In my admittedly short life, all the advice I'd ever heard recommended running away from gunfights. So, why was it that I found myself running towards them so often?

I didn't have an answer to that. But as I stole anxious glances back at Amelia, who was huffing and puffing behind me under the weight of the bags full of cybernetics, I resolved to work on not being an idiot in the future.

For now, though I focused on running. And thinking how to solve this particular problem.

Zerx wanted money and connections. They wanted to be included in the trade again. All I really had to do was give them that in the name of Patch. If they were once more hired to collect 'merchandise', then they'd happily scurry back to their local bosses and leave us alone. I could even use the opportunity to get some sense of scale for the gang.

Who knew? Maybe I'd even manage to figure out who their real boss was and take them out. Surely a client from the inner districts was worth communicating with personally?

It didn't hurt that I could just purchase and then free the people myself. Mela would likely be on board with taking them in and training them or something. I was sure Amelia wouldn't be opposed to it, either. With a bit of luck, we could have an actual organization working for us, rather than just brainwashed drones.

Still, that was for later. First up was trying to stop them from shooting at us as we approached.

I scowled when we finally came within sight of the controlled chaos that had erupted around the mercenary trucks. Then I leaned fully into my eyes' specs.

The world seemed to slow around me as my vision sharpened, taking in all possible details and feeding them directly to my brain. What once might have been overwhelming just felt like a light strain by that point.

And oh boy, was there plenty of stuff to see.

Forty-three Zerx were scattered behind every obstacle they could find: cars, walls, a very unfortunate motorcycle. On the other hand, twelve mercs were holding their positions inside the trucks or behind them.

The numbers looked skewed, sure. A casual observer might even think that the mercs were guaranteed to lose. Unfortunately for the Zerx, the mercenaries were not exactly human anymore.

Oh, they looked it. And their abilities weren't anything beyond normal humans with cybernetics. But while the Zerx were panicking wildly, the mercenaries all had empty looks in their eyes.

They'd obviously been trained, too. They were executing perfectly the strategies I'd briefly read up on from the training files Patch had ambitiously put together. They attacked in groups and waves, baiting the gangers to peek out of cover, laying down suppressive fire, and generally working as a well-oiled machine bent on the destruction of the ganger threats.

The gangers, meanwhile, were screaming at each other, gesticulating wildly, and just floundering in general.

Nowhere could this be noticed better than in the number of their respective dead.

On the merc side, two corpses were cooling on the pavement, redecorating it a splotchy red. In stark contrast, eighteen Zerx corpses were littering the ground.

We could do it. We could get this under control.

I glanced to the side. "We should —"

I bit my tongue at what I saw. Mela's expression was quickly morphing into total rage. Her gun, along with a spare she'd lifted from one of her recent Zerx victims, was already coming up.

"Mela, wait!"

She didn't.

I cursed and spun around to drag Amelia into the alley near us, just as Mela opened fire.

Credit where credit is due, she was extremely effective. Her guns barked, laying lead straight into the bodies of the unsuspecting Zerx, who were now sandwiched between attackers.

Nine Zerx fell before they could even figure out who was attacking them. Mela didn't seem inclined to stop at all, a look of feverish hatred and delight etched onto her face.

Unfortunately, while numbers weren't winning the day for the Zerx before, they sure as fuck were helpful here.

Forty-three minus nine. A simple subtraction equation. You could even pretty it up in the style of those child learning programs! If you shoot nine assholes trying to kill you, and there were originally forty-three assholes, how many are left to shoot back?

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The answer was too fucking many.

Mela's moment of glory and three more kills were ended abruptly in a hail of gunfire, some of which were of alarmingly high caliber.

And my eyes let me capture it all as I finished dragging Amelia into cover.

Blood blossomed from Mela's arms first, dark red trails streaming through the air. Then a bullet slammed into her center mass and took her off her feet, slamming her backwards. Even as that happened, several bullets hit her leg, particularly the area around her knee, and…

The leg didn't make it. It crumbled in on the sudden hole opened inside it. Mela fell back with such force, her stupid thick skull bounced off the pavement like a rubber ball.

That's also about the time my heart finished ripping its way out of my chest and I saw red myself, not that I was about to heroically follow Mela into her stupidity.

Clairvoyance kicked into high gear. My gun snapped up.

Four shots, as fast as my gun would allow me to shoot, got rid of the Zerx with immediate line of sight to me. Then I rushed over to the alley's edge, cursing how slow and inefficient my human legs were, so I could lay down more fire from my relatively concealed corner.

All thoughts of trying to reason with the idiots were gone and forgotten.

The Zerx panicked. They tried to get out of the crossfire, but many jumped directly into it instead.

