Meeting Monsters

Three miles becomes two while Grant is still pulling his pants on.

Mary’s already got a pistol. Eve’s on the roof. Leanne’s yelling on two. The whole web is on high alert.

“Stay inside,” Grant says. “All of you. If I need a landing pad I need you where I left you.”

“That’s another shitty plan,” Mary says.

“It’s the only one that might work. You move, I have to find you. I won’t have that much time.”

She hates it, but she obeys him.

“Yes, master.”

Jose, from four, raw:

“Don’t die in the street, boss.”

“Not planning on it.”

He takes the stairs to the lobby on purpose. The step waits. He doesn’t know if it has a limit and he can’t waste it. Bren is still in the chair by the garage with the hatchet. She looks at him like she wants to follow.

“No,” he says.

“Yes, master.”

He walks out the front door.

They are already on the far sidewalk.

The unreadable man is just an outline until he isn’t. Tall. Broad. Maybe forty. Short hair. A coat that should not still be that clean. No gun. The map still has no number for him. Looking at him is like looking at a hole somebody drew a person around.

The woman in black is half a step behind him. Same as the field. Solid black eyes. That smile. The air behind her still wrong.

She looks at Grant and the smile gets a little wider.

“Hi there friend,” the man says. Casual. Like they ran into each other at a store. “You’re the one she almost had.”

“Yeah.”

“You got away.”

“I did.”

The man glances at the tower.

“Lot of girls in there. I can’t even count them from here. That’s new. She said you can disappear?”

“I can.”

“That’s annoying.” He rolls his neck. “Alright. I’m tired of talking.”

He moves.

Grant has fought Holt. He has fought Dale. This is not like either.

The first hit is a blur that should be a punch and is instead the sidewalk coming up to meet him. Grant’s healing kicks in before he finishes bouncing. He thinks of Eve—

Roof.

Wind. Eve swearing.

“Damnit, master—”

He’s already gone. Lobby. The man is through the glass. The woman didn’t follow the punch. She’s just there, in the frame, watching, like this is a show.

Grant hits the man in the ribs with everything five hundred has.

The man takes it. Grunts. Smiles with ordinary teeth.

“Okay,” he says. “You’re real.”

He grabs Grant by the shirt and throws him through the lobby wall into the mail room. Brick dust. Instant heal. Grant steps to Leanne—

Two.

Leanne has the rifle up and almost shoots him.

“Don’t,” he says, and steps back down.

The man is already in the hole Grant left. Faster than Holt. Stronger than the south hundred. The unreadable man is just more, and Grant cannot read how much more.

They trade blows. Grant lands one. The man lands three and Grant’s shoulder comes apart and knits while he’s still swinging. The woman walks in through the broken doors like she has all night. Bren yells from the garage hall and then goes quiet because she re Mary told her to shut up and stay.

The man catches Grant’s wrist.

“She doesn’t fight until I say,” he says, almost friendly. “She’s been mine a long time. Different kind of mine than your trick.” Grant tries to pull free. “You don’t get to keep jumping, boy.”

Grant thinks of Zoya on two.

The wrist is gone. He’s behind Zoya. The shotgun is in her hands. He doesn’t take it. He steps to the roof.

Eve: “They’re in the lobby. I can put one in his head.”

“Don’t. You hit him and he comes up here. Stay down.”

He drops back into the lobby behind the man and kicks the side of his knee. The t goes the wrong way. The man laughs and the t goes the right way again.

He heals too.

“Cute,” the man says.

The woman tilts her head, watching with her black eyes. Waiting.

Grant stops trying to win a fistfight.

He uses the building.

Step to Mary — penthouse — the man’s hand closes on empty air in the lobby.

Step to Eve — roof — the man is already coming up the stairwell, punching through drywall.

Step to the girl in the hall on nine — June startles — Grant is gone before she finishes gasping.

He hits the man from the side on seven, full power, and this time he hears something important break. The man staggers. Blood in his mouth. Still smiling.

“Not bad you little shit, but not enough.”

They wreck seven. Then six. Grant will not let it get to the garage door. He steps to Bren, pulls her by the arm, and puts her on two with a thought of Leanne and a shove.

“Stay.”

“Yes, master.”

The man comes through the six landing like the wall was paper. Grant meets him. They go through the next wall. Grant’s healing is a strobe. The man’s heal is slower. Finally, some good news.

The woman is in the stairwell now. Not rushing. Just closing the distance Grant keeps opening.

The man gets a hand on Grant’s throat and slams him into the floor hard enough that the tile spiderwebs. His vision blurs. Heal. Grant’s forehead meets the man’s nose. Cartilage. Blood. The man doesn’t let go.

Grant steps.

The man growls after his hand is empty once again.

Penthouse. Mary’s pistol in his face for half a second and then down.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’ll close.”

He’s already gone.

Lobby again. The man is furious now. The friendly voice is gone.

“Stop doing that!”

“Fuck you.”

They hit the street because the lobby is a hole leading to the night air. Eve is on the roof tracking them. The woman walks out after them, boots on glass.

The man is faster in the open. Grant takes a line of hits he cannot fully slip. Ribs. Jaw. A kick that sends him into a parked car that was already dead. Heal. Step to Eve.

