For a moment, Flint wasn’t sure if he was alive. 

Given that he oftentimes wasn’t, this thought was a fairly regular occurrence for him, and usually a thought of little consequence. This time, however, the thought made his heart drop. If he had died, then, chances are, so had one of his friends. 

But, under the rubble that had erupted into the outside tunnel, Flint’s body, while numb and damaged, was alive. He crawled out from the dust and scraps of metal into the tunnel that connected to the highway of tunnels linking every building. Aurein was already further into the hallway, his leg in a severe limp and blood dripping from his head. He was standing, but only barely. 

“Flint!” Aurein exclaimed upon seeing him. Aurein helped him out of the rubble. “Where’s Allef?” 

“Allef was on the same side as Hazni when the explosion happened,” Flint said. The numbness in his side subsided, pain filling its place. One of his ribs was clearly broken. 

“Shit.” 

“I know. There’s no telling what’ll happen.” 

A faint rumbling sound came from the rubble behind them. Eventually, the sounds of rubble falling grew louder, eventually being accompanied by muffled shouts. The rubble nearest to Flint and Aurein began to shift, and then suddenly vanished. In the rubble’s place was Hazni, who was scraping away scrap with invisible bubbles of nothingness around her hands. Just behind her was Allef, her face bloody, one of her metal shoulders dented. 

“Allef!” Flint and Aurein shouted in unison. Allef pushed past Hazni and ran up to the two. 

“Good, you’re all okay,” Hazni said, reapplying a ripped glove. “Now we must figure out how to leave Tempest City.” 

Aurein walked up to Hazni and punched her hard in the face. 

“You almost killed all of us!” Aurein shouted as Hazni recovered. “What were you thinking, pulling a move like that?! The entirety of Keila is on top of us now!” 

Hazni slapped Aurein back with her gloved hand, but he didn’t retaliate. 

“You think I was going to let you win, boy?!” she yelled. “I had no other choice! What would you have done if the three of you were about to lose to me? Give up the Terminus? Die?”

“We’re as good as dead now, thanks to you!” Flint said. “And even if we did retaliate, we wouldn’t have caused so much damage! That explosion had to have taken out several other buildings!” 

“That was the point,” Hazni growled, slowing down her words as if explaining something to an insolent child. “The more damage I cause, the more time Keila spends on recovery efforts instead of following us. The more Keila soldiers die, the fewer are left to stop us. I saved you all. Don’t talk to me like I’m the villain here. This outcome was guaranteed the moment we encountered each other—now that I’ve caused this damage, we have our best odds of escaping.” 

“Stop talking to us like we’re working with you,” Allef spat. “Why do you keep saying ‘us?’ You think we’re gonna help you?” 

“If you had any sense, you would,” Hazni said. “Now that Keila knows there’s someone dangerous in Tempest City, they’ll lock down all travel. The entirety of the Big 5 will hunt us down. They don’t know who and where we are yet, but they will soon. I left you alive because I have the sense to know I can’t handle all of Keila on my own. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so already.” 

Flint and Aurein looked at each other, sharing the same expression of sheer distaste. Hazni was right about working together, and that made Flint grind his teeth. Allef, too, was apprehensive. 

“She did clear a path to free me from the rubble,” Allef told Flint and Aurein. It was true—Hazni didn’t need to do that. 

Aurein strode up to Hazni again. 

“Only long enough to escape from Tempest City. That’s as long as any of us are working with you. Understand?” 

“It’s astonishing to me that you think you have a choice. We have to work together, or none of us are going to live to even approach the Terminus,” Hazni replied. 

“Fine. Let’s go,” Aurein said, running as fast as he could with his limp off in the direction of the docks. Flint followed close behind, followed by Allef and Myasma. 

As they ran, their tunnel reconnected with one of the city’s larger arteries, everyone within running deeper into the city. Red-purple alarms blared overhead, illuminating the people within with a ghastly light. Keila soldiers were pouring into the tunnel, half going deeper into the city to deal with recovery efforts from the sudden downfall of four buildings, half going towards the docks to prevent anyone from leaving. The four spies ran against the flow of the Keila members moving deeper into the city, following groups of soldiers towards the docks. Eventually, their unusual behavior was noticed, and a soldier shouted at them to stop and join the crowd. 

“No can do!” Allef shouted back. 

