Chương 93: 92: Coordination

The stocky Stepper with the rocket-powered sledgehammer saw his chance. While Butter's attention stayed fixed on the Operative, he burst from her blind side, boosters igniting mid-swing. The hammer accelerated to impossible speed, trailing fire and superheated air as it crashed toward her head. Butter didn't dodge. She raised an elbow. BOOOOM. The impact thundered through the corridor. Shockwaves raced across the walls. Dust cascaded from the ceiling. Cracks spread beneath their feet.

The force travelled through Butter instead of stopping. It flowed across her bandages, down her arm, through her body. The blow should've flash-boiled everything it touched. Instead, her bandages drank it in, carrying every ounce of kinetic force to her waiting palm. She opened her hand. THOOOM! Compressed air erupted forward. The second Stepper behind her - already raising his blade - took the blast head-on. His armour crumpled.

He blasted through two stone pillars before vanishing into the darkness, leaving a trail of blood and shattered masonry. The Operative's eyes widened. Those bandages weren't merely durable. They were engineered to ignore blunt force entirely. Only cutting attacks could bypass them. Concussive force could be absorbed and redirected almost indefinitely, but a monomolecular edge would slice through them like cloth. The stocky Stepper recovered with a roar, rockets flaring as the sledgehammer swept around again.

Butter stepped into it. Her palm struck his ear with surgical precision. THUD. The shockwave travelled through his auditory canal into his brain. His eyes rolled back. Blood burst from his nose as his nervous system shut down. He collapsed without a sound. The sledgehammer clanged across the stone. Butter stepped over him without another glance. She hadn't used Cadenza. She never enjoyed killing. Talons were little more than walking corpses. Abominations were too dangerous to spare.

But humans - frightened, indoctrinated humans - were different. She wasn't Clock. She wasn't an assassin. She was a martial artist. Martial artists stopped people. They didn't kill them. The Operative had watched everything. Her grip tightened around her weapon. Butter's defence hadn't been improvised. She'd predicted the ambush, absorbed the strike, redirected its force, and ended two opponents in a single uninterrupted sequence.

Every movement flowed into the next with the certainty of water following the shape of a river. The Steppers stopped advancing. Five seconds of combat had taught them more than any briefing ever could. Rocket hammers. Compression waves. Instant counters. Butter cracked her neck, pink eyes calmly sweeping across the regrouped formation.... The Operative attacked first. Butter's left shoulder had already been shot. Given her physiology, it would take several minutes to heal completely.

The wound no longer posed any real danger, but it limited her range of motion enough to make her movements slightly more predictable. Butter's right fist shot toward the Operative's face like lightning, the muscles beneath her bandages tightening with explosive force. She didn't try to outrun it. She denied the distance instead. One retreating step. A twist of her hips. Her shoulders folded beneath the punch as it screamed past her cheek, tearing the air apart.

Every muscle burned just to keep pace, but forty years as an Enforcer had taught her one simple truth. You didn't beat faster opponents. You cheated. Her sai snapped open, the blades glistening beneath the corridor lights. Tiny sensor arrays hidden inside the pommels mapped Butter's movements before they finished. Every thrust completed its own trajectory almost a hundred times faster than the Operative's arm could physically swing, predictive motors correcting each strike mid-motion. Swo - swish.

The sai crossed that same distance almost a hundred times faster. The Operative herself could barely exceed Mach one hundred under maximum strain. Other Operatives with the same decades of service could move five times faster in identical suits, but she had never been quick on her feet, not even as a human. She was a brawler, not a runner. Exactly why she carried the predictive sai. They allowed her weapons to become vastly faster than she ever could. Butter had nanoseconds. The slightest mistake meant impalement.

Steel flashed. Butter slipped past the first thrust by a hair, muscles rolling beneath the black bandages as her floppy beanie ears bounced. She wasn't reacting to the sai itself. She was reacting to the Operative. Like dodging the pull of a trigger instead of the bullet. The second thrust carved through empty air where her throat had been. She twisted away, abs stretched taut across a waist so narrow it belonged more to a doll than a woman.

