Tasìa took a few deep breaths. Unfocused anger would not serve her greater purpose, at least, very well.

She needed to get her bearings restored first before she marched off to confront the tiger once more.

This was a war of attrition between the two of them, and if that continued to be the case, her few advantages would eventually succumb, and she would ultimately lose the fight.

She had to take a few minutes to better understand what was occurring on this new battlefield, the urban street scene of outer Asunción.

She glanced back at the far wall where the cat had disappeared with its prey.

So ... teleportation is real? If not, that was one hell of an illusion.

Tasìa raised the Magellani .22 revolver, aimed down sight at the far wall, and she took three shots in the immediate area where the tiger took its last leap through the wall.

Tasìa studied the results with squinted, focused eyes. She could not make out a single marr or indention anywhere on the wall. There was no evidence of penetration.

She ambled up to the wall for a closer inspection.

With her hands she felt along the concrete surface, and indeed, there was something strangely insubstantial in the contour of it.

She shook her head at what she was about to do.

This is so stupid. Walk away from all of this, you big dummy. I am about to lose an arm.

Against the protests of her better senses, Tasìa gripped her right hand in shape of an attacking eagle's talon, and plunged it into the wall.

The wall felt soft to her fingers, like pressing into a marshmallow, and then after it had offered very little resistance, its surface pushed gently back against her hand as it reformed into rigid stone.

Good God!

Though she was equally freaked out about it as much as her curiosity was perked, Tasìa doubted that it would do her search any good to waste any more time speculating on the means of the tiger's disappearance.

Most likely, it was either inside of this building that formed the back alley wall, or it had returned to the garage.

Did she really need to know anything else?

Yeah, I do. Survival usually depends upon absorbing every scintilla of info thrown at you and then intuiting how to use it while executing your actions.

Rushing in blind would not save Petro, but it would get me killed, as well as Petro.

For no other reason, I will back out and move forward because I have reached the limit of what I can learn from it.

She backed out of the alley, and turned towards the front street where a small parking lot set in front of a shop. When Tasìa read a sign along the length of the building entrance, she gasped:

"No fucking way!"

Bracci Lavorati Magellani

Tasìa was certain that this was the very shop that the revolver in her hand was machined. On second thought, after her initial surprise, it began to make sense.

Both Kutuzov's men and the Salvage strike team operated from Asunción as their base. Of course, they would get their specialist equipment from a local armorer.

Why would the Italian manufacturer famed for its design innovation set up shop inside Asunción? Then again, why not? Go where the demand leads you.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Tasìa stood in front of a window, and she studied what little was visible inside the shop to her through the smoky glass. Nothing inside appeared to be turned over or smashed-in from where a tiger raised havoc as it stormed through the machinery.

Tasìa was stubborn about what this possibly meant.

She refused to draw the conclusion that the beast had not entered the building but instead rematerialized back in its pen at the garage, not just yet.

If it somehow went back to the garage, or elsewhere, instead of through the wall, that would mean the beast teleported as the means of its escape.

That was a fable too far fetched for her pragmatic sensibilities.

She would need a hell of a lot more evidence to believe that was even a possibility above the subatomic level. Even still, the dematerialization that she witnessed also went contrary to what she believed was plausible with modern technology.

Though, back in her cat burglar days while raiding the gated communities of the Vida Escondida, she ran up against security systems called IWAs, Instant Wall Assemblies.

Materials fed into electro-magnetic matrices, much like blown macromolecular dust on an invisible adhesive sheet in a polymer manufacturing plant, created shifting solid walls.

The materials in an IWA however were preloaded and designed to exacting specification to groove together for that very task; she did not see how that could be possible where a random stone wall was the medium.

Tasìa grabbed the window's mid-frame, and pulled herself up to get a more comprehensive view of the shop's interior.

She could now see the far wall shared with the alleyway. There was a small hole, approximately two yards in length, where the floor had collapsed. It matched her estimated trajectory for the beast's lunge.

So, dematerialization was the answer, then. The tiger leapt through the wall and fell through the floor. Both volumes of solid materials become structurally unsound.

The wall steadied back to full materiality, and the floor collapsed as the tiles tried to reform.

The beast itself was an electromagnetic wave disrupter. Tasìa sighed as she thought about the practical value of her speculation.

I hope that I don't need to get a degree in applied physics just to figure out how to kill the damn thing!

Her ears then suddenly attuned to the sound of someone with a slight limp approaching from behind her.

"My dear lady, what are you doing up there?"

The accent was that of an Italian man. She decided to play it straight when she answered him. If the situation was reversed, with what looked like a breaking and entering, she would probably have shot the perpetrator if she was given a sarcastic answer.

"I'm chasing a phase beast. It entered into the shop, most likely it crashed through the floor and is in the basement now."

His voice flexed high:

"Chasing, and not running away from?"

He quickly followed up calmly before she could answer in turn, "Stay put, let me check this out for myself."

The man joined Tasìa at her side as he held onto the window's mid-frame. She stole a glance. He was dressed nicely for the evening and appeared to be in his mid-forties, and of medium height.

Several inches over her own.

"That damned beast was dragging a man along with it when it escaped me. I need to save that guy."

When the Italian swept his gaze towards the back wall, his head jerked back.

With an exacerbated hoarseness in his voice, he reacted to the collapsed hole in his shop floor.

"Shit, you are not trying to kid me at all." He caught sight of her holstered revolver. Shaking his head, he turned to her. "I see that you are a customer, one with taste, but still, in this particular situation, that one is not going to do you much good."

Tasìa chuckled.

"It's kept me alive so far against that beast. Two shots weakens its considerable tensil stregnth at the midpoint between them."

The man considered what she said, and shook his head. Perhaps, she should explain how computable matrix patterns that undergrid unnatural energy flows along the phase beast's body are revealed to her where the two shots create rippling energy flows that collide into one another.

She needed him to believe her.

The Italian must have read her concern on her face.

"It is just an aside curiosity I have of how you could have had the time to deduce such a defensive tactic before it killed you. Certainly not through experimentation."

Tasìa blinked wide eyed. The fucker was really smart. He even had a smug look on his bearded grin that said he already knew the answer.

But how?

With a curt nod, he emplored, "Let's continue, shall we?"

He climbed down, and offered her his hand.

"Still, if you are going to tangle with that thing, and you plan to beat it, and not just lose or draw, you're going to need a much bigger gun."

Assisted, she jumped down. She gave a bow and curtsey.

"My name is Avellana."

"Pleased to meet you, my lady. I'm Giuseppe Magellani."

Impressed, she raised her chin.

"The founder?"

He chuckled.

"No. Nephew, chief field researcher. What gets deemed useful and thoroughly battle-tested here in the Quadra, I forward to the engineers in Italy as design possibilities."

Custom designs and technology in the field of arms manufacturing. She salivated at the prospect of trying out something that was not yet on the market.

Giuseppe shook his head once more while he chuckled. His demeanor was both oddly accepting while still being stodgedly old fashioned.

"Forgive my bemusement. That gleam in your eye just now ... Come on, lets get you a big fucking gun before that friend of yours becomes that tiger's dinner."