Within minutes, a group of Keila fighters had gathered behind the four, chasing them and firing lead rounds. Those who didn’t use weapons used their Vals, dangerous blasts of fire, plasma, or unknown substances narrowly missing Flint and his allies. 

“High-priority message for Zero,” an officer chasing them said into his transponder. “We’ve found the perpetrators of the bombing. Calling in any and all reinforcements!” 

And the reinforcements most certainly did arrive—alongside a sharp increase in soldiers, a large, darkly colored, triangular drone floated towards them, silently hanging close to the roof of the tunnel. A thin cylinder lowered from the drone’s bottom, swiveling until it focused on Flint’s panicked visage. There was a small flash of light from the cylinder. 

Allef shoved Flint forward, and an object hit the wall just behind Flint with a small tink. In the brief moment Flint could get a glimpse, he saw a cross-shaped projectile that seemed designed to rend flesh and pierce bone. 

“Careful!” Allef told Flint, who tried to regain his footing after being shoved. “These drones shoot tiny projectiles, but they fan out as they fly and can really mess you up if they hit!” 

Another flash of light emitted from a drone, this time aimed towards Hazni, and Hazni swiped a hand in the air to erase the projectile. Not even a second later, another fired at the spot between Aurein’s eyes, and Allef had to block the projectile with her arm. Even the tungsten coating on Allef’s robotic wrist was punctured by the bullet like a pen through paper, embedding deeply in and tearing her artificial skin. 

The moment another drone joined the fray from down the hall of another tunnel deepened the panic in Allef’s chest. What doubled it, though, was the moment she saw nearby Keila soldiers desperately getting out of the way as if afraid of something, and it doubled once more when she noticed the wide hole in the bottom of the new drone. A hole through which Allef didn’t see the machine’s insides or the tunnel’s ceiling, but rather the clean interior of a room for someone very important, honor awards decorating the opposite wall. 

And the idea that she might not make it out of this alive became truly real to her when she saw the person who descended through the portal in the drone’s flat underside. 

“Iskay!” Hazni shouted. 

The name prompted even Flint and Aurein to stop running and look at the newly approaching threat. The four escapees watched with horror as Iskay’s androgynous figure gracefully landed on the tunnel floor from the portal and began their measured approach. 

Iskay pulled two narrow-barreled guns, one in each hand, each one’s muzzle resembling that of the guns the automatic seeking drones had used to target the escapees. Before he could react, Flint took two flesh-rending bullets to his shoulder and wrist, sending him into a daze of pain that knocked him to his knees. 

They unloaded everything they had on the Big 5 member, Flint taking free shots from his translucent gun with his uninjured hand, Aurein hurling projectiles of gold, and  Allef unloading a clip of bullets from her knuckles turned machinegun. 

“Stop that, you idiots!” Hazni shouted over the chaos. “DON’T SHOOT THEM!” 

Before Flint’s mind could even wander to the idea of how uncharacteristic it was for Hazni to choose to spare someone, a large portal appeared just in front of Iskay. All of the projectiles Flint, Allef, and Aurein had directed towards Iskay disappeared into the portal and reappeared immediately in another portal Iskay had made directly above the first. 

The bullets intended for Iskay sprayed out of the top portal back at the three that had shot them, a few almost hitting Hazni as well before she swiftly erased them out of the air. Aurein and Flint suffered minor damage from their scattered returned fire, but Allef received a particularly unlucky shot in the side from one of Flint’s ghostly bullets. 

Allef gasped in pain and Flint gasped in surprise, taking their attention away from the battle just long enough for Iskay to aim another two shots. Simultaneously, Aurein grabbed Flint and Hazni grabbed Allef, pulling the two out of harm’s way as another set of gunshots echoed through the tunnel from Iskay’s guns. 

Allef found that Hazni had dragged her into another tunnel, as before she knew it, Aurein and Flint were obscured behind the corner Hazni had turned. Her last glimpse of the two showed Flint and Aurein scrambling to stand up and run away from the now-approaching Keila drones. But if the drones were following them, then… 

Iskay turned the corner into Allef’s and Hazni’s tunnel silently and quickly. As Hazni and Allef attempted to flee, Iskay knocked on the wall of the tunnel and summoned a portal which they aimed their dual guns into. They then tapped their foot on the floor, summoning another portal, and fired. 

