Survivors

Zay led Ela, Lio, and Warui across the open field outside Seria City. Keeping pace beside him, Ela called, “How are we supposed to find them? It was one gunshot.”

“Didn’t I teach you that?”

“Oh, yeah. Uhhh.”

Lio squinted at Zay in exaggerated confusion. “There’s this one detail I missed. Could you maybe start from the beginning?”

“Tch. Warui, pay attention too.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“From where we’re approaching, somewhere toward Seria’s back right.”

Ela nodded. “The slums.”

“Judging by how muffled it was, I’m more convinced it was back-right. That gives us the quadrant... roughly.”

“Okay. And then?”

“That’s all a single gunshot in an open area can give you. We investigate and go from there.” Zay kept running. “And the fact neither of you remembers such a short lesson is disappointing.”

“No, yeah. I remember it now.”

“Me too,” Ela added, before addressing Warui. “Always stay between me and Lio. You got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t distract us either. We’re not the best at multitasking during a fight," Lio said.

“I gave you drills for that.”

“Well, when we spar, the most we can keep up with is three people at once.”

“That’s good enough. Lio made it sound worse.”

Ela grinned, satisfied that her answer had been enough to keep Zay from pressing either of them any further. “Alright. Warui gets to see our home.”

“All three of us know every inch of the neighborhood,” Lio told Warui. “We’ve got the advantage.”

Warui caught the smiles between them, and some of the tightness in his chest eased.

“Less talking. The checkpoint is coming up."

Night had fully settled by the time they slipped into the slums. Zay and Lio wore matching cloaks with the hoods drawn low, while Warui had turned his military jacket inside out and tied it over his head, hiding both his face and the Army insignia. “Checking every house is going to take time, Captain. The sun might be up before we finish.”

"We won't have to do that. Mercer gave us a contingency plan. We meet with Malia's squad in the place I chose. It's a rundown foster home in this neighborhood.”

“Then we didn’t need to pinpoint the shot,” Ela whispered.

“Malia’s gun signal wasn’t part of the rendezvous.”

“Is it the Emmerson foster home?” Lio asked.

“Yeah, the one that went up in flames.”

After crossing three blocks, the foster home stood blackened against the night, much of its exterior wood charred and several windows already broken.

“You two know the layout. The moment you hear me kick the front door down, you go through the windows.”

“Oh, yes. Formation C.”

Zay ignored Ela's enthusiasm. “You’ll know it’s our comrades if you see that girl who tried following us.” Ela and Lio slipped around opposite sides of the building. “Warui, step aside. Don’t show yourself until we clear it.”

“Right, Captain.”

Zay drew his handgun and kicked the charred door inward. Almost at the same instant, glass shattered somewhere inside.

“Zay!” Malia shouted. "It’s us! It’s us!"

“It’s safe.”

Warui stepped through the doorway.

“Brown-hair girl is here.”

Chena and River were already moving. “Warui.”

“I’m okay, guys. It’s just been a long day... what happened? Why'd Sarah fire her long rifle?”

“Don’t stand in the doorway.” Chena pulled him aside.

“We captured one of the attackers,” River mentioned.

“You’ve got one? Where is he?”

“Unconscious in the back room,” Malia answered Zay. “But we need to debrief first.”

“Make it quick.”

By the time Zay, Warui, Ela, and Lio joined them, everyone had gathered in the back room. The assassin sat slumped against the wall, his face lost beneath a void-black linen cowl. Zay faced Malia. “This developed into something worse than I imagined…”

“The Commander didn’t really give Dirk much to go on.”

“Maybe he still couldn’t trust us with everything he was thinking. Or Dirk left some things out... tsk, there’s too much to consider.”

"Knowing the government is involved is something, at least."

“River, you're sure the darkness wasn’t playing tricks on your eyes?”

“No, Captain. The attackers really did jump off rooftops.”

“I couldn’t believe it.” Sarah dropped into a shallow squat. “They landed like this. Almost no bend in their knees. They run fast too, but—but we still don't know anything about them."

“We’ll have to pry it out of this guy.” Zay stood. “Although I doubt he’ll talk.”

“What happened with you two?”

“Khyrie and I fought three of them when you all left,” Kiel answered River.

