I pulled open the door and stepped into a large, dark room, abruptly unnerved by how quiet it was. The MergoTech lackeys who worked on this floor had probably just gone home, but it was strange to be greeted by a completely dim and silent room after the rest of the building had been a noisy hell of pop music and gunshots. It made me grateful that I hadn't put away the baton.

  This room took up most of the floor and, as expected, had the look of a tech development lab. All black monitors and computers with blinking lights, accompanied by the background drone of PC fans and ventilation. There were tables spread apart covered with tools and flasks that would’ve been more at home in a chemistry lab.

  The air was ripe with that uncomfortably stale silence that made me want to whisper when I spoke, even if there was no reason to do so. The back of my neck prickled from the cold.

  At first, I didn't notice anything in the room that one might describe as secret-techy. But in the subtle darkness, my attention was eventually drawn to a dim purple glow coming from somewhere in the middle of the room.

  I followed the glow, stumbling over wires and stray mechanical parts on my way there; it lead me to a small round plastic table, perfectly in the center of the ominous lab. There was something on that table hidden under a canvas sheet, only noticeable by the violet light seeping out between the gaps where insulated wires trailed into the covered object.

  I tightened my grip on the baton, fighting back a wave of anticipation and fear as I reached for the sheet. The canvas felt cool beneath my fingertips, but there was a faint electrified or fuzzy feeling whenever I moved my hand close to it—like a dry blanket.

  Please, dear god, whatever you are, don't explode on me, I thought, then yanked the sheet off.

  It took me a while before I realized that the device was meant to resemble a human hand. A hand and wrist, rather, but made entirely of pristine silvery metal, with bright purple LEDs engraved along it lengthwise that looked like jagged lightning bolts. Wires and cables were plugged in near to where the wrist bone would have been. The fingers were half-clenched, and when I checked them, I noticed an engraving along the surface of the thumb that labeled the device itself as "StormHand α (patent pending)".

  Yeah, that name was so on the nose that it even put me off, but just having my hand close to the thing was enough to make all other relevant thoughts feel trivial. There was a sense of such sheer, unrestricted power emitting from the device that it nearly triggered a fight or flight reflex in me. The hairs on my arms prick up. I got this feeling that if I tried to actually touch the surface of the device, it would shock me dead. I couldn't fathom just how much electricity was being fed into this thing; no wonder every light on this floor was out. The bill to pay for funneling power into it would’ve bankrupted a small nation.

  It was a cybernetic hand—that much was fucking obvious. An incredibly expensive and empowered variation, the likes of which I'd never seen before. The scantest notion of how much the right merchant in the Undergrowth might pay for this was enough to stutter my heart.

  I put a finger to my earpiece. "Hey Darian, I know you're driving right now, but I think I found the company's experimental tech. Trust me when I say this thing is gonna knock your eyes out when you see it."

  All I heard in response was the intermittent sound of the van's engine. Then, "...od… getti… clo… tel… hen I…"

  I frowned. "Darian? Hello? Something is fucking up your—"

  The signal died. All that remained was static.

  I pried out and pocketed the earpiece, staring at it all the while. That was signal scrambling, alright. But the fact that I had only just started getting it was…

  I looked back down at the "StormHand", mulling over the slightly baffling implications. Just what the fuck is this thing?

  A payday and a roadtrip across the planet, that's what. The thought brought my smile back.

  Cautious enough that I didn’t so much as scratch the paint on it, I reached down and yanked out the wires on the back and side of the device. With each one I unplugged, the low electronic hum that emanated from it got quieter, and the blindingly-bright purple LEDs dimmed until it was a bare shimmer no brighter than an E-reader’s screen.

  I thought about bringing the earpiece back out to check if the interference was gone, but dismissed the thought. Darian said he was on his way here, so he would be here. No point in bothering him any further while he was still on the road.

  I picked up the strange cybernetic hand by its wrist, smiling. Finally.