Some distant part of me noted just how young most of them were. My age, really. A couple were potentially younger. Their faces were twisted up in some nightmarish combo of elation, dread, and sweaty confusion.

Drugs. They're all on drugs… no. Not all of them.

A few older gangers were present. Their faces were harder, set in grim determination, and entirely devoid of the sheen of sweat their underlings sported. They were also screaming at said underlings uselessly as they scattered.

Instantly, I reoriented myself to these older gangers, letting the younger idiots feed themselves to the mercs.

An older woman got a bullet to her thigh, then the back of her head. Another I barely managed to clip in the shoulder, spinning her out of cover and feeding her to the mercs.

A man went down when my bullet went through his throat, and then another when I shot the foot he'd left peeking out. The blow caused him to crumble forward far enough for my next bullet to find his forehead.

Then another stepped out of cover, his weapon aimed at me, and my shoulder was practically blown off.

I blinked the Clairvoyance vision away, reoriented, and smirked just a tiny bit as the seconds of future I had to spare let me guide my bullet to an ideal target. The idiot was wearing a belt of grenades, so who could really fault me for shooting one?

The explosion that rocked the street sent the Zerx scattering across the ground like bowling pins, now well and truly hysterical with panic. Unfortunately for me, I was just focused enough on ruining their day to completely ignore what was happening behind me.

Like, say, a certain gorgeous ripper running out of cover, straight towards the downed form of Mela.

It was pure chance that my head was tilted to the side at the right angle for me to catch sight of her in my Clairvoyance. Pure, eldritch blessing that said Clairvoyance showed me the exact moment when a senior member of the Zerx spilled Amelia's brains all over the street.

The shriek of rage that left me was definitely not human, and I did nothing to stop my Essence from slipping into it. I couldn't even call what issued forth Shadow-speak. It was just jumbled noise with no meaning, expressing exactly how unhappy I was.

Thankfully, it also briefly stunned any non-Shadows who heard it, which was a pretty exclusive club!

From there, a bullet easily found the fucker who dared target Amelia. I only realized I'd stepped out of cover when I automatically moved away from bullet trajectories while swapping out my magazine and opening fire.

Things got a little hazy there.

My world narrowed down to Clairvoyance, gun retorts that got ahead of idiots targeting my girlfriend, and jerky movements meant to keep me out of harm's way. When the final enemy gun fell silent, I was left panting and sweating, my feet barely supporting me.

In spite of that, I immediately staggered over to Amelia, teeth gritted and head swimming. I could see her and only her. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else pinged in my Clairvoyance haze.

"What were you thinking?!" I jerked her back roughly, then almost puked when the motion also tore her arms out of Mela's body, chunks of flesh still attached to her hands.

I blinked as reality snapped back to the present. Clairvoyance retreated. The haze faded. I came to a full stop and actually looked at the scene.

The Zerx were dead all around us. Amelia was bent over Mela's body, desperately working away at it as the redhead jerked this way and that.

I realized that, perhaps, a calmer approach would be better.

"How can I help?" I rasped.

"I need a tourniquet. Her right arm's causing her to lose too much blood. I sorted out the left, but then I realized a few bullets made it past the vest she was wearing."

Vest?

I vaguely remembered Mela putting one on and bullying us into wearing them too, since 'it was part of the uniform, we need to fit in, and it could be useful anyway'…

"Now, Adrian!"

I snapped to obey, but I floundered as I applied my claws and tore strips from Mela's fatigue sleeves. Then I tied them around her arm and tightened them as best I could.

It was messy. I was doing a horrible job. It stemmed the flow of blood a little, but it wasn't a proper tourniquet, and —

"Move."

I was shoved roughly aside by a drone who knelt and extracted a tourniquet from a first aid kit. Amelia rattled off what the bulky man was supposed to do even as she kept pinching wounds shut and rooting through Mela's flesh. She must have summoned the drone when she saw me floundering, but I hadn't even caught it.

Instead of helping, I was reduced to watching anxiously as Amelia fought to stabilize the woman who was like a sister to me, unable to keep a healthy amount of self-loathing from infesting my thoughts.

Seeing her do something so fucking stupid had enraged me, but had I reacted any better? Sure, I hadn't thrown myself out of cover, but I also hadn't just focused on extracting Mela so Amelia could help. And when Amelia did manage to rush over, I almost ruined everything.

I was barely aware of the drones massing around us, protecting us with their bodies. Barely aware of slum denizens peeking out at us before slowly trickling back into the street. All that mattered was Mela and Amelia.

Finally, the ripper leaned back with a tired sigh, closed her eyes for a moment, and then speared me with a relieved look.

"She'll make it. Probably. We need to get back home quickly."

I could only nod and obey.

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