Iris’ blade stopped short of Adam’s throat. Amy’s heel caught the superheated edge from a ridiculous kick, stretching her body across the arena and ripping the skirt of her dress. The impact shocked more than Iris’ arms, but her fashion sense. Mrs. Sherman had graphene in her shoes, like modern age gold gilding. Everyone in the casino got a look at her underwear, causing a roar of applause, but none of the three of them could spare a thought for that.

Iris had to adapt her strategy as she watched the trillionaires shoes somehow not melt, which meant they had the capacity to defend themselves at least temporarily. Amy evidently didn’t trust her own defenses, and broke away as soon as Adam retreated. The slight smell of burnt synth-flesh penetrated the arena as her husband triggered a number of defense systems throughout the casino. The automated turrets sprang free, but so did some kind of black, steel box.

Weapons, she guessed. The best defense was to press the attack, to drive them into defense and retreat. Iris redoubled, chaining attacks and slashes, cleaving her away across the arena, but there was no corner to force them into. Every cut met nothing but air or Amy’s spinning heels. Iris had to go faster.

The moment she thought to drive her reflexes higher, the turrets came online. People screamed and ran as gunfire began ripping through the bottom floors. The machines didn’t aim at the bystanders, they aimed only at Iris, but still the slugs broke tables, shattered glasses, spilled blood. Instinct took over as people grabbed onto one another and shoved others to the ground, trampled over them, climbed on top of them to get to safety. Person after person died beneath leather shoes and silk dresses.

Iris snarled and cleaved wide. She carved open the arena wall while forcing the Shermans away, and sprang through. Her system highlighted each of the turrets for her as she ran for them. The bullets looked like they were hanging in air as she weaved between them, cut down what she had to and pounced upon it. The turret was a gun on a stalk, a gunmetal bird hanging beneath its power wire. Taking a few rounds to the armor of her augment suit, Iris grabbed it by the barrel and wrenched it over. The support shattered as it spewed bullets into another turret. As she fell back to the floor, broken turret in hand, she saw Adam ripping open the box.

Iris chucked the hunk of gunmetal at him. Amy leapt in with a micro-blade, cleaving the broken turret in half; but it occupied them for a moment. By then, Iris was already sprinting across blackjack tables, trampling cards and chips as bullets raced after her. It was times like this she wished force fields had been invented; at least something strong enough to be worth making a shield out of.

She only had the moment to land on her feet after breaking the third turret before Adam Sherman was on her. He had some sort of exoskeleton strapped to his back, support braces down to his wrists and a second set of arms. Like a god of destruction, he assaulted her. Two hands crossed to catch her micro-blade, to press back as the heated edge cut through. His right fist caught her in the gut hard enough to knock her through the ceiling. Paired impacts, like the beat of a heart, and Iris was gasping mid-air, suspended among the debris.

Iris found herself wondering why the Shermans were fighting her themselves. Pride? Would pride and ambition have been enough for them to cast aside their bodies in favor of silicon and steel?

Her reflection lasted only the fraction of a second it took for her to land across a roulette table, spin, and dash once more. On the second floor, another four turrets could see her, and they were already turning clay chips to powder like they were skeet shooting. She sprinted from table to table, dodging behind slot machines that spewed coins in her wake. She knew she was giving Amy too much time to think, to connect to one of the assassin drones out in Fort Helsinki; but she couldn’t fight them while getting shot in the back.

From the corner of her eye, when she leapt to cut down another of the rifles, she spotted Amy in the middle of the arena, her free hand to her temple and her eyes closed. “Shit,” Iris swore, and kicked off the wall. The world slowed to a stop as she pushed her mental processing as fast as it would go. Then it went slower. It stopped. She hung in the air, beyond even the grasp of gravity. She didn’t even feel the growing strain from exerting herself.

The black avatar, the fourth member of the tribunal, the being that had given them access to the Phoenix Project, walked out in front of her, treading across air in her vision. Nothing but a virtual construct, but casual and relaxed, his hands clasped behind his back. “If I might have a moment, Miss Haber? You should be able to speak freely, another perk of the project.”

“Who are you?” She asked the question, but could feel her mouth hadn’t moved. No sound had come from her at all, it was entirely mental.

“The shadow government.”

She didn’t laugh.

“It’s immaterial at the moment. I want to understand what you think you can accomplish here. Justice?”

“Obviously.”

He nodded and shrugged. “You might be right there, but it doesn’t undo what they’ve done. Making someone pay with their life doesn’t bring their victims back to life.”

“So I shouldn’t kill them? Mendel shouldn’t raid their biolab?”

“All you will achieve is spite,” the avatar said, and the flow of time began to flow again. He flickered from her vision as she soared through the air. She had never lost speed, only her relative experience of the time it took had changed, like it had been pushed to the infinite. Amy Sherman reacted as though nothing had happened. The trillionaire jumped back, letting Iris’ micro-blade cleave the floor she had stood on. Sand hissed, slagging to glass as she redoubled. Her next cut struck the edge of Amy’s weapon, thrust out with both hands. It launched Amy through the arena fence.

