Thresholder

They moved through the city at night, Perry in his armor, Flora in dark gray clothes that cloaked her better than her blue uniform. Perry wore a hooded cloak as well, which Marchand complained about since it covered a few of the cameras, especially back-facing ones, but it was a trade-off between some degree of stealth and better mobility and vision. With a cloak, there was a good chance for the glamour to work better, allowing people to think that Perry was a bird, or a teenager running rooftop races. In a fight, the cloak would be the first thing removed, and Perry practiced that a few times to get the motion smooth.

Wesley was a public figure, very nearly the public figure, and it had been trivial to find out everything they needed to know, especially for Flora, who knew the city backward and forward. Wesley’s research laboratory and primary lab was in the west of the city, away from the busy wharfs and most of the squalor of industry, while his home in the city was one of a few fine houses up on Proctor’s Knob. The king had a fine palace as the jewel of the Knob, visible on a night without fog from as far as the cathedral. Perry had likely seen it on his first night, and Marchand had definitely mapped it. Proctor’s Knob was a place that Flora was keen to avoid, given the number of guards there, so they went for the laboratory first.

Faolan Park was a set of new buildings surrounded by high brick walls, which were topped by barbed wire. By the time they reached it, there was no one there, but they’d been moving under the cover of fog and night, and hadn’t expected many people to be burning the midnight oil. Perry had some hope that Wesley would be there, and some trepidation at the thought that Cosme might be laying in wait, but the only light came from a gaslamp near the entrance where a guard sat in his hut. Perry sailed over the walls while Flora came over with a flap of her wings, and they sat for a moment on the rooftops while Marchand listened.

“I don’t hear anyone, sir,” said the AI.

“We’re looking for the rubies,” said Perry. “Show me the map?”

Acoustic mapping wasn’t perfect, wasn’t even particularly good compared to the digital reconstructions that Marchand was capable of with video, but it was something that could be done from out of sight. The rubies were tiny, and Perry thought that they’d be in a safe, which was what he was really looking for, something that might also contain the book that Wesley and Cosme had been looking at. The book was from a different, more advanced world, and Perry thought it might contain useful details. Marchand was also entirely capable of safecracking, though Perry had yet to put that to the test.

When Marchand gave them the all-clear, they moved into the buildings, taking a closer look at things, Perry with the enhanced vision that the suit offered him, Flora with her own ability to see in the dark.

There were all kinds of machines around the place, pieces of equipment and materials for building more of them. Perry recognized certain things, like a metal lathe and a drill press, but most of it was a mystery to him, and Marchand wasn’t terribly adept at identifying machines from other worlds that were equivalent to antiques. There were a few of the devices that had been on display in the tent at the fair, these ones built for fiddling with and testing rather than for showing off. Metal shavings were strewn on the ground and a smell of oil permeated the air. A single large machine dominated the area, and looked to Perry’s eyes like a gatling gun, though the barrels were too short for it to be that, and it was oversized, big enough that even with the suit, Perry would barely have been able to lift it.

“Nothing,” said Flora, her voice a whisper that Marchand picked up easily.

“It’s not clear when Cosme arrived here,” said Perry. “Some of this — most of this — probably predates him coming to this world.” The machine in the center looked new though, and Perry thought briefly about smashing it, just in case.

“Do you think that Cosme would have stuck by Wesley?” asked Flora. “Knowing that you would be on his tail?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “I don’t know how he thinks. If it were me, I would go to ground, find a place that couldn’t be linked to Wesley, lay in wait for the enemy to slip up, gather what power I could, feed Wesley as much as I could to eke out some advantage, return to the shadows when that was done … I think I could turn Wesley, given the chance.”

“How?” asked Flora.

“Cosme had a book,” said Perry. “I have a hundred million books and an artificial intelligence. We’re not the same.”

“You can’t offer him the keys to the kingdom,” said Flora. “It’s a kingdom that doesn’t include my kind.”

“I think it is,” said Perry. “You need human organs, a pig’s won’t do, there’s got to be a reason why, and medical knowledge is a starting point. We can examine your blood under a microscope, for a start, we can see what differences there are in the cells, we can first explain it and then solve it.”

Flora’s lips were tight. The pale skin of her face stood in stark contrast to the black of her outfit. Her lips were blood red, in stark contrast, and when Perry wasn't in the suit, he kept convincing himself that it was just lipstick, not something odd and compelling or worthy of notice.

