I WAS STUPID to think I could kill the Armiger. And now more people are about to die because of me. Just like Sarah.

Just like she must have seen her own reflection before she died. Staring at that black-white Sixer with its scarred paint job, ice-cold dread filling her gut as she realized her mistake too late. Too cocky, too confident, too many good runs in a row.

Fear, cold and gripping, as the Sixer’s hammer clicks back into firing position.

I escape in the only way I have left. A twist of my wrist points the 6-Teba at another gas line and ignites the air into a fully-formed flashbang. Deafening sound and retina-melting light wash out the room, taking all my senses with them. But my body, barely able to function, still has energy left to give. I tuck and roll sideways, feeling the thump-thump vibration in the air as the Armiger blindly dumps the rest of the Sixer’s twelve-shot magazine. Hot lead scars the air. Bullets pound into the tile. All it takes is one hitting the weakest part of the sagging floor to start a collapse.

The Armiger vanishes behind a cloud of rubble as we fall down into two separate offices on the tenth floor. But it’s only the first link of a chain reaction. Years of disrepair already thinned the tower’s superstructure to threads. Burn the entire block down around it, let that heat seep into the ground floor supports, and the whole place is practically begging to give way. Only a small part actually collapses at first. But then it keeps collapsing. Over and over and over again, floors into ceilings into floors, building into a coagulated wave of concrete and debris and furniture and glass that plunges all the way down to the atrium level before washing out into nearby alleys.

Dumb. Suicidal. The only choice I had left, and I drown in the deluge.

My eyes blink back open well after I finish sliding off a pile of loose scree like a slab of raw meat. A long string of airless groans and choked coughs leak out of my abused body while I lie facedown in the rubble. Bright and dark spots swarm through my vision. Still dazed, I look up to find myself staring at one of the Vector Seven’s tight alleys, melting in the heat. Electrical cables dip and twine overhead, silhouetted by nearby fires. Showers spark over the waves of debris. All the storefronts are dark. Windows shattered. No life but the roaring of flames, the pinging of molten metal, the pop of burning plastics, and the dancing embers that reflect off them all. Soon they’ll be gone, too. Fuel to the fire.

Ignorant of the sweat and hair plastered to my face, I force up to my knees, tearing the ragged remnants of the poncho from around my neck. I’m lucky I didn’t choke myself on it. Smoke-stung tears leak from my eyes as I look back over the rubble-filled alley, shocked that I managed to survive the collapse at all. My fingers still work around my revolver’s grip. Somehow I kept hold of it. I try to take in a breath, but I can barely manage a little whistling noise. Every rise and fall of my chest wiggles the ceramic shards closer to my lungs. I can feel them between my ribs, poking through the meat. Bloody pinholes leak out the front of my borrowed shirt. It’s so wet, the grey fabric now black with blood. I’d laugh at how used to the feeling I’ve become in just a few hours, but it’s all I can do to slump against the alley’s brick wall.

A lone neon sign with half the logo shattered watches me like a blinking eye while I gather the strength to move. When it comes, I holster the 6-Teba and start searching through the rubble for Lain and Krey. Keep my free hand pressed to my chest all the while. Luckily, I don’t have to look long.

Krey fights out of the rubble on his own near the collapsed awning of a dry-cleaning store. Then another gasp of breath comes from closer to the office’s blown-out atrium as Lain crawls out from beneath a pile of drywall and concrete. Covered in powder and dust that’s been baked by the heat, she looks like a ghost. A furious, adrenaline-crazed ghost who immediately clutches a hand to her shot-up shoulder while she scans the rest of the room.

Her wild eyes find me first. “Where is he? The Armiger?” she gasps.

“Close,” I answer. My hand twitches towards the tower, all the way across a smoke-choked plaza filled with leafless twig trees and more waves of slurried debris. It’s the only motion I can make. “We fell at the same time. He’s still out there. Maybe crushed. Maybe in the next alley over. Probably coming to kill us, either way.” My mind races through the options we have left. There’s so fucking few of them. The enforcers will be storming down as fast as possible. Can’t go back up and leave out the locker room- I can’t risk Dynasty learning about the air shafts. Can’t leave the block, ‘cause they’ll have it on lockdown from corner to corner.

I’m stuck in my own head. No strength left in me. All of it was ejected by that first kick, and what a kick it was. Over and over again my mind replays how easily the Armiger dismantled us. The others keep arguing. Their voices fade to a dull drone. Crackling fire rises to the forefront, lulling my eyes into tired blinking before a painful cough brings me back to reality.

