Noah gestured him in, glancing down the hallway. Zach walked into the apartment, staring at the mess. The last time he’d been here, he’d just come back from Severity. Too surprised and shocked to do much more than answer Noah’s questions. He tried not to remember how Noah had altered the gravity in the room and the effects it had had on him.

  “What are you doing here?” Noah asked. “And who’s following you?”

  “I saw your brother back at the medical ward to ask if you were safe, after what happened. You’re the only person who knows about my transmigration,” he added hastily. “Well, the only one who knows and hasn’t tried to kill me.”

  Zach frowned, taking careful and deliberate steps so as not to step on anything that might be important. Though in the sea of papers covering the old carpet, it was difficult to decide what could be stepped on and what couldn’t.

  “I see,” Noah said. “And the clapping?”

  He’d been pretending not to read any of the papers, but Noah didn’t seem to mind anyway. By the time he got halfway across the room, he understood Noah’s indifference. The pages were in another language. None of them recognizable to his or Oliver’s minds.

  “Your brother told me once I get to the sixth door, I should clap three times,” Zach responded, his eyes now moving to the silver trinkets scattered amidst the pages.

  “Clap three times?” Noah asked. “That’s code... What was that code for? Four for a guest who shouldn’t see me. ‘Damn weather,’ to tell me to leave if I’m at the medical ward... Three claps...”

  His face hardened as his gaze went back to Zach. “Who’s following you?”

  Zach looked up from a strangely shaped silver object that, for some reason, reminded him of a whale breaching. That was the closest thing his mind could connect it to even though this creature’s tail ended in two pairs of flukes.

  “Who’s following you?”

  Zach looked up. “I don’t know. They must’ve started after I left the hold. I think it’s the same person who... you know… killed everyone.”

  “Lucas,” Noah said under his breath.

  He walked across the room, peering behind the curtains. It was getting harder and harder to imagine him not looking out of a window. “I don’t see him anymore. He either entered the building or left.”

  Something in his bearing had shifted, a general readiness for conflict. Zach couldn’t help but ask, “What do three claps mean?”

  “There’s someone to kill.”

  Zach blinked. He’d said it so casually, so nonchalantly. “You have a killing code?” he asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice.

  “We can’t afford not to have one,” he said, turning back into the room. “You can thank our killing code after I’ve handled your stalker.”

  Noah searched through the mess on the floor, lifting up stacks of paper, moving books and old scrolls, until he came upon a silver dagger. Its edge was so sharp, it seemed to cut the light reflecting onto it.

  Zach bit his jaw, his hand closing in a fist. “It might be the people hunting you.”

  He paused, his hand still on the handle as he slid the dagger into his pocket. “What do you mean?”

  “Your brother said I have to warn you, there’s someone in the camp who can smell Theurgy. Whatever that is. He came to me and said he could smell it on me. Since your brother said your Stepping has nothing to do with Theurgy, it probably has to do with your ritual.”

  A fair guess, seeing all the silver lying around the room. Whatever these two were up to, it clearly required a lot of research.

  Noah slowed, his eyes going wide. “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it. I can’t do combat with the Central yet. It takes too much of my focus for that.”

  He pulled the knife out of his pocket and tossed it back to the floor, his face twitching in irritation. He chewed on his lower lip as that frown of his appeared.

  Hearing Noah stress over what to do without even asking him for his help felt almost insulting. Regardless of what he’d said, the stalker was stalking him, not Lucas, not Noah. Him. He’d led the man all the way here. Did they already think him so weak? The thought scared him.

  “I led him here,” Zach said. “I can help you. Let me help you.”

  Noah looked at him, his fingers pressed against his forehead. “If this is the same person who can smell Theurgy, that makes them dangerous. But if you—”

  He broke off as Zach turned to the door. An apartment door had opened, its hinges protesting loudly. Noah narrowed his eyes, walking to the door. “That’s why he had you stop at the sixth door,” he muttered under his breath.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. Zach ran after him and made it just in time to watch as he closed the apartment door, shutting whoever had opened it inside. A strange thrum of power went through the floor as Noah pressed his hands flat against the door.

  The handle moved once, twice, before it rattled again and again, quickly getting aggressive. But the door didn’t budge. Noah looked around, practically running back into their apartment.

  “If I hold him in the room, can you do the rest?”

  “Yes,” Zach answered without any hesitation.

  “Good, then let’s do this quick, before someone notices all the noise he’s making.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He walked to the other end of the room, where this apartment’s wall neighbored the one with the captured stalker. He pulled the shelf away, revealing a large hole in the wall blocked from the other side with some black thing.

  “Get ready,” he said under his breath. “Go!”

  Just as he put his hand on the black furniture piece, the thing broke inward, sending him flying back across their side of the trap. When the dust of the wreckage cleared, Zach finally caught a look at his stalker.

  A scrawny man stood draped in black, the sleeves of his shirt falling past his hands, keeping every inch of his skin hidden. He wore a marble white mask with a single black swirl swirling out from its center. There were no eye holes for him to see through, but Zach could swear he met his gaze eye for eye.

  He seemed to lower his head to Zach in respect, making the number seven with his right hand sideways above his heart. Then he turned back to Noah, drawing a long, thin dagger, its tip stained blood red.

  Zach quickly looked around, trying to find something he could fight with, though the man no longer seemed to have any interest in him.

  Noah groaned on the floor, turning over on his side before he pushed himself to his feet. The masked man came running, brandishing the dagger threateningly. Zach cursed. When he’d first come into this apartment, there’d been so many weapon-looking trinkets on the ground; now he couldn’t find a single one. It was only useless balls, strange effigies of even stranger animals, or other weird shapes.

