Charlie shoved himself from the hospital bed, only to collapse to the floor. How he kept holding his time he had no idea, but he held it. He kept holding while he pushed himself to his feet, pulled on a pair of boxers, grabbed the printout he’d been trying to read when he saw the feed from Widget’s camera, and staggered down the hall.

  ***

  Charlie had no idea how much subjective time had passed. Beneath his mask, sweat and snot poured down his face, ran across his soaked body, only to leak out through the vents in his boots. He sipped from the integral camelback, hoping he wouldn’t run out of water again. Last time he’d had to let enough time slip to fill it, and the image of an anti-tank missile splashing into Midnight filled his vision the entire time.

  He didn’t know how far back he’d thrown himself. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness when the image seared itself into his memory. He only knew he had to get to New York in time to prevent the deaths of his friends.

  ***

  The incoming mortar round hung in the sky; an enigma Charlie couldn’t figure out no matter how hard he tried. Harlem ought to be burning, but the mortar round held the only flame in sight. Charlie trudged up to it, wondering if he should let it fall, so he didn’t break causality. Midnight would be pissed if he broke causality.

  The thought of his friend snapped him back to crystal clear focus. If the first mortar shell hadn’t landed yet, he could still save them. With adrenaline born energy he scanned the street corner turned battlefield. A simple fire wouldn’t hurt Frostfire or Midnight. He’d seen Widget and Flex storming the militia bastion in Times Square. Jack had Angel in one arm, Siren in the other, and he hung halfway into the subway entrance on the corner.

  That left Axeman. The firefighter lay near Grace, almost directly under the falling mortar round.

  Charlie pulled a length of cord from one of the pockets sewn into the inside of his costume. Widget told him it could hold the weight of two full grown adults; today he’d find out if she’d been right. He looped one end around Axeman’s wrist, pulled it snug, and staggered over to the manhole in the middle of the intersection. It took three tries, his gloves slipping from his sweat coated fingers, but he got the manhole cover off.

  After panting for a few moments, time trying to slip from his grasp, he leapt feet first into the open hole. The moment he felt the cord go taut, he let his time fly free.

  ***

  Charlie staggered up to the pair of militiamen with the missile. One standing where he’d wind up a crispy critter from the backblast, the other aiming directly at the steps down to the subway platform. Clutching at his time, he stumbled into the guy with the missile launcher, letting go the moment his shoulder hit the guy’s chest. The missile fired, spiraling off into the sky. Charlie sighed in relief. Then the sky lit up, a single writhing winged figure backlit by the blast.

  “Fuck.” Rewind, try again.

  ***

  As Charlie let go of his time, he shoved the loader into the guy with the missile launcher. That guy stumbled forward into the other, and they went down in a heap. But not before the missile fired, skipping off the ground, then looping around to plunge straight into the subway steps.

  “You gotta be kidding me.” Rewind. Try again.

  ***

  Charlie knelt, weeping, clutching hit time to keep it from slipping. He’d tried. He’d tried hitting them with two by fours. He’d tried shoving them. Punching them. Grabbing at the launcher. Hitting the launcher. He’d even broken down, stolen a gun, and shot them. Every single time, no matter what he did, somebody died. One of his friends, one of his companions, one of his Blue Bloods, died.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Every. Single. Time.

  Crawling forward, Charlie wished he could send some kind of message. Wished he could jump back even once more, just long enough to leave a voice mail. But he couldn’t. The edges of his vision sparkled, and the two guys wavered in front of him. Fate said somebody had to die here. He’d founded the Blue Bloods with the idea that he’d be the man behind the scenes, making the hard calls, able to do everything logically and rationally, with plenty of time to think over even the most urgent of decisions.

  But here at the end of the line, that’s not who he was. Here, at the very end, he realized. He wasn’t the chess master who would sacrifice pawns. He smiled when he realized that Jessie had got it right all along. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled forward, grabbing at the missile launcher when he stumbled. Clutching to his time with an iron grip, he dragged himself upward, pulled himself around until he dangled from the front of the launcher. He hooked his legs around the militiaman’s knee, wrapped his arms around the launcher itself.

  Then he took a deep breath and let go of his time one last time.

  ***

  Midnight charged up the steps, Jesse close behind. Grace and Widget looked at each other, shrugged, and ran up the steps behind them. As the forward pair hit the closed gate at the top of the steps, Jesse shouldered it aside, and the world exploded. Something hit Jesse square in the chest and knocked her back down the steps. As she tumbled past Grade and Widget, Angela recognized the object as the horribly mutilated remains of a human body.

  “Grace! Go with Midnight!” Widget spun and leapt down the stairs following Jesse. She slid to a stop on her knees, rolling the body off and checking Jesse as her friend blinked and started to sit up, smaller than ever but still apparently unharmed. Then, as if drawn by magnets, her gaze went back to the body she’d rolled off. To the loose fitting, tattered armored costume she’d made herself. It hadn’t rolled like a body. It rolled like a body bag full of soup.

  Fluid, made colorless by the dim light in the subway station, leaked from the facemask. Something whispered in her ear, the armor Mega Moppet had wished up. She ignored it, trying to think, trying to fight back the wave of gray dust, trying to imagine anything she could do for someone who’d been… pulped. A line of text in an alien script flashed in front of her eye, her armor trying to get her attention.

  Text in a very familiar alien script.

  “I wish I had that sarcophagus!”

  ***

  Grace followed Midnight out of the subway station into a makeshift military encampment she almost didn’t recognize as one of the most famous intersections in the world. The buildings surrounding Times Square were in sorry shape; most showed signs of fires, and all the famous billboards and signs had fallen away in whole or in part. Some of them had been used to create barricades across the roads that led into the square, but most had simply been shoved to the side, covering the entrances to the ravaged buildings.

  Midnight had already leapt into the fray. Grace couldn’t even properly follow her as she leapt, darted, and even slid from one group of militia and gang members to another, leaving a trail of broken weapons and broken men in her wake. She literally had a wake, too, as she picked up almost half of the opponents she came in contact with and threw them at the nearest horizontal surface, where they either lay still or curled up and groaned.

  Grace still heard the sound of large engines and, more importantly, the tracks of a construction vehicle; if the others were to join them via the subway tunnels, she had to be sure the criminals they’d come to apprehend didn’t block off the subway entrances. Several of the engines she heard were in what looked to be military vehicles with little stubby tubes sticking out the top. Some of those had tracks, but most had six fat bellied tires beneath them. Regardless, none of them were moving.

  She closed her eyes and focused on the sound, turning away from where she’d last seen Midnight leaping towards the military trucks. When she opened her eyes, she flinched involuntarily as the unmistakable front of a tank nosed its way through the nearest barricade. A quick glance showed her its gun moving to track Midnight. The earlier explosion, right in the middle of the encampment, told her that the criminals weren’t likely to hold fire just because their own men were in danger.

  Grace froze. Then, helpless before her own gallows humor, chuckled, as a sheen of ice covered everything nearby. She laughed again as she imagined what she’d look like trying to face down a tank in the middle of Times Square. Memories of the famous picture from an entirely different square rose unbidden in her mind, and the voice of eternity spoke to her, whispered intimately into her ear from a million miles away.

  And now we answer the call.

  Frostfire walked calmly over into the tank’s path, turned to face it, and looked straight into a barrel that seemed larger around than her head.

  entirely new chapter of Blue Bloods I've written in over a decade.