The pauldrons of Sasha’s armored shoulders scraped against the window frame as she leaped through it, orange metal grinding against wood and plaster. Her heavy landing caused a resounding thud, and her subsequent hurried strides across the room sent shivers through the structure of the building. The bedroom door was open, and down the short hall, she saw Zoe’s armored back. Drawing nearer, the sight that greeted her stopped Sasha cold for half a heartbeat.

  Sam—if Delta hadn’t prepared her, she never would have guessed it was him—was trapped inside a cage of crystallized air, just barely visible like glass in the dim apartment. Still in the shape of a recliner, a massive tooth-lined maw gaped beneath the raised seat cushion. A tongue like a pink tentacle lashed against the barrier, leaving trails of saliva against the compressed atmosphere.

  Zoe stood just beyond the hallway, her white armor spattered with what looked like drool, Gale clutched in both hands. Sasha could see the strain in the raised set of Zoe’s shoulders and the slight quiver in her tensed arms.

  "I hope you've got a bright idea," Zoe said. "'Cause this is about all I've got at the moment."

  Sasha assessed the situation with the tactical part of her brain. "Could I just pick up your cage and carry him out the window?" Even as she said it, she realized the problem—she might have to smash out some of the walls to get him down the hall and then out the window. Which would cost them time and only lead to more questions once the authorities were involved. Still, if it were their only option, she thought she could manage it.

  "I didn't think that far ahead when I boxed him in." Zoe shook her head, grimacing as Sam heaved himself against the barrier again. "I didn't make a floor for the cage, and now it's all I can do to keep it up."

  Sasha raised her helmet's faceplate and tried to talk Sam down. She'd always been good at keeping her cool under pressure—it came with the territory of being a Black woman in predominantly white spaces. Unfair as it was, she’d long ago learned to modulate her voice, project calm, never let them see her rattled.

  "Sam." She kept her voice low and soothingly steady. "Sam, it's Sasha. Can you hear me?"

  The recliner-shaped monster stopped thrashing. The horrible mouth closed slowly, the tongue retreating to hang limply over the cushion-lip.

  "That's it. You're okay. We're here to help you. Just try to stay calm."

  In a rippling of fabric and flesh that made Sasha's stomach lurch, Sam morphed before their eyes. The recliner shape collapsed inward, limbs extending, a torso forming, until something approximating a human body crouched inside Zoe's cage. Sam was naked, his skin appeared rubbery and faintly translucent in places. He breathed heavily through clenched teeth that had turned into sharp points. His eyes—those unsettling yellow eyes with their square goat pupils—were wide with terror and hunger in equal measure.

  "Seems like he still breathes," Zoe muttered. "I could try a Suffocation Bubble, but I'd have to drop the cage first."

  "Maybe we can get him to just follow us out of here," Sasha said.

  "That would require our luck to take a positive turn for, like, the first time ever."

  As they talked, bone blades slowly extended from Sam's trembling forearms—white and sharp, pushing through his rubbery skin with wet sounds that made Sasha want to look away.

  "Sam? Are you with us?" Sasha asked. "Can you—"

  "HUNGRY!" Sam's voice was barely recognizable—a distorted howl that echoed in the small apartment. He lashed at the Solid Air cage with his arm blades, and Zoe grunted at the feedback, her whole body jerking as she willed more power into the construct.

  "It was a good try," Zoe growled in frustration.

  Sasha's mind raced through options. She didn't want to just smash Sam into unconsciousness—he was a victim here, not an enemy. She contemplated using her new Earthen Duplicate power for an extra pair of hands, but up on the third floor, she lacked the raw materials. She'd have to jump back down to the parking lot, access enough earth and stone, and even then, she wasn't sure that her duplicate, Zoe, and she could all successfully grapple with a shapeshifting Sam.

  Think, Sasha. What do you have that he doesn't?

  The answer came to her in a flash.

  "I'm gonna hit him with Aetheric Challenge," Sasha said. "Get him focused on me. Then hopefully, he'll follow me right out the window."

  "Then what?"

  "Then we'll have more options," Sasha snapped, frustration bleeding through. "We'll get him in the Jeep and get the hell out of here, if we can."

  "Alright."

