Arc and I conferred quietly behind the re-closed door. “Somehow walking straight across an open killzone doesn’t seem like the best way to reach our destination,” she said. Her deadpan was impressive. Except in moments of strong emotion her face defaulted to an impassive, almost masklike expression. I was getting used to it, but it was a little disconcerting. “If our foes prepared well enough to bring anti-air, they’re certain to have snipers all over that heap.”

“With you there.” I crouched, rubbing my bruised calf with a grimace. “Unless- your translation, can it make light pass through you too? Make you invisible?”

She cocked an eyebrow, looking down at me from her spot leaning against the doorframe. “An astute suggestion, but no. I might be able to eventually, but for now the best I can manage is a blur. I’ll go fast, mind you, but I’ll likely be seen and I certainly couldn’t bring you with me. What about that…thing in your arm? It stopped my knife up top.”

I rubbed my injured hand with the other, tracing the zigzag lines of the PIN where it still stitched my wounds. “It’s called a PIN. Personal Interdiction Net. You heard of it?” I asked hopefully. It was worth a shot- but she shook her head. “I’ve only had it a couple days and I have no idea how to use it. It caught the knife on its own, yeah, but a fifteen-milly slug is a little different.”

“Oh, somewhat.” Dry as a bone.

“Yeah. And it’s busy holding my arm together anyway. The previous owner cut me up pretty good before she, ah, donated it.”

“…I see,” she muttered, sounding like she didn’t. “So the frontal approach is right out. Shall we backtrack and look for an exit that isn’t so exposed?”

“Another exit, yes.” I stood and stretched ’til my back almost cramped, feeling little bruises and sore spots all over me in addition to the big one on my calf and the already-familiar ache in my arm. When this is over I’m going to have a hot bath then sleep for a week. The ‘when’ was deliberate.

“Backtrack, no. I’ve got this, remember?” I tapped the saw’s hilt. “And come on, you can breeze right through walls anyway!” I joked.

“It’s much harder than ‘breezing’, I assure you.” Finally I got a hint of a scowl out of that calm mask. “If you want me conscious on the other side we’ll have to do things your way.”

“Right. Now, was I seeing things, or were there some more buildings between here and there? Real close to the cliff wall.” I jerked my thumb in the pertinent direction.

“More ruins than buildings, but yes. I suppose any cover’s better than none.”

“Exactly. So how about we get as close as we can while staying in here, then go across using the ruins as cover?” It wasn’t much of a plan but I didn’t see an alternative. Besides, the longer we stayed here the more likely someone would come looking for the grunts we killed.

Arc’s fingers rhythmically tapped the hilt of one of her knives. “If we’ve thought of it, they will have too.” She jerked her head towards the door. “We’ll likely have to go through more of them, but I honestly don’t have a better idea.”

“My thoughts exactly. We have an advantage, though.”

She actually smiled, dark eyes liquid in the dim light. “And what in the void is that?”

I drew the saw. “Whatever the fuck they’re expecting, it definitely isn’t us.” I picked a likely-looking spot on the wall and got to cutting. The Wiken glittersaw went through rusted sheetmetal as easily as it did air. I cut out three sides of a door-sized rectangle and folded it open, using my jacket to protect my hand. The space beyond was unlit but cavernous.

Arc already had one of her big fancy pistols out. She aimed it one-handed, crossed the other wrist under it with a red flashlight held reverse-gripped, and stepped through. How very tactical. I followed her through, deciding to keep the saw close at hand and getting out a red light of my own in the other. Ought to get a light for the coilgun, honestly. I dismissed the thought for later and scanned the room.

It was huge compared to the hallway we’d just left, that was obvious. Neither our flashlights or the faint illumination spilling in through the new door reached the far wall. Water dripped and trickled from a droopy ceiling probably thirty feet high, and the liquid echoes it produced said the room was large indeed. The concrete floor was even worse than in the hallway, shattered and heaved badly enough to make D-block’s sidewalks look pristine. Arc and I tread carefully around muddy holes and puddles of indeterminate depth.

“Amazing this shitheap’s still standing.” I’d meant to mutter to myself, but my words carried in the echoey space.

