Chapter 5: Favor the Bold
Kira’s assessment lasted less than a second. “Move!” she hissed, grabbing the Crusher from the ground and shoving it back into my hands. It felt different now.Heavy with consequence. “Stay behind me. Do exactly what I say.”
We broke from behind the dumpster, sprinting deeper into the alley’s throat. Footsteps pounded behind us, another shot whining off brick. Kira moved like water, flowing around corners, kicking open a rusted service door. We plunged into the stomach of a residential block, a labyrinth of stained concrete and buzzing fluorescents.The air changed. It was warm, thick with the smell of boiled noodles, mildew, and the tinny thump of bass from a dozen different sources. The ceiling was a snarled web of exposed cables and leaking pipes.
“Up,” Kira commanded, heading for a stairwell. The sound of pursuit echoed from the alley entrance. They were inside.My lungs burned. My legs, weak from a lifetime of poor nutrition, screamed. But something else burned hotter: a sharp, metallic shame. Being herded like livestock. Being a problem to be solved. The word echoed in my skull, my mother’s favorite slur, the kids’ jeering chant: Nothing.Null.
We hit the third-floor landing. Kira peered over the railing down the central stairwell shaft. “Two. One covering the bottom, one coming up.” She looked at me, then at the Crusher in my trembling hands. “When he hits this landing, I’ll drop him. You run to the next floor. Find a door, any door. We need to break line of sight.”
“I can fight.” The words came out before I thought, rusty and defiant.
Her eyes flashed with irritation. “You’ve never fired that thing. The recoil will break your wrist. You’re a liability. Now be quiet and be ready to run.”
The dismissal was a physical blow. It was the same look everyone gave me. The look that said I was empty space. A null field.
But I wasn’t. I knew things. I could feel the merc coming up the stairs—not his position, but his mood. A low-grade annoyance. Routine clean-up. A faint, oily anticipation for the cred. He wasn’t afraid. He was bored. And that made him sloppy.
“He’s not expecting resistance,” I whispered, the insight spilling out. “He thinks we’re just running.”
Kira stared at me. “How could you possibly—”
Boots on concrete, methodical, close. No time.
I didn’t run. I stepped to the edge of the landing, my back against the wall. The Crusher was cold in my hands. I’d watched enforcers. I’d seen the vids. I fumbled the magazine from my pocket—the one I’d kept separate, just in case. It slid home with a solid, satisfying chunk. I chambered a round. The sound was obscenely loud in the stairwell.
Kira’s mouth opened in protest, but it was too late.
The merc rounded the corner, a bulky solo in tactical armor, his cybernetic eye scanning. He saw Kira first, his weapon coming up. He never saw me, pressed flat against the wall beside him.
My mind went silent. The world shrank to the feeling of the stock against my shoulder, the smell of oil and concrete dust, the patch of synth-leather armor over the man’s ribs. I felt his confidence, his dismissive focus on Kira. He was a object. A thing in my way.
I pulled the trigger.
The noise was a monstrous, concussive BOOM that filled the universe. It kicked like a living thing, a bone-jarring slam that wrenched my shoulder and sent white-hot pain up my neck. I staggered.
But I saw it.The impact. It wasn’t clean.
The specialized round from the Militech Crusher didn’t just puncture. It unmade. A bloom of horrific force erupted from his side. The armor cracked, then vaporized. Flesh, metal, bone—it all became a spray of pink mist and shattered composite. The force lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the opposite wall with a wet, crunching thud.
He didn’t scream. A wet, gurgling sigh escaped him as he slid down the wall, leaving a slick, dark trail. His remaining eye, the organic one, was wide open. It looked at nothing. Then it glazed over.
The buzzing in the pipes faded. The bass from the apartments seemed miles away. There was only the ringing in my ears and the thing on the floor that used to be a man.
I tasted bile. My hands were vibrating. The Crusher felt unbearably hot.
A hand gripped my arm. Kira’s. Her face was pale, her expression unreadable. “You idiot,” she breathed, but there was no heat in it. Only a stunned recognition. She looked from the corpse to me. “You just…”
The other merc below shouted, his voice echoing up the shaft. “Jax? Report!”
We ran. Not her leading, me following. We ran together, up two more flights, the sound of furious boots now charging up after us. The shock in me was hardening into something brittle and sharp. I had done that. I had erased a man. The feeling wasn’t triumph. It was a terrible, hollow weight. I had proven I was not nothing. I was a killer.
“Here!” I gasped, veering down a familiar, reeking hallway on the fifth floor. The green number 507 was scratched and faded.Home.
I fumbled with the key, my fingers slick with sweat. The electronic lock beeped red.Out of power. Of course. I slammed my palm against the manual release. It stung, but the door hissed open.
We fell inside, into the dark. I slammed the door, throwing the deadbolt—a solid piece of steel my mother had scrounged years ago. The world outside became muffled shouts and pounding fists on metal.
The apartment was a single room, divided by stained curtains. The air was close, smelling of recycled air, instant noodles, and the faint, sweet-sour scent of sleeping children. A shape stirred on a mattress in the corner.
My mother’s voice, thick with sleep and cheap synth-weed, slurred from the darkness. “Kai? That you? You wake the babies, I’ll skin you.”
Kira was a silhouette against the dim light bleeding around the window shade. She was looking at me, really looking, in the gloom of this pathetic, tiny place. At the cracked linoleum, the stacked mattresses, the single, flickering nutrient-heater. Her gaze took in the truth of my life in one devastating sweep.
My mother sat up, sudden fear in her voice. “Kai? What did you."
Kira’s eyes finally met mine again. The calculation was back, but it was mixed with something new. A raw, unmistakable respect. And a question.
The man I’d killed was down there, cooling on the concrete. His eye was still open. I could still feel his boredom, snuffed out into nothing by my finger.
I was breathing hard. I leaned against the door, feeling the thuds against my back. I looked at Kira, then towards the curtain where my siblings slept.
“I got the guns,” I said, my voice a hollow thing in the dark. “Two more. Stashed in the vent. We’re not done.”