It was a little hard not to curse myself as I sneaked out through the smoke and debris.

I knew why I’d gotten caught. For all the things I’d attempted to take care of before leaving my home, I’d overlooked one little detail. My Arclight.

It was the only reason I could think of. My appearance was different, Mutton wasn’t with me, and I had no other visual identifiers that my assassination targets might have somehow sent to the group that was now after me. It was also hard to believe the crime lords would be cooperating with whoever the Untouchables had sent. They tended to hate each other’s guts.

But considering I was likely being hunted by professionals, there was no doubt they’d try to check for Arclight signatures.

Of course, as soon as I had realized that, I had rectified the issue. Diffusing my Arclight stores, I sent out pulses around me to further scramble any attempts to pinpoint Arclight signatures by any scanners. The process was not dissimilar from when I had cut off the loan shark’s comms.

“You still there, Operator?” I sent through the comms.

“I’m working on it,” Aliya said. “Give me a second.”

I had given her a small job to help me with my current quandary. One of the problems with being the target yourself is that you couldn’t take the kinds of countermeasures that would be most efficient.

Ideally, I’d be hacking into the local security systems to try to pinpoint my attacker in turn. But for now, I had been forced to hide.

So instead, I set Aliya on the job.

Not that I was depending on her alone. The dust and smoke were clearing, though the fire from the explosion still raged high. I winced, thinking about the kijo I’d been talking with. But no time to be distracted.

My assailant had no way of confirming that I was dead or alive. Visual confirmation was impossible in the aftermath of the explosion. Heat signatures? Forget it. Plus, with me diffusing my Arclight, that avenue was gone too. Basically, my would-be killer—or killers—had screwed themselves over.

So, they’d either wait for better visuals, or they’d come to the ground to check it out for themselves.

If there were more than one of them, I could see them going for the latter. One to check the street in person, while the other covered the first from a vantage point. Not the original location from where they had fired. A different one, because the first was now compromised.

That they’d shot from higher up was a given. I’d have done the same in their shoes.

Regardless of which option they went with, there would most likely be at least one assailant still at some point far above me. That was what I needed to take advantage of.

Sirens were booming in the distance. The Enforcers were no doubt coming hard and fast, along with other emergency services. There weren’t that many locals about. Most workers had gone on to higher levels for their jobs. But those that were here were still panicking.

I moved along the alley, squeezed between a few buildings, then came to a gate that opened onto the main road. Now I had a better visual of the surroundings.

Identifying the buildings most likely containing the assailants wasn’t difficult. It had to be the one that not only had an accessible roof, but also one that had other, shorter buildings around as a secondary means of getaway instead of just using the stairs. But that would likely be the original location from where the shot had come.

The second spot, where the other assassin was likely covering everything, would be somewhat more innocuous.

I drove a pinch of Arclight into my eyes. Twelve times zoom was really handy for checking every window and balcony in the neighbourhood.

Sadly, quite a few were covered by smoke. Plus, some of them had the locals sticking their heads out, trying to see what the commotion was. A few of them had come down to street level, checking things out in person. I pressed my lips together.

One of them was no doubt the assassin.

“I’m in,” Aliya said. “Want me to send you the feed?”

“Yeah. Did it really take you that long to hack into the local security?”

“You’re lucky it didn’t take me longer. Unlike you, I don’t make a habit of hacking into anything.”

I supposed she had me there. The feed arrived a second later, and I navigated to it through my Interface.

It was a list of all the security cameras and sensors Aliya had been able to get access to on short notice. There were more than I had anticipated. I had to wonder if she had been manually trying to hack into them one by one, which would explain why it had taken her a few minutes instead of a few dozen seconds.

They were old, which would make hacking them easy. But the fact they were old also meant they were unlikely to be in one, unified system, which would make hacking them tedious. Shitting corpos always cutting corners.

I went through all the feeds as fast as I could. They allowed me to see past the smoke and fires, check out spots that were obscured to me from my limited point of view but still had a good overview of where I had almost been hit.

And I finally found the assassin.

One of them, at least. Some of the sensors were Arclight sensors, meant to report any flashes and bursts of Arclight. As already stated, they were old, so they’d never be able to sense Arclight carried within an Augmented human like me. But externals were a different matter.