  "Delta, message the others what we're doing."

  "Done," Delta replied instantly through their armor comms.

  "Zoe, whatever happens, we can't lose track of him." Sasha lowered her helmet’s faceplate.

  With a mental command, she activated Aetheric Challenge on Sam. Golden light flared from her chest, and she felt the power latch onto Sam like a hook sinking into flesh. His head snapped toward her, those terrible yellow eyes fixing on her with predatory intensity. She could feel his ravenous attention like a weight, like a physical pressure against her armor.

  "Drop the cage."

  Zoe released the cage and dove to the side. Sasha stood like a boxer, fists raised and balanced on the balls of her feet in the opening of the hallway. Sam lunged for her in a blur of rubbery flesh, slashing bone blades, and snapping jaws. Relying on her armored gauntlets and forearms, Sasha deflected the majority of his rain of blows. There wasn’t much skill or grace to his attacks, just instinctive animal violence.

  Then, just as Sasha was about to begin retreating down the hallway, Sam caught her by surprise and delivered a stomp kick to her armored knee. Her armor protected the joint, but the surprising force of the blow staggered Sasha to the side, and she crashed into and mostly through the thin wall to the apartment’s bathroom. Dust and sound exploded from the impact.

  As Sasha recovered, Zoe circled around to block the open apartment door, just in case. Like he had eyes in the back of his head—for all they knew he did now—Sam spun and lashed out at her with one of his arm blades. Moving with impossible speed and grace, Zoe easily dodged the blow even as Aetheric Challenge zapped him with a jolt of golden energy. Mimic-Sam whirled back on Sasha with a snarl.

  “That’s it, Sam.” Sasha took a backwards step down the hallway. “Eyes on me.”

  Spitting mad but entirely focused on her again, Sam followed her down the short hallway and into the bedroom. Demolishing his bed along the way, Sasha crashed backward through the bedroom. With a flex of her legs, Sasha dove through the window. A little off target, her left shoulder collided with the window frame, and then she was falling—three stories, through the swirling fog. Sam plummeted after her with a wordless shriek of hunger.

  Sasha landed hard, her armor absorbing the impact, and as she rolled back to her feet, she called up her Earthen Duplicate for the first time. The parking lot asphalt responded to her will, flowing and shaping itself into a rough copy of her armored form. The duplicate was cruder than she would have liked—like a novice attempt at statuary—but it would serve.

  Through her affinity, Sasha could sense a limited intelligence within the earthen construct. A humming presence that hummed within the stone structure, without personality or ego. At the power’s current rank, the description had said that without directions, the Earthen Duplicate could function with limited agency, generally attacking whatever opponent Sasha herself was facing. She could also issue it simple verbal commands. For anything complex, she would have to seize direct control of it with her affinity.

  Like he was jumping down from the bed of a pick-up truck, and not from three stories up, Sam landed a few feet from her, knees only slightly bent to absorb the drop. Before Sasha could react, he lunged at her duplicate, and Sasha felt the Aetheric Challenge zap him, pulling his attention back to her.

  “Don’t let him escape, but don’t kill him.” Having not practiced with the power, Sasha hoped her instructions to the Earthen Duplicate weren’t too complex. The asphalt creation shifted into a balanced boxer’s stance, squared off against Sam.

  Sam came at her then, teeth bared and both arm-blades slashing. Without giving an inch of ground, Sasha swept aside one bony arm-blade with her armored left forearm and let the other glance off her thigh. There was nothing but blind ferocity to Sam’s attack. Trusting her armor and in the weeks of training that had only honed her Nexus-implanted skills, Sasha stepped forward and delivered a gauntlet-clad right cross to the center of Sam’s chest.

  With her Might score of 7, the blow would have been enough to cave in an unenhanced human’s chest entirely. Instead, when the blow landed, it felt more like she was striking a heavy punching bag. Still, the powerful blow not only broke the momentum of Sam’s forward rush, but it also lifted him off his feet and sent him flying back through the air to crash against the ground several feet away on his back.

