The ship landed with a metallic shriek, its ramp hissing down like a mouth opening. My muscles coiled tight. Corporate security. A whole squad, I expected. Ready to light me up.

  But only one figure stepped out.

  No platoon. No backup. Just… one.

  It moved wrong. Too stiff. Too heavy. The gait of something learning to walk on legs like a newborn. My chest tightened. Backed by the ship’s harsh white LEDs, the shadow marched down the ramp, everything into stark contrast. When it hit the alley’s weak glow, my breath caught.

  Brick Crusher.

  Or what used to be him.

  It was Crusher’s frame, but the man inside was gone. His skin was wrong—a sickly, mottled green stitched together with thick black thread. Then I saw the arm. His left arm was just… gone, replaced by a chrome prosthetic that hissed with every movement. And his eyes—God, his eyes. One was his, milky white and dead. The other was a burning red camera lens, humming as it focused on me.

  He wore a black trench coat that hung open over dark tactical pants and combat boots heavy enough to crush pavement. The coat flapped slightly in the downdraft from the ship’s engines. Something metallic gleamed at his belt—weapons, probably. Not what I want to know more.

  My brain blue-screened. He was dead. I was pretty sure I had a receipt for it and everything. I’d killed him. Watched him fall. Watched the bolts fry his body. Watched his eyes go empty.

  But here he stood. Breathing. Moving. Hunting.

  No.

  He wasn’t breathing. There was no fog from his mouth, no rise and fall of his chest beyond the mechanical wheeze of his new arm. He was dead. And I had killed him. The thought was a gasp of cold air. I hadn’t killed him. I had made him. I’d handed Pandora a broken body, and they had bolted it back together into this… this thing. My fault. This was my fault.

  The thing that used to be Brick didn’t speak. No sarcasm. No taunts. No threats about breaking my spine or making me scream. The silence was worse than anything he’d said when he was alive. It just came at me.

  Fast.

  Faster than he’d been alive. Stronger, too. It closed the distance in two strides, chrome arm swinging in a wide arc aimed at my head. I ducked, rolled left, came up near a dumpster. The arm smashed through the metal like foil, hydraulics screaming with the impact. Sparks flew in orange bursts. The stench of scorched electronics-burnt copper and melting plastic-filled the air.

  My training kicked in—go for the joints, disable, don’t kill. I threw a punch, aiming for the spot where chrome met his shoulder. A human punch. My fist connected with his ribs.

  Might as well have punched a concrete wall. My knuckles screamed. He didn’t even blink. Note to self: do not punch the terminator.

  The impact jolted up my arm, rattled my teeth, sent a shock wave through my shoulder socket. His head swiveled toward me with the smooth, mechanical precision of a turret locking on target. No pain. No reaction. No grunt or wince. His left glowing red optical eye tracked me without blinking, focusing with an audible click—some kind of internal targeting system calibrating.

  It swung again. I barely twisted away, felt the displacement of air as the arm passed inches from my face. Chrome claws—three blades extending from the knuckles with a sound like sharpening knives—raked the brick wall where my skull had been a heartbeat earlier. They left deep gouges, shredding mortar and stone like paper. Brick dust rained down, coating my hair and shoulders.

  My lungs burned. Panic clawed at my throat, sharp and metallic.

  This wasn’t a fight. This was execution. A programmed kill sequence wearing my dead enemy’s face.

  I scrambled backward, spotted a fire escape hanging off the building to my right. Survival instinct kicked in—stupid, animal, desperate. I jumped, grabbed the lowest rung with both hands. The metal was ice-cold against my palms. I hauled myself up, biceps screaming. My arms shook. The metal ladder groaned under my weight, bolts creaking in the brick.

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  The thing didn’t follow. It didn’t need to.

  A panel on its chrome forearm slid open with a soft click, revealing a cavity glowing with blue-white energy. Something inside whirred to life, building charge. The sound rose in pitch—a mosquito whine turning into a shriek. I saw the glow a second before the plasma bolt fired.

  The rung beneath my feet melted. Super heated metal dripped like candle wax, hissing as it hit the pavement below. The smell of burning iron flooded the air, acrid and choking. I yelped, yanked myself higher, legs kicking at nothing but space. Another bolt carved a molten scar across the bricks inches from my face. Heat washed over my cheek. I could feel my skin tightening, the beginnings of a burn.

