“You better show, kid.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good luck.” He disconnected from the collator, the flight deck fading away and leaving me alone in the shit with Emerald, who had gone almost irrationally calm. “Emerald?”

  “Those reports aren’t from the rifles I saw the Sanguine mercenaries carrying,” she said. “Idiots are probably blaming each other for losing their sight. Or you.”

  “They think I would intentionally blind my friends to get to them?”

  “That’s why I called them idiots. Ben, you have to get me to a modder. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like this.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help you,” I said, pulling the device out of the muck to my hand. It still disgusted me to touch it, but I needed to know if turning it on would help. I wiped off the screen with my forearm and held down the power buttons to turn it on. It only took a moment to activate and there was only one control in the form of a huge on button that occupied most of the screen. I tapped on it and looked at Emerald. “I just activated the jammer. Did that fix your vision?”

  “Sorry, champ. The implant burns them out.”

  “Shit. I was hopeful. Find a clean place to sit down. I’ll deal with Sanguine and come back for you.”

  “I’ll be waiting. Kiss for good luck?”

  I figured in this case I should humor her. I paused beside her, putting my cheek to her lips. She kissed it and smiled. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

  Moving through the barracks, I hurried into the CIC, uncertain of what I would find. Smoke still lingered from the rounds that had been fired, the stone walls chipped with shrapnel. I spotted Quasar crouched behind the nearest workstation, one hand on the floor, the other holding onto the desk. Across from me, a killer I didn’t know held his rifle in my general direction.

  “Who is that?” he said fearfully. “Who’s there?” He didn’t wait for an answer before pulling the trigger. Bullets hit the wall a good ten feet away.

  “Quasar, sit tight,” I said. “I’ve got this.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she replied, her voice quivering a little.

  “Murdock, is that you?” Coil shouted from behind one of the other workstations. “Sheeet. All you had to do was press the button. How hard could that be?”

  “Sanguine cut the feed before I could press the button. They’re coming for me.”

  “All of a sudden? What the hell for?”

  “Apparently, the Empress put a two hundred million electro price on my head.”

  Coil thought that was hysterical. “Hot damn. Give me an eye so I can shoot you dead myself. No wonder the lookouts spotted the gunship. I bet it’s touched dirt by now.”

  “Who else is in the room?” I asked.

  The scared guy opened fire at me again, getting a little closer this time. Despite the distance, I pulled the gun from his hands, bringing it to mine. “Can you stop that?”

  “I’m here,” Matt said. “But I already couldn’t see, so…”

  “Here,” Shaq buzzed. He sounded distraught over the loss of his eyes.

  The door on the opposite side of the room opened. Ixitat had Druck on her back, carrying him into the room.

  “This sucks, this sucks, this really sucks,” Druck kept repeating.

  “Ixy, keep an eye on them,” I said. “Web the door closed once I’m out.”

  “Yesss,” she agreed. “Carefulsss.”

  I made my way past her and into the corridor, heading for the exit. I wanted to cut off Sanguine’s mercs before they could start shooting the others in the bunker.

  Fresh gunfire rang out up ahead, followed by screams. Too late. The extraction team was already moving in. Opening the last door between me and the outer blast doors, I came face-to-face with a Niflin in full combat armor and Daft Punk helmet. I pushed him away, sending him flying backward into two other members of his group, bowling them both over. I immediately charged after them.

  Activating enhance, I hit them hard, pummeling them into the walls and ripping away their helmets, exposing them to the atmosphere. They choked and fell as I barreled toward the entrance, just getting absorb up in time to block a series of incoming plasma bolts. I raced to the blast door. Four dead killers were on the ground just outside, blood seeping out of their wounds and into the cracked asphalt. A dozen Niflin mercenaries fired on me from cover behind some debris in the front of the building across the street. I continued collecting their plasma as I stepped out into the open. Was this all they could muster?

  I dispersed their attack, sending it back at them. Plasma sizzled into the debris and past, a few of the bolts making contact with the enemy and knocking them out of the fight. They stopped shooting briefly, possibly reconsidering their tactics, before resuming the onslaught. What was the point? They couldn’t get through my defenses.

  Still advancing, I caught sight of two more units moving into position on my flanks, taking cover and preparing to add their firepower to the others. No matter. I swapped absorb for reflect, redirecting the incoming fire to the sides and managing to take out three more of the fighters before they realized what was happening.

  “You want me?” I screamed, fuming over what they had done to my friends and tired of being pushed around. “You want two hundred million electro? You think you can take me? Here I am!”

  I noticed the drone out of the corner of my eye, recording the whole thing. Realizing Sanguine had cut the feed to blind everyone and then restored it so they could record this fight only served to piss me off even more. My statement only served to intensify the attack as the mercenaries on the flanks joined the group straight ahead. Nearly three dozen fighters tried to blast me at once, even though their rounds continued ricocheting off my shield.

  I realized they were trying to wear me out. They probably knew from watching me over the last couple of days that I couldn’t sustain my chaos energy without sustenance, and if they could drain me enough, I would become vulnerable. I could absorb their firepower for a lot longer right now, but they could just keep pouring it on. I had no doubt they’d brought enough ammunition to do the job.

