Gravity catches me with open arms as I leap into the storm. Black clouds swallow me whole. For a terrifying second I lose all sense of direction, hanging in a thundering abyss with Cal in my arms, tumbling in freefall. Then I break out of the cloud layer and a world of rain-soaked neon fills my vision. Streets and skyscrapers blur into rivers of color and light. Ice and water sting like hornets as they break over my skin. Too fast, falling too fast.

Cal’s hair whips past my face. She clutches tight to me as she screams to be heard over the roar of wind. “Tay, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Thirty stories left between us and being a smear on the concrete. Ten more flash past in a blink. My reflection chases me down the glass side of the Metro Blockhouse at terminal velocity. But I can’t slow us down early. Have to wait for the absolute last moment, hoping against all odds that no one sees us plummeting off the arena. The ringed streets of short-roofed restaurants surrounding the Metro Blockhouse swell larger. Cal shrieks louder. I ignore the panic, her nails clawing into my back, the rapidly closing city.

Twenty stories. Razors of raindrops slash my face raw. I focus on the buzz of my JOY’s neural link and reach back through the branches of my memory, summoning up that garden that haunts my every night. A flashback staccato unspools behind my closed eyelids. Crimson hair blanketing my shoulders as Dad cups my left hand and presses it to my heart. Thane, quietly watching. Then chasing a high-speed train over the fields. Soaring high above the coast. My hand on a boy’s bare chest as I feel the spark inside him. My hand trembling, palm burnt and flesh charred, a trail of fried ozone beaming to a hole in the clouds. The fire of ki suffusing my veins. Burning, straining at my body until it seared from the inside out, skin pulsing with an interior glow. So much fire that I couldn’t contain it, just let it flow from inside to out, blooming into the garden in a golden tempest.

When I reach through the neural link now in search of that fire, the spark of life energy that has always lurked within me, I feel nothing but the dead coals of a long dormant forge. An eternal engine corroded by disuse.

I waver.

The city roars closer, so close I can see the stylized neon bowl glowing on a lowrise noodle bar’s orange sign. And in a sheer moment of adrenalized panic, my heart forgets to be scared of the strength I closed myself off from long ago. The class that Dad built his reputation on and eventually passed down to me: ki fighting.

My heart leaps to its most basic instinct with a terajoule kickstart. Unbearable agony shears through my nerves. Burning from zero to everything in a microsecond. Suffusing every inch of skin with awful, kinetic power until my body begins splitting apart at the seams and with a scream of pain I let it erupt into reality.

Thirty feet away from becoming a smear on the concrete, my aura slashes out and burns hard enough in a quarter of a second to slow our descent from meteoric to just barely survivable. I ball around Cal instinctively the moment before impact. We smash down on the rooftop of a dojo in the second ring of streets from the M and scatter apart like bowling pins. Reality stutters. Gravel sawing across my skin. Friction fires slashing my legs and face. Vision pinwheeling through city sky gravel city sky gravel before settling on a concussed view of the Metro Blockhouse when I slam backfirst into a metal snake of climate control ducting.

I drip off the metal. Collapse into a limp pile. Stunned at first, then coughing and groaning airlessly into the gravel. A marrow-deep ache pulses inside my battered body as my heart keeps burning, fueling the ki that oozes painfully out of my skin. For a long moment it’s all I can do to lay there while the storm beats me down. The ache inside me never ends. It keeps going, going, going. Liquid energy escaping from a cracked vase. It’s up to me to find the strength to get up, and I find it the moment I turn my head enough to see the black-haired girl who put me on this rooftop.

“You stopped me,” I snarl, ignoring the grit that cuts into my bloody palms.

Cal fights to her feet at the same time I do. One hand braced against a steam-exuding vent for support, the other hanging limply at her side; dislocated shoulder. Her mouth curls angrily. “Jolie Mons is a political hostage! If you jumped off with her instead of me, there wouldn’t be stone in this city that Gami would leave unturned. Did you not hear her say-”

I take two steps forward and smash my knuckles into her face. I throw my whole weight into the punch. Bone cracks against bone and she goes sprawling across the rooftop. “I don’t care what she said!” I yell. “I don’t care what you think was going to happen! You have no idea what she is to me!”

“And what were you going to do different?” Cal sneers. “Hit me more?” She crawls back up and spits blood, pale eyes glaring death from beneath a mop of black bangs. Sees me coming and laughs out loud. “Fine. Give it your best shot. That’s all you’re good for, anyways.”

I strip off Dad’s jacket, throw away my JOY, and dive straight at her, tackling her to the gravel. She grunts as we fall again. I wrestle her down and start throwing punch after punch at her head, pounding her into the rooftop. Blood splits out of her mouth. Gasps of pain turn into grunts. I brutalize her on even footing, but she doesn’t give up. She’s no martial artist, but she’s still trained enough to fight back. It devolves into an animal frenzy as the storm picks up. No technique, just raw emotion as we beat each other down. Neither one able to get on top for long. Cal’s wet hand slips over my face, nails clawing for my eyes. She socks me in the nose with a blind punch. I fall back choking on blood. She gets a hand in my hair and yanks me to the side, scrambles up, then charges right into the snap kick I fire like a piston into her stomach.

