Through the chaos, Cole caught glimpses of Ashley and Sarah's fight. Sarah's blades came at Ashley from a multitude of angles. A coordinated strike meant to overwhelm. Ashley's body dissolved into light, stepping through her Ricochet-Mote to reappear behind Sarah.

  Her rifle's barrel was already glowing. The continuous beam swept across Sarah's back, forcing her to spin, her Full-Body Plating activating to absorb the worst of it. Chrome armor flowed over her bodysuit, but the heat was immense. Sections glowed red-hot.

  "Getting tired yet?" Ashley taunted, her armor's energy reserves dropping with each exchange.

  Sarah didn't answer. Her blades reformed into a single massive spear, thrust with conceptual weight behind it. Ashley barely dodged, the weapon grazing her side causing her armor to spark. The spear continued past her, slamming into the building behind. The conceptual weight behind it crumpled steel and concrete like paper. The structure groaned, a section of the facade collapsing.

  Titan couldn't pin down a target that existed in three places simultaneously. Burns and molten wounds appeared on Titan's flesh faster than his body could repair them. His movements became more erratic, more desperate. Blood streamed from a dozen injuries.

  Sarah's rifle tracked upward, firing at the spheres themselves. Cole had to abandon the cage, pulling the spheres back defensively before they were destroyed.

  Titan was breathing hard now, minor wounds covering his form, and his next transformation would cost him even more.

  "You're slowing down," Cole observed, circling warily. "How many more times can you heal? Three? Four?"

  "Enough to outlast you," Titan spat blood. His wings flared, struggling to maintain altitude. "You reek of exhaustion."

  Titan's left arm convulsed, the flesh splitting as bio-ports opened along his forearm. Projectile bone spears launched from the openings—four ivory missiles whistling through the air. Two streaked toward Cole, two toward Ashley.

  Ashley's armor's thrusters fired, dodging left. Sarah's massive spear had already split back into individual blades, reforming their orbital pattern around her. They suddenly changed trajectory, cutting toward Ashley's new position as if Sarah had read the dodge before it happened. Cole tried to help, but the bone spears were already on him. One caught his hip, punching through with a deep, gouging impact. The other he managed to deflect with a hastily created Hard-Light shield.

  "Cole!" Ashley's warning came too late.

  Sarah exploited the distraction to close distance. Her gauntlet clamped around Cole's right wrist. She twisted in the air, trying to pin it, her fingers digging into the joint mechanisms. They entered a synchronized flat spin. The street rushed up to meet them.

  Cole drove his left fist into her forearm. The initial impact sent fractures across the chrome. Then the cascade hit. The cracks multiplied, spreading up her armor, each impact stronger than the last. The forearm plating blew out. The structural collapse climbed the elbow and hunted for the shoulder.

  Sarah locked her jaw. A rogue blade snapped to her open palm. She caught it on the drop. The weapon locked into the grip. She drove the edge for his ribs.

  Cole shunted his mass sideways. The steel skated across the plating instead of burying deep. The edge snagged. It tore a trench across his flank. Pain spiked in the red. His free hand clamped her wrist. They were bolted together in the fall. Another cascade pulse cycled through her shoulder. The joint casing exploded. Alloy shrapnel spun off into the slipstream.

  She didn't let go. Her knee drove into his stomach. The air exploded from Cole's lungs. Ribs cracked under the impact.

  Gasping his elbow smashed into her cracked faceplate. The helmet shattered, exposing her face—blood streaming from her nose and across her cheek. The chrome began reforming immediately, flowing back over the wounds.

  The ground was approaching them.

  They spun through the air, grappling, breaking each other piece by piece, neither willing to release until one of them stopped moving. Cole's side was slick with blood. Sarah's face was a mask of crimson inside her helmet. Both were running on adrenaline and rage.

  Ashley couldn't get a clear shot without hitting Cole. But Titan could.

  His right arm shifted mid-flight, the frost receding as something darker took its place. The flesh twisted, folding inward until a void opened in his palm.

  The darkness beam fired, carving through the air toward both of them. Sarah saw it coming, twisted Cole's body between herself and the blast. The beam struck his back, darkness eating through armor and flesh.

