A gleaming metal dagger wings into the gap between my feet, driving hilt-deep into the wood.

I freeze. Listen to the lone pair of boots that I only now have time to hear crunching through the rubble behind me. Breathe out hard. And turn.

It’s not the last of the four uni fighters, the one with the fox, who’s staring back. It’s a girl who’s a lot shorter, a lot sassier, and so much easier to like. And I’m such a fool for trusting her. Because Feint doesn’t look like an off-the-clock intern as she spins another knife between her fingers. She doesn’t look like a flirty city girl who doesn’t even carry a JOY because she’s so bad at fighting.

She looks like she’s used that knife.

A lot.

Feint strides right over the Tamer’s bleeding-out body. Jacket gone and sleeves rolled back, exposing pale forearms and the bangle wrapped around her left wrist. Dark rivulets of blood trace the line of her palm. Her playful yellow eyes dance from the spreading flames, to the unconscious bodies littered around my feet, then finally, to me. Perfectly at home in this carnage, ignorant of the sirens screaming two alleys over.

“I was going to leave the dirty work to these guys, but, well…” she nudges Aurix’s body with the toe of her boot, too heavy to roll. “…they really bit off more than they could chew.”

“Who are you? What do you want with me?” I snarl.

Her lips twitch in a humorless smirk. “I’ll give you a hint.” She casually spins her knife. “You probably have nightmares about it…” Spins again. “…every night.”

The old, abandoned gym begins crumbling to the heat. Watching the roof starting to sag, I run the chances of surviving another fight with a completely unknown entity, then cut them in half. My wounds are bad enough. It’s the exhaustion that’s the real killer. That, and the red-blue-white lights pulsing through the grime-coated windows out front. Lumber and metal clatter and crash around us as the inferno builds. Embers and smoke choke the air. I scan the brick walls, the lobby I entered through, looking for any escape. Only way out is back through the lobby. If even. And Feint’s just standing there like she’s waiting for me to try it.

I’ve only got one factor in my favor. Even if she’s immune to JOYs like the uni fighters claimed, my class doesn’t require one to work. It makes me faster and more durable, and it has training wheels in the neural link that help new fighters learn the martial arts, but I shut those off ages ago. I might be the only person in this city prepared to win a fight against someone who a JOY can’t hurt. Not that it’s much help now.

“Didn’t take you for a runner,” she says, still waiting.

“And you play a good mouse. Had me fooled pretty well,” I reply, stalling for seconds. “Who is it that wants me dead?”

“Someone.” She shrugs. “Someone rich, someone powerful, you’d probably know better than me. I don’t ask why. Just who and when.” An electric-blue glow pulses through the damascene folds of the metal bangle ringing her wrist, igniting a pattern eerily reminiscent of exposed circuits. “I’m sorry whoever hurt you isn’t done yet. I don’t usually like killing people. Especially girls like you. But they gave me a reason I couldn’t refuse.”

“I’m touched,” I snort. “But I bet you tell that to all your victims.”

And I’ve finally found the distraction I need.

The rubble stirs behind Feint as the small snout of a red fox pokes through. Beady, hate-filled eyes peer out. The little JOY-made creature finds me first. Then Feint, and its master’s blood on her hands. The creature’s years-trained heuristics make their choice. And I make mine.

There’s no way out of this except through the girl in front of me. The moment the fox lunges for her ankles, I spring back and use my JOY’s reinforcements to smash a shin through a faltering pillar. The roof buckles above. Gives with a crash. A screen of ash and debris dumps between Feint and I, cutting vision. Through the haze, I see her silhouetted left arm snap up. The bangle around her wrist flashes with an electric pink glow, piercing the smoke. Mid-leap, the fox suddenly freezes, shrieking a pixelated whine. Then its shriek warbles. Crumbling into a nonstop sound no organic creature could make as its body stretches, tears, and smears; ripped right out of existence.

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I can still feel her trying to track me through the smoke, the itch of danger as her killer’s intuition zeroes on my movement. A knife flashes out of the blind. But I’m already six feet above it, springing off the lip of the fighting square and spinning through the burning air. I flip over the smokescreen in a whirlwind, catching roiling flames in my palms. Time stretches in the frame our eyes meet. I fall like a thundbolt, embers swirling through my hair, red heat wreathing my hands. Her head jerks up, a rippling firewall our arena border.