The bullets entered the first portal and came out through the second, at an angle that neither Allef nor Hazni were prepared to guard. One of the bullets struck deep into Hazni’s shoulder after a failed attempt to erase it, and the other tore apart Allef’s mechanical substitute for her achilles tendon, sending her crashing into the ground. She let out a yelp of panic and fear as she searched for which portal the bullet would come through this time, and whether or not its next target was her head. 

“Allef, get a grip!” Hazni’s voice yelled, and her collar was pulled yet again. There was a terrible whooshing noise that accompanied this next pair of gunshots as Hazni extended a hand to erase a hole in the ground, causing her and Allef to fall into it right as a pair of bullets soared overhead. 

Allef landed in the dirt with a thud that sent a wave of pain surging through the bullet wound in her side, causing her to cry out. Hazni quickly adjusted herself, keeping one hand straight up, maintaining a bubble of vacuum that closed off the hole’s mouth. The two watched with apprehension as Iskay cautiously stepped towards the hole, looked into it, and fired a bullet towards the two. The bullet was quickly erased by Hazni’s Val the moment it entered the hole, and Iskay clicked their tongue, stepping out of sight. 

Once Iskay walked away, Hazni turned her attention to Allef, still groaning in pain. 

“Hey! Snap out of it!” she barked. “Stop focusing on yourself! That wound won’t heal and its source won’t disappear until you get ahold of yourself!” 

Only then did Allef realize she was hyperventilating. Her heart, which she hadn’t had a chance to focus on in the heat of battle, was racing faster than she’d ever felt it. 

Allef looked up through the hole. Seemingly reading her thoughts, Hazni said: 

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us. I’m only letting enough air in to breathe.”

“What do we do?!” Allef exclaimed. “We—wait, we need to get Flint and Aurein! They can help us get out of here!” 

“There’s no time! Those two already have enough problems of their own.” 

“But we’re wasting time!” Allef yelled. “We need to get out of here! How—how are we supposed to get away from Iskay?!” 

Just then, Allef felt a large drop of blood fall from the wound in her side onto her grounded hand. She looked down to see a large, spiked projectile sticking out of the wound, mangled skin poking through her uniform. The pain it caused became twice as real. 

“Listen to me,” Hazni began in a stern tone. “You’re panicking. I need you not to be. I need your help to defeat them. Neither of us can do this on our own. So I need you to trust me. No—hey—don’t look at your wound, look at me. Trust me. Am I clear?” 

A flash of a memory came to Allef, of a familiar face looking down at her in a familiar spaceship. Trust me, the woman in the memory said, her face overlaid over Hazni’s. We’re on our own now, and I need you. 

Allef nodded. Of course she would. Her sister always knew what to do in times like this. 

“Good,” Hazni said. “Now. One deep breath in, one deep breath out.” 

Allef obliged. For now, she ignored the wet wheezing caused by what was surely blood in her lungs. 

“Wait,” Allef said, her mind clearer now. “You said we’re fighting? We’re not escaping?” 

“We must fight,” Hazni said. “As we speak, Iskay is planning a trap for us. We must overcome it and kill them. Only then can we escape. Our biggest mistake was ever turning our back instead of going on the offensive.” 

“How? Can we really beat them?” 

“Of course. We will utilize their portals to our advantage. Whatever trap Iskay has planned for us, we will use it to our own benefit.” 

Allef nodded, then winced with pain once more as she tried to move, aggravating her punctured side. Hazni’s attention turned towards the embedded, barbed projectile. 

“It’s hard to move,” Allef groaned. 

“Let me help. Hold still.” 

Allef didn’t dare move as Hazni reached down with her unoccupied hand and pointed a barely-shaking finger towards Allef’s wound. She created a tiny ball of vacuum at her fingertip and carefully dragged it over the barbed projectile stuck in Allef’s side, erasing it entirely. Before she knew it, the better part of the projectile had been erased and Allef was free to remove it from the wound. She did so with a yank, a splatter of blood, and a yell. 

With shaking hands, Allef tore the pant leg off her right calf, exposing the solid metal that was her leg. She pressed hard on a plate of metal on her leg, which popped out, revealing a row of small, square-shaped silver wafers. She snatched one from her leg, closed the storage, and slapped it to her bleeding wound, causing the wafer to rapidly unfold itself onto her skin, patching up the puncture entirely. 

