“Gabriel and Kendrick? Together? In a room with folks they don’t like? We should’ve been more afraid of that.”

It got tense in the room fast. Jericho and I both sat stone still, face as blank as could be. The tapping from Marauder was getting to a point where it was becoming incessant, but it was better than him losing his cool. The twins I couldn’t see without turning my head, and Halogen had our gazes all locked in on her. The very air in the room was starting to feel like something we were being given, and not an ambient natural occurrence. Now her smirk was smug. Looking away felt like a movement I couldn’t have afforded to make.

Yeah, it was a long few seconds. Gaz opened his mouth first. “Fuck it, I’m in.”

Of course.

“Good, good, good,” Halogen basically chirped. She interlaced her fingers, sat back like a lazy fat cat, and those eyes, slowly staining themselves red, returned to me… no right past me to Jericho.

Taunting him, ignoring me. The worst part of all of this was that even if I could shut down Gaz and his minion’s senses, a bit of a further deep dive into his system would be required in order to tell for certain what else I could compromise. I couldn’t afford to dedicate that much focus. If I did, then the comms I was maintaining would probably go down, which would trigger Prodigy to come flying in here half cocked. I needed to be present, to keep my mind active and aware despite the static.

San cleared his throat. “I will be leaving.”

“Don’t want your money?” Halogen asked as he and Geomi got up from the table.

“I do not need your money, nor do I need to make a promise not to assault your city.” Halogen sighed.

“San, you really do like to play hardball, even when you know you’re out gunned,” she growled a bit.

“Yeah, what the fuck makes you think we’re gonna just let you leave if you don’t take the deal and make nice?” Gaz spat at him like venom, the engine sound whirring up inside his chest.

San stopped and turned to look at him then, an old, wrinkled face and hard features dedicating every muscle to stoicism. Geomi placed a hand on a blade at his side, and my senses were flooded with information as he did… something had activated what could only be a cyberwarfare suite inside of his all black suit and white mask. If he was going to start something… well I got the feeling several people would die before he was even warmed up.

Regardless, San himself fully turned to face Gaz and everyone still present moved hands towards weapons. Firewall, I noticed, slid his hand into a glove with what looked like a chipset across the back hand and a circle in the center of the palm. Even Sway looked at attention.

“You can not stop me,” San simply replied, and the temperature went down in the room just enough that when he turned to leave a door opened, and no one else thought to try and hold him up. I didn’t really know anything about San, not enough of what he was capable of besides that Prodigy had once mentioned that San the Mountain was one of few people she wouldn’t want to take a punch from.

But he had left, and that meant the room was clearly split.

On one side, Jericho and the Twins, Gabriel, and myself were clearly in over our heads.

On the other, Gaz and his croney, Sway, Firewall and Halogen.

Well, I had planned for more people willing to take the queens head. I hadn’t counted on just how easy everyone could be bought and convinced to leave. My stark LACK of money was showing here, and Jericho knew just as well that he couldn’t hope to out-wealth a mega corporation like the FORGE. Halogen was done with pleasantries now, and that much was clear.

“Firewall, now is the time to stop feigning fucking disinterest,” she cut into the reestablished quiet. The whimsy was gone, violence raw and untamed taking its place. “It’s getting irritating.”

“As you wish. My rate hasn’t adjusted because you’re throwing money around at everyone else,” he said with more bass and inflection than he had this entire time. “I can’t be bought to help defend your stake here for less than that.”

“You’re lucky you’re half as good as you think you are,” she cooed, happy he was playing ball. The flash of fang she’d shown him hadn’t left, though. “Deal struck.”

“Sigo pensando que esto es estúpido,” Marauder spoke up no longer willing to be quiet here. “We did the song and dance, whatever, these stupid parlays are only ever good for the person who calls em. We shoulda killed la bruja the second she walked out to greet us.”

At that, Halogen, Gaz, and Firewall all shifted. Gabe held up a finger, and somehow that was enough to stop everyone.

“Wait, this was good champagne,” he spoke as unhinged as ever, grabbing the flute glass and downing the drink.

His timing, as always, was immaculate. The situation was as untenable as it was likely to become, and the last thing we had was initiative.

