Hearing Victor’s words felt like a physical blow to Ethan’s mind, as if sothing solid had struck him square in the head.
"Blackie... he..." Ethan managed to force out the na before Victor cut him off.
"He’s... he should be okay," Victor said quickly.
"Okay?" Ethan seized on the word. Victor was not soone who offered false comfort, not even to ease panic. That alone punched a narrow slit of icy calm through Ethan’s fear.
"His vitality is insane. The wound... it’s already closing," Victor continued, his voice threaded with disbelief.
In Victor’s experience, a throat wound was a kill shot. A blade cutting a third of the way through the neck should have severed the windpipe, and once that happened, death followed within monts. There were no exceptions, at least not ones he had ever seen. And yet, monts ago...
They had been ambushed.
The attacker had appeared without warning, a blur slipping out of nowhere, and in a single fluid motion slashed Blackie’s throat. Blood had sprayed out in a violent arc. Then, before anyone could react, a flash of blue light erupted from Blackie himself.
The bleeding stopped instantly.
A thin ring of pale blue electricity sealed the torn flesh together, followed by a rippling, water-like energy that wrapped tightly around his neck, stabilizing the damage. Blackie’s face had gone deathly pale, his body weakened from the sudden blood loss, but he was alive.
He was, however, out of the fight.
The attacker, a lithe and shadowy figure, vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Micah, who had been closest to Blackie, reacted on instinct, unleashing a wide-area runic blast that hurled both himself and Blackie clear of the danger zone. The blast scattered debris and energy across the street, but the assassin was already gone, leaving nothing behind for Micah’s attack to strike.
"Rainie, look out!"
Amber, who was slightly ahead of them, suddenly threw herself sideways without hesitation.
A dagger, almost perfectly transparent, seed to condense directly out of the air. Its trajectory was precise, aid straight for Rainie’s heart. Amber’s desperate shove knocked Rainie off her feet, sending her sprawling across the pavent. The dagger missed its original target and buried itself instead into Amber’s right chest.
They had been on their way to et a black market contact. Everyone was still in ordinary street clothes, none of them wearing their combat chs. With Blackie and Micah present, they had felt untouchable. Based on everything they understood about Earth, a threat of this level simply should not exist.
The instant Amber was struck, the high-tech watch on her wrist, the storage device for her ch, activated its ergency protocols. An ion shield flared to life around her body in a split second. The dagger was clearly specialized, biting into the shield after a brief mont of resistance.
That resistance was the only thing that saved her.
Instead of driving in to the hilt, the blade only sank about an inch into her flesh before stopping.
"Hm?"
The shadowy figure flickered briefly and vanished again, leaving behind a soft, curious sound. It was a woman’s voice, and a young one.
The shock hung thick in the air.
Blackie dragged his weakened body upright, his legs trembling beneath him. His eyes burned with fury as he locked onto the empty space where the attacker had last been.
"You’re DEAD!" he roared.
A sea of lightning exploded outward from him, tearing across the pavent in blinding arcs. His rage went far deeper than anger. He was humiliated. Ethan had sent him here for one purpose, to protect Amber and Rainie. Not only had he failed, he had been taken out first.
To Blackie, it was nothing short of disgrace.
The sheer scale of the lightning eruption startled even Victor and Micah. At first glance, it looked like a massive area-of-effect attack, powerful enough to incinerate everything around them.
For a split second, they wondered if Blackie had completely lost control.
Then they realized it was not an attack at all.
The lightning abruptly softened, breaking apart into thousands of tiny, star-like blue sparks. Each spark drifted lazily through the air before being drawn toward a person present. They settled onto skin and clothing alike, clinging gently, completely harmless.
"There! Get her!" Blackie gasped, his voice rough with exhaustion as he pointed.
He hardly needed to. Victor and Micah had already seen it.
There were five of them standing there, but now they could see six clusters of blue sparks drifting in the air. The sixth cluster hovered right beside Rainie.
Rainie’s ch had fully deployed around her, armor plates locking into place in a clean, seamless motion. Next to her, the blue sparks traced the unmistakable outline of a human figure that was otherwise completely invisible. The assassin was still in perfect stealth. To their enhanced vision, the sparks revealed the faint shape of a transparent dagger raised high, poised for another vicious slash aid straight at Rainie’s neck.
Clang... screech!
They trusted the defensive systems built into Ethan’s chs, so there was no imdiate panic about Rainie being killed in that instant. Even so, Victor and Micah were already moving, bodies launching forward without hesitation.
Rainie reacted as well. Combat training was mandatory on Earth from middle school onward, part of the core curriculum and a requirent for graduation. Instinct took over. She threw a punch, and the elbow joint of her ch flared blue as a propulsion jet ignited, amplifying the strike with explosive force.
The assassin was terrifyingly skilled.
She flowed around the punch as if it had never truly threatened her, slipping to Rainie’s left and then behind her in one smooth, liquid motion.
"Interesting..." the young voice chid, faintly amused. "Even a Star-Severing Blade can’t cut it? I’ll take you back for study."
Everything unfolded in the narrow space between heartbeats.
As she spoke, Victor’s thrown dagger and Micah’s explosive rune were already in the air, both attacks closing in from opposite angles, re inches away from their target.
For that single inch, it was enough.
The assassin produced a small white pellet from sowhere and smashed it against the ground at her feet.
Poof!
A thick cloud of white smoke erupted outward, swallowing the space in an instant. Just as quickly as it appeared, it dispersed.
When the smoke cleared, both the shimring outline and Rainie Chen were gone.
Victor’s first thought was the ch’s GPS.
Rainie’s system did not rely on Earth’s conventional satellite networks. It was tied directly to the transponder of Ethan’s own super-ch, Shatterstar, a tracking system that was supposed to be impossible to interfere with.
Victor pulled up the signal.
His blood ran cold.
Nothing.
He expanded the search range, widening it until it covered the entire planet.
Still nothing.
Then, about fifteen seconds later, a single ping appeared.
Rainie’s ch signal reerged on the map, roughly two kiloters due south.
Victor took a step forward, already preparing to move, then stopped himself.
’No,’ he thought. ’Better to call Ethan first.’
After hearing the account up to this point, Ethan gave a slow, grim nod. "You were right not to chase," he said. "They have sothing that can block the Shatterstar network signal."
"That’s what I figured," Victor replied. "If I’d gone after them and they permanently disabled the tracker, we’d have nothing to work with."
"Right," Ethan said. His voice had gone calm, dangerously so. "How are Amber and Blackie?"
"Blackie insists he’s fine," Victor answered. "Amber..." He paused, pulling up the shared ch systems monitor and scanning the data.
Ethan waited in silence.
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