“Okay,” Allef said, taking a gasping breath of relief now that the bleeding had stopped. She looked to Hazni with gratitude. “Ready.” 

“Remember to leave the hole as quickly as you can, and watch for portals before you watch for Iskay.” 

“Yes. Go.” 

Hazni released the vacuum bubble that sealed their hole and the two climbed back onto solid ground. As Hazni had instructed, Allef took note of the positions of the portals before anything else. The portals were large, each arranged across from each other on the walls of the tunnel so that, when looking through one, Allef could see her own back and Hazni’s front side, repeating reflections of themselves continuing on into infinity like parallel mirrors. 

Something clattered onto the ground by Allef’s metal feet. It was a small, cube-shaped black object, whose details Allef couldn’t make out at a glance, but an angry beeping emitted from it in tandem with a blue pulse. 

Another black cube rolled into place behind Hazni. Then another, then, another. Hazni actually gasped. 

“GRENADES!” 

Hazni swiped a hand at the ground by her feet, erasing two grenades from existence, but four more were quickly thrown in. A drone hovering above Iskay dropped them one by one into Iskay’s palms, who calmly and continuously threw them at Allef and Hazni. 

Right before the first grenade exploded, Allef dove away from it. But the act of diving away from the first grenade had placed her in front of the portal on the tunnel’s opposite wall, through which the same grenade laid. 

A deafening bang sent pieces of shrapnel flying, some flying at her from behind and others from the front after traveling through a portal. The parallel portals created an echo chamber of shrapnel, so that whenever a grenade went off, the pieces it sent flying approached from both sides instead of one. Hazni, with stunning reaction time, was able to create a bubble of erasure in front of her that destroyed many pieces of shrapnel, but only from one angle. They were still grazed or struck with many other parts of the grenade’s ordinance from behind, and the process was only to repeat when the next grenade went off. 

The pain Allef felt in her torn shoulder was interrupted by a yell from Hazni. She was pointing towards Iskay, who was being guarded from the excess shrapnel by the attack drone turned sideways like a massive black shield. In an instant, Allef understood what Hazni was pointing out. 

“I’ll guard you!” Hazni shouted right before the next grenade exploded. 

Another loud bang rocked Allef’s world and she felt a piece of shrapnel tear through one of her feet as she dashed towards Iskay, who was currently blinded by the drone guarding them. Allef dug her tungsten fingers into the drone, reached over the top of it to see where Iskay was hiding, and then unleashed a blast of fire and brimstone out of the rocket engine in one of her hands directly at Iskay. 

Iskay was able to create new portals on top of themselves to prevent total annihilation, stopping the echo chamber of grenades at Hazni’s location, but they still suffered significant damage, as was demonstrated by their subsequent collapse to the tunnel floor. 

Hazni finished erasing the last of the grenades and limped over to Allef, who was confirming that the still-smoking Iskay would stay down. They didn’t move a muscle. Allef pumped a fist in the air with a yell of satisfaction, then winced when her wounds reminded her of their existence. 

“Well done,” Hazni said, looking down at Iskay. “We did good work together.” 

Just then, Allef saw Iskay twitch. She was glad that Iskay was at least alive, but hoped that they would stay incapacitated for at least long enough to let them escape. Iskay twitched again. Then, their body did something bizarre. Each of Iskay’s eyes split into two eyes, their nose into two noses—Iskay was splitting in two like a cell undergoing mitosis. Before Allef knew it, Iskay had become two separate people—a woman with red skin and a man with purple skin, each in their early twenties and wearing fresh Keila uniforms. Both were the exact same height. In unison, the two people who were once Iskay stood and briefly glanced at each other with unreadable expressions. 

“Iskay has two Vals?!” Allef exclaimed, stepping back with Hazni. 

“It’s a surprise to me, as well,” Hazni admitted. “I never would have known. Maybe Iskay was always two people in one. It even appears as if each of these new people are exactly half of Iskay’s age.” 

“And have each taken only half of Iskay’s damage.”

“We have not had to split in a long time,” the purple-skinned man said. “I am Kulli.” 

“And I am Yawar,” the reddish woman added. 

“May we finish this battle?” the two said in unison. 

