The death machine screamed bloody murder again, and this time she thought they’d managed to kill. Light carved down the street, through the corner of Pandora’s Aquarium, shattering one wall and drawing down the roof on one side. Bricks rained over the sidewalk. Someone screamed and then cut short as

the bar wall crashed toward the line of encroaching cops. One dodged out of the way; another disappeared under the avalanche of debris.

Fulki had hopefully rushed out the back already. Yaya would never know.

Magenta squirmed so hard that Yaya’s chest ached. I smell their hate.

Yaya’s face contorted, her pores opening as if her skin could sniff the air. They want to touch us. Hurt us.

Magenta wasn’t making perfect sense, but she told Yaya what she needed to know. “Maybe we touch them instead.”

There were too many cops, but the ABP agents were few and their death machine was powerful yet cumbersome. Close enough, it couldn’t hurt her. She could dodge around it without the agents knowing where she’d gone. They would have to carve open the entire city to find her.

Electricity sang up the death machine’s shaft as another sword of light pierced Bruen Street. Its blade arced down a tree to Yaya’s right. Heat seared her arm, peeling away its lavender sleeve. The tree flared in torchlight.

A high-pitched shriek chased the death machine’s thunder. Yaya spotted the man at the tree’s base just as his skin sloughed in amber light, the glow dripping through muscle and bone. She shut her eyes when he fell forward, his scream only a windy echo, and his body hit the pavement in a wet pile, like slimy bird bones on a bathroom floor.

Yaya’s bicep burned red. Did ABP think these were warning shots or did they mean to kill her? They would have no meat for their labs at this rate.

Magenta slithered through Yaya’s limbs. Touch them back.

Yaya ran fast as she could toward the ABP agents and their death machine.

“Give a big smile to your corporate sponsors,” she said, doubting anyone could hear her besides her friendly parasite. Sarcasm, her only defense when hopelessly outmatched against a rain of hellfire.

But then, she’d spent her life outmatched against AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical. A giant steel dick that squirted some Marvin the Martian heat ray was only their latest jab at her since the checkup injection, since the Congressional approval that they partly owned her, since the release of the double-zero virus in the first fucking place.

The agents fanned out. Streetlights glared in their glassy gas mask eyeholes. They were getting ready.

She didn’t know if she could ready herself, but nearing them was her only chance. Doc and other agents might have been acceptable collateral alongside the rest of the population, but ABP wouldn’t fire on their own.

She hoped.