The white fury becomes quiet.
Quiet is worse.
I enter the alley at speed.
The nearest gang member turns at the last second. His eyes widen. He tries to raise his hands, either to fight or beg, but his decision arrives too late. I catch his wrist and forearm, twist, and feel bone separate beneath my grip with a wet crack. He screams so loudly it echoes off the brick. I throw him into the trash bins hard enough to fold the metal inward around him.
The one with the pistol fumbles beneath his jacket. I cross the distance before the barrel clears fabric. My left hand clamps around his throat and lifts him off the ground. My right closes around the pistol, his fingers still on it, and crushes the weapon until the power cell spits sparks. He chokes, kicks, and claws at my wrist. His nails scrape uselessly over my scales.
“Bad choice,” I tell him.
His eyes roll with terror.
I drive him into the alley wall. Brick shudders. I do not use enough force to kill him. The part of me that knows force, anatomy, and consequence measures the impact even while the rest of me wants him dead. His head snaps forward, and he drops bonelessly to the pavement when I release him.
Silver Ear, blinded from Evie’s spray, swings a knife wildly. “Get away from us, freak!”
I step inside the arc, catch his elbow, and break it backward. His knife clatters into a puddle. He shrieks, tries to bite me, and I slam my knee into his ribs carefully enough to crack twobut not enough to puncture a lung. He collapses beside the wall, vomiting rainwater and panic.
The fifth runs.
I let him take three steps because fear teaches better when it has time to imagine survival. Then I seize the back of his jacket and yank him off his feet. He lands flat on his back, breath exploding from his lungs. I put one boot on his chest and press until his ribs complain beneath the sole.
“Do not move,” I say.
He sobs and obeys.
Neck Tattoo remains standing over Evie.
He has a small plasma cutter in his hand now, probably stolen from a machine shop, its edge glowing blue-white in the rain. His face has gone gray, but he grips the weapon with both hands and points it at me as if courage can be borrowed from heat.
“Stay back,” he says. His voice cracks. “I’ll burn you.”
I look down at Evie.
She is on her side in the filthy water, one hand curled near her face, blood at the corner of her mouth. Her cheek is swollen where he struck her. Her temple is darkening already. She tries to push herself up and fails.
My vision narrows until the alley contains only him, her, and the distance between.
“You put hands on her,” I say.
He licks his lips. “She mouthed off.”
I move.
He triggers the cutter, and white heat slices the air where my throat was a fraction of a second earlier. I catch his forearm, drive it upward, and hear his shoulder tear. He screams. The cutter drops. I punch him once in the sternum, pulling the strike so it does not shatter his heart through his ribs. He flies backward into the brick wall and crumples.
The alley falls into a ragged chorus of pain.
One of them begs. “Please, man. Please.”
My breath comes hard, rolling through my chest like engines under load. Rain runs over my face, into my mouth, along my scars. Blood that is not mine warms my knuckles. The gang members stare up at me from the ground with the expression I know too well. Horror. Revulsion. The animal certainty that they have found something that should not be allowed to live near ordinary people.
Good, I think.
Fear may keep them away from her.
But then Evie whispers my name.