Kulli and Yawar took simultaneous steps towards a baffled Allef and Hazni. 

“Allef, shoot!” 

Allef fired a cone of plasma at Kulli and Yawar, hoping to consume them both, but they both dodged out of the way like mirror images of each other. Kulli and Yawar were each far younger and more agile than they were as one person, and each unholstered their own gun in a blur of movement. Allef put up her guard. 

A bullet punctured Allef’s metal arm, disabling some of its functions. By the time Allef and Hazni recovered from the attack, Kulli had dashed behind the two, leaving Allef and Hazni perfectly in the middle of their enemies. Kulli and Yawar each reloaded their guns, their used cartridges flying through the air in a perfect mirror image of each other, and then aimed the guns at Allef’s and Hazni’s heads. 

Allef and Hazni ducked, but they hadn’t avoided the attack yet. The moment Kulli and Yawar’s bullets made it to each other, they each extended a hand and created a portal that allowed the bullets to seemingly reflect them back at Allef and Hazni. Both Allef and Hazni took the shot in the back, simultaneously screaming in pain and surprise. 

As Kulli and Yawar walked closer to their fallen adversaries, Allef felt Hazni grab her shoulder. 

“Keep dodging,” Hazni hissed. “I understand how to defeat them.” 

Allef tried, particularly when Yawar aimed the barrel of her gun between Allef’s eyes, but the accumulated damage of the battle was catching up to Allef. Every move she made was soaked with the blood and pain inflicted on her, and every attempt to dodge became slower than the last. And in the moment when Allef retaliated out of frustration, sending a blast of fire from her palm at Kulli, a skillful use of portals from him and Yawar redirected it back at her, forcing her to dodge her own attack alongside her opponents’. 

At all times, Kulli and Yawar were formidable—each had the fighting skill of a professional and, even more frustratingly, moved as a single unit. Allef had to do all she could to survive, much less fight back. 

The one advantage of Kulli and Yawar acting as a single unit was that it forced Allef and Hazni to do the same. And even the attacks Allef struggled the most with avoiding appeared trivial to Hazni, who sported at least twice Allef’s battle experience. The most efficient use of Allef’s ever-diminishing energy was to look over at Hazni and copy her almost premonition-like movements, allowing all attacks to flow away from her. 

“You mustn’t copy this move,” Hazni whispered to Allef in the brief moment a simultaneous dodge brought them close together. Kulli and Yawar aimed their guns from opposite sides. Allef, unable to get out of the way in time, put up her guard. Hazni, instead, leapt towards Kulli, who was closer, and aimed a kick that he was forced to redirect, interrupting the attack while Allef blocked another bullet from her vitals with her metal arms. 

The effect of Hazni’s plan was quickly apparent—she had gotten the two out of sync with each other. Instead of operating as a unit, it was like fighting two different people at once, each half of Iskay’s strength instead of double. Since Kulli had to defend against Hazni’s attacks, Yawar could not always summon connected portals in a way that countered Allef. 

“Allef, get out of the way!” a voice shouted. For the tone it was spoken in, a manner she had heard said to her so many times before, Allef nearly mistook the voice’s owner for someone else who she loved, but turning around, it was only Hazni, who was creating between her arms a colossal bubble of vacuum. Allef put her working rocket thrusters on full blast and put as much distance between her and Hazni. The bubble sucked everything nearby inside, including Yawar, who was already moving in Hazni’s direction, turning her into a randomly distributed collection of atoms. 

Hazni let go of the bubble and the atmosphere collapsed into a single point, capturing Kulli in the blast. A shockwave tore across the tunnel, denting the floor near the implosion’s epicenter and rattling Allef’s body. Kulli was lying not far from the epicenter, bleeding profusely and missing a leg. 

Allef fell to the floor with a crash and looked over her shoulder to confirm the battle was over. Kulli, even after a long while, didn’t move. 

“Now,” Hazni said, helping Allef to standing, “we must make our escape.” 

“Tell me how I can help,” Allef offered, resolve creeping into her voice. They had defeated a formidable enemy together. 

“Quickly, watch for incoming soldiers or drones. Iskay most likely ordered the city to be clear so they could fight us on their own, but now that they’re gone, reinforcements are imminent. I’ll bring up a map of the city. If I’m not mistaken, this building close to us is the city’s tallest residential building, and the suite at its top could very well contain someone’s personal ship.” 

