Page 52

My brain barely had time to process before he moved.

One second he was standing there, unbothered—the next, he was on me.

A sharp, twisting motion of his wrist sent a blade of water slicing through the air, catching me across the ribs.

It hit like a steel whip, knocking the breath from my lungs.

I staggered, barely twisting away before another tendril lashed out, slamming me back into the wall hard enough to make my teeth rattle.

I hit the floor, gasping. The corridor’s dim light reflected off the water as it disappeared through the grated floor currently pressing into my face.

I watched as some reversed direction, rippling unnaturally as it slithered toward my wrists and ankles.

I tried to roll, tried to push myself up, but the second I moved, the water snapped tight, pinning me to the ground.

He loomed over me, perfectly composed, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve like this was nothing more than an inconvenience. “You rely too much on raw power,” he murmured, voice smooth, unhurried. “That has its limits.”

He’d never seen power like mine. I could feel my implants humming. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used so much, and pain fractured through my cheekbone as they overloaded. But I held it all as I heard those footsteps ringing closer and closer.

I waited until the steps were right up next to me—then I let it all burn through me. My face scalded as all the surrounding water vaporized, and I couldn’t hear anything over the tunnel nearly collapsing in on itself.

I went until I had nothing left to give. I couldn’t have even flickered a spark if my life depended on it. The steam settled, and an eerie quiet settled over me, until all I heard was my labored breathing and the pounding of my heart.

An icy hand seized me by the back of my neck; my head spun as I was thrown against the steel wall.

“Not bad.” The suit’s cold voice almost sounded amused as he knelt in front of me, his dark eyes scanning my face. He looked immaculate—not a hair out of place. What the fuck was this guy?

“Just another corporate shill,” he said, like he could read my mind. Fuck, maybe he could. No, I’d said it out loud.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Are you going to beg me for your life, like the others?” The question passed between his soft lips like he was asking me the time of day.

“Fuck you,” I gritted out, my vision still blurred as I tried to get any of my limbs to move.

“You will. They always do.” He flicked his fingers, and a small pipe near my head burst open. It let out barely a trickle of water, and the man frowned.

He shook his head—and then I screamed as what felt like a million ants crawled over my still-bleeding stomach. I clutched the wound as blood seeped through my fingers, running up my chest.

No fucking way. My heart started beating erratically again as my own blood crept up my neck and into my mouth.

The hot, metallic taste coated my throat, and I thrashed, trying to claw the liquid away, trying to summon any of my goddamn Flux, but there was nothing.

I gagged, my lungs beginning to fill, my head spinning as he drowned me.

He stood up as I collapsed onto my side, his eyes never leaving me. My vision turned black.

“Beg.”

I was dying, no doubt about it—but I wouldn’t give this fucker the satisfaction. If he was going to take my life, he couldn’t have my soul too.

I flipped him off and laughed—or tried to—but it came out as a horrible, bubbling sound as the darkness closed in around me.

“Interesting,” he said, and the last thing I saw was him flicking his fingers again.

Pain like razor blades slicing me from the inside out shot through my lungs and throat.

Sweet, vibrant pain that meant I was still alive.

Then I was coughing. I coughed again and again, my sides aching, until I heaved blood and bile all over the floor in front of me.

But there was air. I gulped as much as I could and coughed again, my limbs shaking with adrenaline.

I pressed my forehead to that sick, hot mess on the floor, unable to push myself up.

But I was alive. Breathing. Still fucking breathing.

I don’t know how long I lay there, but no cold hands or hot blood found me. Eventually, I pushed myself up and saw him—still standing at the end of the tunnel, just as he had been before. He had his back to me.

Legs shaking, I walked toward him, pulled by fear or something deeper. I should’ve run, but something inside me knew we’d reached some sort of truce. I reached his side, hobbling, and he didn’t even acknowledge me.

He was standing on a catwalk that overlooked the most open part of the underworld, a massive tunnel that had lived another life decades ago as a sewer for another city, the one that died to be reborn as Neo Stellaris.

Three hundred feet below, civilians swirled about.

The Kitsune owned the underworld, but even emperors needed people to rule.

Shops and stalls lined the massive chambers, branching in every direction into apartments and businesses.

In the center of it all, some kids played a game with a ball.

I thought about Ishi then, about me, raised in this buried city.

No light, no air. Just the fumes so graciously granted to us by the city above.

Mold grew on everything. The whole place was always damp, reeking of mildew and toxins.

I couldn’t hear it from here, but I knew every one of those kids was wheezing as they chased that ball.

