Skin sizzled as I slipped the knife up to the hilt. The hairy fool hadn’t even seen me pressed against the cooling tank, my body armor perfectly mimicking the scored surface. I twisted the humming blade, ripping it out the side of his throat. The sniper collapsed, gushing blood instead of prayer, and I dared a quick peek below. The young girl lay twisted on the ground, neck snapped up and back, beyond what even a gene-limbered spine could manage.

I smiled. Two for the price of one.

The floor gave way beneath me, causing a breath of weightlessness, and then I was falling. I spun as I dropped, singing out with my flash pistol. The white-hot bullets riddled the stone below, shearing a stocky man’s leg clean off at the knee. He stumbled back, the skin hissing and spitting as the flesh melted off in chunks, but he didn’t scream. Instead,he leveled a small multi-round missile launcher at my falling body, the infrared eyepieces he wore adjusting and clicking, seeing me easily through the rain of debris, just as they had most likely seen me through the floor itself.

My arm whipped, snapping the knife toward the man. It hummed like a thousand scratch gnats, colliding with the exiting missile just in time. The explosion bloomed a foot from the man’s face, washing him in flame and throwing him backward into the wall of the room where he left a smear of bloody ash.

I landed on the balls of my feet, rolling forward to absorb the fall, and then I was off, sprinting through a doorway and into another room. I didn’t look back as I ran, my knife was gone and the man was coal.

One room, two rooms, three rooms I bolted through, seeing a scattering of dead bodies, and then I crashed through a window, glass skipping off my armor and I was falling again. The wind stroked my face as I looked at the buildings around me. Most were leaning skeletons, pocked frameworks on the verge of collapse. But that was the point. Everything here was a trap.

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Seconds before my body was dashed against the ground, I activated my anti-grav gear, coming to a sudden halt on a thin cushion of energy. The cracked earth seemed to leer, so I grinned right back, killing the generator and taking off at another run.

I was halfway down an alley when an inhuman scream turned my head, showing me a slim, tattooed boy dancing with a redden. The alien was quick, lashing out with claws and fiendish teeth, but somehow the boy was faster, light blooming from his fingertips, making razor claws of his own, slashing and tearing the creature’s abdomen. The redden leapt back, hugging the side of the wall like a bug and screaming again. This time the sound wasn’t alone and strings of liquid sprayed from its maw. The fleshy bands snapped through the air punching through rock, mortar, and the boy’s left arm. The youth let out a cry of his own, but it was filled with more anger than pain.

I couldn’t help but smirk as the boy raised his bladed fingers to cut the line and then suddenly twitched, sagging, as poison from the mucus filled his veins. Even better, the redden wasn’t moving in for the kill, grunting and heaving on the wall, purple blood oozing from its wounded torso.

My shots were flawless, filling the space of all possibilities. Both turned at the sound of my pistol, but it was too late for either of them. The boy twisted away from the first shot, but the hardened liquid that pierced his arm limited his movement, and the second shot caught him in the side, the third his forehead. If the bullets hadn’t been liquid light, graymatter would have sprayed the road.

The redden was faster, snapping the hardened membrane from its mouth and scrambling away. My fourth and fifth shots lit past it, missing by millimeters, by infinitesimals.

Impossible.

It lurched toward me, leaping from one wall to the next in a frenzied rush. Despite my efforts, my shots grew further and further from its darting form, it’s silver-white body almost a blur. And then it was above me, bloodied claws snapping down to kill, and I spun to the side.

The redden’s crystalline nails left jagged gashes in the stone, but my gun hovered inches from its smooth head. My finger tightened on the trigger. Five kills in less than—

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