The third arrived before the previous motion had even finished, nearly splitting her breast open. She leaned back the instant it entered her vision. The Operative's eyes never blinked. If I blink... She'll hit me a thousand times. Butter wasn't merely fast. Her movement hovered around a thousand times the speed of sound. Her hands were worse. Her punches travelled at nearly a quarter the speed of light, born from perfect technique and ruthless efficiency. The bandages rippled beneath the violence of each strike.

White curls whipped wildly around her face, narrowed pink eyes locked in concentration, that pretty expression carrying impossible brutality. Every Jeet Kune Do interception exploded forward with enough force to shake the corridor. Wing Chun chain punches flowed seamlessly behind them until the air itself seemed to vibrate. She wasn't thinking. She didn't need to. Muscle memory had become something beyond instinct. Decades of training forced her weakened body beyond its limits. An Abomination......

that knew kung fu. The Operative had fought monsters before. Nothing like this. Butter still wasn't using the prosthetic. The alloy leg remained planted, almost idle. A single kick from that thing...... could probably knock out a Leviathan. She wasn't trying to kill them. The Operative almost laughed. Soft-hearted idiot. You're digging your own grave, fighting one-handed. She focused. Her left hand flicked open. Half a dozen matte-black pellets scattered silently across the stone between them. Butter didn't notice.

The Operative continued retreating, deliberately herding her across the corridor while the sensors inside her sai kept predicting every exchange. Butter stepped. Click. The pellets erupted. A web of electricity burst upward. Butter twisted instinctively, avoiding the worst of it, but the hesitation was enough. The current vanished. The Operative lunged. Butter reacted exactly as predicted. That was the trap. The pellets were tuned to movement.

The instant Butter sidestepped the thrust, every remaining charge erupted simultaneously, while the Operative's advance threaded perfectly through the safe gaps. The Operative's suit was fully insulated. Butter wasn't. The remaining charges activated all at once, releasing enough electricity to reduce a hippopotamus to charcoal. Butter's body seized for a moment before vibrating the current out of her muscles. A fraction was all it took. One sai punched through Butter's stomach....

The blade burst from her back in a spray of blood. Butter gritted her teeth as steel tore through her organs. The Operative didn't hesitate. She yanked sideways, intending to rip open Butter's abdomen and carve through her spine and liver. Butter's left hand shot out. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Her fingers clamped around the Operative's wrist before the motion could finish, her face tightening as pain flared beneath the bandages. Her right hand swept upward.

THUD. The edge of her palm smashed beneath the Operative's jaw. She stumbled. A fatal mistake. Butter's chain punches erupted into her face. Thu-thu-thu-thu-thu — THOOM. Each impact landed before the previous one had fully finished, hammering her jaw like a barrage of mortar shells. Her vision exploded white. Her brain rattled violently inside her skull. Blood flooded her mouth. A migraine tore through her head as the world disappeared beneath a concussive shock that nearly stole her consciousness.

She rocketed backward, skipped across the stone floor, and barely caught herself before collapsing. Her legs trembled. Her ears rang. Her jaw hung numb. One casual counter...... and I almost blacked out. Blood dripped from Butter's stomach. She looked down at the blade protruding through the black bandages.

"… Tch." She sounded more disappointed than hurt. With one sharp pull, she slid the sai free. The bandages immediately tightened around the wound, cinching themselves shut and sealing the injury before more than a few drops of blood could escape. Blood streamed from the Operative's jaw. Butter's punches were catastrophic. It felt as though her brain was leaking through her skull.

The Magpie Serum worked overtime to keep her conscious while microscopic traces of Apis in her blood dispersed a fraction of each impact.... Butter closed in again. She couldn't allow that. The next barrage would tear her head from her shoulders. A crimson sphere etched with jagged brown patterns flicked from the Operative's palm before Butter could strike. It burst into a net of monomolecular wires. A string grenade. Reserved for Operatives and the occasional Hummingbird.

The wires were invisible, thinner than thought, sharp enough to slice reinforced armour like wet paper. They blossomed outward in a lethal web, reaching for Butter's throat, torso and limbs. Butter leapt back. Pure instinct. Her body moved before her mind had fully processed the expanding net. A Stepper was already waiting. Lean and wiry, with close-cropped dark hair, large ears and pale blue eyes that held a predator's patience. His scarred grey-and-crimson armour bore faded kill tallies.