“We found a way out,” Khyrie added.

Zay approached before anyone could stop him and drove his cutlass into the assassin’s right shoulder. The man grunted. River flinched and turned away.

Zay pulled off the cowl. “Hey. I knew you weren’t actually asleep.”

He pulled the blade free and asked, “Mind telling us who your employer is?”  When the assassin remained silent, Zay drove the cutlass into his right thigh, a low groan escaping him as Zay added, “You won’t talk?” The assassin’s hand moved. Zay saw it.

A hiss through the air.

Both hands hit the floor.

The assassin screamed.

Warui clamped his hands over his ears and kept his eyes away from Zay, unwilling to watch the torture continue. It did little to help. The shouting still cut through, raw and impossible to shut out.

“There’s no need for those.” Zay looked almost curious. “Huh, that’s as far as your pain tolerance goes? Speak up."

“AAAGH!”

“People around here don’t call the wardens. Screaming won’t help you.”

A wave of nausea rose through Malia at the sight of blood pouring from the assassin’s severed wrists, spreading across the floor where his hands had been. “Zay, he—he’s losing too much blood.”

“Kid. You told us he could heal.”

"He can. I—I don’t know why he isn't," River answered Zay.

Several heavy thuds struck the roof.

The assassin’s screams cut off as his body sagged unconscious.

“Ela. Lio.”

Ela caught Warui by the arm, already pulling him toward the door with Lio before Chena could intervene.

“Waru—”

Zay snapped. “Now’s not the time.”

Chena stood with her hand still out and then she drew her cutlass.

“It’s probably the assassins. Khyrie, Kiel, get out of the building. Conceal your faces and draw their attention away. We need Zay’s people to get Warui clear.” Khyrie and Kiel were already moving.

"Malia, what about us?" River asked.

"We fight whoever enters here. They’ll have to confirm which group Warui is with."

“It’s weird.” Everyone looked at Zay. “How’d they locate us? I know it wasn’t this bastard’s crying.”

The charred staircase groaned beneath them, coughing up dust and ash as weakened boards gave slightly under every step. Ela ran ahead with one hand locked around Warui’s forearm, pulling him after her while Lio kept pace beside them. “Do we know where we’re going?”

“The bakery,” Ela told Warui.

Lio reached the window first, bursting through the glass and landing on the neighboring rooftop. Ela and Warui followed, breaking into a run as seven assassins appeared on the foster home roof behind them. Five assassins jumped after them.

“Shit, most of them followed. They might’ve recognized Warui immediately,” Lio said.

"We’re running and everyone else stayed." Ela adjusted her hood. "I think they’re gambling."

They cleared the gap to the next rooftop. Behind them, the assassins kept coming without a sound. No footfalls, no scrape of soles against tile, only the unnerving sense of distance vanishing far faster than it should.

Too fast.

They reached the next gap and leapt toward a hanging rope short of the opposite rooftop. One after another, they caught it and slid down, hitting the street at a run. “Zay will know to meet us at the bakery.” Lio reached over his shoulder and pulled a shard of glass from it, grimacing but not slowing.

Zay stood beside the doorway to the back room, cutlass in one hand and handgun in the other. Chena waited on the opposite side with her own cutlass while farther back River, Sarah, and Malia held position.

“I don’t have any more gunpowder.”

“If that door opens, throw your rifle at whoever’s behind it.," Malia suggested.

The door caved inward with a crack that thundered through the house. Ash and dust burst into the room, swallowing the doorway in a gray haze. No one stood beyond it. Suddenly two clear, knife-shaped objects cut out of the darkness. 

Malia and River threw themselves aside.  Sarah flinched and swung her long rifle, deflecting the projectiles. Zay and Chena ran through the doorway together. Two assassins stood farther down the main room.

Chena threw her cutlass at an assassin. Zay fired at the exact moment the assassin moved. The shot struck the assassin in the head.

They rushed the second assassin, a clear dagger emerging from his wrist.

The assassin rolled out of the way of Zay's strike. Zay’s cutlass buried itself in the wooden wall.

The assassin lunged at Chena.

Zay threw his handgun.

Chena caught it and raised it between herself and the oncoming strike from the assassin as the transparent dagger struck the gun, deformed, and passed through the handgun, but the assassin’s hand did not. His momentum stopped with his hand caught against the handgun.

