Grid: Omnipotence Series

Issue #6: Crossfire

J's whisper rode their short-band. "CrowNet enumerators at 31.9, 33.7, 36.2. They hop when you look; treat it like a school of fish—cast wide."

"Already fishing," Cassiel said, dropping a trio of aerial jammers into the wind. They hung like invisible bells; when a crow crossed their cones, its neck-plate sang and went dull, feather turning from weapon back to bird. Two fell. Eight dodged. Ten more arrived.

Remnant crossed district seams as if they were lines on a map only he could see: tram frame to rooftop to storm lip, always angling toward a moving point only he tracked. His crows saw what he saw—A's silhouette in the crow-black alleys, the glint of a badge he'd never wear where anyone could see it, the glovework of a professional running out of clean exits.

Nocturnal cut roof to roof in long, fast arcs, a shadow that landed where the city hadn't finished deciding on roof or sky. He stayed two buildings back, never closing stupid, refusing the obvious choke points Remnant wanted him to eat. When a crow broke formation and dove for his throat, Pancho met it midair; they tumbled in a snag of sparks, and the rat came up with cable between his teeth. Neck-plate spoofed, he chirred across the link. Give me six more and I'll write the lullaby it sings to itself.

"Make it three," Cassiel said. Her boots hit a rain-slick catwalk running the length of an old station concourse. Ahead, A cut left into a scaffolding maze where geometry ate pursuit. Good choice—unless your chaser could decide where angles went.

Remnant hit the scaffold and the scaffold chose to help. Cross-braces leaned. Ladders extended a rung they didn't own, then withdrew when Nocturnal put a foot to them. The android's laughter came short and mean over the metal. "You keep building alleys for me."

"You keep walking into them," Cassiel shot back, and put a round into his shoulder. Alloy flared. Remnant rotated with the impact—annoyed, not wounded—and took the space pain buys you as a gift; he slipped through a gap that wasn't there until he wanted it.

Maku reached for the tone under the block—found it running too clean, like an empty hospital. He jammed anchors into the unseen: Hana's laugh, the cracked radio's carrier, a seed from an orange that refused to rot. Lights in the concourse froze. For twenty paces Remnant lost his favorite rule. His weight assumed a ground that wasn't going to love him anymore and wobbled. Nocturnal went in at that wobble, blade flashing low.

Claw met steel, sparks bit rain, and the fight skidded across metal that had opinions of its own. Remnant was stronger; Nocturnal was smarter with the ground. He didn't try to win. He tried to steer. A quarter step here, a cut into a brace there, a feint that pushed the android toward a blind corner where Cassiel's firing lane sharpened to a needle. Her shot cracked the mask again at the temple. White alloy frayed.

The crows shrieked and stacked feeds: Remnant saw himself from twelve angles at once—the hooded blade on his left, the cobalt optics to his right, the wire-man's pressure cooking the grid beneath him, the detective running the last clean line.

"Enough," he snarled—and turned his kill clock back to A.

The flock widened, a black crown circling over a single route. A hit the end of it where a tram frame stepped into empty air and could not be persuaded to be bridge instead. He stopped, one boot on rust, the river's breath climbing cold to his face. He could go down. He could go back. Or he could trust a story about a man who cut gods with a knife.

He chose stillness, because stillness is rarely on a monster's list of things to expect.

Remnant saw him and sped up.

Nocturnal saw Remnant and sped up.

Cassiel saw the shot and took it even though it meant she might hit the wrong future. The round scored Remnant's jaw, turning his grin howling-white, and did not slow him enough.