She gets launched five horizontal feet, goes down hard, and stays down. I can’t even chase her at first. I’m frozen to the bone, snorting globs and cartilage, so beat to ragged shit I’m only still moving out of sheer momentum. The ache of aura oozing out of me spikes painfully as I manage to drag myself up with a climate control unit. I cough out smoke, unable to suppress the groan that rattles from my lungs. Clutch five fingers to my heart as my chest keeps tightening. Breaths coming shorter and shorter. Something’s wrong inside me. Really wrong. I should have found another way off the tower. I haven’t touched any class but martial arts in years, though I never erased it from my JOY. But that kind of disuse still shouldn’t fuck me up like this. I’m just too angry to stop and care.

My sneakers squelch as I stagger across the roof. Cal’s face is smeared in half-washed blood, one eye swollen completely shut. She uses a radio antenna to right herself. “Feel better yet?” she yells. When I don’t stop closing, she stands up all five-foot-three of her diminutive height, shouting through the rain. “Would you quit it already, you crazy bitch? There is smoke coming out of you!”

I pause to look down, finally seeing the source of the ache. Ki of some kind is still oozing out of my chest, but it’s not the golden color it should be. It’s black. Sickly. Polluted. My chest spasms tightly again and I slump against cold metal.

Cal’s about to say something even more vitriolic until she realizes I can’t even talk back. Her lips part in surprise. “Holy shit. Are you having a heart attack?”

“Why do you care?!” I shout. “Why do you give two shits about me? Haven’t you done enough already?!” I convulse from the pain, more than rain dripping down my cheeks. “Is dangling Jolie in front of me just to tear her away not enough? Is hunting me like a dog for your master not enough? Spending every night wondering if I’ll even wake up in the morning? Is that not enough for you?!” The words spill out of me raw and unfiltered. I don’t realize I’m screaming again till my throat tears raw. “When I can’t close my eyes because of the nightmares, is that enough? What about watching my father die while I hold him? Is losing everything I ever loved and cared for not fucking enough for you people?!”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The hate, the anger, the fear, everything I’ve bottled up for so long comes out in such a vitriolic flood that Cal just stands there stunned.

“I guess it’s not.” A bitter laugh wracks my chest. “Trying to help? Don’t give me that drivel. I don't need your pity. All you people do is hurt and take. And you have the audacity to stand there and pretend like you care?” I jab a finger at the Metro Blockhouse. “Like you don’t know exactly what he did?!”

“What? No! I barely knew who you were when I was told to take you out!” Cal holds up her hands defensively. Heavy rain drenches us; she has to raise her voice once more into a ragged shout. “Thane never told me anything about you! I didn’t even know you were her! That girl he used to go visit!” She searches my eyes for any sort of belief. “All I got from him was a name and a picture, and I’ve been doing everything I can to keep you alive because I didn’t know more. I didn’t think you deserved to die, that night I found you. But you’re a fucking danger magnet who keeps doing everything you can to get yourself killed! Does nothing I’ve done to help make a difference to you?!”

“I lost everything because of you people! Because your master murdered my father, and Thane-” I choke up, hand veiling my face, eyes squeezing shut. “No. You have no idea what I’ve been through. The hell I’ve had to survive. All you did was stop me from rescuing the one hope I had left.”

Shivers wrack my torso. Cal’s mouth stays stuck open. Slowly she shakes her head, disbelieving even as she puts the pieces together.

“Gami… murdered your father,” she murmurs. “But if Jolie Mons is your aunt, then…”

“Yeah.”

I slump down into sitting. Neon reflections gleam in the wetness on my cheeks; a holo-poster for a memorial service at the Kingswalk drifts off the building beside us.

“He’s my father,” I whisper. “Was, my father.”

Cal sighs, like she’s coming to a doomed realization. “Mars Mons. The last Champion.”

I say nothing.

“But Mars didn’t have any kids. And he… I mean, his death was a tragedy. An accident. Everyone knows. It was all over the news streams.”

I close my eyes, head lolling back against the duct. Real hand on my knee, fake hand drifting in the gravel. Staring up at the darkness so my eyes don’t shut. “I watched Gami murder him in cold blood. I held him as he died in my lap. Do you have any idea what that feels like to a ki fighter? When you can feel the spark inside someone drifting away and you’d give every drop of life in you to keep it burning for just a second longer, but there’s nothing at all you can do to stop it?” My real fingers tremble.

Cal stands there in silence, trying to come up with some sort of reply. None comes. Rain plasters my hair to my forehead. Eventually, she collapses into sitting across from me. Looking at me like I’m a bomb she just found on the side of the street. Reevaluating what she’s been traveling with. Definitely not feeling safer because of it.

“I guess it makes sense now, why Gami wants you dead. You’re the last loose end of the only thing to ever stand in his way.” She winces, gingerly touching her bruising cheek. “I didn’t know I was helping royalty.”

“I’m not royalty.”

“Your dad’s face is stamped on credit chits. If Gami’s enemies knew that Mars had a daughter and she was still out there, they’d use you in a heartbeat. Make you into a symbol, or something.” Cal blinks slowly, head hanging in an exhausted slump. “So the General Manager really is your aunt?”

