3 meters off the ground, while a marginally better position than his former self had been in a second ago, was still very vulnerable. It was one of the downsides of acting reflexively. When you had no time left to think, and could only do, the results were typically a few steps away from optimal. Already, he could see Guillaume's other five drones reaching for their assorted weaponry, two of which had submachine guns and presumably ammo.

Not a great situation to be in… bot not unsalvageable, either. Provided he was willing to crack a few eggs, at least. And to tell the truth, why shouldn't he be? He was free eggs.

First order of business, he thought to himself at a mile a minute. Scatter.

His crystal flared bright white, and a copy popped into existence just outside of Guillaume's encirclement. The ground came up to meet him before he could do anything else, and Henry fell to one knee milliseconds before the first shots rang out. Small arms fire battered away at his reactive shield, but he paid it no mind. His life, individually, was not important right now. Making sure there was enough of him left to finish the fight was.

He used his final moments to bring one last copy to life, before his shield ran out of the thin amount of charge it had at its disposal. Two streams of constant automatic fire stitched him from head to toe, and for the second time in as many minutes, Henry died.

But, where there had once been one of him, there were now three scattered around the field. The odds had balanced out to two to one.

Next, mused another instance, Going to need more than just knives for this.

The fourth copy came to be, and the Henrys split into two groups. Two dashed forward to meet the Knights head on, buying time for the other two to make themselves busy and gear themselves up halfway decently. After all, there were plenty of bodies to choose from right now, and a bunch of gear was still mostly intact.

As expected, the heavy steel armor of the three remaining Knights was more than enough to turn a knife away. Outnumbered as they were, the two sacrificial copies stuck mostly to evasive maneuvers and the occasional opportunistic jab. Just because they'd most likely die, didn't mean it had to happen right this minute.

So, they danced around as much as they could. Juking left, sidestepping right and ducking around as fluidly as they could manage. Easier said than done, considering the chipped remnants of the Knights shortswords were at least twice the length of his own blades.

All either of them could do to protect themselves were quick, swatting parries that carried as much risk of getting your arm sliced open as it did actually blocking the attack. Both of them had to try it a few times. One was able to succeed consistently. The other was being attacked by two Knights at once, and wasn't so lucky.

Blocking one sword in the barest nick of time, he reacted too late to the second swing aimed for his neck to come away unscathed. He brought up his off-hand in a desperate bid to save himself, and the sword bit deep into his forearm. There was this awful sawing noise as steel slid against bone that stood the hairs on his neck on end even through the teeth-grinding pain. Henry changed targets onto the aggressor immediately, hoping to trade at least one blow with him before he met his end.

If I can just stick a weak point, it's a win. Just got to- huh?

The knife in his free hand aimed for the thin seam in the plates beneath the Knight's armpit as it appeared, but… he missed.

His overextension was immediately seized upon by Guillaume, and two swords pierced his torso. As his organs ruptured from the intrusion, the last dregs of oxygenated blood reaching his brain pieced together the why of things.

I'm… no longer a killing machine…

An unsympathetic kick, and the Knights wrested their swords from the interior of his guts. Henry died again, his final moments flashing into the minds of the two copies looking away from the fight, currently rooting through the belongings of the dead as they were.

One long blink later, and the two recovered from the disorientation.

"The hell happened there?", one of the looter copies muttered to the other. "Compared to some of the hits we got in earlier, that should've been a cakewalk. We'd barely even gotten scratched, then!"

"Exception that proves the rule," he replied to himself. "Just means that we have to treat this like any other Central London run. Eyes open, and don't get too cozy with living just yet!"

Jackpot.

Kicking over the corpse of one of the javelin throwers, Henry found exactly what he was looking for – one of the Nobles' improvised explosive spearheads, fishing line trigger and all. A poor man's werewolf killing weapon.

The rebar spike at the front was designed to sink deep into flesh, while the Semtex canister behind it was rigged to explode when the long line snapped free. One of these spearheads could hurt the average wolf. Two could cripple it. As a matter of doctrine, Knights typically brought enough ranged units to outnumber those beasts six to one. It was a tactic that handled… most unwelcome surprises.

This feels like overkill, a bit, he thought to himself. But now's not the time to be halfhearted about things.

"Enough," Layla's not-voice rumbled. A burst of mist swelled in the middle distance, and another brief dump of raw information hit Henry. One hit, dead on the spot. The body sailing through the air out of the obscuring cloud told the rest of the story.

That was fine. They had what they needed to keep going. The longer this fight dragged on, the more options he had to win. All he had to do was prevent them from getting away.

