Heather Matthews didn't look up as she ran. She didn't want to see them, with their glowing eyes and banded metal skin. She couldn't bear to look at their eerie featureless faces. They didn't have noses or mouths or cheeks or anything to make them look the least bit human. They were beasts, monsters, creatures made only for death and destruction. The Aceros dwarfed Heather and any other human. They were massive beyond anything she'd ever seen walking on two legs. She kept running, twisting her shoulders and looking at puddle after puddle splash beneath her boots, never once laying eyes directly on her target.

Heather had never lacked for nerve or for tenacity, but she didn't trust herself in this case. She couldn't afford to become afraid and lose that nerve. The only thing that scared Heather more than the beasts was failure. She lowered her shoulder when she got close, even if the three monsters kept up their steady pace towards the stairs not even wasting a glance on this simple human, but when Heather's shoulder hit the nearest Acero in the hip the creature was knocked off its feet. Its arms grasped at the air as it fell before landing with a crash. The other two monsters stopped and turned to look at her while the third monster rolled to pick itself off the ground. The creatures realized that this was no simple human.

Heather didn't stand still to let the creatures react. She screamed like a banshee and threw herself on the fallen Acero. She struck the monster's face with all the strength she could muster. Its head rocked to the side. She hit it again and again. Her pool of rage wasn't nearly as strong as her sister Taylor's or her cousin Jan's, but it was there and Heather bathed in anger as she wailed on that Acero. The floor shook and the cavernous space fill with the hollow thumps of superhuman bone and muscle hitting armored metal skin. Then a new rhythm shook the floor. The other monsters started towards her. Through the furor of her punching Heather saw that she wasn't doing any damage. She gripped the Acero's huge head in her hands and jumped off its chest to the damp ground. She gave a feminine grunt as her body hardened from top to bottom. She spun, dragging the huge Acero in a circle whipping the beast across the floor as fast as she could before letting it go.

The creature slid then rolled and tumbled towards its comrades striking them both in their legs. One creature lost balance and tripped while the other stopped all that momentum with its hands. It lifted it gaze to Heather and started towards her. She held her ground. The Acero sped up and was on her in a split second. They moved quickly despite their huge size. She pushed away and almost escaped, but a massive hand grabbed her shoulder. She twisted and struggled for a moment before the creature's big fist blasted the center of her face. The world spun around her. Another creature grabbed her by the legs. Then both of them pulled her like a wishbone. Heather screamed and her spine severed in three places, which turned out to be a blessing. They threw her against the transit way wall, and she didn't feel a thing.

She'd flown through the air like a cheap bottle rocket and impacted the wall so hard that she stuck in place for more than a second. She never slid to the floor. The first monster grabbed Heather by her ankles and jerked her high over its head before fanning her body towards the floor like a dirty rug. Her skull fractured after the first impact, and a sound like the breaking of a thousand eggshells echoed after the second more violent impact as dozens of bones broke all over Heather's body. Blood sprayed from her mouth like a gory fountain. The broken ends of bones actually pierced her ruined uniform. The monster tossed her body to the floor, discarding Heather's once proud form like today's trash. It didn't give her a second glance as it went to catch up to its cohorts.

The monster didn't see Heather's wounds heal as quickly as they'd been made like a tossed jigsaw puzzle going back together on its own. She jumped to her feet. The beast'd only gone two steps before Heather came up from behind and wrapped her arms around its waist. She pressed her chest to its back and with a nearly silent hiss, she leaned back and lifted the monster's feet off the ground. It pounded its hands against her arms and used its big metal clad feet to kick her legs, but she wouldn't let go. This fight had just begun.

Jan feared that she'd never get a chance to fight. She clutched the unyielding metal skin trying to pry Acero's fingers from around her neck, but her efforts only seemed to make the metal phalanges sink deeper into her flesh. Blood ran in tracks down her neck, onto her chest and shoulders. Her legs swung uselessly as she hung from this monster's hand. She had no leverage and the fingers were so tight around her compressing neck that she couldn't even get her own fingers into the choke. The monster jerked her like a unruly animal and raised her higher still so that she was forced to look directly at that blank metal face with those yellow glowing eyes, and it could study her face as it choked out her life. Jan's right hand left the monster's finger and she pulled her pistol free. Her motor skills were imprecise, but she managed to put the muzzle of her pistol directly against the monster's glowing eye. She didn't wait a single heartbeat to pull the trigger.

The booming bark of the .45 filled her ears and the tongue of fire obscured her view. Hope grew inside her, but faded like the smoke from the barrel. The damned creature hadn't even flinched. Hot lead dust and slivers copper jacket stung Jan's skin. She dropped her pistol knowing that it was useless. These monsters had no weaknesses. Panic turned to despair.

"What's going on inside?", Thomas begged to know. "What are those metal giants Dad was talking about?" Thomas looked at Sara as tears began to well in his big brown eyes.

Sara blinked several times and looked over at Thomas, not knowing what to tell the worried young man. His family was in there, and they were in trouble. Sara owed him some explanation even if she didn't understand what she was feeling either. "They're some sort of engineered consciousnesses. They aren't human or animal or any combination of the two. When I push into them with my power there's no mind for me to grab hold of. There's not even a reaction to me being there. There's nothing for me to push or pull to manipulate. It's like opening a door and looking into a black hole. That's it. Inside those things are black holes and something else, or someone else gives them their only purpose for existing."

"Are they like those Series 4 super soldiers that helped capture Jan?", Thomas asked after wiping his eyes.

"No", Sara said like she wished that was the case. "Those super soldiers used to be human. The inside of their brain is like a city after a nuclear bomb hit it. The city's in ruins but at least the piles of rubble are still in there for me to recognize. Inside those monsters' heads, there isn't even a reality for me to recognize. There's nothing."

"Can they kill them?"

"I don't know", Sara replied and Thomas began to cry. "I'm not even sure if these things are alive." Sara rubbed his shoulder and made herself smile. "Thomas, if anybody can figure out how to defeat these things, I'd put my money on the Caufield's. Wouldn't you?" Sara watched Thomas' eyes dry up and a tiny hopeful smile turn up his lips. Sara though turned away so he wouldn't see the doubt and worry on her face. She wondered whether she should go in. Her friends might need help.

Heather and Jan weren't the only ones facing the Acero onslaught though. Monsters swept across the building from west to east killing and destroying anything in their paths. A group of DeBraya guards and Joelstine assault forces were locked in a pitched gun battle. The deadly struggle was the most important thing on every man's mind even as a humanoid shape approached the shoot out from down the hall, walking through flames. A DeBraya guard was the first to see the monster and stop shooting at the Joelstine men. Soon the shooting stopped. The thing was too big, too big to be human and it walked right through the fire like the flames were fake. Then it got closer and the glowing eyes shined. The guards and the assault troops shot at it. Every bullet from every gun struck home on the approaching shape. They saw the sparks of ricochet off its metal skin. Each shot was so inconsequential it was laughable. The two groups of men melded into one and took cover against this approaching doom, but the steel and stone that had protected them against each other's bullets was useless against the Acero's might. The Acero killed every single man. Blood ran in pools that flashed to steam when it hit the flames. The monster just continued on its way.

On the second floor a group of DeBraya guards had yet to see any action. They sat at the junction of two hall ways, protected on their flanks by doorways sealed with welded steel plates. Their booby traps were still in place too. It seemed like battle had totally passed them by. They were a couple minutes from leaving this post to find some action when action found them. An Acero burst through the welded steel door like a bulldozer though a picket fence and started killing men. This attack seemed destined to end like the first bloodbath, but a patrol of enhanced DeBraya guards happened to be coming this way on their way towards the front of the building. The sight of the Acero stopped them in their tracks. The monster was in the middle of crushing a man to death. The blood and gore made even the strongest man queasy, but Martin's special guards had been chosen for enhancement because of their toughness and loyalty. They weren't going to let this thing kill their comrades no matter what. Ten huge heavily muscled men attacked as one. The combined ton and a half of beef actually forced the Acero back.

"Get it down!", the leader screamed and twenty arms flexed. The Acero left the ground and then went to its back. Two men held down each arm and each leg. The monster twisted from one side to the other, but the red faced men used all their strength to restrain this monster. The normal guards backed away in relieved shock. They knew that these metal skin beasts were too much any regular man, but these enhanced guards were many times stronger than a normal man, and it looked like they were winning already. They pounded their meaty fists into its face and neck, but the skin was too hard. Hands and fingers broke against the armored skin. The ring leader looked around for something harder than his fists. He found the downed steel sheet. "Help me", he urged a partner. They started rolling the steel plate up like circus strongmen rolled up skillets. Then when the thing was roughly tube shaped the leader lifted the several hundred pounds of steel and cracked the side of the Acero's head with it. That seemed to get the monster's attention. He hit the Acero again and again, but the fourth impact would be their undoing.

Alisha almost stopped when she heard the muffled sounds coming from somewhere nearby. Booms and bangs had replaced the incessant gunshots that she had been listening to for what seemed like days, but in reality was less than an fifteen minutes. Alisha wasn't worried about any of those sounds though. She looked at her watch and wondered what was keeping Jan. Her tall friend had promised to catch up by going up the stairs, but she and Montez had passed that staircase by quite some time ago. She had half a mind to go down and look for Jan, but she'd promised to keep going and to catch up to Martin. Jan's uncle was with Martin and his gang and they were going to rescue him no matter what.

Alisha and Montez frowned when they walked past an abandoned ambush position. There were bullet casings and blood everywhere, but no men living or dead. Blood dripped from the walls and tracked across the floor. Alisha could only guess that Joelstine's men had over run this position. She couldn't have been more wrong. Alisha turned a corner and kept going until suddenly a hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backwards. A startled Alisha looked over her shoulder at Montez's concerned face. The unasked question was written all over her face. He pointed and she followed his finger to the trip wire strung across the hallway just inches in front of her boot.

"I need you here, with me", he whispered in her ear. "You're using your power to keep us invisible and worrying about Jan at the same time. That might be too much even for you. Stop the illusion if you have to", he suggested gently.

Alisha took a calming breath and shook her head. "No I'm fine."

"Okay", Montez allowed. A grin grew on his handsome face. "And remember Jan almost punched a hole in my head the other day, and if I let you get blown up or we don't catch up to her uncle she might finish putting that hole in my head. So, if you have to drop the illusion and we sneak around the old fashion way that'll be fine. I'll take point."

"No", Alisha said again. "I'm fine. I'll pay attention to what's in front of me, and keep up the illusion too." It was a good choice.

The leader of the enhanced guards had his handmade tube in his hands and his mighty muscles were fully flexed as he brought it down to smash the metal skin monster when suddenly the monster gave a sustained pull with its right arm, lifting its elbow off the ground despite the efforts of two super strong men. Then the beast bent its elbow just enough to put one of the enhanced guards in the path of the downward swing. The leader tried to alter his swing, but the monster had timed it right. The steel hit his own man in the back of the head. The man flopped to the ground like a dying fish, but even more troublesome the Acero began to free itself. It reached across its body and grabbed a guard. The man tried his best to keep the massive hand from crushing the arm the monster held. The man flexed his biceps, triceps, and forearms to no avail. Skin ruptured and burst before bone shattered. When the Acero opened its hand the man's arm looked like linen put through a shredder. The man couldn't even scream as shock replaced rational thought and instinct. Another enhanced guard tried to pull the Acero back down to the floor but the monster took this man by the neck and squeezed so hard that the man's head practically popped off his shoulders, but the killing had just begun.

A chill ran through Alisha when she heard the scream. She'd heard a man scream like that before and her stomach sank. The walls made strange echoes and she couldn't tell how far or how close the trauma was that caused a man to scream like his soul was being ripped out. Alisha froze and blanched when she turned a corner and saw the carnage twenty feet from her face. Montez came to a stop without a plan in his head. He couldn't process what he was seeing. The monstrous metal skin beast was killing a man as efficiently as some robot. Two men ran, both of them came barreling towards Alisha who stood invisibly in the middle of the hall. Montez pulled her out of the way just in time. The bloody man looked like he'd faced hell itself. Alisha's adrenaline made her hands shake and her mind race, but she never lost her illusion. Which saved both of their lives. Alisha wasn't sure what that big metal thing was, but it didn't see her or Montez. After killing one more man it stomped past the two cowering agents without so much as turning its glowing eyes in their direction. Once the monster passed Montez took Alisha by the hand and led her towards the scene of the recent killing, away from the monster's path. The smell of fresh death stung Alisha's nose like the smoke stung her eyes and skin.

"What was that thing?"

Alisha's heart raced and her mouth had gone dry. "I don't know", she spoke in voice hardly her own. It took a lot to rattle her, but that thing was as close to Death incarnate as she'd ever seen. It never occurred to Alisha that anyone would be crazy enough to fight one of those things, but it was happening right then.

