Tyrese watched from the shadows as the figure climbed out the window onto the fire escape.  The lithe form leaned back into the window and pulled out a backpack and what looked like a shovel.

The deaf, mute gym teacher had been scoping out Anna’s apartment for the past few days.  He had no desire to rekindle his brief foray into crime fighting.  He’d done a bit of good in Siren’s absence, and then he’d fought a compelled legend and won, and survived a punch from the late Aegis.  He’d walked away from MMA fighting after losing his eardrums and tongue; he knew a sign to walk away when he saw one.  Quit while you’re still breathing.  But something about Anna was bothering him.  

He knew she’d been using the gym.  He’d tried to talk her into coming back to teaching; she could use her power to get her job back easy enough, it wasn’t a huge abuse of power considering the circumstances.  She’d just told him she had things to do first.  And so he’d started staking out her apartment at night, waiting to see if she was picking back up her mantle as Siren.

She was less in costume than she was in disguise; wearing black yoga pants and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled low over her eyes.  She climbed down the fire escape, moving swiftly and quietly.  Tyrese whistled to her and stepped out of the shadows as she dropped from the ladder and landed in a crouch.  She spun around and held up the shovel defensively before she recognized Tyrese and lowered it.

He signed an apology for startling her.

She tucked the shovel behind her back under the backpack.  “What are you doing here?” she signed.

“Checking on you.  You never answer my texts.  I was starting to get worried.”

She apologized and again offered the vague explanation that she’d been busy.  

His eyes flicked to the shovel.  “New weapon for fighting crime?”

She struggled with what to tell him.  She’d been avoiding really analyzing her plan for fear of realizing how bad it probably was.  She certainly hadn’t told anyone else about it.  She could justify her actions once they were done if she had to.  “Don’t worry about it,” she signed finally.

“Now I’m more worried.”

She signed at him to go home.  He shook his head, his concern growing.  Anna inwardly cursed his deafness and her inability to just tell him to drop it.

She signed at him not to worry about it; she’d be done soon.  She then turned her back on him before he could respond and walked off, abruptly ending the conversation.  

Tyrese would not be dismissed so easily.  He stepped after her, quickly catching up to her with his long stride.  He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.  She grabbed his hand, twisting his arm before she shoved him back, surprising him with her speed and strength.  She’d been training hard.

“Tyrese, please, leave this alone,” she said out loud as she signed it, carefully mouthing the words for emphasis.  She abruptly turned again, cutting him off.

Tyrese uttered a frustrated, guttural growl and he grabbed her backpack, ripping it open.  She turned as a big black plastic bag fell out.  Tyrese knelt and examined it, finding the zippers.  “Why do you have a body bag?” he signed to her.

She snatched it up and began stuffing it back in her bag, dropping the shovel in the process.  Tyrese grabbed the shovel and held it up.

She signed at him to give it back.  He made no move.  She grabbed for it and he held it above his head out of her reach.

She considered trying to take it from him for a moment.  He was looking better, but he was clearly still suffering from his injuries.  She stood a decent chance if she tried to fight him for it.  And then she realized she was about to fight one of her few friends, a man who was only concerned for her, as he probably should be.  

She felt sick to her stomach.

She signed an apology.  Tyrese nodded, still holding the shovel up.  She sighed and took a deep breath before explaining everything.  She left out the bits about her visit to the prison and her encounter with Ursula, for many reasons.  Tyrese followed along, nodding periodically, not making any comments.  

“And I just need to do this.  There have been so many other wrongs that need to be righted, but I can fix this one thing.”  At some point she had started talking out loud again as she signed, and she was getting choked up as she plead her case.  

Tyrese nodded again, still not responding.  She waited for some admonishment, something, anything.

Tyrese handed her back the shovel, and asked if she had another one.

She hugged him fiercely.  He hugged her back, ignoring the fact that she was squeezing his bruised ribs painfully.



Macy stared at her phone.  A watched pot never boils, she told herself, and set it on the counter.  She’d finally texted Anna.  After twenty minutes of composing and erasing message after message, she’d finally hit send on a message that simply read, “Hey.”  It was something.

She went to the fridge.  People had finally stopped giving her food, and she had more leftovers crammed into her fridge than she could ever eat.  She pulled a whole lasagna out.  She had no clue who even had given her all this stuff, and if anyone wanted their pans or dishes back, they were out of luck.

Her phone sat silently on the counter while she warmed up a plate and ate.  The lasagna was rubbery and gross, and half her slide went straight in the garbage with the whole rest of the pan.  They definitely weren’t getting their pan back now.