Breathe. I can’t do this forever. I need to try something different.

He steps toward one of his claimed, but cancels it early, something he never tried before.

Grant appears behind the man.

He punches with both fists as hard as he can. Both of his hands hit directly into his spine.

Something gives.

The man drops to a knee.

Grant does not waste time. He hits him again. And again. The unreadable weight finally feels like a number Grant can take out. The man grabs Grant’s ankle and yanks. Grant goes down. The man’s fist is coming for his head and it will end him if it lands clean.

Grant thinks of Mary.

Fist through the street.

Grant on the penthouse floor, gasping.

“You need to kill him,” Mary says.

“I’m trying.”

Back.

The man is up. Slower. Angry. The woman has taken two steps closer and the air around her is worse. Grant can feel the power sitting in her hands. If she touches him, he is Garret.

He keeps the man between them.

“Don’t,” the man rasps at her. Still an order. She stops. Barely. The smile is thinner.

Grant steps to Zoya, to Eve, to the girl on fifteen, to Mary, to the lobby, a stutter of bodies the man cannot copy. Each time Grant lands a hit on the way through. Kidney. Throat. The bad knee. The man stops healing as fast. Grant’s own heal is a grind now, not a blink. He’s close to empty in a way five hundred is not supposed to be.

They end up in the courtyard.

The man spits blood.

“You’re not as strong as me,” he says. “You’re just slippery.”

“All that matters is who wins.”

Grant steps once more — Mary — and cancels it early again.

He grabs the man’s head from behind and twists with all his strength.

The unreadable man fights it. He almost wins. Grant’s shoulders scream. His heal flickers. The man smiles with a broken mouth.

“She’s going to—”

The neck snaps.

His blank on the map pops like a bubble.

The man hits the dirt and does not get up.

The woman makes a sound Grant has not heard from her.

Not a scream. A breath like a rope snapped.

She drops to one knee in the glass. The smile is gone. The eyes are not. Still solid black. No white. The teeth are still the thing he cannot name. She looks at her hands like they belong to somebody else.

The smear on the map hiccups, then sits on her as a person Grant still cannot number — but he can see her now as a body, loose, unclaimed, two feet away.

She looks up at him.

“Don’t,” she says. Voice raw. “I can still—”

He does not let her finish.

He is on her before she finds her feet. Hand on her shoulder.

“I claim you.”

The lock hits.

Instant.

Her hands stop moving. The wrongness in the air stutters and stays — hers, not his. The power is still in her. He can feel it sitting under the claim like a second pulse. Black eyes on his face. The devotion lands on top of whatever she was.

“Master,” she says.

Soft. Immediate.

Name under it, pulled the way the others pull.

“Raven.”

688.

She does not run. She does not swing. She looks at the dead man in the dirt and then at Grant and her mouth shakes once. The teeth catch the courtyard light wrong.

“He had me,” she says. “Not like yours. Different. I couldn’t—” She swallows. “I still have it. What he made me use. I don’t want to use it on you.”

“Then don’t.”

“Of course, master. I would never.”

Mary is in the broken lobby doors. Pistol down. Staring at the eyes.

Eve on the roof: “Is it over?”

“He’s dead,” Grant says. “And she’s mine.”

The web hits 688 and ripples. Hunger. Relief. Confusion. Piper on a landing. Leanne on two. Jose’s heart on four still hammering.

Grant’s hands are shaking. The heal is still closing a line of damage the unreadable man left in him. He looks at Raven in the glass and the black clothes and the eyes that never cleared.

“You killed Garret.”

“He told me to clear the extra men.” Her voice is flat in the way claimed voices go when they tell the truth. “I didn’t choose to, but I still did it. I’m sorry, master.”

He does not forgive her in the courtyard. He also does not put her down.

“Inside,” he says. “You don’t touch anybody. You don’t go near Jose. You don’t go near the garage. Mary’s going to put you in a room and you’re going to stay in it until I decide what to do with you.”

“Yes, master.”

Mary comes out far enough to escort Raven, but doesn’t touch her. She looks at Grant over the woman’s shoulder.

“You barely walked out of that.”

“I know.”

“You are starting to make this a habit.”

“I know.”

She huffs. Looks at Raven’s eyes. Looks at the body.

“Please get inside. Both of you. We still don’t have any food, but I am not leaving you outside at night. Who knows if there is another freak around that can blink somebody out of the world for fun.”

“There isn’t,” Raven says. “At least no one I found when I was hunting.”

Grant believes the claim, but he does not believe the world is simple anymore.

He looks at the five miles.

No smear.

No unreadable man.

Just 688 points and a city that suddenly has no owners in range except him.

Jose, from the hole in the lobby, pale:

“Is she… is that her?”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s yours now?”

“She is.”

Jose stares at Raven for a long second — the eyes, the teeth — then at the dead man, then he goes back upstairs without another word.

Grant stands in the courtyard until his shoulder finishes closing.

Raven waits where Mary pointed, head down, black clothes full of dust from the street, black eyes, and the thing that erased Garret still sitting in her hands and not moving.

The tower is still standing, but the front door is not.