“I’ll admit it,” Flinpen acknowledged as she jumped into my front passenger seat. “Your Arch can be occasionally useful.”

She was Fool’s Golding the three of us, making us look like part of the police convoy descending on the large building up ahead. Judging by that, the closed-off six-lane promenade and the trail of city carnage preceding us, Jadal Cai had not been subtle.

I located the local channel for patrol comms and broadcast it over my speakers for convenience. “Wielder on roof of penitentiary,” the local crackle came in. “Wardens establishing ground perimeter. Do not engage. Aerial team, approach from above.”

“Shame we couldn’t be in the air,” Imbertri lamented from the driver’s seat.

"I only need line of sight,” said Flinpen, craning her neck to look up through the windscreen. “Just our luck he’s trying to break into prison.”

I could sense Jadal Cai ahead, along with the pre-death Rein he was chasing. No directions guided me from the Machine, but both Reins emanated versal magic, and it was obvious who was who. The local Rein was in the process of hurrying further into the prison complex and made less of a dent in my awareness than Flinpen or Imbertri.

Jadal Cai was a lot more noticeable.

Since picking up my unofficial second-tier ability, I hadn’t come across anything else like it. The Chapel’s enemy number one radiated a vibrant beacon that spoke of unpleasant surprises to come. But it made him easy to find.

A short while after our discussion, I'd realised the means of tracking him through the multiverse had to be the same way Near Miss had led me to Jarome: the Defective World Slide under its control. What had passed for so long as a dangerous liability had been in fact a powerful navigational tool – almost the equal of the Machine. That the Chapel already knew about my capability left me with vague rumbles of concern, and I wondered how much it suspected. Reporting the details would be straightforward and clean. Yet I kept running over the words I'd use to pass it off as a feature of the Garrison's construct.

I hadn’t been sure Near Miss would work in the Vein – or if it did, that it would cooperate. But once Flinpen and Imbertri’s jaws had slid shut at the view, I’d picked the next gate over, a few metres down from Makiwa. The one Jadal Cai also happened to be in.

Currently, I was feeling rather smug about it.

I’d hoped a pre-death universe would deter him from assassination, but apparently he didn’t discriminate. He hadn’t had a smooth run of it, however. From what we could piece together, Jadal Cai had landed, triggered some kind of rapid city-wide alert, and been intercepted by law enforcement en route to the other Rein. This had initiated a cross-city chase involving growing volumes of pursuit that had utterly failed to penetrate the invader’s defences. Meanwhile, his target had been escorted to various points of safety failing one after the other in spectacular fashion, culminating in the point of current last stand: an almost perfectly symmetrical multi-storeyed cube bounded in blue light and cylindrical decorative pillars.

It was midday and bright, sun still visible past the isolated plumes of smoke. Whirring vehicles dispensed gutters of blue energy between them as they zoomed overhead in a swarm of piloted metallic cockroaches.

They fired more blue energy in staggered bursts, teardrop-shaped bolts aimed for the roof. Some missed the mark and collided with the building’s glowing barrier, interacting in a shower of whining sparks. I heard the impacts of further blasts beyond my range of vision, and the edge of more fireworks just out of sight.

“No missile will break through that shield,” a new, irritated voice called across the comms channel. “Deploying remote mines. We’ll surround him so he has nowhere to go.”

Stuck at the rear of the ground convoy, I picked up more speed and tailgated, scraped and squeezed my way up the queue, earning Imbertri a few dirty glances from other drivers. The cobbled road was one of those wide, symbolic avenues bordered by trees, circling around the prison like a monument. The gunfire was concentrated on the right-hand side, so that was where I went.

A dozen or so bulky metal disks launched from the cockroaches only for several to be knocked out of flight mid-trajectory by some force unseen.

“Again,” barked the irritated voice.

A police car several vehicles in front of me swerved to avoid being hit, backing the road up further. I reversed slightly and turned sharply for the outside, cutting off cars as I made for the trees.

The second volley of mines was accompanied by blue fire, with a similar number making it through. One exploded at roof level, raining shrapnel. Another mine knocked off-course attached to the near side of the prison building and drilled on with metal claws.

“Target has stopped moving,” said the first voice on the comms channel. “Funnel him in range of the mines.”

The ground dropped perilously away just beyond the trees to make way for rooftops below, but I threaded the narrow gap past the jam to re-emerge at the head of the queue. The other arm of the convoy greeted me up ahead, not far away, but I almost had line of sight to the roof.

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“I don’t know if we can get a clear shot,” I interrupted the radio stream to speak to my passengers. A crenellated lip a metre high bordered the roof on this side, obstructing vision.

“Wind down the windows and we’ll see,” ordered Flinpen.

As I obliged, arcs of blue fire split the heavens, this time originating from the roof of the building. Several hit the front line of the cockroaches, which instantly exploded and prompted a chorus of shouts over the comms channel.