I try to ignore the tar-black ki smoking out of me. Hard ask, given that it feels my heart is being used like a rotisserie spit. “She’s the closest thing I have to a mom,” I say, blinking slowly.

“You two look nothing alike, no offense. And not just in the hair.”

“Dad adopted me.” My carbon-fiber fingers twitch in sync. “He raised me out in the villages. Taught me everything he knew. Your brother, too.”

“You said Thane was your best friend.”

“He was,” I sigh. “It’s a long story.”

Cal finds a distraction in the cityscape to watch. A brooding, downward cast to her eyes. Deep in thought. Genuine in a way that makes me wonder for a second if she really didn’t know about me.

I wouldn’t put it past Thane to have told her nothing about me, about us. He was never much for sharing. And I’d do the same if I were still serving the tyrant who killed my girlfriend’s father. Wouldn’t want to see that guilt reflected in my only sibling every single day. Though that’s assuming he feels any guilt at all. By what I’ve seen of him on the gossip streams, our childhood together might as well not exist.

After another minute of silence, I let go of the cold, angry breath trapped inside me. My lips form a hard line as I gather the willpower to get back on my feet. The longer I sit here getting drenched by the downpour, the harder it is to move. The momentum that kept pushing my just one more step forward is entirely exhausted. But I’ve survived worse than this. So much worse.

“Believe whatever you want,” I grunt, getting a hand on my knee. “But take it from someone who’s been sleeping in gutters for the past three years: I don’t lie.”

Cal sees me struggling and eases onto her feet, limping over to kneel at my side. She holds her Relic near where the ki is smoking from my chest. Activates it, lips a flat hard line. The ache inside me dulls to a slightly more bearable level. I must give some outward sign of relief, because she asks, “Better?”

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you.” She hooks her cold hands under my armpits and hauls me up. “I told you- I didn’t think you deserved to die. That hasn’t changed yet. And clearly, you still need a hand.” She winces, eyes flicking to my prosthetic arm. “Sorry.”

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“I have a pretty good idea it involves rescuing your aunt and getting into even more danger.” She sets me against the duct. “Am I wrong?”

“That’s just the start,” I say. “It’s not going to end until Jolie and I are safe, and that won’t happen until Gami is stopped for good,” I don’t add the obvious conflict with her brother. And I do nothing to hide my distrust, either.

Sure. Cal might have been helping keep me alive so far. Even I can see that there’s a sliver of truth there- I’ve got a temper, that doesn’t make me an idiot. And I’m also a fish out of water in this city. That I found Jolie at all was only possible with her aid. I don’t honestly know if I can rescue Jolie on my own. Dad taught me how to fight, not to rescue hostage political figures.

Having someone who can watch my back, someone native to the city, could be the first step forward I’ve found in the three years since I disappeared from the world. But Cal? She’s the definition of the enemy. There’s no way I can know if this isn’t all just a part of some more elaborate plan. This city is her home. Jolie’s captors are her friends. The sun would go cold before I could believe that someone like her would have a change of heart over something as simple as a little doubt.

And what if it’s Thane who stands in my way? I can see it in the way she instinctively jumped to defend him just a moment ago. He’s her brother. She wouldn’t choose me over him. I’m no one to her. If it came down to it, she’d push that knife all the way home to protect him.

“I don’t know what Thane was to you,” Cal says, holding my gaze. “And I don’t know everything that happened between you two. Clearly it wasn’t great, and I’m his sister. I get it. You’re going to loathe me no matter what I say. So I’m not asking you to trust me.” She blinks slowly, yellow eyes gleaming faintly in the dark. “Just that you give me a shot.”

I start to shake my head. “Why?”

She turns her wrist over, showing the dull stone bangle. “This is what I do. Not who I am.” Then she rests her elbows on the duct beside me, staring at the Metro Blockhouse through waterlogged bangs. “I’m no one’s weapon. And if my brother was wrong about you… maybe he’s wrong about more.”

We flinch together as the storm slaps us with renewed vigor. I’m so cold, so drenched, so tired of running. For a moment, taking Cal’s offer almost seems possible. I just wish that Aunt Jolie were here. That there were someone, anyone I could lean on for a moment without worrying that they’d stab me in the back. That I wasn’t resorting to trusting jackals and left to fight blindly through the dark.

But I’m alone. I’m always alone, now. These burdens are mine alone to bear.

I take a deep breath.

I might not have Jolie with me, but I do know what she’d tell me. There’s an old saying about friends and enemies. And when you’re not sure which one someone is, it’s better to keep them as close as possible.

And if Cal betrays me? I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.

“Then it’s settled,” Cal says, taking my silence as the begrudging acceptance it is. She hooks her head at a ladder on the edge of the rooftop. “I’m sick of the rain. You good with a hot shower and some caf?”

I scoop up Dad’s jacket, glance back at the arena one last time, then follow at a limp. “What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t always a catch, Tay. Some people just enjoy being nice.”

“Spill it.”

“…Said shower and caf are waiting back at my place.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”