Heather gritted her teeth and squeezed her arms for all she was worth. These creatures had thin waists for their massive size, but still Heather's fingers couldn't meet in the front. Her muscles flexed with agonizing definition. Those thickening fibers caused her skin to ripple and pulse. Veins and arteries throbbed, but the armored metal skin resisted still. Doubt crept in. Maybe these beasts were beyond her and she'd done everything she could do. A voice inside her head told try harder. There was more inside of her. She hadn't given her all, and Heather wasn't going to quit until she did. She tiled her head to the side as far as she could to look past this beast wide back and saw that its two comrades were still walking away. Either they couldn't communicate or this one hadn't alerted them yet. Whatever the reason she had time to succeed or to fail. She filled her lungs and squeezed!

Long auburn hair trailed past her hard round ass. Her muscles exploded, expanding so hard that sweat flew off her body. Stitches ripped and burst when her traps expanded through the collar and her lats finally grew wider than the shirt could contain. Heather pushed her strength to levels that she'd never even flirted with before, levels that she didn't even realize were inside her. The metal skin gave a groan. It was like pure strength had been injected into Heather's body and her muscles went supernova, obliterating her uniform. Lush muscle spilled into the cool air as she snarled. Then she felt the tips of her own fingers. She clawed at her own fingers to grasp them. Then she really turned on the power. Her arms were like hydraulic presses now. The monster kicked and thrashed new vigor, almost pulling her off balance, but she was so bent backwards and her legs were so solid that the movement only caused Heather to sway slightly. She held this monster up with her proudly flexing body until felt victory.

Her biceps had gotten properly into the squeeze. Her thick fibrous muscle flexed flat against the Acero's metal skin and that became a battle front in Heather's war against this monster's armor. Her biceps expanded upward and outward, but they couldn't expand against the metal skin. She curled her arms trying to bring her clamped hands towards her own chest even if the Acero's body was in the way. The monster kicked Heather's legs hard enough to break her tibia twice. It healed before she even had to compensate. From its helpless position the monster couldn't damage her quickly enough.

Heather squeezed harder and harder until her muscles became too much for her own body. Tendons stretched and painfully pulled away from bones. Ligaments thinned in her shoulders from the inhuman flexing and strength. Heather bit a hole in her bottom lip from the immense pain. She pulled her finger joints apart with the pressure and still her muscles flexed harder and bigger. The armor compressed and bent. She felt it but didn't let up. Her arms were making headway now even if the metal skin was still fighting for every millimeter. Heather filled her lungs with a fresh breath of air and expanded her chest as big as she could. Her nice tits were pressed flat against this beast's back, but her pectorals weren't. They surged out, creating a valley on her chest where a gallon of sweat channeled from her neck, head, and shoulders down to her landscape abs. The more her pecs flexed the tighter the squeeze got until the monster finally uttered an audible sound, a signal that Heather only heard because her hearing was better than perfect. The other monsters stopped in mid-stride and turned to see their comrade hanging from this human's arms. Heather wanted to keep squeezing, but she threw the monster down and ran away. She wouldn't run for long because that call for help meant that Heather had won this little battle, and the war had just begun.

Fear made Jan's mind race; pain threatened to make her panic, and lack of air was slowing killing her. Nothing had ever compressed a part of Jan's body with so much acute force, but it got worse. She was taking too long to die so the monster wrapped its free hand around its crushing hand and squeezed. Jan's legs kicked and her body bucked wildly. Her eyes rolled back into her head and things inside her neck began to give into the crushing pressure. It wouldn't be long now. Jan's hands pawed along the metal skinned arm. She even reached out towards its featureless face, but her arms were too short to reach. Her hands weren't searching for anything just moving like a decapitated chicken in the throes of death.

The ache in Jan's lungs spread to her entire body as cells demanded oxygen that they weren't getting. Her aimlessly moving hands went above her head. Her knuckles brushed against a segment of the thick wooden grid that made up so much of the ceilings in the armory. Jan's shaking hands went back to the wood. She slid her hands up the sides of the beam until found the top of it. A single idea filled Jan's dimming brain. She got a good grip on the beam from the top and started pulling her arms down like she was trying to complete the most impossible weighted pull up of all time. Failure never entered her mind because failure meant dying and Jan had no intention of doing that.

Jan pulled her arms up. Her biceps inflated like a tire hooked to an industrial pump. Muscles flooded her upper arms until her biceps were a collection of jagged crags and peaks pushing her ever expanding muscle in all directions. Her shoulders capped like sliced stone hard melons. The monster rose off the ground with its hands still firmly attached to Jan's neck. The monster changed its arm angle to allow its feet to touch the floor again, but Jan just pulled her arms up higher and it rose again. The pressure on her super skeleton was tremendous, but so far her neck seemed up to the task. Pain tore through Jan's concentration though. Sweat ran down her body like lava from an angry erupting volcano and her arms continued to make the pair rise up higher. A single vein snaked across the switch backed peak of Jan's right arm while an equally thick vein ran atop the craggy peak of her left arm. The monster tried to pull Jan back down, only adding more tension to the wood braces above. It reset its grip and tugged downward, jerking on Jan's neck until her bones started to splinter.

Twenty feet of ceiling and floor above Jan's head was sagging by nearly six inches now. Tons of thick stone and concrete floor was coming down. Jan could feel it but worried that she'd run out of strength. Her lungs burned for oxygen and even her super human cells couldn't generate strength from nothing. She needed to breathe. Her muscles continued to expand like she had an inexhaustible muscle factor hidden inside her body. Her biceps were now bigger than even the biggest female bodybuilding and many of the male ones too, and they were still growing all while keeping the perfection of their sculpted perfection intact. Jan heard the wood cracking and gave a sustained pull and launched her bicep peaks into the stratosphere. They punched holes in her uniform sleeves like icbms launching from underground silos. Her peaks kept rising and biceps kept thickening until they were pushing against her writhing forearms. Her biceps generated more strength than a powerlifter's entire body and at the edge of consciousness Jan muscles reached a level of perfection that she'd only attained once before and it happened to be enough.

A fifty foot section of the second floor crashed down onto the first floor. Tons of material came down all around both she and the Acero. Her hands pulled the section of wood down right on top of her head, bringing a massive piece of building down along with it. The corner of a load bearing wall fell inches in front of Jan's face and hit the Acero. With Jan being pulled in one direction and the falling section of floor and walling forcing the Acero in another direction, Jan was pulled from its talon like grip, even if it had taken strips of her skin along with it. Jan sucked in a deep breath then coughed as dust filled her lungs more than air. She took another breath before she even hit the ground. Her strength returned almost immediately and even as tons of stuff fell all around her Jan stood up squared her shoulders, ready to fight, because now she was pissed.

Former Federal Judge Alphonse DeBraya crouched on the floor trying to avoid the smoke and flames wondering all the time what was keeping his Aceros. He should have had an army of metal skin beasts around him by now, ready to spirit him to safety and crush all opposition. The building was large, but it wasn't that large. Alphonse didn't worry though. This delay wasn't terrible. There was still plenty of time to make sure his son Martin died, just like Alphonse had planned.

Martin couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he and his group of close guards made their way westward in the building with Ted Matthews as a hostage. The group had seen the Aceros pass by and since that moment Martin hadn't been able to wipe the smile from his face. "You're not all chatty now are you Ted?", Martin gloated as they rushed through smoke filled hallways. "Not after you saw my father's monsters!"

"Why don't you just shut your damned mouth!", Ted yelled back only get elbowed in the ribs by one of DeBraya's personal guards. Just like last time, the young blonde he knew as Carri was there to steady him.

Three massive Acero stared at Heather with their unblinking eyes, but she didn't shrink away. She wasn't afraid. She was resigned. They weren't going to chase her uncle and kill him without first having to kill her. She was pretty sure those three beasts were figuring that out too. She was a pest that wouldn't be swatted easily. They were going to have to work together to get past her. She was as much of a new phenomenon to them as they were to her. "I'm gonna kill one of you before you get me", Heather swore through clenched teeth as they fanned out and started approaching. Heather's head turned side to side tracking each creature until suddenly one of them charged. It didn't bend down to her level instead it kept running until its knee hit Heather full in the chest sending her tumbling back at a tremendous speed. She skipped and bounced to a stop like a thrown pebble.

She stood up seemingly unhurt. The one with the crinkled waist armor charged. It didn't seem affected at all by the damage either. Heather dodged its attack and rolled away from another Acero's grasp. She bent down and jump high in the air, using her extraordinary explosive strength to soar over the monsters' outstretched hands. She landed in the center of the transit way behind them. The monster ran at her expecting her to run away, but she ran towards them dodging them and darting between their legs. Six massive hands swung punches towards her and six massive hands missed. Their huge feet tried to stomp her and their legs tried to kick her, but Heather made them all miss. The monsters bumped and banged into each like clumsy giants which gave Heather an idea.

She took off running down the transit way going west when the monster wanted to go east. They chased her though. Heather smiled knowing that she was keeping them away from her uncle. The one with the damaged armor was right behind her though. Heather was fast, but in a straight line not even her power packed legs could outrun these monsters. She waited until she was almost in the monster's range to cut to her left hard. The monster followed then she suddenly stopped. The crinkled armor monster managed to almost stop, but the two monsters behind him didn't. They hit their comrade at full speed. The shockwave from that impact knocked Heather onto her ass and stirred up a blinding cloud of dust just before the entire building seemed to lift off its foundations.

Heather shook her head and jumped to her feet in time to see the scene clear. Two Aceros remained where three had been before and one of two remaining was face down on the ground. Heather looked beyond the monsters to see a new tunnel where a smooth wall had been before. Massive chunks of concrete and oddly bent rebar covered this new opening and Heather realized what had happened to the third Acero. Its comrades had buried him inside that concrete wall. Heather would have laughed if not for the eyes of that last standing Acero. They burned hot with anger. Heather backed away only to trip over a length of steel dislodged from a disturbed pile of debris. It felt solid against her hands as she scrambled to her feet so she picked it up, not realizing that it was twenty feet long and heavy as hell until it was in her hands. She spun with the steel and hit a charging Acero hard enough to knock it off track, but she didn't swing it again. She ran.

Heather was running out of room, approaching a wall with one of the monsters nipping at her heels. Then she remembered what her uncle had done in this very transit way not far from where she now was and a smile appeared on her bloody lips. She took a firm grip on the steel before she jumped towards the wall. Her right boot hit the wall and a split second later her left one did then her right and then her left as she ran up the wall, defying gravity itself. The monster jumped to snatch her down, but Heather ran to where the wall met the ceiling. With the Acero's massive body rising in the air like a power forward, Heather spun with the sharp construction grade steel pointing at the monster like a lance. In the near darkness Heather aimed at the only thing she could see clearly, the monster's glowing eye.

The old steel was just hard enough and the tip just sharp enough to pierce the clear shroud that protected the beast's eye socket. The steel just barely pushed aside the glowing eyeball, sending a shower of sparks and metal shavings down to the floor. The Acero tried to stop in mid air, but that momentum wasn't so easily stopped. The monster bellowed a chest thumping yell as the steel grated inch by inch into its head. Heather's legs flexed from calf to hip, pressing against the ceiling and wall.

"Yes", Heather screamed in triumph and ran inverted along the ceiling even as the monster's feet were on the ground. She pushed her hands closer to the back end of the steel as it went deeper into the big skull. The creature reached for Heather, but she was just out of its reach. It hit the steel and tried to pull it from her hands. Heather calmly reset her grip once again and squatted to use her legs to power the steel deeper. Then suddenly the long steel spike stopped moving. A moment of heart stopping panic seized Heather. She gritted her teeth and flexed her legs as hard as she'd been squeezing her arms earlier. Her uniform pants burst to ribbons like confetti when the slabs of muscle reached full flexation. Thick sweeping quads, razor sharp hamstrings and spiked calves worked to their full potential. The spike moved again this time sliding more than a foot into that socket and Heather realize what was happening. The steel had reached the backside of the monster's skull. It wasn't hard enough to pierce the metal skin even from the backside, so now the steel was layering inside the monster's cranium like soft serve in a bowl.

Smoke poured from the ruined eye and a thick foul smelling liquid poured out as well. The undamaged eye flickered almost like the monster was blinking rapidly. Its hands spasmed and it went down to a knee. Heather dropped to the ground, landing with a thud but never releasing her grip on that steel. On its knees the monster was still taller than the 5'10" Heather. She held the spike over her head and drove it forward. The monster reached out for her, desperate to save itself, but even its long arms weren't long enough. Heather twisted the spike creating fresh sparks and more spasms from the monster. Its hands shook badly as its metal skin just brushed the fine hairs on her arm. Its undamaged right eye met Heather's gaze for the briefest of moments before the glow faded. The last image in its mind would be the face of the young woman who had conquered it. Heather kept pushing but the resistance was gone. She just pushed the kneeling monster over backwards. Its heavy body flopping under her unrelenting super human strength. Finally she let the steel go. Is it dead? Her mind asked the question, but she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure one of these beasts even could die until the third Acero went to its unmoving compatriot and stood over it for several moments before looking at Heather. She backed further away, not knowing what to expect. The monster lashed out with vengeance. Heather laughed as she ran away. She'd killed one! She'd actually managed to kill one!

