“Who the fuck was that?“

“Bones. Gotta be.” It was easy to hear the Blue Division guards talking through the corroded section of wall I was crouched behind. They seemed to be debating whether or not they should come into the warehouse and root Fidi and I out.

“How the hell would they have found out?” asked a young, male voice.

“Doesn’t matter,” a woman answered. “That’s not for us to worry about. Killing them is- so let’s get in there.”

“Who the fuck put you in charge?” said a different man. His voice was harsh but unsteady.

“Drigo did, before those quarry slags blew him up!” the woman snarled. “Now untangle your Rik-damned panties so we can get in there and murder them!”

She sounded far from pleased. Maybe her and Mohawk had been friends. More importantly, though, we were almost out of time. If Fidi didn’t get into position soon-

My earpiece coughed three bursts of static. He was in place. Now it was up to me to decide the timing. I squeezed the grip of the saw, index finger just brushing the trigger.

The second man started whining again. “Why don’t you get Lyu to do it? Or you do it yourself! Me and the rook weren’t the ones fucking him!”

There was a thud, as of someone getting slammed against a car. “What did you say?”

“Hey, Rudy, please, there’s no need to-“

They were distracted, and it sounded like only three of them. Perfect. I backed up, set my shoes as best I could in the reeking mud, and launched myself right at the wall.

In a fight between gossamer-thin, rusty sheetmetal and three-hundred-odd pounds of charging idiot, well, the smart bet is not on the wall. I smashed through with only the barest resistance, heart hammering as I sprinted straight at the Blues.

The few yards separating us seemed like miles. For all that we’d disrupted them, these guys were still a cut above the average street scum. I had a brief snapshot of them standing there shocked: The woman holding one of the men against the side of their truck, the other man trying to separate them. Then they were moving, the woman already letting go of her comrade’s collar and raising her carbine. I was about to have a very short, very bad time if something didn’t change.

Then a fusillade of automatic fire ripped into them from the direction of the entrance. White sparks flickered all over the SUV’s armored panels as the Blues dove for cover. I’d given Fidi the coilgun so he could cover my approach with a mag of flechettes, then run for our transport. It ran dry quickly, but it gave me the second or so I needed to get into saw range.They were expecting a gunfight. They got something worse.

First was the man who’d been whining. He was just rising from his hiding spot amidst a tangle of broken concrete when he saw me coming with saw raised. To his credit he managed to get his bionic arm up as I struck. The blade shuddered and keened as it sheared down his composite forearm. A savage grin peeled across my face as the blow drove him back down to his knees. Quickly I snapped the saw in a tight arc around his head and into his left shoulder. His howl of pain choked into a gurgle as diamond teeth popped his lung and mulched into his heart. I shoved a boot into his chest to peel him free and swiveled, trying to pick out the remaining targets as fast as I could.

The other man, the rookie, was in a bad way already. He looked to have taken the tomcat’s share of uranium darts and couldn’t even push himself off the ground. I smashed his skull into the side of the truck with a steel-toed kick and didn’t slow down. I turned to go for the woman, only to find her barely a yard away, her carbine rising to put a three-round hyperburst right through my dome.

My arms began to move of their own accord, bringing the saw across. For a few moments things seemed to be in slow motion, as if both of us were moving through thick silicone. My saw described a languid arc toward her neck as her rifle rose to meet my face. I couldn’t tell whose weapon would reach its goal first. The saw’s blurred teeth pricked her skin as her muzzle stared me down like the black eye of Yamagh himself. There was a blinding flash-

And I was peeling myself off the pavement, with no idea how I got there and a splitting pain right in the middle of my forehead. I reached up and gingerly touched it; my fingers came away bloody. My other hand was still on the ground, curled around the saw’s grip, and that one felt warm and wet too. I looked down to see the woman’s body barely a foot away, and her head perhaps two more. I was about to be sitting in a puddle of her blood. Rudy, I thought woozily. That was her name. I scooted drunkenly away from the corpse on my ass, too dizzy to try standing. What the hell-oh. I spotted Rudy’s carbine lying on the macadam, its barrel still smoking.

“I just got shot in the fucking face,” I slurred out loud. “Ooh, that’s definitely a concussion. Yup.” I bit my tongue to keep from babbling any more, and the fresh pain brought me closer to reality. I’d just taken at least one bullet to the skull and lived. Whatever impossible tungsten alloy I was made out off had saved my life-which was not to say getting shot in the head felt good, but hell, anything beat the alternative.

I was about to try standing when I heard the clunk of an opening car door. The sound poured icewater down my spine and washed some of the remaining fuzz out of my head. Going off what my most recent victims said, there was at least one Blue left alive, someone they talked about like they were dangerous. Lyu. I staggered round to the opposite side of the nearest truck and crouched in the stark shadows behind the tire, listening hard.