  Barely missing a beat, Sam scrambled back to his feet, a visible impression of Sasha’s armored knuckles on his chest already beginning to smooth out. Only marginally deterred, he took a step toward Sasha, only for her duplicate to activate its mirror of Sasha’s Rooting power, causing the ground itself to jut up and clamp around Sam’s ankles.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  While Sasha and her asphalt-dupe circled to either side of Sam, Zoe rode a whisper of wind down from the window to land on Sam’s other side. Zoe, Sasha, and her duplicate formed the points of a lopsided triangle, boxing Sam in.

  “Alright, we’re down here,” Zoe’s voice came over her helmet’s comm system. “Now what?”

  "We get him to the Jeep," Sasha said and jerked her head in the direction of the Jeep. "Corner of the building, maybe fifty feet that way."

  "Easier said than done." Zoe shifted her grip on Gale. "He's fast."

  “And tough. I know.”

  Sam solved the immediate problem of what to do next by wrenching one leg free of the earthen restraint with a wet, cracking sound. His ankle bent at an angle that should have been crippling, then snapped back into place as he pulled the other leg loose. He dropped into a predatory crouch, head swiveling between his three opponents.

  "Zoe, use your wind to herd him toward the Jeep. Dupe, flank, and grapple on my signal."

  The asphalt-Sasha shifted its stance and nodded its head in acknowledgment.

  Sam came at her low and fast, his rubbery limbs stretching and contracting in ways that made Sasha's brain itch. She met his rush with a straight kick to the center mass. Instead, his torso deformed around her boot like clay, absorbing the impact, and his arm-blades slashed at her extended leg.

  Sasha wrenched her leg back even as one bone blade scored a shallow groove across her greave. Backpedalling, Sasha enticed Sam after her and closer to the Jeep.

  "Nudge him along!"

  Blinding fast, Zoe darted in from the side, Gale whistling through the air. The blade bit into Sam's shoulder. Sam spun on her, arm-blade lashing out. Aetheric Challenge zapped him with a crack of golden light, but not before the blade caught Zoe across the forearm. Her armor held, but the force of the blow sent her stumbling back. With his back briefly turned to her, Sasha watched the wound Zoe had delivered seal shut almost instantly, the flesh flowing back together like water filling a hole.

  Sasha whistled and clapped her gauntlets together with a resounding clang. "Eyes on me, Sam!"

  He whirled back to face her, that horrible mouth splitting open beneath eyes that held nothing but hunger. Drool splattered against the asphalt as he charged her yet again.

  This time, Sasha didn't try to stop his momentum. She sidestepped like a matador, letting him barrel past, and her duplicate lunged in from the flank. Asphalt arms wrapped around Sam's torso, pinning one of his arm-blades to his side. He thrashed and twisted, his body deforming in the duplicate's grip, but the stone construct held firm.

  Sasha closed the distance in two quick strides and added her own arms to the grapple, locking her gauntlets together behind Sam's back. Between her armor's enhanced strength and the duplicate's mass, they had him pinned—mostly. His free arm-blade scrabbled against her pauldron, leaving shallow scratches in the orange metal.

  "Zoe, his legs!"

  Solid Air shackles crystallized around Sam's ankles, fusing them together. He howled—a sound that was equal parts rage and anguish—and his whole body convulsed. For a terrifying moment, Sasha felt him flowing in her grip, his torso trying to compress and squeeze out from between her arms like toothpaste from a tube.

  She squeezed harder, her armor's servos screaming in protest.

  "The Jeep! Move!"

  They half-carried, half-dragged him across the parking lot. Sam's body continued to shift and writhe, testing every gap in their hold. Once, his head twisted around a full one-eighty to snap at her duplicate’s face. Sam’s teeth tore free a fist-sized chunk from her duplicate’s asphalt head, and only Aetheric Challenge's punishing zap kept him from pressing the attack. Then his flesh began to stiffen as it hardened and took on the color and texture of asphalt.

  Twenty feet from the Jeep, Sam’s body restructured itself, shoving an arm free of their hold. Twisting like a circus contortionist, a blackened arm-blade stabbed at Sasha's armored elbow joint. The point punched through, and white-hot pain lanced up her arm.

  "Shit!" Sasha's grip loosened involuntarily.

  Sam wrenched sideways, tearing free of her wounded arm. His body elongated, slithering out of the duplicate's grip like an eel, and for one heart-stopping moment, he was loose, crouched on the asphalt with all the coiled tension of a predator about to spring.

