Terminal velocity grabs me like a rip current.

Arms thrown wide, I plummet down the side of the skyscraper in a hundred-and-twenty mile an hour blur, a shooting star of white and gold. The skyscraper’s glass sides smear into a solid surface beside me. I cast one last glance at the distant summit of the Metro Blockhouse, wondering if Thane is watching right now. Then I fight the roaring wind to bring my gaze to bear on the district below, where Jolie’s runaway train shoots past the base of my tower without slowing.

I’m deafened by the wind and blinded by the icy tears glassing my vision. Frozen temperatures sting at my eyes and distends my hair into a rippling tail. Pure adrenaline keeps my heart locked in my chest. Propelled by the adrenaline high, my aura blooms outwards so forcefully that even the interns at the M will see the light on the horizon like a shooting star.

Perched on the rear of the train like a geometric scorpion, the titan-tier Mecha- one of Gami’s freelancers, not a leaguer- swivels around, registering my ignition with reflexes that would put our minor league to shame. Fast as a demon despite the size of the machine. Hundreds of meters away on the back of the bullet train, one of its arm-cannons raises. Light plumes from the barrel. For a second, I think nothing’s happened. Then a thigh-thick streak of grey whistles out of the industrial zone and a ten-meter circle of skyscraper explodes beneath me, showering my path with a shrapnel spray of debris.

No chance to dodge. Unfurling into vertical shape, I fire a blast of ki straight down and chase its tail through the molten glass.

The industrial zone rushes nearer. Twenty stories between to the pavement. I snap-twist in a corkscrew and slam my sneakers against the skyscraper, spraying sparks as I surf the vertical façade at terminal velocity. Twinned friction fires of aura build beneath my heels. Compressing like an air carrier’s launch pad. Building, building, building. Pressure, energy, cataclysm charging into a jet-engine shriek. My eyes lock onto the train. One daredevil instinct triggers the eruption.

A sonic boom erupts outwards from my launch, shattering across the skyscraper in a crystal-powder shockwave. My heart sticks to its downward beat. G-forces slam through me. Factories, chemical plants, power stations, and trainyards rip past like immobile icebergs. Splitting the line between two spiring towers pumping steam down into the Vents, I burst out over a huge retention lake and saw across the water from shore to shore, carving the air with twinned ocean sprays.

Ahead, the drawbridge spanning another feeder river finishes lowering a second before the bullet train roars over it. That Mecha hanging onto the last car pivots with insane reflexes and fires a chaingun spray from a shoulder hardpoint. Plumes of water erupt around me as bullets chew into the lake. My heart thrums against my ribcage like an electric guitar. Twisting parallel to the surface, I cut under the bridge’s pylons and shoot out the other side, narrowly dodging a beam of Elemental fire that carves across my path. Superheated vapor explodes into a smoky cloud. A swarm of micromissiles and point-defense lasers hound my trail as I fire through the cloud, bursting away from the river towards the curved edge of a radar dish emblazoned with the logo of the capital’s most popular news stream. I surf the dish’s curve with sparks flying beneath my feet and flash off the end at triple digit velocity, snaking in side-by-side with the bullet train just as it surges back into the industrial sector.

Hazards flash past at mach speed. Girders. Railway crossings. Close-hanging pipes. Clouds of superheated steam. Death waits a microsecond slip away. Anyone else would peel off. But there’s not a ki fighter on the planet who can fly like I can.

The Electric Town Expressway rises on my left side as we hit a long straightaway with a prime view of the distant Shimano Heavy Industries headquarters. I dive into the single-meter gap between the rails and the hovertransports clogging the freeway, hiding in the shadow of the train, heart gunning at full throttle as I sink even with the wheels. Neighborhoods and districts blur beneath the rails. Gears and wheels thunder beside me. Highway on my left. Stainless steel machinery chugging like a meatgrinder on my right. An adrenaline grin overtakes my face. Juking around a girder for a railroad crossing, I surge up another train car and arc up past the roof, then cut my aura and let inertia do the rest.

Two hundred miles an hour of physics hurls me like a slingshot at the back of the train.

Hunched over the last car like a gargoyle, the titannic Mecha has no chance to see me coming. Twelve feet tall, couple thousand pounds, humanoid shape with the standard four limbs and torso cockpit- good at many things, but reacting to a nearly-invisible human bullet closing the distance at organ-splattering speeds is not one of them.