  Now that I had gotten what we were here for, there was nothing left but to go back to the shattered window, and wait until—

  “Well, would you look at that!” a voice boomed from the room’s doorway. “And my partners thought your antics wouldn’t lead us anywhere worthwhile. Shows what they know of planning a heist.”

  I froze, paralyzed by dread. I didn’t recognize that voice; it lacked the sterile edge that everyone else in this building spoke with.

  I slowly lowered StormHand into my pocket, where it weighed heavily, then flipped open my baton and turned on the electric current. Weapon in a vice grip, I spun around and looked toward the source of the voice.

  The person standing in the doorway was about my height, and if it weren’t for the red light of the fading dusk behind him, I wouldn’t have been able to make out a single other feature. He had a rugged, youthful face, and medium-length hair that was dyed a mixture of dark red and black, skewed toward one side of his head. He wore a kevlar vest, a long-sleeved shirt underneath it, and tight black leggings. The smile on their face was bright with a devilish glee that reminded me of my own.

  “And just who the fuck are you?” I said, holding my ground. “If you’re with the security team downstairs, then you should’ve brought more people and a proper weapon.”

  The stranger raised a skeptical eyebrow at me, then broke out laughing. “Did you miss the part where I said ‘heist’, you sycophant? I’m not here to apprehend you, I’m here to thank you. Thank you for kindly leading us right to MergoTech’s dirty little secret. And as for a proper weapon…”

  From absolutely nowhere, he flipped out, of all fucking things, a sai dagger—with a shorter hilt and longer blade than most, and a few mechanical parts of unclear purpose built into the pommel and crossguard. He tossed and flourished it around in one hand, spinning it by the pommel like a poorly-supervised child with a pair of scissors.

  “... I assure you I have no shortage of such things.” He smirked.

  I watched the blade, bewildered that he considered that a “proper” weapon, as I mulled over his words. It took a second, but my subconscious caught on quicker than I could. “It was you, wasn’t it? You hacked into this clinic before we did. You’re after the same thing.”

  The stranger's eyes widened, then he smiled as if proud of a pre-schooler for figuring out basic math. “You catch on quick, comrade. Yes, I did! Though, admittedly, deleting your record was an accident.” There was an inflection in how he talked that seemed more characteristic of an upper-crust person than an Undergrowth thug, as I assumed he was. Rich bastards didn’t try to rob MergoTech, after all. “I did hack into the system when me and my associates were planning a more subtle infiltration into this building, but, ah… I made the executive decision to hold off when we saw a very obviously fake-looking appointment entry in their logs.”

  As if he would die of boredom without overstimulation, he took out a second sai of near-identical design to his other one, and began flourishing that around with his other hand in a series of impractical as hell, if stylish, movements.

  The sight made me feel more confident for when/if this turned to violence. Probably “when”.

  “It intrigued me,” he continued. “You intrigue me. I thought it might be smarter to see if you could make it to MergoTech’s upstairs project all on your own before we could. And I have to say, I am most impressed. You perfectly cleared the way for us, albeit… not very gracefully. But I shan’t be one to complain about a job well done!”

  “Gee. Thanks. I’m flattered.” I took a step forward, brandishing my baton. “Now, mind getting out of the way? I have a payload to take home, and I’m not interested in making small talk with some wannabe gangster with a bad haircut.”

  The stranger softly glared at me. “Firstly, you aren’t one to throw stones at my hair, Mister McCurls. And secondly, why do you think I’d let you do that?” He flipped one of the sais away and held an open hand out toward me. “I’m still waiting for the StormHand.”

  “Yeah, that’s not—” I paused. “Wait, you know what it is? Just who the hell are you?”

  There was a glint of surprise in his eyes, as if he didn't mean to let that one slip, but quickly recovered his composure. “I have sources, and my associates are much better at gathering intelligence than one person, such as yourself, will ever be.” He paused, as if thinking over the last part of my question. “Ah, but for formalities. My name is Julian! Proud thief and Undergrowth mercenary—much like yourself, I reckon, Mister…?”