  Cole roared, his Kinetic Reversal trying to activate but finding nothing to absorb—the darkness wasn't kinetic, it was absence.

  Sarah's grip shifted. She spun once in the air, using the momentum, then hurled Cole downward. He plummeted toward the street, the wind screaming past him.

  Through a gap in the toxic smoke, Cole caught a flash of movement—Ashley's hand gesture, the bayonet ripping free from the street below and flying upward to snap onto her rifle. Five new points of light materialized around Titan.

  Sarah saw the trap too late. Her attention snapped to Ashley, abandoning Cole, but everything was already complete.

  Ashley's rifle fired once. The beam entered the formation, bouncing between the motes faster and faster, gaining energy with each reflection.

  Titan tried to escape. Beams crisscrossed from every angle, too fast to dodge, too numerous to block. His flesh armor charred and regenerated, each cycle depleting his reserves.

  Sarah intervened, her rifle snapping toward the Ricochet-Motes. Reality distortion rounds tore through the formation, erasing three motes in rapid succession, but the damage was done. Titan was burning, his wings skeletal frames, his transformations failing.

  "Titan!" Sarah's voice carried actual concern for the first time. "Fall back!"

  "No!" Titan's pride overruled his pain. "This is nothing!"

  The street rushed up—fifty feet, thirty, twenty—

  Cole vanished.

  He reappeared on top of a massive Halcyon Corp sign twenty stories up, boots finding purchase on the metal framework. The neon letters blazed around him, casting his silhouette in electric blue. The void damage in his back ached with every movement. His Twin Fractal Blades were in his hands, the crystallized monster-eye lenses hungry for blood.

  "Not. Fucking. Done. Yet!"

  Then he was gone again—materializing on a mirrored window across the street, then another building's chrome facade, then a third. Building to building, closing the distance back to the fight in rapid jumps.

  Sarah was below, her thrusters flaring as she dove toward Ashley, closing the distance to finish her while she was vulnerable.

  Cole threw both blades. They tumbled through the air, trailing light, spinning toward Sarah's shoulder—where her Full-Body Plating had tried to reform but remained incomplete, the chrome thin and weakened from too many rapid repairs.

  The blades struck true, punching through the gap in her armor and embedding deep. Sarah's scream cut short. Her movements became erratic, jerky. She spun wildly, her rifle sweeping across multiple positions. Shot after shot all missing wide, tracking locations Cole wasn't occupying. Reality distortion rounds tore through empty space, erasing chunks of buildings. Her head whipped side to side as if she was seeing multiple targets at once.

  "What the—multiple contacts! Where is he?!"

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Gotcha," Cole whispered, savage satisfaction in his voice despite pain running through his body.

  She jerked her rifle toward what she thought was Cole's position. The distortion caused her to fire directly into her own leg causing the armor to unravel. She cursed, her Full-Body Plating already moving to repair the damage.

  The blades embedded in her back created reflection points, distorting light around her like a miniature prism gate.

  At the same time Ashley and Titan were locked in melee combat. His bone spears extended like swords, her bayonet blade meeting them strike for strike. They danced through the air, his wings against her thrusters, flesh against technology.

  Titan pressed hard, his regeneration keeping him aggressive despite the burns covering his body. He feinted left with one spear, then drove the other toward Ashley's throat. She twisted at the last second, bone scraping across her helmet with a grinding screech instead of punching through her neck. Her counter-strike came immediately—the bayonet blade carving deep into his ribs. Blood sprayed across her faceplate, hot and dark.

  Spear met bayonet in a shower of sparks, the impact reverberating through Ashley's arms. Her blade cracked under the repeated impacts.

  "Your blade's failing," Titan observed. "Just like you will."

  "Still sharp enough to gut you," Ashley shot back.

  Sarah tried to help Titan, her hand reaching back toward the embedded blades. But Cole was already moving, forming new hard-light constructs, launching them through the temporary mirror gate the wounds had created. The attacks forced her hands back to defense, unable to remove the blades or support her partner.