“Why not use the shipyard?” 

“Too well guarded. A private ship is our only means of escape.”

“You sure were prepared for anything…” Allef said, turning towards the tunnel’s entrance to watch for any pursuers while Hazni pulled out her mostly-intact transponder behind her. 

If it wasn’t for the back injury that Hazni suffered during battle against Iskay and their component pieces, Allef would have had no warning for what was about to occur. But the bullet stuck in Hazni’s back caused her to stumble on her approach to Allef, making a sound just loud enough to alert Allef and prompt her to turn around and see Hazni’s hand swinging towards her, around which was a thick ball of nothing. 

Allef jumped away from Hazni, but not fast enough—Hazni’s sphere of erasure, double the diameter of her fist, grazed Allef’s stomach, scraping away all of the flesh it touched. The sudden onset of pain prevented her from feeling any, even as she crashed to the tunnel floor. 

“Sorry, Allef. I must eliminate the competition,” Hazni’s voice rang, distant despite the fact that Hazni was standing just above her. “Tria’s grave on Vin and the Terminus await me, and I cannot have you or your friends getting in the way.” 

Allef tried to say something in return, but found that she had no words to say, nor that she could say any, and her already blurring vision was quickly filling with tears. Hazni’s footsteps receded as she made her way to the building where their last chance of escape resided. 

How did this happen? 

In a wave of pain even greater than that in her stomach, the answer to this question Allef asked herself arrived all at once. She had trusted Hazni, if only for a moment. Of all people, Hazni. But somehow, in the heat of battle and the panic of escaping death, it had seemed right. Hazni had reminded her of someone, reminded her so much of the person Allef trusted most… 

Myasma. She was seeing Myasma in places she didn’t exist. Doing the same thing she always did—listen to her sister. But Myasma… she was nowhere now. Not in Hazni, not in Aurein or Flint or anyone else. She was gone. Her entire family, who she had relied on so much in her life, was gone. And now, Allef was alone. 

And she wanted so badly not to be alone. 

But here she was, bleeding out on the floor of a tunnel in a panic-filled city, situated at the heart of the place she wanted to be the least. Now that Aurein and Flint had likely been chased off-planet, if they were alive at all, there was nobody here to save her. 

Nobody. 

Except, maybe, herself. 

Slowly, Allef tried to push herself to sitting. The pain in her stomach was agonizing. But, she realized, it was surface-level. Hazni had missed her vitals, and all that had been scraped away was skin and some muscle. There was more than enough blood for it to look fatal, more than enough to convince Hazni that a finishing blow wasn’t necessary. She found a single undamaged healing patch stored in her leg and placed it on the wound to prevent bleeding out. 

Allef wiped her tears with a bloodsoaked tungsten finger and, with a yell, pushed herself to her feet. She took one step towards the nearest building, feeling her wounds beg her to stay down, and then refused the plea by taking another shaky step. 

Hazni wouldn’t be able to leave Tempest City. Not on Allef’s watch. With Hazni about to be in possession of the only means of escape nearby, catching up to her would be a nearly impossible task. But Allef knew just the way she would do it. 

Her pace steadying, Allef burst open the door to the closest building she could find. It was a residential building, but the almost complete darkness made it hard to tell, save for the violet-tinted light that leaked through the windows which displayed the city outside. 

The elevator was in front of her, but it looked like Hazni had already erased its core functions, as in the place of elevator doors there was a blank gap surrounded by smoothly-cut concrete and metal, and the elevator cabin had been reduced to scrap. Maybe she did suspect I was alive. 

Allef stepped onto the destroyed remains of the elevator cabin and looked up into the elevator shaft. It, too, was only lit by ambient light from outside the building, and seemed to go on forever above her. She tapped her hands against the wall of the elevator shaft a few times and tried to activate the rocket thrusters within them. They sputtered to life, filling the shaft with a vibrant orange glow. She pointed them downwards and tilted her head up, activating the rest of the rocket engines in her body and soaring into the air. 

Windows that displayed Tempest City flashed by Allef at an increasing pace like a strobe light. Air rushed by her ringing ears. She rose higher and higher within the building, until at last she cut the engines and let her momentum carry her further up. Once she had slowed down, still a ways away from the building’s top floor, she gripped the inside wall of the elevator shaft with her tungsten fingers and began to climb. She had to save her rocket fuel for what would come next. 

