Mori is moving before the last word fades. One finger on her earcom, the other aiming a lethal amount of electricity at Ajax and I while she sprints back up the darkened, spiraling staircase.
“Follow me and I’ll kill you myself,” she snaps.
I can already see where she’s going. I don’t like it. But I don’t have many alternatives, and certainly none that sound better in my head. Ajax was right, just like Champion Fang. My anger and emotions ruled me too easily.
I should have trusted Jolie. She’s safest in the penthouse, and she’s no storybook princess who needs rescuing. Her final bet wasn’t meant for Vex. It was meant for us. She’s got one card left up her sleeve, not that I have any idea what it could be. And as much as betting her life makes my hands clench and my teeth nearly bite through my tongue, I’m going to let her play that card.
My sister doesn’t work in half measures. If she said the night would end in a surprise, it’s going to be cataclysmic. I just have to buy her time.
Letting Mori run, I head down the staircase in full, violently burning fury. All heat. All rage. Not a shred of cold or calculating to me. I need every instinct now that we’re found out. The anger, the frustration, it’s just fuel to the engine burning inside me. And how it roars in response. Howling up and down the stairwell, setting my pace in subsonic thunder. More than ever before I feel like I could push my aura, my heart so much further. Morph my talents into something dangerous. Unstoppable, unconquerable. Yet I use them like a blacksmith, hammering into my problems to solve them one slam at a time.
I promised Jolie I would change my tactics and find victory against Ajax. Yet what have I done since that day but spin my wheels more, hammer like I always have? If I fail this time, my sister will die.
I turn one fist over and watch the flaming aura flow. My hands are strong, yes. But that’s all they are. As Ajax has shown me time and time again, any difference in power can be conquered by sufficient skill. I need that. To use my head, as Champion Fang put it. My strength is in instincts, reflexes, charisma. That’s not enough on its own. To win tonight, I need to evolve.
Ajax brings that cold reminder with him as he falls in beside me, still labored in breath from our standoff. The sunset to my sunrise. Wrapped in dead metal where I exude living energy. Yet there’s that one seed of the eclipse in each of us. Eddies of current flee from my darkened brow. Ajax’s face alone is uncovered, cast in simple blue by the blade that lights his path.
I tap into the earcom one final time.
“We’re going down. Mori?”
She skips into a private channel. “Don’t say it, flyboy. I’ll get her out. Done plenty harder things.”
“Good. Screw the corp.”
The com goes silent with a laugh and a click. I slip it out and crush the device inside my palm, deafening myself to one weakness. Turn my neck to pop it. Swing my arms, loosening the joints. Another level passes. Five. We descend past guards and blinking security cameras that trail on silent motors to our progress. The procession grows behind us. High above, Mori’s faint presence vanishes from the ethereal limits of my kinetic sense. I narrow my focus then. Bring it close and tight, forming a field of aura around myself that I can feel like an extension of my own skin. Any attack will have to pass through the aura first, giving me crucial extra frames to react.
Two foot-thick blast doors split open like a metal maw as we step onto the landing of Sub-Six. More hallways stretch on ahead, lights extinguished. So mundane for whatever it is that they’re keeping down here. Science always has a way of sucking the life out of living. There’s nothing but metal and dim deck-level lights as far as the eye can see.
I pause on the threshold after it opens, eyes roaming over what lies beyond.
Ajax’s JOY rebraids his dye-streaked hair into its rightful shape. “You feel it too.”
“The weight in the air.”
We stare down the darkened tunnel alone, our only company the faint hissing of a climate control vent.
“I want you watching my back in there,” he says.
“That’s a first.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m serious too,” I snort. “I don’t want you watching mine. I want you prepared to do whatever it takes to stay alive. We can’t be rivals if you die on me.”
“Why am I the one who dies in that scenario?”
Juvenile spite, not wordless agreement, sets us into motion. Our bootsteps fall together as we stride into the yawning black, barely mismatched in timing. Shoulder to shoulder. Thin and broad. Hammer and blade. Ajax’s rapier slithers up his side like a serpent and wraps around his right forearm, melting flush into the armor there.
“Because you’re always playing defense,” I say. “It’s why no one likes the way you fight. You never take risks.”
“And you never quit overextending.”
“So you do get it.”
“I get why I’m first rank and you’re second, if that’s what you mean.”
