Somewhere out of view, a mysterious stranger had shot a bullet at my feet. We trained our guns in the direction it had come from, but there were things that even our night vision couldn’t make up for. In particular, obstructions to our vantage point. There were more than enough leftover crates, debris, and miscellaneous items to hide behind. They were all garbage at this point regardless. The cracked ceiling let in a trickle of sunlight. It was evidence of decay. This place was coming apart at the seams.

  “Why don’t you come out and face us?” I asked.

  Taunting your opponent was as much an art form as it was a gamble, but we needed to take back the upper hand. Our assailant knew where we were. They could see us. We couldn’t see them. When people get overly emotional and hasty, that’s when they make mistakes. That’s when things get ugly, and I knew all too well. The shot I missed with the android girl still stuck around in my head, taunting me with the threat of failure.

  I glanced down at Cassie to my left. With the leap back I took, she was further away now, but not entirely out of reach. The teen girl was a liability. There were two things that made people either freeze or act erratically. The first was being a noncombatant, and the second was being overwhelmed. Considering how she was currently trembling at my feet, we couldn’t risk this turning deadly. We wanted to get the girl out sane, breathing, and all in one piece.

  Silence.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Not in the mood to talk?”

  Behind me, Gabe was making his way around the perimeter. It was good thinking on his part. He nodded to me, and I didn’t react, but he knew I saw him. We couldn’t let his opportunity go to waste. I needed to keep them distracted long enough for him to grab the girl.

  Silence again. It was starting to get on my nerves.

  Finally, they spoke.

  “You really are clueless, aren’t you?” they asked. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”

  “You’re not giving us much to work with,” I said.

  For whatever reason, this person seemed fixated on me. A vendetta, maybe. I’d been getting sick of those. It seemed like I collected them like badges of honor. They were the gift that kept on giving, and I hated every single one.

  “Here’s a hint,” they said. “You ruined my life.”

  From their voice alone, I couldn’t tell if they were a man or a woman. Their outdated and theatrical voice modulator made their words deep and garbled. The choice was absolutely intentional. There were easily available modulators that created completely different, realistic, and believable voices. It was the kind of tech that could trick someone without them even realizing you were pulling the wool over their eyes, but this buzzing and scrambled tone gave it away immediately. It screamed that they had something to hide.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of people accuse me of that. You’re going to have to jog my memory a bit.”

  Memories of screaming faces, justified or otherwise, flashed through my mind. I was no stranger to angry lovers, family, or victims. They never thought I did enough or, alternatively, that I should have minded my own business because they were doing just fine before I came over to rain all over their parade.

  “Are you speaking for yourself or on behalf of someone else?” I asked. “I’ve put a lot of people behind bars. I won’t deny it.”

  “You’ve done worse than that,” they said. “You killed him.”

  They crept into the light, not fully, but enough for me to make out the smooth, white mask that concealed their face. It was bisected down the center, dividing their eyes from their mouth. I had expected theatrics, but I hadn’t expected their long, flowing hair. I understood now what Cassie meant when she whispered the word ‘again’ to me. For her, this was the second time. Whoever this was, they had beaten us to the punch and gotten to her before us.

  “But he’ll never stay dead,” they continued. “Not now. Not ever.”

  Who was it who died for our sins and rose again? The man who truly fit that description was the one and only Jesus Christ. But Jesus, the son of God, rose after three days to sit by the side of his father, and I sure as hell hadn’t killed him. So who did that leave? A false god. An ugly thing. There was also one of those.

  “Zenith,” I said, the taste bitter on my tongue.

  The hair fell from their mask as they leaned forward. A sloppy rendition of the eye of providence painted in a bloody red peeked out from behind the loose strands. The long sleeves they wore hid their arms but not their hands. They glinted in the low light. I’d seen those hands before on the four most devout adherents of the Neo-Luminaries. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that they were one of them. The problem with that theory was that they were all dead already.

  “Was Starlight a friend of yours?” I asked, hoping to gauge their reaction.

  “Starlight?” they laughed. “Don’t insult me. She was nothing compared to me.”

