The comm vibrated once.

  She glanced down at it without stopping, thumb brushing the receiver clipped at her collar.

  “Target is moving,” a voice said. Calm. Operational. “Extraction inbound. He’s heading for the office block east of the platform.”

  She sighed softly.

  “And?” she said.

  A pause. The faint crackle of background noise.

  “Don’t let him leave,” the voice continued. “You got that, Kiara?”

  “I heard you the first time,” she replied. “You don’t need to nag.”

  She ended the call before a response could come through.

  The city stretched out below her, broken streets and damaged structures layered in uneven depth. Smoke drifted between buildings. Emergency lights flashed without rhythm. Somewhere below, rotors beat the air, loud and impatient.

  Kiara stopped at the edge of the rooftop.

  She closed one eye.

  Her other eye traced the outline of the building Victor was moving toward.

  She raised her hands.

  Slowly.

  Carefully.

  Then she pressed them together.

  The building screamed.

  Not immediately. First came a low groan, deep and structural, as if the concrete itself had realized something was wrong. Windows shattered inward. Support beams bent with visible reluctance. Floors began to compress, folding down into each other in a cascade of cracking weight.

  Below, Victor stopped dead.

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  His shadows surged outward reflexively, rippling across the ground as he looked up.

  Kiara exhaled.

  “Honestly,” she said to no one in particular, “you’d think someone would learn to stop walking into obvious problems.”

  She stepped off the rooftop and dropped to the next level below, landing lightly, already moving.

  Victor reacted quickly.

  A shadow peeled itself free from the ground behind him, swelling into mass as it took shape. The gorilla hit the street with a heavy impact, concrete fracturing beneath its weight as it turned toward Kiara.

  Kiara glanced at it.

  Closed one eye again.

  Her gaze flicked sideways, locking onto a bus abandoned at the intersection nearby.

  She lifted one hand.

  And flicked.

  The bus tore free from the street as if it weighed nothing, launched sideways in a blur of metal and shattered glass. It collided with the shadow gorilla in a concussive crash, obliterating the creature in a spray of darkness and debris.

  Kiara smiled faintly.

  “Wow,” she said. “That was rude.”

  Victor didn’t smile back.

  Shadows slid along the ground toward her, low and fast, multiple shapes moving in coordination.

  Kiara raised her hand, palm outward.

  Closed one eye.

  And slapped.

  The incoming shadows snapped sideways, launched back the way they’d come, tearing through wreckage and collapsing into nothing against distant walls.

  She looked at Victor again, head tilted.

  “I’m going to want that case,” she said. “So let’s not make this annoying.”

  Victor’s jaw tightened. He raised his arms, shadows pulling inward, coiling, preparing—

  One eye slid shut and then Kiara closed her hand.

  Not around him.

  At him.

  Victor’s body locked mid-motion as pressure slammed in from every direction. His feet left the ground. His breath crushed out of his lungs in a sharp, involuntary sound.

  The case slipped from his grasp and hit the street below with a hollow thud.

  Kiara relaxed her grip slightly.

  “Good boy,” she said.

  Victor tried to move. Tried to pull shadows in to shield himself.

  Kiara didn’t let him finish.

  She wound her arm back, casual, like someone about to throw a baseball.

  And threw.

  Victor vanished through the side of a nearby building, glass and concrete exploding outward as his body tore through multiple floors before disappearing into the interior with a distant, thunderous crash.

  Silence followed.

  Kiara walked over to the case, bent down, and picked it up.

  She turned once, scanning the street, the rooftops, the broken spaces where predators had just learned there were limits to cleverness.

  “Next time,” she said lightly, “don’t try to hurt girls who mind their own business.”

  Then she turned and walked away, the case hanging comfortably at her side, the city still settling around her like it had simply been corrected.