I JERK TO A STOP in the wide open door.

On the other side, standoff silence. Five undercity lords and the masked assassin responsible for killing two of them freeze in a record-scratch pause.

Kun Kharsa gapes at Sarah’s Sixer. “The Armiger?”

Ulysses’ eyes widen as he sees me. “Mori?”

The 6-Teba flashes from my holster to hip in a blur of black and gold. The Sixer snaps up into matching firing position, irons leveled at my forehead. The Anvil is already out of his chair. A stiletto drops into Volt’s hand. No one else has even had a chance to move. Yelena’s face contorts as she finally recognizes me.

“Nero lied!” the witch crows to her lieutenants. “Kill the girl! Kill her no-”

The red light staining the glass frieze wavers infinitesimally. Red dot flashing over the bookshelves / Nero’s shoulder / the witch’s haughty eyes and the window detonates at the same time as the upper half of her body, a man-eating slug shattering the conference room at three thousand supersonic feet per second.

The world upends in a black-powder thunderclap. Colored glass and Yelena’s liquified insides explode into the room like a paint bomb. Dripping bony crimson, Nero shoves away from the table right before Wishbone- the Armiger again in disguise- puts a bullet in the back of his chair. Marble chips spray the air. Before the Sixer can switch back to me, I dive into the conference room fan firing one-two-three from the hip. Staccato gunfire stutters the framerate of the room. Three red-hot craters appear in the Armiger’s cape as he pivots away from the shots and drives the butt of the Sixer into the Anvil’s forehead, halting a bull rush and sending the man smashing into a bookshelf.

The one-way holographic illusion to the side room wavers into nonexistence as the Anvil crashes into it. Bedlam roars on the other side. Limbs flying and flopping, flashes of light and elemental power, blood sprays slapping into the transparent barrier. Bullets and blades smash into the barrier, creating meters-long cracks.

I can’t stop to look for Lain and Matthias. Everything’s imploding around me. Ulysses rolling sideways from his chair as one of Yelena’s witches warps the stone of the table and sends it spearing towards him. Kun Kharsa’s Guardian smiles behind his demon-mask, just finished snapping Kharsa’s neck. Bought by Dynasty. His six-foot blade clears its sheath and he hits the table in a powerslide, swinging to finish off the Anvil while the smaller man is still stuck in the bookshelf. He’s a tank. One of my bullets punches into the meat of his shoulder completely unnoticed while another ricochets off the table and destroys the rest of the window.

Through the crinkling maw of glass, half a mile of rooftops away, the telltale gleam of a familiar rifle’s scope flashes once as the sniper packs up and makes his escape.

Grabbing a chunk of the bookshelf like a brick, the Anvil smashes headfirst into Kharsa’s turncoat Guardian, grappling and pummeling the larger man against the table. I curse and try to aim past them at the Armiger, but he’s moving like fluid. To my left, Volt snaps his fingers and a bolt of thunder connects his fingertip to one of Yelena’s remaining witches, frying her on the spot. He doesn’t stop there. Still flowing, simultaneously driving a stiletto into the stomach of the second witch. The blade sticks as he tries to rip it free and she willingly falls against him, trapping him against the wall. Fire building in her hands. Then the 6-Teba clangs and she spins wildly to the side in a spray of red. Volt is about to nod his thanks when Sarah’s Sixer speaks for him, punching two center-mass holes in Volt’s chest while the Armiger keeps pressing towards me behind the interlocked brawlers.

One link at a time, I watch the house of cards propping up the Vents collapse inwards on itself, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Sarah’s dream unravels in front of me. The 6-Teba’s cracked barrel smokes orange-hot as I cycle from target to target without firing, lost in the fray until Nero rushes past me on a path to the conference room doors. His lost bodyguard is already gone from his mind as he opens the lock and throws open the doors, only to be met with a vibro-tipped pike to the leg as the dragoons waiting outside surge into the gap. Metal crinkles and buckles. Oil splashes the floor. Circuits sparking. Silent, Nero throws a hand up and catches the next blade on his forearm, letting it bite deep into the metal instead of his neck. Concealed hardpoints in his hands flare open and turn the pike-wielding dragoon into a fried husk of armor. The next that shoves past her body eats a pulseblast to the chest and ragdolls over his shoulder, crashing into the lip of the table, neck bent at an unnatural angle.

The third drives a chainsaw blade into his heart, instantly killing him.

Ulysses roars over the carnage. “MORI!”

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Pounding the last dragoon into the door with a triple-tap execution, I whip back just as a silhouetted back interposes itself between me and the Armiger and a crack of gunpowder thunder breaks my ears. Chips of stone and wood slash at my forehead. Ulysses grunts hard. Not hurt. One of the ornate marble chairs fills his hands like a shield, shifting position to block two more shots the Armiger sends our way. The kinetic impact kicks Ulysses into me and me into the wall.