Jan rubbed her neck gently. Her head was still scrambled and her neck hurt badly enough to test her legendary pain threshold. It was so dark and dusty that she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed until she saw those yellow eyes in front of her. Rage exploded inside her like an atom bomb. All the pain was forgotten. Jan attacked that monster with all the fury her awesome body could produce. Jan tripped twice over unseen piles of fallen ceiling and floor, but she kept going. The monster saw her and prepared to meet the attack, or so it thought. Jan jumped to a stop, twisted her body and delivered an uppercut to the monster's chin that would have taken a buffalo's head clean off its shoulders. The creature reeled like it'd been hit by a train. Jan's muscles were already pumped from earlier efforts to bring down the ceiling and all the strength coursed through rejuvenated body. She danced forward and planted a tremendous kick that knocked the monster off the ground. The beast landed and stumbled on debris itself. It tried to catch Jan's next kick, but it slipped through the monster's defenses, hitting the center of its big chest. The monster fell back again then kneed Jan in the jaw as she rushed recklessly. With the advantage, it grabbed Jan by the back of her head and lifted her body as high as its long arm could reach then slammed her face first into the concrete floor. Rubble danced across the cracked floor and Jan's blood left a smear where she'd impacted. She was barely conscious as the monster pulled her up again. Her battered face leaked blood from a dozen fresh wounds. Then the monster slammed her down again. Her mind wasn't nearly clear, but she put her hands out.

Her palms impacted the floor and her muscles solidified like living marble and the smash attempt failed. Her face and chest were still several inches from the floor. The monster leaned in and tried to squash Jan flat against the floor. Jan's arms trembled as the monster leaned down with everything it had, but her arms and back absorbed the monster's strength, and with a trembling effort, she pushed up, doing a pushup with the weight of an Acero on her back. Her triceps thickened to match then best the Acero's power and her back widened and flexed until it was as solid as a tectonic plate.

The monster realized its failure and pulled her up, which was exactly what Jan wanted. She put her hands to the monster's and pulled her long strong body up until it was parallel to the monster's arm. She wrapped her legs around the monster's arm locking them in place then straightened her body ramrod straight. Jan's muscles cut at hard angles like a katana. Muscles bulged and burst from every surface of her skin. The monster's hand let go of the back of Jan's head, but it was too late. She drove her hips forward and her legs backwards until the pressure on the monster's elbow was too much. The metal skin buckled a little and the biomechanical joint dislocated violently. Jan dropped to her feet and the monster actually retreated several steps.

Jan loaded up a punch and hit the monster in the chest so hard that a dent formed in the metal skin. The monster had never experienced anything like it. It was overmatched. Jan's punches flew one after another, each blow lifting the massive Acero off its feet. Finally she'd had enough. She planted her boot firmly in the ground and twisted up her body, coiling it like a spring. She released all that strength into a kick that hit the monster's chest. It flew off its feet landing on its back. The Acero made it to a sitting position before Jan arrived. Sitting on its backside, it was just slightly shorter than Jan. Its head was right where she could reach it. With the fury erupting inside her Jan leapt onto the monster's back like a wild animal.

She reached her arms over its shoulders and locked her fingers beneath its chin. She dug her heels into its back and pulled its head towards her with everything she had. Despite the creature's immense strength it couldn't resist this. Every muscle in Jan's awesome body, from her calves to her long lean thighs, strong runner's hips, lean razor sharp abs, thickening pecs, and jagged biceps, strained painful beneath her sweat streaked skin. Her bold azure eyes were shut tightly and her face turned redder by the second. Veins cut across her flexing muscles like lightning across the sky. Jan's efforts quickly bore fruit. The monster's head rolled until the back of the head was touching its own shoulder blades.

The Acero slammed its huge metal clad hands in Jan's already cracked ribs with enough force to break her unbreakable bones. With her torso stretched tightly her exposed ribs didn't have any defense. After several blows Jan felt the ragged edge of a broken rib pierce the bottom of her left lung. Blood frothed to her lips as the lung began to fill up quickly. The monster kept up its brutal pounding, but if this was a war of attrition Jan was going to win. Her muscles were decimating the metal skin. All her strength was focused on a single band of armor in the monster's neck where it met its chest. The special metal was already stretching, and Jan's muscles were only getting harder and bigger as she pulled like they would never stop flexing. But then the monster emitted some warbling sound. Jan only thought the sound was one more sign of the monster's impending doom, but then the floor began to shake behind her with the footsteps of another Acero. She didn't have to turn to know it was there. She imagined the glowing eyes growing bigger as it got closer. She focused instead on killing this beast quickly. The muscles in her back flexed and jockeyed for position in an ever changing landscape of pure muscle. Her biceps peaked higher than they ever had in her entire life, pushing up like the Andes, limited only by the surging growth of her writhing deltoids. The fibers looked like high tensile cables tensing.

Jan girded herself what whatever the approaching monster would do, but the first punch against her exposed back was harder than she'd been prepared for. The second punch landed in the center of Jan's spine bending it against its natural curve. Jan grimaced then cried out as her ribcage broke under a third punch. Blood ran in a solid current from Jan's mouth coating the Acero's head, but she didn't let up. The monster couldn't tell any difference in Jan's strength even after three massive blows from its comrade behind her. Finally the beast stopped throwing straight punches and hit Jan's head and sides with hooks and crosses. Jan knew she couldn't stay like this much longer, but she wasn't going to stop either. She filled her lungs and with a volcanic surge pulled the head up and back. Her body hit a new gear, flexing to a level she'd never reached. Striations sliced across her body and muscles pulsated to bigger and bigger shapes until with a grating wrench the metal skin tore and the head's defenses were breached. Without the strength of the metal skin this monster's neck joint didn't have a chance. It only lasted two seconds against Jan's complete muscle domination. With a triumphant roar Jan pulled the big rounded head off the monster's body. An awful smelling black liquid sprayed out in front while Jan flew backwards off the decapitated monster's body towards the one behind her. She hit it in the chest and fell to the ground. The monster kicked her so hard she flew towards one of the thick walls and actually broke through it.

Hitting the wall was worse than getting punched by the Acero. The walls were so thick and well constructed that Jan lost consciousness after breaking through it. Her nearly unbreakable bones were fractured in several places. Her body knit itself back together though, even with Jan's mind turned off like a short circuited appliance. Her ribs and spine realigned themselves and thin tentative skin grew over the puncture to her lung. Bright red blood ran from Jan's mouth as she lay in the rubble of the destroyed wall. Then the rubble went flying in all directions. A huge hand reached down and snatched Jan up by her hair. She dangled like a doll in the angry Acero's fist until her eyes opened. Out of the corner of her vision she saw the reflection of the Acero's eyes off of its approaching fist. Then she felt the pressure wave gathering in front of the nearing blow and wiggled her body out of the way, swinging by her hair and allowing the punch to just miss behind her. Jan's mind snapped to full alertness and she raised her body up and wrapped her legs around this monster's arm just like she done to the dead one a couple of minutes earlier. "Big mistake", Jan hissed before thrusting her hips forward and dislocating this monster's arm too. She dropped to her feet and spit out thick blood to the floor and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand while looking at the glowing eyes backing away from her. "No don't go anywhere. It's time for you to join your friend."

Alphonse's eyes opened wide as he stared at his control panel and watched two of the amber lights go dark. "No!", his scream was drowned out by the roar of the flames. He jumped when a section of burning ceiling fell to the already burning floor in the adjacent room, but his eyes never left the control panel. "It can't be", he muttered then began to shake his head. Two of his mighty Acero were dead. His face twisted in anger. His monsters had been created by the most brilliant scientists in the world. They'd been created to defeat army formations and now two of them were dead. "It has to be those damned girls!", Alphonse screamed out loud. His son Martin was so afraid of Jan Caufield and her cousins that he was willing to run away and leave his money behind. Alphonse had thought his son a fool, but maybe he'd been right all along. Then the former federal judge began to worry that perhaps the fire and the gun battles weren't the real danger, but he tried to calm his racing heart and get a hold of himself. Two of his prized creations were dead, but there were lots more. The rest were still operating with full capacity and he might have casualties in a battle against those girls, but in the end his Aceros would prevail he was sure.

The transit way walls were splattered with Heather's blood, so was this beast's armor. Heather and this Acero had staged an epic running battle. The monster stood a ways off trying to calculate its next move, and the hesitation made Heather grin. This creature hadn't been able to best her in anything it had tried, but those victories had cost Heather dearly. Her uniform was long since ruined, and her body showed signs of the fight. Every surface of her body was covered in deep purple and black bruises while others sported angry red welts and even scabbed cuts. Blood soaked everything like sweat, but she was in perfect fighting condition. She'd slowed her healing a bit to save energy, and if this monster thought she might be wearing down, it was about to learn different. Heather looked into the monster's yellow glowing eyes and winked. They rushed at each other and met in the center of the transit way floor.

She wrapped her arms around the creature's relatively narrow waist and allowed her body to bend like a bow before she pushed off with her legs, adding her mighty strength to this creature's charge. They both flew off the floor, with the Acero on top and Heather inverted and clinging to the monster to the very end. The Acero tried to compensate, but had no leverage. Its head and shoulders plowed into the concrete floor piling a deep furrow in the concrete floor. Heather rode this monster like a body board until they finally stopped. She readied to attack, but a sound like a thousand sniper rifles sounded and the floor gave way. Heather and the creature fell and fell and fell. Everything was so black around her that Heather couldn't even tell if her eyes were opened or closed. All she knew was that when she spun a certain direction she saw the Acero's yellow eyes falling with her. Heather didn't care if she fell to the pit of Hell itself, she was going to kill this thing.

Jack was almost to the front door. He and the men behind him had to dodge searing flames and the odd bullet from a distant gun fight, but Jack had to slide to a stop and pirouette behind a wall when a spray of bullets came his way. "Same team you assholes!", Jack shouted to a group of Joelstine's men over the roaring sound of flames. Jack poked his head when no more shots came and as saw four sheepish men looking back at him. This assault had gone to hell, Jack realized once he started towards the door again. Joelstine had ruined this entire operation, or almost ruined it at any rate. Guns once again aimed at Jack when he rushed out the front door of the armory building. Joelstine's men were understandably twitchy. They hadn't counted on DeBraya's guards being so formidable and Jack was big enough to look like one of DeBraya's enhanced guards. Those super strong blood thirsty soldiers had killed their fair share of Joelstine's men.

Jack turned to his left when he came out and saw Joelstine himself standing next to a Hummer. The bureaucrat's breath caught in his throat when he saw Jack and his mind raced to find something to say to keep Jack from at the very least breaking all the bones in his face, but Jack only looked at Joelstine for a split second before running to the last Hummer in the convoy. They reached into the back of the vehicle and took what they wanted before running back into the burning building.

Heather and her Acero foe fell nearly thirty feet, past thick steel pilings and even thicker concrete and steel support beams until they hit the solid limestone bedrock. Several inches of solid stone was pulverized when the Acero landed. Heather gave a grunt when the air rushed from her lungs. She got up even before she could breathe and attacked. She rained a blur of punches onto that featureless face. Sparks flew as Heather's exposed knuckle bones hit the metal skin. Those knuckles put dents, nicks, and gouges into that metal face where measly grenades had failed. It wasn't enough.

Heather breathed in deep whooshes and furtive pants and still the creature fought back. She had to get through the metal skin. She'd felt something soft and maybe even squishy on the inside as that length of steel had slid into the other creature's skull. These monsters had to have another, more exploitable weakness. She decided to change tactics. She forced the very tips of her fingers into a layer of metal just below the creature's massive chest and tried to make it bend.

Heather heard debris falling and realized that the monster that had been knocked into the wall must be awake. It jumped down from the transit way to the damp sub-basement. Heather whipped her head towards it, only to get an eye full of steel coming her way. The pressure wave gathering in front of the ten foot long piece of structural steel would have injured a regular person and the sound of the impact against Heather's head was enough to make tough man puke. Her neck broke and her head twisted around like a doll's. Her hands never let go of the armor though, so both she and the creature beneath her went flying. The pair landed on their sides with Heather holding on. The beast made a move to put Heather on her back and quickly enough the Acero mounted Heather and threw punch after punch at her once beautiful face.

Its metal fists ripped through Heather's soft skin and tough bone, each blow reshaping her face like a forging hammer. Still Heather tugged against the metal skin with all the power she had. The other creature walked past the brutal pounding to retrieve the length of steel that had slipped from its comrade's hands after crowning Heather with it. She realized that it was the back half of the same piece of steel she'd used to kill the other Acero several minutes earlier. They must have pulled what he could salvage from the dead Acero's eye and brought it down to the sub-basement. Heather wouldn't have guessed that these beasts had the capacity for irony, but it was clear that they intended to kill Heather with that same length of steel.

The pounding spread from Heather's face and head to her chest and even her abdomen and sides. The creature's hands were so big perfect aim wasn't necessary, besides, Heather's face had become numb to its destruction. She focused everything on getting through this metal skin. Her arms shook from the tortures strain on Heather's muscles and testament to her struggle. Her bloody fingers made progress, slipping in deeper, touching some kind of membrane that connected the metal skin to way lay beneath. The creature continued to pound her face. It was unrecognizable. Only her violet eyes remained undamaged. The pain was changing though. A deep ache throbbed way inside her head, and it wasn't from the fists bashing against her skull. This pain was own doing. She'd felt the early warnings of something like this before, but back then she'd had the luxury of pulling back. Not this time. Heather was pushing her body too far, pushing the limits of her power and her strength too far. She didn't stop because she couldn't stop. This battle had begun as a fight to save her uncle from certain death and had morphed into a fight for her own life.

