Ugh. She hadn't been keen on the werewolf option, but circumstances hadn't allowed for precision.

  The batch she'd stabbed into herself had held stronger candidates—weird snake sinew with its bone-deep durability and dense tensile muscle fibres, larger green humanoid tendons that adapted under pressure, even that calcium-loaded swamp mutant with the explosive tongue. Any of them would've made better upgrades. But this is what came through first... hopefully her blood would intergrate the rest just as quickly, a few seconds was not too bad. [Lesser-Werewolf] it was, for now.

  "Wasn't even my top pick," she muttered, blinking as the notification flashed. Desperate times, desperate measures.

  Kelly thought the word ‘Status’ and sent a sharp mental command to her background Al: cough up the EQ score and slap it on the panel.

  [Name: Dr. Kelly Cain.Race: Human

  Title: Giantbane (II)

  Rank: F-

  EQ: 4.18

  Traits:

  - Mana Incompatibility (X),

  - The Aberration of Mana (I),

  - Primordial Blood (l),

  - Troll-Marrowed (I),

  - Lesser-Lycanthrope (I)

  Skills: ]

  Titles could boost her EQ when she equipped them. But traits? Traits couldn’t be “turned off.” They were more permanent. While titles were like her ceiling—her peak—traits were her floor, the foundation. And her foundation had risen.

  Kelly mentally nudged her background Al: "Next time my EQ spikes, let me know before anyone else does." Then she focused on the new trait—Lesser Lycanthrope.

  [Lesser Lycanthrope (Rare, I-Grade): This being's physiology is partially merged with elements of lycanthropy, granting innate, subtle enhancements aligned with werewolf biology for a permanent, minor increase in base strength. While incapable of a complete transformation, partial transformation is possible in high termed emotional circumstances; the individual's body instinctively triggers minor physiological shifts under heightened stress or adrenal stimulation. During such events, muscle density moderately increases, enhancing physical strength by a further 10%. Concurrently, sensory acuity—including sight, hearing, smell, and reflexive response times experience a parallel improvement of roughly 10%. These enhancements activate subconsciously and are tied directly to the body's natural fight-or-flight response, requiring no deliberate control or conscious effort.]

  "Fight or flight... Synthetic adrenaline, maybe?" she muttered under her breath, tone light, eyes wide and tracking. If the Trait was triggered by real stress, it could be triggered by fake stress. Panicc—chemical or virtual fear cycles, sensory overlays. Instead of the transformation being reactive, it could be permanent. She could even get rid of the dog stuff and keep the strength.

  Maybe. The trick was keeping the trigger alive.

  Her back flexed—nothing dramatic, but the fibers felt heavier. The panel called it "partial." That was like being given a jetpack and told it was a strong pair of shoes.

  But why was it just partial? That wasn't how augmentation worked. "Where's my monster?" she said quietly, teeth visible now. Her breath hitched as the effect hit—then stalled.

  She was supposed to blow up into a seven-foot wolf-thing—bones stretching, voice cracking, whole skeleton rebuilt like a weapon. Instead, the change stalled. Ten percent muscle, sharper hearing, a nose that maybe sniffed a little better. Great. She got the sampler version. The trait spliced in clean, but the output came clipped. That meant someone tampered mid-write. Either the Status Panel ran it through hacked acquisition rules, or something else rewrote the finish line. Like a firewall slamming down on anything past I-grade. Now that she was thinking about it, every Trait she picked up came through at that level. Instead of being raw, the behavior was managed. Traits came filtered. And if something was editing her biology while she worked?

  She'd find it. Then tear it out.

  The cuffs yanked her upright, locking tight across the wrist plating and grinding into half-healed nerve ports. Her skin itched weird. Muscles clenched in short bursts like her body was figuring out if it should upgrade or explode. But instead of twitching in pain, it was twitches of recalibration.

  The head scientists scurried into the room to stabilise the guy she'd given a forced evolution without healing.

