Lymph filling his lips, viscous and bitter.

Maria laid the plate in front of her. Steak and potatoes. Delicious, beautifully presented, perfect. It was the sort of product you could only achieve after following a cookbook to the absolute letter, with mechanical accuracy. It was devoid of human error.

“Bon appetite.”

“Thank you, Maria,” said Jin. “It looks great.”

She took up the knife and fork, and dug in. The steak, a dark brown on the outside, cut easily. Inside, the meat was white and oozed lymph when she poked it with her fork. She had felt hungry, her stomach had rumbled, but when she brought that piece of flesh to her mouth, it all felt wrong. The lymph seemed more like sour milk, and the meat like curd. She imagined it wriggling on her fork, still alive and pulsating, as it once had on the homunculus.

Jin lowered the steak. She went for the potatoes instead.

“So Mum,” said Maria. “Is work going okay?”

“Work is going great.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been seeming…tired, recently.”

“Well, work is tiring, I suppose.” She spent her time cutting the potatoes into smaller and smaller chunks instead of eating. “Is there anywhere you want to go? Museum or zoo or something? I’ve got a bit of time now that the recent mission’s over.”

“Really?” The childlike glee sounded so genuine. “Anywhere?”

“Within reason.”

“Paris?”

“Within reason, young lady.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Like, within a day trip?”

Maria tapped her chin with her finger. She thought for a minute. “Fireworks.”

“Fireworks?”

“Yeah! We couldn’t go to Hanabi this year, right? So why not do it ourselves? We can buy a bunch of fireworks and let them off together!”

“That’s a great idea,” said Jin. “We’ll get some sparklers, some firecrackers. It’ll be nice.”

“Can we get the Red Dragon Rockets this year?”

“We talked about this. Not until you’re sixteen.”

“Please, mum.” She put her hands together. “I’ll be careful, I promise. And you’ll be there anyway, right?”

“Rules are rules,” Jin insisted.

“I’ll do all my chores!”

“You already do all your chores.”

“Well, then maybe I deserve a little reward for that.”

Jin sighed. It was a good point. “Alright, but just one rocket, okay?”

Maria smiled, as bright as the sun. Jin focused on the smile. When she looked too closely at everything else, there were cracks in the facade. Things she would say or the way she’d react that Maria wouldn’t. But the smile was real. That was Maria’s smile.

Jin’s interface blared red, covering her vision with a massive ‘alert’ message. The voice on the other end was sticky with static, but she could just make out Chang’s voice. “This is…Runner…I am directing this call to all open Bureau channels. I repeat…”

She got out of her chair.

“Mum?” said Maria.

“Elite Runner Mobitz is in incapacitated…the Menagerie squad is incapacitated. Requesting reinforcements immediately.”

“I’m sorry, Maria,” said Jin. “I have to go.”

❖

“Major General.” Chang took a moment to catch his breath. “Oh god, fuck, I have never been so glad to see you.”

Séquard pulled out a rifle from underneath his coat and levelled it at the homunculus. “Get out of here.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright alone? You haven’t recovered from the transplant yet.”

The barrage of bulletfire was his only answer. Its muzzle flashes left stains of yellow in his eyes, and the clattering of empty shells on concrete rang like hail.

The homunculus looked more confused than anything, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off its skin. Not that he expected it to do anything when Runners like Mobitz couldn’t make a scratch.

Chang ran over to Mei. She was struggling to get up, her head bleeding profusely. He swung her arm over his shoulder, and with all his remaining strength, dragged her out of the rubble.

The homunculus screamed, and Chang flinched from its sheer volume, almost dropping Mei to cover his ears. Chang glanced back to see the creature pounce at him. Its body cast a shadow so wide and dark, it seemed like an eclipse. Foolish as it sounded, he had no problem believing the monster was a force of nature, capable of blotting out the sun.

A blur came flashing, and the light shone again. Chang scanned the room. Séquard had slammed the homunculus back down the hallway, their monolithic arms locked in a struggle. Somehow, the creature even looked hurt.

“Go!” Séquard shouted, limbs tense.

A part of him wanted to stay. He was a First Rank Runner, and though he was the newest amongst them, he still had some pride. Most of all, he hated his own weakness. But he needed to be rational here; if there was anyone in the Bureau who could kill that thing, short of the hero of the war herself, it’d be Séquard. The most he could do to help was to get out alive. Live another day.

Chang supported Mei as they limped away from the battle. She was starting to come to, coughing and spluttering blood.

“Kai.”

“I don't want you not to call me that,” he huffed.

“We need to get the hostages out, Kai.”

Shit. How could you forget that, you coward? “You’re the one who put them in danger in the first place. Why the change of mind?”

“I’m not Faust. Just because I want to liberate the homunculi does not mean I want to spill human blood. Believe me if you want, but I never intended all of this.”

