There wasn’t much time to think about the absurdity of what I was doing. All I knew in that moment was having a gun seemed a hell of a lot more preferable to not having one or trying to use the knife.

Still, the weapon was in the center of the street, exposed. I shot a glance at Wife-beater guy as I moved. He was completely focused on Daphne now, a smug leer on his face.

“Thought you were better than me, didn’t you?” There was the sound of a foot striking flesh, hard, and Daphne groaned.

I picked up the gun, feeling the reassuring weight of the polymer in my hand. The prolonged cylinder of the silencer did little to alter the gun’s profile. I knew a Glock well. My father had trained me how to shoot with one. I scampered over to a nearby car, placing my back to the engine block and did a slide check to make sure a round was chambered. Popping the magazine out, I was relieved to see it had several rounds left before quickly smacking it back in - the number 8 instantly popped into my head. Weird, must be another effect from raising my Intelligence.

There was another thud, another groan.

My vision was blocked and I didn’t want to expose myself. I went prone to get a an angle from beneath the car and found a decent view from between the tires. The distance was fifteen feet, maybe less. Not far from the distances I’d shot at the pistol range. After endless practice I could manage a decent grouping, but that had been years ago.

Never aim at anything you’re not prepared to kill.

That had been his advice. The ageless adage my father had repeated like a mantra. I lined up the white beads of the sight, aiming at Wife-beater guy’s head.

Then, I froze.

What the hell was I thinking? This wasn’t me. I never resorted to violence. I talked my way out of my problems, found creative solutions. I’d thrown myself headlong into this looking for a distraction, and where had that got me? Into a situation far, far worse than anything I’d been running from in the first place.

Think.

Car tires squealed as a black Escalade pulled up at the cross street, unable to access the road we were on due to a barricade. At first I was relieved. They had to be other Users. They’d deal with this. Then the relief vanished as I realized that Wife-beater guy had seen it too and his creepy smile got even bigger.

No no no.

He dropped into a crouch, then looked down at Daphne. “I’d love to draw this out, but it looks like backup is here.”

I looked back at the Escalade. Three men were exiting, moving slowly up the road. One held a sword—where the hell did he get a sword—while the other two backed him up in formation. They weren’t going to make it in time.

But now, there was a problem. Silencers aren’t as whisper-quiet as they are in movies. Silenced gunshots are loud as hell. If I fired, they would hear me. Whoever they were, they were organized, and I was easy pickings at this point.

For some reason, all thoughts of retreating left me.

You’re going to do this. So do it right. Find the solution.

Frantically, I surveyed the street, the buildings, looking for anything I could use. A window AC unit high up caught my eye. Something about the way it was mounted looked crooked, unsafe. A thought started to form. When I’d used my ability on the SWAT officer, it hadn’t affected him directly. It had affected the object in his hands. Could I use it on an object directly?

I fell into a strange state of calm. There was a plan. Granted, there were so many things that could go wrong with it, but I always felt better once a plan was in place. I knew I couldn’t rely on Probability Spiral automatically guiding the AC window unit to land on my enemy like a cartoon. If I understood correctly, it just increased the chances of unlikely things happening in my favor. There was also a healthy dose of chaos thrown into the mix. Whatever happened, I had to be ready to take advantage of the situation. As long as there was a path, I could follow it through to the end.

I ignored my strange onset of resolve as Wife-beater guy wrapped his hands around Daphne’s throat. I ignored the way my pulse was pounding. Breath. In-and-out.

Slowly, focusing everything on the window unit, I activated the skill.

Probability Spiral

The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t as hard to use anymore. I felt a little exertion, sure, but nothing like the first time. Maybe because the skill itself had leveled. The second thing I noticed was that everything seemed to move in slow-motion as the AC unit began to fall.

As the falling hunk of metal plunged from the sixth story window, I took aim, prone, holding my breath. I gripped the dagger in my left hand. Wife-beater guy’s vitals lit up, a heat map of red and yellow over his organs. Good info, but my target was lower. I quickly drew a bead on the illuminated yellow of his kneecap closest to me as he leaned over Daphne, still choking the life from her.

I pulled the trigger just as the AC unit impacted the pavement, the noises merging together.

Wife-beater guy shrieked and fell backward, clutching at the back of his thigh. I’d missed, but still hit the target. The men at the front of the street began to run. My hands, so still a moment ago, shook violently. My mouth was drier than it ever had been, tendrils of shock clinging at my mind, threatening to tighten. I didn’t know if I was going to start laughing hysterically or throw up.

The frenzied feeling of momentary victory only lasted the handful of seconds it took Daphne to roll on top of Wife-beater guy. Then it was replaced by shock as I watched her fist smash into his head, bouncing it against the pavement. He coughed, the sound a wet, half-gag. What was she doing? He was down!

Neutralize or terminate.

“Guess what, asshole. I am better than you.” She growled. And then she kept hitting him, over and over, loud thuds slowly merging into something that resembled a wet slap. I didn’t want to look at what was left of him.

Fear coursed through me. Daphne had been normal when I’d known her. Kind. This was someone else. Someone willing to kill without hestitation. Was everyone insane?

A text screen punctuated by red, painfully bright text popped in front of my face.

Fuck. Couldn’t the system have just warned me when I picked the gun up in the first place? Well, that answered that question about this devolving into a shootout. There were more notifications.

Almost simultaneously, I heard Daphne shout. “What do you mean the reward is split?!”

“Shit, we gotta go, cops are on their way,” One of the men said. They were dressed in a mishmash of suits and business casual. Still, they didn’t have a gangster vibe. If you ignored the weapons they held in their hands, it was almost a white collar aesthetic.

