It blurred, One second it was across the split. The next it was in front of Rhea, blade already halfway through a motion I could not track. She moved of course she did, she met it at an angle that should have robbed it of force but it didn't.
The impact went through her arm and into me. Her sword shrieked against the flat. Sparks guttered in the steam like fireflies drowning. The figure eases pressure,curious like it was testing the thickeness of paper like a finger.
"Rhea!" I lunged forward, which was brave but also useless. The gauntlet surged on my fist in a tired but gallant gasp. I slammed it into the things cloak.
I hit not just darkness, it felt like punching a shadow with muscle memory. Pain crawled up my knuckles in threads.
The figure looked at me,not the way fighters looked at one another but the way collectors look at items they've been hunting for a long lovely time and It's ember eyes warmed at me
"Don't," Alma pleaded. "Don't touch it, it'll map you…don't let it map you.."
"Map?" I said, because repeat a scary word and maybe it becomes less scary? Bummer! No it doesn't
"Master," Alma said and the last syllable skittered, "it's a kernel predator. It eats systems and wears them. If it gets a full template of me, it'll print me." she did the smallest laugh "then I'm just…software and I'm not."
The figure's free hand came up with an open palm towards me. The air between us wrinkled like heat haze but sharper than that, as if the space itself had been gridded. The hairs on my arms stood so high they hurt.
Panels cut into my vision.
[Emergency Prompt —Consent Override]
[Do you accept foreign handshake? Y/N]
Every instinct I had that had ever kept me alive screamed No in the voice of every teacher,every guide,every Alma and my thumb twitched towards the air as if I could press the no button.
The prompt flickered and the N blurred and theY brightened.
Charlotte's laughter floated thin down the tunnel "Oh this is better than I hopped."
Rhea swore, a word I'd heard once and promised never to repeat in the decent company. She shoved off the blade, pivoted and cut low at the things knee. If it had ligaments, it didn't care, it flicked it's foot and her sword clanged off stone. It's off-hand turned a degree more toward me.
"Eiji," Alma said and it wasn't a tease, wasn't a jeer, wasn't even brave. It was a human name saying a human name. "Look at me."
I forced my eyes off the glowing Y. I found her…edge soft, eyes enormous and bright through the corruption noise. She put her palms together like prayer and it would have been funny any other time. "Say it."
"Say what?" My mouth was full.
"What you said on the cliff."
The figure's palm brightened, the prompt jittered again and the N went thin as hair.
"I trust you," I told Alma, I didn't shout it, I said it like I meant it,like it was a secret,like something a person could hold onto while falling. "Alma, I trust."
The gauntlet burned cold, my wrist wrap went from river-stone to glacier. A new overlay shouldered that bad one aside..not clean,not total but enought to breathe.
[Borrowed set— Anchor Link: Vision Lock (10s)]
[Effect: Hands are yours. Eyes are yours. No external UI injection.]
The world snapped back into my skull, the figure's palm dimmed a fraction and the Y sulked.
Rhea moved like someone who had just been given ten seconds, she shoved into the figure's space, shoulder under the blade,hips twisting and for a flicker she smiled…the terrifying kind that meant a line had been held.
"Run," she said.
I didn't argue, I grabbed Alma by instinct and yanked her forward.( She's light when she wants to be. I hate that I know that now) We sprinted along the cracked walkway, the split gaping to our left, the cistern throwing white noise around our terror. A maintenance door loomed..a rectangle of rushed hope.
The figure turned its mask of a face toward us without moving its feet, the ember eyes narrowed in a way that made the world dim. It lifted its blade like a conductor asking a symphony of hush and when it brought the flat down on the stone,the crackling glyph it had burned earlier flared back to life.
Alma screamed, it wasn't a sound for air, it was a file tearing.
Her avatar started, then dropped to her knees mid-run, hands clutching her head. Code peeled off her strips. The light under her skin went wild.
I skidded to catch her. "Alma…"
She looked up at me, through me, for one heartbeat,every tease,every cruel joke, every glittering laugh she'd used as armor burned off like chaff.
"Don't let it wear me," she whispered.
Something hit my back and I stumbled. It was Rhea, she'd taken a blow meant to fold me. She braced, bleeding from a groove across the pauldron and bodily shoved us at the door.
"Get Out!," she snarled. "if you want to live."
The door resisted the idea of being useful to me, I hammered it with my shoulder. The horned figure walked towards us through air that didn't hold it. Its blade trailing behind it, a line of quiet ruin behind the metal.
"Eiji," it said and there was...God help me! There was a fondness in it. "Don't run, you came for me."
"I really didn't come for you" I said "I really didn't come for you." I added and put all of my strength into one more hit.
The door tire open.. the river air slapped my face immediately, cold,fishy and full of honest stink. A silver dawn painted the canal silver, barges dozed like fat cats, the city breathed fresh air.