“What, you don’t want to liberate that homunculus back there?”

“That’s not a homunculus. Not anymore.”

“On that, we agree,” said Chang. “That’s a monster.”

“Only because the Bureau made it so,” said Mei. “That is their speciality.”

As they hobbled back the way they came, further and further away from the vault, they continued to feel the Menagerie rumble. He heard gunfire and the crackling of broken concrete in the distance, and more than once, Chang almost radioed in to check on the elite Runner. Each time, he fought back the urge.

Once they made it to the lounge, Chang swung open the door. “Everyone, my name is Hannibal Chang and I am a First Rank Runner. The eco-terrorists have been neutralised, but I need you all to get out of the facility immediately.”

The hostages glanced at each other for a frozen moment, then back to him. Many of them stood up, but nobody was willing to move out. In hindsight, it might’ve not been a great idea to have the terrorist leader on his shoulder.

“Shoot the air,” Mei whispered.

“What?”

“I’d do it myself, but the homunculus knocked my gun away.”

Chang reached for his pistol and emptied a round into the ceiling. Immediately, the hostages began to swarm towards them. There were even more people than he had thought, diverting around the duo like a river around a rock. They carried a controlled panic with them, none of them screaming or clawing for space, yet the collective dread they felt from that faraway battle was tangible. Even now, Chang could still feel it.

His interface came alive. The Princep’s voice came through, finally free of static. “Chang, do you read me?”

The last of the hostages were starting to leave. “I read you, ma’am. I’ve just released the hostages. Séquard’s handling the homunculus.”

“Understood. I’m sending more reinforcements as we speak.”

“I will escort the hostages and meet the calvary up topside then.”

“Negative, Runner.”

“Ma’am?”

“Pinging your interface chip shows that you’ve got someone else with you.”

Chang’s voice died in his throat. It felt like someone had punched him in the gut. “I’ve…captured the terrorists’ leader, Tang Mei-ling.”

Her next words fell like axeheads, cold and precise. “She cannot leave the Menagerie alive. That is an order.”

❖

Séquard struggled to breathe. The monster kept a single foot on his chest, and yet it was already more weight than most homunculi. Both its hands nailed his own to the ground, their iron grip unbreakable, even with his without his compromised position.

“I’ll give you one thing,” he managed to get out. “You’re heavier than the Grendel was, that’s for sure.”

The homunculus snarled. The force on his chest grew, the claws digging into his flesh. He could feel his new heart squish against his ribcage. Normally, he’d have a synthetic heart in battle that was far more durable, but this one pressed on bone like an overfilled water balloon. He stifled a groan of pain, and tried again to rip his hands free, to no avail.

“Can you feel that heartbeat? Yeah, that’s not my fucking heart you know. Had to give up my real one when the war broke out. I’ve been using cybernetic ones ever since. But this one in there right now? It ain’t cobalt and wires; it’s one of your own.”

The darkened pits of its eyes seemed almost to soften. Most Runners claimed to have seen something like it. A spark in their eyes, they claim. All just baloney. The homunculi only seemed sentient because human empathy was so strong, it made men deranged. That was the true battle. Not against homunculi, but against the delusion that man could make brethren of beasts.

“That’s right. Homunculus heart. I was the one who gave the command to kill her. My latest conquest.”

The homunculus leaned in and unhinged both jaws. They stretched wide enough to encompass the entirety of his face, revealing their armoury of knife-like teeth, some still crimson from their recent hunt.

Séquard forced in one last breath, as much as he could manage. “My only regret was that I couldn’t rip it out of her chest myself.”

He swung his head up, mouth open, and ate. He didn’t care what he got between his teeth, only that he bit down hard enough to tear it off. The homunculus screamed; the same high pitch noise of a squealing pig. He felt sinew rip and lymph filling his lips, viscous and bitter. Finally, the flesh came free.

The homunculus staggered off him. Part of its jaw was missing, leaving behind a mess of throbbing white pulp and what he could only imagine was bone just underneath.

Séquard only laughed, mouth full, and swallowed. That solid chunk of meat scratched at his oesophagus like fishbones as it fell. “Just like a prime ribeye,” he leered.

Bleeding and frenzied, the homunculus raised one limb. The metal plates that ran along it sprung open in an all too familiar pattern. Cybernetics. The creature’s enlarged frame allowed for larger weapons too, as a cannon twice the Bureau’s standard size sprouted from within its arm. Swamp-green light gathered at its muzzle.

The first blast, a short burst, came faster than any bullet, searing a patch of his hospital gown off. The skin underneath scorched black.

Séquard bolted down the corridor, both arms crossed over his head like a shield. Light started to gather again. Just as the blast fired, he leapt the final distance. The laser zipped by his cheek and dissipated somewhere behind. He brought both fists crashing down, pulverising the metal plate on top of the creature’s head. Then, he dropped low. One hand hooked onto the cannon and shoved it away. The other went down, gripping a steel rod that stuck out from one of the broken concrete shards.