“He’s wielding!” the radio shrieked. “Evade. Evade!”

“Local magic,” observed Imbertri, leaning past the wheel on the dashboard. “He picked it up fast.”

“Weirder is the fact no one’s using it against him,” said Flinpen. “Line of sight incoming.”

Half the rooftop lip disappeared, leaving no trace behind, and Jadal Cai finally came into view, surrounded by a ring of the deployed mines. He hid behind the same spherical shield he’d used on Irwol – or another one from the same line – though the bottom of it had been reshaped into a flat plane. I suspected that change had been made as a direct result of the last battle with Flinpen, Alusept and I. Jadal Cai didn’t stand so much as hover slightly above it, which I was sure he hadn’t been able to do last time.

He wasn’t watching the roach copters in pursuit, only holding one hand back to emit casual slicing fire. His main attention seemed to be directed towards the prison’s blue shield, head cocked as if listening for something.

And he looked like a different man. No beard and no eyepatch, his hair longer and features much younger, and most importantly – different. He still had the colouring and general physical characteristics of a Rein, but a regular one I could have run over in any number of universes.

Despite that, it was unmistakably him. If the versal signal and equipment hadn’t been enough of an indication, the general single-mindedness and disregard for the army bearing down on him completed the picture. I was surprised he’d even bothered with a disguise.

I didn’t have a chance to analyse further, because Flinpen used Halve.

The arcing fire flickered out as the figure on the roof dropped its arm.

At first it appeared to be a trick of the light, one half of the body slightly out of sync with the other by a few inches. Then it split along a vertical seam, right half sliding down the left and folding onto the eave in a river of blood, where it continued to slide in gruesome trajectory along with the protective shield. The left half toppled over and caught on the remainder of the crenellations.

“Hold fire,” the comms channel ordered.

Contrary to appearances, Jadal Cai’s versal signature remained mostly unchanged, not even disappearing to the Chapel for soul reassignment. It had split half-and-half between parts of the corpse, wavering between the two as if undecided where to end up.

“He’s not dead,” Imbertri declared in solidarity, tone grim.

The fingers on one half of the corpse twitched. Blue fire crackled uncertainly around them. “How?” I exclaimed as they curled around the rooftop decorations.

Muscle and flesh started to fill in on both halves of the body, pushing out parts that had caved in. The eye moved on the half on the crenellations, darting directly to Flinpen.

He knew.

“Shit,” she uttered, ducking under the seat to refresh Fool’s Gold. “It's Halve, not Quarter. I only get one chance.”

I took the hint and reversed as Near Miss triggered, doing my best to find a new path through the increasing mass of cars. On the ground, we were in a limited position.

An arc of blue struck from the roof and blasted a hole in the road I’d vacated. One of the whirring cockroaches responded with return fire. It promptly exploded and fell from the sky.

The comms silence lifted.

“Open heavy fire!” the commanding announcer shouted over other raised voices in the background. “All hands go! Don’t hold back!”

I watched as another arc lanced towards the copters and instinctively reacted to stop it. For a brief moment I sensed a small glimpse of a larger picture; the connections and possibilities tying it all together… as Near Miss activated in response. And then it was gone.

The arc missed, striking out into air. Blue teardrop bullets from the roaches riddled both sides of Jadal Cai’s regenerating body and pinned them shuddering to the roof.

“Halve his regeneration speed!” Imbertri called over at the passenger seat.

Flinpen poked her head up and squinted through the flashing lights. “Done. I think.”

“Good! Now his cognitive speed and magic capacity.”

“Done and –” A flash and cloud of smoke lit up the roof as one of the mines went off, “– not done.”

“Well, cognition was the important one.”

“It’s working,” I said, sensing the versal signature dwindling, and inserted my voice into the comms channel. “All units continue to fire, and detonate the mines. Don’t give the wielder a chance to recover!”

“Nice thinking,” said Imbertri.

“Likewise,” I replied.

A series of devastating explosions rocked the top of the building and sent the unshielded half of Jadal Cai splattering into a sea of viscera. The other half had already overshot, but the second-hand kinetic impact pushed it over the edge of the roof to the cobbled ground, where armed police immediately descended upon it. The shield sputtered out, and blue light flashed against the pavement.

The versal signature moved. Independently of its body, it streaked into the prison in a beeline to the other Rein.

“Imbertri –”

“I saw it.”

I still could. With no way into the building, I couldn’t do much but observe as the first locus converged on the second and – for lack of a better word – absorbed it. The remaining locus became ever so slightly brighter.

It moved a very short distance within the prison, and then vanished from the universe.

“This time he has to be dead,” Flinpen said in the passenger seat, watching Imbertri’s face with a slowly mirroring expression of concern. “One of you tell me I’m right.”

“I don’t think this quarantine of yours was a sound management decision,” Imbertri answered.

“Agreed,” I added unnecessarily. “Stopping Jadal Cai will be tricky.”