Heather's muscles bulged and strained and pushed to the very breaking point. Suddenly something popped inside her head. To her ears it sounded like a fuse failing, and it might as well have been. One second Heather was the very image of strength and the next second her arms fell to her sides useless.

Thick bright red blood oozed from her mouth, nose, ears, and even her eye sockets as she lay motionless and helpless. Heather felt like her brain had been put in a blender. Shocks of white hot searing pain flashed every second as her eyes rolled and darted without the ability to stop and focus. Part of Heather's mind functioned enough to realize that she'd given herself an aneurysm and another part of her brain realize that this might be a death sentence. A brain didn't heal as quickly as other body parts, and that was true for Heather too. Given time she'd recover completely, but she didn't have any time left.

The creature kept its glowing eyes on Heather making sure her sudden stillness wasn't a ruse. It held out its hand and took the length of hardened steel from its comrade's hand and took a firm grip. It aimed the torn burned end of this now ten foot long spear directly between Heather's eyes.

Tears ran in swirling rings down to the cold limestone ground. Heather tried desperately to move or to roll, but her insane efforts only made the bleeding worse. Her index finger moved and then her hand and then as if someone else was controlling her, Heather's hand gripped the Glock strapped to her hip. The monster saw the movement and the gun, but a single pistol was less than no threat to an Acero no matter what kind of ammunition it chambered. The creature ignored it and started down with the steel. Heather concentrated only on her right arm, so much so that she couldn't even draw a breath. She pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the creature's front. The length of steel gained speed in the Acero's big hands. Heather pulled the trigger. The beast froze the moment the .40 caliber slug entered its body and mushroomed like it was designed to do. A thick dark liquid spilled from the hole. She hadn't been aiming at the special metal skin. She'd aimed at the tiny half inch bend she'd created in that skin. She fired again, this time angling the barrel up ever so slightly. The Acero tried to get its grip back to finish her off, but Heather emptied her magazine of bullets into that beast before the heavy steel fell from the monster's hand to clatter across the limestone. The awful smelling black liquid poured from the half inch gap in the armor like water from spigot. The glowing eyes dimmed, flickered, then went out. The beast rolled over to the ground. Heather would have yelled in triumph if she could have yelled at all.

The last remaining Acero boomed an angry roar and snatched Heather up from the ground by her neck. It held her shattered body aloft while it took time to look at another dead comrade. The monster didn't have a face to show emotion, but Heather didn't have to see it. She felt it radiating from the monster as it squeezed her face, crushing her already broken jaw. The monster pulled its arm back to deliver the first punch in a barrage that Heather knew she wouldn't be able to weather. She had nothing left. Even her body couldn't heal from so many injuries quickly enough to mount any sort of defense. She'd kill two out of the three, and in most games two out of three wasn't bad. She'd have to live with that she guessed, or die with it she thought with another bit irony. Heather closed her eyes this time, knowing that this was beginning of the end, but she was wrong.

Above her, on the transit way's floor, her uncle yelled, "Clear the back blast!" Jack depressed the trigger of the AT-4 sending the Swedish made anti-tank missile streaking towards this creature's crinkled waist armor. Jack'd aimed for the back initially, but saw the damage at the last second. He prayed this would be enough. The rocket hit right where Jack had aimed and exploded with enough force to knock Heather from the Acero's grip. The super heated jet of molten tungsten barely punched through the damaged armor to explode inside the metal skin. Everything biological was turned to ooze instantly, but on the outside only a tiny hole and a slightly distended blister on the metal skin showed where the armor had failed at all. The creature fell to the ground, dead. Team B rigged up a rope and Jack repelled to the limestone bedrock and ran to his niece. The other men didn't believe that someone so beaten could even be alive. Jack knew she was. She had to be because he couldn't imagine the alternative. He slid on his knees to her side and gently lifted her head. Her eyelids struggled to open as her face began to rebuild before she managed a weak smile. "I knew you'd save me."

Jack leaned down and kissed Heather on her rapidly healing forehead. "Save you? You'd already killed two of 'em. Looks to me like you had that last one right where you wanted it." Heather coughed and grimaced when she tried to laugh since all her ribs were currently broken. Jack held her closely for several minutes while her wounds continued to mend. Heather wasn't quite healed when Jack helped her to her feet. "Are you ready to go save your dad?", Jack asked once they were back on the transit room floor.

"Almost", a pale and weakened Heather replied in a horse voice. "All that fighting and healing took a lot out of me, and I've lost a lot of blood." Jack began to worry as he looked at Heather, wondering if fighting those three things had been even more than her super powered body could take. She saw his worry and gave him a tired smile. "Do any of you guys happen to have some water, and maybe an energy bar?"

Jan stared into the eyes as they dimmed to blackness. She held another severed Acero head in her hands while its massive body fell to the floor with a dust stirring bang. The head was pretty heavy and her muscles were sore. She took a couple of steps to her right and set the heavy head down next to the first head like they were trophies on her shelf. She might have kept one of those heads as a momento if the thought had crossed her mind, but she had more important things to worry about. Killing the second monster had been easier than the first because she already knew how to do it and because there wasn't a third monster to contend with. She'd have killed it even if there had been a third, but Jan wasn't looking for any more punishment. She was far behind her friends in searching for her uncle.

She went to the place where she'd initially fallen through the floor and got on her hands and knees. She worked quickly patting the ground searching for lost equipment. The second monster she'd killed had made the same noise as the first one so perhaps it hadn't alerted another Acero, but Jan didn't want to take any chances. Her body was far from healed as she searched in the blackness for her night vision goggles most of all, but she found her pistol instead. She ran her hands along the slide and grip feeling for damage before sliding it back into its holster. She went back to searching. She chuckled, which hurt her ribs and lungs, when she realized that she should have used the dying Acero's glowing eyes to illuminate the area. Too bad she hadn't thought of that earlier. She found her submachine gun under some debris. She slung it over her shoulder and kept patting the ground until finally she found them. Jan quickly put the goggle strap over her head and looked back towards the severed heads and gave a shiver. She stood up and dusted her hands without looking away from the Acero heads. "It was probably a good thing I couldn't see what you look like", Jan said to the destroyed monsters as she walked past the empty heads. "If I'd seen you I would've freaked out completely." As it was she jumped up the stairs five at a time until she was on the second floor tracking the path of Alisha and Montez. They found her.

Jan was keeping away from the flames as best she could and trying to move between the shifting shadows when suddenly a hand reached out nothingness and tapped her shoulder. She turned quickly to see Alisha who threw her arms around Jan's bloody neck. "I was so worried about you", she gushed.

"With good reason", Jan replied and patted Alisha's back before they broke off their embrace.

"Me and Montez saw one of those metal things your father was talking about. You didn't have to fight one did you?", Alisha asked.

"No", Jan replied and Alisha exhaled in relief. "I had to fight two of them", Jan deadpanned and Alisha looked shocked.

"I don't know what those monsters are but they can't see through my illusions anyway, so we won't have to worry about them."

"I don't know who brought them here, but I don't think it was Martin", Montez offered once they'd started walking again. "If he'd had those creatures he probably wouldn't be in hiding in the first place. Or have hired all those scientifically enhanced guards like Carri."

"Or have thrown me from a helicopter. He had no way of knowing that I'd be able to kill one… or two of those things."

"There's more going on here", Alisha agreed. "We just need to be careful."

Morgen Stern uncharacteristically jumped for joy when he felt some of those alien consciousnesses die. He wasn't sure what they were, but he'd never felt anything like them man or beast. It was like they'd been created by something other than what had created every other life on Earth. At least they were life, some bastardized form of it. There were still plenty of monsters in this structure, but there was at least a force inside that could counter them and maybe even neutralize them. Morgen had always admired Taylor, Jan, and Heather, and they hadn't disappointed him. Some wrenches had fallen into the machinery, but he hoped to be able to still salvage his plan.

In another corner of the old armory Slater Hastings banged his fist against the door in frustration and screamed the name of his one time cohort at the top of his lungs, but Carri wasn't coming back. She wasn't even who or what he thought she was, and she wasn't going to save him. She had left him there to die or to be arrested, whichever happened first. Slater felt betrayed and scared in equal measure. He backed away from door and coughed as smoke began to seep into the room. He covered his mouth with his shirt and looked around in the complete darkness knowing there was no way out. In frustration he fired his pistol at the door over and over again even if he knew that those slugs couldn't penetrate. "Somebody help me!!!", Slater screamed as the heat in the room began to rise. The puddles on the floor started to sizzle from the fire that burned on the floor beneath him and Slater began to feel like a lobster in a pot. Sweat mixed with his tears as he backed away from the door. Smoke billowed in through the cracks choking off the air supply. Slater dropped to his knees just to find air to breathe, but he knew that wouldn't last long. He wanted to scream again, but when he tried to fill his lungs with air all he took in was smoke. Carri's face left his mind and her cute features were replaced with the nauseating beauty of Taylor Matthew's face. It was her fault he was in the mess and it was too bad he wouldn't get just one more chance to end her life because if he got that chance, he'd use it.

Taylor turned her head as she moved quietly down the hall with her two team members behind. A gun battle raged nearby but even with her hearing she couldn't pinpoint the location. This building did strange things with sound. She kept moving because that fire fight wasn't her concern. Joelstine was the one who'd ordered his men to storm the building against her uncle's orders and his men were bearing the brunt of the fighting. Taylor sympathized, but she had to focus on getting her father away from Martin DeBraya. Someone else was more concerned with Taylor herself. He stood in a room where Taylor couldn't see him, but he could see her creeping through the halls.

Taylor frowned and gave her head a little shake when she thought she heard something. She motioned for her two team members to stop and she continued towards a corner. She stood at the corner for several heartbeats listening. The gunshots were louder down that way. She stepped from behind the protection of the wall and didn't even get a chance to react before the butt of an ak-47 shattered against the side of her face. She fell to the ground stumbling sideways as a big man came towards her. Taylor's chosen team members didn't hesitate. They fired several shots into the man's torso, but the bullets hit the special bulletproof vest with no affect to the wearer. He pulled his rifle back and used the splintered butt to hit Taylor in the forehead knocking her from her side to her back. More bullets hit the man's body armor with no affect. "You fuckin bitch!", the enhanced DeBraya guard screamed as he pulled his rifle back for another swing. "You broke Danny's face! Crushed his fucking jaw! Now I'm gonna crush you!!!", he exclaimed to punctuate his latest blow. It didn't land. Taylor caught the swing, stopping it with a single hand. The burly man looked past his rifle to Taylor's face and fear nearly made him piss down his leg. She snatched the rifle from his hand and jumped to her feet. She raised the rifle over her head and the big man recoiled like a person about to be struck, instead Taylor put both hands on the Kalashnikov and broke the sturdy assault rifle over her knee like a twig. The destroyed receiver fell to the ground and the bent barrel was only an instant behind it. The man knew he couldn't run so he drew back for a punch, but her hand moved so much faster. She gripped his throat. His punch fizzled when she squeezed and lifted him off the ground.

Taylor's two teammates shook their heads in awe as she held this very large man at full arm's length like her hand was empty. He squirmed and pulled at her hand, but her face was completely impassive. The anger that had been there only a moment earlier was completely gone, replaced with a detached curiosity. "I don't remember crushing a guy's jaw today", she said calmly as the guard dangled and turned red in the face.

"It was you!", the man spat out in a coarse voice while struggling to take in breath past Taylor's hand. "I saw a tall bitch pick my friend up and crush his damned face like it was made of play-doh."

Taylor looked over at her team mates. "I think I've been mistaken for Jan again", she said with a bit of incredulity. Then her steely gaze went back to the man hanging from her hand. "Where's your boss going? Where's he taking my father?"

"I wouldn't tell you if I knew", the man struggled to say defiantly.

Tendons on the back of her hand stood out as Taylor very slowly closed her fingers. The man convulsed as she crushed his neck, seemingly effortlessly. His enhanced muscles and bones were not even a challenge. After a few seconds of agony she relaxed her grip and let the man take a breath. "I don't know!", the man declared as his bladder finally emptied down his leg. "I'm just supposed to fight until they tell me to stop. Look, I don't wanna die. Please. I'm sorry! I'm sorry I hit you in the face with the rifle", the man blathered and cried.

Taylor's countenance showed that she was unmoved by his pleas. She sighed and looked at her team mates again. "We're on the third floor right?"

"Yes", the closer one replied and Taylor nodded.

She took a step closer to the wall and the man's eyes darted left and right in fright. She bent her elbow slightly, brining his face closer to hers. "I know you don't want to die, but you're going to have to pay for what you've done here today."

"I'm sorry for attacking you! Please don't hurt me!!! Please!!!!", he begged.