  Ashley feinted high with the bayonet, drawing his spears up to block. Then she dropped low, inside his guard, and grabbed him.

  "Cole, now on me!" Ashley roared over the intercom.

  Her thrusters fired at maximum, driving them both backward. Titan thrashed, bone spears extending from new bio-ports along his torso, trying to impale her. She twisted, taking glancing hits across her armor as she locked him in a grappling hold.

  Cole sent his three Graviton spheres streaking toward Ashley's position. He reformed behind Sarah in the same instant, ripping both blades from her back in a spray of blood and sparks. His Fractal Edge arm drove into her exposed spine where the blades had been embedded.

  The cascade payload detonated. The initial kinetic transfer multiplied. Dozens of secondary strikes echoed through Sarah's chassis. Vertebrae snapped. Forge-ports ruptured. The shockwave exploited every gap in her plating. The force launched her across the airspace. She cratered into a corporate building. An explosion of glass and steel swallowed her into the dark interior.

  "Sarah!" Titan's roar was pure rage now.

  Ashley held firm despite Titan's struggles, her armor taking damage but her grip never loosening.

  Cole deployed his spheres. They parked in a triad formation around Titan. Top. Port. Starboard. He vanished from behind Sarah's impact site and reappeared directly above Titan, materializing inside the sphere formation.

  Gravity sheared in three competing directions. The physics tore at Titan. His body, already weakened from multiple regeneration cycles, couldn't handle the stress. Something tore deep inside as organs ruptured. The gene-hacked tissue surrendered.

  Cole's Fractal Edge arm was already charged. He dropped, driving his fist into Titan's exposed chest. The cascade impact detonated on contact. The shockwave mapped his internal network. Bone fragmented. Blood purged from Titan's mouth. The void-black optics widened in system shock.

  His regeneration triggered. Slower this time. He was reaching his limit. Tissue crawled over the massive internal trauma. Trying desperately to repair.

  Movement caught the corner of Cole's eye. Sarah had dragged herself from the wreckage, chrome plating cracked and bleeding. Her helmet was compromised. The shattered visor exposed a bloodied face and optics burning red. Her surviving blades recalled to her coordinates.

  The blades fused. They reformed into a single heavy spear. The weapon radiated an energy spike that made Cole's tactical HUD bleed red warnings. She had hard-coded the concept of piercing into the alloy. The pure philosophy of penetration rendered in physical form.

  Sarah's arm cocked back. Her targeting system locked on.

  She hurled it at Ashley.

  Cole clocked the trajectory. "Ashley. Move." But she was anchored. Still grappling Titan in the gravity well.

  It struck Ashley's armor and passed through like the metal wasn't even there. The spear phased through the plating and emerged from her shoulder. It took flesh and bone on the exit.

  Ashley screamed, releasing Titan. He lurched forward, movements jerky and uncoordinated, his body still trying to knit itself back together. Blood poured from his mouth. But desperation drove him—his hand shot out, grabbing Ashley's throat. The limb transformed mid-grab, fingers elongating into crushing claws.

  The grip ratcheted tight. The mutated arm applied structural stress. He dragged her in. He pinned her to his chest plate. Ashley's neck-guard cracked under the torque and the residual spear damage.

  "No!" Cole dove toward them, but Sarah was already firing, forcing him to dodge, to waste precious seconds.

  Titan's free arm began transforming. Frost spreading across the limb like growing ice. The air around it dropped to sub-zero, misting with condensation. Point-blank range, he pressed it against Ashley's straining armor. The bolt of concentrated cold fired, and metal shattered. Ashley's left thruster exploded into frozen shrapnel, her armor's integrity failing catastrophically.

  Gagging, vision narrowing from the pressure, even dying, she had one move left. Her palm aimed downward at the industrial complex below them.

  A massive bolt of light streamed from her hand, so bright it painted shadows across the entire district. It struck a chemical processing plant and detonated. The shockwave caught everyone, hurling them in different directions. Chemical fire erupted upward, green and toxic, creating a pillar of flame that separated the battlefield.