  I reached the roof, dragged myself over the edge on my belly, gravel biting into my palms. I didn’t pause. I ran.

  My sneakers slapped against tar and gravel, each step jarring my spine. The city spread out around me in a mess of flickering neon signs and tangled sky ways crisscrossing between buildings. Wind whipped my hair into my eyes, stung my face. Behind me, I heard the ship’s engines spool up—a deep thrumming that vibrated in my bones. It lifted, slow and deliberate, tracking me from above with spotlights sweeping the rooftops.

  I vaulted over a ventilation shaft, landed hard on the other side, kept moving. My wrist buzzed.

  “Nikki!” Handy’s voice crackled through the speaker, tinny and urgent. Static distorted the edges.

  “Not now!”

  “Analysis of your opponent suggests running is a low-probability survival strategy!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the only one I’ve got!”

  A shadow passed overhead, blocking out the ambient light from the city. The ship was faster than me. It banked left in a tight arc, cutting me off. The side door opened with a pneumatic hiss, and the thing dropped out.

  No parachute. No safety line. No hesitation. It just fell three stories, hit the roof in a crouch, hydraulics absorbing the impact with another wet hiss and a mechanical groan. Cracks spider webbed across the tar beneath its boots. Chunks of gravel scattered. One boot had crushed straight through to the concrete under layer.

  We locked eyes. Or it locked its glowing red eye on me. Same thing.

  It rose, slow and inevitable. No rush. No urgency. It knew I was cornered. The roof’s edge was behind me, a six-story drop to the street where hover-cars zipped past and pedestrians scurried like ants.

  I clenched my fists. My claws slid out—sharp, curved, wrong. The tips gleamed in the light from the ship. The wolf stirred under my skin, restless and angry, pushing against my ribs. Fur prickled along my forearms. My teeth ached with the need to shift.

  No.

  I couldn’t transform. Not here. Not in the open. Too many cameras mounted on every building. Too many witnesses glancing up at the noise. Pandora wanted proof I was a monster? I wasn’t handing it to them. I wasn’t giving them footage of me going full werewolf in downtown Chicago.

  The thing took a step forward, boot crunching on gravel. I took one back. My heel hit the ledge, empty air, yawning behind me.

  “Nikki,” Handy said, quieter now. Almost gentle. “Fight it.”

  “I am!”

  “No. You’re running. There’s a difference.”

  My jaw clenched. “What do you want me to do? I can’t hurt it!”

  “You haven’t tried hard enough.”

  It lunged. I dropped low, swept its legs—or tried to. My shin cracked against chrome with a sound like a baseball bat hitting a steel beam. Pain exploded up my leg, white-hot and blinding. I bit down on a scream, tasted copper. Rolled sideways, barely avoided the claws slamming down where my chest had been. Tar and gravel sprayed everywhere, pelting my face and arms.

  I shoved myself up, limped toward the opposite edge. There—another building, maybe fifteen feet away. Close enough to jump.

  I hope.

  The thing turned, servos whirring as it tracked my movement. The plasma cannon charged again, that rising whine filling the air.

  I ran. Ignored the screaming pain in my leg. Pushed off the ledge with everything I had. Flew through empty air, arms windmilling, stomach dropping into my shoes. Wind roared in my ears. The gap stretched below me—six stories of nothing.

  I hit the next roof on my shoulder, hard enough to see stars. Rolled, skidded to a stop against an AC unit. The metal was warm against my back. The plasma bolt scorched the air where I’d been, super heating nothing. Ozone smell mixed with burnt tar.

  The ship circled, searchlight sweeping the rooftops in methodical passes. The thing stood on the other building, motionless, watching. Waiting. Calculating its next move. Studying me like I was data to analyze.

  I hauled myself up, ribs screaming. Every breath felt like knives. Blood trickled down my arm—scraped raw from the landing, gravel embedded in my skin. My leg throbbed where I’d kicked solid metal like a moron. Cracked shin, probably. Great. Add that to the list.

  Handy buzzed again. “The couple’s safe. They ran when the shooting started.”

  Small mercy. At least I hadn’t gotten innocent people killed.

  “Good,” I rasped. “One less thing.”

  The ship hovered closer, engines thrumming. The thing raised its arm, panel sliding open again. Blue light glowed in the cavity.

  I turned and ran again.