  Kelly hardly payed attention, her head down in thought, mouth twitching with soft happiness at a new toy. A new variable.

  [Rare Trait: 'Lesser-Mimic' gained!]

  [Lesser-Mimic (Unique, I-Grade): This being's physiology is partially fused with mimic biology, granting them limited adaptive morphing capabilities. Upon physical contact, their body biologically registers a single type of material, temporarily enabling them to morph sections of their anatomy into this registered substance. Transformation is limited to an area approximately the size of a hand and can only replicate one touch-registered material at a time; each new material registered overwrites the previous registration.]

  Huh. Touch a thing, become the thing. Temporary, hand-sized, one at a time got it. "So basically body-mod rock-paper-scissors."

  Just a part of her body—cool. Where, though? Hands, face, spine? Because if she touched copper with her elbow and her cheek went metallic, she was filing that under medical-grade design failure. Could move it on command? Or did it just pick a spot and throw metal on skin like a drunk 3D printer?

  It only covered about a hand's worth of skin, dropped the last material every time something new made contact, and acted like that was supposed to be a limit. Which meant it had a registry hiding somewhere. And if something logged inputs, she could mess with the log. Stack fake touches, queue materials, cheat the limit. Trick it into holding more than one. She could shift the trigger zone too—move it up the arm, across her back, anywhere the mechanism didn't expect.

  The one-material rule felt like a babysitter switch, not a real boundary. All she needed was to find the crack. Once she found it, she'd tear the whole thing open and wear something impossible.

  And where exactly did it trigger—was it always the last body part that touched something, or could it pick randomly and screw her over mid-movement? Could she control where the contact got logged, or was she trusting some internal dice roll every time? She needed to test that. The guns could wait.

  Kelly squeezed her eyes shut and tried to feel it—the phantom limb, the extra nerve, that weird new sense she’d read about. The reports always made controlling extra limbs, senses, and prosthetics sound easy, as natural as snakes tasting the air or chameleons flipping colors. Simple, right? Only it wasn't. It just felt like...her. Same body, same parts, same non-response.

  "Yeah, of course it's harder than it sounds," she muttered under her breath, because heaven forbid her biology let her off the hook. Her body felt about as cooperative as a corporate ethics officer. Fine. No more guessing. ‘Background Al, show me the goddamn sensation’, she thought, sharp and clear. If her biology wanted to play coy, she'd drag it into the light kicking and screaming.

  And there it was. A tingle that bloomed at the edges of her senses. The new feeling was uncanny, like a pair of invisible hands—one that could touch any surface and one that could copy it exactly. She grinned, curious, and tested whether she could shift them around, turn them off—yes, she could move them anywhere, which instantly made her consider the sheer chaos this could cause. It was bizarre to think of them as hands at all—more like rough patches of skin that logged and mirrored materials—but nothing like what she'd experienced when controlling safety limbs.

  In her head, she named them "copy hand" and "paste hand," because why not, then she slid both onto her palms, one for capturing, one for replicating, because having them close made sense in that moment.

  She'd rig something better later, anyway.

  Her grin widened—dry, twitchy, half-feral. Not bad.

  One of the suits eyed her shifting muscles and barked for backup, scurrying out of the room.

  Smart guy. The other stayed, his expression smug. Not so smart.

  The suit stood over Kelly, shoes spotless, voice clean and dead. "What's the missing element in your formula, Dr. Voss."

  "You hit him with something engineered. It dropped him faster than our guns cleared holsters."

  He read the display fed to his lens, expression untouched. "EQ says 4.18. You've pulled it off again. Effortlessly."

  One brow lifted a fraction. "So. What did we miss this time, Dr Voss?"

  Kelly lifted one cuffed hand as though she was changing the channel, her expression so flat it practically told them to shut up and let her think.

  The head scientist crouched beside the teleporter, who twitched like someone had rewired his nerves with scrap metal. Blood leaked out of his pores in thin, sluggish threads. She slammed one knee into his shoulder, stabbed a stabilizer into his chest, and waited as his thrashing finally slowed. His eyes cracked open, half-lidded and confused, his breath coming in rough, uneven pulls.