“And I don’t need to give him everything,” said Perry. “Just enough to turn him away from Cosme, to get Cosme’s location, to kill Cosme or otherwise dispatch him, and then the whole thing is over, we’ll both move on, if he’s not dead.”

Flora didn’t seem particularly mollified by that.

In reality, Perry wasn’t all that sure that medical knowledge would help. The vampires clearly did have some biological differences, but the glamours couldn’t possibly be explained by differences in cells or DNA, and Flora’s wings were made of shadow, protruding from her back and then disappearing, which was, in fact, magic. And if it was magic, then it might just be a matter of magic that Flora needed to feast on organs, something that no amount of scientific understanding could change. Perry needed to know more about magic in this world, and if he didn't find Cosme, that was on the docket.

They found no trace of the book, the rubies, or Cosme, only projects and notes on those projects, though none of the notes mentioned the subjects Perry was most interested in. There was a thick metal safe near an office area strewn with papers, and Marchand was able to help Perry crack it — cracking it, in this case, simply by sending a pulse of sound through the device and then giving Perry the combination — but it was filled only with money, bonds, and deeds. Perry left it all where it was and closed the safe. It was good to know he could steal from here if he really had to.

“We’re off to Proctor’s Knob then,” said Perry.

“It’s brightly lit,” said Flora. “Well-guarded. The fog doesn’t sweep over it like it does elsewhere.” That wasn’t a ‘no’, but it was close.

“If we’re lucky, we end this tonight,” said Perry. “If I kill Cosme in his sleep, it won’t be long before a portal opens. It’s what’s happened the last two times. Not always right away, but close. All your troubles, at least so far as I’m concerned, will be gone.”

“I’m already out on a limb,” said Flora. “No one knows that I’m sheltering you. I serve the Council and the King, but neither knows what I’m doing here.”

“If you don’t come with me, I’ll go alone,” said Perry. He nearly folded his arms across his chest, but the bulk of the armor would make it awkward.

“I’ll come,” said Flora, letting out a breath, lips half-parted. “We go quickly, silently.”

Perry nodded, relieved. He would have gone alone, but he liked his chances better with backup.

It was harder to keep to the rooftops as they approached Proctor’s Knob. These were buildings with grounds, not usually extensive ones, but enough so that the two of them needed move along the damp grass at times, hoping that they’d stay cloaked. Flora moved fast than Perry could fly with the sword, so he adopted a leaping style, using the armor’s power to launch himself into the air and the sword to slow his downward momentum enough that he wasn’t crashing down into buildings or leaving inch-deep impressions in the earth. The glamour wouldn’t help with that kind of evidence.

Proctor’s Knob was more brightly lit, even though it was growing late into the night. It was devoid of fog, which had been a fickle ally so far. The gaslamps of the wider city were nowhere to be seen, replaced by something that emitted a steady yellow light at far greater luminance. The area was gated, its long roads paved with thick flagstones, with none of the filth that marked the rest of the city. From the look of the plants, there must have been an army of gardeners and cleaners coming through every day, along with maids and servants, people keeping everything neat and tidy. The streets were empty now, this late in the night, and the houses were dark.

They moved like shadows in the night.

Wesley’s house was one of the largest ones on Proctor’s Knob, though nothing like the castle that had been erected as a symbol of the king’s continued reign on a new continent. The house was a tall thing of steel and glass, modern in a way that felt out of place with its surroundings, clean lines rather than baroque details, with a sleekness that could hide no imperfections. It wasn’t all exacting modernism, and there were a few sweeping flairs to it, but it was a place that spoke of the future.

A single light was on in the house’s lower level.

They stopped outside, and Perry listened, holding still so that Marchand could stretch the limits of the suit’s microphones.

“Someone is working in the basement, sir,” said Marchand. “Three people are asleep upstairs.”

Perry watched the house carefully. He hoped that they were hidden well enough in the bushes beneath a weeping willow, but they were in the back, away from the yellow lights, and likely almost invisible. The glamour would help too, making any movement seem like it was just the wind. Perry was operating on the assumption that Cosme didn’t know about the Custom, and that meant there was one additional element of surprise.

The only question was whether Cosme was actually in the house.

