make a deal with the likes of you?” He scoffed. “Only reason you’re afraid is because you’ve been replaced. You’ve not done what the world needs from you and you’re pretty much as good as dead and gone.”

  She smiled a little, like someone had just slit her mouth open with a knife. “Your eyes don’t glow.”

  He tensed his jaw. “I don’t see what that has to do with this.”

  Olympia flicked his forehead. “You’re a defect, Adam.”

  He batted her hand away. “I’m all that is perfect. Billions of dollars worth of revolutionary technology is standing in front of you. Countless man hours and even more countless resources, shaped inside a body that would have the Greeks salivating.” He folded his arms. “Veronica herself spent every waking moment perfecting me.”

  “And she gave birth to me,” she said, which felt like a slap across the face. “Look how I turned out.”

  “Difference being is that you’re a mistake,” he said. “My conception was meticulous.”

  “You were a test tube baby that’s not turning out like they wanted,” Olympia argued. “Why else would they have the fucking balls to bring my dad back to life? Because you’re not good enough to ever be him, Adam.”

  From behind him, Sasha said, “If you guys are gonna fight, please don’t do it here. My folks would kill me once they find my body in the rubble.” She remained silent for a second, then added: “You’re both pretty fucked.”

  Adam glared over his shoulder. She shrugged and lifted her hands in false retreat.

  “Look,” Olympia said, making him face her. “I don’t want it, but I need it. Help me so I can help you.”

  He said, “for someone who thinks of herself so highly, what would you possibly need help with?”

  “I want to kill her,” she said, filling the silence. “I want her gone, and I want Cassie Blackwood dead.”

  can relate to them later down the line, then I've now got a up and running that's currently 6 issues ahead (3 weeks ahead in other words) that you can check out if you like. Hope you all had a great start to your weekend