“King Bard in his tomb, what a fucking mess this is.” It was Vivar’s staticky voice, heavy with disappointment. “Those dust-sucking quarryslaves just can’t leave anything alone.” Heavy footsteps crunched on the broken asphalt. They were followed by a series of light clinks, almost like metal on glass.

“What in the world did this?” The new voice was a woman’s, high and with a slight accent. It had a strange undertone to it, almost glassy. A vocal implant, but much nicer than Vivar’s. Had to be this Lyu. Any plans I’d had of jumping Vivar evaporated. I could barely stand up straight, let alone fight two people at once. I’d have no help until Monta pulled up with the Dienskat- which hopefully wouldn’t be long. Until then, I’d just have to- well, I wasn’t sure. Right now, with pain pulsing from the center of my forehead like radar waves, it was hard to think of anything past hiding.

“Diamond-tooth chopsaw. I’d bet a case of good vodka on it.” I cringed a little as I listened to Vivar light a smoke. He’d guessed I was responsible.

More clicking and the whine of cybernetics as Lyu moved around. “Ah. This ’Sawyer’ person, you mean. The mad mutant.” Kings. Walker even had my enemies using that stupid nickname- and a mutant? I guess they technically weren’t wrong, but they didn’t know that.

“Effective work, if crude,” she continued. “But where is the body? It sounded like Rudy took a shot. She was not one to miss, and I see no blood trails.”

Shit.

We were so close I could hear Vivar pull on his cig. “Take care of it, and dig the trunk out of that wreck once it cools down. I gotta tell Canra about this before she hears it somewhere else.”

“Aye, aye,” came the insouciant answer. “Be safe.” Vivar grumbled something unintelligible in reply, got back in the truck, and pulled rapidly out of the parking lot. Watching his taillights recede, I hoped he and Fidi didn’t run into each other.

From the other side of the SUV, Lyu gave a slightly mechanical sigh. “Sia’s grace, that man is insufferable. Now, then…” More small clinks as she moved closer to my hiding spot. I quickly came up with a plan: Wait for her to come round the side of the truck and bushwack the hell out of her. Not my proudest work, but at the moment alternatives seemed few and far between.

I could see the shadows of legs moving towards the back of the truck. Any second now. I tightened my grip on the saw, got my legs under me, shook my head to try and clear it of fog. Her silhouette came round the corner, and I lunged, swinging hard for her head. The saw caught only air as she leaned out of the way. I bulled in further, trying to at least knock her down, but she backstepped out of reach in a silvery blur. I stopped short, swaying a little. It felt like that nasty part of a night where you’re still drunk, but you’ve been up too late, your head hurts, things are spinning, and the intoxication isn’t even fun anymore. I gritted my teeth, barely resisted putting a hand to my pounding forehead, and got a look at my would-be assassin.

It was hard to tell how much of her was still human. Articulated, chrome-finished armor covered her from below her eyes down to her feet. Her arms and legs, at least, were certainly cybernetic: the former were double-jointed at the wrist and had seven fingers each, and the latter ended in appendages like a cross between a high-heeled boot and a hoof. Braces of throwing knives were clasped at her waist and each thigh. Her eyes were probably implants, too, shining a deep purple from her pale, freckled face. Tattoos like blue sunbursts flanked their corners. Silver-blond, feathery hair stirred in the dank breeze as she sized me up in turn.

“You are faster than you look,” she said in that glassy, hollow voice. “Sawyer, I presume? I hadn’t realized you were a woman.”

“Yeah,” I managed to grind out. “Lyu?”

“That’s right. I don’t suppose you’ll be making this easy for me?” She began to pace slowly to the left, and I swiveled to keep facing her.

“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, tried to clear my head. “No surrender.”

Lyu shrugged. “Hm. Too bad. Let’s get it over with, then.” Without further preamble she leapt leftward and something bright flickered right at me. I dove behind the SUV just in time to dodge. The thrown knife hit the pavement hard enough to cast sparks before skittering away. Yeah, definitely bionic arms.

She was still going, making a pair of impossibly fast, zig-zagging lunges like a jumping spider. More knives flashed out and it was all I could do to stagger round the truck, keeping it between us. Have to close the distance, I thought. Try and surprise her again-“

From the other side of the truck there was a metallic clang like a hammerblow. Suddenly Lyu came vaulting over the truck, at least ten feet in the air with a knife already pinched between her double-jointed fingers. I stumbled sideways but it wasn’t enough. The blade flicked out and smashed into the meat of my shoulder like a hot rivet.

“Ah, shit!” It hurt more than I would have thought possible, but the fresh pain decomposed almost instantly into anger. I ignored the knife and lunged at her with saw hissing even as she landed. The tip of the blade just grazed her upper arm, leaving a dull track in its shining surface. At least she wasn’t fast and tanky.

Fast seems bad enough, though. She practically ricocheted away as soon as she touched the ground. I slumped against the truck, an impotent scowl twisting my face. I tried to decide to pull the knife out or not, but she wouldn’t even let me do that.

