“Sounds like Love’s thing,” Sidepiece murmured.

“They’re sharing info. Love Lost is going to love this.”

⊙

Love Lost screamed. The scream hit Nailbiter and several members of the Patrol. That it hit Nailbiter didn’t really matter. Nails was filled with piss, vinegar, and rabies, and having the dial set to ten on ‘rage’ didn’t change a lot. It made her more intense, aggressive, and focused, and far less likely to choose any option that wasn’t ‘fight more’. It did the same to her enemies, but they weren’t going to win that fucking fight.

When they’d reported the meeting over, Sidepiece had messaged Love Lost. The response had been an address. This intersection.

No elaboration. If she’d known it would be a fight like this, she would have hurried.

Sidepiece adjusted her coat, pulling it open so the buckles came undone. She ran toward the thickest part of the fighting, raising her voice to a harsh pitch, “Give me the word!”

“Get ’em!” Nailbiter shouted.

“That’s two words!”

Nailbiter’s fingers elongated, narrowing into rigid, sharp lengths, which scuffed the road near Sidepiece’s feet. Sidepiece cackled.

A Patrol soldier whipped around, gun raised, and kept spinning, as Disjoint’s hand gripped him and shoved him. A judo move at long range. The guy stumbled into another soldier’s way, nearly getting shot.

Sidepiece reached into her coat and reached for another organ, her fingers sliding on slick tissue and the fluids that periodically dripped down from the upper half of her torso to the bottom. Her kidney—not her right kidney. That one was still growing back. Her left kidney was ripe, and the faint, sharp pains told her it was loaded.

The sharp pains became something pronounced as she gripped the kidney and set to tearing it away. There was a sound like wet cardboard ripping, audible snapping as the congealed and hardened parts around old injuries broke away. Her right knee trembled with the effort and the pain, to the point she almost fell to the street, but then the last attachments broke, and she had her kidney in hand.

She even gave it a brief shake for good measure, feeling the reactions stirring within, like the fluids within the kidney were coming to a boil, the bubbles pushing out through the solid matter.

“Run!” someone gave the order. A captain, who twisted around and aimed to open fire with their assault rifle. Disjoint fucked with their aim.

They were already running, but they were running on a battlefield obstructed by their rage-filled allies, with parked vehicles here and there, and all of the other normal obstacles of a sidewalk, like mailboxes, trash cans, and trees. Those things funneled them.