His palm struck another Stepper's shoulder, transferring momentum in one fluid motion. The Magpie Serum surged. For one impossible instant, the recipient's body exceeded its own limits. Pain receptors overloaded and shut down. Muscles contracted at impossible speeds, converting months of stored energy into a single, devastating burst. He pseudo-teleported. His body snapped into its destined position through sheer acceleration, agony tearing through every nerve.

He was already upside down above Butter, monomolecular blade sweeping toward her eyes. She tried to moth-step away. Something clicked against her calf. A micro-mine. No larger than a coin, buried beneath the rubble, waiting specifically for that movement. The shaped charge detonated without spectacle, precise enough to remove her leg at the knee if it had been flesh. BOOM. Her prosthetic absorbed the blast. The alloy blackened and buckled but held.

Her trouser leg shredded into scorched ribbons as heat seared a line along her thigh. She staggered for a microsecond. It was enough. A kick crashed into the back of her head, driving her straight into the waiting slash. A perfect three-way attack. She had nowhere to go. The blade carved across both eyes. Slash. Blood sprayed. Butter grunted. Her vision flashed white, red, then nothing. She tried to move. Something was wrong. Her speed was gone.

Every limb felt impossibly heavy, as though she were fighting through deep water. The explosive responsiveness that defined her movements had faded into crushing sluggishness. Realisation struck. The smoke bomb. The red-haired Stepper's opening move hadn't been a simple smokescreen. It had been carrying something else. An odourless, colourless gas that had been seeping into their bodies since the battle began. Enforcers were conditioned to resist it through years of exposure. Butter wasn't.

A single breath would stop a normal human heart. Against enhanced physiology, it dulled reflexes, slowed thought, and weakened muscles. Every passing millisecond made her slower. Butter's hands shot upward. Too late. The monomolecular wires snapped around Butter's torso, tightening instantly. She felt them bite through her bandages, skin and muscle. Her hands caught the strands on either side, but the strength was gone. The wires cinched tighter. She fell.... Katherine screamed.

A Stepper hit the floor beneath her as she chokeslammed him into the stone, both shoes stomping his face. She saw Butter's body crumple, the wires slicing through her like paper, and white-hot rage consumed everything else. She tried to invoke an onomatopoeia.... A disruptor clamped onto her neck. The word died in her throat. What emerged was meaningless gibberish. Her tongue felt heavy. Her lips refused to form the sounds she needed. The Nonagon struggled to translate nonsense into power.

The disruptor ignored strength and durability. It attacked the brain itself, scrambling nerves and thought, turning dangerous opponents into confused wrecks. Understatement was still active. Instead of completely disabling her, it merely slowed the effect. She became a buffoon. Her limbs flailed without coordination. Punches sailed wide. Kicks missed completely. Every movement became a mockery of combat as her balance collapsed beneath her. The Nonagon still tried to interpret her broken words.

It found nothing but static. Pain ripped through Katherine's body as the Nonagon devoured pieces of her to fuel powers that never manifested. She doubled over, clutching her stomach as something inside her was stripped away. A boot smashed into her face. Her skull cracked against the stone. Blood spilled from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes. The corridor spun violently. She tried to invoke Ellipsis. Instead, she lurched straight into the next kick.

The impact snapped her head back, throwing her to the floor once more. Herculean had faded. She felt its absence immediately. Her body had become unbearably heavy. Every breath came ragged as the disruptor's hum filled her skull with static. Only the rage remained. It burned beneath the confusion, beyond the pain. It was the one thing the disruptor couldn't touch. She willed the Nonagon to destroy it. The Nonagon answered. Without hesitation.

Cobalt energy surged through her nervous system, reaching for the disruptor. It had already entwined itself around her neurons. Destroying it meant destroying parts of her own brain. She didn't care. The Nonagon shattered it. Agony eclipsed everything. Pieces of herself vanished alongside the device. The taste of mango. Her mother's voice. A rooftop in Paris beneath a violet sky. Removed. Then Herculean returned. Strength flooded back into her muscles as a dagger slashed toward her throat. Her hand shot up.

