Chapter 58: DEAD OR ALIVE

The crack across the glove case widened as Angle and Arch crossed the first silk bridge toward the central bloom. The flower shifted beneath them, pulling hanging shops through open air while white strands tightened between petals, and both gloves still leaned toward Angle.

Gant noticed them before they reached the next bridge. Blood had dried along his chin, pale and dark marks remained scattered across the petal, and his gaze moved from Angle to the gloves before settling on the Siphon Aegis wrapped around Arch’s arm.

Rovan followed the direction of his stare and nearly forgot Gant for half a second. The grin on his metal face flattened. "What the hell is Arch doing here? Last I heard, he was hiding from the Nexus." His attention shifted to Angle, lingering on the red scarf and faint heat around his fingers. "And who’s the kid?"

Selyn had noticed them too. Her rifle stayed trained on Gant, but she adjusted her footing to keep him in sight while watching Arch and Angle approach. "Arch." There was no greeting in the name, only recognition.

Angle glanced toward his father. "You really do know everyone."

"Knowing someone and being welcome are different things." Arch kept moving while his attention alternated between Gant’s hands, the glove case and the Eclipse members. "They know my name. That’s enough to make this worse."

Rovan flexed his transformed fingers. "Gant was already enough trouble. Arch walking into the middle of this after years off the board doesn’t improve my afternoon."

Selyn kept her sight on Gant. "Watch him. He hasn’t made himself our problem yet." Her tone made the last word sound temporary, and Arch heard it without answering.

Gant wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. "Siphon Aegis. I heard you disappeared." His eyes moved to Angle, studying the solar shimmer beneath his skin before returning to the cracked case.

"And I’ve heard enough about Gant to know introductions won’t improve the situation." Arch slowed at the end of the bridge and kept Angle half a step behind him.

Gant glanced between them and the gloves. "You come out of hiding in Eclipse territory with a kid I’ve never seen, and both of you walk straight toward what I came for. That’s inconvenient."

Angle stepped onto the central petal while heat crawled beneath his palm. The gloves twitched inside the case, and Gant’s hand dropped toward the surface at the same moment.

Arch caught Angle across the chest before his next step landed. A pale point had appeared where Angle had been about to place his foot, while the dark mark on Rovan’s brass shoulder remained several metres away.

Rovan drove forward before Gant could build around the new point. His steel fist forced Gant away while brass absorbed the return strike with a dull ring, keeping his hands busy and his body away from the case.

Selyn lowered her rifle and reached beneath her coat. The weapon she brought out was shorter, built from three narrow black rails around an empty center while a small silver mechanism turned between them with a soft click.

Gant’s attention snapped to it. The pale point beneath his fingertips disappeared when his hand left the petal, and Rovan caught the reaction with a crooked grin.

"Oh, you brought that one." Rovan shifted his steel foot forward, putting himself between Gant and Selyn’s line.

"Keep him facing you." Selyn rested one finger against the trigger while the silver piece kept turning.

"With pleasure." Rovan crashed into Gant again, steel striking bone while Gant’s hands searched for another point.

Rovan shed the first marked layer before Gant could use it and drove his brass side through the opening, forcing him farther from the case. Selyn fired during the exchange, producing only a small metallic click from the distant weapon, followed by another sound much closer to Gant.

His head started to turn toward it, but Arch caught Angle’s shoulder and pulled him toward the case. "Move. Whatever that does, we don’t need to learn it from inside the effect."

They pushed deeper onto the central petal while Rovan kept Gant occupied and Selyn held the strange weapon steady behind him.

Several petals higher, Sterling hit the side of a hanging kiosk hard enough to lose his breath. Karkas had redirected him there with one forearm while keeping most of his attention on Sio, and the impact shook a small metal token loose from inside Sterling’s coat.

The token struck the amber surface twice and flipped face-up near Karkas’s boot. Sio saw it fall but could not make out the engraving, while Sterling reached toward the empty place inside his coat.

Karkas looked down for less than a second. His face became completely still, and his boot covered the token before Sterling could move toward it.

"That belongs to me." Sterling started forward, but Karkas’s attention had already returned to Sio.

"Stay out of this." Karkas kept his weight over the token, leaving Sterling several paces away with one hand reaching for another wire hook.

"You became strangely considerate all of a sudden."

"Don’t confuse priorities with consideration." Karkas did not look at him again.