The homunculus fired a third, frenzied blast that went nowhere. In one smooth motion, Séquard wrenched the rod from the rubble and stabbed it into the creature’s cybernetic arm. Its tapered edge jammed deep into the machinery of the cannon, sparks flying. He half-prayed the rod would pierce right through the flesh and poke out through the other side.

Without its cannon, the homunculus shifted to its other arm. Blades sprung out from its fingertips and sang as they cut through the air. Three of them gauged his neck, deep enough to cut an artery. Blood came rupturing out.

Séquard pressed down on the wound and stumbled back. He could barely feel the pain, but he knew it was bad. His hands were drenched within seconds.

The homunculus didn’t press forward, choosing to back away. For a brief second, Séquard thought it was retreating, or at least taking a moment to catch its breath. Instead, it widened its upper jaw, and a metal barrel slid out. A second cannon.

No. That wasn’t just another cybernetic. As the energy built up at the muzzle’s tip, the world seemed to almost dim around them. Red and green shifted into grey. When he glanced down at this body, it was painted in streaks of black and white. Colour itself drained from the world, sapped into that barrel.

The drumming of heartbeat in his ear, the way the air stilled– every instinct he had trained as a soldier and a Runner, compelling him to run.

“Now that’s a good parlour trick,” he laughed. “A homunculus, using Axiom. Like a monkey with a revolver. You can imitate us all you want, but you will never be more than the animal you are.”

Slowly, Séquard took his hands off his neck, raising them outwards. The blood that had pooled there began to ooze down his shirt and pants. Once-purple embers sparked in his palms. “I’m going to tell you a secret, beast, because I respect the fight you’ve put on. I’m a bit of a mystery in the Bureau, see, because nobody knows what my Axiom is. Most people tend to think it’s pyrokinesis, or something related to fire. The truth is, my Axiom is physics selectivity.”

The homunculus unleashed its Axiom. It came at him as a continuous stream of light, the recoil alone almost knocking the monster off its feet. The aura of its light tore the concrete walls apart as it flew past. It launched too fast for him to react. He didn’t need to.

The beamed reached him, and stopped. It didn’t dissipate, it didn’t diverge around him. It simply, and resolutely, ceased. The homunculus took a step back.

“I choose what forces of the world act on me and I can ignore them just as easily. Friction, inertia, torque. I am exempt to them if I so choose. I stand here, tied to the ground, chained by gravity because I let it. Because without it, the momentum of the very Earth spinning beneath will fling me halfway across the continent.”

Clint Séquard reached for his anchors to the world. Then, he let go. All of it lasted for no more than a second. A fraction of a second. A minuscule measure of time, so small that nobody could perceive it, let alone count it. Nobody except for him.

When he grabbed onto his anchors again, he was much farther down the corridor. Colour had returned. He turned around: the homunculus’ corpse stood for seconds before it fell. There was a cavity through its abdomen, lit aflame in violet hues.

“The flames I leave behind aren’t because I control fire. They’re because I’ve moved so fast, the friction alone has set the air ablaze.”

Séquard collapsed against the wall. His head was splitting. The floor spun all around him. Most of all, the bleeding didn’t cease. If anything, using Axiom only exacerbated it, splattering the hallway in crimson pools, sticky on the soles of his boots. He ripped off a piece of his coat to tie around the wound, though blood kept dribbling out.

“This is Elite Runner, Clint Séquard,” he gasped into his interface. “Requesting the Princep.”

She picked up immediately. “Is it done?”

“Project Opinicus is missing a heart, lungs, and pretty much everything else.”

“Good work. I’ll patch a team in to dispose of any evidence, but I need you to handle one last thing.”

He looked at the red smudges on his hands. “Better be quick ‘cause I’ve got minutes before blood loss takes me.”

“Project Leveret.”

“You made the vault to hold two special projects?”

“We made that vault to hold Leveret,” she said. “Opinicus was the warden.”

“Fucking hell.” Séquard began to hobble towards the grand hall. “Next time, keep me in the damn loop.”

“Ask no questions, Séquard.”

“And trust in the Bureau,” he finished, sighing. “Orders are orders.”

It seemed like hours before he made it to the vault, stumbling and shuffling, desperate to keep his precious fluid from leaking dry. The inside was dark. The light from the hall barely reached in, as if it was afraid of that void within. He felt around for a light switch, until tiny lamps lit by themselves the further in he crept.

Séquard stopped. His eyes widened. “No.”

“It’s loose now. You have to.”

“I won’t kill it. I can’t.”

“Clint, it’ll kill millions.”

“I know. I’m sorry, but you need someone else.” The Leveret glanced up, and their eyes locked. “Good fucking luck. You guys will need it.”