The meat and potatoes of this plan was to get enough people in the room on our side to make fighting against the hardline FORGE affiliates and subordinates a possibility. I couldn’t have ever had a good number on how many of them would show, or how many less clearly loyal players would come to the table, so I had to try something. In a lot of ways, that was always the least stable part of this plan. The other half, however, was nowhere near as flimsy or dependent on others to work.

Gabe flung his glass like a dart, and the other hand followed as he vaulted over the table to stand on the projector. From the second hand, the silver ball from earlier flew, beeping rapidly.

I swear I said no bombs… how had he even snuck that in here?

“Finally!” Millie called out as her and miles began to glow.

In the next two seconds, I was up, and both of the twins, along with Jericho who had also started to glow himself, bursted with light. The room went black, save the glow from Gaz and the woman… and the silver ball.

“Fuck!” Gaz yelled shattering the glass with a heavy swing first, and then swinging at the ball. Before his fist made contact, Firewall flung out a hand and the glove shot a flame that encompassed it.

“I can’t see shit!” I heard as I stopped maintaining the comms and went on the offensive. That had been Halogen. Another voice cut in: “EMP! Get down!”

The ball, surrounded in flame, exploded and I directed my attention to forcing open the doors, and sending the virus I had prepped to launch into Gaz and the woman he was here with earlier. The magic EMP was a temporary measure, and wouldn’t work on anyone who had also prepped themselves to fend off someone like me for very long before the magic wore off. The flames and force of the explosion lit up the room, maintained by Firewall’s power, and he got up, holding his hand out as me and Gabe made a break for the closest door.

The club had erupted into chaos, people sprinting towards the stairs to get out of the club via every emergency exit they could find. The explosion of flames was uncontained, flung at our backs and we just barely got clear by hitting the deck to either side of the door. Every screaming civilian who had been touched hit the floor, but Firewall snuffed out the flames quickly.

With Gabe and I making space between us and the door, they knew where to run away from, even in pain or terrified. “Get out of here!” a security guard yelled barreling towards us. Gabe was quick with his gun, drawing and firing as we ran at him. It was a snap decision on his part, but he lifted his arm and a holographic looking shield erupted to life ahead of him. I recognized him, immediately, as Anthony from earlier. The dark of the powerless club didn’t do much to hide his face when the glowing shield came to life.

His shield stopped the bullets cold, but as another ball hit his shield and exploded, it blinked out of existence and that was good enough for me. Rather than a gun, I snatched something that was hanging inside of my Cardigan, a baton wouldn’t be a bad guess on first look. As I whipped the telescopic weapon out, the end of it buzzed to life. I went low under a swing, and with a whip of my arm, the man’s jaw cracked and he seized from the shock it imparted. I moved him with a shoulder check and heard more gunfire from Gabe, though this time he was aiming at the door, keeping Gaz and the woman from having a bee line on us. It was not working, since Gaz’s arms and torso weren’t exactly flesh.

Thankfully, another of the remaining grenades was thrown while I ripped the gauntlet off Anthony’s hand. My brain scanned it while I put away the baton and focused again on the comms.

“Prodigy!” I called into the receiver.

“I am already incoming, the Daywalkers stormed the building.”

“I need you or Shift to kill the power fully, find the generators and their backups!”

“Shift can handle it, you need me,” she calmly said, and then Shift cut in.

“On it, I know where the main power station is.”

No more time to talk. The hardlight riot shield I’d snatched up was strong enough to hold off single, blunt impacts but against rapid fire it wouldn’t last long enough to be useful. Good enough for me..

The grenade went off, and I saw the flames get stopped before they could expand again. Fucking firewall had emerged now, and Halogen wasn’t far behind. He made a corridor of flame around her, like hell opening up for Lilith. “Where is my security!?” she asked, noting only one man had come to see what was going on.

“Guess the augurs didn’t show you everything,” I said, strapping up the shield and reaching into my cardigan again to undo the straps holding my own gun in place.

“You know, this was supposed to be a calm dinner,” she commented as her veins started to glow from below her skin. Her eyes had lines of red and purple pulsing in them. Sway cleared his throat from within the room, hiding in the doorway.