  “Fuck yourself,” I said placidly. “And what associates? Did you drag along some imaginary friends?”

  “I don’t really feel like we should bring—”

  “Okay, enough of this shit,” another voice said behind him. The new voice was low and muffled, like it was being distorted through an electronic filter.

  Another person ducked in from the hallway behind Julian and immediately leveled two identical mechanical pistols at me with such perfect aim that it looked military-trained.

  The person in question looked to be a muscular woman with barely-visible, shoulder-length dark hair; she was nearly half a foot shorter than me, but I couldn’t discern many details because she was covered head-to-toe in a goddamn powersuit. It was definitely an older model, as the plates were dull grey and the glowing LEDs in their seams were quite dim—as opposed to newer models, which were all pristine silvers and whites with LEDs bright enough to kill the night.

  She moved unimpeded in the armor, despite how clunky it looked. I felt her harsh stare through the two parallel blue-line LEDs that marked her helmet’s vision window; its design strongly reminded me of the visors on medieval helmets.

  Instead of being impressed, I was honestly just irritated at how many times I’d had guns pointed at me in the past hour.

  “Give over the device or we’ll take it off your corpse,” she said.

  “Jesus, Heather, there’s no need for that yet!” Julian reached over and pulled one of her hands back. Now she only had one gun pointed at me. “There’s still perfectly adequate time to resolve this without violence!”

  “If that was so important to you,” the woman—Heather?—said without taking her sights off me, “then you would have done it five minutes ago instead of standing here and monologuing like a fucking—”

  “I’ll stand here and monologue all I want, or you’re not getting so much as a slice of our payment. Do you understand me, Gunny? I am still your boss, aren’t I?”

  “You are. But I would rather we got out of here with our loot in hand before the police get on our asses, rather than losing it because you bantered with some underworld lowlife.”

  “Hey!” I said. “Glass houses!”

  She kept her glare firmly affixed on me through her helmet. Though it was totally expressionless, I could feel the questioning look in her gaze.

  I shrugged. “Your accent. I can tell you’re from the Undergrowth too.”

  She hesitated for a second, then shook her head and yanked her other pistol free from Julian’s grip. “Don’t know when to shut up either, do you? You’re worse than Julie.”

  Julian looked appalled for a split second, then shook it off. “Oh, enough of that! You want this over with so badly, Heather? We’ll finish up here, then.” He looked back at me.

  I stared back at him. “What?”

  “Pretty much what she said, but less callously, I guess.” He held out his open hand, for the second and hopefully final time. “Hand over the MergoTech device, and nothing bad needs to happen.”

  I furrowed my brow at the criminal—not that I can throw stones at him for being one. “And if I say ‘no’?”

  He extravagantly sighed. “Please, dear god, do not do that if you know what’s good for you. If you just hand it over, then this will be much easier for all of us.”

  “Hmm. No.” I smirked.

  Julian facepalmed at the same time that Heather said, “You gonna let me pop him in the fuckin’ skull, now?”

  Before Julian could go off at her again, I said, “Well, why don’t you try? Come over here and take it from me. No more talking in circles. We’ll settle this disagreement like honest thieves.”

  I waved my baton for emphasis, and she seemed to genuinely consider what I said for a moment, then shrugged, and aimed both pistols directly at my head. “No thanks, bud. I prefer my fights with uneven odds.”

  “You two won’t be having any fights at all,” Julian said.

  “But—”

  “No, Heather.” Julian looked back to me, and weirdly, smiled. It seemed as earnest as a snake like him could manage. “I respect you, Sir…?”

  “Tarim,” I said, just so he’d stop fucking asking.