“People like a show. They like tension, drama, flair. Heroes aren’t heroes because they always win. They’re heroes because you don’t want to see them lose.” One thought of Jolie redoubles my venting ki as I clench my fist. “I’m just a regular guy like anyone else. I want to see a show too. So I do what makes my heart beat fastest, and I don’t stop to ask questions.”
“Have you ever wanted to be better than a flash in the pan?” Ajax asks.
“Always,” I grunt. “Which is why I think we could learn a thing or two from each other, if we weren’t always fighting.” I toss my head from side to side. “I need something from you too.”
“Go.” He can see how fired up I am, bordering on levels I’ve never pushed myself to in our fights. We’re stepping into the unknown. An entirely different world from the bright lights and rules we’ve always known. There will be no second chances, no second rounds. Lives are on the line. This is the true world our entertainment covers, the one that exists just outside the camera frame. We’re a gladiatorial peoples with unlimited power at our fingertips. And reality is written by the victors.
“Hold me back in there if I’m about to do something stupid,” I say.
“Our metrics of stupidity are wildly different, you know.”
“I do. So let’s cover for each other. If you watch my back, I’ll watch your front.”
“Almost sounds like we’re agreeing on something, for once.”
“We should try it again sometime.”
Ajax smirks at my side. Our strides lengthen in tandem.
“Agreed.”
-
Chamber seven is the last, darkest edge of the Shimano complex. Massive blast doors end sublevel six’s vast central corridor in a bunker wall Ajax tells me is reinforced by over a solid foot of ultradense metals. Nothing gets through in either direction.
Just the sight of the defenses sets my nerves on edge. Every inch of the central corridor we’ve crossed has been empty and devoid of life so far. The atmosphere is stale, tense. Heavy from the weight of the city above. We passed no guards, no security other than the occasional camera that swiveled on invisible servos to follow our progress. It’s like this place was built for the entire purpose of containing its secretive contents.
Like the stairwell, the blast doors part through their center when we step forward, splitting down a fanged line of segmented ridges. Clouds of cold mist roll past our feet as the gap grows. I separate myself two arms’ lengths from Ajax. Close enough to support if needed, but not for us to be caught up in the same attack. Thousand-pound hydraulics let out a bone-rattling boom as the bulkhead locks into open position.
My aura lights the way forward, taking us into a sea of underlit glows and beeping, humming machinery. Every step I take looses a hollow echo into the darkness. The sound never returns. Immense banks of computational machinery rise to my right and left like a causeway of temple pillars. Cables and tubing sprout from each, worming across the ground in a floral procession that winds to the sunken center of the chamber. I recognize the indigo glow pulsing through some of the cables. It’s the same shade as the vial Jolie snagged in the Vents.
“Full-case JOYs,” Ajax murmurs, eyes roving over the endless stacks of cubelike machines. “Thousands of them.” He looks further, gauging the true size of the space. Our steps still haven’t begun echoing back. “Maybe tens of thousands.”
Relics of a bygone era, before the Creators could fit all of a JOY’s capabilities inside a palm-sized sphere. Needless in our day. Yet these strange machines’ electrical guts click and churn on either side as we pass into their monolithic shadow. Entire labyrinthine corridors wind between the stacks. Questions beget questions in my mind.
Rivers of cables pour alongside us, heading for a cleared circle marking the conflux of the ancient technology, entering the open space from four cardinal directions. Holoscreens dance and predict simulated data in massive orrery projections above the clearing. Lifeless mannequins of spindly steel skin and carbon fiber nerves hunch at attention beneath electric-blue shadows. Training dummies. A thick wirejack protrudes from the back of each, chaining them to a grotesquely corpulent welding of computational machinery that drips from the ceiling like a massive technological icicle. Red lights pulse with sickly, organic rhythm across its height. Droplets of illuminated information scurry back and forth along the wirejacks. And at the center of the data flow, raised from the floor like some sacrificial plinth to a pagan god, a glass-walled medical pod rests five precise meters beneath the tip of the icicle.
A lone figure stands alone over the pod, bathed from beneath in the glow of computational datastreams. A brutal, broad-shouldered Mecha whose carbon fiber fingers drag like serrated blades across the glass tube. His introduction was given at the Metro Blockhouse to barren stands not two weeks ago. Akis Prazen. The Sectional minor league’s newest and least proven superstar, in all his gunmetal glory.