“Halogen, I’d love to watch you work, but your image is, unfortunately, a concern.”

“Fuck that they shot at us!”

“We did!” Gabe commented. “And I’m about to do it again.”

Gaz put himself between the two of them.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Sam, you cannot be seen here doing… your thing. You go too far off the rails and I don’t know how much PR work I can do to unsee that for people. Let them earn their keep.”

She sighed, and red smoke lifted from the corners of her mouth. “You all lucked out,” she spoke as the standoff continued.

“Tell Jericho I’ll be in touch,” she spoke, backing away into the room and giving one last look before disappearing.

There went my shot, but that was fine. I hadn’t only risked my neck to neutralize her. All in due time, but I needed to get out of here first.

“I’ll let you two handle the heavy lifting and provide fire support,” Firewall offered, all business.

“Yo G, get that fucker before he throws another grenade,” Gaz ordered, and the slowly reactivating lights went back out. Perfect timing. The virus I had infected both of their systems with activated next. “Oh what the fuck!” Gaz called out as all of their optic systems shut down completely.

Gabe started firing, sending rounds at the two of them while they couldn’t see to fight back, and as the background noise shut off and I could use the full breadth of my powers I prepared to get to work all the way.

Gabe didn’t need his powers to be a solid shot, or to fight well in a chaotic situation, and though I was above average, I was a lot more reliant on my power to be useful. In situations like these, that much was clear as day because, even as I pulled the trigger, Gaz still barreled right at us alongside G. That caught me off guard.

With the roar of his core growing louder, I realized what it was doing for him as I barely got out of the way of his charge. He was like a train, fast and just as damn strong. A piston of a fist hit my shield, and it was shattered again, needing a few more seconds for the battery to reactivate. One punch overloading that thing fully was terrifying. I had hoped a few more shots would buy me a second to move aside, but I was wrong.

He wheeled around and scored another glancing blow.

This one hit my face, right in my left eye. I was knocked off my feet, and immediately lost the feed from the fake orb in my eyesocket. Even with my vision swimming, I saw Gabe pinned and avoiding bladed arms stabbing into the floor, just barely, and when the snake darted out, he was just fast enough to catch it, fingertips digging into the metallic appendage.

I assumed it was so his power could work but I didn’t see more. Gaz grabbed me as I was trying to get up, and his fist hit me again. I saw stars, then nothing, and then I came to again as he barked at me. “Did you think I needed the fucking EYES I put in my own head to see you? Like that was the only way I could take in my surroundings? Stupid fuck,” he called, smelling like hot metal. I couldn’t even get my bearings to fight back before he was rearing back and the sound of his core igniting filled the room. This punch would definitely be enough to shatter my skull, and I couldn't even get the shield arm up, let alone get the shield itself on.

He swung like a hammer falling, and I expected the worst, but something got between his fist and my head. I focused my vision to the sight of a hand much smaller than his holding it back, knuckle to palm.

Prodigy was right on time and Gaz grunted, holding me by my shirt in one hand and unable to straight up overpower her. The roaring grew louder and he exerted himself more. She frowned in response, and delivered a straight punch into his chest with all the power she could muster in just a few seconds. With that impact, Gaz had to let me go and was sent sliding back towards the other side of the bar, heavy boots scraping along the floor. When he did stop, he caught himself before he fell, and I heard the music that was an engine stalling. He coughed, synthetic oil and blood spurting out of his mouth and pooling under his shirt.

“Damn, that was a hell of a fucking punch,” he grunted falling to one knee like a cyborg that was slowly losing power. I heard a screech and then snaketongue finally jumped off of Gabe, backing away as he fired the gun at her while she scrambled along the floor to get away. The way she moved was closer to a four legged spider than a person, and I saw immediately why she’d yelled.

Gabe had used his power to cause her entire fake tongue to come apart in her mouth, pieces snapping off even now that he no longer had a hand on it. That would have been funny, but I was still fighting to stay conscious. The one saving grace, I was coming to realize, was that he had hit me in the part of my skull that had been reinforced and replaced with highly durable components to house my fake eye.

Still, I could feel myself losing the fight to stay vertical.