My aura cuts back on and gathers in both hands as I slash over the Mecha’s head, hurling twinned waves of bladelike energy into its arm joints. Both arms slide and fall free, snowballing into an avalanche of armored debris as they crash into the industrial sector. Rotating as I fly past, I flash right back at the disarmed titan from the opposite side, snagging onto a handgrip on its roof port. The train’s velocity eases the strain from my heart.

I spare a single moment to search for Aurix. A still-glowing hole in the roof of the train tells me where he’s gone. My plan solidifies. Shuck this metal oyster, then stop the other Shadows heading for Jolie.

Not even bothering to figure out the ejection port’s release, I rip the mech’s roof straight off its hinges, flinging it off the back of the train. A dark blur of human movement lunges out of the cockpit at me. Thin pain slices a vertical line from my neck to my jaw as I whip my head back, just barely dodging the extendable blade the pilot swings upwards. I fall back a step. Arms pinwheeling wildly. The pilot’s already out, blade slashing for a followup. Dark jumpsuit armor and helmet. Staggering speed, completely unerring as he swings not for my head, but my legs, forcing a jump that’ll get me sucked away by the wind. The kind of choice someone with Dad’s experience would make to deal with a kid half their age before the vigor of youth can overpower the wisdom of time.

Ki fires out my left hand on pure reflex, slapping his blade down into the mech’s metal skin. Another blast from my pinwheeling right restores my balance and hurls me into the pilot. I make it fast. Five-hit chain ending with an open palm smash to the chest. Rather than get hurled off his mech, the pilot lets the final blow hit and crumples around it to disperse the energy, combat boot snapping up at my chest with steel-toe strength. I juke to the side, catching and trapping his leg under my arm. Supercharged by ki, I barely have to think to flex my arm and shatter everything from the shin down.

The pilot grunts through his helmet as the bone breaks like brittle wood. But sacrificing an entire leg gives him a fraction of a second where I’m held in place, and he does not waste it. He retracts his blade to knifelike length and drive it into my thigh with a reverse-grip strike, punching straight through my aura and into the muscle.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

My leg buckles. I go down hard and drag the pilot along with. He halts our fall with one hand, snagging a grip on the mech’s shell. The gauntlet of his other hand fires a strand of grapple hook cable that nooses around my throat and cinches tight. Metal digs into my already bruised neck. I reach up on instinct, ki gathering to cut the hangman cable. He draws a wide-bore pistol in the moment it takes me to cut free. I look up into a barrel glowing with crackling yellow light just as I start to fall.

The light expands and grows holes, stretching into a snaring net charged with stunning current that devours me whole. Paralytic electricity hits my nerves like a gut punch as I’m hurled off the back of the train. I gasp in shock as my body contorts like a dying spider. I plummet towards the expressway. Wind whistling in my ears. Real arm bent backwards behind me. The prosthetic trapped across my chest. Falling, falling. Ki blasts poking useless holes in the mesh as I fire with everything I have, then resort to trying to melt it through sheer auric heat. Transports, headlights rushing up at me. Then a familiar comm click hits my ears. A platinum blur slashes through the net and rips it away, freeing me to burst sideways and slam onto the back seat of Jolie’s autobike just as Cal gooses out from behind a hovertransport on the highway.

I drop into the saddle behind her. The engine picks up beneath my legs and we spur forward, wheels skittering over the pavement. Cal puts us behind another transport before the mech pilot can line up a parting shot. Her voice rolls into my ears through the comm channel.

“Holy shit Tay, I didn’t mean literally race a bullet train. How fast were you flying?”

“Not fast enough,” I grit out as a klaxon horn bellows from ahead. We pull out of cover to see the train surging away from us with renewed speed, the mech pilot nowhere in sight. The expressway curves ahead of us, diverting from the tracks. We’re going to lose it. Chest heaving, I start regathering the strength to take flight again. Rip out the knife lodged in my leg; aura gushes from the wound like water into a sinking ship to caramelize the wound from the inside. My foot bounces from the pain. Jolie’s train keeps pulling away. I start to rise just as Cal’s fingers curl around the throttle.

“Grab me.”