  I needed to hit them back. Hard.

  Noting the enemy positions, I dropped to a knee, chaos energy flowing from my construct to my hand as I slammed my palm against the ground. Activating separate, I held my hand in place while the ground began to shake.

  The action used a lot of energy. In no time, my palm began to tingle and burn. Cracks appeared in the asphalt, spreading from my hand like glass hit with a rock, branching out and racing toward each of the Niflin positions. The asphalt shuddered, a sound like thunder building from beneath it, the energy piercing further into the earth than I had even planned. Within seconds, it hit the mercenaries, the ground around them shaking so hard they couldn’t keep shooting. Deeper fissures opened up all around them, swallowing a couple mercs and sending a few more over the edge as they lost their balance. Some caught hold of the fissure edges and held on for dear life until they either fell or their comrades pulled them to safety.

  My arm tingled, beginning to go numb. I couldn’t hold the attack for long. In my fury, I kept it in place, separating layers of earth, hoping the extraction team would fall into the fissures. In my fury, I didn’t notice the gunship rip around one of the taller buildings until it was too late.

  It launched a barrage of missiles, nearly a dozen screaming toward me, moving too fast for me to even try to stop. I had left reflect activated and the missiles struck it, but they weren’t like bullets. They detonated on impact with my invisible barrier, and even though the shield didn’t allow the shrapnel or the fireballs through, the force was still enough to fling me nearly fifty feet down the street. I landed roughly, tumbling end over end, my face torn open as I slid through the gravel. My concentration broken, I came to a rest on my stomach, all my sigiltech actions negated as the gunship passed overhead, no doubt ready to circle back and hit me again.

  Bleeding and in enough pain to probably have some broken bones that would take restore longer to heal than it would the road rash, my ears rang and my vision blurred. I tried to push myself up on both arms, but the right remained numb, giving way beneath me. I had pumped too much chaos energy through it, and now it would need time and restore to heal. The sigil was already working on my face, healing the lacerations and stopping the bleeding. I barely thought about that as I raised my head, seeing the nearest group of Niflin had broken cover to rush me.

  I just barely got absorb in play again, catching their plasma bolts inches away from hitting me. Down but not out, I added enhance, giving myself the strength to get back up and charge them. They came to a quick stop, fear evident in their body language as I threw myself into their midst, dispersing the plasma energy into them and taking them all out in one quick release.

  A whine in the air overhead alerted me to the gunship coming in for another pass. Looking up, I found it just as it opened fire, heavy blasters throwing huge balls of energy at me. Too big to absorb or reflect, I leaped aside, barely avoiding the rounds as they dug deep pits in the old asphalt, chewing up the ground where I had just been standing. The gunship passed overhead and disappeared behind a building, in the process of setting up for round three.

  Maybe I should have stayed in the bunker, but I’d hoped to end this quickly. I had no doubt Dominator would be here any minute. In fact, I didn’t really understand why Lyke wasn’t here already. She had to know by now I was on Merton. And with Sanguine’s feed, she could use the same hack I had to visualize the transit and make the crossing. So where was she? Too busy watching me get my ass kicked?

  Or did Succaath have something to do with it?

  There was no more time to think about it. The remaining mercenaries had recovered, and they kept a steady stream of plasma coming that I continued to reflect away. My body was getting fatigued, the chaos energy waning already, not that it had been anywhere close to full-strength before all the attack started. My first thought was to run, but I couldn’t count on Dominator remaining out of the fight indefinitely. Besides, where would I run to? The missiles had thrown me too far from the bunker, and when I glanced at it, I saw a unit of Niflin making their way inside. They would probably kill whoever remained.

  “Ixy, you’ve got incoming,” I said, tapping on my comm badge.

  “Copysss,” she replied.

  In the back of my mind, I wondered if Emerald would have finished off the extraction team by now if she weren't blind, ripping through them like a whirlwind and gun-fuing them as if she were a female John Wick. I’m not sure she would have succeeded, but she was definitely crazy enough to try. And she didn’t have sigiltech to fall back on.

  So what was I still doing here, absorbing and reflecting plasma bolts and running out of steam? Keep told me once when he took the sigiltech rings from me that if I had constant access to the catalyst I would start to use it like a crutch. Wasn’t I doing just that right now? I felt like a one or two-trick pony, leaning so heavily on sigiltech I was almost paralyzed by it. I had come out of the bunker with a gun, which I hadn’t even tried to use before the explosions knocked it out of my hands.

  Sigiltech was a tool. A helper. An upgrade to the normal human condition. In my case, a lifesaver of sorts. But it wasn't’ the be-all and end-all no matter how seductive its power could be. Despite its ability to dig through the toilet to find the jammer, it couldn’t always spare me from having to get messy.