The suit just stared down at the metropolis, a calm look on his face. I reached into my jacket and pulled out my VaPurr, taking a long drag to settle the vibration of my implants and dull the pain from my still-bleeding stomach.

“What do you think comes after death?” His words were soft, but they cut through the static hum of the tunnel like a knife.

I shrugged, leaning over the catwalk railing as I blew smoke into the damp air. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. Nothing to it. Black void.”

“But you were not afraid to die?” He still didn’t look at me.

“Scared shitless, actually. But what can you do in the face of the inevitable?” Funny, the things you’d say to a complete stranger who almost nulled you.

“So you don’t believe in hell?”

I gave him a look, even though his eyes never met mind. “Compa, look around. We’re already in hell.”

He let out a soft laugh—not menacing, not angry. Fragile, even. “Did you know the Mayans believed that the underworld wasn’t fire and brimstone, but a deep, endless well? Xibalba—a place of fear so vast no light could escape.”

“Thanks for the history lesson, but what—”

A distinctly metallic ping sounded near my ear as a screw flew off the nearest pipe. It groaned and then snapped as water forced its way out. Every pipe overhead burst in a torrent.

Aquatekniks were often viewed as weak. Their environment restricted them because they needed that element to wield their Flux. Hell, I hadn’t even fathomed this suit could’ve been aquateknik when I was hunting him. I never made that mistake again.

At first, there were screams echoing through the enclosed space of the underground. But slowly, they faded into nothing—nothing but the white noise of water cascading down into the pool below, swallowing all the light in a black and endless void. The only light that remained was above our heads.

He walked toward me and placed a hand on my shoulder as he passed. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His eyes mirrored the water below—deep and dead.

He held out his hand, a matte black card pinched between his first two gloved fingers. My hand moved without conscious thought as I took it from him. I didn’t hear him walk away over the endless silence of the pit below as I clung to the railing in front of me.

I tried to wake up then. I could feel consciousness calling to me, but something pulled me deeper into the abyss—into a memory I hadn’t let myself think about. Not ever.

I waded through the water, not thinking about the bacteria and toxins swirling within.

I didn’t care.

The door to the apartment was cracked open, debris wedged in the narrow gap. I shoved against the flimsy material and it crumbled, soaked beyond recovery. I stepped past the wreckage into the kitchen I’d known all my life.

“Ishi…” My voice was quiet, because I already knew there wouldn’t be an answer.

Small bodies floated face down in the living room. I didn’t look at them.

I didn’t care.

The refrigerator had tipped over, trapping my mother beneath it. A pipe pierced her stomach, the filthy water around her darkening as her lifeblood oozed out. In her arms, the baby.

I didn’t care. I didn’t even know why I was there.

Then she coughed, her body shuddering. There must have been an air pocket in the refrigerator that had lasted until the water receded.

“Cyanos…that you?” She was pinned and couldn’t see me. I lifted the appliance off her, and her face was already paler than death.

“Kasan…”

“Your sister—get her out. Get them all out.” She held the very dead baby out to me. “Take them, Cyanos.”

“Mama…”

She pressed the cold, stiff body into my arms.

Her hand came up to my face and I flinched, bracing for the strike. She was so much smaller than me—had been since I was twelve—but my body still carried those memories. Instead, her icy hand cupped my jaw.

“You were always my favorite, you know? My little blue angel.”

She let out one more shuddering breath, and her eyes went dark.

And I didn’t fucking care, as water ran down my face, my eyes burning.

I didn’t fucking care.

I don’t know how much time had passed before I finally broke away from that sight.

Everything between then and me standing back at ground level, looking up at the neon-infected sky, was black—my mind knowing I had no desire to remember.

I looked up at those beams of light, ad after ad after ad, scrolling into the heavens. The world I knew was gone.

I was the most free I’d ever been.

Rain poured down my face, washing away the sins of everything that had happened underground. I could have gone anywhere. Been anyone. I was free—to live with everything I’d done, with all the memories that, if I looked at too closely, would eat me alive.

So I did the only thing I could. The only thing I’d ever done: move forward without looking back.

I didn’t know how to feel anything but anger—pure rage.

And I knew it would destroy me, burn me to a crisp from the inside out.

I needed a conduit. Someone to guide it, just enough, so I could survive another day.

I tapped the black card to the side of my Vysor, and only a few words appeared:

Chuck Texcucano

POM Security

589.3443245.33467

I called the number and sold my soul to a new master, rather than suffer infinite possibility alone. I gave in to what I already knew I was.

I had power. And people would always fear me.

That made me the perfect weapon. Something for someone else to control.

A kaijin. A ghost. But never human. Never a man.