Clearly, my would-be killers weren’t at all worried about being spotted. The man I’d found on a balcony had a canister full of bullets next to him, all brimming fit to bursting with Arclight. He even looked the part of a professional killer. Sleek pants, tight jacket, eyes covered with shades.

“I’m sending you a specific feed channel,” I told Aliya. “Keep an eye on our friend while I make my way over.”

I could have kept an eye on him myself. It would be easy to relegate the viewing feed to one corner of my sight using the Interface, while the rest of my focus remained on navigating to my target.

But I wanted to use that space to see if there were any other assailants on ground level, so I left it to Aliya.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“You’re dragging me too deep into this…” she said.

“I’ll make it up to you if I get out alive.”

My target was on the other side of the area. The explosion had occurred at a T-junction. I’d have to travel along the main road to get to my attempted killer. That was, if I was suicidal.

Which I wasn’t, so I tried to sneak around and find a hidden alley instead.

I was successful. I was also spotted by someone making her way over to the explosion site. She only glanced at me before moving on. I wasn’t that interesting.

My heart thudded harder as I got closer to my target. The feeds I was reviewing didn’t reveal anyone on the ground who looked even remotely like the target I had spotted. A bad feeling ricocheted through my head. The second—or more—assassin would pop up just when it would be least convenient.

Which was what probably had my heart racing a bit. For over a year, my targets were all these dumb crooks who couldn’t hold a candle to me even if they had wanted to.

Now, I was against actual pros. It gave me the same exhilarating feeling as when I was on a battlefield.

The same feeling that had led me to the moniker of Juggernaut.

I found a tucked away fire escape near my target’s building and climbed as fast as I could. His attention was still focused on the explosion’s aftermath.

My feed revealed the Enforcers had arrived, bringing with them an old-fashioned fire truck that was dousing the flames. The uniformed Enforcers were taking statements from everybody, and I wondered if one of them was after me.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an angle to take out my killer from on high. I’d have to manoeuvre around.

So, I got onto the roof using the fire escape. It was sloped, not a flat surface that could have been used as a setup for long-distance sniping. Regardless, I shimmied my way across it until I finally saw my target.

Or, where he should have been. Asshole was now gone.

“He only just went inside,” Aliya said. “Not far from his original location. But I’m losing track of him, fast.”

Of course, the feed she was viewing probably wouldn’t be able to see that far into the building. I needed to act. Now.

The bullets burst out of the side of my target’s building without warning. Instinctive use of Arclight was all that saved me. The mag-shield came to life, ripping the momentum away from the shots and freezing them in front of me.

What an ass. He must have spotted me and immediately fired. Didn’t matter there was solid concrete between him and his target. His ammunition apparently didn’t care.

I really wanted to think it was my turn to shoot back. Commissioner Gregor hadn’t given me bullet limits this time. I had packed as much ammo as I could store in my holsters, and now it was time to use them.

Or it would have been had my asshole of an opponent allowed any openings. I could get shots off from behind my mag-shield but the storm of bullets from my assassin would simply act like a shield against anything I fired too.

So instead, I pushed a significant amount of Arclight into my legs. The hexes came to life, glowing with burgeoning power.

Then I jumped and fell through the building.

I hadn’t increased my weight with Arclight. Simply the impact power in my legs. It would allow me to move fast. In this scenario, it would also let me crash through the roof to the floor beneath, then the floor underneath, and so on until I reached a floor that was no longer suffering a hail of concrete-piercing bullets.

It was at that floor that I heard someone screaming. Like I had said, most people were either out of the building or away at work. But not everybody. Hopefully, the poor guy hadn’t gotten hurt.

I hadn’t turned off the Arclight in my legs. Just paused it so I didn’t keep crashing through the floors. When I repowered it again, I burst through the wall horizontally this time, exploding into the building my target was on.

Alright, I was in. Now to actually reach my would-be killer.

I brushed the dust and dirt off me. Then I raised my arm high. Nice thing about Arclight was that it could be modified into various frequencies and densities. This time, I modified it into a single powerful and penetrative pulse. Before I could second guess myself about whether my target was even on the building still and if any innocents were in the way, I fired.

The top half of the building basically erupted. Despite the smoke and the crashing debris and the detonating sounds all around me, I didn’t dare lower my sensitivity via the Interface. I needed everything I had to take down the government goons I was facing.