  Cole found himself on one side with Titan. Ashley and Sarah were on the other, invisible through the toxic inferno. He could hear combat—impacts, energy weapons, Sarah's rifle discharging—but couldn't see through the chemical flames.

  "Ashley! ASHLEY!" Cole's voice cracked with desperation.

  Scales sprouted along Titan’s arm. The terminal end bloomed into a serpent head. The optics registered pure predation.

  "Your girlfriend's dead," Titan hissed. "You're next."

  "She's not my—" The rebuttal clipped as the serpent bypassed his guard.

  The serpent struck faster than Cole could dodge. It coiled around his chest, constricting, dragging him across the battlefield. Architecture blurred. Glass exploding, steel groaning as the serpent used his body like a battering ram. Each impact drove the air from his lungs. Fangs found a seam in the plating. They sank into the tissue beneath.

  Cole went loose. He let it happen. His Repeater Core drank in every impact, every crushing squeeze, every building he was slammed through. The nodes in his spine lit up in sequence, brighter and brighter. They banked the momentum. A battery spooling to critical mass.

  Then he purged the cache.

  The shockwave detonated outward from his chest. The serpent head vaporized in a cloud of gene-hacked tissue and bone shrapnel. The structural failure traveled up the limb. Titan broadcasted pure audio agony into the smog.

  Cole rendered a hard-light deck under his boots. He kicked off. The gap between them was deleted in a fraction of a second. The Fractal Edge arm primed for a heavy cycle. He drove his fist into what remained of Titan's serpent arm—the mangled stump still trying to regenerate.

  The impact spread through Titan's shoulder. Titan staggered backward, his massive frame struggling to stay airborne.

  Cole's body shattered into hundreds of razor shards, all streaking toward Titan like a swarm of glass bullets.

  Titan’s eyes went wide with desperation, with the realization that he was losing. Both his arms began transforming simultaneously, doubling the biological strain.

  His right arm collapsed inward, flesh folding into that terrible void, until the Event Horizon weapon formed. His left arm sprouted hundreds of mutation spore ports, grey-green gas already leaking from organic vents.

  He fired everything.

  The gravitational anomaly tore through the air, pulling in the toxic smoke from the chemical fire, the mutation spores from his own arm, debris from shattered buildings. Cole's shards were caught in the pull, dragged toward the singularity. If they entered that gravitational well, they'd be crushed, compressed, destroyed.

  Cole had to reform or be consumed.

  His shards converged, snapping back into solid form. But he was moving before he fully materialized—his legs' Specular-Drift system activating, creating mirror surfaces in the toxic air around them.

  He vanished.

  Titan spun, trying to track him, but Cole was already behind him. The Fractal Blades were in his hands, photon edges blazing white-hot. He swung.

  The blades sliced through Titan's lower back, severing spine, kidneys, intestines. All of it came apart under the photon-edged assault.

  Titan's roar became a gurgle. He collapsed forward, wings folding.

  His regeneration triggered again. This time it was agonizingly slow. Flesh crawled across the massive wound, struggling, but still working. Muscle fibers reached for each other like desperate fingers. Vertebrae began knitting back together.

  Cole could see the immense stress it was having on Titan's body. His skin had taken on a grey pallor. His breathing was ragged. The wings were skeletal frames with barely any membrane left. He was reaching his limit.

  "Just fucking die already!" Cole screamed.

  He unholstered his photon accelerator—one shot remaining. His hands were shaking from exhaustion and blood loss. There was no time for delicacy, no time for careful calibration.

  He poured everything he had left into the weapon. Every ounce of photonic energy his damaged systems could generate. The barrel began to glow, then to smoke, the weapon itself protesting the overload. He could feel it reaching its limit, the internal components seconds from catastrophic failure.

  Cole pressed the barrel right below Titan's neck.

  He fired.

  The beam punched through Titan's torso. The entry wound was fist-sized. The exit wound took out his head and most of his back. For a moment, Cole could see through Titan—through the smoking hole where a person used to be.

  All seven feet of Titan collapsed, his massive frame hitting the rooftop with a final thud. The wings disintegrated into ash. The mutations receded. The regeneration didn't trigger.

  Titan was dead.