"Apology accepted", Taylor said dispassionately before her gaze hardened. She straightened her arm suddenly and the man's head hit the stone wall so hard it bounced off like a dodge ball. The man's body went slack and Taylor dropped him then turned to her team. "Put the special restraints on him", she ordered and the two men went to work rolling the huge guy over and shackling his hands. She sighed and rubbed her face where the first blow had struck. "I swear, the next time somebody punches me in the face, I'm gonna kill him." The two team members looked at Taylor and then at each other. Both were just thankful that they were on her side. They'd been sent to arrest her the night before, but that CIA lady had been correct. Taylor could have killed the entire roomful of agents without breaking a sweat. She was almost otherworldly.

"Ok he's secure", one of the men announced and stood up.

"I've got him", Taylor said and hooked her arm beneath the spherical shackle and lifted the unconscious man up like a huge handbag. She continued down the hall, as if the man weighed nothing at all. He had to weight more than 300 pounds. Both men blanched when they remembered that they'd held guns to Taylor's head the night before in an attempt to arrest her. That was comical in retrospect. This veritable goddess was almost too much for her team members to fathom. They wouldn't have believed that they hadn't even really seen her in action yet.

Despite their losses the Aceros continued moving towards Alphonse, sweeping east like an all consuming tsunami. The leading edge of the Acero wave had made it to the third floor, the floor where Alphonse was waiting for them, but had run into a shoot out.

The lone survivor from one of DeBraya's enhanced guards teams ran away from one of the monsters even if the Acero didn't really seem interested in giving chase. It wasn't long before the survivor came upon another shoot out between DeBraya men and Joelstine men. The crazed man right into the midst of the shooting. "Run!", he yelled while motioning for them to follow him. Nobody did. "It's coming!!!", he screamed as loudly as he could but never stopped running. One man finally looked down the hall where the man had come from and saw the Acero. It was already on top of them, and another bloodbath began.

A few seconds later, Taylor dropped the bound strong man and brought her carbine to her shoulder. Two DeBraya guards came out of a doorway firing back through the door they'd walked out of. Taylor's finger curled around the trigger thinking that some Joelstine men were on the other end of those barrels, but a Joelstine man emerged from the door right next to the DeBraya men. In all six Joelstine assault troops came out of the doorway and fired side by side with 8 DeBraya men. Several men weren't shooting but instead were calling through the doorway desperately trying to reach someone. Taylor came up behind the huddled group of firing men and got her first look at the metal skinned beasts called Aceros. She drew a furtive breath and blinked her eyes as if she saw an apparition rather than reality.

One Acero held a man by his arms while the other monster grasped his legs. They pulled in opposite directions until he was emitting an inhuman high pitch wail. The tortured man's joints failed and his left leg pulled free sending an arc of blood into the flames. The man was still alive though and his screams were chilling to the soul. They didn't last long. One of the retreating men took mercy and put a bullet through the man's head. The two monsters dropped the dead man like a broken toy and grabbed a wounded man who was nearby. The same shooter raised his gun to end this man's life too, but Taylor stepped forward and pushed his barrel down. "No. This one's going to live", she said as she rushed into the room. Hands reached out to stop her and people called for her to stop, but she ran directly at the two monsters.

They were both huge, but she was undaunted. Taylor took a page from Jan's playbook and opened this battle with a kick. It hit the closer Acero in the back of the knee hard enough to make its leg bend. With the creature slightly lower, she leaned and put her right hand between its legs. With a display of raw power, Taylor lifted the beast off the ground. Guns fell silent and their barrels pointed at the ground as Taylor lifted the creature across her shoulders. The monster teetered from side to side like a turtle on its shell. It tried to build momentum to free itself, but Taylor didn't give it a chance. She turned towards the flames in the distance and jumped straight up. They rose until the monster's blank metal face nearly touched the ceiling before her muscles finally flexed hard enough for the expansion to show. Nothing she'd done so far was a worthy test for her super human sinews, but she powered up her arms this time and threw the beast forward as hard as she could. It launched towards the flames like a meteor. The wind off its traveling body momentarily put out the roaring flames, and when it finally hit the floor some distance away it tore right through it and the one below that. Pieces of wall and burning equipment dropped down the huge hole behind the beast. Taylor landed and turned to face the other monster, who had dropped its wounded play toy and started for her.

The beast slammed its huge fist into the side of Taylor's face, the same side that had taken the rifle butt attack. She flew backwards end over end. The monster gave chase and slammed another punch to her head before punching straight down to her stomach. Taylor's body jerked upward involuntarily. It pulled her off the ground by her head and this time it threw her. She went through two solid stone and concrete walls before coming to rest near some flames.

Dust and debris obscured the onlookers' views, but they saw the Acero stomp through the flames to finish her off. Taylor's team members worried while the DeBraya men went forward to help the wounded man get out of the area. Some Joelstine men had fleeting thoughts of going to try and help that courageous young woman, but most just figured that she'd bitten off more than she could chew. Then a feminine yell sounded above the roaring flames and the Acero came flying towards them head first breaking fresh holes in the wall and brining down sections of concrete and wood from the ceiling above. The monster landed only a few feet from the doorway and men jumped backwards, but Taylor came running out right behind it. She moved like Hermes. The monster was nearly upright when Taylor's first punch struck home. The monster's entire armored body rang like a bell. The punch sent the creature to the ground and Taylor jumped on top of its chest. The monster gripped Taylor by the ankle and snatched her off her feet. It clubbed her body into the ground as it stood up. Blood ran from cuts on Taylor's cheek, but even in this creature's hand her expression was of anger more than fear. While the monster got its balance and prepared to batter her again, Taylor calmly reached towards her ankle and wrapped all ten of her fingers around the monster's wrist. Her lips pursed and her body finally betrayed true effort as she crushed the special metal skin. Her hands shook and her forearms blazed hotter than the flames around her. The metal skin didn't make a sound as it collapsed, but the Acero did. It howled and tried to pull away, but Taylor wouldn't let go. As the big beast tried to pull away, Taylor set her feet and yanked the monster towards her.

The Acero swung mightily, over and over, but Taylor casually dodged the blows before tiring of the cat and mouse game. She forced it to the ground. "Now that I know you feel pain, whatever you are", Taylor began and took a deep breath. "Let's see how you like agony." With that she tightened up her face and let her power loose. Taylor rarely unleashed the full fury of her power, but she did now. Her muscles doubled in definition until her skin looked transparent. Striations marched like armies across her back and shoulders. Her body transformed before the eyes of the onlookers and the effects were immediate.

Metal skin that could shrug off bullets and bombs buckled then tore. The creators had made the Aceros' arms very strong, and this beast was pulling against Taylor with all of its might. It wasn't nearly enough. Taylor matched its strength, besting both it and the strength of the metal skin. A putrid black liquid spilled from the new gaps in the metal skin and the Acero thrashed about, howling in pain. The arm crackled and twisted and came off in her hands. The Acero's scream was almost as pained as the man he'd ripped in half. Free from her grip, and its own arm, the monster backed away, attempting to gain distance to mount a defense. Its putrid black blood spilled to the floor and Taylor stepped around the puddles as she advanced with the monster's severed arm still in her hands. With a look of pure hatred she clubbed the monster with its own arm. The heavy armored weapon was just the tool she needed. The floor shook and glass blasted out of far windows after the first impact. The shockwave made the onlookers take cover. The beast held up its good hand until Taylor's furious pounding had mangled it too. She concentrated on the head, scything blow after blow into the monster's head. The rage only built up inside her. Suddenly though she stopped and turned towards the gawking men peaking at her from behind their cover.

"You bastards are under arrest", she said in a breathy voice while looking directly at the DeBraya guards. "Surrender yourselves to these agents and follow their commands exactly, or when I'm finished with this thing I'll come after you", she threatened then went back to pounding the helpless Acero. She was a little surprised that her threat actually worked. All of DeBraya's men tossed their weapons to the ground and submitted to being cuffed and escorted from the building. She pounded the Acero for another minute or two until there literally was nothing left for her to pound.

Alphonse screamed at the top of his lungs when he saw another light go out. Flames roared all around him, but he kept his eyes only on the control board. He choked and coughed until his throat was raw, and yet he still screamed though the flames drowned out his voice. His future was destroyed. The legacy of his family was ending here, being consumed just like this building. He banged his fists against the hot stone floor until they hurt. His smoke stung eyes were squeezed shut so he didn't see the wall of flames leaping towards rusted cans of benzene. The thin tin didn't stand a chance with that much heat. They flashed into an impressive fireball that nearly burned Alphonse's face. The rush of furnace-like heat made the old judge lurch backwards onto his ass. He looked on helplessly as the control panel was consumed. The remaining lights shined for several seconds even after the hard plastic case began to warp. Alphonse shuddered when he saw what other light was shining. It blinked red, like an omen of doom. Alphonse wrapped his hand in his jacket hoping to shield it from the flames long enough to push the button, but the heat was too much and he snatched it back. He watched impotently while the control panel, the only device that could command the Aceros was destroyed. Like always Alphonse's thoughts turned towards himself. How in the hell was he going to get out? "Morgen", he said aloud. He had to find Morgen.

The instant that control panel burned up, everyone looking at an Acero watched their eyes go from yellow to red. One of those people was Morgen. One of those monsters had nearly crushed him when it had crashed down through the ceiling, but X-419 had been there to save him. She'd been ready to fight it, but the thing had simply stood up and started walking eastward, compelled by whatever controlled it. Morgen was hesitant to try and influence something as artificial as the consciousness of an Acero. If it wanted to go east then he would let it go east, until its eyes turned red. Then it stopped. It stood still for more than thirty seconds before it thrust its arms out knocking huge holes in walls to its right and left. Then it spun slowly, breaking more and more of the wall. The ceiling sagged as this monster ripped out the supports then its red eyes settled on Morgen and X-419. It started towards them, still keeping its arms out, dragging huge chunks of building down with it.

X-419 didn't wait for Morgen's order. She ran at the monster. Femmes didn't have fear, but Morgen did and he reached out to her and almost ordered her to come back, but he didn't. He knew that this Femme might be saving his life.

X-419 with her smooth dark skin and hard curvy body rang blow after blow off the monster's metal skin until it pulled in its arms and had to fight. X-419 didn't stay still for very long, sticking and moving like a boxer of old, but the Acero got it licks in too. It grabbed her by her graceful neck and slammed her body to the ground before slamming her into a wall. Then it punched her in the head and dropped her. Blood ran from her nose and mouth, but the Femme didn't stop attacking, trying to keep the beast from getting to Morgen. The beast turned on the beautiful Femme and sent punch after punch into her hard body. She caught a punch and pulled the monster off balance, but the advantage didn't last long. The monster was forcing X-419 into the raging flames and there was nothing she could do about it. Her shoes were already starting to smoke and the soles were starting to sizzle. Morgen couldn't wait another second.

He thrust his hand sending his power surging. "Aufhören!", Morgen yelled in his native German and the creature froze. Morgen's body shook from effort as the monster's alien willpower fought against him. He used everything he knew to control it. X-419 didn't waste time either. Instead of attempting to attack the momentarily defenseless Acero she attacked the area around it. She hit the thick floor in strategic places until the heavy Acero fell through it into the transit way below. Neither of them had any way to know what they had done.

"It's time to get out of here", Morgen told the Femme after checking her injuries. His grand plan had obviously going to hell, and he was going to leave this building before he did the same. They ran towards the nearest stars and past the burning generator room. It wouldn't be long before they were out of this inferno.

Slater's swollen face hurt from the incessant heat. Flames devoured the door and soon the fire, like a living breathing creature, would come in and devour him too. His back pressed against the wall, no more room, no place to go. He pulled the hammer back on the pistol, knowing that it took less pressure to pull the trigger with the hammer back than in normal position. He was blubbering too much to try hard at anything at this point. He put the gun to his head, the same gun he'd planned to kill every Caufield with, the same gun he'd used to kill his father, was about to blow his brains out. It was better this way though. Better than being burned alive. He was going to close his eyes, but didn't. He'd do this looking straight ahead, not that he could see anything other than smoke and flames anyway. Slater exhaled one last time then pulled the trigger.

The bullet passed over Slater's head when the floor beneath collapsed. He didn't even have time to curse. He looked down as he and everything around him fell into what looked like a fiery abyss. Slater wished he killed himself a minute earlier because now his death was going to be painful and slow.

He hit quite hard and waited for the instant when his flesh would start to boil, but it didn't happen. He opened his eyes and looked around before standing up in the center of a piles of rubble. He was completely untouched by even the smallest fragment of brick. The smoking gun was still in his hand, and the fires that had threatened to burn him alive were temporarily smothered by mountains of debris. He marveled. He'd been placed in the only spot where he could have survived. He looked up two entire floors and saw where he had been. That level of the building was still engulfed in flames. "Somebody must like me", he muttered and went through a door he'd never seen before. He didn't know where the door led, but there seemed to be less smoke that way.