  Finally able to rise to one knee, I dropped reflect, added enhance, and pushed, sending myself hurtling through the air, back the way I had come, across the street to the face of the building some of the mercenaries were using as cover. They fired on me along the way, but I let the plasma wash past without trying to stop it, taking a couple of weak hits before coming down a few feet ahead of them. I pulled debris from their flanks, pelting them with small bits of asphalt and distracting them as I lunged into the fray. Ripping a rifle from one of them, I elbowed him in the gut with enough force to throw him hard into the wall. Spinning, I fired point-blank into the chest of another Niflin before jumping at the third, cracking him across the helmet with the butt of the gun and knocking him out. The last one snuck up on me, jumping on my back and wrapping an arm around my neck to choke me. I grabbed his armored forearm with my hand, drawing on separate to open the fabric and then calmed-to-death to instantly kill him. He went slack and sank to the ground like an empty sack.

  That was more like it.

  I scooped up a plasma rifle and turned toward the the other unit of mercenaries who were moving cautiously through the street to get me in a better line of sight. Enhancing my vision, I aimed the rifle and fired, dropping two of them before they could find cover. The others scrambled behind a chunk of stone that had fallen off one of the buildings.

  Bad idea. Despite the distance, I reached across and pushed it, needing only to tip it over to crush them beneath it. The effort made me a little lightheaded, but the return on the investment was worth it.

  The whine of the gunship drew my attention. It swung around one of the buildings, approaching for the third time. A glance at my hand helped me judge the amount of gas left in my tank. I had to bring the ship down without damaging it if we wanted to escape. First, I needed it to slow down.

  I had done the cloaking trick before, making myself vanish so I could get past a bouncer to get some information. I repeated it now, though the shape of the combat armor made it hard for me to completely hide my face. I added dampen to it, cooling my skin so I would vanish from potential thermal sensors as well.

  It worked well enough. The gunship came in hot, but it pulled up now, the whine changing pitch and a hum forming in the base of its hull as vectoring thrusters gave way to anti-gravity controls. I walked toward it, head down, glancing to the right as one of the Niflin who had gone into the bunker came running out. Ixitat landed on his back as he cleared the door, dragging him to the ground and stabbing him through the back with her forelimb.

  The gunship pilot must have noticed her. The bow began to turn as the ship hovered a hundred feet overhead.

  Out of visual sight and with the pilot distracted, I dropped the cloak, shifting the chaos energy to excite and pull. I reached overhead, trying to make the pilot think I needed my hands to tug the vessel down. It helped me focus on forcing more output from the ship's reactor while I excited the main thrusters, pouring additional heat into the system.

  “Ixy!” I shouted. She looked up just in time to see the front of the gunship coming toward her. She bounced back into the bunker and hit the door controls, closing them tight as the ship started shooting. The plasma blasts exploded against the hardened door, creating more heat for me to add to the ship's engines.

  I knew the pilot received the critical heat warning when smoke started pouring off the thrusters. Small vents on the sides of the ship opened, trying to accelerate the pace of dissipation. In space, it would have worked. Down here, the craft couldn’t get rid of its heat faster than I was adding it. I released my pull, and the gunship rose nearly fifty feet before the hum lessened in volume and it sank back down, unable to stay aloft. Smoke billowed out of the top of it as it touched down just in front of the bunker, right beside me.

  I pulled open the outer hatch and then the airlock, entering the ship before the pilot could exit. The inside of the gunship was simple—two benches on either side, racks for gear in the center, a ramp at the rear to let them depart and a small flight deck up front. When the pilot opened the flight deck door, I was right there to greet him. His facial reaction was invisible behind his helmet visor, but the way he fell back signaled his fear.

  “You’re going to contact the mothership." I told him, "and tell them I’m dead.”

  “I will not.”

  I pushed the air surrounding his throat, cutting off his ability to breathe. “I can torture you in ways you can’t imagine. In ways no one else can.”

  He gasped, grabbing at his throat, unable to form words until I let his throat go. "All right." He lifted a palm, warning me off. "I'll do it," he said, dragging himself back on the deck until he leaned against the back of his seat. Slowly reaching behind him, he picked up a cable and plugged it into the back of his helmet.

  "Careful," I said, returning a light pressure to his throat in warning.

  “Mother One,” he said. “This is Extract One. We got him. I repeat. We got him. Mopping up now. Copy. Extract One out.” He pulled the plug back out. “Satisfied?”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Sit down, but stay facing me.”

  By the time he was back down in his seat, Ixy had left the bunker and boarded the ship. She startled me when she appeared right behind me.

  “Okay, you definitely need a bell,” I said, drawing a clacking laugh from her. “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to round up the others.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Rounding up my team was easier said than done. Since only myself and Ixy could see, it took me nearly an hour to get Emerald, Quasar, Druck, Shaq, Coil, and the idiot who had kept shooting at me onto the gunship and ready to depart. To both Emerald’s excitement and Coil’s dismay, none of the other killers appeared to have survived the fighting, including Chantal. A quick sortie with the gunship on liftoff had left the sensors clear of any signs of life, visual or sensor-based. The sightless targets had been easily neutralized by the trained mercenary forces of the extraction team.

  Although the flight control systems weren’t completely familiar to me, I had learned enough about piloting ships that weren’t Head Case to get the gunship from the ground into orbit and to the Sanguine mothership. Only three decks tall and shaped like a frisbee with thrusters attached, Mother One was a glistening silver private luxury yacht that had been converted to a floating production platform.