Dante

  I look up at Destiny through narrowed eyes.

  I’m not as completely at her mercy as she imagines, but that’s a card to hold, not to play. For now, I need to learn what I can while she has me down and helpless – or thinks she does.

  “Who are you?” I gasp out. “What do you want?” I don’t have to fake being winded. Her barrage of attacks was insane, and I’m almost surprised to be conscious. Even being what I am.

  Destiny takes a cautious step back, then smiles as she considers me. “’Who’ is not important. Just understand we’ve been watching you. We’ve sown our seeds and now reap our harvest. You’ll see the beauty of it, soon enough.”

  “Once you’ve brainwashed me,” I rasp. I almost feel like I’m overdoing it, but between the beating I just took and the drugs and sigils floating in the air, I need more than a moment to recover – or at least to plan. Destiny is out of reach, and her drones are pointed straight at me, ready to open up if I make a wrong move, no matter which way I jump.

  I have a knack for tactics and strategy, but really, even an idiot could figure that out.

  And even the thought of moving against her sends a buzz like static through my brain, and makes my muscles feel like lead. Which might mean even this brief exposure to her sigils is catching up to me.

  “Enough talk,” a voice snapped from behind me.

  A tall younger guy walks into my line of sight, tan, muscular, and his exposed arms traced with tattoos looking eerily like the symbols scrawled in the air around us. He doesn’t get too close to me, either, though closer than Destiny, and his cold blue eyes stare down warily from beneath a shock of spiky black hair. Something flashes in his right hand. I realize he’s carrying a saber hilt with a silvery guard and a shimmering blade of an almost invisible white energy.

  “You’ll come to us on your own, soon enough,” the newcomer tells me. “But we don’t have time for this.” He glances at Destiny. “Either get him moving under his own power, or bag him up. We need to get him back. The others will be here soon, and I won’t keep them waiting.” He raises the transparent blade and points it straight at Dante’s face, the point almost touching his nose. “Stay down,” he warns.

  “I’m on it, Escalante,” Destiny replied. “Just getting him under control.”

  “Get him under or put him under,” Escalante snaps. “Time’s up.”

  Just then, a white sphere the size of a baseball rolls out of the shadows in a long, curving arc towards the spot where I’m still kneeling, and a wry voice speaks all around us. “Your time, anyway.”

  All across the rolling ball, brilliant points light up, and suddenly the air is full of a silver mist, glowing with fierce new sigils in actinic blue and deep purple, somehow driving Destiny’s symbols back into shadow with their brilliance.

  And just as suddenly, the buzz in my brain and the lethargy in my limbs slips away. A double “pfft!” sounds in the alley, and both of Destiny’s drones drop, their carapaces crackling with lightning.

  “What?!” Destiny cries out. Escalante says nothing, but whips his sword away from my face and then slashes down once, twice, cutting right through my shoulders as easily as parting smoke.

  I bite back a cry at the stinging edge slicing through my shoulders as my arms drop, nerveless. I glance frantically back and forth but am shocked to see they’re still attached, and not even a trace of blood. But I can not feel them, and they hang limp, as if paralyzed. The ghostly saber seems to grow fiercely brighter, the edges looking impossibly sharp as its wielder turns away.

  A white tendril lashes out from somewhere out of sight, curling around Escalante’s arm like a bullwhip and yanking him away from me even as his sword blazes brighter still. With a contemptuous slash he cuts through the pale strand. He gives me one last glance as he towers over me.

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  Escalante ignores me and whirls towards the back of the alley, lunging, his sword slicing through a new floating drone now almost on top of us. A crackle of blue-white electricity bursts from the shell which I notice is another perfect white sphere up until the moment the other man bisects it.

  Destiny seems shaken by the new sigils floating all around, flinching back from them. She looks away, raising an arm defensively as she taps desperately on a smartwatch as if trying to call out or call something up. Either way, nothing happens.

  Flashes of angry light burst around Escalante as he advances, and I realize I have the barest moment to act, incapacitated or not. My arms feel like something vital has been disrupted within them, but instinctively I fight back, imagining living energies surging back into them from my vital core. My chi, normally serene, rages like a volcano as power erupts into my arms and legs. But I can take it.

  The complete numbness fades, replaced by the stinging of a hundred angry hornets. But at least I can feel my arms, now, and the stings are a reminder. Several tiny taser drones cling to both of my arms, but seem inert as well, as if the power has gone out of all of them. I decide to chance dealing with them while I can, but before I can act, Destiny snaps her fingers. This time – instead of disappearing and reappearing – I just see a blur right before her foot catches me in the side. I can’t even twitch an arm in defense.

  Still on one knee, I roll with the momentum of her kick and lurch into the brick wall next to me with a groan – and a plan. My right arm’s hidden from Destiny’s panicked gaze by my body, and I immediately scrape that limp arm along the brick and mortar, grinding the minidrones against it until they fall away. “Wha—?” I gasp plaintively at the girl. Her gaze shoots from me to her smartwatch to where Escalante is charging down the alley, clearly trying to decide which is most urgent.