“There’s a smell of death,” said Flora. Perry looked at her, and saw that her nostrils had flared.

Inside the armor, Perry was having the air filtered, and smelled nothing. “March, particulate diagnostics, if you can.”

There was a long pause. “Aside from the air pollution, sir, I would agree there’s a stench of bodily decay. It’s hard to say what the source is. The filters need changing next time you get the chance, sir, which might help with a diagnosis of the origin.”

“It’s subtle?” asked Perry.

Flora nodded. “It’s there though. Something foul. Blood iron, rotting.”

Perry stared at the house. That wasn’t expected. It wasn’t good either.

“We should go in,” said Perry. “Find Wesley. Talk to him. He already knows about thresholders, he shouldn’t know about vampires or anything else. It’s not a violation of the Custom to talk about the Custom with people who know, right?”

“It depends on what you tell them,” said Flora.

“I don’t want to tell him anything,” said Perry. “I want to know where Cosme is.”

“We can’t be in for long,” said Flora. “Too big a risk of the servants waking up, and if the knowledge spreads to them —”

“It’s also possible one of those sleeping people is Cosme,” said Perry.

“If the knowledge spreads to them, if it hasn’t already, the Custom is put at risk,” said Flora. She was giving him a hard look. “I want this resolved, out of my city. Battles between thresholders have ended with calamity each time. Not this time.”

“I understand,” said Perry. He'd like to avoid that too, if possible.

He moved forward, watching where everything was marked on the HUD, until he came to the French doors at the back of the house. He’d unwrapped his sword, unsheathed it, and had it ready to slice through bone if the need arose. The door was locked, but Perry forced it, breaking the mechanism with the immense power of the suit.

He had broken into a house for the first time two days ago, when he’d gone into the attic of some well-to-do family to get some rest. This felt much the same, skulking about in a place where he wasn’t wanted. His heart was hammering, because here he would likely have to turn to violence. The kitchen he found himself in would be smashed to pieces, the fight spilling out into the backyard if it wasn’t ended in an instant — but he would try to keep it contained, quiet, something that would look like an unfortunate break-in rather than a forensically inexplicable maelstrom.

It took some work to find the door into the basement, where the noises of a person were coming from, and that was locked as well, from the inside. Perry was more careful with that one, forcing it with enormous power but as much control as the armor was capable of, and he hoped that it was mostly silent.

He went down the stairs with Flora following behind, and though he couldn’t smell it, his brain tricked him into thinking that he could. There was blood everywhere, iron in the air, smeared and dripped on too many surfaces.

Wesley was down there with a corpse on a table, hands red. There was medical equipment next to the table, saws and scalpels, but the body had only a single obvious wound on it, right at the crook of the elbow. It was all lit by a proper incandescent bulb, harsh light cast out over everything, and Wesley standing, the lone figure, tools in hand.

The room was large, mostly unfinished, with workbenches off to one side and the automobile from earlier parked in it, an incline leading up to the street level where a door must have been at the front of the house. It was a workshop, and blood aside, Wesley was wearing his suit and a leather apron. There were more of the rubies sitting on the table beside the tools.

Wesley looked up with a start, eyes wide, then relaxed slightly.

“He’s quite alive,” said Wesley. “I fear I’ve taken too much, but he is quite alive.”

Perry looked at the body. There was no obvious rise and fall of the chest.

“The heartbeat is slow,” said Marchand. “Breathing shallow. He needs a transfusion, or at least a saline drip. I would recommend you take him to a hospital.”

“What is this?” asked Perry. He’d tweaked the distortion on the suit, so his voice would come out even more different from normal. He really didn’t need anyone making the connection between the man in the power armor and Perry the regular human.

“Science,” said Wesley. “Engineering. Magic.”

Perry threw off his cloak. There was no point in hiding, and he might need vision and mobility. Marchand helpfully put up a rear-facing view in the bottom corner of the HUD, showing Flora in her black clothes, up the steps and out of sight, both guarding the rear and making sure she wasn’t seen.

“Who is that?” asked Perry.

“One of the footmen,” said Wesley, looking at the body. He picked up one of the rubies sitting on the small metal table and held it up to the light. “Forged by blood.” He looked at Perry. “Do you think it ghastly?”

“Yes,” said Perry. He looked at the body again. “He needs help. He might die.”