Sio caught the exchange just before the pale and dark sections of Dead or Alive shifted around his feet. His ribs hurt with every breath, and Gumm had spread farther over his left side after taking several impacts meant for him. He recognized that token, Sio thought, but Karkas was already cutting diagonally along the border of the dark ground.

The nearest pale route narrowed. Sio opened a portal beneath himself and dropped through, emerging beside a silk support farther across the petal while the board rearranged around him.

Pale ground opened beneath his boots, but both obvious exits darkened almost immediately. Karkas had already begun crossing toward the wider route, leaving Sio with a thinner strip near the petal’s edge.

Sterling fired his wire over Karkas’s shoulder and caught a silk support behind him. He pulled hard enough to drag the living strand across the hunter’s path, buying Sio enough time to form another portal.

Karkas reached toward the entrance as soon as it opened. Sio shifted the exit before stepping through, and his boots struck another pale section lower on the petal with enough force to send pain through his knee.

He looked back through the portal and found Karkas studying the changing board rather than Sio himself. He’s learning where it redraws after I move. Sio closed the opening and formed another beside his shoulder.

His fist entered from the right and emerged near Karkas’s temple. The hunter turned, so Sio shifted the exit lower and drove the same punch into his ribs.

Karkas staggered one step, and a grin started across Sio’s face despite the blood coating his tongue. He sent the next punch through another portal, but Karkas caught the wrist as it emerged and pulled hard enough to drag Sio’s shoulder halfway through the opening.

Sio killed the portal before the rest of his body followed. His arm came free numb from elbow to fingertips, and Karkas closed the remaining distance without needing the board.

The first punch buried itself beneath Sio’s ribs and folded him around the impact. He tried to straighten, caught the second across the cheek, and tasted fresh blood before his feet found the petal again.

Gumm spread over his chest as Karkas moved in. Karkas changed level, drove a knee beneath the creature’s coverage and took Sio’s legs out from under him while Sterling’s wire snapped around his forearm.

Karkas pulled once, and Sterling came off his feet. Sio reacted before he could think, opening a portal beneath Sterling while the rich kid slid toward the edge.

The exit dropped Sterling beside a hanging shop several metres away. He rolled across the roof and caught a silk strand with one hand, but saving him scattered what little concentration Sio still had.

Karkas’s boot struck Sio in the side before he could close the portal. Something inside his ribs gave with a sharp pain that washed the world white, and he rolled across one boundary before stopping against a raised vein in the flower.

His left arm folded when he tried pushing himself upright. Gumm crawled farther across his chest and spread several limbs between him and Karkas, its body trembling from the punishment it had already absorbed.

Don’t, Sio thought as the creature held its place. He had no idea whether Gumm understood him, but it stayed between him and Karkas anyway.

Karkas caught one reaching limb and drove it against the petal instead of tearing it. Gumm shortened itself and pulled back over Sio before the grip could settle.

The bounty placard still floated overhead, and Sio blinked until the letters stopped doubling. The word beneath his portrait had changed to DEAD, while the pale sections around him had disappeared beneath dark ground.

Sterling shouted from somewhere beyond the ringing in Sio’s ears and threw another wire. Karkas caught the line without turning, pulled it from Sterling’s hands and let it fall beside him before stepping into Sio’s square.

Cold spread from the purple scar beneath Sio’s eye and sank through his chest. His heart stumbled, recovered, then missed another beat while pressure closed around his lungs and made each breath smaller.

Sio tried opening a portal beside his hand, but the thin purple ring trembled against the petal and collapsed before reaching the width of his palm. Karkas crouched in front of him, breathing harder now while his expression remained composed.

"You make the bounty difficult." Karkas studied Sio’s face as though the fight had become an assessment instead of a struggle.

Blood ran over Sio’s tongue when he tried to smile. "Can I charge extra?" The words came out rough enough to scrape his throat, and even that small effort tightened his chest.

Karkas caught his collar and lifted him until the back of his head left the petal. The dark square pulsed beneath them, and pain struck through Sio’s body hard enough to open his fingers while the hanging market above Karkas smeared into amber and white.

Sterling’s mouth moved somewhere behind him, but Sio could no longer hear the words. Gumm crawled over his chest, several eyes blinking in and out of focus as his eyelids began to sink.

Something deeper than the pain answered before they closed completely.

〔 NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED 〕