Then I’m in range. Slashing down from the rafters. Razor-sharp platinum flashes towards my chest at the last moment. I twist, halfing my falling momentum so I can slap Feint’s knife to the side with a carbon-fiber palm. Drop and reap her ankles with a scything sweep. But she’s just as fast. Twisting mid-fall, she touches down with five fingers and handsprings over the shin that would have claimed her head and instead clips only hair. There’s a microsecond gap I leave for her to counterattack in, but another flicking movement of her wrist activates her bangle again instead, and-

My JOY shuts off.

The strength the sphere was feeding me, propping me up with, letting me leap in a six-foot arc with, vanishes. I don’t even register that my body doesn’t respond like it usually does at first. I’ve lived so intimately attached to the tech that the moment it abruptly winks out for the first time in years, the microsecond lag it takes to adjust costs me everything.

Feint’s hand flashes, low-high. And that’s all it takes.

It feels like she punches me in the stomach from five feet away. Belatedly, I realize her knife is no longer in her hands. I fall back a step. Then the cold begins slithering its way deeper into my guts. My throat chokes up. Whole body hitching from shock. Freezing, rebelling as the stabbing pain blossoms and a familiar hot ooze begins pouring from my stomach.

I teeter over and collapse backwards onto the floor. Croaking for air. Grabbing at the knife impaled in me, nearly blacking out when I touch the handle. My fingers shiver as they firm around the grip. But I can’t make them close. I scrabble back on one elbow, through the burning embers and chunks of wood rain that rain down, searing my skin, melting cloth and flesh together. The pain helps me claw back to my feet. Just in time to eat a boot to the face.

My head snaps back. Concussion as I slap against the ground. Feint’s soles come to a stop outside my rapidly blurring vision. Spitting sparks, the dead shell of my powerless JOY rolls to a stop outside my reach. Feint nudges me onto my back and kneels. I gasp again, chest seizing. Her face wrinkles bitterly.

“Hate this part,” she mutters.

She forces her hand over my mouth, grabs the knife, and I scream a muffled scream into her palm. The fires keep burning. All of me shudders, the blood pumping faster. I try to throw a kick at her, but my leg won’t even move. Heat choking everything. Being smothered. I can’t die here. Not like this. It hurts so bad. I need to get up. But my arms refuse to respond.

Once she’s done wiping the blade off on my shirt, Feint rises and leaves me to die. I jerk over onto my side, everything out of focus, straining my left arm with all the strength it can give. It shudders uselessly, pushing me up a single agonizing inch before dropping me right back onto the floor. Still outside my reach, my JOY winks back to life when Feint passes far enough away, powering back on just to keep me alive just a few agonizing moments longer while my head slaps down into the puddle of my own blood.

“We’re not… done…” I slur at her back. “Shitty, fucking… assassin.”

Feint’s heat-blurred boots come to a stop amidst the rubble.

“Come finish… your job.” Blood trickles and drips down my head. I gasp out a single laugh through the obscene pain when I finally see her feet turn. “That’s… more like it.”

A mouthful of liquid splashes against the floor, arterial red, as I force myself onto hands and knees. I blink with horrible slowness, almost crumpling back down. Viscous blood drips from my lips. When my eyes crack open again, I’m staring at laces and hard leather. My real hand, left hand, balls into a fist.

“You really want to die that badly?” she asks. I can almost hear her shrug. “Fine by me.”

Feint drops to her haunches, looking me over. Two soft fingers caress my chin, lifting my head and exposing my neck. Cold metal presses against my throat.

I meet her gaze through a curtain of sooty hair. “You really are… a shitty assassin.”

She arches an eyebrow. “And how’s that, Tay?”

I push my forehead into hers. “You’re too goddamn nice.”

She looks down. Back up, eyes widening in surprise. My hand is already locked around her wrist. With all the strength I have left, I rip her arm to the side and twist to break her grip at the last moment, arrowing her knife at the wall. Right into an exposed gas line.

The knife drives in to the hilt.

Feint sighs.

And a superheated fireball rips the world in half.