He wears no decadence, no flashy lights or impressive colors. Yet power drips from him like a physical aura as he stands there. No tension or expectations make home in his shoulders. Casually confident, uncaring of our arrival. His stance is stone unyielding. Dashing both wind and waves as Ajax and I step onto the plateau and draw to a stop.
The sparking remains of a training mannequin drip from one of Prazen’s inorganic hands. What remains of the hapless machine is scattered like shrapnel across the rest of the plateau.
“Funny thing,” Prazen says. He scatters the last of the mannequin’s remains like hayseed. Steel and circuits clatter across the floor. “They don’t squirm like real people do.”
His voice is like the razor-sharp bass of an electric guitar, dripping with malice. Sapphire light peeks from the fibers of his neck as he tilts his head to the side, mimicking an unconscious habit of the man behind the machine. As a fully-converted Mecha, his movements are an anathema I can’t track through my kinetic sense. I have to follow him with my bare eyes while he steps to the side of the medical pod, letting Ajax and I catch a glimpse of the comatose body and sickly blue fluid inside it.
Bishop. Ajax mouths the word. I nod in agreement and prime a handful of ki right at Prazen’s chest.
“Gonna step aside? Or do I need to ask nicely?”
Prazen’s mechanical fingers flex in and out. His fists are heavy, brutal tools of bludgeoning. I studied his classes twice over after Bishop’s disappearance. Mecha, Martial Artist, and Assassin. Still doesn’t give me much a clue as to how he’ll meld the three when I’ve never seen him fight for real. At least I have Ajax at my side. Two against one is almost insurmountable odds for any fighter.
“We’ll take him together,” Ajax mutters. “I’ll go left. You go-”
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“-I’ll go first.”
“That’s not…”
“You pushed your luck too far,” Prazen interrupts, rolling his shoulders loosely. Back still turned. “Should’ve stayed in your school, Showmaker. There are no rules here. What’s about to happen is, nothing personal.”
“It became personal the moment your allies started shooting at us. The moment you kidnapped a minor league fighter.” Ajax counters. His blade hums loudly as it rises. “You took Bishop. Why did you bring him here? What are you doing with him?”
“The same thing we’re going to do with you.” Prazen callously slaps the pod and the swirling datastreams go haywire around us, spasming out of alignment for the briefest moment. “Feed you to the machine.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“No,” the assassin chuckles. It’s a lifeless, humorless sound. The rasp of a blade clearing its sheathe.
Finally, he turns to face us. His pixelated faceplate flashes dark red as he taps a two-stroke command into a hologauntlet on his right arm. Splintering lines of sapphire shine to life beneath his suit as Mecha weaponry activates across his body. He shrugs out of the jacket and shirt, casting them to the side. Rings of electric-blue encircle his fists.
“Yapping dogs aren’t worth my time.”
I’m no professional, but I almost live at the Metro Blockhouse on the weekends. I’ve watched pro fighters from afar for countless hours. Studied their commonalities until I figured out what separates them from the rest of humanity. From me.
It’s not experience. And it’s not skill.
It’s the unshaking knowledge that they are better, and there is nothing you can do to stop them.
I cannot let the cold unease that swirls in my gut take hold. I switch to a sideways stance, hands open like blades and ki shocking across my skin like lightning. Summon all my fearlessness. Let it tear down the intimidation factor that separates us. Prazen might be better than me. But that’s never stopped me from taking a fight before.
Sweat beads on my cheek, trickling down to my jaw. My straining aura burns a rapidly expanding hole in my stamina. A kinetic shudder builds beneath my feet as the flames begin venting even faster, surging with every beat of my heart. My knees tense. Toes bounce. Waiting for the drop.
A confident smirk slashes across my mouth when Prazen’s hands raise. “Now you’re speaking my language,” I say.
There’s only two ways to win a fight when outnumbered. Either Prazen can blow both Ajax and I away at once, or he can break the fight in half. Separate the flock and eat each sheep one at a time. One path takes unparalleled strength to pull off. The other takes unmatched skill. Both are nearly impossible to manage unless it’s a fight already won. For that, he needs the initiative.
Prazen shows me just how wrong I am. I lunge at him first in a crimson blur and cut nothing but air with a supersonic kick. He’s already slipped past me, tearing for Ajax like a carnivore the instant I break formation. Rubber burns underfoot as I slide to a stop and whirl around just in time to see him hose Ajax down with a spray of exponentially dividing micromissiles.