Speaking of which, said hunter fell to my floor with basically no scratch at all. He was dressed in a shiny coat, an Arclight shock baton in one hand and handgun in the other. A Boltstride 88A. if I died here, at least I’d be dying to top-of-the-line weaponry.

“Neat trick,” the assassin said. “I can see why they call you the Juggernaut.”

A little jolt rushed up my spine. It was the first time I had been addressed by that moniker by anyone other than Commissioner Gregor in almost two years.

“You—”

“Sorry, not interested in convo.” The assassin attacked. “Die.”

Arclight had a lot of strange properties that different tech and people could take advantage of. In this case, my assailant was apparently appearing and disappearing at will.

I couldn’t detect what exactly he was doing. Probably some new tech developed on the higher levels. A secret one I hadn’t been told about. That was fine. My mag-shield was blocking the shots from his handgun no matter which direction he fired them from. Which meant he’d try to get at me melee-style.

That’s when my advanced Arclight technique kicked in. Condensing Arclight into tiny needle threads, then holding it, holding it, holding it, until—

The assassin closed in with his shock baton raised, but my needle threads lashed out. They made the very air sizzle with burning strength, like the crackle of lightning. The assassin fell back with a cry. Oh, yes. It felt good to exercise my real power once in a while.

I had landed a strong blow against my adversary. Most of his coat was vaporized, burnt skin oozing blood and oily fluids at several spots. He was far from done, though.

“And here I thought you could take down the mythical Juggernaut by my lonesome.” The assassin tutted, his shades glinting. “For a dead guy, you’re more of a handful than I thought. But that’s alright. You won’t be around for much longer.”

I cricked my neck. He was right. Our fight had lasted merely a minute or so, but it had no doubt already gotten everybody’s attention. More importantly, it must have dragged in all his colleagues’ attention.

Not that I needed to worry about any of that.

“See, you’re forgetting something, pal,” I said. “You forgot where you are.”

I bull-rushed him. The same way I had pushed extra power using Arclight into my legs came into play here, sending me bursting towards my target. He tried to dodge, but one outstretched arm was enough to catch him—thanks to our previous interaction having fried some of his Augments—and then we went tumbling over the side of the ruined building.

“Where—”

“This is Underlevel, asshole.”

Our collision had snapped the shock baton out of his grip, but the assassin’s hands were reaching for me. Hands peppered with little spikes protruding from the palm and fingertips.

But they failed to reach me when our plummet ended as we struck the roof of the train elevator.

Of course, an Augmented body would survive even a multi-storey fall like that. The whole train elevator shook, panicked shouts of people from within serenading my assailant’s curses. But the elevator didn’t stop moving. Why would it? If even half the occupants reached their destination alive, that was good enough for the Untouchables on higher levels.

“You’re a dead man,” the assassin shouted. I was trying to reach his head with my own needle-palmed grip while keeping him grappled to the floor. “You should stay dead!”

“I’m tired of being dead.”

“Then why’d you have to come alive, huh?”

We couldn’t do much more than grunt and wrestle against each other. Both of our Arclight was going haywire as we both continuously sent out interrupting pulses. The elevator continued shaking as it travelled on its tracks, the air sizzling with power and pounding with the panicked shouts.

A rough grapple later, the assassin had flipped us just enough so that he now had my arm in a tight lock. “So this is all that the Juggernaut’s got, huh?” The needles on his hand stabbed into the skin of my trapped arm. “Pathetic.”

It was then I realized that upper level tech had developed enough to send Arclight into any part of the body and affect it. Unlike my ability, where I needed to inject it into directly into the brain.

“Well, nothing for it, then,” I said.

“What?”

I had already cut off the Arclight connections between my trapped arm and the rest of my body. Whatever poison the assassin was injecting wasn’t going to affect the rest of me. Which meant my arm was no longer useful.

So, I blew it up.

It took less than a millisecond to initiate the self-detonation via a mental command. I didn’t even need my Interface. Gave me all the time to see the shock on the assassin’s face, hear his scream for the briefest instant, before we were both sent flying in opposite directions off the train elevator’s roof.

My only regret as my burning body fell back to street level was that we’d fallen on opposite sides. It was going to be a pain to find my would-be killers brain.