“No,” said Wesley. “I took only as much as I could. He’ll sleep here, and be weak for a few days, but he won’t die.”

Perry couldn’t say for certain that was wrong. Marchand had medical routines, could diagnose diseases and injuries, but wasn’t a doctor, just an AI with some of a doctor’s protocols. Wesley wasn't a doctor either though.

“I did pay the man to be a test subject,” said Wesley. “You’re not here looking for me though, are you? You’re looking for Cosme. I can tell you where to find him.”

“You use blood to make more of the rubies?” asked Perry, ignoring the diversion for a moment.

“Only certain types of blood,” said Wesley. “Blood that matches Cosme’s. He’s come here with a wealth of knowledge, knowledge he’s said that you have too, knowledge that you might share with me.”

“Why would he say that?” asked Perry.

“He meant it as a warning,” said Wesley. “A caution against being enticed. But I am enticed, and if I give him to you, you’ll have no reason to kill me.”

“Explain the bracer,” said Perry. “Explain how it works.” His sword was out in front of him, and it was obvious he didn’t need to make the threat. Not that he would kill Wesley, who had brought up the very good point that there was no reason to. Covering tracks, perhaps, though killing one of the most famous men in the city seemed like a poor way to keep from being discovered.

“It gives him power,” said Wesley. “Through his body, but much more in that one arm. Each ruby is crystalized from his blood, a pint of it, pulled from him, embedded in the bracer. He grows stronger over time, so long as he gives of his blood when he’s able.” The words came quickly. Wesley was possessed of supernatural coolness, calm even when an armored man with a sword was down in a basement laboratory where definitely illegal things were happening. “The rubies hold energy, enormous energy, more than the blood used to make them. And with a thought, he can spend them, charging himself with more power. You saw it when you fought him, didn’t you?”

Perry was silent for a moment. “Where is he?”

“Not here,” said Wesley. “He knew that you would find me, knew that you would hunt him, knew you would come here. But he knew that I was an ally to him, so we have a way to speak with each other over wireless telegraphy.”

Perry thought about that. It was entirely possible that it was a lie. He did have Wesley at swordpoint, and this sort of coercion was liable to produce lies if it couldn’t produce the truth. There had been wireless messages, the ones March thought were from a code book.

“Contact him,” said Perry. “Send out a message. Bring him here.”

“Not here,” said Flora, who was making herself known. She’d brought the fabric up to cover her face, keeping only her golden brown eyes visible.

“Not here,” Perry agreed, not turning to look back at Flora. “Somewhere quiet, abandoned, where no one needs to see the fight, if there is one.”

“We’re in the city,” said Wesley. “He’ll be suspicious if I send him away. He’s close by, needs to be for the transmitter to function, within a few miles for reliability. And it’s the middle of the night. He might be sleeping.” His bloody hands were in front of him, both defensive and showing no weapons, but still not entirely helpless to Perry’s eyes.

Letting Wesley send out a message was a risk, but not an unacceptable one.

“Show me the code book you’re using,” said Perry.

“There is no code book,” said Wesley. “Only a handful of signals, minimal, though I’ve taught him the Ergmore system.” His eyes were still wide. He was a performer though, a showman, and Perry had been tricked by someone feigning defenselessness before.

“Contact him,” said Perry. “Bring him here.”

“Not here,” said Flora. “We’re next to the castle, too close to important people with too many guards.”

“He’s right,” said Perry, not looking back. “Anything else would be too suspicious. We want to end this now.”

Wesley nodded, then lowered his hands. The first thing he did was to wipe the blood from his hands, which had grown sticky, and once that was done, he went up to one of the machines that was set up there. It looked different from the other one back at the manor, and different still from the one that had been used for demonstration in the tent. Wesley watched carefully, though he was in the dark. He’d meant this to be an ambush, and wondered briefly whether this was how it went with thresholders, whether they sometimes just kept missing each other.

“This isn’t good,” said Flora as Wesley donned headphones and began tapping out a message.

“No, it’s not,” said Perry. “But there’s nothing for it. We need Cosme. I understand him better now, at least. The replication of the rubies is worrying, but we need to put him down now, before more can be made. We need to cut him off from these resources.”

Marchand chirped about the outgoing radio transmission, which was happening through a thick cord connected to the machine, running up to somewhere above them where there would be a good line of sight. It was a coded message, the code book apparently memorized, which wasn’t a happy sign.

