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“What?” The guy who was obviously in charge looked around wildly but his eyes slid past where they were standing unseeing.

“Where? There’s no one else here.”

“They must be here,” the messenger said, holding out a tablet to the man. “They’re streaming your conversation and once again we can’t block it.”

“But…”

“They’ve got superpowers, Keith.” One of the other men leaned across and looked at the tablet. “You shouldn’t assume what they can do. They’re over there somewhere.” He waved his hand towards where they are were standing. “They must be able to go invisible.” He gave a wry half grin. “I think we’re screwed.”

“No!” Keith snapped. “I haven’t come this far to be stopped by a group of freaks. If we can’t get the power we need the gentle way, we’ll just have to do it the other way.”

“No, it’s over,” one of the others said. “Now they know what we were up to, we won’t be able to carry enough of our underlings with us to subdue the populace.” He shook his head. “I should have realized this couldn’t work. It was a stupid idea, why did we ever think it was a good one?” He shook his head. “We’ll have to–”

“No, there’s a delay. They haven’t reached the key incriminating point yet.” Keith grabbed a handgun and began firing wildly in their direction. “We can stop the broadcast. I won’t lose to a bunch of unnatural freaks!”

Lydia gasped as the first bullet hit the shield she was generating. She hadn’t realised that a mundane object travelling at such speed would knock her back so much. But her shield worked and the bullet stopped short and turned into deformed slag in midair, as did the ones that followed it, though each one penetrated a little further and knocked more wind out of her. Fortunately, Keith’s companions subdued him and wrestled the gun from him before he got enough shots off to wear her down.

The one who had tried to talk Keith down turned and looked towards where they were again, though he obviously still didn’t see them.

“Okay, we surrender,” he said. “But don’t imagine this is over – we may not be able to get the political control we need to wage all out war on you monsters but others will learn from our mistakes.

I don’t like these people, Matthias said dryly. But I think the cavalry are here. That was quicker than I expected. Sure enough, the doors burst open and man in a general’s uniform burst in with a large numbers of military police who subdued the conspirators and dragged them from the room.

The general in the mean time turned towards where they were still concealed from Matthias. “Is Peter with you? I think I owe him and you an apology. He told me this was a trick. I appear to have been used quite badly and until I saw your broadcast I didn’t know. Please show yourselves. I promise I mean you no trouble.”

He’s my immediate superior, Peter said. I think he’s telling the truth.

I’m certainly not picking up any deception, Matthias said as he dropped his concealment. But he still got here rather too quickly for my taste and without a unicorn or rifling through his brain it’s hard to say for sure. So keep your shield up for now, Lyd. He turned his attention to the general. “You’ll have to excuse us if we don’t trust you given tonight’s events. We’re leaving now.”

“I understand.” The General nodded before looking at Peter. “I’m going to do my best to make sure you don’t get any repercussions for what happened tonight. You’ve stopped a coup after all.”

“Thank you, sir,” Peter said as Matthias jumped them out.

—

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