“There’s another way out,” Krey says, continuing while I’m still slumped against the alleyside. “An apartment complex on the southwest corner, goes up to the next layer. Same corp owns the one above it. The two of them are linked together on the inside. You can get out that way.”

Lain spits a mouthful of soot at his feet. “And then what? Our only safehouse is in Nero’s territory on the other side of the Vents. We’re all dead the second someone sees us out on the streets. Mori’s got a million-credit bounty on her head.”

“Not my problem,” Krey sneers back. “I’m not leaving.”

“Right. You, the noble savior of the undercity, slayer of the syndicate mooks. Got your elbow snapped by the Armiger and he wasn’t even looking when he did it.”

“And what were you doing? Lurking in the rafters while Em took the heat just so you could get rolled like a first-year Martial Artist?” Krey cocks his head to the side, venom in his eyes. “I was the only one who even tagged him. We could have taken him if you two had the guts to fight. But you wanted to run from the start.” He tosses a hand at the waves of rubble, the flames consuming the block. “Look what that got you.”

“You’re not the first loose screw with a grudge against the syndicate. And you definitely won’t be the last.”

“People like you are the reason they’re winning. Always rolling over so those bastards can take whatever they want. How much longer you think they’re going to let you do that?” He pinches two fingers together. “When they own the Vents, rats like you are going to be the first ones gone.”

“Do tell, with your extensive life experience. You’re a gang thug. You don’t know the first thing about dealing with Dynasty. Daddy’s always been doing it for you.”

“And you’re a pickpocket running with a wannabe-Iros. Don’t give me that drivel.”

“Both of you shut up,” I snarl. I can’t keep looking weak in front of them. All it’s doing is intensifying the cracks in our jury-rigged alliance. Battered and beaten, pretty sure I’m going to be permanently down some organs by the end of the night, I push away from the bricks to see them both mid-expletive. “I said shut it,” I repeat, pointing a finger at Lain before she can say a word. “Save the arguing for when we’re out of here.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She lets out a mirthless chuckle. “Didn’t you hear? Your boyfriend isn’t coming with us.”

“That’s his choice,” I say. My eyes flick over to Krey. “Your arm is broke. Come on.”

Krey shrugs and starts fishing around the rubble for the pieces of his Malice. “Nah. I’m not done, Em.”

“I’m not leaving you for Dynasty, Krey. I came back to get you out.”

“Already told you- I’m not going till I’ve put a bullet in every last one of them.” His brow darkens as he shoves a round into the broken rifle. Voice softening, gaze dropping to the concrete. “Go, Em. Get moving. I’ll find you later.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Lain says. She searches the nearby scree for her garrote and comes up empty, then settles for relacing her boots. “Sorry Mori, but that secret passage of yours is taking Matthias and I as far from here as possible. Whether or not you come with is up to you.”

When I’m silent for too long a moment, she finally glances down the alley at me.

“Gunslinger. Make your choice.”

My ruined boots crush the silty concrete as I pad over to Krey. Crouched on his haunches, he keeps piecing the Malice together until I thrust a hand in front of his face. Hard again, hard as he is, not letting him run me over like last time.

“We had a rule, Krey.”

“Yeah. We did. But things were different then.” He sets his sights on the groaning tower, frenzied flames reflecting in his irises. “We were kids. Had that luxury, had to look out for each other. But now?” His head shakes. “You think you know how to fix this. I know I do.”

Reticently, my fingers curl back inwards. “You’re wrong.”

“Maybe. But we both had our shots in there, and we missed. I won’t miss next time.” The callused pads on his palm clutch warm against mine, squeezing once in dismissal. “Later, Em. I’ll see you uptown.”

Patting the Malice’s parts with his one working arm, Krey shoots me a two fingered salute, an even cockier smirk, and disappears into a connecting alley. I watch him go until he rounds a corner and disappears into the smoky innards of a butcher shop. Then, putting my oldest friend in the world behind me, I slip my gun back into its holster and shift to Lain, who watched the entire exchange with arms crossed under her chest.

“We can’t use the airshaft. That’s one card I’m holding in reserve,” I tell her.

“The last order you gave almost got us all killed,” she growls, not at all pleased at my attitude. “I could give two shits about me. But if you fuck with Matthias, you better have a real good alternative, pal.” She hooks her head at Krey’s trail. “And it better not have that suicidal bastard’s fingerprints all over it.”