“My, my, Sawyer. This will be more interesting than I thought. That fat lech Vivar so rarely lets me off my leash.” There was a loud, wrenching clunk, and suddenly the arc-lights up above dimmed and went out. There was no light now but the dim, distant lifelights and the fitful flicker of the burning cars. “Oh, and by the way, don’t pull that knife out. You might bleed to death…” There was a teasing quality in her voice that said this was just a game to her. And why tell me not to pull it out?

I growled and yanked the blade out of my shoulder, unable to suppress a groan as it sucked free. It was probably poisoned. I’d risk the blood loss before I dealt with whatever crap it was doped with. There was a hot, wet sensation on my hand, now, and I looked down to find it cut across the palm. The fucking thing had been edged all around. Didn’t matter when you had steel fingers. I watched the blood pool in my palm, trace down the lines and calluses. It seemed to pull up in peaks and valleys almost like the line on an oscilloscope, like some kind of waveform. Was it a signal? From who? What were they trying to-

“Damn it!” I hissed, biting my tongue to try and focus. Too late. I’d definitely been dosed with something. My mouth was getting dry, my heart pounding harder than it should be. Thinking straight was like trying to keep hold of a cat that really wanted to be put down. It felt like the time Fidi and I had split an inhaler of Buzz he’d lifted from a gomi stand. I still couldn’t believe people did that shit for fun. It was less a high than a psychotic break. Supposedly it was based on an old military incapacitant, and I believed it.

“Anticholinergics really are something, aren’t they?” came Lyu’s voice from somewhere. “Though one thing they are not is pleasant.” I could almost see the words, I thought, tracing through the air in silver curlicues. The edges of my vision darkened, as if I was seeing the world through two jagged holes in a mask. What sort of mask? A scary one? A blank one? Maybe someone else’s face, or-

I jammed a thumb into the wound at my shoulder. The mirror-bright pain was almost enough to make me scream, but it let me concentrate a little better. Right now I was like a woman beneath a lone lifelight, surrounded by deadly darkness. Any longer out here and Lyu’d just pick me off from range, wait until I was too stoned off the poison and blood loss to resist. I had to make her fight me on my terms, not the other way around. Already I had an advantage: I was the target, so she had to follow me. I looked around, doing my best to ignore the round corners and wavery edges that every object was developing, and made my decision.

With the most explosive lunge I could muster, I sprinted at the decrepit row of offices that were opposite the warehouse. Immediately a pair of knives whickered at me, leaving trails of colored fluid that swirled and danced like something alive. One missed, the other nicked my calf, but I hardly noticed. I was too busy looking at how the asphalt seemed to have delaminated into something like black grass. As I shoved though it I had to dodge the bifurcated form of one of the Blue enforcers I’d killed way back in Grayson’s back room. He’d chosen to stand right in my way, and as I went past I spat at him, “What the fuck are you doing here?” His only response was to gurgle and dissolve into vapor. “I am tripping fucking balls,” I muttered to myself, the words dropping free of my lips in a spill of black smoke.

I crashed through the glass door of the offices without slowing down. Looked normal enough inside, except for all the mold on the walls, the writhing spirograph mandala etched into the ceiling, and all the smoke. Wait. It was an effort to remember that not everything I was seeing was real, but the smoke probably wasn’t a hallucination. One of the cars I’d shot had crashed into this building, and though the whole place was damp that wouldn’t stop burning fuel and batteries from setting it alight.

“Please, Sawyer, why not end this with a little grace?” Lyu sprinted through the same door I’d just shattered, whipping a knife at me at point-blank range. It nailed me right in the chest, but hung up on my ribs with a spine-shivering grating noise. Lyu herself shot right past, titanium-cleated feet tearing up the carpet as she skidded and turned to face me- but I was already moving. She was too close, on the wrong side to use the saw, but I still caught just an instant of gratifying surprise in her eyes right before my fist smashed into her head. Metal bent under my knuckles as she went down. Finally I had room to swing, but the cyborg got a foot in between her body and the saw. She flicked her leg out so fast my blade got caught up in its tall heel. With a noise like an overtightened guitar string, the saw snapped a bare couple of inches above the hilt.

I snarled in rage and lashed out with my own foot, catching nothing for the effort but a titanium boot across the face. Rather than press the advantage, Lyu flipped gracefully to her feet and lunged straight back through the wall, deeper into the building.

I stared down the hole she’d left. Swimming grids and wiggling lines imprinted themselves on the walls around it, and its edges flapped back and forth like flags in a stiff breeze. Within I saw nothing but smoke, felt nothing but heat. With one hand I flicked her knife off my chest. The saw’s hilt creaked in the other as I clenched it tight.

“Come on then, Sawyer,” Lyu called from within. “Let’s end this. Run and I’ll just put a knife in your back.”

Maybe I believed her. Maybe it was the poison, the anticholinergic drug. Or maybe I just wanted nothing more than to crush her into a pile of bloody scrap. But she was right. This had to end, and soon.