The room he entered was decorated with the kind of perfect furniture you found only in a house that had too many rooms. According to the blueprint he’d been given, under it would be the saferoom.

Still the gun, Bleeder said in his mind as she leaped over a sofa, heading toward the wall, which hid the steps down to the saferoom. Useless. I cannot be killed with that.

Wax raised Vindication and sighted, then fired, Pushing the bullet forward in a burst of extra speed. It hit Bleeder as she landed.

Right in the ankle.

The bone shattered and Bleeder collapsed as she tried to put weight on her ankle. She turned toward Wax, lips raised in a snarl visible through the broken side of the mask.

Wax put a bullet through the eyehole in the mask.

This is meaningless—

He strode forward, shooting her in the hand as she tried to raise her gun. Wax pulled out the syringe, ready to Push it toward her skin, but she growled and became a blur. Wax tried to follow that blur—but at that moment, the side of the room burst open, revealing the hidden stairwell. A group of men in black suits and shotguns piled out, frantic. The governor’s special security.

Wax dove for cover as they started firing. He didn’t catch much of what happened next, as he put his back to the side of a thick chair. Bleeder moved among the men, firing. They tried to fire back, doing more damage to their friends than they did to her.

It was over by the time the report from the first gunshot had faded in Wax’s ears. Men lay groaning and bleeding on the floor, and Bleeder was through the hole and heading down the steps. Wax set his jaw and Pushed himself across the room. He landed, skidding on blood, and leaped into the stairwell. Another Push sent him soaring down the steps.

Gunshots resounded in the narrow confines of the stairwell, coming from just ahead. Wax slowed himself with a shot forward into the ground, landing beside a final handful of guards who lay bleeding on the floor.

The kandra stood alone before the door to the saferoom. She looked at Wax, smiled, and became a blur.

But her speed only lasted a fraction of a second. Soon after she’d begun tapping her metalmind, she slowed back down.

Wax caught sight of her just as she unlocked the door to the governor’s saferoom, using a key she shouldn’t have. She pulled the door open with a flourish, then glanced back at Wax, shaking her head. She obviously thought she was still a blur moving with incredible speed. And she was.

Wax had simply joined her.

One of the fallen bodies stirred, and Wayne pushed back his hat, showing a grin. Wax raised his hands, a gun in each, and was rewarded by an expression of utter shock on Bleeder’s face. She’d regrown her eye, though blood still streamed down the front of her mask. As he had chased her, talked to her, she’d always seemed fully in control.