“The Daywalkers did their part upstairs,” she commented, dragging me away as I finally noticed that fire was slowly starting to approach us, encircling Gaz and G.

“One for two,” he called out. “This will get worse for you than us, though, so I’ll be a good sport and call a draw if you’re good with it. Nice tricks, but they won’t be enough. Take Halogen’s advice and get out of town kid. This can’t end well for you.”

I managed a thumbs up at the call for a draw, and then turned it into me flipping him off as Prodigy helped me up to my feet, determining that we were going to make a retreat.

Before we started to run, I gave them each one last look, and Gaz, even with blood and fuel leaking out of him, laughed. Firewall looked grim, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.

They’d come out of this mostly fine, and my plan hadn’t exactly panned out, but I did learn enough here that I could make a plan for tomorrow.

“Can you move?” Marauder asked, approaching with his gun still trained on them. “I’m running low…”

“He’s definitely concussed. I’m gonna carry him until we see the Day-” I heard her talking, but the second we couldn’t see Firewall because of the flames and started to run away; I fell over into the dark.

When my eye snapped open again, I was in the back of a truck. “Do. Not. Move. Upgrade,” I heard Prodigy say with a chilling sort of focus in her voice. Two heads poked over the second row of seats to look at me in the trunk of a pickup peeling down a street more like a warzone. Shift and Marauder, which meant… the assault had done enough to get us out somehow. I could sense the lack of noise where the compound had been in my second sense. Shift had managed to compromise the main generator and got out. Good.

Prodigy moved her hand, deft and precise, and I realized with a start I couldn’t see out of my fake eye and her hand had moved towards where it was. “Careful, if it’s bleeding something sprung and he might have worse damage than that in there,” Marauder called as Prodigy’s eyes seemed to strain under the weight of her focus.

“I can see what is going on, Marauder. Be quiet!”

I felt it then… why she was so intensely focused. Pressing against where cold, hard metal met soft, warm flesh in my eye socket was a pair of narrow fingers.

I blacked out again.

This time I was startled awake by a bomb… or something close to it. Two blood-slick hands held me down, and I felt frigid, rough terrain against my back.

Asphalt.

“Don’t move, she's still in there!” Shift commented with a frantic panic in her voice and a soot across her forehead. “Why won’t he stay knocked out?”

Gunfire and another explosion rattled my chest, and I recognized the sound as Marauder’s gun. He stopped shooting long enough to reply, two Daywalkers taking his place behind the truck, neither of them familiar or alien to my blurred peripheral vision. “It’s his power! Jefe’s got failsafes and tricks to keep his brain active when it shouldn’t be.”

“What the fuck how does that make sense?”

Hyo pulled back her hand and reached behind her. Sauntering iron? And tweezers?

“It’s like a computer in hibernate or something! Look, I don’t do computers and he’s basically a fuckin computer!”

He cursed in Spanish. I still don’t remember what he said exactly.

“Fuck!” I groaned out. “Gabe what-“

Hyo hissed out a violent admonishment at me in Korean as Gabe scooted over and a translucent dome slammed shut over our heads, a Daywalker’s power most likely.

“Scrappers chased us down and almost hit the truck with an RPG. Our boys intercepted before it got too hairy, but Jehricho is spread super thin. He’s diverting people to us but he won’t open a portal to any of the safe houses for us while we’re fighting.” That made sense: protecting secret locations. “Your eye got fucked up but it’s salvageable. Your cyberdeck, though? Took a lot of punishment, hermano. No bueno. Shoved it right into your soft parts back there. Tu cerebro eres bein, nothing Medigel can’t manage.” Sileena and Hyo both looked at him for half a second, and he didn’t stop looking at me.

He’d lied, probably.

“Yeah but you’re bleeding everywhere,” Sileena cut in and I suddenly felt it welling in my eye socket. “Prodigy is trying to bend everything back into place without breaking it, or ripping all the human parts up.”

I groaned as she carefully moved my head to empty out the blood and then got to doing…

Something. I blacked out again.