Slater stumbled several times, but kept going because the air got cooler by the step. It felt good against his face, and he chased that cool air like a starving man would chase the scent of food. He passed crates and dusty boxes until came to door and suddenly he was out. He fell to his knees realizing that somehow he'd just walked out of hell. He turned around and saw the armory engulfed in flames with nothing to douse them. He noticed something else too. The one massively strong building seemed to be sagging in the middle like something was pulling it down from below. His smoke stung eyes might have been playing tricks on him, but he didn't care either way. He was never setting foot in there again. He was sure he wasn't seeing things when he turned towards the swamp and spotted a shiny black Aston Martin parked like a valet had left it for him. Slater rushed to driver door and jumped inside. Almost as a lark he pushed the start button in the center of the console and to his amazement the big v12 motor roared to live. Slater didn't waste a second. He slammed the door shut and sped away.

Morgen and X-419 exited the building a minute later and stopped in astonishment. They looked up and down the road, but even the tail lights of Morgen's car were lost to the moonless darkness. Morgen reached out with his gift and felt Slater's relief, but the boy was speeding away so quickly that Morgen couldn't quite get a lock on him to make the asshole come back. And to make it worse the speeding lights of the Aston Martin had gotten someone's attention. One of Joelstine's trucks started their way. Morgen looked at X-419 and sighed. "Back inside", he ordered. "I have an idea."

"Turn left, now", Sara said over the encrypted radio. "You're about fifty yards behind them."

"Roger that, control. I have eyes on them", Jack replied then shook his head. 'Damn she's amazing', he thought in his head.

"I know", Sara quipped over the radio. Jack smirked then turned a serious face to his team.

He took a moment to look each one of his people in their eyes. No one had more focus or clarity than Jack Caufield, the man they called the Bear, and one look was enough for everyone to understand that. Then Jack looked over to his niece. Heather's face and body looked unblemished as usual, but Jack could see the effects of the pounding she'd taken even it didn't show readily. He didn't want her to have to any more than anybody else from here on out. He rested his hand on her shoulder gently and began to speak.

"It's go time. We've been over this a dozen times. Shit might have hit the fan, but this part of the plan stays the exact same. Nobody shoots unless I shoot first, and you follow my lead no matter what. No exceptions." His team nodded and Jack nodded back before turning around and hurrying into position.

Taylor touched the earpiece and smiled. "So Team A's in position? Great. We're on our way", Taylor informed Sara who passed the info on to Jan and Jack. She looked at the two men following and motioned with her head for them to pick up the pace. They jogged along the semi-lit transit way feeling small vibrations in the floor, but ignoring them until the floor shook so violently that Taylor was thrown from her feet mid-stride and one of her guys bit his tongue. Taylor got up and frowned wondering if part of the building was about to fall in beneath them. Her team members were worried about the same thing. They kept running though, picking up speed feeling that they might be running out of time. Off to their left in the bowels of the building something exploded. They had no way to know that the fire had finally ruptured the diesel generator tanks. The trio kept going until Taylor stopped on a dime and put her hands out to keep the men behind her from going any further. She was able to stop two grown men without even a wiggle. They looked around their team leader and realized that she'd probably saved their lives. There was a hole in the floor and a look down it showed nothing but blackness. The floor shook again and Taylor backed away. She frowned and leaned down. She laid on her belly and pushed her head down the hole. The floor shook again and a mighty crash beneath them sent smoke billowing through the hole. Taylor pulled a chem-light from her cargo pocket and dropped it. It fell nearly thirty feet to the limestone bedrock. Another jarring bang made Taylor pull her head from the hole and look at her companions. The expression of worry was plain on her face, and both men realized that if Taylor was worried then they should probably pray.

"I have to go down there", she announced and pulled the ammo magazines from her pouches and handed them over while requesting every chem-light the pair had. "You two keep going and meet up with my uncle and sister. Tell them you're joining their team. Help them save my father, please."

"We'll do our best", the man to her left replied solemnly.

"Why aren't you coming with us?", the other one asked suddenly feeling exposed without his super hero leader out in front of him.

Taylor slid her legs into the hole, holding onto the rim with only her arms. "If I'm wrong then I'm wasting my time, but I'm rarely wrong." With that she dropped into the darkness.

"We're almost there", Martin's chief of security said to his boss.

"Good", Martin replied. He could already taste freedom. He and his men dodged between vehicles moving towards the huge roll up doors. Ted's heart thumped in his chest. He'd always believed that his girls would rescue him, but he might be close to outliving his usefulness. He had Carri watching out for him, and she might be strong enough and good enough to take all these guys, but in some strange twisted way Ted worried about her. She was just a little older than his daughters and oddly caring considering her line of work. Ted should hate her, revile her even, but in his heart he couldn't do it. He looked behind him and saw Carri with her blonde pony tail flopping from side to side as they jogged. The thought of Carri having to fight one of those big monsters made his stomach turn. He had no idea that his children and his niece had already been forced to tangle with the Aceros.

"We're not moving too fast for you are we?", Martin joked then slapped Ted in the stomach. Ted flinched and drew back. Martin laughed and pointed. Ted's face flushed, but he didn't comment. He only wanted to live long enough to see his wife again. He didn't have a lot of resistance left inside him. Suddenly men jumped from the smoky shadows. Ted's head whipped back and forth only seeing black shapes and gun barrels.

"Nobody move!", a man's voice shouted. Martin's men fanned out and aimed their weapons. The chief of security put his body between the guns and his boss. Carri took Ted by the collar and forced him to the side. "Put your guns down right now and you'll just get arrested!", the man yelled again.

"Jack?", Ted murmured as Carri pushed him all the way to the floor.

"Whoa whoa!", Martin yelled waving his hands for his men to hold fire. "Let's talk about this. You're all reasonable men. Perhaps we can make a monetary accommodation. How does half a million apiece… fuck that a million apiece sound?"

"Like shit", Jack replied and stepped out of the shadows where everybody could see him. He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room. He looked past Martin to Ted and winked. Ted gave a half grin thinking the wink was a signal to him. It wasn't.

Across the room Alisha nodded and Jan started moving. She walked slowly, being careful to make it easier for Alisha to keep her illusion rock solid, but this operation was already easy for someone with Alisha's talents. The tension in the room was high though, and anything could go wrong. Jan approached her uncle from behind with her rifle slung over her shoulder so her hands would be free. She stepped into the midst of Martin's security, while Martin himself tried to negotiate his freedom.

"Well I see this isn't about money with you, Mr. Caufield. It's about your brother-in-law. Well, now that's even more precious than money isn't it? How about you let me and my men go and I just might let you have him back in one piece."

Ted wasn't sure what to do. His brain was scrambled and his thoughts only came in fragments. He couldn't string two ideas together to save his life, then a voice entered his head. "Don't worry, Mr. Matthews. This is Jan's friend Sara. I'm right outside the building, and you're just moments from being rescued."

"How are you…?", Ted thought before his lips could even move.

"It's part of my abilities sir. Jan is just a few feet behind you."

Ted's head shot to the rear. "I don't see her."

"That's because Alisha is keeping her hidden. Alisha's so good that I can't even feel Jan's presence, but trust me she's there. You won't feel when she touches you." And he didn't. It was spooky to be able to actually touch someone and they not feel you. That happened when Jan leaned down and put her arms under her uncle's shoulders. Even his injured right shoulder didn't register the pain because Alisha's illusion was impregnable.

When Jan was about ten feet behind Martin's last guard she lifted her uncle to her shoulder and started towards Alisha and Montez. Jan was walking at a near normal pace when Ted's vision blurred and he saw the truth.

"Jan!", Ted exclaimed and threw his arms around his niece's neck. Tears of joy filled his eyes.

"It's going to be okay", Jan said with a loving smile. "I've got you now."

"I can walk if you want to put me down."

Jan smiled. "Not yet, if worse comes to worse we might have run and I'm faster than you are. Even with you on my shoulder", she added with a smirk.

"Where are Heather and Taylor?"

"Taylor's close by and Heather's over there with Daddy. She's back there in the shadows somewhere."

"I can't even tell you how happy I am to see you."

"That makes two of us", Jan replied. "Daddy's going to keep stalling them until we're out of the room and then Alisha's going to put all of Martin's men in an illusion so they can be arrested without any more shots being fired. Don't worry this will all be over soon." Jan didn't know how wrong she was.

Jan was about fifty feet from Alisha and Montez when the building lurched violently. A monumental boom thundered through the cavernous room. Old dust fell like waterfalls when the entire building shook hard.

Taylor looked around her as she walked slowly towards the banging in the distance. The chem-light only illuminated a few feet in front of her face. She walked through a forest of concrete and steel. Pillars and pilings rose from the limestone bedrock like the mighty cypress trees in the swamp above, but these monoliths didn't reach towards the sky, they held up the soaring groin vaults that held up the huge armory building. The pilings were single thick girders that had been driven into the bedrock more than a hundred years ago and reinforced the arches, but the main supports were the big reinforced concrete pillars that sat on huge pedestals that were anchored to the limestone. These pillars sat at the vault junctions. Taylor noticed a few dozen pilings twisted or missing. Then she saw a tumbled pillar. That must have been the big crash she'd heard before. She looked up and saw where a vault had failed. This mighty building had withstood the fire, the shoot outs, and the super human battles, but no structure could have the rug pulled out from beneath it and that's what the Aceros seemed focused on.

Taylor had no way to know that before the control panel had burned, the last button Alphonse had pushed sent the Acero into a mode of pure destruction. And without the control panel there was no way to change that instruction.

Taylor kept going, getting closer to the booming sound until everything around her shook. Pieces of ceiling dropped three stories and smashed inches away from her. She pulled her body tight trying to make a small target for the falling masses, but it didn't matter. The loudest sound she'd ever experienced reverberated in the sub-basement. She fell to the ground in pain, covering her bleeding ears. The bedrock shook and sounded as if it had split in two. The building moved from where it had been before. Tons upon tons of building began to sink as more support was lost.

Alisha still called Jan's name and Jan screamed in reply, but Alisha couldn't hear her, it seemed like nobody could. Jan had been thrown from her feet. She rolled to protect her uncle when flames from a river of burning diesel created an inferno beneath them. She clung to the tilting concrete square when the building gave another shudder and the floor sank, but slower than the ceiling. Flames licked from the other rooms and raced across the ceiling timbers super heating the air and making lots of smoke. Jan clawed at the concrete square as she and her uncle kept sliding backwards. Her fingers dug groves into the old cement and still she and Ted slid towards the flames. "Throw him to me", a voice to her Jan's right yelled over the cacophony. Jan had to twist her entire torso to see Carri standing on a buckled section of floor beckoning. "It's the only way", Carri urged before jumping backwards the dodge a falling section of ceiling. Jan hesitated even as she and her uncle inched closer to the flames. Both of them curled their legs, but soon that wouldn't help. "Trust me!", Carri screamed one final time.

Still she didn't make a move. The concrete square started to break up from the heat and extreme angle. Jan's hands clawed at thinner and thinner square that finally started to crack up beneath her. She slid down more than a foot and her legs touched the top of the burning diesel. Jan pulled her uncle up higher, but they kept going down. Jan shook her head, praying Taylor and Heather would forgive her before swinging her arm sending her uncle sailing to her right. Her aim hadn't been great, but he'd landed on a fairly stable section of floor. Ted scrambled to get to his feet even as the floor beneath him shook fiercely.

A crate ten feet tall and six feet wide slid towards him. It picked up speed as the floor sank further and further. A section of ceiling fell behind it, the rush of super heated air giving the big crate an extra push. Ted didn't even have time for his life to flash before his eyes. The crate was on him too quickly. At the very last moment a woman's hand crashed through the thick wood and stopped the thing cold. Attached to the feminine hand was an arm made of pure iron hard muscle

The effort showed on Carri's face even if her arm remained rock steady, preventing the crate from moving even an inch. Her legs straddled a hole so she'd stopped that crate with only the power in that one arm. She held it at arm's length long enough to hop across the hole and shove the two ton crate back with both hands giving Ted enough room to breathe.

"That's like six times I've saved your life", she whispered in Ted's ear then picked him up to move him to some place relatively safe. She only made it a few feet before the building lurched again. The floor sank even more. She reached out with her right arm and held on while everything around her slid backwards. She managed to get Ted and herself to a momentarily stable section of floor, but everyone else wasn't so lucky. Jan was pulled backwards like she was caught in a black hole, but really it was building tilting towards its center, breaking like a house of cards with no support in its middle.

Taylor pulled herself from her temporary burial and huffed in frustration. She immediately heard more pounding and that frustration morphed to anger. Taylor cracked more chem-lights and ran towards the sound, any earlier apprehensions forgotten. She bounced to a stop when she came upon four Aceros bashing the pillar like logging teams of old. Each blow fell fractions of a second after the one before, but instead of wood chips these chops took off hundreds of pounds of concrete and steel. The monsters had crushed hand grips into what had been pilings. The vaults were already breaking apart, with wide cracks running in zigs and zags across its face. Openings big enough to drive through had formed where chunks of ceiling had fallen away weakening the floors above even more. The pillar stood despite this beating. It was bigger even than the last pillar the creatures had felled. It sat at the junction of several vaults and Taylor didn't have to be an engineer to figure out that this pillar might be a linchpin in the support system. There were other pillars off in the distance, but the loss of this one would be more than this old building could take. The whole structure shuddered and sank by inches after each blow. Taylor sucked a breath and resumed her jog. It turned to a trot then to a sprint. She was a blur when she got to full speed.