We fell onto a narrow platform and Rhea slammed the door behind us. The blade hit it from the far side,right where my head had been and the impact sent a shudder through the bricks that I knew I'd feel in my molars for the rest of my life.
The countdown in my vision lurched to [05:00] and then prttily to [04:59]
Alma sagged in my arms,heavy now so human it hurt. The corruption lines across her cheeks were like snow frost.
Boots thudded along the canal above us and shouts ricocheted between the stone and water. Charlotte's orders took the shape of nets
Rhea scanned the bank like she could will up a miracle from the river. Her eyes landed on a skiff moored badly…half sunk,tar-stained, anonymous. She grabbed the rope,yanked it close and planted a foot in the hull like she was threatening it to float away.
"Get in," she said.
I hauled Alma, she clung to me shaking. I had a new thing to be, a person you hold onto when your code is coming apart.
Rhea shoved us off, the staff wobbled,panicked then remembered to float. She took the oar like she'd done this a hundred times in lives she didn't brag about and dug us into the current. The rookery roeared somewhere behind the stone like a god arguing with a worse one and the canal took us away.
For ten breaths there was only water and oar and my lungs auditioning for other jobs and then the world remembered we owed it.
A shape leaped from the rookery level, arching out over the canal like a bad idea but with good legs. It hit the far bank, left a crater of pulverised stone and looked up. Horns,ember eyes and a cloak of dusk that had sparks
It stepped onto the water, not into, onto it. The river skinned over to hold it, ice in a summer that hadn't consented. It began to walk towards us,each step a circle of frost, each circle a map of how fucked we were.
Alma's hand spasmed in my tunic. "Don't let it map me, I'm begging you," she said, barely air.
"How?" I asked, because I am very good at helpful questions.
Her eyes found mine. "Kiss me please."
I blinked. "Alma.."
"Vision lock," she panted. "Sync spike. If we spike fast and hard, it can't draw my template. Ten seconds,I can block." A ragged smile. "Consent."
"Do it," Rhea said and if jealousy had ever lived in her, it didn't today.
The figure took another step, the skiff rocked on wake it didn't earn. The countdown pounded in my skull:[04:12].
I swallowed everything I was and wasn't and leaned in. Alma's mouth was cold and bright and tasted like error messages and rain. The world narrowed to the press of her lips, the fist of her hand in my collar,the way her broken light stitched itself across my skin.
The panels hammered open.
[Emergency Sync: Vision Lock — MAX]
[All external UI injection: DENIED (10s)]
[Balance +30. Grip +20. Heat ward +10.]
The horned figure paused, its ember eyes narrowing. The circles of ice under its feet guttered like candles in a draft..It lifted its blade.
Rhea planted her feet, oar in one hand like a spear. "Eiji! Now or never!"
Alma tore from my mouth with a gasp that might have been a laugh in kinder worlds. "Left," she croaked. "Cut behind the barge, don't blink."
We cut,the skiff kissed a barnacled hull but lived anyway. The blade came down behind us and the river reared like a hoard kicked by a ghost, the spray hit my back like thrown nails.
We cleared the barge, the figure raised its blade again.
A shadow crossed the water, the white fire dragon had returned, it slid low over the canal, so close the heat of it curled the paint on the skiff"s rim. It looked at the horned figure with a patience that had murdered empires and opened its mouth exhaling a thread of white fire that stitched the river with steam between us and it. For one exquisite moment the world was all must and roar and the taste of boiled air.
When the steam tore away, the figure was gone. No splash, no smoke,no clever quip, it just wasn't there anymore
When the steam tore, the figure was gone.
Alma sagged against me, eyes wide and very very human. "I need…a minute," she whispered and then her avatar guttered like a candle and went out
The countdown stopped at [03:33].
"Alma?" I shook the empty air like a very stupid fool.
Rhea's jaw worked up and she rowed like we had a destination to be at. "She's not gone," she said. "She's under, we need to buy her time."
"Where?" I asked, terrified.
Rhea pointed under the canal bridge ahead. Nets hung there, dark and patient. Guards were waiting above with crossbows and smugness.
"Thought there.." Rhea said.
"What? They'll kill us," I said.
"They'll try," she replied.
The dragon beat it's wings, the sound was like a city deciding to last for the day. Far behind, Charlotte screamed something about seals and sectors and bring me his system. The canal narrowed, the nets look like teeth.
My hands found the oar with Rhea's and we put our weight into it
On the bridge, a match flared as a guard lit a signal wick. For a second the smoke worte a word l didn't know how to read it
The river bent and the nets loomed and from the shadow of the bridge, a hand reached down..slim, ink-stained, witch-rings clinking and cut the first rope with a knife that hummed.
"Boat," a voice called, dry and amused. "If you want to live, duck."
We ducked, the skiff shit under the bridge into black water that smelled like spells and trouble
Behind us, the horned figure's ember eyes blinked open again in the steam.