Not Over Yet
When my eyes cracked open beneath the collapsed bricks and mangled steel shelving, the first thing I tasted was a mouth full of grit, dust, and the sharp, coppery tang of blood.
A needle-sharp agony stabbed into my ribs, stealing the air right out of my lungs. I twitched my fingers and toes to check for sensation, then gingerly twisted my pinned shoulder. The back of my skull was split open; warm blood trickled down the nape of my neck and seeped into the collar of my shirt.
My hand fumbled instinctively for the Rozen R98 slung diagonally across my back.
…Ah, shit.
When I slammed into the wall, it must have gotten crushed directly between my spine and the solid brickwork.
The scope glass was completely shattered. The bent tube was pinched flat against the barrel, and the cracked wooden stock wobbled uselessly on its tang. A top-of-the-line rifle, dead and gone just five minutes after I got my hands on it.
Swallowing back bitter tears, I shoved the wrecked R98 aside.
Fortunately, the Type 91 Rifle had ended up wedged in the gap under an overturned steel rack. Reaching out with my left arm, I caught the sling and hauled with everything I had. Shards of scrap metal and a cascade of bolts came clattering down around me, but the rifle dragged free.
The Type 91 had weathered the disaster far better. The receiver bore deep gouges, but the steel was intact. The real problem was the bolt. The handle had been bent inward against the frame, and the cocking piece was knocked askew. Inside the chamber rested the single live round I had chambered right after putting a shot through the locomotive's cab.
Tugging on that seized bolt would be an exercise in futility. Shooting was out of the question. I shifted my grip, setting my hands firmly against the stock.
Beyond the rubble, the screech of a greatsword hewing through solid iron collided with the harsh, rhythmic crack of Lentz's revolver.
Section Chief Irina was fighting both Lentz and the gravity mage all by herself. If I stayed lying here, caught between the two of them, she would be overwhelmed.
I had to get up. But between the violent collision with the masonry and the backlash of pushing my output past its limits, my thighs and knee joints felt like solid stone. Every intake of breath sent a tearing agony through the inside of my ribcage. Sitting up was an ordeal in itself.
I can't move like this.
Keeping my back propped against the collapsed bricks, I patted down my inner coat pocket and retrieved a flattened pack of Cheonghoecho.
Prying the cardboard open sent a shower of crushed leaves and torn paper tumbling into my lap. The half-smoked stub and the pristine stick had been thoroughly pulverized when I hit the wall. Only two retained any semblance of shape. One was bent sharply at the midpoint, while the other had merely suffered a squashed body. Picking the lesser of two evils, I placed it between my bloody lips.
Scritch.
After snapping two matches in half, the third finally flared to life. Cupping my hand against the drafts, I brought the flame to the tip of the herb.
The harsh, acrid smoke scraped down my throat. A fit of coughing tore through me, jolting my shattered ribs, but I clenched my teeth and forced the smoke deep into the recesses of my lungs.
Back on the emergency stairwell, I had only taken a light drag just to dull the pain in my legs. Now, I wasn't even sure if a full stick would be enough to get me onto my feet.
I drew three, then four long, continuous drags, watching the cherry burn hungrily down toward the filter without pause.
Whoosh…
In an instant, an icy chill swept across my brain.
The throbbing agony in my flank retreated into the distance. A current I had never sensed before began to brush against the surface of my skin from beyond the mound of debris.
The faint hiss of water droplets boiling inside the steam pipes, the thud of boots striking the ballast beneath the tracks, and then…
…What is this?
Around the gray-haired mage standing in front of the locomotive, an unnatural disturbance coalesced.
It wasn't the wind.
Invisible currents of atmospheric pressure scattered through the air were being drawn toward the mage's interlaced fingers, condensing into a dense, heavy mass before plummeting toward the tracks beneath Section Chief Irina's feet.
I wasn't seeing it with my eyes. The fine hairs on my skin and the raw nerve endings throughout my body were registering the shift in atmospheric pressure first.
Craaaash!