Inch by inch, foot by foot, Allef climbed the building. She heard the faint echoes of a spaceplane taking off. As she approached the building’s top, the sounds of Nopetu’s endless winds became clearer and clearer, until she climbed through the elevator opening of the top floor and was met with a short runway pointed downwind. At the runway’s end was nothing but the purple haze of Nopetu’s eternally agitated atmosphere. No other ships were in sight except for the one already in the air whose engine plume was slowly dimming, riding Tempest City’s winds away from Allef and towards the edge of the atmosphere. The one that contained Hazni. 

Allef knew that Hazni wouldn’t be able to use the ship’s engines much. The winds themselves were extremely turbulent and threatened to tear apart any ship within them—the use of an engine only exacerbated that risk. In this way, Allef had an advantage. She wasn’t a ship. 

But she did have engines. 

Swallowing her fear, Allef began her sprint towards the runway’s edge. The winds picked up behind her, greater and greater in intensity, until even her dense tungsten limbs couldn’t weigh her down anymore. She took the last few steps she could as the wind accelerated her, and then took a leap off the edge. 

Buildings soared underneath her, each glowing with the golden light of thousands of windows. Even the tallest buildings were still small beneath her, and the windswept ground was yet further below. Thousands of feet separated her and anything solid, making her heart jump into her throat with fear. But, she knew, there wasn’t any time for fear. 

Allef readjusted her sights on the glow of Hazni’s ship and activated her own thrusters, feeling the intense G-forces as she rode the wind and her exhaust plume closer and closer. She watched the light of the ship’s exhaust plume grow brighter, eventually coming close enough to make out the ship’s shape. It was sleek and slim and shaped like a massive jet, made of solid metal and easy curves that were clearly designed for luxury rather than speed or effectiveness. Its wings rattled violently as it rode Nopetu’s turbulent winds. At last, with a final push from Allef’s thrusters, she soared over the ship’s engine and grabbed its top. 

At first, Allef’s grip slipped, and she began to fall off the ship. She sent a rocket-aided fist into its top, puncturing the immaculate metal and letting the higher-pressurize atmosphere within the vehicle out. It was clear at this point that Hazni had noticed her presence, as she tried to maneuver the ship wildly. Allef embedded her other fist into the ship’s hull and held on tight as Hazni tried to shake her off, a futile task as the endless winds threatened further to tear the ship to pieces. 

It was by now that Allef noticed the atmosphere was thinning. The winds Hazni was riding were diminishing, not because they were becoming slower, but because there was less air at this altitude to constitute them. She climbed up the ship to its cockpit at the front, where a transparent viewport showed Hazni, more panicked than ever, trying to leave the atmosphere as fast as possible. Once Allef made it to the clear cockpit, she locked eyes with Hazni, who looked back at her with fear. 

Allef lifted a fist and, aided by the rocket engine in her elbow, sent it jetting into the clear window separating her and Hazni. It cracked in a spiderweb, sending white, lightning-shaped patterns in every direction in the window. She still could not hear Hazni, but clearly saw her mouth yelling the word “Stop!” Allef lifted her fist once more and sent it plummeting into the window again. 

This time, the crack opened a hole. While small, it was enough to hear the inside of the ship through, its countless warning blares and the shouts of Hazni. 

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Hazni yelled. “You’ll kill us both!” 

“Well, shit!” Allef shouted back in a voice laced with sarcasm, though she had no idea if Hazni could hear her over the cacophony within the hull. “I can hardly imagine someone doing that stupid to me!” 

Allef slammed her fist into the window again, and her entire arm punched through. The whistle of escaping atmosphere filled her ears now. Hazni looked like she was scrambling to turn on the ship’s autopilot, preparing to deal with Allef herself. 

With one last punch, a hole opened in the window just wide enough for Allef to enter the ship through. She landed on the inside of the cockpit, Hazni still fussing with the controls a few feet in front of her, and took heavy tungsten steps towards Hazni. 

Hazni leapt from the control panel and swiped her hands at Allef, each surrounded by a ball of vacuum, prompting Allef to dodge out of the way. Hazni’s missed strikes wound up scraping away some of the cockpit’s inside wall, letting even more of the ship’s pressurized atmosphere escape. 

