The man fired again. She raised her hand, shielding her face as the bolt splashed against her open palm. Heat flared across her fingers. She didn’t slow.
His expression shifted from determination to disbelief as she closed the distance.
Annie kicked him in the knee. The joint buckled sideways with a wet crack. He dropped, mouth open in a silent scream, and she caught him with an uppercut on the way down. His head snapped back, and he hit the floor.
She shook the residual heat from her hand. Energy weapons were still a little dangerous. But only a little. She’d reached a point in the growth of her powers that most of her internal organs remained constantly phased. That meant that unless she was asleep, she could survive even a sniper round.
“Augustus,” she said over comms. “How’s your side?”
“Found their main storage. Explosives, weapons, supplies, electrical equipment. Also dealt with about a dozen of them. None had powers.” A pause. “They are well supplied. Mil-spec gear mixed with civilian surplus.”
“Same on my end. One of them had an energy weapon.”
“Interesting. I’ll secure this area and start cataloguing. Keep pushing.”
“Sure.”
Felix’s voice cut in. “I have eyes on three individuals who escaped through a secondary exit on the north face. They are moving quickly on foot. Wait.” He paused. “They just uncovered tiny little cars. With handlebars and four wheels.”
“ATVs,” Augustus said. “All-terrain vehicles.”
Talia responded. “Track them as far as you can. If they’re running to another location, I want to know where.”
“Understood.”
Annie pressed on. The corridor narrowed again, then opened into a junction where three passages met. She paused, listening.
Silence from the left and center passages. But from the right, the faintest scrape of a foot on stone.
She turned right.
The passage widened into what looked like an office. A desk sat against the far wall beneath a battery-powered lamp. Filing cabinets flanked it. Papers were scattered across the surface, some spilling onto the floor. A map of the region had been pinned to the wall above the desk, covered in handwritten annotations.
A man stood in the center of the room.
Tall, lean, dressed in loose, dark clothing. He watched her with calm eyes. No weapon in his hands. No panic on his face.
Annie studied him. Something felt wrong, but she couldn’t place it. “You want to do this the easy way or the hard way?”
He smiled.
“Hard way. Got it.” She stepped into the room and swung.
Her fist passed through empty air. The man was simply gone, replaced by nothing. Annie’s momentum carried her forward, stumbling.
Behind her, a boot connected with her lower back. The impact jolted through her metal, jarring enough to make her stumble another step. She spun, arm sweeping in a wide, bladed backhand.
And found nothing.
A fist cracked against the side of her head from the left. She hadn’t seen anything. Annie snarled and swung toward the source, but her knuckles met stone. The wall. She’d been turned around somehow, the room’s geometry shifted in her perception.
She pulled her fist from the cracked limestone and reset her stance.
The illusionist appeared by the desk, leaning against it as if he had all the time in the world. He said something in Arabic, then switched to heavily accented English. “You are strong. But strength without sight is just noise.”
Annie launched toward him. He flickered and vanished. A kick caught her shin, and she tripped over a chair that hadn’t been there a second ago.
She caught herself on the desk, which was suddenly on the wrong side of the room.
He was good. Better than a Class C had any right to be.
“You’re a lot more than the reports say,” Annie said, straightening up.
The illusionist laughed. His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “I keep my best tricks in the dark. Where I can kill those who witness them.”
Another hit, this one to her stomach. Hard. The guy had ascended attributes backing up his strikes. She felt each one land with more weight than an ordinary human could produce.
Then a blade slipped between her ribs. It found nothing but more metal, but the casual willingness hardened her resolve.
Annie took a breath. Let the Combat Lock settle over her, sharpening her focus.
He was fast, and his illusions were disorienting, but she’d been tracking the pattern. He could only hit her when she committed to an attack, because he needed her off-balance and focused on the wrong target. The illusions were reactive, built around her expectations. And every real strike came from close range, because he had to actually be near her to land them.
He was a melee fighter using illusions to create openings. She’d fought his type in the arenas plenty. They were all the same. Clever, but limited to cheap tricks.
“Okay,” Annie said. “This is boring now.”
Annie Redlined both arms, raising them overhead, then bringing them down hard. Density Flux Control and MetaMetal Adaptation worked in tandem. Her hands bulged, flooded with extra mass until each one was nearly a meter across, bloated spheres of solid metal with increased density that hit the stone floor like twin wrecking balls.
The floor shattered. Cracks radiated outward in every direction. The desk jumped. Cabinets toppled. The ceiling rained dust and fragments as the shockwave tore through the room. Stone shards sprayed across every surface.
A figure stumbled into view three feet to her right, arms thrown up to shield his face from the debris. Real. Solid. No longer hidden.
Annie burst forward, hands already back to normal size. She threw a simple, straight jab that landed before he could react. Her fist caught him clean on the chin.
His head snapped back. Then he dropped like someone had cut his strings.
Annie stood over him. Victorious, but underwhelmed. She reached down and checked his pulse. He was alive, but he wouldn’t be getting up for a while.
She glanced around at the wreckage. The office was destroyed. Desk splintered. Cabinets dented and overturned. Papers everywhere. The map on the wall hung by a single pin, spotted with holes.
A glint of gold caught her eye.
One of the filing cabinets had split open on impact, its contents spilled across the rubble. Among the mess, a small vial had rolled free. The liquid inside caught the lamplight, shimmering with that unmistakable color.
Liquid gold.
Annie crouched down and picked it up, turning it between her metal fingers.
Serum.
“Talia,” she said quietly. “I found some.”