cHApTEr 19. rusH Hour (2 of 3)

The roof of the building was quickly turning into a pillar of frost in the middle of summer.

Jean was already halfway to the other end of the roof. As he moved, he opened the revolver’s cylinder and emptied it with a shake. The spent casings, along with one unfired round, rang against the ground. After that, he slipped his hand and the revolver inside his coat, no doubt to keep their warmth from being stolen and frost from building up, then rushed toward the second stairwell on the roof. His intention was clear. He was planning to escape and relocate to another vantage point where he could regain the advantage.

As much as Mioray wanted to help Farah, he was in no shape to do it. He would only get in her way. Even now, he had to crawl along the ledge toward the corner to avoid being frozen. It was already becoming difficult to tell which parts of the rooftop were safe and where the active draining of heat was happening at any given moment. All he could do was hold onto the sniper rifle, though who knew whether Jean had prepared extras just in case.

Farah chased after the gunman, and when it became clear that he was going for the stairs, she slashed her hands diagonally through the air. Immediately, two slabs of ice rose in front of the stairwell entrance, growing from the bottom up and crossing over each other. They completely blocked Jean’s path.

With his escape cut off, the gunman simply ran past the stairwell and headed for the ledge. There, the gap to the next roof was small enough to jump across. He had clearly kept that route in reserve for an unforeseen emergency, like the one he had found himself in now.

And under normal circumstances, he would have made it. But the rooftop was freezing over, and ice was spreading across its surface. It caught up with Jean and spread past him. Unable to keep his balance on ice, he slipped and fell.

“Looks like you’ve got nowhere to run,” Farah said with a smug expression, though something felt off about her. She was forcing the words out. “You sure you don’t want to share anything before you freeze to death?”

Jean scoffed beneath his grey mustache. With extra caution, he braced one hand against the ice and managed to settle onto one knee.

“No need to be this dramatic,” he said. “We both know my death won’t be permanent. You can freeze me all you want, I’m still going to come back. Sure, I’ll be out of the competition, but our team can afford that.”

Suddenly – or maybe not so suddenly, since Niles had the power to switch between their perspectives and was aware of what everyone else was doing – his voice rang in Mioray’s ear:

“Team Erinel, thirty-seven. Team Lokiel, fifty-nine!”

Mioray glowered. Even though he tried not to dwell too much on the competition, he couldn’t believe the gap had already widened to twenty-two souls, with less than an hour left. At this rate, they would never win.

He checked his phone, hoping for some news from Mia, but there was none. Either she was still searching for the Soul Collective, or she had found it already and was now trying to subdue it. Hopefully, it was the latter. Maybe it would not make a big difference to the score, but at least there would be less danger on the streets.

“You, on the other hand, can’t even lose him,” Jean said, pointing at Mioray, “if you expect to catch up to us.”

“Who cares?” Farah shrugged. “If you ask me, losing will do Erinel some good. Maybe next time she won’t be so quick to make dumb decisions. No, I just don’t like the idea of a Soul Collective roaming free around the city.”

“You sure?” Jean smiled. He drew the revolver from his coat and pointed it at Mioray without even looking at him. “Then you’re fine if I shoot him?”

“Be my guest.”

Wait, nobody had asked Mioray for his opinion! He wanted to protest, but Jean had already raised the revolver. It was reloaded, and the man in the fedora fired at Mioray.

The shot rang out, the bullet flying straight at Mioray, fast and precise. However, before it reached him, an ice pillar rose in its path and took the force of the bullet head-on. Despite Farah’s seeming indifference to Mioray’s fate, she still used her power to stop him from being shot. Mioray thought it was her way of paying him back for when he had saved her from a Soul Collective in the past.

“I can see through your bluff, miss,” Jean laughed, pleased by what he saw. “You act cold and tough, but you’re soft on the inside, not cut out to be a heartless assassin. You have powerful abilities, but it looks to me like you reach your limits quickly.”

Mioray looked at Farah. He understood what Jean meant. With her powers active, the soul aura lingering above her head looked very different from what he was used to seeing. Usually, a soul reminded him of a candle flame, burning calmly and flickering at the edges. Farah’s soul was no flame. It was still, as if frozen in time, crystallized like the ice forming in her presence.

Perhaps that was the source of her pain. The undead did not feel pain, but Farah suffered from frost biting at her from within. What if the pain was not coming from inside her body? What if it came from inside her soul? She did not have her puffer coat on, and she was shivering. She tried to hide it by shifting in place, as if keeping her body ready, but it was still noticeable.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Farah answered simply. She ignored the gunman’s other observations.

