“Jack!”

Lyia’s voice crackles in Jack’s brain, snapping him out of his daze.

“Pin!”

He starts to reach up to his ear, but stops short, remembering that he’s hearing her by comm kneak and not an ear wig. “I hear you, Lyia. Didn’t know you were listening in on Slim’s comm.”

“Pinny. You can’t stop him. You’ve got to get out—”

Jack feels the heat starting to emanate from his neck and work its way up behind his ears. Memories flash in his mind. Blood pooling under his teacher’s head. That kid Orris. Jack starts to pace. “You know what I’m thinkin’, do you?”

He feels Corva’s hand rest on his shoulder for an instant. She doesn’t say anything, but he jerks away, continuing to speak with Lyia over the comm. “I remember everything that happened back at the Fold. You were there! You watched them go, just like me. How can you tell me to stand by and let the same damn thing play out? Corva says the kill zone is all of Bule. All of Bule, Lee. We’ve heard this song before.”

He stops in the middle of his pacing and talking. Corva’s hands are on both of his shoulders now, reaching from behind him. She tries to push down. He resists, but only for a moment. He feels her foot kick behind his knee, forcing him to collapse down to a kneel. She gives him an additional shove and he finds himself on all fours. There’s the breeze of something sailing over his back.

Rolling to his side, he looks back. “Hey! What the—”

The last words of that sentence don’t make their way out. They clog the back of his throat as he realizes that the breeze over his back was a large axe blade swinging at him. The grunt that was wielding that axe isn’t holding it in its hands any longer, though. Somehow, in the time it took Jack to roll from his hands and knees to his side, Corva managed to remove the axe from the grunt’s hands and bury its blade deep in the back of the creature’s skull.

The long-armed grunt wavers a bit in front of Jack; its steel-covered face seems to point blankly at him. Without warning, the mass of the thing lurches forward, a result of Corva kicking it in the back and prying the axe loose.

Jack scrambles backward, clearing himself of the landing zone for the grunt’s carcass. “Shit, Corva!”

“Pay attention.”

He looks around and realizes that all his pacing while talking to Lyia had brought him close to the rooftop’s edge. Also, there are more grunts making their way up and over the edge. Corva connects the blade of her newly acquired axe to the neck of a nearby grunt. Two other grunts on the far side of the roof also collapse, but not from Corva. Using the visual overlay from the control kneak, Jack can see blips from the small pack of nanobots leaving the heads of those grunts. Slim’s handiwork.

“Lyia, put Slim on.”

“I’m here, kid. Sound’s piped through the main. Both of us can hear and talk to you.”

“What’s going on, man? You’re s’posed to be keepin’ things clear.”

“Cut me some slack, kid. I’m all friggin’ Space Invaders here. Fuckers know where you guys are and they just keep comin’.”

There’s a series of metallic pops and a loud screeching sound over the edge of the roof where Jack had crossed. He turns just in time to see the last bit of the metal gangway twist off of both buildings and crash to the alley below. In its place, he sees the spindly fingers from the grunts that tore it down. They claw at the edge of the roof, trying to find any decent kind of grip.

“Shit.” Jack squats down, swinging his heavy pack off his shoulders to the ground in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Corva’s voice is sharp, insistent.

“Yeah, kid. Now ain’t the time for a picnic.”

“Will everyone just shut the fuck up a sec? Our only clear way off this rooftop just got torn down. I guarantee that the roof access is locked tight. So even if we wanted to make a run for it—an’ I ain’t so sure we should—we’re in for a helluva fight. Every bit of gear is gonna help.” He digs in his bag, shoving items to the sides, then looks up to Corva. “I got somethin’ for ya.”

Jack drags a long, roughly cylindrical item wrapped in cloth from the bag and offers it up to her. Corva grabs the bundle, a quizzical look on her face. Zeke switches his perch to her other shoulder so he can see better. Unrolling the bundle, both Corva’s and Zeke’s eyes widen. Jack smiles as she realizes that she’s holding the two explodey batons from her first fight at his bar.

“Slim told me that disarming an’ re-encoding the biometrics was a right sumbitch.”

Dropping the cloth, she holds a baton in each hand and gives them a bit of a test swing. “They work?”

There’s a crackle in Jack’s brain. “Do they work? Jack, this chick is insulting my art. You best—”

“Yeah, they work. We already bound ’em to your bio. Check the strike surface. Gel’s already coating. That means they’re activated. They recognize you.”

Jack closes up his bag and slings it back over his shoulder. “Jus’ don’t go blowin’ any more holes in the ground, yeah?”

She smiles. It’s warm and genuine, the kind of face he imagines that a friend might make. It actually takes him off guard for a moment. Then her expression changes, like an idea just came to her. She looks at the roof access door. “Hey, Jack. Holes in the ground are off-limits, but what about holes in roofs?”

He follows her gaze to the door. “Yeah. Thought of that. This building is Spitz’ place. Bit of a storehouse. One floor. High ceiling. Helluva fall if you boom too big. Besides, didn’t you just fall through a roof? You wanna do that again?”

Corva and Zeke exchange a look. Zeke nods, disappointed. Corva gives the access door one more plaintive look before turning back to Jack. “Yeah. Okay.”

