“Wrong. That’s wrong…”
“Wilbur had the opening. Why didn’t he take the shot at The Scalpel?”
“And there. Aldrich had his back turned… and nothing?”
Ember’s murmurs filled the derelict room.
The sound snapped Nicole out of her chess-ga trance, pulling her from the calculations of a ticking clock.
She looked up at Ember.
The woman had put the modified “observation goggles” back on. The mutterings, filtered through the lenses, carried a thread of confusion and sharp alert. They were aid squarely at the Third-Rank fight inside the greenhouse.
Nicole set her pieces down. She picked up her own goggles and focused on the battle.
As the image on the Palmfiend skin cleared, she saw what Ember was talking about.
To eyes with combat experience, Wilbur’s actions made no sense. There were monts of clear, obvious hesitation.
He was a new Third-Rank, no match for Aldrich and The Scalpel. But he was still a Third-Rank. A single, well-tid strike could turn the tide.
But at the monts Ember had pointed out… he should have attacked.
He didn’t.
He just milled around on the edge, a threat, a distraction, but not a finisher.
Nicole shot a look at Ember, her surprise hard to hide. Even hidden behind the strange goggles, she couldn’t mask her shock.
She hadn’t expected Ember’s combat awareness to be that sharp. To spot such subtleties in a Veteran Third-Rank fight. To make those kinds of calls.
How was that even trained?
Nicole quickly reined in her thoughts. Her opponent was basically a Third-Rank already. She’d hit as hard as one. So, seeing like one… maybe it wasn’t so strange.
She steeled herself.
“Ember.” Her voice was calm, firm. “I’m going to contact The Scalpel. I’ll tell him to target Wilbur. Force a reaction. Watch closely.”
Ember paused.
“Alright.”
With that one word, Nicole moved.
She didn’t bother hiding that she could contact The Scalpel. It was his tacit approval that had let her place the Gazer Mite in the heart of the greenhouse in the first place.
..................
Botanical Garden. Glass Greenhouse.
The rain and fog were still thick, clinging to every leaf and pane of glass.
Three figures flickered through the dim space, a blur of motion against a tapestry of rain, fog, and mutated plants.
The screech of steel on chitin, the wet thud of tearing flesh, and ragged breaths wove with the drumming rain.
Clang!
Another violent impact!
The Scalpel’s pale daggers knocked aside one of Aldrich’s stabbing scarlet appendages from a near-impossible angle.
His footwork shifted. Using the recoil, he sprang backward.
In the brief gap where Aldrich and Wilbur couldn’t pursue, he lted into the shadows of thick vines and ferns.
The power of the Ritual surged through his ho field, helping him hide, giving him a mont to breathe.
And in that mont of disengagent, his nerves still thrumming like a plucked string, The Scalpel felt it.
A faint, rhythmic buzz against his back. A special Palmfiend, strapped tight, almost fused to his skin.
He knew that rhythm.
It was the ergency signal from the blonde intel dealer, Nicole.
They’d built a relationship on profit and trust during the last raid. A silent partnership. So this ti, he’d allowed her to “observe” from the periphery.
But…
“Target Wilbur?”
“What’s wrong with Aldrich’s second…?”
The doubt flashed through his mind.
But on the battlefield, especially in a fight where death ca in a flash, hesitation was poison. She had a reason.
The Scalpel’s form flowed through the shadows, a phantom.
His sharp gaze, a hawk’s, cut through the rain and the gaps in the leaves. He locked onto Wilbur.
The man stood under a massive, drooping plant, his eyes bloodshot and feverish, scanning the shadows where The Scalpel might hide.
The Scalpel frowned.
He was just extending his pistol from the darkness, lining up a shot…
When, from behind him, a voice—husky and vicious—rang out.
“Found you.”
The next second, the corner of his eye caught them.
Dim, eerily scarlet points of light in the gloom.
The cold gleam of hard carapaces catching the faint light. The sign of the Scarlet Widows bursting from the shadows for the kill.
Ambushed?
Not a trace of panic touched The Scalpel’s plain face. It was as if the man surrounded by venomous spiders was soone else entirely.
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