She caught the blade between her fingers. She squeezed. The dagger shattered in her grip, fragments scattering across the floor. The Stepper holding the dagger - a lean man with brown hair, a hooked nose, one scarred eye and cold green eyes - stared for a heartbeat in disbelief. Katherine's elbow crashed into his jaw. KRAK. Bone exploded. His jaw tore clean off his face. His fist lashed out on instinct. She sidestepped, sank her teeth into his forearm, and drove a kick into his torso, tearing the arm free.

He collapsed before he hit the floor. Katherine stood over him, breathing hard. Blood ran from her nose, eyes and the gash across her palm. Her limbs trembled with exhaustion. Her mind still felt fractured, pieces of herself simply... gone. But she was standing. The disruptor was gone. Butter wasn't.... Clock roared through the effects of the gas and lunged at the Operative, violet light flickering uselessly around his fingertips as the last traces of Gloom died. A canister burst in his path.

Ultra-light aerogel foam exploded across the corridor, swelling into a pale grey wall that looked as soft as mist. That was the trap. Move through it slowly and it offered almost no resistance. Hit it at high speed...... and it became harder than steel. Its microscopic lattice strengthened under stress, turning momentum against whoever carried it. Clock struck it at over twelve thousand times the speed of sound. It was like colliding with a neutron star.

The aerogel rejected every ounce of his momentum, reflecting the force back into his own body. BOOOOOOM. The corridor detonated. Walls cracked. The floor buckled. Nearby Steppers were hurled away like ragdolls as debris rained from the ceiling. It felt as though a nuclear blast had gone off inside Clock's body. He rocketed backward, smashing through two stone pillars before crashing into the far wall with a sickening crunch. His skeleton fractured throughout. Ribs shattered. Both arms splintered.

His spine buckled in three places. His organs bruised and bled without Gloom protecting them, and a hairline fracture split his skull from temple to jaw. It wasn't enough to kill him. He was too stubborn. They knew that. The Stepper who had deployed the trap collapsed a few metres away, smoke rising from his armour. He had burned out his own body forcing himself into jerk-speed - moving faster than light to perception for a single instant to blitz Clock. His heart had burst. He died smiling.

The Shaker was already buried in Clock's spine. He felt it lodged against his spine - cold, alien, immovable. The Operative's weapon. It had locked onto his existential signature, anchoring itself to his very existence. Tearing it out would erase him along with it. The device activated. Clock felt it instantly. Parts of his body began teleporting in opposing directions. Bones shifted a centimetre to the right. Organs shifted a centimetre to the left. Each violent pulse ripped through his anatomy.

His skull briefly overlapped his sternum. His heart occupied the space where his lungs should have been. It was shaking him apart. Every misaligned fragment was lost to the quantum chain, permanently deleted beyond regeneration. Piece by piece, the Shaker was erasing him from the inside out. Trying to vibrate free would only make it worse. The device would self-destruct, scattering every molecule in the wrong direction, stripping away his electrons before the remainder exploded. Clock dropped into a crouch.

Every shred of concentration went into matching the Shaker's rhythm. His body twitched and jerked through precise, desperate movements where a single mistake meant death. Blood and sweat beaded across his brow. His jaw clenched until his teeth ached. He was losing.... Katherine hadn't been fighting. She had stood frozen for the last five seconds, eyes darting across the corridor. The Nonagon pulsed weakly against her hip. Now she saw them.

Microscopic particles drifted through the air like dust caught in sunlight, faint shards of Apis glimmering before fading again. Restructurers. They had locked onto her the moment she entered the corridor. Not the Nonagon. Her. The particles flowed through her bloodstream like microscopic surgeons, dismantling every neural pathway and dream-stuff connection that allowed her to wield the artifact. They weren't destroying its power. They were severing her ability to reach it. Blood trickled from her nose.

Understatement had delayed the process, weakening the particles with every passing moment. It wasn't enough. They were winning. Katherine swayed. The four irises in her left eye spun frantically as her vision blurred. She saw Clock collapsing beneath the Shaker's assault. She saw Butter trapped beneath tightening monomolecular wires, blood pooling beneath her. She tried to move. Her body refused. The Restructurers had already won.

— The Steppers regrouped at the far end of the corridor, tightening their formation as they assessed the battlefield. Bodies littered the stone floor - some still, some twitching, others already being dragged away with practiced efficiency. One Stepper helped a wounded comrade to his feet despite the bone jutting from his arm. He didn't scream. He simply steadied himself and waited. Another hauled a corpse by the collar, leaving a crimson trail across the polished floor. The Operative stepped forward.