Chena drove her forehead into his face, staggering him. She grabbed his wrist, twisted until his elbow dislocated, and then drove his own clear blade into his skull. His body went limp, falling at her feet.

“Good. That’s why I threw it at you—”

“We have to chase Warui.”

“No, you wait here for the other two that ran off. They probably took some assassins with them. I’ll catch up to Warui.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Your emotions don’t overrule orders."

Chena’s hand curled into a fist, her forehead swollen.

Zay broke into a run through the dark streets of Seria’s poorest district. No lantern posts stood there, leaving the road swallowed in shadow, but he moved through it without hesitation. His eyes had known these streets too long to need the light.

They probably plan to lose them on the way to the bakery.

There are eight assassins we know about.

Three are in the foster home.

Maybe two or three chased Khyrie and Kiel.

"They're fine—"

Ela lay in the street.

For a moment, his mind refused to understand what he was looking at.

A tunnel-like wound ran completely through her skull.

Zay didn’t breathe.

Lio was against the wall nearby. Five clear, pipe-sized needles pinned his body to the building. One passed through his head. The transparent weapons began to lose their shape.

Turned liquid.

Lio’s body slipped free.

Fell forward.

Thud.

Five assassins faced Zay. One held Warui unconscious.

“Hhh…”

Nothing came out properly.

“Nnh…”

Something opened behind his eyes.

A girl stood in front of him.

Nine years old.

“So, umm…”

Eleven-year-old Zay stared at her. “What do you want?”

“Me and my friend wanted to know why you’re the only kid in the neighborhood that doesn’t go to the schoolhouse.” She pointed toward a boy beside her. “His name is Lio.”

The boy lifted one hand. “Huh—hi.”

“Piss off. I’m not in the mood.”

Ela was dead.

Lio was dead.

“RRGH!”

He ran straight at the five assassins who threw three clear tomahawks at him. One passed so close to his head that it clipped strands of hair. He rolled left beneath the other two and came up moving, pushing violently from both feet. “URRRGH!”

Something clear began to bead along the nearest assassin’s wrist, seeping through the skin like liquid sweat. It gathered slowly, lengthening as it took shape, until the fluid hardened into a transparent dagger.

The weapons collided. The transparent weapon deformed around Zay’s steel. Before it could flow completely past the blade, Zay twisted his cutlass and drove its edge through the assassin’s wrist.

The assassin’s hand came off.

“GRAAH!”

Another swing.

The arm followed.

Footsteps rushed him from both sides. Zay ducked. Two clear weapons crossed over his head. Still crouched, he gripped the cutlass with both hands, then cut diagonally through the wounded assassin.

The body separated, hitting the ground in two pieces.

Zay pushed from his left leg, his shoulder slamming beneath another assassin’s chin as the man reeled backward. Zay spun, his cutlass passing through the assassin’s neck.

The head fell first.

The body followed.

He charged the assassin holding Warui and came to a sudden halt at the sight of a clear cleaver held to Warui’s throat. Zay's chest heaved as he watched the assassins retreat into a dark alley. Warui disappeared with them.

“Hah… where’re you—”

Footsteps came from behind.

Malia.

Chena.

River.

Khyrie.

Kiel.

Sarah.

“Cap—”

Malia stopped. They all did.

Ela lay in the road.

Lio beside the wall.

Warui was gone.

Zay released his cutlass, the blade striking the pavement as he dropped onto one knee and pounded his forehead with his fist.

“Tsk—chk…”

His teeth ground together.

“Nnh—chk…”

Nobody moved toward him.

Warui slowly opened his eyes. Everything was blurred, the voices reaching him first.

“We’re not like them. Earl, Karl, Nick, and Pytr are just dead. Nothing else happens.”

“Zaccheus is still alive.”

“He’s about to die. His heartbeat is fading.”

“That damn captain they’ve got. Swordsmanship that good shouldn’t be hiding in this country.”

Warui forced himself to concentrate and noticed their clothing. They were three of the assassins.

“That explains how they took Avelorn so easily, if the report is accurate.”

“Package is up.”

“Knock him out again.”

Warui tried to move, but a boot caught him across the face.