“Now we wait, I suppose?” asked Wesley, who was still wearing the headphones.

“If you send another transmission, I’ll hear it,” said Perry. “We’ll be outside. Wake no one. Speak to no one. I’ll know.”

He stalked off, not looking back, going back upstairs. He didn’t know how long it would take for Cosme to show up, if Cosme did show up. The best they could do was to hide out and wait, then ambush him. With Flora’s help, the fight would go better than it had the first time, though a part of Perry thought it might have been better to wait until the rounds he’d ordered were ready, or until he could work out the details of how and whether to get vampiric powers.

They sat on the roof together, in an area that was completely concealed from below, four stories up.

“He knows too much,” said Flora. “You heard what he said. ‘Magic.’ He’s introduced it to the world already. He’s using blood, practically a varcoli himself, and if blood is the price to be paid to power the steam engines, if blood replaces coal, it won’t be long until we’re found.”

“March, let me know if he leaves,” said Perry. “Let me know if he starts the car. And be on the lookout for Cosme's approach, or anyone upstairs waking up. Throw up stats on the screen, a map of the house, things like that.”

“We don’t know what message was sent out,” said Flora.

“By design,” said Perry.

“Your opponent could hole up,” said Flora. “He could smell a trap and not respond.”

“Yes,” said Perry.

“What do we do then?” asked Flora. “About Wesley?”

“That’s up to you,” said Perry. “He’s a kid in the candy store. He’s had something fall into his lap — probably because of his fame — and he’s trying to ride the Century of Progress. Too famous for you to kill, unless you make him disappear, too famous to let him keep going, I guess.” He hesitated. “I’m willing to help you. Ideally you stick him away somewhere, but … he’s done nothing wrong, assuming he was telling the truth about the man in the basement, assuming it was voluntary, paid. Assuming the footman lives through it.”

“Sound. Movement,” said March.

“Where?” asked Perry, but March had already put it up on the HUD. Cosme was approaching, ridiculous spinning staff above his head, flying above the quiet rooftops to the house.

“There,” Perry said to Flora, pointing out the figure. Cosme was fast with the staff, Perry had to give him that, quite a bit faster than the sword but maybe not if Perry was at a full sprint in the suit.

“This is a bad place for a fight,” said Flora.

Perry had two bullets left, since he’d left one with the man who was going to try to make more. Shooting Cosme down didn’t seem like it would work, and the gun wasn’t as accurate at a long distance, in part because the barrel was short. He’d given Flora as much information about Cosme’s abilities as he had, but the staff could parry almost anything, moving almost instantly. Overwhelming it seemed difficult, though maybe not impossible. The gauntlet, likewise, now that they knew what it actually did, seemed like it would be a problem, though if most of the power was in that single arm, that meant that Cosme would be weak in other places. Chunking through the charges on it, trying to drain it that way, seemed impossible: there were just too many of them.

“Better to get him now,” said Perry. “End this quickly.”

She seemed skeptical. “I’m ready,” she said.

Perry launched himself through the air when Cosme was coming down for a landing in the backyard next to the weeping willow. He brought the sword down with full force, trying to time it so that the blow would get the force of the fall and the power armor’s articulation. As predicted, the staff came up to block, but they both fell to the ground, and Cosme landed with Perry on top of him.

Perry tried thrusting, hoping that the staff’s ability to parry would be stymied, that the sword would slip off to one side and find flesh, but it was too fast, too precise, catching the point of the sword exactly. Perry thrust the sword forward, letting it get caught, and moved his hand slowly forward, Cosme still wriggling beneath him. If Perry could get his hand past the staff’s block, then he could rabbit-punch Cosme in the chest, and —

Cosme’s bracer surged with power and he pushed the staff hard, forcing Perry to either lose his grip on the sword or onto his feet. He let the sword go and reached down until he was past the staff, then punched forward as hard as he could, nailing Cosme in the chest. Something broke, and then Perry was fending off the staff as it struck him, his attempt at a second punch parried with such suddenness and force that it was like punching a wall. His hand smarted, which was a terrible sign, and the two of them backed up. Perry called the sword back to his hand.

“Round two then, huh?” asked Cosme. “I’d wondered.”