  There was a jerkiness to the way they moved. It was like an animal on its last legs. Adrenaline kicked in when death came close and told it, no matter what, not to die. The drooping cadence of their movements gave away their lethargy, and the prominence of their collarbones gave away how little they ate. They were a person wasting away on nothing, but no one could live on just pretty dreams and sunlight, at least not forever.

  "But you did know her," I said.

  “Do you have any idea how much I hate you?” they shot back.

  I didn’t respond to that; I didn’t need to. They could see me thinking. The gears were whirring round and round, trying to piece everything together. To put it bluntly, I could guess, and they weren’t exactly being subtle about it either way. They stalked me like an animal, pacing back and forth from the ledge where they stood.

  “You were there, weren’t you?” I asked. “On the final night.”

  “Did it take you this long to figure it out?” they scoffed. “I don’t know what he saw in you.”

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  “Saw in me?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware he saw anything at all. He seemed more like the kind of guy who liked looking at his own reflection.”

  Now that got a reaction. They jerked, tearing off the bottom half of their mask, revealing a pale, gaunt face. Their thinness made their jaw look too prominent on their face. Then they laughed, and when they did, they did it with their true voice. Our mystery assailant was a woman.

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” she asked.

  She took a step closer, looming over me from her perch. There was a wildness in her movement. A tremor. She bared her teeth like an animal, hissing through the space between them.

  “Well, you can’t fool me. I know what you are!” she seethed.

  “Then why don’t you come down here and show me?” I asked.

  Only too happy to comply, she leaped down and landed neatly on her legs. Almost too neatly. It should have been clumsy, ugly, and uncoordinated, but she fell with the lightest step. I was starting to think her legs were artificial too. Was there anything original left of her? Then we were face-to-face. Come hell or high water, we were stuck with each other, so we might as well have gotten comfortable.

  “People like you think you’re better than the rest of us. Does it make you feel big hiding behind your little badge?” she asked.

  She stalked closer to me.

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like for the rest of us?” she asked.

  Cassie whimpered behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, catching Gabe’s silhouette creeping in along the perimeter. Good thinking. Our assailant was worked up and distracted. If we could keep her that way, we’d have the girl safe and sound before she even noticed. Out of sight, out of mind.

  My Iris buzzed in my ear. Static. With concentration, I could make out Ethan’s voice, but all of his words sounded like gibberish. The construction of this place must have been blocking our signal somehow. We weren’t going to be able to call for help. The odds weren’t bad. She was alone as far as we could tell, and her physique was sickly, but I couldn’t underestimate her. I made that mistake before, and I had my new arm to show for it.

  “This is more than just a game to you, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wouldn’t need the girl for that.”

  “I don’t need her at all,” she said. “But I saw an opportunity, and I took it. This is what it takes to make bitches like you listen to bitches like me.”

  I could feel her anger bubbling through the surface. There was a candid honesty in the way she spoke. We weren’t exactly subtle stomping around like we owned the place. Someone who lived down here would have had ample opportunity to see the android come and go and guess what we were looking for.

  “You followed us,” I said.

  “You didn’t really think that was the only way in, did you?” she asked. “You’re just visiting. I live here.”

  You didn’t survive long in places like this without learning to keep an eye out. Her modifications wouldn’t have come cheap. Someone like her must have learned to play dirty. Crime, underhanded tactics, and the more unsavory parts of the red-light district paid more than most clean professions ever would.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t belong here. Do you?”

  “I do what I have to,” she scowled.

  Gabe pinged me. He was within reach of the girl. The woman in front of us certainly hadn’t noticed. We were in the clear. Despite all her posturing, she didn’t seem to want us dead. I had a feeling she was bluffing and wasn’t as much of a threat as she was pretending to be. Tension bled from my shoulders, and I could almost breathe again.

  “You think I’m a joke, don’t you?” she asked. “You think this is funny.”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing?” I asked.