“It wasn’t always down here, was it?” Arc’s eyes remained on the surroundings. Her pistol and light stayed steady, perfectly in sync.

“Doubt it. The whole freakin’ Chasm wasn’t here a few centuries ago, I think. There was an earthquake or something- dropped a whole damn block down kings know how deep.”

“You think? Not know?” Still moving forward, she panned her light over a monster heap of tumbled machinery, long since rusted into a single hunk. Maybe this had been a storage building for spares or stuff the main factory wasn’t using.

Her words made me bristle on instinct but her tone was curious, not confrontational. “I think, yeah. They don’t exactly teach us history in D-block. I have no idea how long ago it happened other than ‘a while.’” I stepped over something that might once have been a toolbox. “No clue how long Savlop-2’s even been around, for that matter, or the Sun Age or any of that. Kings…”

Arc actually stopped and looked back at me this time, making me dip my light so I didn’t blind her. “Truly? No idea at all?”

“I mean, it was a long time ago, obviously. But that’s it.” It had never struck me as strange before. Ages ago things had been one way, and now they were this way. That was it. But even Arc’s poker face melted into astonishment.

“…I quite literally cannot imagine what that’s like, Sharkie. These Admin people- they are people, aren’t they?”

Right. Her friends are robots. “As far as I know. For some definition.”

“Well, they’re even crueler than I thought.” She turned and kept moving, her light beam sweeping precisely across the cracked and dusty floor.

I didn’t answer. Somehow I’d never thought of our lack of history as something intentional- oh, our lack of education? Sure. There were free educhannels running on the holo 24/7 for kids to watch, free Net classes on reading and basic math taught by teachers recorded who knew who long ago, but none of it was required. It was up to parents, or the kids themselves, to choose to use them.

The one exception was the literacy grant- Admin would give a one time payout, adjusted year to year, to anyone who could pass their reading and writing exam. It wasn’t anything comprehensive- I’d gotten my money after only a year or so of ‘Sawada Finishing School’- but the test was randomly generated for each taker and it was pretty hard to scam. Even parents who just wanted to steal the payoff to buy drugs or gamble would have to actually get their kids to learn if they wanted them to pass. It was an incredibly cynical but effective way to promote literacy. I figured Admin didn’t want us deeks devolving into pre-literate apes. They wanted us just smart enough to make good factory drones, too stupid to do anything else.

Looked at that way the lack of any historical education made sense- you didn’t need to know anything about the Sun Age to read the controls on a paste vat. But the way Arc found it so repugnant had me wondering if it was a more deliberate omission. Maybe there were parts of history they didn’t want us taking inspiration from- the ‘downtrodden casting off their oppressors’ or some fantastical shit like that. It had to have happened before. Or maybe it was just because the past might show there were alternatives to the current system. It was harder to concieve of getting rid of Admin if you couldn’t imagine what would replace them.

What, if anything, I amended to myself. Admin did shit for us except take. Why would anyone else be any better-

There was a rattle as my boot hit a rusty length of pipe, sending it clanking across the floor. Arc and I both froze but nothing else happened. She glanced back at me and I waved her off, shaking my head. Now was not the time for my woefully underequipped political philosophizing.

This place was like an open grave for mechanical equipment. I saw huge presses rusting in half, whole heaps of end mills piled like beer cans, lathes that would never turn again. Everything, including the heaved floor, was covered in a carpet of oxide-ochre dust that looked weird and matte in our red beams. We were the first people here in a while.

Arc and I got to the far wall without further incident. It was blank sheet metal divided at intervals by support girders. She wordlessly stepped aside so I could attack it with the saw. I squinted against the smoky clouds of rust it raised as it cut another door.

I went through first, leading with my light, and immediately threw up a hand to stop Arc. “Look.”

“I see it.” This room was big too, though not quite as cavernous as the last. More old equipment was shoved up against the walls, but the most concerning thing was in the middle. The floor was in good shape here, hardly even cracked. This made it easy to see the multitude of bootprints and trails in the dust that covered it. Most of them surrounded a heap of mostly uncorroded metal parts.

