Wip didn’t answer Stella at first. Tension was rising through the lobby of the old Stanties building. Some of the thugs were sweating and panting, clearly afraid of what would come next.
Their aftos weren’t all that impressive, just some low level weapons and a few tools such as stealthing devices. If they were Cartel, they clearly weren’t that important or well off given the quality of their aftos. Wip’s display of power had made it clear that they didn’t stand a chance. The only one of the thugs who didn’t seem afraid was Flak, and it was anyone’s guess whether he’d keep his soldiers in line or not.
And Luci was completely helpless to it all, stuck to the floor by her own weight with enma-blocking manacles pinning her arms behind her back.
“Wip? Are you there?” Stella said over the loudspeaker.
“Nah,” Wip replied.
A pause. “Wip, I’m being serious here. Are you going to help Luci?”
“Nah.”
Everyone stared at Wip aghast. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that every single person in the room was thinking, Did you really just come here to give Luci money?
Stella screamed over the loudspeaker. “You stupid, overgrown turnip. I will throttle you in your sleep! If you don’t fix this mess right now, I will shove a dan so far down your throat that you’ll be crapping out kin for the next three weeks!”
“Let me say it differently,” Wip said. His tone was dead serious. “I shouldn’t have to help her.”
The room went completely silent. Even confident Flak watched the scene unfold with his eyebrows raised and a smile creeping onto his face.
Luci had never pinned Wip as selfish. Sure, she’d only known Wip for two days, but in that time, she’d come to see Wip to be too considerate. That image had just been dashed and, frankly, she was confused.
One the one hand, Luci thought it was only right. On the other, she felt betrayed. Some part of her had held out hope that Wip actually cared for her, that he’d protect her. It was a seed that had been festering in her heart, making her think that she’d found a family she didn’t deserve. That seed had been trampled.
Stella’s cold voice cut through the silence. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Wip, but if Luci doesn’t come back in one piece, then you can find a different fence.”
She hung up. Static emitted from the loudspeaker, filling the void. Wip fiddled with his phone for a few seconds before the noise switched off, then he pocketed the device.
Laughter echoed from the back of the room, drawing everyone’s attention. Flak stepped forward and waved his gun around nonchalantly.
“Hey, I get it—er, what was it? Wip? Funny name. Wip. Look.” He lowered his gun and sucked in air through his teeth. “You and I think alike. Nobody’s going to save you so you have to make do. It’s a tough world. If it ain’t the monsters trampling you, it’s some bratty S-class dungeoneer running around with a few million kin in aftos that his rich daddy had paid for. But us? We have to make do.”
Flak strutted forward, his demeanour giving off an aura of confidence. “So, I’ll tell you what. How about we work together. You help us get the girl to the Sylexan consulate and I’ll be happy to give you a million kin for the trouble. We could use the extra spike since, well, you know how touchy the Cult of the Moon is these days. You won’t get a better—hey!”
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Wip completely ignored Flak and walked up to Luci, his face set like stone. Combined with the scars and burns to both sides of his head, it made Wip the most terrifying thing Luci had ever seen. However, what lay beneath was even more terrifying.
When actively using it, Luci’s gestalt sense reached nearly two metres in range. Currently, she couldn’t flow or spike her enma at all with the enma-suppressing cuffs on, which meant she only had her passive enma. It was like a bedrock, a foundation upon which all enma was melded and all aftos could be bound. Nothing could take it away from an enma practitioner; it just didn’t do much of anything on its own. Except for sensing things, that was.
Through torturous training and endless nights spent absorbing the light of the moon, Luci had managed to push her passive gestalt sense to a range of ten centimetres surrounding her skin. The accuracy of her senses tapered off exponentially past that.
The moment that Wip’s toe crossed into her gestalt sense range, Luci turned to the side and threw up what little she had in her stomach.
Coughing and sputtering, she whimpered there on the floor. Her throat burned. She felt weak, vulnerable, more so than ever, unable even to wiggle away from a blob of her own bile. She was like an ant about to be crushed by a rising tide. And the reason for that stared down at her with eyes glowing a stark crimson.
If Luci’s soul was the moon, then Wip was the sun: orders of magnitude larger, heavier, and bursting with furious power.
The lights on Wip’s collar flickered so brightly that it hurt Luci’s eyes. Lighting crackled around him. Then at once the sensation passed and Wip was flashing his half-missing teeth. “Come on, Luci, get up,” he said. “You’re not this weak.”
Between coughing up lingering bile, Luci managed, “You’re wrong. I’m pathetic. I’m nothing like you. I’m so small and insignificant that I’ll only hold you back.”
Wip leaned over her and frowned. “I didn’t say you had to be like me, or even that you had to keep up with me. I don’t care about that stuff. What I said was that you weren’t this weak. Now, get up. Fight. If you don’t, you’re going to be stuck down there and helpless.”
Before Luci could protest, a roar erupted from the corner of the room. The man who’d been trying to save Missy, the woman who’d posed as Stella, snatched up his afto from the floor, which looked like the grip of a tool that lacked a head. Letting out an incoherent scream, he waved the grip, and a white-hot rope flared out. Heat radiated off it as it crossed through the room, carving through the walls like butter, and lashing directly at Wip’s chest.
Flak and his thugs all dived out the way. Wip, on the other hand, only shifted his gaze calmly towards the searing rope. The searing heat burned Luci’s eyes as it drew closer to Wip’s chest.
Just as the fiery whip was about to connect, he raised a hand and caught it. The end of the afto-whip flicked past Wip’s hand and cracked behind him, spraying fire across the room. Everyone dived out the way, screaming in terror, save for Luci who was stuck to the floor.
The searing rope fizzled out in Wip’s hand, going from white to blue to red, and then turning an inert black. The length of the afto-whip past where Wip had caught it was turning a similar black yet still remained solid despite being hewn of oxon, aftocore energy. The length between Wip and the angry thug’s hold, however, was bulging outwards, and growing fatter and hotter by the second.
The thug holding the afto’s grip let out a furious roar. He yanked the grip, trying to claw back control, but Wip was unmoveable. The bulging part of the afto-whip grew until it was as fat as a blammath and took up most of the room. Everyone scrambled to the walls to get out of its way. Luci tried her best to shuffle away as the radiating heat seared every bit of her exposed skin.
Then the grip burst, and fire sprayed across the room.
The explosion rattled the whole building. The force sent people flying. Luci slid across the floor, screaming for her life, then came to a stop close to a wall. The furniture, the plaster on the walls, the ceiling fan, anything that wasn’t concrete or metal was either already aflame or in the process of catching fire.
The thug fighting Wip flung back, letting out an agonized scream. Luci glimpsed that his arm ended in a stump. If she wasn’t too busy screaming in fear, she would have probably thrown up again.
One of the thugs had caught on fire and was charging out the door. The rest were following behind. However, the man on fire never made it as a yellow beam of light struck him in the back. He collapsed onto the door, barring the exit.
“What are you grupp heads doing?” Flak bellowed. The thugs all turned to him with fear stricken on their faces. “You all know how deep in we are, right? If the Cartel finds out we’re taking ten million kin from under their nose, we’re as good as dead.”
Flak trained his gun on Wip and fired. The beam struck Wip’s shoulder and knocked him back. Red electricity sparked where he’d been hit, blocking the shot.
Flak shouted his orders. “Get him!”