Two new copies covered the exits, one by the elevator and one by the fire escape. One of Guillaume's instances – formerly a member of his own organization – had been trying to make a break for it, only to find his path blocked at both points.

He barely even slowed down. Just enough to draw a good bead on the goalie and dump the rest of his clip in Henry's direction. 9 distinct barks of the submachine gun sang out before a single click. Only five made it to their intended target, well within what the reactive shield was capable of handling.

"Sorry," he told Guillaume's instance unapologetically. "But I can't let you do that."

"Pah!", Guillaume spat back. "You think too highly of your own abilities. Just because you are free from my control, does not make you suddenly able to trap me here. I'll kill you, then override the will of every last man, woman and child I meet. How do you plan to stop me then, hmm?"

"Don't need to. All I have to do is wear you down."

"Then you have chosen to die."

"I've gotten used to it. Have you?"

He wasn't dignified with a response. Guillaume unsheathed a wicked-looking iron club, still caked in the remnants of Evelyn's brain. Hefting it into a ready position, the old man in a younger man's body looked as though he'd had ample experience with such a brute instrument.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

That made two of them, then. He'd gotten awful handy with a knife himself over the months.

Their duel broke out in earnest, just as Guillaume used Layla to spearhead the charge against his other copy on the far side of the roof.

One Henry stood alone to meet the five-man charge. Another chased after them, explosive spear in hand and looking for the right place to put it. Leaving one looking around for any small advantage he could find.

What left is there to make use of? The Knights can shrug off more than half the equipment the Club had at their disposal, and most of what could has already been spent! Even with a working SMG, I'd need something with more of a punch-

His eyes widened in realization.

Of course.

Henry made a break for the lifeless body of Evelyn. Kneeling down by her side in the puddle of blood and oil that had formed, he pried his revolver from the cold, dead grip of her fingers one by one. The wooden grip of the weapon felt sticky to the touch, black-red ichor staining his hand as he flicked the cylinder open.

No bullets left. The Constable had only given him six. Time to dip into his own supply, then.

He yanked free the stick mag in the SMG he'd looted from its housing. For anyone expecting any sort of professionalism in the craftsmanship of the weapon, they'd be getting a head start on rolling in their graves the moment they saw it. Tolerances on the steel plate were poorly matched and hastily welded shut. The handle that one would normally use to grip the thing could only barely be considered 'symmetrical', if anything.

But most importantly for him right now, the ammunition the weapon itself used was extremely mismatched.

An assorted mix of whatever spare casings they could scrape together and stick a lead cap into, the jury-rigged ammunition of the club came in myriad shapes and sizes. He just needed to find the ones that fit his gun before Guillaume reached the elevator.

Easier said than done, as always.

He spilled a few off the top of the magazine into his hand while Guillaume's five instances ate up the distance between themselves and their escape. If any one of them got past, it was game over.

None of these were any good. He tossed the handful to the ground, and tried again.

The duel by the fire escape, by contrast, was much more evenly matched. Less variables to worry about, but succeeding in keeping Guillaume busy enough that any attempt to rush past would only get him killed. Henry's twin knives kept up the pressure beautifully, leading an all-out offensive that the hijacked thug had to contend with constantly. None of the cuts he was landing were anything more than superficial, but with enough time-

From far, far down on the streets below, the echo of metal bending reached their ears. Followed by the sound of shattering glass, and after that a tremor shook up the entire side of the building. Both duelists stumbled, as the din repeated itself over and over in a gradual, plodding rhythm.

Henry got to his feet first, and didn't waste the opportunity to finish things. Club armor was much cheaper than that made by the Nobles. Plenty of wider gaps to choose from, and that was before you even counted the lack of a helmet. One knife thrust downward into the meat between the base of Guillaume's neck and the shoulder, setting up the follow-up strike through the eye cavity perfectly.

For the second time that night, the de facto mafia don of the Gentleman's Club had died. Only four more to go, and then…

And then what?

…He should probably figure out what had caused the commotion below first. Wouldn't do to have a nasty surprise now. Definitely wasn't him avoiding addressing the elephant in the room. Nope. Not him.

Peering out over the edge of the towering skyscraper, he realized that the other clones would have to fend for themselves for just a bit longer.

Sir Henwood had finished his brawl with werewolves. As the last few stragglers scampered off with their tails between their legs to their alphas, the gargantuan mech suit had began the ascent to claim his true prize.

If William gets close enough to Guillaume to be mind-jacked, Henry realized, there's no way I'll be able to stop him from escaping.