Arc came through, immediately sidestepped out of the doorway and panning around with her gun. Though I was doing the same thing, I risked a glance over at her. Her regal face was a mask. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration but both stayed open for maximum peripheral vision. That was how you were supposed to do it, but I’d never gotten the hang of aiming with both eyes open. Even with a holo sight I still squinted one shut, though I’d switched from right to left after getting my new eye.

After a few tense moments Arc lowered her pistol and clicked on the safety. For all our vigilance, this room was as deserted as the last. It hadn’t been that way recently, though. Most of the prints on the floor had sharp edges and little dust at the bottoms. I was no professional tracker but they had to be pretty fresh.

Arc nodded when I brought it up. “Certainly. It has to have been your friends from across the way.”

“Cute,” I muttered, walking up to the pile of metal that occupied the room’s center like a shrine to the rest of the building’s decay. Closer up it seemed to be made up of almost identical pieces- a sort of hollow cylindrical mounting maybe two feet long and one across. Each consisted of a pair of metal rings on either end, joined by an elegant web of metal strands to make the sides. A few of those strands branched into the interior as if to hold something at the cylinder’s very center. Some were painted white or brown, others were left as various bare metals- aluminum, steel, copper, something iridescent that might have been bismuth, tungsten, even what looked like platinum or gold. They had the weirdly organic look of having come out of a printer, and the slightly chalky texture of the unpainted ones made me think they had. Each also had a set of copper contacts on the end rings, with embedded traces leading down towards the middle. There was some variation in the shape of the latticed sides, and some lacked the internal branches completely.

What they all had in common, though, was that that parts of them seemed to have been dissolved or eaten away- and no matter what the cylinders were made out of, the edges of the missing sections had become a dull-gray and crumbly substance. I’d seen it before not too long ago. Kings strike me down if the inexplicable wound that killed the Winnower hadn’t had the same stuff around its edges.

“What do you make of these, Sharkie?” Arc crouched next to me, setting her elbows on her knees. I saw her wince as the motion widened some of the tears in her jacket. “It would seem an awful lot of metal to just leave around.”

“Yeah. I think…I think they were experimenting, trying to come up with something that worked.”

“That makes sense. So you haven’t forgotten the scientific method, at least.” I shot her a look but she just smiled. She met my eyes for just a moment before her weirdly intense gazde returned to the cylinders. “Work for what, though, that’s the million-ton question…”

I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, but tons of what?”

“Of shipping, or orbital lift capacity,” she said, meeting it with one of her own. “A common unit of value exchange during the Sun Age- and a common expression as well.”

It startled a laugh out of me. “Don’t act like I should’ve understood. Nobody goes to space anymore.”

“I know. A pity,” she sighed wistfully.

“What, you have friends up there?”

“No. But it would still be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so.” I’d never given it much thought- might as well say it would be nice to be a princess or have superpowers. It did sound fun though- and I imagined I’d enjoy seeing Dezhda and Pengyi and my dad’s reactions as much as I would going there myself. “Anyway. You ever seen this stuff before?” I indicated the gray powdery stuff stuff on the damaged lattices.

She reached out and brushed a finger across it without hesitation, then rolled it between her fingers and smelled it. “I should think so. It’s just iron dust.”

“Wait, seriously?” I grabbed another frame- it was a very pale, light metal, magnesium maybe- and sniffed. Smelled like iron, felt like iron when I touched it. Tasted like it too.

“Quit looking at me like that,” I told Arc, who snorted. “And let me phrase that better. Have you seen it just…grow like this? I mean, you already know I’m just an uneducated deek, but one metal doesn’t just turn into another.”

“No, this is quite impossible, unless your Admin have been researching the Philosopher’s Stone.” She paused a moment, her pistol clinking lightly against her leg. It was weird- she got a real lights-on-nobody-home look, thinking to herself with the same disconcerting intensity she displayed everywhere else. “Or if they’ve gotten into some science they ought not to have,” she said when she returned.

“Spacetech shit,” I said flatly.

“If that’s what you call it. Making one element into another used to be possible, I’ve read, if monstrously inefficient. Or it was if one had access the right facilities- which they certainly don’t.” She cocked her head, thinking again. “Unless they’ve got a gigawatt reactor hidden somewhere. And have EM-suppressing technology even more anachronistic than the transmutation technology, because if they didn’t the Sculptor would surely have noticed-“

“You mean she’d pick it up on sensors or something? She spying on us from that tower?”