“That apartment complex he mentioned is the best way out,” I say. “And you’re right- the moment we get seen on the streets by someone on Dynasty’s payroll, it’s game over. But right now they’re looking for three Venter kids dressed like us. They’re not looking for a couple of dayshift workers heading up to the surface. Almost every Venter who works for the corporations lives on this block. Shimano Heavy, Valor Industries, you name it. We’ll borrow some clothes and slip in with the morning commute. Take a metro or something, hop off on a stop near the industrial lifts.”

Lane sardonically snaps her fingers. “Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

Ragged breathing echoes through the smoke pouring from the tower, cutting our argument off at the head. We turn together to find the source. Squinting into the ashen clouds, wrists over our mouths. My hand drifts towards my gun until Lain waves me off.

“It’s Mat. I’d recognize his panting anywhere,” she mutters under her breath. Her voice rises as she hisses into the smoke. “Matthias, get the hell over here.”

“Just trying to avoid the hornet’s nest you two awoke,” his disembodied voice replies. He jogs into the alley a moment later, nearly tripping over a cinder block on accident. Looks to me when he finishes dusting himself off. “Could you have given me any sign you were about to knock down a building?”

“I told you not to play jockey with my brain.”

“As I said- far better than the alternative of having said brain melted by an Iros.”

“Mori here was just deciding whether or not to follow us back to the locker room,” Lain says, taking a defensive step to put herself beside Matthias. The top of his head just barely brushes against her nose. “Doing a piss poor job of convincing me there was another way out, too.”

Matthias taps his forehead. “I was still listening. And Mori is right. We can’t let Dynasty learn about the air shafts.”

“Matthias, now is not the time to be a patriot.”

“No, it’s not,” he counters. “It’s not the time to be contrarian either. We have two minutes to get off these streets and into cover. That building is swarming with enforcers. There’s no way we’re getting back up.” He places a hand on hers. “I know you don’t like any of this. It’s not our usual kind of job… but it’s even more important. This could stop Dynasty for good.”

I think I’m more surprised than Lain is when Matthias leaves her side to stand at mine. Not just by his sudden show of trust after I almost dragged them into a fatal mistake, but by the burden of belief his hopeful gaze carries. When he pauses to glance at me, completely sure of his next words, I want to look any direction but back at him. He looks at me like people used to look at Sarah. Like I know something he doesn’t. Like I have a plan and a promise that things will be better. But I don’t.

I don’t. I’m just a girl with a gun doing my best to pretend all the pieces aren’t falling down around me.

“Sarah Morninghawk had a plan to stop Dynasty,” Matthias says, steadying me when my knee threatens to buckle. “I know you don’t care about it, Lain. But I would like to believe in it. Emilia believes in it too, or she wouldn’t be standing here now. She’d be heading back into the fire to back her friend up.”

“I put you between a rock and a hard place with the Armiger,” I tell her. “Shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. Believe me, I know.” I tap a nail against my bleeding sternum. “There’s still another way to see Sarah’s plan through. Even if Nero’s territory is too far, I can still make it to the summit tomorrow night. But I can’t make it there without help.”

“Technically tonight,” Lain mutters.

“Sure. Tonight.” I sigh. “You’re right to be pissed with me. You’d be right to leave me. All I can ask is that you give me one more shot.” I nod at the office. “…And remind you that we’re about to be overrun by Dynasty enforcers.”

Lain stares down Matthias for a long moment, trying to break him through eye contact alone. He wins out in the end. Seems the willow has some roots after all.

“Right on all counts,” she finally sighs. “Pretend to be as noble as you like, all you’ve done is put us between another rock and another hard place, Mori.”

I watch the flames.

“Matthias wants to help you. So I’ll help you. But don’t get it crossed up in your head, little gunslinger. I’m not here for you. I’m here for him.” She jams a finger into my sternum, pushing the ceramic shards a millimeter deeper. “Try not to forget.”

“Loud and clear,” I mutter, watching her stalk past. Matthias is far more receptive when I nod to get his attention. “I can get us at least five blocks away from here, but I’m firing empty after that. Dynasty took Sarah’s JOY, so they’ll already be zeroing in on her usual spots and contacts. Got anywhere to lay low?”

Matthias arches an eyebrow at Lain’s quickly disappearing shape. “Luckily,” he says, “I think we know just the spot.”