Her blonde hair clung to her face with sweat and blood, brown eyes fixed on Butter's fallen body. Her feathered armour was scorched and cracked, yet she walked with quiet certainty.

"You underestimated my Steppers." Her thick Russian accent rolled through the corridor. Her gaze swept over Katherine - frozen, bleeding from the nose, her four irises spinning wildly - then Clock, still trapped in the Shaker's rhythm, before settling on Butter lying motionless beneath the monomolecular wires.

"Because we were human," she continued.

"Because you destroyed the Apis spheres." A faint smile touched her lips.

"How do you think we survived before Dr. Isolde perfected Apis? Did you think the Syndicate simply appeared with its soldiers, weapons and impossible technology?" She took another step.

"We had engineers. Scientists. Strategy. We survived because we refused to die. My Steppers are not merely soldiers. They are thinkers. Survivors. They have faced worse than you." Katherine stared at Butter. Not again. She had only just gotten her back. She had held her. Kissed her. Promised weddings, adopted children, gummy worms and terrible music. Not again.

"SUGARBEAR!" The scream echoed through the corridor like a wounded animal. She tried to run. The Restructurers held her still. Blood trickled from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes.

"CLOCK! CLOCK, SHE'S-" The words broke apart. Clock looked. His violet eyes found Butter's motionless body. The blood. The wires. His breath caught. A sound escaped him - somewhere between a scream and a sob. The Shaker pulsed again, dragging his pelvis an inch left, his lungs an inch right. He forced himself back into the pattern, muscles trembling beneath the strain, sweat pouring from his face. He couldn't stop. Stopping meant death. The Operative watched with cold satisfaction.

"You thought we would meet you with punches and kicks?" she asked.

"We are humans fighting gods. Flies before titans. Did you truly think we would face your impossible powers on equal ground?" She shook her head.

"Strength is meaningless. Any fool can swing a sword. Any idiot can fire a gun. Planning. Preparation. Anticipation. That is what separates the living from the dead." Another bloodstained Stepper approached, setting a smoking cylinder at her feet - silent proof that the plan had unfolded exactly as intended.

"We have fought things stronger than you. Faster than you. Older than this facility. Older than the Syndicate itself." Her eyes settled on Butter.

"And we buried every one of them." Behind the Operative, the Steppers recovered their dead and wounded. One hoisted an injured woman over his shoulder while another dragged a fallen comrade toward extraction. They moved with the cold certainty of people who had done this countless times. Katherine ground her teeth. The Nonagon pulsed against her hip, its hum vibrating through her bones. The Restructurers were still dismantling her, but the artifact was rebuilding what they destroyed. Too slowly.

Butter lay motionless in a widening pool of blood. Clock still danced beneath the Shaker's assault. The Steppers regrouped. They had cut Butter down. Broken Clock. Crippled her. And they were still winning. A cold, crushing rage settled over Katherine. I'm going to kill them. The thought sliced through the static. Every single one. But first... She had to reach Butter.... Another Stepper approached the Operative carrying a massive black blaster, its barrel humming with restrained power.

She accepted it without a word. Her brown eyes remained fixed on Clock. The Shaker continued tearing him apart. His movements slowed. Sweat poured from his face as blood dripped steadily from the corner of his mouth, spattering onto the stone.

"What a shame," she murmured, looking him over with detached admiration.

"Such a pretty thing." A faint smile touched her lips.

"Perhaps we can extract your DNA after you die. Grow a clone." Her smile widened into something predatory.

"A plaything... for my enjoyment." She raised the blaster. Its barrel rested against Clock's temple.

"Goodbye." Katherine screamed. The Restructurers held her frozen as blood streamed from her nose, ears and eyes. Blue light erupted. It poured from Butter's prosthetic leg, faint at first, then brilliant enough to flood the corridor. The Gloom inside Butter had been revoked. The magic stored inside the prosthetic had not. It had been deliberate. The Gloom had kept the prosthetic dormant from the beginning, leaving it completely offline while the Revoker stripped only active magic flowing through living channels.

It couldn't revoke what wasn't awake. Now it was.