Arc shrugged. “Maybe. But I mean she, herself.” She cut off my next question before I could start. “If she was ever human, Sharkie, I’m not sure she still qualifies for the position.”

“…Okay. Right.” I filed that one away for later- with a few bright red exclamation points on the folder for good measure. I specifically didn’t think about if Arc and I counted. “If Admin had tech like that already, they wouldn’t be fucking around in the dark like this. They’d be using it.” Arc nodded along. “I have seen something like this before, though.” I told her about the Winnower’s mysterious and gruesome death.

“And she was cold too, you say? Flash-frozen?”

“Yup. Near the edges, at least. That trip any wires in your head?”

“King Ironstride comes to mind. ‘Where he walked, chill iron followed.’” She quoted the Originatia with a smirk. Not exactly a Dakessar zealot, it seemed. “I don’t know much else, I admit. Most of what’s written about the Ten Kings of Earth struck me as legend or propaganda, so it never bore much of my interest.”

“Sure,” I muttered, but now it was my turn to think. The Cromwell at the old Dakessar temple Park had taken something from the wall of icons, some object that represented Ironstride. He was also called the Warlord, crowned in iron, such a consummate warrior that killing steel sprung up from his very bootprints. All very silly, but then again Arc had just told me the freak that made us could smell a nuclear reactor from a hundred miles away or something. I couldn’t really discount anything at this point.

I sighed heavily. “Well, if they’ve raised a Martyred King from the dead, talking about it won’t make us any less fucked.”

“Think about it. At least we’ll be killed in a uniquely incomprehensible manner.” Arc stood and offered me a hand, grinning.

I realized she was excited- not that I could judge. There were more reasons she’d left an apparently comfy life at the Sculptor’s tower than to meet Sharkie, suave assassin and world-famous menschenjaeger.

I tossed the cage I was holding back onto the heap and let her pull me up. Her hand was surprisingly calloused.“Thanks. And hell, I’ve never been religious. Maybe I just need some proof.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” she asked, then shook her head. “Whatever. Shall we move on?”

“Yeah. I’m sure not gonna come up with anything else.” We walked around the pile, adding to the mess of tracks on the floor, and I cut yet another hole in the far wall. We went through a few more storerooms without incident, these totally bare except for empty sheet-metal shelves. When I cut through the wall of the third a bit of reflected light came through the gaps. We’d finally reached the Chasm wall side of the outbuilding. Arc and I flicked off our lights and went through, staying close to the wall.

I crouched and crept up to the corner of the building, Arc on my heels. The main factory building was still crawling with activity. Fires still burned in some spots, and mechanical noise and shouts echoed across the wide expanse between us and them. I also saw four lights bobbing in the dark space between the two buildings. They were still closer to the factory than us, but coming closer.

“Someone coming to clean up our mess,” Arc said when I told her.

“Yep.” For a moment I wondered if the two mercs we’d killed had body cameras and even now our images- or mine at least- had been broadcast to the rest of them. But that was ridiculous. What did it matter when they’d shoot any intruders on sight anyway? “Let’s move, then.”

Up ahead were a few low slabs of concrete heaped with wreckage- old foundations, I guessed- and past them was a long pole building that looked kind of like a garage. One of the long walls directly faced the killing field, while the other butted right up against the cliff as if tossed there by a giant. We’d have to go through rather than around. The near end was collapsed, but the far end showed lights flickering through holes in the walls.

“Through there?” I asked Arc, pointing. We could get there using the piles of wreckage for cover, but there’d still be a few seconds where we were exposed to the factory.

“I don’t see a better option. We should just make a break for it, I think. I’ll go across first to see if they’re paying attention.”

The suggestion made me scowl. It made sense, considering what she could do, but it still didn’t sit right. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. If they don’t see me they likely won’t see you- and if they do see me, they won’t hit me.” Calm as still water. But then she glanced down and plucked at the sleeves of her filthy but still very pale coat. “I suppose I could have dressed better.”

That made me crack a nervous smile. “Seriously, did you have to wear white? It gets dirty too easy too.”