  She stood, brushing off her hands, then threw Kelly a look like she'd prefer to inject her next.

  "He'll be sore until we get him proper healing," she said, her voice flat. "But he's stable. He'll live."

  The teleporter groaned awake, his body twitching as the serum burned through him like a live wire. He locked eyes on Kelly, face contorting into pure fury. "You fucking bitch!" he snarled, reaching for his gun.

  The gun came up, his knuckles white around the grip, as the phaser calmly placed a hand on Kelly's shoulder. Glass planes shot up from the ground, as though the lab had been built to withstand firefights, "Let me kill her, she's Vaughn scum. We'll still get paid for her dead body!" His rage boiled over as he fired off several rounds, each one aimed to kill.

  The shots passed through her like smoke, harmless and surreal. The phaser's tone stayed flat.

  "We'll get more money if she's alive. Do it later."

  The seated teleporter, still streaked with blood and trembling, shouted again, "I'M GONNA FUCKIN' KILL THAT BITCH!" and kept firing until the clip ran dry.

  Was his name Greg? He looked like a Greg. Kelly thought she'd done him a favor. A quick dose of evolution, a little screaming, a lot of blood—it wasn't charity, but hey, who said survival was free?

  "Dude," Kelly said, tilting her head slightly, "aren't you supposed to be, like, disciplined? This is very unprofessional." Her tone was light, almost breezy, as if she were calling out someone who brought the wrong slides to a meeting. She pointed at the suit standing behind Reggie and a shielding merc.

  "You could've hurt your employer." She let that hang a moment before adding, with just the faintest edge of incredulity, "Who let this guy on the team?”

  The suit sighed and stood rigid, eyes locked on Reggie, who tilted his head just enough to confirm. "Interrogate her, please. Break a few ribs if you have to, but don't kill her," the suit ordered, cold and certain. "She's high-value, not expendable unless she forces our hand."

  “No problem." Reggie spun a coin through his fingers magnetically. "Damn. A Vaughn pet project who thought she could step on the Platinum Mile and steal without consequences? Not very smart."

  Kelly slipped her 'copy hand' into her pocket, brushing against the cool, jagged edge of a metal shard. It was a sliver of diamond-hardened graphene from the hyperloop crates—scavenged after her run-in with Rook and the Obsidian mercenaries.

  As she sent a mental ping to her metal bracelet, priming it for change, Kelly turned her head slightly and fixed the Phaser beside her with a flat, measuring stare. "Alright, what do I call you?

  “Casper? Phaser Guy? No, I've got it—See-Through Mc-"

  The phaser calmly looked her in the eye. "I'm not see through—"

  The phaser pressed a finger toward Kelly's collarbone, slow and deliberate. She jerked her cuff up just in time, but his finger, still phasing, passed through the metal with no resistance. As he re-solidified, the material warped briefly before a neat, finger-sized hole appeared. He flexed the digit, shrugged. "Tell them the secret, Dr. Voss. I'm allowed to hurt you."

  Kelly raised her eyebrows, tone flat. "Actually, I think I'll call you the Fingerer. Sounds more your speed."

  He shook his head and shot a hand toward her forearm.

  Kelly thought, okay, now's the time to panic, imagining her forearm breaking off like a snapped twig once the phaser made contact. The gruesome imagery surged through her—bloodsoaked loops where she'd seen worse, felt worse, torn apart and forced to start again. The reaction hit her body like a trigger: fingernails lengthened and curved into jagged edges, teeth grew sharper against her tongue, and her pupils narrowed to slits as her muscles tightened. Her head hair stretched down in uneven strands, inch by inch, while her arms flexed with strength that felt like a wire pulling taut. The reflexive shift surged through her, flooding her with energy, heightened senses, and sharpened strength.