  “Ah yes, Tarim! I sincerely do respect you. No matter how this ends, I wish you a happy life. But if you will not change your mind on giving us StormHand—”

  “I might if you’re willing to give me half of what you get for selling it,” I said. I didn’t entirely mean that; at this point, I was far to curious about the device to hand it over so easily.

  Hehehe. Hand.

  Julian’s smile vanished in a blink. “That’s not happening.”

  “Thought as much!” I hefted my stun baton with both hands. “Now if you’re the one who wants to fight me for it, why don’t we get this out of the way? That’s if you really think some cheap dollar store antique knives are going to take me down when a bunch of guns couldn’t.”

  He had the audacity to snicker at me. “Oh, I don’t plan on taking you. If you really won’t compromise—”

  Conceding entirely isn’t compromising, dumbass.

  “—then we have no reason to speak any further.”

  “Meaning you’ll just let me walk out of here? Yeah. Sure.”

  “Hardly.” He took a few steps to the right, moving along the room’s wall. “Heather, clear the doorway.”

  For the first time, she lowered her guns, and looked over at Julian. I still couldn’t read her expression through the helmet, but I got a strong impression that she was completely baffled. “Are you fucking serious, Julie? This can’t be necessary.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Of course it isn’t,” he said. “But at this point it’s about conserving our energy.”

  Heather hesitated for a moment longer, then scoffed, stood straight, and nodded. “Fine. You’re the boss.” She stepped to the other side, away from the doorway and from Julian. She kept her gaze fixed on me the whole time.

  “Well, I’m glad we finally agree.” Julian said, then smirked at me again. “Last chance to change your mind.”

  “I honestly don’t know why you think I would at this point.” I worked the words through a vague anxiety that rose up in my throat.

  “Hmph. You know what? Neither do I. Waste of time.” He leaned toward the doorway, then shouted, “Asterion! Take care of him!”

  Asterion? Who in the hell—

  A monster stepped through the doorway.

  At first, going by its silhouette, I thought it was a person—but that was until it had to lean down to fit itself through the doorway, in which its proportions were so massive that it momentarily blotted out all light from the setting sun outside.

  When it stood straight, the mechanical beast’s… I want to say “head” scraped against the fucking ceiling; it was at least eight feet tall. It looked, superficially, like a person—bipedal, torso, shoulders, the shape of its head even looked vaguely human—but it was made entirely of dull-grey metal. Gears quietly clicked with every movement of its arms and legs, though its body was covered with long metal plates that obscured any interior workings. Its torso was covered in a mechanical ribcage that layered over solid plate armor.

  Its only distinct features besides vaguely humanoid characteristics, metal, metal, and metal, were the four round, glowing blue lights at the front of its head—likely its source of vision. The head itself had long grooves along the side that made it look like a dense helmet, but somehow I doubted that it concealed a face.

  Um. Uh. Asterion, I presume? How the hell didn’t I hear that thing approaching?

  I felt a sharp twinge of fear at the sight, but there was a certain comfort in knowing that it was only a machine. I could deal with a machine. It was the people you needed to worry about, because they couldn’t be predicted. Every machine was unique, but none of them worked with the sheer, raw randomness that a person did.

  I could deal with this. It was fucking weird and terrifying and a surreal turn of events from how I thought this evening would go, but I could deal with it. Besides, I had an electrified baton. If it could destroy an electronic lock, it could destroy this thing.

  My confidence lasted until the thing tilted its head in confusion at me. A gesture so terrifying fluid and human that it gave me pause.

  It looked over at Julian. With seemingly no movement at all, a mechanical, muffled voice emitted from the monstrosity's head. “Is this all?”

  Julian rolled his shoulders. “Don’t butcher the man too hard. He’s a good sort, but he wouldn’t pay over. Just get him out of the way and we’ll be home in time for tea.”

  “Hmm. I see,” the thing said, then looked back at me. “I’ll do this thing, then.”