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t exactly plan on riding an avalanche into a scrapyard packed with mercenaries, Sharkie.”

“Yeah, well, that’s on you for not coming prepared-“

“And besides, I look good in white.” The lady wasn’t wrong, I had to admit as she squinted at me like I was a used vic she was thinking about buying. “I don’t believe you couldn’t pull it off, though. Black would suit you better.”

Always nice to have a second opinion, I guess. “Yeah, you’re not the first to say that. We can have a nice little fashion show once we’re back up top.” I stood up straight and shook myself.

Arc’s eyes traced her path one more time. “A show isn’t necessary,” she muttered to herself. “I know how I look, and that’s en-“ Suddenly she streaked away, becoming an Arc- colored smear like one of those long-exposure photos. She blurred around the old foundations and was pressed against the wall of the garage in no time flat, standing next to a crooked, empty doorframe.

I blinked rapidly, eyes watering as I listened for gunshots. The way she moved wasn’t natural- it was like my brain viscerally rejected it. When they were clear I met her gaze across the no-man’s-land and waited a bit longer. After thirty seconds with no reaction from the factory I signalled I was coming. I sheathed the saw and pocketed my light- there was more then enough coming from the main building to see by- then took a deep breath and sprinted.

Running had never been my strong suit- cardio was mind-numbingly boring and I was too big anyway. I was puffing pretty good by the time I reached the first rubble pile, already feeling deja-vu from the time I’d had to rescue Walker from the Blues’ ambush. Maybe if I told myself to practice more, this would be the time it stuck. Yeah, right.

I caught Arc’s eye and waited, but no gunfire or shouts said I’d been seen. I sprinted from pile to pile until I finally joined her at the garage building. I was breathing hard and rested my hands on my knees, until I remembered that actually compressed your lungs and stood up straight. I got a bemused, vaguely pitying look from Arc the entire time.

“Hokay,” I huffed out after a short break. “Ready? We’ll try to sneak past if we can…but I doubt we can. You got any juice left?”

“Juice…? Oh. Yes. I’ve had some time to recover.” She was good- hardly a note of mockery in there.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You gain a hundred pounds and see how fast you run.”

“I’ve no idea of what you’re implying.” The corner of her mouth barely twitched. Yes, very good. “Shall I lead?”

“My turn to take point, but thanks.” I drew the saw and coilgun- using a flashlight would give us away quicker than anything- and ducked through the crumpled doorway. Within one corner of the ceiling was smashed down into the interior like a giant rock had landed on it. In some spots it was so low it almost touched the trucks that sat in a neat row, slowly rusting into powder on their dry-rotted tires. Together the obstacles made a wall that closed off our half of the building from the other- and it was from there that weapon-lights flashed and vague voices echoed.

I moved forward slowly, almost sliding my feet instead of lifting them to feel for obstacles where the light through the walls didn’t illuminate. Arc crept like a stalking beast behind me, pistol and dagger in hand. Her breath was calm and even and so was mine. It was moments like this that I most acutely felt I was different from normal people. Not just in size- there was something wrong in my head, something missing or added. People weren’t supposed to be this calm in a situation like this. I certainly cared, I was certainly focusing, but it was more like I was putting some especially fiddly part together on a workbench than deeply risking my life. Even trained soldiers felt fear, I’d read- that was why they trained, so even when they were fucking terrified practice and muscle memory took over instead of panic.

I reached the side of a decrepit old Demaz stakebed and risked a peek around its corner. The beams of four white weapon lights quickly killed my dark vision no matter how much I squinted. The area ahead was bare except for a few more trucks parked against one wall. I saw two mercs armed and armored like the ones we’d killed already. One leaned against the wall maybe ten yards away and the other was somewhat closer, just pacing aimlessly in the middle of the floor. Two more beams shone from the other side of the parked trucks, moving slowly, but I couldn’t actually see their wielders without poking my head out way too far.

I pulled back after less than a second. I heard them talking, their voices echoing weirdly in the metallic space. I held up a hand at Arc, deciding to wait and see if I could glean any more info. She nodded.