“Watch it!” Allef taunted. “You don’t want to make things worse for yourself now, do you?” 

Allef raised a fist and slammed it into Hazni’s chest, sending her flying into and through the door to the main cabin. Allef followed her deeper into the ship, where they had now entered a storage area, the walls lined with spacesuits and crates of both luxury and practical gear. Allef dodged another of Hazni’s erasure swipes, which scraped away part of a toppled water jug on the ground, before countering with a kick to the head. 

But Hazni’s desperation, too, was growing, as was shown by her increasing affinity for making larger and larger vacuum bubbles. At this rate, her Val alone would be able to suck enough air out of the ship to make it unlivable for the both of them. But Allef’s worries about running out of atmosphere were quickly quelled when Hazni made a larger-than-ever vacuum bubble that erased a person-sized hole in the side of the ship’s inside wall. By dodging the massive attack and avoiding getting sucked into space, which by now they had reached, Allef had put herself in a bad situation, and found her left arm quickly pinned underneath Hazni’s foot, immobile. Hazni pushed her closer and closer to the hole until Allef was even able to see stars appearing outside, no longer blocked by Nopetu’s atmosphere. 

Allef tried to move her right arm, but Hazni’s other foot pinned it to the floor as well. They had just about run out of atmosphere now, and they would likely suffocate before they could kill each other. But right before Allef was about to be pushed outside, she looked at her right arm in the hopes of freeing it somehow. It was bulkier than her left, and for a moment, she forgot why. Then she remembered: the gravity nuke. She had wanted to save this for Zero, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. 

The machinery in Allef’s chest shifted as it allowed for all of the power in her personal fusion reactor to pour into the artificial gravity generator in Allef’s right arm. Allef looked defiantly into Hazni’s face and spit in it. Hazni lifted one of her feet off of Allef’s right arm to stomp on Allef’s face, and Allef took this opportunity to aim her free arm at Hazni. Before Hazni even realized what had happened, Allef activated the gravity nuke. 

A massive distortion in spacetime accelerated Hazni into space through the hole in the ship’s side at many times Nopetu’s escape velocity, turning her into a speck in the cosmos and then nothing at all in the span of less than a second. Heart racing, she tried to breathe a sigh of relief, then found that she couldn’t. 

Allef got up and threw on a thankfully-intact spacesuit as fast as she could manage. She waited desperately for its air reservoirs to kick in and allow her to breathe, feeling her head become faint and her vision begin to darken. It was hardly more than two seconds before she could breathe again, a gasping breath of fresh air that felt better than any breath she’d ever taken before, but it felt like eternity. 

With Hazni now gone, Allef checked on the status of her flight out of Nopetu. This being a ship owned by a rich Keila citizen meant that it avoided the suspicion of Keila’s fleet, but being chased was hardly her biggest problem right now. The ship was full of holes, some thanks to her, but many from Hazni. It could easily fly through the vacuum of space in this state, as it was built to handle the absence of atmosphere, but she could never survive reentry into Vin with this many holes in its side. 

As she took inventory of the different methods of emergency repair the ship offered, Allef got a message from the inside of her spacesuit. Heart racing, she answered it, and it displayed on her clear visor within her helmet. The message read: 

 

To all high-ranking Keila forces: 

Iskay has suffered a shameful defeat. Alert Zero that the Terminus has been located on Vin at the coordinates below. 

51-09.15 140-46.53 

 

Allef’s heart, lifted by the high of victory, sank into her stomach. It looks like both she and Hazni had underestimated how alive Kulli had been left. Hazni’s boasts about her escape had unknowingly been overheard by Kulli, and now Zero was surely on his way to Vin. 

Allef pulled out her transponder, whose screen had been massively cracked during the day’s chaos. There was a single message from Aurein: 

 

We made it to Vin. Please tell me you made it off of Nopetu in one piece. 

 

The transponder was too damaged for her to respond, but the joy of knowing he and Flint made it to Vin was enough. Soon, though, they would have to deal with Zero and his forces, and potentially without Allef—her ship needed significant repairs before it was ready to land on any other planet again, and she herself had taken plenty of damage already. 

At once, Allef got to work on repairing the ship. If Zero was coming to Vin, then her friends were going to need all of the help they could get.