Ajax’s control of metal seizes the mass of projectiles and flings the entire cloud into a nearby server rack. Staccato explosions crack the air. Splinters of glass and ceramic explode over us in a shrapnel cloud. One slices Ajax across the brow. The flinch is all Prazen needs. He slaps Ajax’s blade to the side completely uncaring of the stunning current, jukes a six-long string of thrusts, and drills him with a solo haymaker to the chest in a microsecond gap before Ajax’s next combo.
The peerless defense of Concordia University’s top ranked fighter shatters, just like that.
One perfectly driven nail breaks Ajax open, and once he has his prey off-balance, Prazen does not relent. He bears down on Ajax with voracious intent. Brutal, using his heavyweight body like a sledgehammer to create fear of even a single slip. Violent, throwing himself so close that both blades and hands become useless. Feral, driving into Ajax with knee strikes, elbow slams, headbutts- anything and everything delivered at concrete-shattering velocity and full-auto rhythm. It’s not even that he’s moving faster than I do. Speed has nothing to do with it. Watching him move is like watching water pour. Fluid, entropic, always finding the easiest crack to slip through. Moving one series to the next while Ajax is overwhelmed by the moment, unable to think more than a single step ahead.
For the first time I’ve ever seen, my rival is completely outmatched. Every ounce of his concentration is devoted to defense.
Another barely-blocked straight hammers so much kinetic energy into Ajax that he goes tumbling backwards, crashing through a nearby holoprojection. Sapphire rings encircle Prazen’s legs, Mecha augments catapulting him in a meteoric arc over the lab to finish off my rival.
My vision skips frames as I blink back into battle. One moment I’m watching them from afar, still rushing back to take the heat from Ajax. The next, like a slideshow skipping pictures, I’m flinging myself forward with a blast of ki and my shoulder is turning Prazen’s gleaming torso into an insurance claim. He rolls perfectly with the hit, deflecting the force of my strike across his upper body. Letting my momentum careen us towards the front of the lab.
We trade blows like thunder as we tumble, fists and feet lashing out with air-shattering strength. Close quarters is my specialty. I make him regret prioritizing Ajax as the larger threat. Lance out with four thunderous blows in a single second, a whirlwind in freefall. Ajax wouldn’t survive a single one of these strikes straight on, but Prazen is a Mecha. As resilient as a tank compared to a regular human. I smash an elbow across his blunt head and a knee into his stomach in the same instant. Metal plates buckle at the impact. I whip my entire body to the side when he turns our spin into a right hook that flashes through my bangs, then chop a supercharged hand into his chest hard enough to leave a crack in his glowing ionic core. Building my tempo even when the world’s flying by upside down.
A wild grin creeps back onto my face. I’ve got thi-
A gunshot thunderclap slams out as Prazen catches my next fist straight on.
He snorts. “Juvenile.”
And headbutts me through a holoprojection at terminal velocity. JOY-colored data flashes through my vision the microsecond before I slap into the floor. My shoulder wrenches out of its socket. I suck in a pained gasp. Twist and roll, letting the impact shock through my body from end to end. Use it to catapult back up onto my feet with hands raised and aura flaring. One foot sweeping out wide like a compass for balance.
The deck spikes like a sine wave when he crashes down behind me.
Maybe he did deserve his spot in the pro leagues.
Metal fingers grab my skull and slam me facefirst into a wall. I bounce off seeing stars, throwing a half-blind haymaker in reply that somehow strikes true when Ajax grabs Prazen’s entire shell with his elemental class and immobilizes him for a split second. Two of my fingers break at the off-center impact. But even while stunned, my ki-enhanced strength is ludicrous. Ajax and I reunite in the moment Prazen is backstaggered by the force of my blow. My rival’s blade weaves into its full killing edge. Prazen tries to ward him off with a microlaser, but Ajax’s metal control is a hard counter to the Mecha. One flick of his wrist closes the microlaser barrel and Prazen’s arm implodes from within. We’re on him in the next instant. A pack striking in tandem for the very first time.