She tapped the ice beneath her feet, and a ridge of ice began to form from her position toward Jean, rising to knee height like a snake greedily hunting its prey. Jean could not avoid it in time; he was still having trouble moving on the ice. The ridge did not hit him directly, but it swallowed the edge of his coat and trapped him in place.

Farah skated toward Jean. Unlike him, she was confident on the ice. She was going to freeze him, and by doing that, she would probably prove that she could be a heartless assassin. She wanted to preserve that image of herself as harsh and hostile, whatever her reasons were.

Jean, however, did not falter. He quickly slipped out of his coat, leaving himself in only a black polo, and fired at Farah. She had to raise another ice pillar in front of her to shield herself, but she crashed into it as well. Jean did not stop there. Without getting up, he slid across the ice to get a clear shot at her from another angle. Farah barely had time to raise another shield. By the time Jean ran out of all five bullets, she was fenced in by a half-circle of ice. If the gunman had been carrying a weapon with a larger magazine, he surely would have trapped Farah with her own powers. But since he only had a revolver, he had to pause to reload, and Farah used that brief opening to reposition.

Mioray’s attention was broken by an incoming call. For a second, he thought it might be Mia, but it was Reyna Kayree. Her timing could not have been worse, yet if she was the one calling him, it could be important.

“I’m in the middle of something, so if it can wait–” Mioray said into the phone while keeping his eyes on Farah and Jean.

“Where the hell are you?!”

Mioray was dumbfounded. He had not expected Reyna to shout at him. What had he done to deserve that?

“What happened?” he asked.

“A bloody monster happened, that’s what! It’s devouring people left and right, and it’s moving toward the undamaged part of the city where the civilians are! We already have the military assisting us, but their guns have no effect on the monster!”

Was she talking about the Soul Collective? But shouldn’t that have been impossible?

“And you can see it?” he asked, bracing for the worst.

“How could anyone not see it?! It’s all black, with a wide mouth full of sharp teeth, and it’s the size of two elephants!”

It would have been a stretch to think the monster was anything other than the Soul Collective. How powerful had it become since it was thrown out of the crater? Mioray had never thought it could affect the physical world enough to be seen by ordinary people, no different from any other creature. Erinel had never mentioned that a Soul Collective could become a fully physical being.

“It’s one of those things, the Soul Collective, right?” Reyna continued. “Erinel assured me the dead would not disturb the living, but all I see is the opposite! If this is your area of expertise, then you need to come here and do something!”

Mioray held his breath when he saw Farah flinch. She stayed on her feet only because she leaned her bare shoulder against one of her ice pillars. The mint-crystal ice above her head was collapsing, shrinking her soul. She did not have much time left.

Jean, too, was struggling now, as his body gradually cooled and his movements became slower. He fired again, but the bullet was slowed by the thin line of ice growing from the barrel, just as it had before. Jean snapped the ice away, but he no longer had his coat to warm the gun.

Their deadly dance felt distant. It was no longer the main thing on Mioray’s mind. Because what Reyna said shattered him, finally catching up to him.

“How many people died because of the monster?” Mioray asked quietly.

“Thirteen that I’ve seen, but who knows how many it ate before the military engaged it!”

The Soul Collective was eating people. Mioray and the others had grown so used to the idea of a Soul Collective consuming souls – which was horrible enough on its own – that the thought of it harming living humans had stopped crossing their minds.

Now the Soul Collective had reminded them. Thirteen dead. Maybe more. And it was the undead who had allowed the spiritual being to feast. All because of that wager between greanrips. They had frightened the souls of the dead in the crater. They had prompted the Soul Collective to manifest. Then they had thrown it into the city streets and left it unattended.

Were they murderers?

No, that didn’t make sense. Mioray didn’t want to kill anyone. He wanted to help people. Save them. He had been trying to stop this nonsense and focus on what mattered, but nobody listened to him. He had been obstructed at every step, and now it was not just a competition anymore. Real people were suffering because of it.

It did not matter how many points they got if they captured that Soul Collective. That damn wager had brought out the worst in them. What if this was what triggered the second disaster? How would Mioray look Natalie in the eyes if Chad Haytham was among the people the spiritual monster devoured?

“Thank God, I see Mia has arrived!” Reyna exclaimed. “What is she doing? Is she trying to draw the Soul Collective’s attention to herself? I think she’s luring it away from the undamaged part of the city.”