I woke up as a door slammed shut and this time it was our car that roared to life. Gauze and medical tape surrounded my left eye. Out the sun roof I saw Sileena suddenly warp herself into place, fingers hooked into place to hold her steady. She had a machine pistol in her other hand, barrel releasing the last smoke as if it had recently been fired. Gabe held me with one arm, breathing panicked and sweat running down his cheeks. The energy flaring off his hands and the uncharacteristic quiet gave away his savvy persona had broken, even as the fighting sounded distant compared to earlier.

“We gotcha mi pana, hold tight.”

“Someone’s coming down the road two blocks up, right side,” I breathed. I could see through a camera around the block. Black SUV. The kind bad guys used. Gabe looked down, and Hyo cut the lights. A heavy pause, no sound but us breathing, no light but flickering street lights. “They passed.”

“Thanks Jefe. Now go to sleep, let us watch your back.”

“You’re clear now, I think. Call Jehricho… tell him I got it.”

“What did you get?”

“The other thing I came for.”

“Stop talking! Off switch upgrade, now,” Hyo scolded.

This time when I went out, it was intentional.

----------------------------------------

I woke up and had it not been for my sole remaining eye snapping onto Hyo, sleeping in the unbelievably soft queen sized bed with her back to me, I might have immediately panicked for the lack of familiarity in my surroundings.

Instead I panicked for fear of how I’d ended up in bed with Hyobin Park. The soft features of her face were so opposite to the sharp, precise expression she wore almost as much as the disinterested and annoyed one. It was always so jarring. My breathing hitched, and her eyes snapped open the same way mine had.

“Kendrick!” she commented, sitting up and placing a warm, soft hand on my forehead. “Breathe, take it slow. Calm…” she soothingly said, keeping my body from jolting like I wanted to.

It surprised me, pleasantly, how soft she could be when she wasn’t slamming her fist through solid metal. I suppose it shouldn’t, though. People had commented that I was similar in my own duality; one side fire and brimstone, aggressive to the core and the other calm, thoughtful and slow to act.

It was one of the reasons we balanced out well, the two of us.

“How long was I out?” I asked as my bearings came together.

“Three days, as of this morning. Gabriel has been working on your eye, Sileena hasn’t stopped patrolling the neighborhood, and even a few bordering this one, besides sleeping the whole time.”

Shit, that didn’t sound good. “Is she scared?”

“Antsy was the word one of Jehrico’s partners used when she sent her out the night we got here. Too antsy, making everyone nervous with her pacing.”

“Why?” I asked dumbly.

She sat up and gave me something between a glare and pensive expression I couldn’t place easily. “Upgrade, you…” she said like she was unsure what to say. “We saved you, and both your brain and your cyberdeck retained full functionality, thankfully, but it was a close thing.”

“Ah, I almost die one time and you all-”

“You did die.”

I fell silent. That was the lie Gabriel had told.

“You had a brain bleed, and it was hard to get the Medigel in place to stop the bleeding. If anyone else had been with you, those hits would have caused you to die from the trauma. Twice, your heart stopped. Once there, once when we got here and moved you. Shift saw the lights go out, for lack of a better way to explain it.”

“Fuck,” was all I could respond with. “Okay, yeah that explains that… but I’m alive. I’ll give her a call after I’m fully up and running.” She nodded in a way that signaled relief and approval. “Thank you, Hyobin. I… you really are insanely dope. When did you learn to do surgery, exactly?”

She shrugged. “Kind of just came to me…” she lied with a half smile, getting out of the bed.

While she shuffled around looking for clothes, I extended my mind, connecting my cyber deck to my fake eye… which looked to be in the living room? Gabe stared into it, pulling away a sharp tool and mouthing something I couldn’t make out.

“Well, he’s certainly added some things to the eye,” I told Hyo, noticing a few colors I had never seen before. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

“TURN IT OFF!” he finally hollered, and I chuckled, shutting the connection between my brain, the cyberdeck, and my eye off.

“Wait…” I commented, flicking the lights on in the room with a thought and sitting up. “I know this place… this room used to be…” I trailed and the door opened.

When I locked eyes with Millie, she did NOT look happy. In fact, she looked like she hadn’t slept for a month. “Mine. Yes. You’re up now, so I’d like my space back, if you don’t mind. Good morning Hyobin,” she offered with a wave, and then frowned back at me again before slamming the door shut.

Well, so much for the hatchet being buried.