“…nothing, nothing, hmm- wait! The fuck’s that!” a female voice suddenly shouted. I froze and I could practically feel Arc tense like a hammer spring next to me. “Oh! Just more nothing!” the voice said sarcastically. Just a joke- I could kill her for that.

“Sarevna really doesn’t want anyone fucking around with the lab, I guess,” said another woman, just as mocking.

“Seriously.” This one was male, one of the ones behind the wall. “That missile bus went up like like a fuel drum. Even if someone did punch out of it, they’re at the bottom of the fuckin’ hole, now. Beams would’ve have picked up a P-mad.”

The first voice snorted. “Fuckin’ jetpacks…You’re preachin’ to the icons, Kalikos.”

“I’m a Kestite!” Kalikos protested, indignant.

“And don’t I know it. Fuckin’ demon-worshiper, it’s probably your fault we’re out here,” the woman said without much heat.

“Shut your kingsdamn vent, Trooper Dega,” snapped an older woman- the fourth. “And you shut your praetor-damn vent, Trooper Kalikos. We’re on guard duty, not fuck around and bitch duty.”

“Yes, Sarge,” both chorused. “Isn’t every duty fuck around and bitch duty, though?” I heard Dega mutter.

These deeks didn’t know much more than I did. I’d heard enough. When I turned to Arc, she mouthed Ready? Her eyes glinted in the gloom, calm and steady. I nodded, got my plan across as best I could with hand gestures, and readied myself. Make sure the saw’s battery was in place, the blade locked into the hilt. Set the coilgun to flechettes- full-auto, high spread. We were in too poor of a position for stealth. Beside me Arcadia press-checked her pistol, brass winking in the ejection port. She nodded one final time and held up her fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

Now! I shot to my feet and sprinted straight out into the open. The closest merc to me turned just in time for her eyes to widen as I shot her. Flechettes punched into her gut a instant before I swung the saw. It took her in a rising slash and split her from hip to shoulder. I felt her spine split as a faint tremble in the hilt, her ribs as a brief buzz before she tore in two. “Fuck yes,” I growled to no one but myself. Kings bless Wiken Tool. My old one would have hung up.

“What the fuck is-“ The frantic yell from the side was cut off by a rifle burst and a gurgle. I didn’t look, focused on the merc who’d been leaning against the wall. I held the coilgun one-handed as the first corpse fell, aiming low through the red mist. He pulled the trigger at the same I did. Something plucked at my shoulder and the rest of his burst went wild. Mine punched uranium darts into his pelvis before stitching up his vest and across his face. He staggered back like a toddler pushed on the playground before falling heavy and still. At the same time his rifle banged and my coilgun chattered three rapid gunshots sounded off to the side. They echoed weirdly, almost covering the sound of a body slumping to the floor.

Finally I risked a look over there, aiming down the coilgun’s holographic sight- and just as quickly I lowered it. Arc was still standing, a bloody knife and a smoking pistol in her hands. At her feet was a decapitated body, and several yards away was another one with two bullet holes in its chest and another turning its face into a bloody crater. Scary as I was, I couldn’t imagine what it had been like to see her translate through the wall instead of around it to service her targets.

“Good?” I asked. I was grinning, excitement in my voice. I almost didn’t question it any more.

She nodded, not even breathing hard. “That one tried to shoot me, but it went through,” she said with a toss of her head at the far corpse. Looked like the sergeant. “And you? You’re bleeding.”

“Just a graze,” I said after a glance at my shoulder. Adrenaline was keeping it from hurting at the moment, but I could still move and it wasn’t bleeding too much. I turned to the far end of the room, where a crumpled bay door led into some kind of mechanic’s shop. “We’re pushing our luck already. We gotta get going before-“ Something moved in the gloom ahead. A sleek, matte, shape. Tall, humanoid, something in its hands. Dull red glinted on its face.

“Cover now!” I screamed as I dove behind one of the trucks. A burst of gunfire chased me there and just as I fell behind it a sledgehammer hit my chest. My vision went gray as every ounce of air was punched viciously out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. A weight landed atop me and just as swiftly rolled off as my diaphragm spasmed. It felt like someone had clamped a vice around my ribs and was now sliding a knife around under them.

