Her hearing returned much more slowly than did her sight. Tasìa could just barely make out the sound of a fizzing noise from a faint spritz dabbing against her hip.

She checked the purse she had clipped against her belt in the stead of her operator's fanny pack. The long, thin bottle of Ki-Jack Ginseng, All-Natural Alertness Elixir, peeked through, throwing out a misty spray, where the Al-Majhul operator had stabbed her in the ass cheek.

Most likely, he attempted to plunge her very own stiletto into the vertebral sacrum at the bottom of her spine to cripple her, but he got his hand caught in her purse on his upthrust.

Pure stupid luck is going to run out on you any minute now. She told herself.

As she lay on the floor, Tasìa realized she had caught another break in the fight. Annebél had the four Al-Majhul operators pinned down.

Big Red had replaced her standard ammo with shells that contained a vicious quad of slugs that exploded on impact.

Given the violent noise coming from an operator who pitched a fit of howling shouts, Tasìa assumed he had been wounded already.

The dead one at her feet's comlink whispered a repetitive phrase through the broken mask. She didn't recognize their language, but it obviously corresponded to "Ma'aruf, check in! Check in!"

Tasìa popped the broken tab and quaffed down the elixir. Except for beer with her steak dinner, she had neglected quenching her thirst since leaving the software security shop.

Soon she felt the elixir work through her exhaustion and add a degree of clarity to her brain's functionality. As she kept her gun trained for any movement above her, Tasìa could see along the ceiling through the broken window.

All of that exploitable terrain up there I could have used to my advantage. I could have found a way in through one of those vents ramping down. Nope, I go in like a gunslinger instead of the sneak thief that is more to my nature.

Why? She pondered upon the question for a moment.

The Modality gave me a means that made direct confrontations not only feasible to achieve concrete results, but also added social capital to the payoff—like when I confronted the American spooks back in the pool room in the back of Beauregard's bar.

You took a lot of unnecessary risks, Tasìa.

If I get out of this crap alive, I'll have to relearn how to follow my old instincts. I would never have passed up an opportunity to exploit something in the environment like that asymmetrical rotating HVAC anti-mold exhaust filter up there.

Tasìa tried to shake off the current drift of her thoughts; she needed to get back in the game. It was no time for pontification. Annebél couldn't hold the operators down much longer without incurring a great deal of risk to herself.

However, something occurred to Tasìa.

What if the Modality was still inside her but she was disconnected from it through sleep deprivation-derived brain fog?

But the Dark-Eyed Ones penetrated my defenses. They did what they said they would do to me.

Were the Dark-Eyed Ones mere sleep-deprived hallucinations born of deep-seated fear?

Tasìa recalled Geminetta's words: Don't let your hatred of our kind blind you. Down there in the Cistern and further along in the surrounding caverns are answers that you are seeking.

Tasìa shook her head.

"No, they were real. Mel saving me was real, and the remains of that gross-looking third eye was real."

Actually mouthing those words caused her sinuses to become irritated. Before getting back into the fight, she needed to check out the condition of her nose; to that effect, Tasìa hocked up a dark, blood-crusty loogie.

She patted the bridge of her nose, and it felt oddly numb on the side folds, but it stung on the bridge perch.

That meant there was separation between the bridge and sinus cavity. Indeed, she could feel the fracture beneath the skin by rolling her thumb over it.

A pulse of fear jabbed at the bottom of her gut. One derived from a phobia Tasìa acquired when she was a kid who watched Hong Kong martial arts movies. In a lot of them, there would typically be a scene where a fighter side-clipped an opponent's nose, causing a vicious crack, and followed it up with a front punch, crashing nasal cartilage into the opponent's brain for a dramatic instant death.

It made a lasting impression on her young mind.

Annebél yelled for her as the brawler popped another quad slug at the Al-Majhul.

How many shotgun shells does she have left in that big duffel bag she totes around? Tasìa asked herself. Bulk estimate, eight cases of twenty-five rounds each, that would make two hundred when they started out breaching into the Cistern.

Annebél is at less than half that quantity now, she surmised.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Tasìa! Can you hear me? Are you still with us?" Annebél yelled across the pump bay. She had backed up to the opposite wall from the control room and twin pumps to get cover by a tool shed lined with work benches. It also provided an advantageous angle on all of the Al-Majhul operators.

After experiencing pain from merely whispering her thoughts out loud, Tasìa couldn't answer back without risking rupturing her nasal septum even further.

She glanced up passed the rim of the window pane quickly, and then back down, spotting a wounded operator lying vertically against a stack of three pallets with cement bags on them. Back in the game himself, he was calmly placing a pair of Veber Sphere grenades on the pallet meant for a slingshot attachment on his right upper arm.

He was going to try to roast her alive inside the control room.

She studied the wound that caught an explosive round in his hip and side and had also ripped off a chunk of the armor. It revealed something beneath the outer armor shell that explained the resilience of the operator that lay dead in the control room with her: a layer of leather treated with metamaterials spread and clenched against his wounded flesh in a bind attached to muscle tendon; clearly the setup was designed to treat the deepest of injuries.

It explained why the one dead at her feet was so hard to kill until an overdose of epinephrine ruptured his heart. It seemed nothing she did, even shooting him in the face with a 10mm made much of a difference.

Tasìa grabbed the 50-Split, raised up, and shot two .50 rounds dead center on the wound, snapping his torso apart from his legs and waist.