The wound on his face from a bullet graze was much worse, the skin around it red and puffy, the ridge of it raw. He’d been hurt worse than Perry had thought. His ear was covered in a bandage, hiding the damage.

“Getting dropped on like that should have broken your legs,” said Perry.

“Should have,” Cosme agreed. He was breathing heavily, wincing slightly. “Tougher than I look, I guess.” He pressed a hand against his chest and groaned. “Or maybe not.”

Perry was waiting, trying not to look up to see when Flora was going to make her entrance. He had cameras on the suit that would show him, but he wanted to be able to react at a moment’s notice.

“I think you broke a rib,” said Cosme. “Maybe two.”

“Do you heal fast?” asked Perry.

“A bit,” said Cosme. He winced again. “Mind calling this off until I heal up?”

“Not really feeling like doing that, no,” said Perry.

“Dick,” said Cosme. His eyes flicked to the house. “Did you kill my guy Wesley?”

Before Perry could answer, he saw Flora come down from up high, quiet as a whisper. She landed behind Cosme, and he didn’t seem to notice her at all, not until she struck, and then only because his arm moved the staff behind him to block his claws. She went at him with a vengeance, the staff blocking her attempts at sinking those claws into his back, but that meant that his front was exposed. Perry lunged forward with the sword, and this time the staff came down late.

Cosme was bleeding from the bottom of his rib cage down to his thigh, a long slash that had cut through his skin like wet paper. The bracer lit up again, far brighter than before, and Cosme lashed out with the staff, sending Flora into the trunk of the weeping willow and Perry staggering back. The wound Cosme had taken should have been a mortal one, the gash through his belly and leg of the sort that men quickly bled out from, but he was still standing, and the flow of blood had slowed. Perry glanced at the tree, where Flora was climbing to her feet, then at Cosme, who was worse for the wear. The hand that was holding the staff was torn up, which was apparently what Flora was trying to accomplish, not a bad idea.

“Who is this?” asked Cosme. He was backing up, trying to put both Flora and Perry in front of him. “Another thresholder?”

“You know the word?” asked Perry. He was waiting, sword in hand, hoping that Flora was still in fighting condition. The fight would be harder without her, much harder.

“Two on one,” said Cosme, wild eyes going to Flora again. His wounds hadn’t fully healed, not even close, but something had slowed the flow of blood from a torrent to a trickle. “Hardly seems —”

He was cut off by a thunderclap that came from Perry’s side, through the open door to the house. The lightning struck Perry full-on, and the display flickered for a second before coming back on. A new image showed appeared on the HUD, Wesley with two gloved hands, having entered the fray. March hadn’t clocked it, or hadn’t recognized the threat until too late.

“Activating Zeus-Killer protocol,” said Marchand.

The armor became sluggish. Perry’s first Adversary, Mordant, had limited lightning powers, mostly used for movement and an attack that let the power flow through his hands. Perry’s suit had been fried, encasing him in metal, and after he’d been rescued, Richter had made some changes to the internals, which had been replaced, hardening everything against massive surges of electricity and creating the Zeus-Killer protocol, which shut down a number of subsystems so they’d be less vulnerable.

“March, shoot him!” Perry roared. The suit would be slower until the danger had passed, protecting Perry from misfiring motors that could easily snap one of his limbs.

The gun rose from the shoulder mount, turned, and fired backward toward the house, compensating for Perry moving to avoid a hammer-heavy swing from the staff, compensating for Wesley moving behind a wall. It was a lot for the suit's firing algos to handle, and impossible to tell whether it was a hit, especially since that was happening in only a single corner of the full display, picture-in-picture.

Cosme was on the attack, having sensed his moment. The staff was being used like a club again, with huge swings, and the bracer seemed to be constantly glowing, power flowing through it. There were fewer rubies than when he’d started, but not nearly enough were missing. Some of the swings were easy to dodge, the wind-up so exaggerated that Perry knew well ahead of time where they’d land, but others were so wide and sweeping that Perry had no choice but to back away. Perry brought his sword up for one of those swings, trying to parry it or at least catch it, and the sword went flying from his hand, clattering against a wall before swooping back through the air and returning to him.

