Being near a gate opening was like being in a windstorm. The air tried to equalize through the hole in reality, deafening winds roaring over the clearing. Then the monster stepped through, and the world was supremely quiet again.

“How are we going to fight that?” Kim asked, her voice low.

“We don’t have to fight it. Just distract it. 2, maybe 3 minutes. We can do that.”

“Can we?” Kim asked, turning to me.

“We are going to try.”

On the other side of the portal, the monster moved in slow motion, spilling out into the art gallery.

I found my knife on the way to the gate. Pausing at the edge, I looked to Kim. The monster was still crawling on the other side — we had time. Seconds, sure, but time all the same. Kim looked back. Her face hardened with determination. She nodded.

I stretched my muscles. Only minor scrapes remained on my body. The dangerous wounds stopped bleeding. Bruises remained, and the chest wound would likely scar, but that would be fine.

“Two minutes.” I said to Kim. “We just have to buy around 2 or 3 minutes. Then Willow should arrive.”

The city’s contracted Awoken would respond in the event of a gatebreak. Already, I could see people scattering — moving at a crawl — on the other side.

Not willing to wait any longer, I jumped through.

Stepping through a gate normally left me with a sense of temporary vertigo as the world shifted, but this was different entirely. I felt like I was moving through molasses for an instant, pushing against a permeable wall that put a spike of pain into my head. And then reality switched, like splashing through water, and I fell to the floor.

The employee of the DOAA — the same one that had been here when we arrived — held a phone in his hand, pulling it to his ear with wide eyes. But the monster didn’t charge him.

Instead, still dripping blood and gore, it tried to rise to its full height, head scraping against the ceiling. It sniffed, looking around, plodding left and right to look for something it seemingly couldn’t find. Then it fell to all fours and screamed.

It was getting ready to charge forward. I needed to distract it, to lure it away from the people still here, still operating the building. I ran to its side, launched myself off the ground, and kicked it in the head with full force.

I felt maybe an inch of give before I fell to the ground, scrambling back up to my feet.

It turned and locked eyes with me.

Without yelling or an ounce of rage, it swung its arm.

I dropped back to the ground and the sky changed colors as a wall of white swept over my head. The walls of the separated gallery collapsed. The monster looked at me the same way I might look at an ant. I scrambled to the side as the monster brought down its arm, reaching out with my knife in the same motion.

The tile floor exploded, a ditch opening where it parted the stone floor like hot butter. Water from a pipe in the floor sprayed upward, filling in the hole and spraying everywhere. The thought of one of those blows hitting me sent a tingle down my spine. A scratch showed on the monster’s armor. Not deep enough to reach the flesh. It was deep enough to tell me I couldn’t hurt it, even using its own strength against it. The monster showed its teeth.

“Evacuate the building!” I heard Kim yelling at the gate attendant.

Me and the monster began a dance. It would bring its fist down. I would scramble out of the way. The building would veer closer to the edge of collapse. After the 5th swing, the floor around the monster collapsed down to the basement. It clung onto some concrete structural rafter, lifting itself up from the hole it had dug in the ground. The monster screamed, the building shook.

I didn’t hear what the gate attendant said, but I didn’t have to. The siren outside spoke for him.

Like there were warplanes flying above, the entire city rang out with the same alarm, high pitched and blaring, letting everyone know: there was a gatebreak.

Falling in the hole pissed the monster off. I looked at it, into its huge, silver eyes that seemed to glow in what little functional lighting remained present in the devastated gallery. It looked at me. With each second, it felt like my heart was pounding louder in my chest.

Then I ran.

The monster was slower than it should have been. I dodged blows by inches, the plating of its arm nearly missing me each time as blows rained down at me. People screamed and ran by, clearing into the open lobby. I moved away from them, heading left, and finding myself facing a staircase.

Fuck.

Two people scrambled backwards at seeing me. They turned around, climbing the staircase. I didn’t have a choice. I ran up the staircase, luring the monster right to them.

People scattered or screamed as I threw myself up the steps, the monster screaming behind, gaining on me inch by inch. The raised platform opened into a room with a hundred costumes in all colors and shapes and sizes; dresses and suits and petticoats covered mannequins arranged in elaborate circles. As long as it was focusing on me, it wouldn’t be hunting all the innocent people around me. That’s what I told myself as I continued running for my life.

I dashed between costumes, the gigantic monster bashing down the mannequins I ran into — or attempting to eat them, judging by the shredding, gurgling, wet noises it made behind me. Qi pumped into my legs, pushing my speed to its absolute limit, but it still wasn’t enough. I had dashed around the entire room; no displays had survived. They were all left in ruined tatters, scraps of cloth and broken plastic decorating the floor. I stepped over the wretched out pieces of a chewed on mannequin, diving below a raised stage as another swing from the monster passed by my head. I felt my clothes whip out from the force of the displaced air above me.

Across the other side of the platform and above me, I heard a shout. I rolled out from under, looking up.

Kim’s arms were glowing as she stabbed into the bend in the monster’s joint, spear shining silver and ephemeral copies matching the stab. The smallest, tiniest portion of the weapon dug into the monsters flesh. A single drop of blood came free from the skin, black and iridescent like oil.

It roared.