  I pretend to try to stand, fake a stumble and slam back into the wall on my left side, scraping free the remaining minidrones on my left arm and then the few still clinging to my shirt. I try to ball my hands into fists, even knowing it will be a tell to Destiny and Escalante once I can, but my fingers barely twitch. I fiercely imagine forcing even more energy into my arms, though they already burn incandescent in my inner sight, as my chi burns through every cell, and I wish I’d paid more attention to my inborn energies when practicing martial arts. Practical skills mean nothing when you can’t move.

  Destiny ignores me, punching something vengefully into her smartwatch. Escalante’s transparent saber rings out, slashing through three more white drones as he hurtles forward towards an unseen foe.

  On the other side of the alley, something in the wall near Destiny moves, and I realize the wall is shimmering, almost as though it too was a hologram. And then that something fires, with a sound like a huge hammer slamming into a sheet of rubber.

  My eyes can just pick up a ripple through the motes and silver dust floating down the alley, passing between me and Escalante, flowing deeper into darkness, and then slamming into a sheath of silver – a shroud of hoverbots just where the shadows come together. One forming the silhouette of a person out of tiny drones before the ring of compressed air slams into them and through them, scattering scrap and shrapnel in its wake.

  “Vortex cannon,” a girl’s voice says, amused. “Not bad.”

  The silver dust around us flares into silver-white fire and then sweeps over us all. For a moment, I can see no one. I take advantage of the cover to rise to my feet and slip towards Destiny, fists clenching as life returns to my arms.

  Just as quickly, the silver-white nimbus fades out, and I’m facing the girl who started this whole confrontation. Destiny jumps, her hand suddenly lighting up again with the tell-tale sparks of a supercharged taser, and she strikes out instinctively. I dodge as easily as I breathe.

  Another “pfft” sounds, and the holographic stretch of wall firing vortices of air fades away, replaced by another drone toppling out of the no-longer-concealed alcove.

  I hear a “twang” followed by a “thwap” as Destiny swings her electrified fist towards me again, and a white plastic dart with a suction cup appears just above the bridge of the girl’s nose, right between her eyes. She blinks at it, then spasms and falls as if jolted. Destiny crumples back against the wall.

  Meanwhile, the sound of slicing metal and crashing gear echoes from Escalante’s direction as he charges our newest visitor.

  But I’m back on my feet both physically and mentally, and it’s time to end this.

  A girl all in white – white shirt, white jeans, white shoes, white gloves and especially white mask – steps out of the haze of silver, two tiny white plastic guns clenched in her hands. The right one is fitted with a silencer which is, of course, also white.

  Neither is still loaded, I’m guessing, as she drops her arms and jumps back as Escalante bursts through the last of her drones. The silver haze in the air around them seems to be burning to fine ash and settling in slow motion. But nothing about the swordsman was slow.

  But I’m already moving, swift and silent. And finally angry.

  Escalante whips his sword around in a blinding arc aimed at the girl in white’s neck… only to have her duck the blade and shoot over to the wall, incredibly fast, and then bounce further back down the alley even faster. I don’t see her take a single step, but can hear a faint, whistling hiss coming from her sneakers.

  The girl’s white guns disappear, replaced with white tendrils uncoiling from her wrists which she uses to lash out at Escalante. One catches his foot as he races towards her. He half-stumbles before his saber slices through it. The other catches his sword arm and pulls hard. He’s airborne. Escalante tosses the blade to his other hand and slashes the cord, using the force of its pull to propel him closer to his foe.

  The blade blurs around in another long slash for the girl’s neck. She’s backpedaling with impossible speed, but Escalante’s faster, and suddenly intent on the kill.

  He takes a kick in the small of his back before his blade connects. Hard enough to shatter an ordinary man. He only staggers and twists in midair like a cat, bringing his saber back around to fight, but my second sidekick’s already in his face.

  The strike lands with bone-crushing force. Escalante slams back, knocked off his feet. He should fall. He should at least be hurt. Instead he backflips past the girl in white and lands on his feet. Barely shaking his head. Escalante doesn’t even look bruised. I drop into a crouch, catch up two broken but hefty drones in my hands and slam them together with immense force. And a rage I don’t have to fake.

  Blade or not, if this guy thinks he’ll hurt the girl in white, much less kill her, I’ll break him. No regrets, no quarter. And I suspect Escalante, like me, can take a lot of punishment before breaking permanently.

  Which means I’m going full out, whatever happens next.

  My expression and makeshift weapons make my intent clear, and Escalante decides not to test me. Or at least accepts the odds are no longer in his favor.

  Escalante feints a lunge towards me with his blade, and then in an impossible burst of speed runs up the side of the wall like it’s nothing, sprints along a decorative stone trim to the far end of the alley, drops down and snatches up Destiny like a throw pillow.

  He shoots me and new girl a hard look, not so much a glare, as a look of intent appraisal. Then he slips back out into the street, taking Destiny with him.

  The white-clad girl turns to me. “Follow me if you want to live.”

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