The maintenance floor buckled under an invisible stamp, and the sound of Irina dropping to one knee echoed through the depot. As the mage twisted his hand seal, I felt that concentrated mass of pressure pivot down toward her right arm.
All I have to do is stay out of that trajectory.
Gripping the Type 91's receiver with my left hand, I planted my shoulder beneath the steel shelf and heaved upward.
Screeeech—
Kicking through the loose brick rubble, I strode out into the open.
Lentz, who had been aiming an empty revolver squarely at the Section Chief's forehead, whipped around. Every drop of color drained from his scarred face. Across from him, the mage followed his gaze, his interlaced fingers suddenly trembling violently.
I couldn't fathom why they were reacting like that. What on earth was on my face that made them freeze up as if they were looking at a vengeful ghost?
Exhaling a long plume of smoldering Cheonghoecho smoke, I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand.
"That hurt like a bitch, you bastard."
Section Chief Irina's languid gray eyes snapped wide as she looked at me. A flash of shock and sheer bewilderment crossed her features, but the moment Lentz tossed aside his spent revolver and backed away, she instantly reset her stance.
The mage frantically broke his hand sign and wove his fingers together once more.
A chilling mass of barometric pressure dropped like an anvil toward my left ankle.
I see it.
I casually pulled my left foot back half a step.
BOOM!
The steel-reinforced floor where my foot had rested plunged four inches deep into the foundation, shearing mounting bolts that pinged wildly into the rafters. The mage's eyes bulged as if they might pop from their sockets.
"Alright, let's go for round two."
Digging my left boot into the gravel, I surged forward. Shifting my grip on the Type 91 like a baseball bat, I closed the distance toward the mage's flank in a single breath.
Goosebumps erupted across the back of my hand. The mage snapped his hands sideways, wrenching gravity downward around the rifle. The lump of metal grew immensely heavy, dragging toward the concrete, but I didn't bother fighting it.
Riding the downward momentum, I dragged the receiver along the floor in a sweeping arc. Carried by the centrifugal force, my entire body spun, sliding smoothly into the mage's blind spot on his left.
I brought the rifle butt around, aiming directly behind his knee.
Right before impact, the air beside my ribs collapsed with a heavy thud.
Tsk!
I twisted my torso, but I was half a beat too slow. An invisible hammer of air slammed into my ribs. My feet lifted off the ground, throwing me clear across a set of rails.
This time, however, I didn't hit a wall. The moment I touched down, my left boot caught the iron rail and skidded along it, before I drove the heel of my right boot into the gravel bed to arrest my slide.
His hand sign shifted again. Rather than targeting my body, the crushing pressure of mana converged on the scattered tools across the floor—monkey wrenches, iron pipes, and a heap of heavy structural bolts.
I raised the Type 91 vertically before my face.
CLANG! SKRRR-CLANG!
A hail of metal shrapnel battered the rifle. My forearms went completely numb. If Bram hadn't reinforced the interior of this stock with high-carbon steel, it would have snapped in two right then and there. Blood dripped down my cheek from a stray fragment, but the guard held.
Tearing through the cloud of flying iron filings, I stomped forward four relentless paces.
In sheer panic, the mage crooked his right ring finger. The air over my chest tightened like a vice. Dropping my head, I slid beneath the vector.
Above me, a heavy steel chair whipped through the empty air, shattering against an iron pillar behind me with an ear-splitting crash.
Distance: one meter.
A broad swing would get caught in his gravitational field again. Tucking the Type 91 tight against my chest, I drove the heavy corner of the walnut stock straight forward into the pit of his stomach.
"Guh-urk?!"
The mage's fingers tangled, forcibly tearing his hand sign apart. As he stumbled backward clutching his gut, I took half a step back and glanced toward Lentz.
Over on the right track, Lentz was desperately fending off Section Chief Irina using a shattered spear shaft as a makeshift shield.
Irina's greatsword, however, was already carving bloody furrows across his shoulders and thighs. As a third clean strike cleaved across his torso, the faded scar across his cheek burst open anew, spraying crimson.
