Chapter 57: GLOVES

Gant landed on the central petal with the glass case less than twenty paces ahead. The flower still shifted beneath the Grand Exchange while silk groaned overhead, but his attention stayed on the dark gloves inside the case.

Rovan dropped into his path and caught the steel support running beneath a broken auction platform. He kept his palm against it long enough to feel the material, then grey metal spread deliberately from his fingers, climbed his arm and swallowed the rest of his body until even his face carried the dull sheen of worked steel. "Much better. I was getting tired of being made of expensive meat."

He planted himself between Gant and the case. "You killed one of our merchants, dug through his records and came back here for something Selyn bought. That usually earns a conversation."

Gant crossed the remaining distance, and Rovan drove a steel fist toward his ribs. Gant slipped outside the punch, brushed two fingers across Rovan’s forearm and struck a broken section of railing with his other hand. A black point remained on Rovan’s steel while a pale one appeared on the rail.

Rovan’s marked arm tore sideways with enough force to wrench his shoulder after it. His boots scraped across the petal before he widened his stance and drove both steel feet into the soft amber surface. "Positive. Negative. You make touching people unnecessarily complicated."

Gant touched the petal several metres away, shifting the pale point with him. The pressure changed at once, dragging Rovan’s arm downward until his knee hammered the surface. Rovan released the transformation around the marked forearm, and the steel peeled from his flesh in a thick sleeve with the black point still fixed to it. The discarded metal shot toward Gant’s pale mark while Rovan pulled his bare arm free. "That’s useful to know." He rolled the shoulder once and reached back toward the steel brace. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

A faint sweetness drifted through the dust. Gant stopped with one foot forward, and even though nothing was there, his gaze lifted above his head while Selyn settled farther up the bloom with a long black rifle pressed into her shoulder.

Her finger tightened, but nothing came from the barrel. The smell thickened instead as amber haze gathered above Gant and hexagonal cells began assembling inside it.

Gant moved before the first bee appeared. He jumped, caught the lowest forming cell with his right hand and left a pale point across it. By the time his boots struck the petal again, Rovan had rebuilt steel over his shoulder and was already closing.

Gant met him halfway and slapped his left palm against Rovan’s chest. Black spread beneath his fingers, and the unfinished hive lurched toward the marked body.

Rovan’s eyes widened. "Oh, that’s filthy."

He grabbed the steel covering his torso and abandoned the transformation before the force could reach his actual body. Metal peeled away from him in broad sections, holding the rough shape of his chest and shoulders for a breath after he stepped backward. The black point stayed with the hollow shell.

The hive crashed around it and finished forming. Bees spilled from the amber chambers, turned in midair and fired long black stingers. The volley hammered the shell while needles punched through thin sections and ricocheted over the petal.

Rovan rubbed his bare chest and watched what remained of his metal double. "That was a perfectly good body."

Gant was already moving around the swarm toward the gloves.

A buyer trapped behind an overturned bench chose that moment to run. Several bees turned after the movement, and Selyn shifted the rifle as the first stinger caught the man behind the knee.

He folded onto the petal. Three more needles buried themselves around his shoulder and neck before he could crawl back to cover, and his fingers began missing the floor as he clawed toward safety. "Get them off me. They’re inside the lights. Can’t you see them?" Nothing hovered above him except open sky, but his pupils widened and a laugh broke into a sob as he dragged himself from something no one else could see.

Selyn cut the Claim before another volley formed. The hive collapsed into amber dust with the bees dissolving around it, while Rovan looked from the shaking buyer to Gant and lost the grin he had carried into the fight.

"You knew the swarm could take somebody else." Rovan’s voice had lost its earlier playfulness.

"I knew Selyn would stop it." Gant wiped blood from his thumb. "She dislikes wasting ammunition on people she wasn’t paid to kill."

From the distant petal, Selyn worked the rifle without firing again and shifted higher along the bloom, putting the next hive farther from Gant’s hands. Rovan pressed one palm to a brass structural brace and the other to the steel beneath his feet. Brass spread across his left half while steel covered his right, the two materials meeting down the center of his body.

"Steel and brass. Those I know." Rovan flexed mismatched fingers and stepped back into Gant’s route. "Come put another sticker on me."

Gant did exactly that. A black point appeared on Rovan’s brass shoulder while a pale one formed on a cargo cage hanging above the petal. The brass half of Rovan’s body ripped upward so violently that both feet left the ground, but he let the force carry him and twisted with it. His steel fist came around with the arc and smashed across Gant’s jaw before the marked shoulder pulled him past.