She rips the bike to the right, skimming over the harrowing gap between the expressway and its rickety service road. My hips groan as we slam down into the bumpy pavement at a hundred-plus, dodge two huge potholes in the unfinished surface, then gun for a curving offshoot that angles away from the industrial sector and back to the rest of the capital. The train roars away from us with another sound of the horn. I whip back over my shoulder, watching it shrink and disappear.

“We’re going the wrong way, Cal! You’re heading back towards E-Town!”

“Sit down, I’ve got a plan.”

“It’s the middle of the morning commute!”

“Really? You don’t say.” She hunkers lower over the controls. “We’ll catch her. I promise.” When I don’t sink down yet, she glances back with a smirk. “Come on. When have I ever lied to you?”

Letting my heart spiral back down, I tight my legs against the bike and duck into Cal’s shadow. The offshoot road curls back into brighter surface districts, linking us up with the raised glass highway that bisects the city along its lateral axis. Shadows and spotlights sweep over us in alternating pockets. Five lanes of black asphalt spread out wide, dry as a bone. Cal leans harder on the bike. Sparks scatter over my feet. A wide, arched tunnel filled with golden-yellow light sweeps over our heads, gone in seconds. The autobike’s engine revs like a blender, echoes hammering into my ears as Cal weaves past the other traffic and tears out the other side of the tunnel.

Dazzling neon cityscape pickets both sides of the expressway. Highrises and cascading advertisements for the weekend’s pro fights shower us with illumination. But the highway ahead glows red. Wall-to-wall red. Traffic light red in the shadow of the Shimano Heavy Industries tower. And we’re racing towards it at two hundred miles an hour.

“Cal…”

Cal just cranks the throttle harder. Her fingers dance over the central console. Lost in concentration. Face lit from beneath by holographic blue as she keys to activate something built into the bike’s navigational hardware. The holoscreen lights up with the fishhook logo of the corporation that nearly ruled the capital. She presses it with her thumb, sinking as low behind the windshield as possible. A single-digit countdown flashes onto the screen.

“Hang on.”

Without warning, the traffic lights ahead start cascading from red to green in a domino wave. The countdown ticks one second lower. Cal swings us into a lane-splitting position. Kicks a hidden release with her heel. Her hand twists. And

the world

smears.

My stomach disappears. The speedometer flatlines. The Electric Town melts into a hyperdrive tunnel. Winging forward at heart-attack velocity, splitting the traffic-jammed lanes so fast my body locks in place on pure instinct.

Entire neighborhoods flash past in the first second. The Metro Blockhouse is there and gone. The Electric Town runs from end to end in five seconds flat. The highway empties in front of us as we fly into the opposite half of the capital. Our path zippers closed and the traffic lights change back as the countdown ends. The industrial sector and the capital’s outer storm walls swell on the horizon. Just in time, the runaway train pounds out of the industrial cityscape onto an arching bridge that crosses right in front of Gami’s half-finished citadel.

Aura surges down my legs. Cal slips her feet from the pedals and curls into my arms. The speedometer tumbles down from three hundred. Blinking through the wind, I line up the shot, grab Cal, and kick away from the bike, launching us like a cannonball at the citadel’s huge front courtyard. The bike races off unpiloted. Balling around Cal in midair, I fire a ki blast and curl tight.

We explode through the courtyard’s twenty-meter walls like buckshot. Scorched ozone and slag shower the vast metal plaza leading up to the fortress itself. Huge, geometric monoliths cast hundred-foot shadows across the field. My body hits off one of them so hard it leaves a dent. Chunks and molten shards of metal rain around me. Somehow I stayed curled around Cal. I drip to the ground with a grunt while she rolls to her feet with a knife already rotating into hand. Boots spread in protective stance, facing down the remains of my aunt’s escape and Valance’s attempt to stop it.

Trapped at the citadel’s entrance with his back to a closed pair of massive doors large enough to admit a titan-class Mecha, an injured Yuki leans heavily on a blade of pure ice, barely keeping himself upright in front of Jolie. My aunt breathes out a sigh of relief as my aura washes over the field. The emotion isn’t shared by the rest of the warriors who flank them in a trident formation.

Aurix’s broad shoulders shudder as his hair begins stirring in my current. The cracked helm of the limping mech pilot sags from exhaustion. And Valance’s pink eyes narrow in cold calculation as she turns from the citadel’s steps, the first words of a spellcast already formed on her lips.