  Maybe she was sharper than she looked. The way I saw it, she was a subpar imposter acting like a puffed-up brat trying to manufacture some sort of fucked-up, one-sided rivalry. She wanted to pick up where Zenith left off, but she didn’t have his vision. She didn’t have a plan. This was purely impulse. The stars aligned, and she made her move. Even her modifications were just posturing. She didn’t know what she needed them for, and she had no plans to put them to work.

  “Admit it!” she screamed. “It’s all over your face. You’re not scared, you’re fucking bored!”

  “Bored?” I asked. “Is that what you think this is?”

  My hands were still gripping my gun firmly, and my aim was steadily fixed on her torso. This was projection at its finest, not that she noticed. They never did.

  “I loved him,” she spat, continuing on with her one-sided argument. “And you. You! You killed the only man who ever looked at me as more than a collection of broken parts.”

  I really doubted that. What Zenith was good at was selling an illusion, all smoke and mirrors, just like a good magician. He gave people what they wanted to see — beautiful, immaterial, and paper-thin.

  “Even if you took us down, it wouldn’t make him love you,” I said.

  “Shut up,” she hissed.

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “You don’t know anything!” she cried. “Don’t look down on me!”

  Her eyes burned. That was the kind of hatred that ran red hot, restrained under pressure, cultivated with a long history of pain. No, this wasn’t new, and it probably wasn’t about me either. This was historical. The cracks likely started to show even before she met Zenith.

  She lunged at me, grabbing my weapon with both hands. Not one to back down, I wrestled for it with her. My world turned sideways. We hit the ground — hard.

  “What do you even need this for?” she growled. “You’re not in danger, are you? Are you?”

  She looked like a rabid animal above me, snarling and baring her teeth. My head swam, and stars burst across my vision as my head made impact with the cold, hard ground. Indistinctly, I heard her scream.

  “I’m not a threat, am I?” she asked. “I’m nobody. I’m nothing.”

  I couldn’t think straight. My subconscious kept me fighting for my weapon like a lifeline. My knuckles burned white around the grip, twisting it left and right, trying to regain control of the situation. In retaliation, she crunched the gun in her hands. My hands went lax seeing my pride and joy turned into scrap metal, and she took the opportunity to wrench the damn thing and hurl it across the floor.

  “Answer me,” she growled. “What am I to you?”

  A shot landed a few feet away, then two more in quick succession. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a blurred image of Gabe struggling with our missing girl. Her hands grabbed at his gun as she shrieked and flailed in his arms, struggling uselessly against his broad chest. She was no match for him physically, but the look in his eyes told me she’d taken a hit to his resolve. They showed a conflicted, wavering sorrow.

  “No,” she sobbed. “No more! Please...”

  Another shot landed, no closer than before. Then another. Then another.

  “I don’t want anyone to die... Not again… Not again…” she trailed off, repeating those two words over and over like some sort of twisted mantra.

  An earth-shattering sound boomed from my side. The woman once above me was gone. Her destination was across the room. Her shoulder slammed against the pillar once more. Dissatisfied with just a crack, she tore at it like an animal, breaking off chunks and hurling them to the side. They crashed into the walls around us. The ceiling groaned. As above, so below. The ground rumbled under my feet.

  “I’m done,” she shrieked. “If I can’t make you understand, then I’m going to make you remember my name instead!”

  Her words bled into the chaos, drowned out by the growing destruction around us. It was too late; our moment of opportunity was over, gone in the blink of an eye. The beam gave way, and then the rest exploded in a cascade. Sprays of dust and debris filled the air, choking out our lungs and obscuring her from view. I was frozen again, and I hated myself for it. Everything blurred. The world around me spun. Failure. Again. Again. Again.

  Outside my field of focus, a strong hand grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. My feet moved on their own. Faster and faster and faster. Soon we were sprinting toward that crack in the ceiling like damned souls reaching for heaven. A slab of concrete fell from above, clipping my shoulder. Blood gushed, but I didn’t feel it. A chunk of rubble headed for the girl, and I stuck out my arm reflexively. I felt the synthetic material crunch, and then I didn’t feel that either.

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