  [EQ: 4.18 → 4.59]

  Kelly ignored the pop-up and pinged her molecular shape-memory bracelet—the slim and dense weapon had looked harmless when wrapped tight against her wrist. One thought, and it snapped open into Light Chainsaw Mode. It was something she’d developed to—theoretically—deal with the more overpowering magical creatures. Or to deal with people who held EQ and speed scores so fast that the idea of her swinging it around as a mere enhanced level person, was like giving a newborn a knife and calling them dangerous. Mostly it just made her swings erratic.

  Before all this—the portals, the magic, the resets and madness—Kelly would’ve thought an atom chainsaw made no sense if you already had a blade that cut at the molecular level. Chainsaws scraped things away, one layer at a time. Pointless.

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  Then she faced a giant snake in the sky with scales that twisted space, and that thing in the north that still made her shudder thinking about it. Some creatures flat-out ignored reality—using ‘magic’ to skip past physics. Sometimes you needed a weapon that could cut through layers of magical bullshit just to even the playing field.

  Even with the all-cutting weapon, to some, she still wouldn’t be a threat. But to everyone else?

  She might as well have been the boogeyman. Or woman.

  The blade spun up fast, glowing at the edge, not from heat exactly, but from tearing things apart on a molecular level—too much acceleration, no resistance, like swinging into a vacuum. It sucked in air with each rotation, causing the weapon to sway dangerously against kelly's grip.

  Kelly hated using it.

  It didn't cut like a normal weapon. It didn't push through anything. It broke the bonds between atoms at high speed, so when she swung it, there was no drag or resistance, just movement.

  Like swinging in space, it could only accelerate once in motion. That was the problem. Without any feedback, the swings were too fast, too clean, and too wild. Easy to lose control. Easy to take off her own leg. She'd done it before. Worse, every second it ran, it burned through the rare materials inside—melting them, vaporizing parts of the blade, leaving less to work with. She avoided using it when she could. The accelerated material decay was bad enough, but the real issue was always number of times she'd miscalculated a swing and atomized herself out of existence.

  It was powerful and It was disposable. It was a great way to win a fight and destroy the thing doing the winning.

  And the only materials to fix it came from off-planet—so using it basically meant kissing her one universal weapon goodbye.

  But it was her best weapon for taking on Genecorp.

  In Genecorps’ upper floor lab, surrounded by combatants, a gunman who could see the future, and another phasing gunman who treated matter like a suggestion, heat radiated from Kelly’s molecular chainsaw’s glowing edge. The weapon’s new form vibrated at speeds that made it feel weightless in her grip.

  Instead of swinging through the intangible man and giving the Deadqueen’s design a test, Kelly cut the floor out from under him. One slice, one shriek, and the phaser dropped like a glitch in a physics sim—straight through the polished tile, gone mid-threat. Simpler and way funnier.

  Kelly lined up the blade to cut through the cuff on her wrist—precise, careful—and paused.

  There was a bullethole in her wrist. And two jagged gouges bled slow from her thigh, clean punctures through synth-fiber and skin. Huh. So the phaser got her after all. So did the future shooter. Sloppy. No first run was ever perfect. She'd have to remember to step back sooner next time—assuming there was a next time.

  [EQ: 4.59 → 4.18]

  [Title equipped: The Null]

  If the Title blocked precognition like it claimed, it might jam his aim too. Worth a shot.

  She'd rather lose a little strength without Giantbane than fight someone who knew her every move; that just wasn't fair.

  The gouges were closing, but way slower than they should have. Tissue knit in weak pulses, blood still streaking her leg. Troll regen was working—just overloaded. Probably too busy holding the rest of her unstable mess together to prioritize a couple clean punctures. Instant healing would've been nice. Instead, she got triage.

  That explained why she ended up with two Traits after injecting five samples. The werewolf strain had registered clean, and the mimic one must've paired with mimic DNA already floating in her blood. It implied she could only integrate one sample at a time; simple queue logic, first in, first claimed.