Jack stares at her for a moment while his ears fill with the sounds of grunting and scratching from the horde still trying to make their way onto the roof. They don’t have time to argue about this. “Look. Let’s call it a backup plan. Okay?”

Corva gives a slight tip of her head. It’s not much of an affirmation, but it’s enough.

Rubbing his hands together, Jack refocuses on the task at hand. “Alright. You watch my back. I got a bit of business to handle with ol’ Wrinkles.”

He runs up to the building edge closest to Thegn and brings his hand up to his left ear. “Hey, Slim. You still got summa them nanos for me to play with?”

Slim’s voice crackles in Jack’s head. “Yeah, kid. But hey, maybe you should—”

“Thanks.” With that, Jack twists the tip of the nanobot control kneak, disabling the passthrough to Slim and giving himself control of them once more. Where are you little fuckers?

His mind tingles with the added awareness of each nanobot in the swarm. Despite knowing that there are at least three Umbrati grunts an arm length or two from reaching the top edge of the roof where he stands, Jack allows himself to close his eyes. For a moment, he sees a brief wisp of a not-face filling the darkness, its mouth opening and closing silently.

Jack shakes the vision from his mind and focuses on reacclimating himself to the nanodrones. Slim did well; most of the nanobots remain unexploded and generally undamaged. They’re split into two minor swarms, one on each side of the building. Using the controls afforded by the kneak, he reunites the swarms and brings the full collection of nanobots forward to his current position. Another voice scratches in his mind.

“Jack. Pinny. What are you doing? We’ve gotta get away from here. We can hide like before—”

Lyia.

Somber, Jack shakes his head. Of course, they can’t see him do that. His eyes are still closed. He speaks out loud; at least Slim and Lyia can hear him. “Sorry, Lee. I can’t stand by while another town dies—gets killed. Not when I’m here and I might be able to do something about it. Ya’ll need to keep your mouths shut for a spell. I’m gonna need to concentrate.”

He opens his eyes and looks up toward Thegn’s roof, expecting to see that old sack of loose skin kneeling there, not looking at anything. Instead, his entire view is filled with the hideous steel-plated face of yet another grunt.

Jack flinches. The nanobots aren’t going to get to his position in time to protect him. He looks at the grunt’s throat, wondering if he can strike out and attack like when he was being controlled by Corva’s weird power.

He edges a foot to the side, preparing to do a quick sidestep. The grunt lunges forward. He slips to the grunt’s side, but there’s another problem; he’s too close to the edge of the rooftop. While dodging the grunt, Jack’s shin slams into the low wall that wraps the roof. Right in the same spot he hit before. It hurts horribly, and he’s on the verge of careening over the edge and into the ally below. The thought briefly runs through his mind that the swarm of grunts choking that confined space would break his fall. Great, I’ll live just long enough to feel myself being torn apart.

Jack feels his weight threaten to drag him over the edge. His feet lift off the rooftop. His arms flail out, grabbing at nothing, and his stomach tightens as his mouth fills with saliva. Inexplicably, he smiles. He can’t help it. The thought is too amusing. His last act in the world is going to be to vomit all over a crowd of Umbrati as he plummets to his death.

Just as he feels his feet start to clear the roof’s low wall, he’s stopped midair. He’s not falling anymore. Long, spindly fingers wrap his shoulder to the back of his neck, gripping him tightly. His body twists a bit from its own inertia, allowing him to see the blank, covered face of the grunt he just dodged. For a moment, they stare at one another. Well, Jack stares at the grunt. Without eyes, it’s difficult to tell where exactly the grunt might be looking. Stranger still, it isn’t making any of its typical hissing or grunting sounds.

In a single mechanical move, barely shifting its weight at all, the grunt hurls Jack back on the rooftop. The second it lets go, Jack hears the grunt resume its familiar sick throat-clearing noise. It only lasts a blink, though. The guttural sounds of the grunt are cut short, replaced by a small boom muffled by something wet and meaty. Jack rolls over in time to see Corva’s follow-through with her new batons, right where the grunt’s head used to be.

“Pay attention, Jack!”

He watches as Corva takes a second swing at the body of the now-headless grunt, caving in its chest and sending it over the edge and into the alley. Still riding her shoulder, Zeke looks down on Jack. The expression on the monkey’s face seems like it reflects a certain amount of pity.

Corva bounces on her toes, keeping her body turned sideways so both Jack and Thegn are in her field of view. “So, you’re not listening to anyone with more sense than you. Big surprise.”

“You heard me?”

“Yeah. Subtlety really isn’t your thing.”

Jack opens his mouth to argue, but Corva interrupts before he gets any words out. “Look, I get it. I really do. You don’t want to see another town get wiped out. Neither do I. I had the same argument with Zeke. He says the smart move is to run. But he also says you always have a plan. I trust that. We trust that.”

Jack feels himself smile involuntarily.

“However,” Corva’s voice is enough to push the smile away. “Your plan won’t work unless you let us in on it.”

Corva takes a swing at the wall just as another grunt’s hand reaches over its lip. As the wall crumbles and the grunt’s hand disappears, she steps between Jack and the roof’s edge; between Jack and Thegn. “So what’s your plan?”