Somehow, he'd need to convince his former post-apocalypse flatmate to not get what he came here for. As he pondered how exactly he was going to convince the man in a ridiculously sized suit of magitech armor that this fight wasn't one he could win, a matching bullet fell into the palm of his other self's hand.

Finally.

With only one shot, aiming for the Knights was off the table. He didn't have time to find another, either, they were getting too close to the exit. Instead, he focused on separating the ones that mattered to him from the ones that didn't.

"Sorry, love." Henry thumbed the shoddy reused casing into the cylinder, closing it up and taking the time to aim carefully. "Hope you don't take this too hard, wherever you are in there."

He pulled the trigger, and a hyperaccelerated bullet found its mark tearing through Layla's thigh midstride. Guillaume, not being removed from the pain like he normally was with his usual domination technique, fell to the floor with a groan.

Like a stone in a river, the remaining four rushed around and past their fallen leader. Why wouldn't they? Each one carried themselves like the real Guillaume would, because each of them were. Sure, losing the one in control of the Shroudwalker was unfortunate, but at the end of the day their hides were each the most important one to care for.

At least, that was his best guess. Though he was scarcely wrong when it came to human behavior.

The four ambulatory instances were nearly upon Henry, now. The elevator called to them like an ark in a flood, promising untold power to anyone who-

"NOW!!"

The copy tailing the group heeded the signal of the one body blocking the elevator. The explosive javelin sailed through the air, missing each of the four runners as it sailed through the air in a spiraling arc.

Fortunately, he wasn't aiming for any of them. He was aiming at himself.

The steel tip struck as true as possible, reactive shield flashing awake just in time to prevent Henry from being impaled. A useful life-saving measure, all told, but… not what he was looking for right now.

He grabbed the haft of the spear and broke the line trailing away from the explosive payload. Holding on tight to the primed weapon, he dove backward, using his final moments to raise his middle finger towards the four Guillaumes rushing him down.

The Semtex charge ignited, engulfing Henry, the elevator, the three Knights, the last remaining thug and the nearby stairwell in an erupting ball of flames and debris. Leaving nothing but a smoking crater with a… questionably usable service ladder left behind.

A flawless execution. Now, there was only one left. Meaning the tricky part was finally here.

Concrete rubble flew over Layla's head, plinking her side with small stones from where she lay prone on the ground. She was in no condition to walk right now, let alone climb down. Whatever power she had left in the tank, all of it was being diverted to maintaining pressure on the wound on her thigh, just barely preventing the blood from doing more than stain the tattered jeans.

"So that's what the bullet was meant for," Guillaume groaned as a fresh wave of pain rolled through the clean exit wound. "And here I'd mistaken you for growing a spine, finally."

Layla coughed up a lungful of blood and concrete dust. "Well, Henry, the time has come for you to choose," she laughed weakly. "Will you kill your precious girl to keep me from escaping, or will you risk the whole of Hallow London for a chance to see her again?"

The two – three clones of Henry, now that he replenished his fourth man – all surrounded her, prepared to fight and die enough times to restrain her with a pile of their corpses if need be.

But not prepared to kill her. He could never bring himself to do that. It was already bad enough that he'd had to turn his gun on her to begin with. And, well… hurt her by leaving her, too.

"Shut up," Henry growled. "Let her go."

"And… *haah*- why would I do that?" That same damned sharklike grin spread across her face, lips curled back as far as they could go. "From where I stand, you should be begging me to spare her life. Don't act like I'm without options."

"Well, now you've openly admitted it. She's still in there, somewhere. Otherwise you wouldn't be acting like you still have leverage in this situation."

"Maybe I'm bluffing."

"You don't bluff. You're not a rat, like I am. It's hard to have the need to lie when you can just take anything you want by force."

"…My, my…", Guillaume paused as he followed his train of logic. "You know me -*hk*- better than I thought."

"I know a trick or two. For example-"

Henry grabbed Layla by the wrist and pressed her hand to his crystal. He shut his eyes, anticipating the blinding white flash that had happened when Evelyn had inadvertently discovered the extent of his mental defenses in the tunnels below London.

The flash never came. Shocked, he looked down as the other two copies presiding stiffened, just as confused as he was. Guillaume laughed, much more haughtily this time, as he pulled back Layla's hand from his grip. On the knucklebones were the digits 0008, twitching erratically in the direction of the original numbers on her shoulder.

"What, trying to… how you say… cop a feel at this hour, Henry? Naughty, naughty. I'm afraid that is not how that works. But, if we're sharing tricks, now…"

Layla extended her pointer finger and poked him between the eyes.

"I have one of my own you might remember."

His brain exploded.

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