  Kelly sprinted for the downed teleporter, but the ten gunmen moved like a drill team—spread, aimed, fired, no hesitation. Stun discs zipped in tight arcs; she threw out her mimic ‘paste’ hand and caught a few, their charge bouncing off with a neat little ting. The rest stuck. Her limbs seized mid-step, and she hit the floor hard beside the bloody guy she'd half-murdered earlier.

  The light chainsaw stopped spinning. Accross the room, Reggie didn't even raise his voice.

  "Switch to higher voltage. She looks different. Her EQ might've spiked."

  Electric pulses locked her muscles down hard, but Kelly's mind stayed mobile—sharp, twitching, annoyed. She shifted the mimic patch mid-shock, rerouting the "paste" zone to every spot lighting her up. Rubber. Boot-grade. She'd tapped her heel before impact, just in case. One by one, the discs lost their bite and dropped off her skin with fast, satisfying clinks. The teleporter beside her twitched, eyes wide, bloody fingers scrabbling for a combat knife like she'd insulted his mother and stepped on his cat.

  She slid the copy zone up to her neck—high, out of the way, less likely to brush against stray crap mid-fight, then switched it off. It was the safest dumb idea she had. If anything bumped it, the whole stored material would get wiped and she'd be back to square one, but hey, maybe today was a no-neck-touching kind of day.

  Kelly lunged and slammed into him with the ferocity of a thrown toolbox, claws locking around his wrist before he could stab anything worth stabbing. "Seriously? You're really this mad about a little free evolution?" she spat, dragging his half-broken body toward the line of fire. He kicked and cursed like she'd ruined his birthday.

  But the gunmen were professionals, already fanned out as though they'd rehearsed it, moving in perfect sync. "Guys, could you stop being good at your jobs for one second?" she groaned, vaulting backward just as Reggie lifted a hand and the air went full microwave.

  A crack split the air—then came the bolt, fat and blinding, tearing through metal tiles and throwing blue light across every slick surface. Kelly squinted, jaw tight. Of course it had to look that cool.

  It was aimed dead-on at both her and the half-conscious psycho still swinging.

  And kelly did something different, something crazy.

  She let it hit them.

  The bolt struck with the weight of a collapsed engine, flooding her nerves with raw voltage. Her claws locked deeper into the teleporter's wrist as both their bodies seized—his spasms jerking against hers like a puppet in a shredder. Metal discs found them mid-surge and ramped it higher, chaining current through flesh and mimic skin alike. For a moment, the world became heat, pressure, and the sharp scent of burning metal.

  [Title: Fortress of Flame Grade I → II]

  [Grade II Effect: Whilst equipped, grants a 20% decrease in heat damage.]

  The teleporter gave a strangled grunt as the surge drove Kelly's claws deeper. Smoke curled from their skin. Space folded sharp around them—colors wrong, edges warping—and the world cracked sideways as they vanished.

  They reappeared mid-smoke trail, slammed half-sideways into what looked like the lab next door—scorch marks, tangled wires, chemical haze. Both were still steaming. Kelly hit the floor hard, rolled, checked for missing limbs. Her fingers twitched—empty. Great. No bracelet. "You're really unprofessional, you know that," she muttered at the heap of twitching, burnt merc beside her.

  "Fuck you," he croaked.

  She exhaled, staring at the ceiling. The light chainsaw had blinked out somewhere between planes. Wonderful. A teleporting maniac just stole her off-planet rare-alloy atom-cutter mid swing.

  Damnit.

  Under blackened lights and static haze, Kelly pushed herself upright—skin peeling in places, the sting chasing every breath. Her nerves crackled like old wiring, but the burn in her muscles felt almost nostalgic. Across the floor, the teleporter fumbled with his comms, voice slurred and ragged.

  "Target-cough—target's mobile. Lab six. She's, she's still up, what the hell—“

  His blade sparked against the ground as he tried to stand, still clenched in his shaking grip. She stopped, brow rising in mild surprise. "Still with the knife? Points for commitment."