Anna still hadn’t responded.  She picked up her phone and called.

“You have reached the voice mailbox…”  

She sighed and nearly hung up, but waited for the beep.  

“I miss you.”



Ellen’s fingers twitched.

“Oh my god, it’s working!” Anna said.  They’d laid Ellen’s body on Anna’s bed back in her apartment, still in the dress she’d been buried in.  Anna and Tyrese stood on either side of the bed, Anna reading from a sheet of paper.

Tyrese gave her a look, signing for her to focus.

“Right,” she breathed.  She looked back at the spell, and started chanting again.  She’d carefully transcribed the words from her naked body.  There had been minimal smudging luckily, and Ursula’s handwriting had been rather neat and easy to read given how it had been written.  

Tyrese’s flesh rippled with gooseflesh.  Every instinct told him to stop this, but he kept still.  He’d helped Anna dig up her grave.  He had opened the coffin, finding stiff corpse, the faint odor of Formaldehyde wafting out over the stronger smell of perfumes and the scent of freshly dug earth all around them.  He remembered wrapping that poor girl’s still warm body in a sheet and carrying her out of that house as they’d pulled her out and put her in the body bag.  This was wrong, but so was her untimely death at the hands of the Sea Witch.  And it wasn’t like she could get any deader.

Anna continued to read the arcane words, hoping her pronunciation was right.  It couldn’t matter too much, she told herself.  There were magic users from all over the world, with all different accents, speaking the same arcane tongue.  Surely not having the perfect pronunciation of every guttural syllable couldn’t affect the outcome.

Ellen’s eyes moved under her eyelids.  

Tyrese took a deep breath.  He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, and he took quick, shallow breaths that irritated his still healing ribs.  He forced himself to calm down, watching as Ellen’s eyes continued to move about under her closed lids.  Her eyebrows rose slightly.  Tyrese recalled learning that oftentimes morticians had to glue the eyes shut of the deceased, otherwise they could open back up and disappoint or, more often than not, horrify friends and family at a funeral.  He wasn’t sure he wanted her to be able to open her eyes, afraid of what they might see looking back at them.

Anna’s eyes drifted to the bottom of her notes.  She was nearing the end of the spell.  She continued to read.  The words were uncomfortable to say, not just physically, though they were sounds she thought the human mouth was not meant to make, but something about them just felt off.

Ellen’s left foot twitched, tapping spastically.  Tyrese took a step back, looking up at Anna.  She kept up the incantation, and he watched her lips and mouth move in alien shapes.  Tyrese didn’t pretend to know anything about magic, but he was starting to doubt that Anna’s theory that her power could bend such powerful forces to her will with no consequence.  He could only think of two people that had ever come back from the dead, and the first one was a miracle performed by the second.  Magic and superpowers flew in the face of a lot of the teachings of the bible, but it still seemed wrong that Anna’s power was on par with the Son of God.

Ellen’s eyes continued to flutter about under her eyelids, and her extremities twitched wildly.  Tyrese signed at Anna to stop, but she wasn’t paying attention.  He clapped his hands and made a hooting noise.

She stopped, but she didn’t look at Tyrese.  She dropped the paper and looked down at Ellen.  She hadn’t stopped because of him.  She had finished with the spell.  Ellen’s body had gone still.

“Ellen?” Anna asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Tyrese’s heart was racing.  She was completely still; she didn’t even appear to be breathing.

“Ellen?” she asked again.  She reached out and pressed her fingers against Ellen’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

Ellen’s blue eyes snapped open.  They were filmy, but the cloudiness cleared away instantly, and her eyes looked up to meet Anna’s.

“Ellen!  Oh my god!  It worked!  You’re back,” Anna rattled.  She started to pull her hand back, but she still hadn’t felt a pulse.  She pressed deeper, and Ellen’s hand snapped up and grabbed her wrist tightly.

“Ellen, it’s okay.  You’re alive, you’re safe.”  But was she?  She caught Tyrese’s worried look out of the corner of her eye as Ellen gripped her wrist so hard it started to hurt, and she felt the first twinges of worry settle in her own stomach.  Something wasn’t right.  “Ellen, it’s me, Anna.  Macy’s sist-”

Ellen twisted Anna’s wrist viciously, forcing her to her knees by the bed, and she sat up and leapt off the bed, throwing Anna to the floor.

“Shit,” Anna swore as she banged her head on the bed frame.

Tyrese rushed around the bed.  Ellen moved stiffly but quickly to meet him, shoving him back with both hands.  Tyrese was stunned at the strength behind the push, stumbling backwards.  Ellen looked past him to the window across the apartment.  She broke into an awkward run out of the bedroom.