  Noah was dodging left and right, pushing himself to avoid the dagger’s rust-tipped point. While he was doing well enough, he had no chance to use his power and hold the man still.

  Oh, forget this!

  Zach ran toward the man, his fists balled up tight. The dagger raised, the man jumped to the side to fall out of Zach’s charging path. Zach went on, swinging for his jaw, swinging for the side of his face, kicking for his feet—all of which the masked man avoided effortlessly.

  Every time Zach had him distracted enough for Noah to attempt to kneel and touch the floor, the man would spin away, forcing Noah back to his feet, almost reaching him each time. He moved easily between the two of them, never letting either of them out of his sight. He jumped over Noah’s low sweeping kick and leaned away from Zach’s fists.

  He’s doing all this, and still won’t take a single swipe at me.

  Zach was no trained fighter. He was simply moving whichever of his limbs were closest to the man’s body, but there was an increasingly subtle agility to his movements that he found decidedly strange.

  Zach threw another left hook, his swing going wide and high, but this time, instead of leaning away from the blow, the man moved underneath it, rolling away from him until he jumped back to his feet halfway across the apartment.

  Unlike Zach, he didn’t seem to mind stepping on the scrolls and pages or kicking the trinkets that were in his way.

  “Who are you?” Noah asked, breathing hard.

  He sounded more annoyed than anything else, especially when the man said nothing. He only glanced between the two of them. Zach thought he was trying to figure out a way to bring an end to this encounter.

  “So, you know what I am?” Noah asked.

  Zach noticed Noah was holding the silver knife from before. With no eyeholes to see the man’s gaze, Zach only had the impression that the man was staring at the knife. He seemed more wary of it than either of them.

  “Do you hunt Mhabran often?” Noah asked.

  Still, the man gave no response.

  “Nothing? What if I put the knife down? Could we talk then?”

  The man slowly tilted his head to the side, not moving an inch. So, Noah flicked his wrist, tossing the knife away. He lifted his hands above his head, kneeling slowly. “Better?” he asked.

  Zach frowned. Was he really giving in so easily?

  “Now, are you the only—“

  The man sprang, moving faster than Zach would’ve believed. His speed was great, but it was within normal range. Without thinking, Zach sprinted forward as well, intercepting the man before he reached Noah.

  The man forced himself to step back as if frightened of the idea of hurting him, and just as his left foot moved to follow his right, the room itself grew heavy. A deep pressure pressing down from above.

  The man made his first sound then. A grunt of surprise. His body seemed to shake as he fought to remain standing. The dagger was torn from his grip, pulled down to the floor. His left arm started spasming, his right already being pulled to the ground as well.

  Zach did his best to fight it, but just like before, it seemed his limbs would snap off if he tried to resist any further. Both he and the man went down at the same time, landing on their knees. And still, the pressure pulled at them.

  Zach could feel his shoulders going next, his entire body threatening to tip forward. What was Noah thinking? How was he expected to move when gravity itself was reluctant to let him go? Behind him, he could hear Noah grunting softly, the effort of what he was doing clearly getting to him.

  Zach focused on the masked man, who started letting out rough grunts himself. Even now, he still tried to fight against Noah’s power, but where before he’d appeared practiced and composed, he now looked panicked.

  Zach could see it in the way he tossed his head from side to side, in the way he shook his entire body. What’s more, he thought he could hear the man muttering something, yet even that sounded frantic. He hadn’t expected this.

  “I can’t go on anymore,” Noah said softly behind him. “It’s-it’s on you now.”

  A thousand questions came to Zach, all of them demanding to know what he was expected to do. Doubt and disbelief tore through him.

  Yet when the pressure eased off his joints, somehow Zach knew what to do. An instinct that had him straining his senses, speed tightening the muscles in his legs, waiting to be unleashed at a moment’s notice. Despite the pressure, he saw the muscles in his forearms cord as his fists tightened.

  The man noticed the changes, but it was too late.

  The pressure ceased at once, and Zach launched himself across the room, the pages on the floor swirling from his passage. The man was still swaying on his knees when Zach stopped in front of him and drove his fist straight through the man’s chest.

  It was an odd sensation, feeling flesh and bone give way that easily, but he pushed on until his fist made contact with something that felt even stranger, an explosion of warm liquid erupting from the touch.

  His heart!

  The man’s body seized, jerked, then went limp, folding over Zach’s arm. It was surreal, feeling the exact moment the man’s life had left him.

  The apartment started ringing, a piercing sound that had Zach shaking his head. No. No, that wasn’t the apartment. The ringing was in his ears. He pulled his fist out of the man’s chest, watching as he fell to the ground.

  At the incessant pain in his fist, he glanced down and found shards of bone piercing the area around his knuckles. He removed them one by one, the wounds bleeding out in their absence.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Noah said tiredly as he approached the man’s corpse. “Stop the blood.” He squatted, turning the man over. “Let’s see who’s behind the mask.”

  He slid the mask off the man’s head, and Zach blinked, his eyes going wide. The man’s entire face, save his eyes, was covered in small ridges, small growths that looked as hard as bone.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Zach asked.

  “Nothing,” Noah answered, looking up in confusion. Then he shook his head. “I keep forgetting about your... situation. This man’s a Dorsi. From the Dorsum kingdom. That’s how they look.”

  Zach shook his head. So, there were even more differences between this world and his.

  That’s not what you should be thinking about. That thought came from nowhere, but was accurate. He’d killed someone. He’d driven his fist through a man’s chest, and worse, he’d had no reservations about it.

  He still didn’t. He’d done what was necessary. It had been a fight, and he’d simply done his part. Kill or be killed. Except the man hadn’t actually tried to kill him. All he’d done was dodge his every attack. But again, a voice whispered that he’d only done what was necessary!

  Still, shouldn’t he have felt something?

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