  Then she sprinted—without flourish or delay, nothing between her and the kill but open floor.

  His hand clamped around her ankle just as she lunged to silence him, fingers locking tight like he'd been waiting for it.

  The world jolted. A flash. A pull behind the ribs.

  The teleporter's arrival spat them both out like a hiccup in space-time. They skidded sideways across the corridor tiles, inertia dragging them with all the grace of a half-loaded shopping cart slamming into a curb. Kelly landed with her boots first, shoulder second, pride somewhere after that.

  She staggered up, coughed soot, and flicked melted sleeve from her wrist. "That was your ability? You fall badly and take people with you? I've seen pizza delivery drones with more tactical control."

  She turned. Ten rifles met her. They locked onto her center mass the moment she rose. Reggie stood in front of them, posture tense, a residual static crawling under the skin of his forearms.

  They reappeared in the corridor—burnt, smoking, and dropped straight into Reggie's line of sight.

  The futuresight marksman—third from the left, crouched behind a blast panel with the predictive rifle braced to his cheek—jerked mid-adjustment, staring at his scope's warped output.

  "That's not possible," he muttered. "She's scrambled like static."

  He tried to aim again, movements uncertain. Then the futuresight marksman froze."I can't see what she'll do next… she's blank."

  Kelly stared at the many guns.

  This current run was a disaster in three acts: lack of sample acquisition, lack of prioritisation, and losing her most effective weapon. If she had played her cards right, lied in just the correct way, made the perfect sequence of actions? She could have stolen the perfect sequence of samples and turned herself into a powerhouse in a single day. Instead, she had crashed through it all in a bid to restore and prioritise her molecular stability. It led to a day that showed knowing physics didn’t mean you could outrun it. At least not on the first run.

  But at least with all their guns and tech, they still hadn't managed to catch her.

  "You're really bad at this," Kelly said flatly, meeting Reggie's gaze.

  Reggie paused. His eyes moved to the burn tracing up her collarbone, to the streaks of blistered skin and half-healed charring second-degree burns. He exhaled through his nose with the impatience of someone preparing for a customer service call.

  "We were trying to avoid property damage and keep you alive. Two goals you've apparently made personal enemies of." He tilted his head toward the crater in the wall her reappearance had caused. "And that stunt with the floor? The lab?" His tone went flat. "That's coming out of our pay."

  Reggie looked across the scorched floor, the wrecked hardware, the injured body slumped at her feet, then at her.

  "It's starting to look more cost-effective to bring you in dead."

  Shit.

  Every loop was a currency and she planned to boost interest with each breath.

  Psychological control was leverage, and she'd handed it over to a guy who shot lightning out of his wrists. Which, honestly, was just showing off.

  Kelly stood over the teleporter—Wolf-mode hot in her chest, blood too fast to waste. Her copy hand fired—one claw hardened into diamond-hardened graphene. "Sorry Greg. I promise I won't kill you next time," she said, and punched it straight through his chest, carved deep, and ripped the teleportation rig from under the ribline. She looked at it once and knew exactly what it was—inhuman, almost alien looking, impossible tech design associated with how the Deadqueen—Jellybean—designed her advanced tools. Kelly stuffed it into her coat and moved.

  "Shoot her!"

  Reggie launched off the floor as though he'd been personally insulted by gravity—tiles exploded in arcs of blue, the room humming with static tantrum as he hit the far wall running. Literally. He ran up it. Smooth, casual, electromagnetism turning him into a wall-sprinting hired gun.

  Kelly glanced back. Vertical murder-sprinting. Incredible. He really wanted her to notice him.

  Bullets curved around him mid-air, tracking Kelly with the enthusiasm of unpaid volunteers. Each round twisted air to get a better shot, her enhanced senses catching the blur.

  Then came a flash of sparks. Reggie shoved off the wall and the whole lab answered—crackling arcs tearing the panels behind him as he shot forward, limbs tight, eyes locked, zero hesitation.