Right then, the blood-drenched mage screamed out toward the rear of the locomotive in the harsh dialect Lentz had spoken earlier.
"Kasha Lentz! Barca nat!"
Lentz turned his bloodied face, uttering a single, dry reply.
"……Sab rak."
Without sparing the mage a second glance, Lentz seized the unconscious security chief from the locomotive's tender by the collar and bolted toward the eastern drainage tunnel.
"Uh……?"
The mage's face turned stark white. He screamed desperately after Lentz's retreating back, but the iron hatch of the drainage conduit slammed shut with a heavy boom, cutting off the sound of footsteps into the distance.
I blew out a trail of herb smoke and clicked my tongue.
"Why're you so slow on the uptake, kid? He ditched your ass."
The mage couldn't understand my words; he could only roll his bloodshot eyes in frantic confusion.
Catching her breath, Section Chief Irina recited a short phrase in Kasha with a chilling, deadpan tone. The mage shrieked back in sheer denial.
"What'd he say?"
"Lentz told him he'd be back with reinforcements in three minutes."
"He obviously cut his losses and ran, and this idiot actually bought it."
Refusing to accept the reality that he had been abandoned, the mage coughed up a spatter of blood and locked his hands together before his chest. He squeezed out his mana with desperate abandon, his knuckles blanching bone-white under the strain.
RUUUUMBLE!
The entire foundation of the depot groaned in agony once more. It was a desperate, wide-area gravitational field meant to pin down both the Section Chief and me at the same time.
The steel floorplates warped under the immense load, pulling my boots down as if they were glued to the deck. I braced myself on the Type 91, but the muscles in my left arm began to shudder violently from the strain.
The mage's arms were trembling just as hard. I only needed his fingers to slip.
Dark crimson blood began to trickle steadily from his nostrils, his lips, and even his ear canals. Pushed far beyond his physical threshold, his raised arms shook like leaves in a gale.
Now.
The mage's left pinky spasmed and slipped free of the interlocking seal.
In that microsecond, the crushing weight bearing down on my shoulders relaxed.
"Hup!"
Planting the Type 91 like a vaulting pole, I sprang into the air like a coiled spring.
The gravitational vector meant to seize my ankles grazed past my afterimage. The lower hem of my overcoat was torn away, scattering buttons into the empty air, but I had already crossed the gap to his face.
The mage flinched in horror, desperately throwing his hands forward to reform the seal.
Before his fingers could meet, the heavy buttstock of my Type 91 tore upward in a vicious rising arc.
"Go to hell and apologize to my Rozen R98!!!!!"
CRACK!
"Gaaah-hurk!"
His head snapped back at a brutal ninety-degree angle. Half a dozen teeth sprayed into the air as his hand sign was shattered completely.
Grabbing the reeling man by the scruff of his collar, I spun him around and brought the hard corner of the buttstock down onto the crown of his skull.
THUD!
With a dull, sickening crunch that vibrated through the wood, the light in his eyes vanished entirely. His limbs went limp, and his body crumpled onto the iron rails like an empty ragdoll.
Whuuuush……
The bizarre, oppressive weight bearing down on the depot vanished as if it had never existed.
"Haaah…… haaah……"
I leaned my full weight onto the grounded rifle, barely keeping myself upright.
The strength drained from my fingers. If I hadn't been propped up by the wood and steel, I would have dropped flat onto my face.
My thighs trembled uncontrollably. The blinding pain in my cracked ribs and split skull, previously held at bay by the herb, came roaring back. I wanted to catch my breath, but my eyelids were already sinking shut.
Oh, man…… I'm actually going down…… Clocking out on time be damned……
I glanced toward the drainage tunnel where Lentz had fled. If it were Section Chief Irina, I figured she would have kicked that hatch off its hinges to pursue him immediately.
Yet, she didn't take a single step forward.
Clatter!
The massive greatsword slipped from Irina's grasp, sliding across the iron plate.
"……Section Chief?"