Flora came to his rescue just as he’d been pushed back against one of the walls that surrounded the grounds, and once she’d joined the fray, Cosme could no longer make the large swings he seemed to prefer. As soon as he would begin winding up, Flora would move in, forcing a parry from the staff, which killed any momentum and might that he could bring to an attack. He was overwhelmed by the two of them, retreating, defensive, and finally began to run away from them. Perry followed, his suit propelling him forward with mighty leaps.

It seemed like all that was left was a killing blow, but Cosme stopped, turned on a dime, bracer bathing the yard in red light, and threw the staff.

The staff was moving fast enough to scream through the air, and it struck Perry in the shoulder, spinning him around. He’d been in mid-jump when he’d been hit, no feet on the ground to transfer the energy of it, and he slammed his head against the dirt hard enough that he blacked out for just a moment. When he got to his feet, Flora was fighting against Cosme alone, her clawing frantic, doing no damage, only preventing him from using the staff offensively as it quickly changed position to intercept her strikes. It was all-out aggression, all so that Cosme's defenses would mean he wouldn't be able to get his own shot in.

“Now!” shouted Cosme.

Wesley stepped out from behind the interior wall, gloved hands out. He was bleeding from the side, face pale but still standing, and he unleashed two streams of lightning, one from each hand. These hit Flora, and when they did, her whole body tensed, every muscle clenched as hard as it could, dropping her to the ground.

“Kill Wesley,” said Perry as he got to his feet, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the gun fired its final bullet. This time there was less to compensate for, and blood blossomed out from a wound in Wesley’s chest, slightly off-center. The inventor fell, the wind knocked out of him, bleeding, and Perry was left to face Cosme down alone. Flora wasn’t getting up. Marchand put a view of her up on the HUD, showing her limp form as apparently vital information.

Cosme came closer, staff in front of him, and Perry lowered his sword, getting his stance correct. There was no opportunity to cut and run, not when the gun was now empty, not when Cosme was faster in the air. Perry could run, possibly leap across the rooftops, but Flora was slumped on the ground, groaning, and he couldn’t leave her there.

Cosme threw the staff again. There was a wind up to it though, a lead time, and it hadn’t come without warning. Perry braced himself and planted his feet, catching the staff in the center of his chest, absorbing most of the energy. He grabbed the staff and threw it with the full might of the power armor, not at Cosme, but away, into the air. Then he moved on Cosme, trying to take advantage of the opening.

Cosme had only the bracer, its rubies alight, and he used it as a shield, blocking the sword as it came down. If it had been brass, the sword would have cut through, but it was magic against magic, and the sword barely left a mark. Perry brought the sword down again and again, but it was blocked each time, and then the staff was back, parrying perfectly. Perry moved back, sword up, cursing. Cosme was panting heavily. The bracer was being drained for strength, which meant that it might become a war of attrition. Perry thought he would win. The armor’s battery was being drained too, but it had quite a bit left, enough for a sprint across the city if need be. The percent charge ticked up as he watched it.

Cosme’s bracer flared to life, brighter than ever before, and he punched at the ground, launching himself up into the air. The staff was spinning before Perry even realized what was happening, and then Cosme was up and away, his bleeding form quickly disappearing into the night sky.

Perry cursed, trying to decide what to do. He picked up a rock from the gardens and launched it with the full force of the armor’s power, but from Marchand’s tracking, the aim was off, the aerodynamic rock curving off to one side.

Perry looked to the side, and saw that Wesley was no longer there, though there was a smear of blood against the counter he’d been slumped against.

“Status,” said Perry. “Show me where people are.”

“The neighborhood is waking up, sir,” said March. “Armed men are on their way down the street. The car in the basement has just been started.” Images helpfully showed up on the HUD. Men were pouring out of the castle down the street. They’d made plenty of light and noise, both with the gunshots and the thunderclaps. It was Wesley in the basement, trying to make an escape, but Perry didn’t think he’d get far with two bullet wounds. The walking dead, they called people like that, those that would succumb to gut wounds or blood loss.

“Chart a course back to Flora’s, keeping out of the lights,” said Perry.

He moved over to her even as a yellow line was being drawn on the HUD, across the city. She was still breathing, very shallow, and her eyes fluttered very briefly. She wasn’t human, and he had no idea what kind of damage the lightning had done to her, but he hoped that she would live.

He scooped her up in one arm, putting her over his shoulder, then gripped the sword tightly and flew off into the air.