Chương 4: Unwelcome Guest

Kelly lunged, and every gun present raised, moving from the ground to a position that roughly translated to'kill her.' The moment stretched—the approaching man's finger tightened on the trigger in reaction to her sudden movement, everyone else adjusting their aim—but Kelly was already inside his guard. She closed the space between them before most could react. A few had faster hands. A bullet punched through her outer thigh; the leg buckled for a half-step then held.

Another tore through her upper arm, spinning her shoulder back before momentum pulled her forward again. Both hits landed exactly where she had calculated they would when she committed to the lunge. The price of entry. Then the third bullet hit her flank, and the calculation broke. The impact shoved something deep in her abdomen out of place.

A hot, wet wrongness bloomed behind the wall of muscle, and her medical implants started screaming warnings about internal bleeding, a familiar chorus of'you might actually die'. The alerts stacked behind her eyes in a cascade of red: pressure dropping, containment unlikely, seek immediate intervention. She could feel the slow spread of blood pooling in a cavity that pressure bandages would fail to compress. For a few minutes, the leak would stay contained, a dull throb she could move through.

Then the containment would fail. The pressure would drop. The organs would begin to shut down one after another, kidneys then liver then heart, and that sequence would end the day unless she reached the facility before the first organ gave out. This is why I need my lab, the home and public augments... They're just not good enough to survive this, she thought, irritated. Kelly grabbed the gun's barrel and ripped it sideways, twisting hard enough to dislocate the man's wrist in one motion.

Momentum carried her past him to the next hit—an open-palm strike straight to Simon's throat. Simon staggered, gasping, eyes wide with surprise more than pain, but Kelly didn't stop. She never stopped. A rifle shot cracked behind her. Kelly pivoted, threw her whole weight into the turn, and wrenched Simon into the bullet's path before the sound finished echoing. Her foot hooked his ankle, killed his balance—his extra muscle meant nothing when his legs weren't under him.

The round punched through his shoulder with a wet thud. He grunted, but she barely heard it over the sound of her own laughter. Her laugh cut over the noise, sharp and bright, because that wet thud belonged to someone else. She'd left a blind spot seventy-five degrees up and to the right. On purpose. A hole she'd built into her position, waiting for something dumb enough to climb into it.

The droid scaled the barrier, jumped straight into that empty air, and aimed down from an angle any combat manual would stamp SAFE in bold letters. An angle she'd drawn for it. Kelly stabbed her transforming blade into Simon's shoulder. The polished metal caught the scene behind her—a rear-view mirror punched through a man's collarbone. She pivoted his screaming bulk toward his own crew, and her other hand threw the grenade she'd pulled three seconds ago at the airborne metal idiot. That trick?

A security officer killed her once. Lesson burned into her skull: pull grenades before you need them. Gives the poor bastard on the receiving end zero time to do anything but turn into shrapnel.

"God, this is fun," she said, and slammed her elbow into Simon's wound as the droid hit the ground in flames.

"You should've seen how the last fight went the first ten times. Spoiler—way worse for me. But I learn fast." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Simon snarled, augmented muscles fighting against her grip. He was stronger—augmented. But she had taken him by surprise, the whole exchange compressed to less than a second. His arm tore forward, nearly breaking her grip.

"You're insane." Kelly yanked him forward and kicked the back of his knee, using his own weight to send him stumbling off-balance, his body positioned between the guns and her. She tilted her head by his ear.

"Nah. Just stubborn." Then, turning toward his men, a rifle in each hand—one leveled at the group, the other pressed to Simon's temple.

"Alright, gentlemen," she said, flexing her fingers, "I've got twenty minutes—maybe forty tops before this becomes a big waste of time and I fall flat, dead from internal bleeding and organ failure," a leaky hourglass in her guts, sand spilling red. She could feel her strength fading by the second, her mind whirring. Kelly's smile pulled tight across her teeth, a red grin that matched the stain spreading down her side.

She kept one rifle shoved against Simon's temple, the other leveled at the semicircle of his men, and the muzzles in front of her dipped and rose like they were taking a vote. A kid with a bandolier and sweat dripping into his eyes half-squeezed his trigger, then his neighbor grabbed his forearm and shook his head. Simon's own breath hitched against the barrel—he could feel the cold metal, she could feel his pulse through it. His men traded glances that said one thing.

They were stuck in the world's dumbest equation: shoot and risk killing their boss, or hesitate and let the lunatic bleeding out in front of them decide how this ended. For a second, nobody moved. Then the sky burned. Kelly didn't have to look up. She already knew what kind of people could afford to fly. The sky had turned into a problem. Too many things in it wanted to kill you. The flying creatures people had started calling dragons and other, millennia-old names had made air travel an expensive gamble.

Anything that wasn't armed to the teeth with cutting-edge firepower had a decent chance of getting ripped out of the sky and turned into flaming wreckage. Which meant most transport stayed on the ground. That made it easy to hear the incoming ship before it arrived. The hum of high-grade propulsion, the shift in air pressure, the low, bone-deep vibration of something expensive moving fast.

A sleek transport craft descended hard, engines kicking up a storm of dust and debris as it slowed just enough to deploy its cargo. Five figures dropped onto the pavement—with full tactical gear, high-end augments layered into their bodies, movements so precise they barely disturbed the rubble beneath them—enhancements no civilian could afford. Their helmets reflected the carnage around them, their armor calibrated to be as much a message as it was protection. A Suicide Squad.

Kelly's lenses tagged the five figures before their boots hit the pavement—mercenary loadouts, off-world corporate signatures. Augments so high-end their powersuits could tear through anomalies like wet paper. Probably paid enough to ignore the fact that their life expectancy came with an asterisk. One of them cracked pavement with a step. Figures, Kelly thought. The elites bail, then send the collateral crew to hoover up the wierd shit.

The real prizes still on Earth—reality-warping scrap you couldn't find anywhere else. And now the goons were here to make claim. High-risk retrieval teams. Mercenaries scouring the wreckage. Simon's men tensed. The mercs didn't even glance at them. One of them scanned the barricade and gave a single, dismissive gesture forward.

"Move." Kelly didn't budge. Simon's men held position. A brief silence settled between them. The grip on triggers tightened, armour shifting against the sides. Someone cleared their throat, but no one spoke. A boot scraped against the floor, abrupt and sharp. Eyes flicked toward it, then back to the targets just as quickly. The tension was thick, and Kelly felt the familiar ripple of'this is about to go to shit' settle in her gut. Kelly subtly rolled her shoulders, still weighing the odds.

Then the barricade exploded. Something massive ripped through the wreckage, scattering cars, bodies, and steel like paper. Its head eclipsed the second-story windows, its flesh a patchwork of cracked granite, and each step sent a tremor through the pavement as if the street was flinching. Fifteen feet tall, built like a moving fortress, it crashed forward with the force of a thing that had never been stopped and moved with the strength of a being that only knew fear as something that smelled delicious.

It was a troll.