“Ellen, stop!” Anna cried after her as she pulled herself to her feet.  Ellen paid her no mind.  Tyrese sprinted after her, grabbing the small girl from behind in his powerful arms, wrapping her in a bear hug.  Again the strength she possessed surprised him as the pulled her arms apart.  He skin felt weird against his, cold and stiff, and he reflexively recoiled just a bit, allowing her a moment to slip free from her grasp.

“Ellen, listen to me!  We’re trying to help you!” Anna cried, running after them.  She was still a bit dizzy from hitting her head, and she couldn’t get out of the way as Ellen shoved Tyrese into her, the huge man smashing her against the wall.

Ellen turned and headed back for the window.  Tyrese launched himself after her.  She was unnaturally strong, and he wasn’t messing around anymore.  He grabbed her in a headlock, tightening his massive arm around her windpipe.  She clawed at his arm, drawing blood as she raked his flesh, but he held on.  He lifted her off the ground, and she kicked back, driving her heels painfully into his shins, but he still kept his grip, waiting for her to weaken, but she never did.  He tried adjusting his grip, thinking he must have been holding her wrong.  His arm was slick with his own blood, and she slipped free the moment opportunity presented itself.  She planted her feet on the ground and pushed back, slamming Tyrese into the wall.  He grunted as she smashed into his bruised ribs, and she slammed back again, forcing him to let go of her completely.  Tyrese dropped to his knees, clutching his ribs.

Anna rushed over, and Ellen caught her by the throat in one of her bloodstained hands.  Ellen threw her backwards, and Anna landed hard on her back on her coffee table, breaking it.

“Oh, fuck,” she moaned.  She looked over as Ellen made for the window.  She glanced at Tyrese, doubled over in pain.  “Alright,” she said, grabbing one of the wooden table legs as she rolled to her feet.  “Clearly I’ve screwed something up, and I’m really sorry to be taking this out on you.”  She rushed Ellen.  Ellen turned to stop her again, and Anna ducked nimbly under her arm and brought the table leg across her face as hard as she could, breaking it.

Ellen’s head hung low in the shadows for a moment, and she didn’t move.  Anna waited, still holding the splintered end of the table leg.  Ellen slowly looked up, revealing that Anna’s blow had smashed through the skin on the side of her face.  She didn’t bleed though, and the strong smell of preservatives came from the gash.  In the moonlight through the window, Anna could see the pale glimmer of bone.

“Oh shit.”  Anna ducked as Ellen swung at her.  She stepped in, peppering her with blows, aiming low, trying to knock her off balance.  She wasn’t holding anything back.  Ellen was much slower than her, but the dead girl, and that’s what she was, Anna could see that now, possessed inhuman strength.  Anna recalled hearing somewhere that a lot of physical limitations are put in place by the brain.  She didn’t know if that was true, or that was the case here, but the animated corpse was insanely strong.  

Anna took a solid blow in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her.  She stumbled back out of the way of the follow up swing, and Tyrese came out of nowhere and tackled Ellen to the ground.  She easily threw him off of her and got back up in time to catch Anna’s sweeping downward kick aimed at her skull.  She swung Anna by her ankle with both hands, throwing her clear across the room where she luckily landed on her couch, bouncing off it to the floor.  But the time she got up, Ellen was already out the window onto the fire escape.  She raced over as Ellen climbed up onto the railing and jumped off, falling three stories to the street below, where she stood up and walked off.

“What the hell have I done?” she asked.



Izzy slipped the sling back on and hung his recovering arm.  He was tired.  This, all of this, whatever this was, was not helping.

Tyrese signed something to Anna.  “What is it?” Izzy asked.  Anna had called him, not sure of what else to do, and he’d come out to find that she had somehow tried to bring the girl the Sea Witch had killed back to life and now she was back and running loose in the city.  They were standing by the edge of the river, where someone had said he’d seen a girl matching Ellen’s description by the water.

“Tyrese thinks she might not have to breath.  He had her in a choke hold for a long time.  Which would make sense if she was…”

“Reanimated instead of resurrected.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Like a zombie,” he added.  It was harsh, perhaps unnecessarily so, but he felt the situation called for it.  The Legend turned away from the black water.  The trail was cold, whether whatever Anna had brought back could breath underwater or not, there was no tracking it down now.

Anna didn’t respond.  Tyrese stood off to the side.  Barrage’s lips weren’t the easiest to read, especially in the dim light of the distant streetlamps, but his body language was very clear.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Izzy asked.

