The problem with the cycle was that being on the outs made them more likely to bend or break the rules. The wedge between them and everyone else had also made them more inclined to simply fold into the Fallen, especially after Gold Morning.

The amnesty was a thing, crimes had been pardoned, but feelings were still feelings. The bikers had backed up some of the shittiest people around, and that was hard to let go of.

There were three people moving through the trees as a group. Their attention seemed to be fixed on flanking Hollow Point. That would’ve been the motorcycle guy’s intention too, then. Getting around behind and opening fire.

Two of them were heavy, and could’ve been brothers. One of the heavy ones had a tattoo that was partially obscured by his glasses, and a goatee. The other had a metal shackle of a collar around a neck that really was too wide for most metal collars. It made skin bulge out the top and bottom. Similar shackle-like cuffs were at his wrists and ankles, but they weren’t so bulgy.

The one in the center was a breaker. He was a wraith of a person, a statue broken up into solid segments that were hard and almost ceramic in appearance, with electric blue lines spiraling around each of the jet black, ceramic-ish, solid parts. They were connected to other parts by only a deep blue smoke that was hard to look too deeply at. His face was less of a face and more of a solid, triangular surface with a series of six or seven holes bored into it. Each hole was ridged with a corkscrew pattern, cone-shaped.

He didn’t walk and he didn’t fly. He had legs that existed as a jumble of segments, they moved, and he kind of was in places. It reminded me of the animated optical illusions where circles continually rippled outward and appeared to grow endlessly, but they didn’t actually grow.

In his case, the lines and edges of the harder body moved and rippled back, he appeared to stay in place, but he actually moved, with the indigo-blue smoke billowing out behind him.

Two guns. Shackle-guy had a handgun, and the guy with the goatee had a shotgun. Breakers didn’t tend to have gear.

I flew over their heads, and I saw that the breaker’s face wasn’t three-dimensional. It was such that no matter what angle I viewed it from, it always faced me.

He didn’t react like he saw me, though. Not just yet.

One of the most underrated things about flying was that it was silent.

I took advantage, lowering myself down behind the guy with the goatee.