  Aetheric Challenge pulsed again. Sam's head snapped toward Sasha, and she saw the war playing out behind those yellow eyes—hunger versus compulsion, instinct versus the power binding him to her. The compulsion won, and he lunged at her instead of fleeing.

  Sasha was ready. She caught his leading arm-blade with her wounded arm—loss of grip strength didn't matter if she was just using the limb as a hook—and pivoted, using his own momentum to swing him around. Her good arm came up under his chin, locking around his throat in a chokehold. The duplicate, chunk still missing from its head, darted in and seized his legs. Together, they lifted him off the ground entirely.

  Sam thrashed like a landed fish, but without leverage, his supernatural strength meant nothing. His arm-blades flailed uselessly against Sasha's vambraces. His body tried to flow and shift, but she adjusted her grip with each deformation, keeping pressure on his windpipe.

  "Get the door!" Sasha shouted while struggling to keep Sam’s thrashing body bear-hugged to her chestplate.

  Warren appeared out of the mist and yanked open the Jeep's rear hatch. Zoe created a Solid Air wall between the back seat and the front, and then Sasha hauled Sam into the vehicle.

  "Go, go, go!" Sasha released her hold on her asphalt-dupelicate and the animated statue instantly crumbled into dust.

  "What about Pablo and Eden?" Warren demanded as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Still armored, Zoe piled into the passenger side, and the engine roared to life.

  "They'll catch up," Sasha grunted, adjusting her grip as Sam thrashed against her. "We can't wait—I don't know how long I can hold him."

  “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” Sasha heard Warren grumble under this breath as the Jeep lurched into motion, tires squealing on the asphalt.

  “What’s wrong?” Sasha demanded through clenched teeth.

  “It’s just…” Warren paused as he made a sharp turn onto the frontage road. “Pablo told me to have a distraction ready, and I didn’t get to use it!”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Zoe snapped.

  “How often does Pablo give me permission to blow shit up? Seriously, this had to be the one time that everything went according to plan?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Zoe said with mingled exasperation and amusement.

  In the rear compartment, Sasha held onto Sam with everything she had, her armor's servos whining with the effort. He'd stopped trying to bite her and had gone eerily still, his yellow eyes fixed on her face with an intensity that made her skin crawl even through the armor.

  "Don't...want..." Sam's voice was barely a whisper, distorted and wrong. "...hurt...you..."

  "I know, Sam." Sasha kept her voice steady, soothing, even as her arms burned with the effort of restraining him. "Just hold on. We're going to help you."

  ***

  Pablo felt the moment Sasha's Aetheric Challenge activated through the metal of her armor—a subtle pulse of energy that made the orange plates sing. He tracked the chaos through his Metal Sense: Sasha's armor crashing through the window frame and her heavy impact in the parking lot below.

  The firefighters were still trying to get through the gate. One of them had produced a set of bolt cutters and was attempting to cut through the lock mechanism. Pablo felt the blades bite into the metal and resisted the urge to reinforce the metal. Sam was clear of the apartment; it's better if they start making their way up to the apartment. So, Pablo allowed the lock to give way with a satisfying snick.

  "Finally," the lead firefighter muttered. She yanked the gate open. "Sir, please stay back. This is an active emergency scene."

  "Yeah, of course." Pablo stepped aside, raising his hands. "I hope everyone's okay."

  The firefighters rushed through the gate toward the building stairs. The EMTs grabbed their gear and followed close behind, gurney rattling over the uneven pavement.

  "Wait!" A voice called out from the fog. "Over here! She's hurt!"

  Eden emerged from the mist, half-supporting a limping woman with blood-soaked arms and a dazed expression. Kate. Pablo recognized her from the description Delta had provided. Clad in only jeans and a t-shirt, Eden looked like nothing more than a concerned neighbor who'd stumbled across an injured woman in the chaos.

  The EMTs immediately pivoted toward them.

  "Ma'am, what happened?" One of them was already reaching for Kate, guiding her toward the gurney.

  "I don't—there was glass, and—" Kate's voice was shaky, disoriented. "I fell. I think I fell."