The man closest to Daphne bent down. “Time’s up. Your father will be pleased. You get the core?”

Oh no.

I peaked around the corner of the car to get a better view. Daphne was frantically swiping through the air in a motion I assumed meant she was going through her notifications. Did other Users actually have to do this? I could just mentally move, open, and close notifications with a thought. Maybe it was another aspect of my Ordinator class…

“No. Some piece of shit sniped it.”

“Brennan, end the instance. We can’t leave bodies,” said the man crouching next to Daphne. His hair was buzzed short, and he was wearing dark-framed glasses. Of the three, he gave off the most dangerous feel, the sort you’d cross the street to get away from.

There was a sharp hissing noise to my right. I jumped and nearly shouted in alarm, only just managing to clamp a hand over my mouth. One of the corpses had begun to smoke and bubble, flesh slowly dissolving into bone, until the bone itself was gone. One by one, the man called Brennan—a blonde with a bougie haircut and dead eyes—waved his hand over the bodies, erasing them from existence.

The implication hit me like a truck. All throughout, I was wondering how the city wasn’t in a full-blown panic with Users fighting. People with abilities. Murders in the streets. But Brennan was completely unbothered by what he was doing. He was either a psychopath, or he’d done this before. They all had.

They could kill me right now and no one would ever know.

“Did you do this?” Buzzcut asked Daphne. He had rolled over the body and was looking at Wife-beater guy’s ruined thigh.

“… No.” Daphne finally said.

Buzzcut studied the wound, then looked over at the smashed AC unit, tracing it back up to the window it fell from. His face broke into a smile.

“Want me to go up there?” The third man asked.

“No.” Buzzcut shook his head. “Wait.” Then he stepped out into the middle of the street and raised his voice. “I know you’re out there. This was clever but you’re out of your element.” I waited for him to rotate away from me, and retreated back through the alley, the way I’d come.

“We have no intention of hurting you. I’m guessing you’re a User. Probably new. For some reason I can’t see you on the interface. That’s interesting. We can talk about that, we’re all figuring this thing out together. Maybe it’s an ability and you’re a stealth class. That’s fine. Great, even. Haven’t met a rogue yet, we can talk skills. It can be tricky if you’re solo. So maybe we can even help you get started.”

Double-blind’s effect. It had to be. I didn’t stop to look, but caught his blurry reflection from a nearby store as he rotated like a sentinel and continued his little speech. Good, keep talking. Easier to keep track of you.

“Look, I’ll be honest. All we want is the core. You probably wouldn’t be able to use it for much anyway, unless you manage to sell it, and honestly, good luck finding a vendor. They’re like chasing ghosts. Just come out, hands up, and we’ll talk. Best case, you make a couple of friends. Worst case, we pay you and you go on your way.”

Right. I didn’t have to recall Daphne’s glowering face and bloody knuckles to know he was full of shit. None of them had even reacted to what she’d done to Wife-beater guy, which was crude overkill on any reasonable scale. And simply given what I’d seen of her tonight, I doubted she’d be the sort to forgive that I’d taken half her experience and all the reward, regardless of it being the result of saving her life.

But that didn’t change the fact that the words sounded so damn reasonable. He was good, he’d give him that much.

Buzzcut waited for a moment longer, then his smile finally dropped. “Fan out. Three minutes, then we’re gone.”

“They’re mine.” Daphne growled, and took off running up the street.

I found myself wishing I’d equipped Jaded Eye. There was no question it would have made this entire experience exponentially more miserable, but it had been invaluable for navigating out of the hospital.

I waited for an opening, then darted for another alley. Would they know I was on foot if they found my back? Probably not. Unless everyone that came here and subsequently died was part of their group, which I doubted since I had received the bounty as well.

After taking a few random twists and turns, I found myself jogging down a narrow access road. At that point I was confident they’d lost me. It had been far longer than the initial three minutes and I doubted whatever the core they were looking for was worth answering particularly awkward questions when the police arrived. They wouldn’t stick around, keep looking.

So when the bright xenon lights of the Escalade lit up the access road like a flood lamp, I felt my entire body tense up. I didn’t want to spin around and risk showing my face, but there was no question it was them.

I turned my head just enough to catch sight of the dark SUV from the corner of my eye and activated Probability Spiral, hoping the engine would die. I kept my pace steady while breathing a little harder from the use, hoping for a miracle.

Nothing.

What? Is it because the car is moving, or it’s too big and complex? What exactly made the AC unit and gun different?

It dawned on me that the answer was probably in the damn name. Probability. Sometimes things worked out for me. Sometimes they didn’t. It was a dice roll. Fuck. What a terrible ability.

A wave of mental fatigue swept over me. Two uses was pushing it. I couldn’t risk trying again. If it didn’t work out perfectly, I’d be left out of breath and unable to run.

I was just about out of options. The access road was narrow, no turns. There was a large drain pipe attached to a nearby building that would take too long to climb. Plus, I would probably slip and fall off. No windows to break or fire escape ladders to climb. Nothing.

I started sprinting and immediately heard the engine rev as the Escalade accelerated. The end of the road was close, and they’d have to avoid debris. I leapt towards the side of a giant blue dumpster and pulled it out into the center of the street, trying to maintain momentum.

Shit. There was no way I’d make it in time.

Up ahead, I saw something strange. A blue door, half the size of a normal person. Glowing. I wasn’t in the habit of going through random doors, but to be fair, I also wasn’t in the habit of being seconds away from being actively run down by a giant black Escalade.

Reaching the door while out of breath, I crouched down and grabbed the handle. Moment of truth. Throwing caution to the wind, I wrenched open the door and leaped through just as the SUV roared passed.