  Before I could ponder the implications of what that meant, the thing—Asterion?—took a few steps forward, casually shoving over a lab table that was in its way. It stared straight at me for long enough that a rare kind of regret for my decisions settled into the back of my brain.

  “Are you prepared, my fellow?” Asterion said.

  I paused, once more disturbed at the sheer humanness in how it acted, and not really knowing how to process this at the same time. “Um. Why the hell are you asking me?”

  It shrugged. He shrugged? Its voice sounded vaguely masculine, but I was very suddenly unsure if I should be thinking of it as a human or a machine. “Never hurts to hope for a challenge. Oh well.”

  Asterion stretched out his right hand. I only just noticed that he held a piece of gold-plated metal in that hand that looked a lot like the crossguard of some old-ass sword, though it had a cord that looped into an open plate in his forearm.

  Before I could fully process the conclusion that my subconscious came to, a sword blade sprouted from the hilt and nearly carved into the fucking ceiling; it was easily as long as my entire body. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, it began to faintly crackle with dim blue currents of electricity, much like my own stun baton did.

  A part of me wanted to believe that this was a dream. That was too absurd to be real, right? Why on earth would a humanoid robot working for a shitty little Undergrowth gang have a massive fuck-off sword? I glanced off to the side, toward Julian, and my delusional doubts were put to rest.

  The criminal shrugged with an awkward smiled. “You should’ve handed it over, mate.”

  I blinked stupidly at him, then looked back at Asterion. The beast had leveled the sword towards me in his right hand, standing with a perfectly straight posture in spite of his size.

  “Hmph. En garde,” was all he said.

  Julian might’ve had a point, loathe as I’d be to admit it. A bare sliver of dignity was the only thing keeping me from pissing myself in fear.

  I couldn’t even get my bearings or think clearly before the robotic beast barreled toward me, gigantic sword scraping across the ground behind him.

  My eyes widened and my body burned alive with adrenaline. I ducked and rolled to the side mere seconds before the beast crashed into the place I had just been. The weight of his sword splintered the table StormHand had sat atop, sprinkling me with dust and plastic chunks.

  Asterion hesitated for a moment, his eyes settling on me as he readjusted his sword in a better grip.

  Before he could flow into another brutal slash, I ducked behind him, and slammed my baton into the crook of his knee, where I could see a break in the metal plates.

  The baton sizzle sizzled, but nothing happened. I ripped it out, and dodge back, convinced he was about to spin around and boot me across the room, but no such thing happened. He gave me an inquisitive look, then simply waited for me to back away.

  It wasn’t until I was a good few meters away that he raised his sword once more.

  He’s trying to fight me fairly? Why?

  Before I had a prolonged chance to ponder this, the beast groaned and slashed at me in a wide arc, blade crackling with enough electricity to brighten the whole room.

  I brought my baton to bear, and in the next few seconds we became a whirlwind. I have no idea how on Earth my stick was enough to ward away the robot’s massive-ass sword, but with every moment his blade fell upon me, I let instinct do the talking, and fought it off with my baton.

  Back and forth and back and forth we went—my arms screamed, my breath fell short. My head was coated in sweat despite the evening cold. The weight of Asterion’s strikes crushed furniture around us—assuming he didn’t simply slap the tables and chairs aside like annoying flies. With every collision of our weapons, there was an ear-splitting zap, a bright flash of light, and we were forced apart.

  Even though my baton withstood him, I couldn’t go on the offensive at all. For something so big, he was so fast, so aggressive, that I couldn’t do anything other than defend. I blocked, parried, and danced back, trying to keep out of reach, but his weapon was so long and so fast that I couldn’t get a safe distance away no matter how hard I tried. Asterion turned the lab into a complete wreck around us, leaving splintered tables, broken chairs, and shattered, sparking computer monitors everywhere he moved.

  I was shocked that I’d survived as long as I did. I’ve had my fair share of hand-to-hand combat training, particularly with knives and batons, but no amount of skill could combat the raw, overwhelming power and agility behind every one of Asterion’s attacks, or the sheer unrelenting force of his moves.

