Some have pipes. Some have knives. Two carry slugthrowers. One holds an industrial plasma cutter stolen from a machine shop, its blue edge coughing in the rain. They fan out across the plaza, trying to surround me. They are frightened. That makes them louder.
“Big bastard thinks he owns Halo!”
“Cut him down!”
“Ron said no killing unless he makes us!”
That last statement is useful.
I pull back my hood.
They see my face clearly then, and several of them falter. Scars carry stories even when no one knows the language. Mine tell them I have survived better killers than they will ever become.
“Leave,” I say.
No one leaves.
The first slugthrower fires.
The round hits my upper chest and flattens against scale and muscle with a dull, brutal impact. It hurts. It will bruise. It will not stop me. The second round misses when I move, burning past my ear and striking the old sculpture behind me. Stone chips scatter.
I reach the first shooter in three strides. His weapon comes up again, but my hand closes around the receiver and his fingers together. I do not crush his fingers completely. I crush enough. He screams and releases the gun. I swing him by his jacket into the second shooter, and both hit the ground in a tangle.
Then the plaza becomes motion.
Rain. Shouts. Boots splashing. Knives flashing under red emergency light. The plasma cutter hissing near my left arm. I fight as I was trained to fight, except every strike stops short of death. That restraint costs effort. More than killing would. Killing is clean in combat. A throat. A heart. A skull. Quick arithmetic. Mercy is labor.
I break a knee with a kick angled outward instead of through. I dislocate a shoulder rather than tear the arm free. I drive one man headfirst into a rain barrel, then pull him back before he drowns. I take the plasma cutter from its owner and throw it high through a broken skylight where it explodes in a shower of sparks against the metal rafters.
A knife slips between my ribs beneath my coat.
The blade catches on scale, bites shallow, and breaks.
The boy holding the hilt stares at the broken end in disbelief.
I seize the front of his jacket and lift him until his boots kick at empty air. “Do you know why you are alive?”
He shakes his head, crying now.
“Because Evie asked.”
I throw him into a heap of plastic vines near the entrance.
Inside the primate house, the air is warmer and fouler. The roof leaks through broken panels, and rainwater runs down fake tree trunks into old exhibit pits. Gang lamps and scavenged holo-strips cast the room in purple and red. The smell is bad: wet concrete, stimulant smoke, blood, mildew, sweat, old animal musk trapped in porous walls long after the animals were gone. Music stutters from a speaker somewhere above, glitching every time water strikes the wires.
Ron Sanchez waits at the center of the main enclosure floor.
He sits on the edge of an old feeding platform like a prince on a cheap throne, purple mohawk sharp, sleeveless jacket open over a fitted shirt, tattoos shining against damp skin. The silver ring through his nose catches the red light each time he breathes. Several remaining gang members stand around him, but not as confidently as they would like.
Ron claps slowly.
I keep walking.
“Damn,” he says, grinning. “You made a mess.”
“You made one first.”
His grin widens. “Ah. Bakery girl.”
