I flew after him, ignoring my main objective for the moment.

The kind of shooting most people practiced was shooting while at the range. Feet planted, shoulders square. Not possible when three-quarters of that person’s footing and immediate surroundings were uneven fields of meat that wanted to pump them full of fast-gro mutant fetuses.

I hit the ground hard, just to the one gunman’s right. They didn’t even pop off any shots as I made the approach, because they were focused on not getting sucked into the meat. My landing broke more of the flooring. If he’d been on an isolated section of ice in the middle of a frozen lake before, he was standing on ice cubes now.

“Drop it,” I told him, as his eyes widened and he realized his predicament. I reached for his wrist and he didn’t fight me or try to get away.

The gun tumbled from his grasp.

Immediately, I took off, gripping him hard around the armpits with one hand, my other hand at his arm. It was a precarious hold and he seemed to realize it, because he made a prolonged, frightened sound that wasn’t quite wail or whimper. More of a ‘murrr’.

He was my human shield as I flew at the other gunman. I let go of him, and I let him crash into the other guy. Floorboards beneath them cracked but didn’t break like eggshells. The building between this spot and Nursery had probably absorbed the worst of the mist.

I half-floated over to them, half-stalked. With one stomp, I put the gun through the floor and into the meat.

“What the hell kind of money are you earning, that you’re willing to put up with this?” I asked. “You know one of your buddies got a fetus stuck in their ear, right?”

“Not money,” one of them said, crawling backwards to get away from where the ground was bulging, a soft wet mass crowning at the aperture. “Homes.”

“Homes?”

“On a safe world. Big houses with two servants each. Room for our families.”

I could hear Lord of Loss making his approach. The building next to us shuddered, steel girders disintegrating and bending beneath Lord of Loss’s mass.

“Next time, throw down your weapons. It’s not worth it. Someone else would have killed you.”

“If we die, our families still get the homes.”

“If they get those homes—” I started. Lord of Loss reached the edge of the building, metal screeching as it crumpled beneath him. He looked down at me. “—they’ll be living somewhere under the thumb of a guy who would throw away their loved ones without a second thought.”

“He has second thoughts,” one of the ex-gunmen said. “He was clear about the rules. The job comes first.”

“He’s better than others,” the other said.

Lord of Loss leaped down. I flew back around the corner to where the braided umbilical thing had been.