CHAPTER 44: LEVIATHAN — RECKONING
The floodwater came up to my thighs.
I waded through the drowned streets of Brockton Bay, the hydrokinetic resistance making the pressure feel... manageable. Not comfortable—nothing about walking through disaster debris was comfortable—but less suffocating than it should have been.
The metal-sense mapped what I couldn't see: submerged cars, collapsed signage, the rebar skeletons of buildings that hadn't survived the wave. Every step required calculation—avoiding jagged edges, finding stable footing, navigating around obstacles that wanted to trap or cut.
The parking structure rose above the waterline like a concrete island. I climbed the vehicle ramp to the second level and found the team.
Brian was there, one arm in a makeshift sling fashioned from what looked like a curtain. His mask was cracked, his costume torn, but his eyes found mine the moment I appeared.
"Evan."
The name slipped out before he could stop it. We were supposed to use cape names in the field, but after everything—after the hand-holding, after the battle, after dying and coming back—the pretense felt hollow.
"I'm here," I said.
Lisa sat against a support column, pale and silent, her laptop balanced on her knees. Three phones lay beside her, each showing different feeds of information. She looked up when I approached but didn't speak.
Alec had a gash across his forehead, crusted blood mixing with concrete dust. He gave me a tired wave. "Glad you're not dead. Again."
"Same."
Rachel was in the corner with Brutus and Judas. Just two dogs now, both massive but subdued. They pressed against her sides while she sat motionless, staring at nothing.
Angelica wasn't with them.
"The second wave," Brian said quietly, following my gaze. "She was clearing civilians when the water echo hit. Rachel got there in time to see..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
I crossed to Rachel and crouched beside her. She didn't acknowledge me, but she didn't push me away either. Brutus's tail thumped once against the concrete.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Rachel's jaw tightened. Her hands stayed buried in Judas's fur.
"She was a good dog."
The words were inadequate. Everything was inadequate. But I said them anyway, and Rachel gave a single nod that might have been acceptance.
Lisa ran the numbers while the sun set over a broken skyline.
"Seventeen confirmed dead," she said, her voice flat. "Thirty-two critical injuries. The PRT is overwhelmed—medical stations are triaging by survival probability, not severity. If you're not likely to make it, they're not wasting resources."
"Who did we lose?" Brian asked.
"Velocity. Dauntless. Manpower. Stormtiger. Cricket." Lisa's eyes flicked to me on that last name—she knew what Cricket's power had meant to me, even if she didn't know I'd lost it permanently. "Shielder's in surgery. Kaiser's been moved to a secure medical facility—official story is injuries, but my contacts say he's using the chaos to disappear."
"And the city?"
"Forty percent of the Docks underwater. Commercial district took structural damage from the first wave. Boardwalk is gone." Lisa closed her laptop. "The Protectorate's projecting eighteen months to restore basic infrastructure. FEMA's mobilizing, but federal response to Endbringer attacks is... complicated."
I thought about Danny. The Docks were his life—the union, the shipping industry, the waterfront jobs that barely paid enough to keep the lights on. If forty percent was underwater...
"The Hebert house?" I asked.
Lisa's expression softened slightly. "Still standing. Your family evacuated to Arcadia's shelter. They're safe."
The relief hit harder than I expected. I'd been so focused on the battle, on the deaths, on the diverging casualty list, that I'd almost forgotten to be afraid for them.
"Thank you."
Lisa nodded. Then her voice dropped, meant only for me: "The list was wrong, wasn't it? The one you had."
I didn't answer directly. "Velocity wasn't supposed to die."
"And Aegis?"
"Wasn't supposed to live."
Lisa processed this. Her power was filling in the gaps, connecting dots I hadn't spoken aloud.
"Butterflies," she said finally.
"Yeah."
We sat in silence as the last light faded. The parking structure creaked around us—structural damage from the battle, the kind of sound that made you wonder if the next creak would be the last.
Rachel buried her face in Brutus's fur. Alec stared at his hands. Brian watched the waterline recede, his good arm hanging loose at his side.
Nobody mentioned that there should be more of them in the world than there were.
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