It scans Ify for just a millisecond before taking one too-fast step toward her and raising a fist.

It’s going to kill me.

That’s Ify’s last thought before its comet-sized fist comes crashing down on her head.

She slowly opens her eyes and gasps. Onyii stands before her, trembling, knees bowed, muscles tensed to their limit, holding the juggernaut’s fist in her hands. It presses down on her, digging her feet into the concrete. The ground cracks around her.

Onyii half turns to Ify. Ify blinks. Onyii’s face becomes Uzo’s. Tremors from the strain ripple through it.

“Run.”

CHAPTER

38

I am pushing the fist away, but the juggernaut’s other hand smacks into me, hurling me clear across the street, through the first floor of a department store and onto the next street. A maglev car swerves to avoid me and crashes into another storefront, bursting into flames.

My body is aching and it is feeling like metal is broken inside me, but I am not feeling fear when I struggle back to my feet and wipe oil from the side of my mouth.

Gunfire. It is pistol. Small-caliber, and bullet is pinging against too-strong surface. I am knowing just from the sound that it is Grace shooting at juggernaut, and I am running back and jumping though department store, over counters and through broken windows, and when I am coming back out onto first street, I am seeing juggernaut holding Grace in the air by her neck and her legs is flailing and she is soon not breathing. So I am running even faster and jumping and curling into ball that is hitting the back of juggernaut’s knee. Juggernaut is falling to one knee. I am skidding to a stop on my feet, then I am running and leaping into the air and punching juggernaut in the helmet with all of my force. Helmet is not denting, but juggernaut is staggering backward and raising arm that is still holding Grace, and then I am kicking that arm at the elbow so that it is snapping and short-circuiting and finger is letting go.