The massive pillar groaned like a wounded giant after a particularly hard hit. The building swayed as its weight shifted on the precarious balance at the crown of this pillar. Taylor timed her attack perfectly at the backswing of the nearest Acero. She grabbed the damaged end of the gigantic club with both hands and kept running. Her momentum snatched the creature off its feet. Then she stopped suddenly and using her shoulder as a fulcrum cantilevered the beast over her back. It went flying off into the black distance. The beast was still in the air even as its club clattered to the ground just in front of Taylor, who promptly picked it up. The gritted her teeth and dug her fingers into the hard old steel to make a grip for herself before rushing at another monster.

The pillar was teetering already, but Taylor was about to give it some relief. She drew back and swung the i-beam with every ounce of strength she could muster. Her swing dwarfed the best swings the Aceros could produce. The sound of the steel girder hitting the special metal skin was almost as loud as the pillar falling from before. She attacked with a single minded fury that nothing on earth could have matched. She knocked huge person sized dents into the metal skin with each blow. The construction grade steel couldn't even keep up with her. Each impact twisted the overmatched steel into a new shape, and the edges started to look like melted candle wax because each impact momentarily melted the steel before it solidified only to get melted again.

Taylor's eyes were only focused on the Acero's. She watched for them to go out. That's the only way she'd know when it was dead. She didn't look out behind her though. Another girder whistled in the wind. She didn't hear it over the sound of her own club's noise. She didn't notice her hair flutter in a subterranean breeze. The flat side of the girder hit Taylor, shoulder, neck, and the back of her skull. The impact was brutal. She lost consciousness and slid along the bedrock for several feet before coming to a stop. She moaned and rolled over in time to see a glint of light from the monster's red eyes illuminate the girder as it came down towards the center of her face. She rolled to the right with only milliseconds to spare. The girder missed her by the slimmest of measures. The monster pulled back on the girder to try again, but Taylor bounded to her feet and jumped onto the girder, running up its length even as the Acero raised it higher in the air. The monster should have dropped its club because Taylor slammed a mighty punch to the center of the monster's face leaving a fist sized depression where nothing had been before.

The creature lumbered backwards and Taylor pressed her attack. Punches and kicks came from every angle, each one harder than the one preceding it.  Taylor explored the depths of her seemingly inexhaustible volcano of power. The monster ended up on its back, hemorrhaging that terrible black liquid through gashes in its metal skin. Taylor ignored the smell and acid like burning to jump onto the monster's dented chest. She landed one metal destroying punch after another. Her fists flying too quickly to be seen clearly, only the momentary pause after impact showed. The monster managed to deliver a punch to the center of Taylor's forehead. The blow was far too little and far too late to change this fight. It just made her even madder than she already was. She forced her fingers between two banded layers of metal, the same way Heather had done earlier, but the skin was no match for Taylor's strength at all. A wave of flexing went from her forearms up to her corrugated deltoids. The special metal skin only resisted for a few seconds. Her muscles continued to bulge under her bruised and lacerated skin until the metal was completely out of the way. The monster grabbed Taylor's svelt waist with both of its hands trying to pull her off. She reached out with her left hand and grabbed the underside of its chest cavity, her fingers sinking into the mushy membrane. The monster gave a howl of pain, but pulled with desperate strength to dislodge this woman. Taylor held firm with her left hand and then with a snarl of effort she curled her arm bringing her body closer to the monster again. Her biceps muscle flexed so hard and so hot that it began to singe her uniform sleeve. Her left bicep peak rose as her arm bent more and more. Both of the Acero's arms pulled with everything they had, but Taylor overpowered the mighty beast with just one arm. It was as if pure power was injected into that slowly ballooning muscle. When her arm was at a right angle Taylor's body was still up in the air being pulled by the monster's hands. She'd had enough.

While holding with her left hand, she pulled her right hand back and threw a punch as hard as any she'd through before, but this time the metal skin wasn't there to protect the beast. Her fist sailed through the soft membrane and into the monster's innards. Her punch traveled all the way to the monster's back making a positive dent in the monster's back armor. Taylor pulled her hand back, flinging the acidic black liquid all over the place. She punched again and this time the monster gave a weak yelp. Taylor's fist broke all the way through the metal skin hitting and shattering limestone bedrock beneath the monster's back. The beast tugged and pulled and twisted to get Taylor off of him. She just curled her arm some more, causing her sleeve to peel off of her peak like a banana. She pulled her fist back one more time and punched, this time her first went deep into the chest cavity destroying organs and biomechanical systems within the monster until she felt what she was searching for. She opened her fingers and took a firm grip before snatching her hand out with a mighty tug.

The big hands lost their strength and Taylor fell from its grip. The beast's glowing eyes dimmed as Taylor showed the monster its own still beating heart. The huge black heart was covered in the burning black liquid that continued to squirt from ruptured vessels. The monster raised its hand towards her, but its eyes went out and its hand fell to its side. Taylor turned when she heard the other two monsters coming towards her. She held their comrade's heart in the palm of her hand for a moment before throwing it to the ground and stomping it out of existence. The skin on her right hand bubbled and sizzled from the acid, but she didn't seem concerned. She didn't say a word, but she didn't have to. She'd done everything that had to be done. These monsters understood completely. They'd been created to be the top of the food chain, but in reality they had to fall in line somewhere behind Taylor like everybody else. She was more than them. They had no advantages and no hope of survival. Neither monster was going to survive to get out of this sub-basement. Every surface of Taylor's body spoke that message plainly, especially her crystal clear blue eyes. Taylor took a step towards them. The monsters roared their own defiance. Taylor prepared for a charge that never came. The monsters ran in different directions. One of them picked up an i-beam club and attacked the pillar while the other one retrieved a girder to attack Taylor. Taylor ignored the monster attacking her because that support couldn't take many more blows.

The tilting was even worse on the upper floors. Morgen and X-419 were practically walking on the walls with the floor tilting so badly that the fell when they stepped on it. And flames burned all around them. Weakened timbers fell allowing old concrete and more burning wood to fall sometimes right in his path. His eyes burned like he had acid for tears and his lungs ached for fresh air. The only good news he had was that X-419 never once asked him where they were going. She just followed. They quickly bounded up the burning steps before taking a left. He stopped suddenly when he ran into one of the steel plates DeBraya's guards had welded up. He ordered X-419 to remove it, but only after making sure there wasn't fire on the other side. She kicked the steel and an entire section of burning wall fell, along with the doorframe. Morgen fell to his knees when a rush of smoke and cinders billowed towards him. He felt X-419's strong hands lift him to his feet. He took the lead again. They were almost there. He was about to turn left when he heard a man's voice from off to his right. He turned, trying to see through the black smoke. It was Alphonse. Morgen turned and rushed to the man who was lost and turned around in the slowly collapsing building. Alphonse jump from fright when Morgen's hand grabbed him by the arm before a look of profound relief crossed his face.

"Nice to see you here", Alphonse said, understanding how fortunate he was.

"Why did you come?"

"I wanted to make sure things happened to plan."

"Who's plan, yours or mine? Did you bring those… those creatures with you?"

"This is a discussion we can have later, Herr Stern", Alphonse replied, regaining his composure by the second even as the flames licked near his head and his feet. "We should focus on getting out of here… with our lives intact."

Morgen had half a mind to push Alphonse into one of the many infernos burning around them. Instead he just coughed and wiped his eyes. "I suppose you're looking for a way out of here."

Alphonse gave a curt nod. "It is as if you read my mind Herr Stern. Hopefully you have worked something out."

"I have. Stay close", Morgen shot over his shoulder as he started towards his original destination. The three strong group ran down the hall when the building gave another lurch. Floors fell and burning walls closed in.

Carri crawled behind Ted, wishing that he was a few inches shorter because even on his knees he was visible. Angry red and orange spotlights fell on the pair as they tried to make it to safety. For a moment the building seemed to be stable, like the massive edifice had somehow found the strength to stand a little while longer. No one had an idea of the battle raging in the bowels of this building and they didn't care. Everyone, including Carri, just wanted to get out with their lives.

Behind her Martin and his closest men reassembled. They'd lost one man and one other man had a dislocated finger. Martin counted himself as lucky. He was looking for Carri though. That young blonde was worth her weight in gold. Martin and his group started again towards their escape when out of the corner of his eye Martin saw a female ass. He came up behind Carri and stopped. "There you are." His voice made Carri freeze. Ted tried to hurry and get away, but Carri put her hand on his ankle gently. He stopped and sighed in resignation. "At least you caught this bastard. Come on, we have to get the hell out of here!"

Carri stood up and put a hand under Ted's uninjured shoulder to get him up as well. "I'm sorry", she whispered in his ear. "Don't be", he mouthed back as the group moved westward. Ted looked around hoping to see Jack or Heather or Jan, but all he saw was ruin and flames behind him. If he'd had a moment to contemplate what might have happened he'd have broken down, but the building lurched again, knocking everybody to the ground. Crashes came from above as furniture and equipment scraped across sinking floors and banged into fire weakened walls causing hundreds of small cave-ins all over the building. Carri knew the way to the garage area. She held Ted by his arm as they hurried towards the doors. The big doors were shorter now, but getting out of this room put them one step closer to living.

"They're getting away", an assault solider reported.

"Follow them!  They know a way out of this place", Jack said and hustled to his feet. It was hard to run when after every step the building gave a lurch knocking people about like balls in a pinball machine. Jan, Alisha, and Montez were separated from Jack and the rest of the team by a river of pure fire, but they could still hear each other on the radios and were giving chase too.

Taylor raised her tired arms once again only to pound another ground shaking punch to the side of this monster's crushed in head. Sweat poured off her body as she knelt atop the beast's dented chest. She raised her fist to land another blow, but in a rush of blood thirsty fury she reached down, grabbed the remnants of the Acero's head and twisted until the monster's obliterated face was pointing the wrong way. She stood up unsteadily to her feet and used the back of a tattered sleeve to wipe some blood from her cheek. Her chest rose and fell quickly as she surveyed her handy work. Four Aceros lay dead, scattered in a loose circle around her. One was in literal pieces while another was missing its torso. Then of course there was the one with the spun around head and the one missing a heart. Taylor wasn't unscathed though. Her usually beautiful face was swollen, her head ached like it had been run over by a train, the skin on her right hand looked like melted wax, but she was finished. Taylor realized that she'd probably saved more DeBraya men than her own by stopping the collapse. She took weary steps towards the pillar and used the last chem-light in her pocket to survey the damage.

The monsters had knocked huge chunks from the base. Stress cracks ran from the base to the crown and the weight at this junction of vaults was going to make this huge pillar fail, but not for a while. Taylor sighed and reached across her body to return the dangling earpiece to its place.

"Heather, this Taylor, do you have Dad?", Taylor asked informally. She was way too tired to care about protocol.

"Negative", Heather replied with regret. "Jan had to throw him to safety when the building was coming down around us."

"I think I have that under control", Taylor said with no small amount of pride.

"Don't worry. We have eyes on Dad. It looks like Martin and his guys are making for some trucks in the garage area. We're trying to get in touch with Joelstine to get his men to focus on the garage doors, but he's not answering any of the pre planned channels. It might not matter. If the building stays put Alisha can reset her illusion and we can simply get Daddy that way."

"Ok sounds like a good plan. I'm in the sub-basement, but don't wait for me. Get Daddy no matter what."

"We will, and you hurry up and get out of that basement. I was down there earlier and it sucks."

Taylor chuckled. "I told you I'm on my way." Taylor planned to meet Heather outside in ten minutes, but Taylor didn't have ten minutes.

She was a hundred feet from the damaged pillar when an Acero started moving. Taylor had ripped the beast in half after breaking its back open over her shoulders. She thought she had killed it, but this monster clung to life and to its mission of destruction. The monster moved with only its hands, traveling carefully as not to make a sound. The monster reached out for a girder and carefully took hold of it. It found the very end of the girder and planted it against a small rise in the limestone then sought out the other end and took a firm grip. It extended it arms fully. The monster looked at Taylor and judged that even with her speed, she was too far away to stop it. Then it pulled its arms down launching its body like a rocket.

Taylor spun and screamed a dread and defeat filled cry. She ran towards the pillar knowing she wouldn't make it. She prayed that the monster would miss or not do much damage, but the creature hit the pillar with its body so hard that the entire construct shifted on its pedestal. The Acero crushed its own head and broke holes in its own armor with the impact. Its death had been worth it. "No!!", Taylor cried as the pillar started its slide from the pedestal and into oblivion. Everything above her head that had once been solid broke apart. Taylor ran, at the time not knowing where she was going.

A burning hole opened up beneath Jack who dove to his right, but the hole followed him. Jack grabbed hold of an old tractor, even as the ground beneath him fell away completely. Jack held by just his right hand, his grip more than strong enough to hold him, but nothing could hold up the tractor when the ground fell in beneath it. Jack tried to climb higher, but the flames got closer, like open jaws ready to consume him. Suddenly he stopped falling.

"I've got you!", Heather yelled. Jack looked up and saw his niece on the backside of the big tractor. Her young face set with her teeth on edge as she powered up her muscles again to hold this tractor. The ground under her was unstable, but it was good enough for Heather to drag the tractor and her uncle from danger. "We have to get out of here", she said once she had her uncle to relative safety. "The building's coming down."