  She yanked the teleporter's corpse into a front carry, holding it up like a meat umbrella. The first few bullets thunked into flesh, ribs, something that definitely wasn't hers. It slowed nothing.

  "Sorry, Greg," she muttered, casually absorbing fire through a dead guy she'd recently improved.

  Then she chucked him like a spent battery—right at Reggie's smug trajectory—and with the other hand, thumbed the teleport device still warm on her person.

  Kelly jabbed a biomechanical finger into the rig—still bloody from where she tore it out of Greg—and forced a hasty neural connection. That was only half the process. Deadtech always needed calibration; that was the standard. Without it, nothing synced cleanly—inputs scrambled, output glitched, and coordinates came out half-imagined. She could end up anywhere. But she didn't have time to care. She twisted the interface and pushed a neural command through raw, unfiltered link—and felt a bullet punch into her back as the rig warmed, hopefully missing anything important.

  Kelly reappeared mid-sprint, dead center in front of the elevator—only to find the doors sealed, locked, and bolted as though someone had welded shut her escape route out of spite. Her momentum halted with a short skid and a breath she didn't have time for. Behind her, bootsteps thundered in predictable, furious, and absolutely not-giving-up steps. She raised her voice, not even turning around. "This is getting clingy, Reggie. Start a fan club or try the head scientist!" She popped the rig open one-handed, neural lines jittering in her palm, interface still bleeding signal.

  "Ten bucks says he thinks this counts as foreplay—I’m flattered, really, but I don't date men who bring twelve rifles to a conversation!"

  Kelly barely had time to curse the elevator before a ripple passed through the wall behind her—a warping smear of flesh and phase-tech distortion—then the Phaser stepped halfway into reality, his grin already ahead of the rest of him. One arm swiped through the wall beside her, blurred at the edges, glitching through solid steel and reinforce plastic—the Deadtech hissing through atoms. "Foreplay? You're picky" he said, voice too close and too casual as he swung at her spine. "Should I be jealous of rifle boy?"

  Kelly twisted aside, rig still jittering in her grip, coat flaying where his hand passed through it. "You're not my type either," he said, tone bright, eyes wide. "But I'll try anything once."

  Kelly let out a sharp, almost delighted laugh, more amused than anything else. "Wow, look at you go. You're finally getting the hang of it." Most people just screamed, shot, or ran. Maybe all three. Boring. But this guy? He had the decency to keep the sparring verbal as well as physical, to throw something halfway clever her way. Now it felt like an actual fight, not just her steamrolling another stoic bloodthirsty anomaly-filled day.

  "Sixty points," Kelly declared, flashing a wry grin. "You're getting there, but delivery needs work."

  The teleporter rig snapped off her neural flick and dumped her behind Reggie's squad in a flash of glitchy spatial rudeness. She hit the floor already sprinting, boots skidding toward the stairwell. Cooldown symbols blinked red across the rig's side "Cooldown already? What is this, amateur hour?" Apparently, even stolen apocalypse tech got stage fright.

  Reggie's crew snapped around as one, perfectly synchronized. Very professional. Very murdery. Kelly didn't slow as she reached the door. "Twelve points for the choreography!" she yelled back, already halfway down the first flight.

  Kelly ran.

  She just needed to sync the rig, jump out, and find somewhere to tear it open in peace.

  Kelly tried to race down seventy flights, floor after floor of half-collapsed hallways, gunfire, and someone's attempt at a decorative kill tunnel. The teleporter rig finally fully synched, blinking green—limited range and that two-second cooldown, which honestly felt generous. She ducked a sonic blade, kicked a futuresight marksman down an elevator shaft (he didn't see it coming), and teleported past a barricade of Reggie's hired optimism. The Phaser came through a wall. She went through a ceiling. Synchronising with the teleporter changed everything. It was real progress.

  Kelly, now armed with stolen guns, had only made it down twenty flights before needing to cheat again—a last-ditch teleport dropped her at speed four floors below Reggie's squad. The impact jarred her knees, but there wasn't time to care. She made a mental note to grow better knees next loop.