“What the hell is that?” the weight yelled over another burst of full-auto. Bullets pinged off the truck’s engine block and punched through the rotted tires with dull whup-whup noises.

“M-mask!” I choked out through the crushing pain in my chest. I’d been shot, that was obvious, though who knew how bad. I couldn’t get a breath in. “Armor!”

“Sharkie! Are you alright?” Even in the gloom I could see Arc realize what a dumb question that was, but by clinging to the truck’s fender and her offered hand I got upright.

“Been- been better,” I heaved. “That’s power armor! I don’t have anything to kill it straight up-“

“I can, if you buy me a little time.”

“For real?” I yelled in her face over the gunfire. This was an Enforcement Mask we were talking about, one of Admin’s own pet wrecking crew. I didn’t think she understood how bad this was-

“Yes. I need to- to focus.” She looked deadly serious but the stutter told me she was nervy. Not that I was judging; I’d be scared even if I hadn’t just been shot.

Rapid stomps approached, like an augged-up sprinter in lead boots. I glanced in their direction, almost fell as my chest twinged. What other option did we have? “Fine. D- do my best.” I grabbed her shoulder. “Now go!”

Arc faded out of my grip and blurred away just as the Mask rounded the front of our truck. I took advantage of the split-second distraction to lunge saw-first. Rather than go for the throat I swung at the short, bulky machine gun in the Mask’s gauntlets. They tried to yank it out of the way but too late- the blade made a thin shriek as it sank through the gun’s top and sent belted cartridges jangling everywhere. I knew from experience how tough that dull gray armor was- better to get rid of the gun than try and fail a quick kill.

The Mask didn’t miss a beat. The MG’s front half had barely had a chance to fall before a huge gauntlet flew at my face with a wheeze of fiber muscle. I dropped and tried to roll with it but the armored fist still caught me a glancing blow. Magnesium fireworks sparked in my vision and I would have cried out with the pain if my chest wasn’t so tight. Staggering back had me barely dodge a kick that might have taken my face off. Desperate, I flipped the coilgun to penetrators and dumped the mag. Recoil almost tore it out of my hand, leaving a trail of fat uranium flashes across the Mask’s front.

They calmly covered their eyeports with a forearm, then reached down with the other. A sidearm identical to mine shot from its holster into their grip on a magnetic tether. I tried to gain my feet but the wide muzzle stared me down already. I got ready for the split second of plasma flash before flechettes ripped me apart- but then a ghostly blur came through the Mask, through me too.

I felt nothing but a prickle of cold. The Mask froze, finger just brushing the trigger of their coilgun. Then they leaned back, so slow, like a man who stood suddenly after four or five drinks. Farther, farther, and finally the Mask- the corpse- slammed onto its back with a crunch of concrete.

Blinking, I looked at the body then turned. Arc stood behind me torn suit and all. Something dark and bloody was clenched in her fist. At first it looked like one of the giant moth caterpillars you found in attics or abandoned vics sometimes, but I squinted and looked closer.

“Dead fucking kings walk,” I murmured. It was a segment of armored cyborg spine, the frazzled strands of nerves fringing from either end sheathed in some kind of conductive nanocoating. I got what Arc had done now: translated right through the Mask’s armor, let her hand become just real enough to fucking rip their spine out, and moved on with grisly trophy in hand. It was like turning out a light by punching through the sheetrock and yanking the leads out of the switch.

She met my dopey stare and smirked. One of her gold hairpins was gone and her bun was coming undone.

“Told you.” Then she swayed, dropped the spine and fell backwards just like the Mask had.

“Rik dammit,” I muttered as I gingerly went over to her. Her translation power seemed to be a great exertion, so who knew what that burst of physical law-breaking had done to her. I crouched down and found her with eyes closed, apparently unconscious.

“Arc?” I nervously half-whispered. “You good? Come on, man, get up…” I was about to touch her shoulder when she blinked several times and opened her eyes.

She didn’t move except to grin again. “I told you.”

“You said that already. And are you okay?” I glanced around. Silent for now, but I was sure that wouldn’t last.”

“It bears repeating,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m just tired, unlike you.”