“The door!” he shouts, shouting at the secret passage. “Go, Mori!”

Behind the Armiger, Kharsa’s guardian laughs like a madman as he ends the grapple with a surge of sheer strength, ripping the Anvil off and flinging him to the ground like a towel. The young man’s grey eyes search for Ulysses through the tumult. Filled with shock, surprise, that everything could end so easily. A lifetime of struggle, survival, honing his claws on the hardest concrete in the world, just for his shout to the wind to be cut off at the throat.

Ulysses gasps. “Marcus…”

The Anvil has no time to rage like Sarah did. The blade sinks into him like Excalibur’s stone. There’s a wet cough. A flicker of cloth as the Armiger’s cape billows in the way. In my throat, a building scream that draws the Guardian’s attention to me, flash-fried ozone stinging my tear ducts as explosive light pulses behind closed eyelids. I open them again to the huge man’s lifeless body teetering sideways and smashing the Armiger off track.

Ulysses hurls the chair at them with a roar of rage and guilt that only a father could summon. The roar of a man who’s lost children before, and never wanted to lose another. Then his hand is in the back of my shirt. Half-carrying, half-pushing me into the secret hall while he pulls down a bookshelf to block the exit. We don’t have time to talk. Don’t even have time to look back, not when Sarah’s Sixer starts indiscriminately firing, turning the wall into a cheese grater. A stray bullet cuts across the back of my calf. I gasp aloud when another hits the side of my waist. Ulysses shields me with his body and we keep running. More shots and debris cut into us both. Ahead, the chaotic hammering of an all-out battle echoes loud and clear as the Eight’s lieutenants respond to a surprise attack from Dynasty enforcers and turncoats among their own ranks. They aren’t winning.

“On the right,” I shout, waving my overheated revolver at the still-curving passage. The bag-of-chains clang from the Sixer finally lets off. “Fire escape stairwell.”

Well over twice my age, Ulysses effortlessly matches me stride for stride. Face set, brow narrowed, eyes hard and subsumed entirely by concentration. “That was Krey’s shooting. Did you two plan this?”

I choke on a laugh. When he looks down at me, I shake my head. “Can’t breathe. Shrapnel, fuck. In my lungs.” I cough into my offhand, using the other to eject the 6-Teba’s spent ammo cylinder. A flick of my wrist slots a fresh one without thinking. “Krey’s gone solo. He’s crazy, dead set on killing all of Dynasty. I can’t stop him.”

Focusing on my running, I put a hand to my head and search for the mental tickle of the Psi link connecting me to Matthias. It’s still pulsing, albeit frayed to hell and spiking with adrenaline and panic and injuries. Somehow he stopped it from spilling through the link. I don’t exactly know how to open it myself, but he must sense me reaching out for him, because suddenly all that adrenaline on his end starts dumping into my head like a dam just opened.

Matthias rips through my surface thoughts until he finds the location my entire mind is focused on reaching. Brief vertigo as he borrows a snapshot of what my eyes see. Dimly through the link, I feel a fuzziness along my fingertips from where he’s grabbing Lain and tugging her away from a fight. She pulls one of Nero’s lieutenants in front of her to block a cut from a sword. The man’s body jerks and spasms like a puppet. Already dead. The corpse slumps to the ground to jam the way behind them as they flee into the secret passage.

I jerk back into my own senses just as the stairwell comes into view around the curved corner. Two Dynasty enforcers block the door, blades trained on the room where the lieutenants still fight, watching the growing twin shadows of Lain and Matthias hobbling towards them. Ulysses sweeps ahead silent and wrathful, hands tightened into martial shape.

They don’t hear him coming.

Snap kick to the back of a knee, the joint pops like a cork. Elbow to the other enforcer’s skull at jackhammer velocity. Brained against the wall, dead instantly on impact. There’s no hate to his movements. Just the brutal, machinelike efficiency of a man who has long since made his peace with choosing the lesser of evils. The first enforcer screams on the ground in front of him. Ulysses drives a heel into his spine, smashing the vertebrae to pulp like a bundle of twigs, then silences him with an effortless snap of the neck.

I know I am not the girl I was two days ago as I watch him dispose of the trash and feel absolutely nothing.

Blood drips in ones and twos from Ulysses’ bruised elbow as he rises back up into standing, winding his shoulder in a small circle to relieve the tension in the joint. I run forward and put a hand on his arm before he can kill Lain and Matthias in an equally fast manner.

“They’re with me,” I say as the two bloodied thieves hobble around the corner. They see me and Ulysses standing over the bodies, the same adrenaline craze in all our eyes. Mouth firm, Lain shakes her head at me, condemning without words. Once again I led her into a trap, and once again I’m her only way out of it. But it doesn’t stop her from following Ulysses. One of the Eight standing over two enemy corpses- he’s the best chance she has of getting out alive.

We flee into the stairwell in silence, abandoning Sarah’s dream two steps at a time.