  I never had a second to breathe. I never had a chance to make an opening or go on the offensive. I didn’t stand a chance. He was guaranteed to beat me, and any defense I put forth just delayed the inevitable.

  And it made me feel alive.

  My blood roared and adrenaline fell behind every one of my strikes. The flow of the fight overtook me, instinct drove me long before thought did, and I could see everything he was going to do before he did it. I brightly smiled even as the physical strain blended with the pain in my arm and made every movement burn my nerves alight with agony. Even as my muscles felt ready to tear asunder, I lost myself in the rhythm of the battle. There was nothing that made me more eager to live than the rush of a good fight.

  I got so absorbed in the flow that I was utterly blindsided when Asterion backed up and lowered the point of his blade into the ground.

  I paused. I glanced aside to see that Julian was just as confused as I was. Asterion merely stood there, staring placidly at me, shoulders heaving despite the fact that he wasn’t visibly capable of breathing.

  “Hello?” I said. “Are you tapping out, or are you waiting for more, big guy? ‘Cause I got more for you if you really want it!” I furiously waved my baton at him, which felt a little like an ant jabbing a sewing needle up at a Sherman tank.

  “Hmmmmm. You fight well.” He spoke with a voice like rattling pipes. “Much better than I anticipated.”

  “Is that a concession of defeat?”

  “Hardly.” He made a buzzing noise that almost sounded like a sigh. “Merely makes it all the sadder that this has to be done, unless you change your mi—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you assholes that I’m not going to? I’m taking the device with me one way or another.”

  “I know you will not concede.” He shook his metal head and raised his sword once more. “And that is why I am sorry, my fellow. There’s pain in ridding the world of such a talented fighter.”

  I felt very emotionally mixed, all of the sudden. “Uh… am I supposed to be flattered by tha—?”

  He charged at me.

  And that’s when I saw my opening.

  He never attacks with his left arm.

  As he charged at me, I saw that he did so with his right arm holding the sword up, ready to unleash another barrage of slashes. But his left arm simply hung off to the side, inanimate—it didn’t seem any less functional, but Asterion for some reason didn’t use it at all except to knock furniture out of his way.

  The right arm had some wiring and gears exposed in the center of its forearm, where the cord that powered the sword wound back into his arm. Even though his left arm didn’t hold a blade, it had an identical gap in the metal plates.

  I smiled with triumphant glee. Got you now, tin can.

  As he closed the gap and his overhead sword strike crashed downwars, I swiftly ducked to the right. From this angle, his sword-arm was blocked from reaching me by his own heavy-metal torso.

  The thing had but a moment to blink in surprise at my movement (or at least he would have, if he had eyelids) before I leapt up, and funneled as much charge from my cybernetically-enhanced arm as I possibly could into the baton. The room flashed bright with bursting lightning bolts, the crackling of their power filling my ears as I brought the baton down, aiming directly for the exposed spot on his left forearm.

  Which was the exact moment when he first raised his left arm.

  When my baton collided with it, a small aura of shimmering blue light suddenly appeared around his left hand, stopping my strike. My baton was being physically repelled—the same feeling as fruitlessly pushing two magnets with opposite poles against each other.

  My plan of attack fell apart as my baton easily slipped off the shimmering blue light, and I was left standing blank-eyed next to Asterion’s upraised arm.

  It can conjure a fucking shield?

  He stared down at me with no noticeable expression.

  I took a few steps back, reassessing what to do next, when his sword-arm swung back around.

  I hadn’t even noticed it was moving until the sword slashed a goddamn inch away from my face. I only avoided getting decapitated by ducking back from the monstrosity. The whish of air that could’ve been my death sailed merrily overhead.

  I danced further back from Asterion, trying to get my guard back up and keep a hold of my rapidly-draining adrenaline rush instead of the aggressively-rising fear.