Dramatic, but hardly damaging for a HAB unit.

Instinct made her spin around. Adam Sherman came flying in at her with a felt table in two of his hands. Easy to cut through, but the other half would keep going. She locked eyes on the short barreled shotgun he had in his other set of arms. Iris darted in, cutting not at the table but through the stock. He fired right as the barrel came shearing off. Depleted uranium pellets belched out with fire and smoke, but the gasses bloomed without propelling. They didn’t even break her skin. Getting struck over the head with the table split her scalp though.

The shards of veneered MDF didn’t reach the ground. With Iris’s head bent to the side, one eye shut from the impact and her nose still burning with gunpowder, the avatar appeared again. “Kyou know what’s remarkable? That people still think you’re human.”

“I am human.”

“Technically speaking, machines can have souls. Being technically correct isn’t what makes this remarkable, but rather the reaction of the people that you claim to be fighting for. They will all say a HAB unit such as yourself is human… but look at what you have done.”

“How are you doing this?”

“I have excess processing power that I’m lending you. Now think about this: How much time do you think has passed? You’ve thoroughly destroyed almost a quarter of this entire bunker since you scared the Shermans enough to fight back, but not even thirty seconds have passed. People are still running for the doors, pissing themselves scared. You’ve pushed yourself to a realm beyond human limits.”

“If you call this beyond human limits, then what are you?”

The avatar cocked his head at her and thought for a moment. “I’m not human at all,” he said, and vanished. Again, reality crawled back to speed like someone spinning up a film reel. Again, she had to spin to her back. Still blind in one eye, she parried Amy Sherman’s micro-blade, knocking it away. The woman twisted mid air, putting her body into a spin and kicking her leg down into Iris’ shoulder hard enough to crack her augment suit.

One handed and roaring, Iris shoved herself at the woman before she could escape and hacked her superheated micro-blade into her. Amy’s leg parted from her body. Iris couldn’t savor the blow, and had to dive away. Somersaulting across the sand, she came to a grinding halt as Adam shattered the ground she had been standing on. She sprang on him before he could even pull his fist from the concrete.

Again, time stopped.

“Why are you doing this?” Iris demanded. “You think this helps them or something?”

The unnamed avatar paced beside her, looking at her like an art exhibit. He lifted an arm and gestured at her target. “Adam Sherman is a businessman, not a fighter. He thought he could buy his way to strength and power, that technology could substitute for experience. He tried to buy himself immortality, even a life insurance plan in the form of his other half.” He gestured to Amy, sprawled across the ground.

“His other–”

“Half of his brain. I’m trying to feed them future sight, but so much of their interface is tied up with the left and right halves of their brain coordinating that they can barely understand the data. Worse than that, they don’t actually understand what it is to kill, to take life.”

“They just started a world war!”

“With the press of a button and a few emails. Not with their own hands.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, you’re right that as long as you have them in a panic for their own lives, they don’t have the spare thoughts to send the kill signal to their assassin drones in Fort Helsinki,” the avatar said, and flickered away.

Iris’ blade cut through the extra arms on Adam Sherman, hacked through their plating and cut them apart like rolled tatami mats until nothing but stumps remained, and criss-crossing gouges through his chest. He had the audacity to look surprised.

She couldn’t kill him before she had Amy in the palm of her hand as well though.

Amy had a gun. Where she had gotten it, Iris drew a blank. She didn’t even have time to dodge before Amy fired. Point blank, armor piercing. She saw it hang in the air before her, spinning and flying at her.

The avatar, the puppet master, strolled around it, looking between it and her. “I have direct line control to their drone. It’s a UB-47, a micro scarab, triple shot design. Would you like to see the camera feed?”

An image appeared in front of Iris, like a visual overlay. She could tell from the angle and the lens distortion that it was from a drone. The choppy bitrate spoke to the diminutive size, the components compressed to the limit of physics. The angle was from on high, a second story or a street light or something, but it looked down on a familiar redhead dragging a suitcase like it weighed two hundred kilos.

“If you do anything to her, I won’t stop here. I will track you down. I will stop at nothing to kill you.”

“I told you, I’m not human. You can’t kill me. Your threats mean nothing to me. All I care about is my own sense of morality as we collectively face the precipice.”

“You can shove your utilitarianism up your ass.”

“Again, I’m not–”

“Shut the fuck up!”

The avatar sighed. “Miss Haber, your anger won’t change the situation. The only one who can change anything is me.”

Iris tried to snarl. Her lips couldn’t even move. She didn’t have access to her internal processor, as though it was completely consumed with the accelerated communication. All she could do was stare at the display and watch as the micro scarab extended magnetic coils and took aim.

“Well then, shall I bring you closer? Will that make you change your mind?” the avatar asked, and let time push forward. Iris knew what was happening inside the drone, the swirling charge of magnetic fields, loading a slug the size of a grain of rice.

Then Silvy dropped the suitcase. She spun and pulled a pistol out. One shot. The chemical reaction didn’t need to charge; blasting a bullet into the microscarab. It leapt right out of the visual display at her, like it had been teleported across the world.

No, not Silvy’s bullet. Amy’s.