Ajax goes high. I go low. Sweep for Prazen’s legs and force him to jump sideways, straight into the reaping blade flashing for his neck. He jerks his head to the side at the very last instant. Ajax’s blade sinks in, carving halfway through Prazen’s mechanical throat. The man’s jaw splits as he lets out a mechanical bellow. But then the blade sticks. Ajax hangs suspended in the air for a moment, arms straining to drive the blade all the way through. I kickflip off the ground and launch into a wild roundhouse kick right as Prazen snaps a foot into Ajax’s stomach, flinging him into the path of my strike. I cancel my attack by the barest possible margin and Ajax crashes into me, sending us both to the floor.
“Better, boys,” Prazen grunts. His half-severed neck cricks to the side, splashing glowing blue oil over his shoulders. “Let’s see you grit those teeth.”
I can feel my aura flagging as I stagger back to my feet. Pushing my heart to make so much aura for so long drains me like a marathon run. The flood of ki energy circles through my whole body before venting outwards, diluting pain and replenishing my limbs with fresh strength- but it extracts an even heavier toll. Call on my heart for too long or too much at once, and it’ll give out in the worst way possible.
I can already feel myself edging against that limit. My skin stings and sizzles from the constant flow of energy. Heart aching from the strain. I’ve trained my whole life to improve my capacity, but even so, I’m only human. The thought to ratchet down my aura is banished by the mechanical threat looming in front of me. I need all the power I can get to crack Prazen’s shell. And I can’t rely on Ajax.
I leave Ajax to fall and lunge back into battle. Duck under a full-metal punch that thunders through the space my head occupied a frame before, weave back two steps, then snap my hands up in full defense as Prazen brings his full attention onto me.
Down an arm, the Mecha changes styles like he’s cycling the next shell in a revolver. His legs beat me back with servomotor strength, firing like cannons into my chest. Then he changes again. Ejects a cyberknife from his gauntlet and slashes it across my arm faster than I can react to the new factor. He overwhelms me in that all-knowing way just like he did Ajax. Blood begins sheeting my arms as the stabs add up. I’m fast in striking back, but my blows never stick. They always glance off when he pivots to redirect the force. Better by leagues than I am at my own class.
I juke, dodge so fast I see my own afterimage, blast his knife away with a handful of ki and evade kick after kick by the narrowest margins. My reply is a brutal, chain-lightning series that still can’t break his footwork. It’s like I’m fighting a computer that preprogrammed my every move. A master of an art I’m only a student of. Prazen instantly traps me in a backpedal the moment my offensive pressure flags. Slamming into me again and again and again, corralling my options every time I try to break free. My whole body responds in a blur of reactionary twists and open palm blocks, but it’s not enough. I can’t keep up. The ki I make can’t level the field. My heart aches like a beast’s claws are digging into the muscle, gripping with brutal talons of pain. I need something more to bring me to his level.
Prazen mocks the very idea. “I should have dealt with you first, one-trick. Eighteen classes to choose from, and you don’t even know how to use one.”
His one good fist slams to a standstill against mine when I fire back. Fury rises in my heart as I skip back and scorch his shell with a two-handed blast that does absolutely nothing to slow his rampage. He beats me in fists. And what do I have after those? Ajax is down. Jolie is counting on me. It’s all on my shoulders, I’m the only one left on my feet. I can’t lose here and disappear in some god-forsaken lab. I’ve got fans. I can give a little more.
I will always give more.
Hoping vainly that Jolie will forgive me, I reach deep into the well that I call upon to kickstart my aura, finding the core of my heart gasping on its last legs. No matter the source, there is a line in the sand when such strain normally overwhelms the body and throws you to the ground in a powerless lump. Informally, that line is called burnout. The body’s built-in limiter to protect itself from destroying itself. Most people can’t pass that line except in the most extreme circumstances. Because if someone like a professional athlete who’s spent their entire life acclimating to a fighting environment unhooks their mind from their body and pushes past that limit anyways- forces themselves to run faster, lift heavier- something else entirely begins to happen.
Formally, that line is called cardiac arrest.
I shoot past it without hesitation.
Calling even deeper on my heart, I blow the limits I’ve spent two decades building. Anything less won’t be enough. I alone am not enough. I need more. And it comes rushing in like a tsunami.
Heat like I’ve never felt before shimmers to life above my skin. The white flames of my aura grow brighter, even brighter still, like a newly birthing star shrieking at flashbang intensity as it accelerates into a friction-fire inferno. Bubbles of raw ki start dripping out of the air itself. There’s no telling how insane the flood pouring out of me is, the volume of energy it takes to suddenly make the atmosphere itself spontaneously condensate and the metal deck melt beneath my feet.
