My finger tightened on the trigger. “Put it down.”

“Fuck you,” the kid said, all spite and vitriol. His face was flushed red, and he was wearing civilian clothes. A t-shirt and cargo shorts, both ratty. From the gauntness of his cheeks, he hadn’t eaten in a while. Hunger always looked the same.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

His hand trembled, green gem at the top of his staff swaying, constantly on the verge of moving off target. He looked angry, tired.

Dangerous.

I called out to my summon. “Could really use your help here, Azure.”

“Short stack’s got… some serious… firepower. His illusions… blocked our communication. Trying to take control.”

More serious than the fire laser? The spell that nearly skewered me had gone off instantly, without enough lead time for to trigger. If that was the cheap seats in his arsenal, I didn’t want to see the VIP.

Mana shifted, as the green gem crowning the staff glowed.

God dammit, I don’t have time for this.

“Last chance.” I said, putting as much menace in my voice as I could muster. “Put the staff down.”

The safe option would have been to fire. This sort of thing was inevitable. Both my brother and sister were evidence that the system didn’t exactly discern by age. And like the firearms of the previous age, magic was the great equalizer of this one. It was only a matter of time before a kid with power ended up on the wrong side with more guts than sense.

“Please.” I tried.

His expression shifted to something I recognized. The moment of resolve transformed to action.

Shit.

There was a burst of light, and a bludgeon of energy curved from behind me, slamming into the boy’s chest. He grunted, the staff in his hand spinning away as he slammed backwards against a shelf, knocking a plastic display-case of knock-off jewelry free and tumbling to the ground.

Behind me, Astria gaped, her chest heaving from the exertion. “Why—Why is there a kid here?”

“Dunno,” I shook my head, then started moving towards the door. “Eye-in-the-sky says he’s powerful. Make sure he stays down?”

“I’ll keep watch.” Astria nodded, her focus returning as she shrugged off the residual shock.

The kid murmured something barely intelligible. Almost impossible to make out.

Almost sounded like “Don’t hurt him.”

I took off down the hallway, moving at a dead sprint. There was no sign of Astrid, Sae, or Max, and no way to check in with them as the Galleria folk were still running squelch. Multiple lockers and doors had been thrown open, probably Sunny trying to throw obstacles in the pursuer’s path. I followed the trail, falling deeper into the mask, suppressing the ramping anxiety.

I was pretty sure I’d hit him with a poisoned, armor piercing bolt. While Sae’s poison wasn’t generally lethal to Users, it was a debilitating paralytic. After a matter of minutes, he’d have trouble moving. After ten, he wouldn’t be able to walk. If Sunny was as clever as he acted, he’d figure that out in short order.

And he’d make a move.

As it turned out, Sunny hadn’t made it far. His once perfectly coiffed salt-and-pepper hair was wild. Both Sae and Max had backed off, given him space. For good reason. The most likely scenario played out in my mind. Sae and Max had chased him from behind, while Astria—hearing the callout, had circled around to flank. Either she’d frozen, or miscalculated how quickly Sunny would close the distance.

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Now he had an arm around her throat, steel barrel of a 1911 pressed to her head. “Where’s the fucking bogeyman? Come on, bring him out.”

Jinny whimpered.

I went cold. In that moment, the day of the tunnel played on repeat in my mind, over and over. Only now, I could see him for exactly what he was.

A throwing knife twitched in Sae’s hand, charged and green. Max had a crossbow trained at Sunny’s head.

I crept up, sticking to the wall, using Max’s frame to obscure my approach.

“Let’s just take it down a notch.” Max subtly angled, trying to get a shot.

“Landing a bounty isn’t going to help you get out of this.” Sae added. Her voice was casual, but from the tension in her shoulders, the way every muscle was poised to spring forward, I could tell she was feeling the same weight.

“Riiiight. I look stupid to you?” Sunny spat, shifting his human shield erratically, making it next to impossible for either of them to find an opening.

“File I read said you’re a great fighter. A genuine threat with a sword. All the leveling, and questing, be a shame if it all went to waste because you wanted to play hostage negotiation.” Max heard me approaching out of the corner of his eye, and held a hand behind his back, splaying out five fingers.

Low chances we save her as things stand.

“Put the gun down, let the girl go. She’ll sit this out. Big guy like yourself can handle a two-on-one.” Max dialed up the accent and smiled, shrugging towards Sae. “She’s most of the firepower here anyway. So really, it’d be more of a one-and-a-half on one.”

“Where’s the bogeyman?” Sunny’s voice escalated into a shout. “Come on out, fuckface. I know you’re here.” He sounded unhinged. Off his god damned rocker. And I didn’t think he was faking it.

I could appreciate what Max was going for. But it wasn’t going to work, not with the state Sunny was in. Once upon a time, I would have questioned the wisdom of using my powers here. It was the best way to subvert Max’s reading, but all three of them were too close not to realize there was fuckery at play.

But we were far past that. The strike-team had gotten me this far, and to their credit, they were all decent people despite our business. Astrid and Astria were just trying to survive, level up and amass the power necessary to make it through the next event. Max was the kind of guy who knew how to shut the hell up when he had a line on a good thing. And Sae already knew everything.

I was done hiding. I reached into his mind with Suggestion, amplifying his fear, stabilizing his hand.

“Picked apart. Pinned down with nowhere to go. How does it feel?” My voice reverberated down the hallway, echoing.

Sunny stiffened, then crouched lower, his expression a twisted sneer. “There he is. The conquering hero. Figured you had to be the one going through my crew like tissue paper. Everything’s gone to shit in since the day I met you.”

It took a moment to connect that he was talking about the day I’d invited himself into the backseat of his car and chatted him up about joining the transposition, not the incident outside the trial.

“In fact—” he continued.

“—Just, uh, who’s the kid?” I cut him off, glancing back the way I came. “The one you left behind.” Unstable as he was, I’d picked up in the tunnel that Sunny was a seasoned negotiator. And the best way to deal with that kind of person was never letting them get their footing.

There was a long silence, as Sunny glowered with a look that could kill. “He alive?”

“For now.” I smiled. “Who is he?”

“Nobody. Just some street trash I paid for the wards.” From the blank expression, to the apathetic tone, the lie was supremely convincing. Without context, it might have passed. But even if the kid hadn’t been worried enough to potentially throw his life away, Sunny fucked up when he asked after his well-being.

Family. I’d put money on it.

“Uhuh.” I stared at him blankly. “Look, whoever he is to you, I really don’t care. Things don’t have to get nasty. The way I see it, you have one of mine, and I have one of yours. There’s potential for an even trade. We’ll call this a draw, and you can go on your way.”

To his minor credit, for a moment, he seemed to seriously consider it. Then his expression hardened. “So you and yours can regroup later and pick us off on our way out, once this poison cuts my legs out from under me? Nah. We’re not gonna play it that way. I don’t give a shit what you do to the kid. I’m gonna walk away with the girl. If I see a single tail, she’s done. And if I don’t, maybe you get her back.” He smiled cruelly. So confident he held all the cards.

If I was the same person I was when we clashed in the tunnel, that might have been true. I might have let him go. But we were long, long past that. The truth was, I didn’t need to threaten the kid, or buy time. Because the longer Sunny ran his mouth, the more opportunities he was giving me for cast after cast of cementing his fate.

“You know what?” I tilted my head. “I would have negotiated. But I was really hoping you’d say no.”