It was a small comfort, but Mioray could not have hoped for more. Mia had found the Soul Collective, but was she enough to stop it and send it through a portal to the realm between realms? He doubted she could manage alone. She had to hold on until Farah finished with Jean.

Just then, the gunman dropped his revolver, now covered in a crust of frost. He steadied himself as Farah approached him. It was over. She stopped only a step away from him, and half his body was already covered in ice. The man was unarmed, on the brink of freezing. Just a little longer, and he would turn into an ice statue.

A loud gunshot swept across the rooftop.

Part of Farah’s face turned to mushy red.

She had been shot. In the eye. There was a hole now where her left eye had been. She dropped to her knees, her arms swaying like a fragile spikelet, and then collapsed onto the ice, staining it red. The snowflakes sparkled sadly in the embrace of the setting sun.

And Farah’s frozen soul faded away.

“What was that?” Reyna’s voice cut through the silence. “Mioray? Do you hear me, Mioray?”

Jean carefully crossed the ice, going around Farah’s lifeless body toward Mioray. He was slow, able to move only the right side of his body while dragging the frozen left. On his right hand, he was missing his index finger.

It was not a coincidence. If the gunman was unarmed, how had he shot Farah? There was only one explanation. He had fired his finger like a bullet. Mioray would have bet anything that this was Jean’s undead ability. Apparently, he did not need guns to shoot. He had fooled everyone by seeming to rely entirely on weapons. It was a smart tactic on his part, only he was the enemy, and admiring him now felt inappropriate, especially when Mioray was supposed to be next on his hit list.

“I try not to rely on this, because, as you can see, each shot costs me a finger.” Once Jean reached Mioray, he took the phone from his hands, ended the call, and placed it back. “It’s inconvenient having to search for them afterward and wait for them to reconnect.”

The gunman tried to move his left arm, but it was frozen solid.

“No use,” he sighed with a frown. “I can’t fire from my left hand. That girl really cornered me. She’s something. I don’t think I’ll be of much use for the rest of the competition, but it’s not so bad if I take both of you with me.”

Twisting awkwardly, he reached for the sniper rifle pinned beneath Mioray. Jean lifted it, but Mioray caught hold of the barrel. He could not just let the man shoot him without any resistance.

“Let go of the rifle,” Jean said calmly. “If you insist on being this persistent, I’ll just fire another one of my fingers.”

Jean pulled on the grip, but Mioray stubbornly held on. Then Jean slipped and fell. When he crashed onto the ice, his frozen leg and arm broke off.

He started laughing, frighteningly and without control.

“I haven’t felt this much thrill in a long time,” he finally said after calming down. “I can see where Lokiel is coming from. This is really fun.”

This was not exactly how Mioray pictured fun. This was definitely not what Terry had in mind when he said they should try to enjoy their situation a little and avoid taking everything so seriously. There was nothing funny about Mioray missing his feet or half his hand and several fingers. Or Farah being shot in the eye. Or thirteen people being killed by the Soul Collective.

“You don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get rid of me,” Mioray said, now that the fight was over and an unsettling quiet filled the space between them. Somewhere, Mia was risking her existence to keep the Soul Collective from harming more people.

“As long as you’re not escaping, I don’t need to,” Jean said, adjusting his brown fedora after it had slipped to the side. “Keeping you from competing is enough to fulfill my contract.”

“So you’re sharing the details now?”

“Only if it serves the contract. I reckon you’re a smart guy. You’ll understand that trying anything now would only get you hurt.”

Mioray looked at the emptiness where his feet should have been. He wondered when he would recover them. His feet were back at the crater, and he needed to return there to retrieve them, but because of Jean, he was stuck on the roof. And Mia needed help. If the Soul Collective was as large as Reyna Kayree had claimed, they needed everything they had to stop the monster. Yet Mioray seemed to be the only one interested in helping. But what could he do in a state like this?

“There are people dying because of the Soul Collective, you know,” he said to Jean.

“Let them die. Their deaths will be noticed, unlike ours.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The gunman exhaled a cloud of steam.

“People often die alone. That’s just how it is,” he said. “But what matters is when their death is acknowledged. That’s what gives their lives weight. I died alone. Some relative or close friend of one of my targets wanted revenge, so they hired another assassin to take me out. I knew it was going to happen. Lokiel came to me and told me I was standing at death’s door. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, so I decided to wait for my executioner to come for me. They were experienced. Even on high alert, I never noticed them, not even when they killed me.”

What was worse? