Chapter 171: God-Hand Punch. (The End of a Ghost)
"Abram," Owen said, breathing harder now, chest rising and falling. "You’re stupid enough to travel with a hairy man you don’t know and a girl who turned on you the first chance she got."
I braced, trying to read where he was going. Richard. Jenn.
"They’re no more," he said, smiling. "But you can remember them by this. They left you to die in the desert."
He was buying time. Recovering from the first round. Talking to slow the pace.
"No more," I said. "What does that mean?"
"I killed them," Owen said, the smile widening. "They ran off in my car, remember."
"Why?"
Behind him, Mary was pushing herself up against the wall, one hand braced on the metallic surface.
"They were traitors. You should thank me." His smile held. "You have a real talent for fighting on the wrong side. Here you are doing it agai—"
I discharged.
The charge caught him square in the chest like a sledgehammer made of lightning. Blue-white light exploded across his torso. He staggered back, boots sliding on the floor, then dropped hard onto his back.
Before he could rise I closed the gap in two strides, hands hooking under his ribs. I lifted. He fought it, elbows driving into my sides, but I had him. I hauled him off the ground, got him across my shoulders, and aimed for the nearest wall.
I threw him.
His right hand snapped out mid-air and clamped onto the side of my head, fingers digging into my scalp. He twisted, pulling my head under his armpit and locking it there in a vice. He rotated us mid-throw, using my own momentum against me. My feet left the ground.
We crashed down.
The top of my head slammed into the metal-coated floor first, still trapped under his arm. Pain exploded white-hot through my skull. The room spun violently. Owen was already moving, rolling on top of me, knees pinning my arms, drawing back a punch aimed straight at my nose. I saw it coming — knuckles tightening, charge crackling along his fist — but the dizziness slowed me. I couldn’t move fast enough.
Then the floor turned to water.
A rolling wave surged beneath us, liquid metal rippling like a frozen ocean caught mid-motion. It threw us apart. Owen tumbled one way. I slid the other, slamming into the wall. I turned my head.
Becky was on her knees, palm flat against the floor, blonde braid hanging forward. The metallic coating she had laid down had liquefied at her command, turning the entire apartment floor into an unstable, shifting surface.
Owen tried to stand and couldn’t. The floor rolled beneath him again, solid one second, liquid the next, impossible to plant his feet. He dropped back to one knee, charge sparking angrily at his fingertips.
I got up first, finding my balance on the uneven, wave-frozen surface the way the plain had taught me to find footing on shifting sand. My head throbbed. Blood trickled from my scalp down the side of my face. But I was up.
Owen looked at me across the unstable floor, eyes narrowed, the mild smile finally fading as I approached him.
"I don’t think you’re a bad person," I said, stopping in front of him.
"Stupid positive confessions." He laughed once, short and bitter. "You know what’s going to stop you from reaching wherever you’re going, Abram? You trust people too easily. You believe in them too easily."
He found his footing and rose. His face met my fist.
[God-Hand Punch.]
The impact was brutal. My knuckles connected with his jaw with a wet crack that echoed through the room. The force lifted him off his feet and threw him backward into the wall. Becky’s metallic coating snapped back to normal in an instant, every surface reverting with a loud metallic ping. Owen slid down the wall, legs splayed out in front of him, head lolling, done.
I walked over. Mary’s photographs lay scattered across the floor now, glass cracked, frames bent. I sat down beside him, watching his chest rise and fall in shallow, ragged breaths. Blood trickled from the split in his lip, running down his chin and dripping onto his shirt.
"You’re an outlaw," I said quietly. "You’re coming with us to headquarters."
He lifted his head with the last of his strength, eyes glassy but still sharp. "You’re not a fool," he said, catching his breath. "How come your eyes aren’t opened?"
Mary appeared in front of us without a sound. A knife flashed.
The blade drove straight through Owen’s neck with a wet, meaty thunk. His eyes widened for half a second, then went blank. He dropped dead against the wall, head slumping forward, blood pouring down his chest in thick, dark sheets.
I stayed sitting beside him for a moment, staring at the body. The cleaner who had torn the mission apart from the inside. Who had killed Speed. Who had killed Oddo. Who had, by his own words, killed Richard and Jenn.
"He was going in alive," I said.
"He was never going anywhere alive," Mary said, pulling the knife free with a slick sound. Blood ran down the blade and dripped onto the floor. "Not him. You don’t take a ghost into custody. You end it or it ends you."
Becky was on her feet now, breathing hard, sword in hand, staring at the body and then at Mary with an expression I couldn’t fully read. The history between them sat thick in the room with the dead man.
I got up slowly. My knuckles ached. Blood — Owen’s and mine — smeared across my fist.
Owen was gone. Jenn and Richard were gone with him, if he had told the truth. And the woman I owed my life to twice had just made the decision I had been unwilling to make.
The apartment was silent except for the slow drip of blood hitting the floor and the faint hum of the metallic coating still covering the walls.
Mary wiped the knife on her thigh and looked at me, calm and steady.
The mission had just changed again.