"Sonya-ssi!"
It was completely unlike her usual languid, poised tone. What tore from her throat was a desperate, ragged cry bordering on a shriek.
She tore across the tracks toward me, her boots kicking up ballast. Her panic was so absolute that her heel caught on the edge of an iron tie, nearly sending her sprawling; she barely kept herself upright by throwing a hand to the ground before scrambling forward again.
Her face was paler than a sheet of paper.
"Uh…… what's wrong?"
My tongue felt swollen and thick, slurring my words.
Irina collided with me, seizing both of my shoulders in a desperate grip. Her trembling fingers frantically traced my throat, my neck, and the sides of my face.
"Sit down right now…… No, lie down! Quickly!"
"I'm…… fine…… Just a little sleepy……"
"There is no way you are fine! Don't touch it, please!"
When I raised a hand to rub at the strange warmth prickling around my eyes, Irina gasped in sheer horror, snatching my wrist and yanking it downward.
"It's ghost flame…… You could be suffering from mana stripping! Your skin is freezing. Sonya-ssi, can you hear me?!"
Her voice cracked sharply at the edges, trembling with unrestrained terror.
Tearing off her charcoal-gray longcoat, she folded it double across the gritty ground, gently cradling my back as she lowered me down, gathering my head into her lap.
Stripping off her leather glove, she pressed two fingers firmly against my wrist. Even as she counted the erratic flutter of my pulse, she screamed at the top of her lungs for a stretcher.
Drip.
A single, hot, clear drop landed softly on the back of my hand.
Lifting my blurred gaze, I saw Section Chief Irina's gray eyes swimming with tears. She hastily wiped at her face with her uniform sleeve, but her pale lips wouldn't stop quivering.
…Huh? Why is she crying?
She honestly thought I was dying.
I didn't know what mana stripping was, nor did I understand why flames were flickering out from the corners of my eyes. Seeing her this terrified made it obvious that something abnormal was happening, but to me, it just felt like the crushing muscle fatigue and heavy drowsiness of an underpaid worker pulling three consecutive graveyard shifts. I lacked the wits to judge whether it was fatal or not. All I wanted was to put her mind at ease.
"Section Chief…… I'm not dying…… Just really tired……"
"Don't speak…… Please, don't close your eyes! Sonya-ssi, look at me! Can you hear my voice?!"
Irina clutched my freezing hand between both of hers, pressing it tight against her chest.
BAM! BAM! CLATTER!
The eastern access hatch burst open violently, and Lieutenant Havel poured into the depot accompanied by a heavily armed detachment of the Belokh City Guard.
"Is the situation contained?! Where's Lentz—"
Havel took in the blood-slicked depot floor and the crumpled form of the mage, but the instant his eyes landed on my face cradled in Irina's arms, he froze dead in his tracks.
"……Ghost flame?! It can't be."
"Get a stretcher and thermal blankets over here this instant! Bring the medics, hurry!"
At Irina's frantic roar, Lieutenant Havel spun on his heel and barked like thunder.
"Medics, move! Bring the damn stretcher, right now!"
The guardsmen scrambled in sheer chaos, rushing forward with medical gear.
Even as rough hands hoisted me onto the canvas stretcher, my trembling fingers reached out toward the Type 91 Rifle lying abandoned on the ballast.
"Officer…… my gun…… that was expensive……"
Havel looked at me with an expression of pure disbelief, shaking his head before retrieving the rifle and setting it carefully beside me on the litter.
Phew…… thank god. At least I secured the gear.
The stretcher lurched into motion, swaying over the uneven tracks. Section Chief Irina stayed glued to its side, holding my wrist in a crushing grip as she called out my name over and over.
"Sonya-ssi, you can hear me, right? Answer me. Keep your eyes open, look at me……"
"Yeees…… Section Chief…… Just ten minutes…… let me sleep……"
"Sonya-ssi! Sonya-ssi——!"
Her desperate calls grew distant, fading into the dark. I parted my lips to answer, but no sound came out.