“I just, I had to try-”

“Bullshit.  You weren’t thinking.  What the fuck do you know about magic?”

“I-”

“No.  You’re so far out of your depth.  You don’t get to just undo death,” he growled.

Her eyes narrowed.  He’d pushed her too far.

“Izzy-” she started.  His good arm snapped up, pointing two fingers at her throat.  She felt a small tremor of force across her larynx, threatening to cut her voice off.

“Don’t you dare tell me to stop.  I will shut you up so fast if you make so much as a sound.  You called me here, and you need to hear this, and hear it well.  You dabbled in something you can’t possibly understand.  I don’t even want to know how you stumbled on this, but you best forget it.  We have to live with the consequences of our actions, death included.  That’s not just being a hero, that’s being human.”

Her lip trembled, but she kept quiet, letting Izzy’s rage wash over her.  It was harsh, but he wasn’t wrong.

Izzy lowered his arm.  He didn’t need to tell her that brining back Ellen as some sort of magical undead monster would be far more devastating to Macy than Ellen’s death had been.  “Go home, get some sleep, and tomorrow, go to Arlington.  Take Lady Sapphire up on offer.  Join the LC.”

“I thought you were against me joining the LC,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.

“And I was wrong.  I thought you were better off on your own.  I didn’t know you’d go dabbling around in forces you can’t understand.  Evidently, you actually need the oversight.”  He took a deep breath, and turned to Tyrese, who’d been watching the entire scene play out.  “And you.  I have a ton of respect for you.”  His eyes flicked back to Anna.  “But tell him he’s an idiot for enabling your stupidity.”

Anna started to sign it to him, but Tyrese signed that he got it, and added an apology.

“Izzy…  I’m sorry…”

“Don’t.  I don’t want to hear it.”  He turned on his heels and walked off.



Anna found herself back at her apartment, dirty and exhausted.  All she wanted to do was to fall into bed, and put off dealing with everything that had happened until she had slept for at least twenty hours.

“Hey, where have you been?  I’ve been worried; your place is a mess.”

Anna froze, seeing Macy looking at her from her kitchen door.

“Sorry, I let myself in.  You haven’t been answering your phone, and you weren’t here, and I couldn’t bring myself to go back to my place.”

Of course she couldn’t.  It reminded her of Ellen.  The woman she had gotten killed and then dug up in a foolish attempt to bring her back and had created a monster.

“What’s wrong?” Macy asked.  All of the blood had drained from Anna’s face, and she was pale as a sheet.  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She wasn’t exactly wrong.  Anna tried to find the words.  She’d toyed with them over and over as her plan formulated, before everything went wrong.  Something humble, she wouldn’t even take credit.  Oh, Ellen’s alive again?  Someone must be righting wrongs.  Not that, she hadn’t found the right words, but that was moot now.  There were no right words for what she had actually succeeding in doing.

“Anna?”

“I’m joining the LC,” she blurted.  It was the lesser of two evils.

“What?  Why?” Macy asked.

“Because-”  There were so many things that could have followed.  Because left to her own devices, Anna had snuck into Lighten Prison to see the woman who had killed Macy’s girlfriend and trusted that woman to teach her how to use magic to resurrect Ellen, and now whatever she had raised was loose.  “Because it’s the right call.”

“Oh come on, what happened to everything we wanted.”

“It’s my decision, and it’s final.”

“I guess it is.”  Macy picked up her purse as she walked towards the door.  “Good luck with that.”  She brushed past her adopted sister on the way out, not looking back as she walked down the hall.

Anna wanted to tell her to stop, that she could explain.  That explanation wouldn’t fix the problem.  Macy would forget her annoyance at Anna’s sudden decision to rejoin the LC, that minor infraction overwritten by the reason for that decision, a violation of trust that would not be smoothed over so easily.

Anna stood in the doorway to her apartment long after Macy had left.  Everything was starting to catch up with her.  Her chest rose and fell as her breaths got shorter, more panicked.  She’d only wanted to help, how had everything gotten so screwed up?  She slammed her apartment door, stumbling into her apartment.  Even standing was suddenly a chore.  She just had to make it to the couch, and she could curl up in a ball and hide.  Hot tears fractured her vision, and she tripped over her broken coffee table, landing on the floor in front of her couch.  Her hands fumbled around above her until she managed to pull the couch cushions off and over herself.  She pulled her knees up to her chest and lay on the floor on her side, hidden under the cushions.

She would join the LC.  Siren would be the super heroine she had once been, a part of one of the greatest super hero teams that had ever been.  But for now, Annabelle Carillon passed out under a pile of pillows.