  The room suddenly felt much quieter. Darker. I realized my weapon weighed a lot less.

  I lifted up my baton. A stump sparked with limp electric bolts where the entire upper half of it had been a second ago. Apparently, my weapon hadn’t gotten so lucky at avoiding the sword slash.

  I looked back up at Asterion, who held his sword in a much more relaxed grip. The thrill of the fight that had driven me up until then was snuffed out like a birthday candle.

  “Um,” was all I eloquently stated before he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt with his left hand, tight as a vice. Then, he yanked me up and casually tossed me across the fucking room. I sailed through the air and didn’t make a sound until I crashed into a broken table, meters away from the metal monster.

  Something cracked in my ribs. My entire upper body burned alight in fiery agony. It became difficult to muster a single coherent thought past the haze of pain and confusion and dizziness that had overtaken me. No planning, no thrill, no eagerness to dive back into the fight. Just bewilderment.

  Asterion strolled toward me, oversized sword raised.

  Fear scorched through my confusion.

  I panicked and tried to wrestle to my feet, pushing against the broken table, but it was too late. He moved too quickly, and by the time I had so much as gotten a leg up from the ground, Asterion was in front of me.

  He finally gripped the sword in both hands, and plunged it down into my right arm.

  Everything became a blur. I felt a sudden, scorching inferno of pain that slowly dragged its claws down my entire arm. Then I couldn’t feel a single goddamn thing. Nothing more. Just fear and a particularly dizzy kind of panic.

  I knew it was over when I heard Asterion’s terrifyingly-human voice say, “Such a pity…”

  When I recovered the ability to process what I was seeing again, I saw Asterion’s blood-stained sword retract back into the hilt. The beast then walked off to the other side of the room. Back to the doorway.

  It… it didn’t kill me? Why— I looked at my right arm, and realized he didn’t need to.

  It was bad. It wasn’t completely severed, but it was a knife’s edge away from being so. I couldn’t see far beyond my blood-drenched, ruined shirt, but the length of the cut and the fact that I couldn’t feel my arm at all told me enough. I wasn’t gonna use that limb anymore.

  So much for those cybernetics, I thought, indignant and dizzy.

  “Bah. It’s only a pity because this didn’t need to happen,” Julian said from the other side of the room. He held a hand to his face, visibly more annoyed at the ordeal than anything. Asterion settled down next to him, kneeling down so his head didn’t scrape against the ceiling. I wanted to hate him, but I struggled to hold onto many coherent thoughts at that moment. “You see, Tarim? We’re going to have StormHand anyway, now, but you’re coming out of the deal one arm short. Entirely your fault. This didn’t have to end so messily.”

  ”Fuck your— ah! Jesus…” Whatever that tin can did to my chest when he threw me was enough to make talking alone hurt like hell.

  Julian shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, I think we all get the point by now. We’re done here, and I’m done trying to get a word past your degenerating brain. Heather? Mind retrieving our merchandise?”

  “Sure thing,” the gunslinger said. I had almost forgotten about her, but she strolled out of the shadows toward me—still in her powersuit, but only holding one of the pistols she had aimed at me earlier. The other was holstered at her side.

  My eyes widened. Suddenly, through the fog and exhaustion that had blotted my mind, I saw a scant hope of getting out of this after all. I tried to hide my smile as I waited. I slipped my remaining good hand behind my back, grasping something I normally didn’t have a reason to use.

  No, it wasn't my ass. I talk out of that plenty.

  I waited until Heather stood right in front of me, pistol held in a lax grip. Perfect.

  She kept me fixed with a judgemental look—even though I still couldn’t see through her helmet, I just knew that was how she looked at me—and sighed. “You should feel lucky you’re getting away with your life at all, dumbass. If it was up to me, that wouldn’t be the case.”

  She knelt down next to me—to retrieve StormHand from my pocket, I reckoned. She didn’t even register me as a threat, anymore. Considering how badly Asterion had wounded me, she probably wasn’t wrong to think of me as little more than a corpse.