"Okay", Jack said with a nod then cued his comm. "Evacuate the building!", Jack yelled into his comm. unit. "Everybody out of the building now!" Jack just hoped it wasn't already too late.

Men all over the structure reacted to the shift and the building's accelerating collapse. Flaming walls and ceilings finally gave up their burdens and crashed down on the already weakened floors. Men were caught trying to dodge the falling floors, walls, and ceilings while dodging the flames. Some jumped through the flames hoping to find something clear on the other side only find themselves face to face with a wall of fire. Burning men tried to jump out of collapsing windows only to get crushed by the crumbling façade.

Jan rushed ahead of Alisha to wedge her body into a closing doorway. She moaned as the weight of the walls above crushed down on her shoulders, but with a trembling push from her long legs the doorway moved up several inches giving Alisha room to climb behind Jan's back. Jan gritted her teeth and pushed up even more to make enough room for Montez's bigger physique to fit. Once they were safely through Jan put her hands on the wall and removed her legs. Her triceps looked like they more than doubled in size as all that weight pressed down on her struggling arms. She held it up long enough to dive to her right into the buildings garage. Smoke and flames engulfed her as the wall behind her fell in.

From the outside the collapse looked like a time lapsed implosion. The sight was impressive and terrifying. The eastern side of the building fell against the still solid western side until it too began to sag. Everything that had been straight and level was twisted and leaning. Flames shot a hundred feet though the roof illuminating the swamp sky for miles around. Rushes of superheated air broke out windows from compression and the building grated and groaned as it died before everybody's eyes along with the three or four dozen people still inside it.

Sara stood up and covered her mouth while Thomas cried. Sara pulled her power back, unwilling to be inside anyone's head while they tragically died not even her dear friends. No one inside was going to make it out. It was falling too quickly. Her thoughts instantly went to rescuing survivors, but then something happened. Sara frowned thinking that her eyes were playing tricks, or that maybe it was a trick of the firelight. The building stopped falling. The massive brick façade stopped sinking. The roof line stopped dropping. The building froze in a state of semi collapse, an impossible position. It was as if something had pushed a pause button, but then something even more amazing happened. "Fuck me", Kevin breathed and Sara didn't even react because she was amazed too. Confusion turned to disbelief when the building started to rise.

Floors leveled. Walls straightened and doorways reopened. Desperate men spilled out of the half collapsed building praying and scraping to put distance between themselves and the building before it resumed its decent. Some men looked back wondering what in the world could be holding up the building, never imagining that it could be a person.

Taylor had wanted to get her shoulders under the falling pillar, but it was already too low and she couldn't get her long frame beneath it, so without any other options, she'd allowed the massive pillar and all the weight above it to fall into her outstretched hands. The rugged bottom of the pillar pulverized the tender skin on her palms and an exposed piece of rebar gouged out the side of her right hand, but that pain was incidental to the pain of the weight above. She stood like a caber thrower, with this caber being heavier than a busload of people and the building above like a mountain. The weight flattened then ruptured the thick soles of her combat boots. Anguish played across her beautiful face and her muscles battled with the weight and with each other. Her delts and traps, lats, abs, and pecs flexed to bursting, jostling for position under Taylor's skin. Sweat streamed down her body like spring thaw from the Alps, creating puddles at her feet. Throbbing veins shot to the surface mapping out a landscape of bulging shapes along and across her shredded muscles. Her awesome body and her super human muscles were pushed to their very limits.

Taylor's brain couldn't categorize all the pain she felt not only her hands, arms, and shoulders, but fibers had ruptured deep within the thickening bellies of her diamond hard muscles. Her heart sped like a runaway bullet train trying to keep up with surging muscles. Bones in her long corded legs micro-fractured a hundred times sending shards of bone blasting into her muscles from the inside out like shrapnel from an internal bomb. With inhuman effort Taylor's head slowly turned and she looked up. The soft glow from her chem-light made it hard to see, but she saw enough to know that the crown of the pillar was still attached where it had been for so many years and even more importantly the ten solid steel pilings around her were mostly straight. She needed them to remain strong. There was a little spring in any steel and these thick beams were no different, but if she let that bend stay too long it would become permanent. She knew what she had to do.

Taylor's upper body swelled by full inches, obliterating her uniform top and she kept getting larger, larger than she'd ever been before. Muscles kept thickening and swelling, bubbling and seething beneath her skin, working to do the impossible. Taylor's body shook violently. Her face was contorted beyond recognition with every torturous second playing across her features like a nightmarish symphony. She threw her head back and screamed into the blackness. Power burst from her core, and despite the weight pressing against her splayed and broken hands, Taylor forced her arms higher. The building groaned.  The pillar rose taking everything up with it.

"Daddy!", Jan shouted through the blinding smoke. "Daddy! Where are you?!?"

"We have to get out of here!", Montez yelled and reached out for her, but she pulled from his grasp. "He gave the order to evacuate. We have to follow orders. Don't make the same mistake Joelstine made with his men. Your dad knows what he's doing." Jan shook her head and tried to look with her night vision goggles, but saw only flames and wreckage. Montez stood in front of Jan, the woman who'd almost killed him a couple of nights earlier and looked directly at her, seeing so much of his girlfriend in her eyes. "Heather's with him, Jan. There's nothing you would do to save Jack that Heather won't. Now come on." Montez saw the answer on Jan's face and he took her by the shoulders. They ran towards Alisha who'd scouted a way out.

On the third floor, the ceiling was only inches above Morgen's head and flames licked at the wool in his expensive tailored suit. A second ago he'd thought that he might be too late, but suddenly the building had stopped going down. It might buy them the time they needed.

"We need to go this way!", Morgen yelled pushed forward through the shrinking space.

"Where are you taking us?", Alphonse demanded to know, but Morgen pushed forward until they ran into a smoldering ruin that used to be a doorway. Without prompting, X-419 pushed to the front and knocked a hole into the rubble then helped the two men through. Once into the remnants of the other room Morgen exhaled, his breath swirling the smoky air like a jet engine. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a satellite phone. He calmly dialed a number then had to wait, hoping the person at the other end of the line would answer. He'd hoped not to have to involve her again, but his life depended on LaShaunta Turner picking up the phone. The phone buzzed and seconds ticked away like years. Finally a frustrated voice answered with an annoyed sigh, "Hello."

"Shaunie", Morgen exclaimed even if he hadn't been planning to. It caused twenty year old LaShaunta Turner to frown at the other end of the line.

"Are you okay, Morgen?"

"I will be as soon as you get here. I need you to come to the room in Martin DeBraya's secret hideout where I had that meeting a few days ago. The room with all the boxes. Do you remember?"

"Of course I remember."

"Then please come now. Oh and Shaunie, come in about four feet below floor level."

Not a split second later LaShaunta appeared in front of Morgen dressed for a New Year's party. Her sultry body was encased in a pink and black cocktail dress. For a moment her absolutely sublime thoroughbred form was outlined against the burning background. Her long braids rolled off her shoulders and down her back. Her pretty face was perfectly made up. LaShaunta was completely out of place in this hellish building. She choked on smoke and squinted against the sting. "Morgen!", she called out.

"Over here!", Morgen yelled while waving his hands. Flames shot up through the crumbling floor and LaShaunta was forced back, but not for long. An instant later she was in the midst of the anxious group.

"I'm pleased you joined us my dear", Morgen said in his charming way. "Now if it's not too much trouble I'd be even more pleased if you took us anywhere but here." Morgen was already touching X-419, but LaShaunta had to reach out to Alphonse even if she recoiled at the thought of helping that man. A rumble came from above and the ceiling came down where the group had been, but they were gone.

"They're going to make it!", Thomas yelled as the building seemingly rebuilt itself. "It's a miracle." Kevin had never been too religious and he didn't figure to start now, but as looked at the huge building rising despite the damage and how far it had already fallen he couldn't figure another explanation. He looked over at Sara and wondered what could be going through her head. It took quite a lot to impress her. She looked impressed, but he couldn't read her expressions very well.

"Oh no", she breathed then suddenly took off running towards the building, her legs pumping as furiously as they could. She ran from the outcropping towards the building without saying anything. Thomas didn't even ask why she was running. He just took off after Sara. Kevin slung his rifle and started after her too. He had to chase her for nearly 200 yards before he got close enough to scream a question. "What hell is going on?!?"

Sara ignored him instead she spoke with her power. "Hang on Taylor, I'm coming. I can make a way for you to get out of there."

"No! Don't come", Taylor replied with a thought. "Is my family out of the building… my father… my uncle?"

"Not yet. They're all still inside." Sara's reply stiffened Taylor's resolve and her muscles. Her biceps peaks were pregnant with fresh growth. Fibers tensed until her skin was full to bursting. The steel girders around her groaned as they took more load as Taylor's tired body started to slump, but she held the pillar at waist height. She had to save her father even if he was still in Martin's clutches.

"Hurry up everybody knows what to do!", Martin's chief of security shouted as they felt the building settle momentarily. "Get to your positions!", he screamed and ushered his boss towards their escape, but Martin stopped and pushed against his security chief.

"Not you, Carri! You come with me and bring that asshole. He comes with me!"

Carri's face showed her frustration, but she didn't argue or resist. She'd promised Ted and his niece that she would keep him safe and she was going to do just that. Even with flames burning  and sections of building falling down around them, Carri led Ted along the uneven floor towards her nominal boss. Engines roared to life and bright rack lights came on to illuminate the destruction all around them.

"The doors won't open!", one of the guards yelled. "I think the building's too twisted for them to move."

"Use the trucks!", Martin yelled and strapped himself to his seat. The chief of security relayed the order and the first of three monster trucks took off towards the doors. Martin thought back to his dead friend Spencer as those trucks broke through the roll down door and out into the open air.

A blister appeared on the side of the building near the northwest corner that burst as Jan forced her way through the thick wall. She spilled out into the swamp. Alisha and Montez were close behind her. A chimney full of smoke billowed out behind them. Jan coughed and wheezed before standing up and looking around. Her soot covered face wore a look of deep concern. "Daddy", she called into her radio. "Daddy!", she screamed and took several steps away from the building. Jan turned when she heard the crash of monster trucks ramming through the garage doors. She and her team ran around the corner in time to see the three big trucks bouncing out of the building and down the rough drive way. Jan took off at a full sprint, going faster than either Montez or Alisha could run. But as she passed the building she saw someone coming out of the building running almost as fast as she. There wasn't much light, but it didn't take much light to see Heather's auburn hair trailing behind her head like the tail of a comet, and to Jan's great relief Jack came running out of the broken down garage door with the rest of the team. He didn't try to catch those trucks though. He tried to get Joelstine on the radio.

Inside the burning garage Martin smiled and looked over at his chief of security. "I told you it would work. Hit it Jimmy!" Three big supercharged engines started up and the smoke billowed behind three huge fans. The man in the driver's seat pushed the throttle to max and the first of three airboats came scraping out of the garage towards the wetland beyond. Jack stopped and turned quickly looking on helplessly as the airboats escaped behind him and his team. One of the team members fired a shot that sparked off the propeller housing, but Jack ordered him to hold his fire. Ted was on one of those boats. Jack started giving orders through his radio.

Taylor heard her uncle's words and smiled in spite of the excruciating pain. "Just hold on", Sara shouted with her mind.

"Sara, I'm not making it out of here, but at least my family is out. I want you to promise me that you'll do everything in your power to rescue my father."

"I'm going to help save him and I'm going to save you too", Sara declared. She was close. The thick smoke made her cough and the heat made her want to shrink away, but she kept going anyway.

Bloody tears rolled down Taylor's cheeks as capillaries burst all over her body including her tear ducts. She was hyperventilating as she looked down at the limestone then up towards the ceiling, taking note of a crack right above her head. "Sara", Taylor began, her mind barely able to string together thoughts. "Tell my family that I love them dearly."

"I'm almost there!", Sara shouted with her power.

"And Sara thank you so much for everything you've done."

Taylor pulled her hands from beneath the bottom of the pillar, leaving most of her skin behind. The pillar dropped and the building dropped with it. Taylor jumped towards the ceiling, rocketing upward with all the strength left in her legs. She put her arms up to protect her head from the wreckage. It only partially worked. Tons of debris on its way down met her body traveling up and the collisions were terrible. Then her momentum slowed. She wasn't going fast enough, and the building started pulling her back down with it. Space filled in around her. Broken building flooded into the space around her body like a hole dug in soft sand. The weight crushed in on every square inch of her body, but worse on her chest. She thrust out her arms, her hyper pumped muscles shoving tons of debris away from her. Her hands hit something solid and she pushed hard. Triceps jutted from her arms and her pecs gathered like canyon walls, but tons more debris came to fill in every space. Taylor's strength gave out. She craned her neck, fighting for just one more precious breath that would never come.

A blast of hot compressed air threw Sara from her feet as the building gave a chest crushing rumble causing the ground to shake for a mile around. The building plunged to its doom. One last plume of fire lit up the night sky like an eerie noon hour, and then it was over.

... to be continued...

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