I finally glanced down at myself as she sat creakily up. My chest was wet, blood making an even darker stain on my dark work shirt. Breathing was getting easier, not harder, so I guessed I didn’t have a punctured lung. Still hurt like a motherfucker, though. Moving gingerly, I brushed my fingers across, cringing when I found the spot that hurt worst. Something pricked my finger, a jagged little twist of metal. It didn’t budge when I touched it, and in fact I could feel my flesh pulling against it, a separate hurt from the sharp ache in my ribs and lungs. To say it felt unpleasant was like saying the Sump didn’t smell the greatest. It was the bullet, apparently having smeared itself against the very edge of my metallic sternum. Any farther left and it would have gone through my lung, not to mention the aorta or heart. It was good the Mask had aimed center mass.

“Bastard shot me in the tit!” I gasped out. At least it hadn’t been my head again. “And you’d better not say something like ‘Oh, he must’ve been a good shot then-‘”

“Why would I say that?” said Arc, almost bewildered. “That would be rude in- void, at least three different ways. Let me get it out.”

I held up a hand. “Haven’t you worn yourself out enough already?”

“You’re hurt. I can still manage this much.” Before I could protest further she reached out and plucked at the bullet, translating it just long enough to get it unstuck. She dropped it into my hand. It was still warm.

“Thanks,” I muttered. “I didn’t get to keep the last one. You mind binding me up?” The slug was out but the slightly oblique wound it had left was still running with blood. Maybe not as much as it ought to have been, though. I’d never had a chance to compare. I took off my jacket and fumbled some sticky bandage and quick-clot out of one of the many pockets.

Arc was still swaying a little, sitting on the floor like a toddler who’d fallen on the playground and suddenly realized she was tired. She still nodded, though. “Shouldn’t you take your shirt off, though?” At any other time I might have joked about that, but this was about the least sexy situation imaginable. All we were missing was a pile of burning garbage, maybe an open sewer. “The bullet might have carried fibers in with it, and leaving them in there risks infection.” She took the bandages anyway when I held them out.

“Nah, just do the quick patch job. We gotta keep moving. I’ll have Doc Laggard look at it when we’re out. Someone’s gotta pay for all his fancy instruments,” I added half to myself.

“If you say so, Sharkie.” Arc quickly bandaged me around the chest, cutting the extra with a flick of a knife and handing me back the rest of the roll as I thanked her. When we stood it was like a couple of old men getting up from a long tiles game.

“Well then.” I was still wheezing a little, my lungs still aching. I nodded at the de-spined Mask. “We ought to move before his friends catch us-“

Something clanked in the far corner. Arc and I both had a gun aimed in that direction in no time flat. I don’t know what I was expecting- some kind of mine or trap, a combat robot, a breaching team blowing in through the wall- but what I did find was a single very terrified merc, prone on the floor as if he’d been trying to sneak out behind us. His combat shotgun was left in the corner behind him.

He immediately began to babble through his black balaclava. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Please, kings, don’t hurt me!”

Neither Arc nor I moved, just staring at him. I couldn’t see his face, but those wide eyes and his cringing posture told me everything. He reminded me of something I’d seen when I was a lot younger.

Me and some friends met up with another one of our buddies. He had to cross the street to meet us, and his younger brother- ten years old max- had tagged along. Our friend ran into the road without looking and a sedan came scooting out of a blind alley and slammed right into him. He’d ended up okay except for a sprained wrist, but at the moment he’d lain unconscious and tangled in the road, rolling to a stop like a corpse. In the second before I ran to help him I’d seen the look on his kid brother’s face, standing frozen on the sidewalk. His eyes were wide and flat, his lips slightly parted, his expression one of total shock at seeing the figure he imitated, idolized, turned into a skinny limp ragdoll in the street. This merc had the same look on his face, like the rug had been yanked from under him and he hadn’t hit the ground yet. He didn’t look like a professional killer. He looked lost.

“Oh kings, oh kings, please at least make it quick!”    he sobbed, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. “What the fuck are you people?!?”

We glanced at each other, and while Arc kept her pistol up I lowered mine and went towards him. He rolled over and sat up, scooting back until he was against the wall.

“I’ll tell you what we are,” I said as I reached him and grabbed his throat. “We’re your new bosses.”