  Corporate guards were already charging up from below, full of contract loyalty and misplaced confidence. She shot two mid-sprint, dropped a third with a flying kick that cracked armor, and kept moving, saving her next teleport for the next life or death emergency.

  Reggie tore down the stairwell, boots slamming concrete, breath short and rising with frustration.

  "God, she's so annoying. How does she move like that? Her EQ's low as hell."

  Behind him, the Phaser jogged steady, barely winded. "Shitty regeneration, good reflexes. future-gun proof. Probably switched off her pain receptors. Teleports anytime we get close to dropping her—not bad, but she wont last much longer." He smiled faintly, eyes tracking the distant gunfire below. "And I dunno. I think she's kinda funny." Then he hopped forward and phased straight through the step, vanishing down.

  Kelly jammed a reload into the magwell of her stolen, forcibly unlocked rifle, after whipping the empty mag into a guard's face hard enough to make his helmet rethink its job and his body debate whether to follow.

  Her new senses caught something buzzing wrong in the atmosphere—pressure above, sudden. The Phaser reappeared mid-air, directly overhead, arm extended, eyes lit with manic precision. "Sixty points? You make this too easy," he yelled, already firing mid-fall. He'd waited for her to reload, stayed above, guessed where she'd jump. She teleported four floors down—landing in a hard roll before rising to a sprint—but he never stopped falling, already on her.

  Kelly opened fire as she ran, voice raised cheerfully over the roar behind her. "You're great at falling, but you ever try aiming?" Two unconscious guards bounced on her shoulders like inconvenient toddlers, limbs flopping against her back with each step. Technically they were cover for her vitals—Ghost Pervert wasnt allowed to kill them, probably. Functionally they were accessories. She yanked a grenade loose with one hand and lobbed it over her shoulder without looking. "Hold that thought," she added, already diving through the gap between stairways as the explosion cracked the path behind in half.

  The explosion rocked the stairwell, its flames punched outward like the building had indigestion and terrible aim. Reggie, trailing just behind the worst of it, raised a warped slab of metal with his field, shielding most of himself and only part of his squad. Screams and cooked synth-cloth followed. The Phaser stepped straight through the fire at the fractured stairwell's edge, coat singed, jaw twitching, hairs burning and launched into the breach with a furious hiss. "I swear to god, I will personally rewire your jaw shut!" he shouted mid-leap. The burn marks on his coat made him look like he'd lost a fight with a microwave. And he'd lost a boot. Not both. Just one—which Kelly thought was way worse than losing both.

  "You're dead, Voss!" He yelled.

  Kelly ignored the flaming ghost pervert screeching somewhere behind her and dropped two guards in one motion—a sweep to the legs, a burst to the chest, done with werewolf speed and surgical boredom. She ducked behind a pillar, reloading, running the city's ‘GeneCorp escape’ options through her head mid-motion—sublevel fabricator plant? too irradiated. Sewer annex near 38th? She'd heard it was full of sludge creatures. Maybe the mag-rail depot by Madison, if the power grid was still online. Somewhere with walls that didn't open turrets or bleed when stressed would be a nice change. She needed somewhere quiet, roof access maybe, or a storage vault with good vents.

  Preferably no more high security buildings full of teeth. Kelly almost made a choice, then the Phaser shouted something from the smoke and fire like a scorned stage actor auditioning for relevance. She turned halfway, barely glancing.

  "Huh? Sorry, were you saying something important?"

  She adjusted the unconscious guard on her shoulders like a scarf, then struck a casual lean against the stairwell rail—smoke, gunfire, flaming psychopath overhead.

  "You've all been very patient, and now it's your turn to die creatively."

  She flipped her rifle over her shoulder and raised the teleporter rig high, turning it theatrically, on full display, because she was tired of running, and style mattered.

  "If you're still breathing after this, feel free to complain."