For a moment, I’m able to keep it contained. Hyperprescience crackles through my every nerve. Everything moves in a slow motion drip. Every drop of sweat beading across my body. Every micrometer of sudden hesitation in Prazen. Every strand of dirty hair plastered to Ajax’s face as he rises and charges back in to defend me. And somewhere, high in the skyscraper, I sense a swift-approaching comet of unimaginable, kinetic potential racing towards my aura at meteoric velocity. Jolie’s trump card.
I see it all. Then feel the swell of my chest as it’s struck in slow-motion by a stress greater than any I’ve ever felt before. The rising tide that roars from my soul. doesn’t hit a plateau. It keeps accelerating. My heart keeps giving. Pushing so far and fast in mere microseconds that I don’t have time to adjust. It swells until it can’t take anymore. And then, an instant after I make my fatal mistake, it bursts.
I still slam my hands together and blow Akis Prazen to hell before I drop.
Or I would, if he didn’t grab my wrists and casually throw them to the side. A professional until the end.
Damn.
My head hits the deck as my heart attack begins and Ajax tries to end the fight. He’s a dancer in my blurred sight. Fighting over my body like manic, slashing into Prazen and using his speed to cross the man up like a freshman duelist who just got thrown into the most vicious hazing ritual at our university. I see again why he is better than me. He’s already evolved and overcome his earlier faults to battle on even footing for precarious moments. I almost think he’ll make it. Take down a man with the skills of a major league fighter. And for a moment, he does. He weaves circles around Prazen and hacks him to smithereens for two full seconds before his usually inscrutable control slips and the Mecha ends it with an uncaring punch.
Ribs creak and crack like frozen twigs as metal fist meets brittle bone. Ajax groans and coughs blood as he crumples beside me. His blade dissolves in a slowly spreading pool of crimson. Down for the count.
My body jerks on reflex. I drive a fist into the floor and roar through gritted teeth, pushing my face one horrible inch away from the ground. Then another. Raising my head just enough to see Ajax. I reach out. Place a hand over his heart, feel the feeble pulse, struggling and laboring to keep on living. He’s weaker than I ever thought he could be, reigning at the top. A glass cannon in a frail body.
Prazen closes.
My aura vanishes with a final, pitiful gasp. Heart gripped by lethal pressure, I fight off the ground and raise my bloodied gaze at the man. I can’t even breathe. I’m running on borrowed time. I do not even know where I find the strength to rise to a knee. Raw stubbornness, Jolie would call it. I prefer to think of it as never knowing when to quit.
Heavy boots rattle the deck. Stomping closer. Prazen’s good arm winds back to deliver a killing blow. I ready myself to defend. Close my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, struggling for one more breath. Fear fills my lungs where air does not. I bite it down for her. “So sorry.”
My fingers clench together. A final smile splits my face when Prazen doesn’t even slow. Then a far more gnarled, more callused hand slaps mine away like a reprimanding ruler.
“Hmph. Tell her in person, boy.”
He steps out from behind me as if he’s been there all along, watching every failed step I took. The champion of my Section. Idol of my childhood. A weathered serpent of an aging, hunched man. Champion Fang appears in our midst like a contemplative breeze. Rustic, unknown till the moment of its arrival. Living aura curls about him like a dragon’s cosmic tail, rippling jade, disciplined by a mind infinitely more wise than mine.
Prazen’s mechanical jaw splits open and another voice speaks from it. “Interfering with sacred tradition you yourself championed,” Vex Shimano sighs through him. Gunshots and thunder crackle through the transmission. “It’s true. The hypocrisy of the old never dies until they do.”
Champion Fang barks out a single note of laughter. His old shoulders pop as bare, wrinkled feet interdict my view. “A sore loser isn’t becoming of the Shimano name,” he grunts. “I’ll be settling this with your masters, boy.”
One gnarled hand presses flat against my back. Gentle heat grows there. The air itself buzzes as the world takes in a breath, and the champion gathers his strength once more.
“Tell them to expect me.”
Then the telltale buzz of kinetic energy dumps me into unconsciousness on the deck of a roaring gunship, smoke thick in the air, my ears filled with screaming wind and blaring klaxons and yelling women, and my last sight the summit of a burning skyscraper through a slashing-shut ramp.