A .50 round from an anti-material rifle designed to take out vehicles was an entirely different circumstance than even a 10mm handgun which could eat through the flesh and bones of a large mammal like a bear.

She slipped back down and, with eyes clenched, shook off the last thing she witnessed: the bands of metamaterial leather whose logic circuit controls were going haywire squeezed the Al-Majhul operator's guts into goo.

So gross!

7.62 rounds from a pair of AK-47s pounded the exterior wall in estimation of her current position. Tasìa rolled to the door, crouched beside the dead Al-Majhul for cover. Bullets splintered through the tin and plywood above her.

From her previous peek up, she knew no one was on the door into the control room interior side; the remaining three Al-Majhul operators were crouched by the pumps for cover, and it gave her an idea. Tasìa rolled slowly out the door with the 50-Split in hand and stopped when she had the Al-Majhul torso in view.

She drew the 50-Split up against her shoulder and put a red target bead on the grenade that remained on the palette.

The other grenade had rolled away, struck by the ripped apart torso when she shot the Al-Majhul operator.

Tasìa made a billiards calculation as she lined up the shot. She pulled the trigger and nicked the grenade to fly towards the pumps.

On landing, the volatile materials exploded. The trajectory did not need to be perfect for her purposes. In fact, the last thing she wanted to do was damage the pumps. She was in enough trouble with the Vida Escondida Autonomous Authority as current matters stood.

She simply needed a distraction.

She could tell by Annebél's gunfire that the operators were once more scrambling for cover after the explosion.

With a smooth, arching throw, Tasìa pitched her 50-Split onto the control room's rooftop. She scrambled up the side of the wall, twisted herself over the awning, grabbed the rifle, rolled across to the far side of the roof, and raised herself into position.

With that last action, where she bobbed her head up, Tasìa made the calculated risk that the operators had not prepared for her diversion. She caught the nearest operator ill-prepared.

She lucked out. He was the only one of the group that faced her. His immediate companion was busy extinguishing a fire where napalm had clung onto his leg armor.

He caught sight of her but was too slow to draw his AK-47 up to aim. Tasìa took the top half of his skull off.

Fifty caliber, for when your opponent absolutely insists on wearing Kevlar.

The operator beside her target calmly sprayed down the flames on his legs with a retardant whose hose swiveled from a fanny pack like he had done it a thousand times before.

Flame retardants were a standard item for fully suited operators because Molotov cocktails were used as a common riot tactic to roast them alive inside the suits.

He suddenly jerked, let go of the hose, and pulled up his gun when he caught sight of the corpse beside him. She ducked down.

She could have beaten him in the draw with no problem, but she had no idea where the third Al-Majhul operator was. Indeed, a spray of bullets from her right told Tasìa she had done the right thing, and just in time too.

With her situational intuition kicked in, Tasìa prepared for what came next by switching out her gun and popping a moon clip into the .357 Clastic. When the grenade spun over her and apexed several feet above, Tasìa was already mid backflip off the roof.

She landed in a very low squat exposed to the gunfire of the smoldering operator, but giving no angle for that other last living Al-Majhul.

The smoldering operator overshot towards the ceiling as he tried to follow her fall's descent, just as she assumed he would given the gun he carried, and the readjustment for recoil he made bought her a luxurious second to empty the revolver's chamber into his face.

Tasìa turned around and popped in the second moon clip as the grenade exploded on the control room roof, and the heated flammable liquid spread out. Tasìa had no worry of being bullrushed by the last operator before she rearmed herself because she knew a grenade-based countermeasure would backfire before he even threw it.

He could not risk approaching until the napalm stopped spreading between them. The petroleum gel tended to cling to Kevlar. As the last member of the crew with no one left to cover for him, the Al-Majhul was dead meat if he had to stop to extinguish a fire.

Napalm dripped off the sides of the awnings, and the shingles caught fire.

Tasìa backed into the cover provided by the pump, waiting for the operator to approach. When the gel no longer pushed a path forward on the cement floor, she didn't have to wait for long.

The stomp of his boots let Tasìa know he was going to make a mad dash that circled around the napalmed zone inside of which the two dead operators corpses caught fire.

The maneuver potentially exposed him to Annebél's suppressive fire, but what choice did he have? He was in a pincer between both women.

Surprisingly to Tasìa, no gunfire came from behind him. Then she understood why. As he came into Tasìa's sight with his weapon up, she saw an inhuman blur approach him from behind.

Annebél was a foot taller than the Al-Majhul operator. He tried to turn his head as he heard her approach, but she caught his arm with one hand and threw his AK-47 away with the other.

Annebél grabbed him by the back of the gorget collar of his armor with her right hand and she clinched his left thigh brutally hard with the other one.

She smashed him into the concrete floor all the while belting out a bloodthirsty yelp and the operator screaming for mercy. On the fourth smash, the armor split into several cracked segments.

Annebél tossed him several feet away and brought the shotgun up against her shoulder. Before she fired, a loud boom shot off from the roof.

"Fuck," Tasìa yelled. "There goes my big sexy gun! Get cover. The last drone inside it is going to pop off too."

She waved Annebél over. The brawler shot the last Al-Majhul in the head before rushing over to join Tasìa under the pump operation's assembly of control valves as the control room roof engulfed in flames.

As she sat down, Annebél caught a glimpse of Tasìa's nose.

"Did you run into a wall? That looks pretty fucking nasty."