Blood sprayed from Gant’s mouth as Rovan hit the petal, rolled and regained his feet with the brass arm still tugging upward. "That was much nicer."

Gant straightened with blood along his chin, then looked back at the glass case. Rovan shifted into his path again.

Several petals away, Angle watched through gaps between hanging buildings. "He isn’t just pulling them. The points decide what force happens between them."

Arch nodded once. "And every new point changes the problem. Rovan keeps throwing marked material away before Gant can build enough around him."

Angle glanced toward Selyn’s distant position. "She only fired once." Arch followed the rifle as she climbed farther out. "She learned something from the first shot. Good assassins rarely need the same lesson twice."

The glass case shifted, and one glove curled its fingers against the glass. Angle slowly removed his hand from the silk railing, and the glove relaxed.

"Dad, watch the case." Angle raised his palm between them as a faint orange glow gathered beneath his skin.

Arch had already stopped watching Gant. Both gloves tightened around empty space when Angle let the heat rise, then loosened as soon as he lowered it.

"That hundred percent wasn’t just the System recognizing material," Angle said, rubbing his thumb across his palm. "They’re reacting to my Scar."

A crash higher in the flower pulled Arch’s eyes toward Sio’s side of the bloom. Hanging shops blocked the view, but he tightened the Siphon Aegis and stepped onto the nearest bridge. "We get the gloves and get back to Sio."

Angle followed. "So we’re stealing them."

"We stopped being customers when Tavian turned the building into a flower." Arch tested the living silk under his boot and kept moving toward the center.

Higher along the bloom, Karkas hit Sio’s petal hard enough to shake amber dust from the raised veins. Sio barely got his feet beneath him before Karkas reached him, while Sterling backed beside the hanging kiosk and fastened his wire hook around one of its supports.

Sio opened a portal beside his shoulder and drove a fist through it, placing the exit beside Karkas’s jaw. Karkas read his torso turning, ducked before the punch emerged and caught Sio’s wrist on the far side.

Sio killed the portal before the grip could turn his arm. Space closed, breaking Karkas’s hold, but the hunter’s shoulder was already driving into his chest. Gumm flattened across Sio’s back before he struck a raised rib, softening the collision without stopping the pain through his spine.

Sterling whipped his wire across the gap. Karkas stepped over it, but the delay gave Sio time to place another portal beneath his leading boot. Karkas’s foot vanished to the ankle and emerged behind him, breaking his stride while Gumm stretched from Sio’s shoulder and slapped across the side of his head.

Sio stepped forward with an elbow toward the ribs. Karkas blocked it, caught Gumm’s limb with his other hand and pulled, but the creature shortened itself before the grip settled. The sudden loss of resistance brought Karkas half a step closer.

Sio tried to use the opening, but Karkas reached him first and closed one palm around Sio above the elbow.

Cold slipped beneath Sio’s skin before he tore free. A translucent sheet unfolded overhead with the dry sound of stiff paper, showing his face, purple scar, name and reward while two heavy words formed across the bottom: DEAD OR ALIVE.

Pale shapes spread across the petal beneath Sio and Sterling while darker sections opened between its raised veins. Karkas stood inside one of the dark areas, eyes travelling over the pattern before returning to Sio.

Sterling looked down at the pale ground beneath his boots. "I assume this belongs to him."

"Nothing good around me belongs to anybody normal." Sio shifted toward the nearest pale section as Karkas came forward.

Karkas did not chase the place Sio occupied. He cut along the border of the dark ground, closing the broadest route and forcing Sio toward a thinner pale strip. Sterling fired his hook into a silk support above him and dragged the strand across Karkas’s path, buying Sio enough time to open a portal behind Sterling.

"Move." Sterling stepped through, and Sio followed before Karkas could reach the exit.

The pattern rearranged around them. Karkas looked once, then stepped toward the pale section Sio had been about to choose.

Sio stopped with his foot raised as another dark patch opened near his heel. He’s choosing where I go. Gumm crawled farther over his chest while Sterling drew another hook from inside his coat.

Far below, orange light washed across the central bloom as Angle stopped halfway across the bridge with a compact solar flame wrapped tightly around his right hand. He raised it toward the central petal, and the glass case holding the gloves reacted so violently that Arch stopped beside him.

Both gloves slammed upright inside the case and opened their fingers toward Angle. The flame tightened in his palm, and a crack raced across the glass.