  Your mistake. I stopped hiding my smile.

  “Good thing it never will be,” I said, then ripped a small knife out of the sheath I hid in the back of my pants. I flipped it into a forward-facing grip, and drove it at her. “Supri—!”

  She blocked it.

  It seemed impossible, but where once she had held a pistol in one hand, she now, somehow, held a medium-length metal cudgel that she was using to block my knife. I didn’t catch the moment that it transformed, but I could still make out the little metal screws and pieces near the base of the cudgel that resembled the pistol it had replaced.

  Who the hell designs guns that transform into bludgeoning sticks?

  She fixed me with a sharp glare. “You really need to shut up.”

  She used her free hand to draw the other pistol from its holster, and shot me in the gut.

  The world seemed really, really funny all of a sudden. I wonder how much of that was the hilarity of how quickly every little detail of my entire plan went to shit, and how much of it was the catastrophic shock and sudden blood loss.

  “Jesus fuck, Heather!” Julian shouted.

  I settled back and stared vacantly at them, feeling detached from my own mind and body as Heather reholstered the pistol. She easily pulled the silver-and-purple MergoTech piece out of my pocket.

  My entire torso was unnaturally warm, like I had ingested a wildfire.

  “Here,” Heather said. I watched, vacant, as she tossed StormHand across the room. Julian fumbled to catch it. “Problem solved. Got the merch. Now can we get out of here?”

  “Wha— Heather, are you going to explain why—!”

  “I don’t particularly feel like doing that right now, no.” I saw as the cudgel she held unfolded piece by piece until it was in the shape of a pistol again, which she then holstered next to the first one. “I got the job done. You can rat me out for how I did it later, if you still care that much.”

  Asterion hummed and tilted his head at her, but didn’t say a word.

  “I…” Julian shook his head, then pocketed StormHand. I already missed the intensely pleasant violet glow of that strange and powerful device. “Oh, fine! But this will be something to discuss later, Gunny! Make no mistake about—”

  “Sure, whatever you say, boss. Now, do you still want to leave this guy here?”

  “I… what?”

  She nodded down to me. “You seemed pretty insistent that we let him walk free, but I don’t know how that’s gonna go for him, now. So, you still sure about it?”

  “... I mean, I don’t see any reason to change that plan, so if we... Oh fuck, not now!” he suddenly exclaimed, looking through the doorway.

  I wondered what they were in a panic about up until I processed what I was hearing: The sound of not-too-distant sirens somewhere far below us. Bright blue and red lights flashed through the broken window out in the hallway, rapid enough to cause seizures.

  Heh. Took them long enough to get here. The thought was as distant as every other feeling.

  Asterion looked at the blinking lights with an as-usual unreadable expression, then got up and walked back out into the hallway, ducking his head beneath the doorframe as he went.

  Heather cursed under her breath, then drew one of her pistols. “No time to go back and forth, Julie. Let him go or clean him up?”

  Julian hesitated for only a moment, glancing back and forth between me and the doorway. Finally, he shook his head and closed his eyes with a frustrated sigh. “Oh for… sorry, mate. Business is business. Do him in, Gunny. We can’t risk this fellow telling the pigs about us.”

  “You got it, boss.” Even though she got what she wanted, she didn’t express any great enthusiasm for it. Didn't express much at all, really. Maybe that was the helmet.

  As Julian wordlessly followed Asterion out through the doorway, Heather aimed the barrel of her pistol down precisely at my left eye. She did it with the calm, professional, passionless attitude of someone who had spent years acclimating themselves to killing people in cold blood.

  Some distant part of me that wasn’t quite so mindless and delirious from blood loss was scared. Another, more constant part wished that Darian was here with me. I missed his voice.

  “Sorry to know you, Tarim,” was all the gunslinger had to say.

  She shot me in the head.