  "She was near the back of the building," Eden said, her tone pitched perfectly between worried and helpful. "I found her by one of the cars. I think she cut herself on some broken glass."

  The EMTs took over, easing Kate onto the gurney and beginning their assessment. One of them shone a penlight in her eyes while the other examined her lacerations. Pablo noted that while Kate's arms were covered in cuts, none of them looked immediately life-threatening. Eden had done good work.

  "You're a friend of hers?" the first EMT asked Eden.

  "Neighbor. I was just out for a walk when I heard the sirens." Eden gestured vaguely toward the fog-shrouded parking lot. "Is she going to be okay?"

  "Looks like superficial cuts, mostly. We'll take her in to get checked out." The EMT was already reaching for bandages. "You can give a statement to the police when they arrive, if you saw anything."

  "I didn't really see much," Eden said. "Just found her and brought her over."

  Pablo caught Eden's eye and gave a small nod toward the corner of the building. She extracted herself from the EMTs with a few more murmured reassurances to Kate, then drifted toward him. They fell into step together, moving away from the emergency vehicles and into the thinning fog at a deliberately unhurried pace so as to avoid the appearance of fleeing the scene.

  "Nice work," Pablo said quietly.

  "She'll be okay. Physically, at least." Eden's expression was troubled. "Mentally? She saw something in that apartment. She's not going to forget it."

  "We'll deal with that later. Right now—"

  Through his Metal Sense, Pablo felt the Jeep's engine roar to life on the far side of the building. Tires squealed against asphalt. By the time he and Eden rounded the corner, the vehicle was already tearing out of the parking lot, disappearing into the pre-dawn gloom.

  "They left without us," Eden said.

  "The others were able to get Sam contained, but I don't know how long that'll last," Delta reported over Pablo’s still active speaker phone. “I can instruct Paladin Warren to return for you after they’ve secured Sam.”

  “What’s the status on Agent Murphy?” Pablo’s mind had already been clicking away on next steps as he and Eden moved out onto the sidewalk and started walking away from the apartment complex.

  “She woke up while the five of you were occupied with the current disaster. Checked on her trackers and saw my spoofed data showing you all fleeing south. I’m tracking her rental car, currently in pursuit.”

  “Perfect. Then don’t bother sending Warren back for us. We’ll make our own way back to the Quester’s.”

  “We will?”

  “I need you to go round up Rowan.”

  “Why? Are you worried about him?”

  “We could use the extra hands taking care of Sam.” Pablo glanced back over his shoulder as a Napa Police SUV raced past them toward Sam’s apartment building, lights flashing. “Delta thought Sam would be okay for at least a day, and we saw how that turned out.”

  “Hey!” Delta protested indignantly over the speaker. “I said there was a 98.5277% chance that his condition would remain stable for—”

  “And we all saw how that turned out.” Pablo rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you start working on a plan to keep Sam contained once they get there?”

  “Once he’s transported into the Command Garden, I can—”

  “No, they’ll bring Sam into your chamber, but I don’t want you bringing him into your interior until we figure out what the hell is going on.”

  “Don’t be absurd—”

  “After you were just attacked by a virus you didn’t know was possible? You told us the dungeon core was planted behind the clinic,” Pablo said, and beside him, Eden gave a startled gasp as she put it together too. “Have you determined whether Sam or Rowan were responsible?”

  There was a long, heavy pause before Delta reluctantly said, “No, I can’t determine that at this time. When I went back to check, I discovered that the clinic’s security footage had been tampered with repeatedly by someone other than myself.”

  “Then make a plan for containing Sam without exposing yourself to risk. Comprende?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s why you want me to go get Rowan?” Eden asked, alarmed and reflexively defensive on Rowan’s behalf. “In case he’s responsible?”

  “Or in case he’s also experienced a rapid mutation. Having them in one place will let Delta keep an eye on them both. All you need to tell him is that we need his help with Sam, because we can’t let this slow us down from heading into the city.”

  “Alright.” Eden nodded, clearly uneasy with the proposed subterfuge. “I understand, but Pablo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It sounds like you’re sending me by myself to get Rowan. So, what’re you going to be doing?”

  “Me? Nada.” Pablo kept his tone light. “Just breaking and entering the hotel room of a federal officer.”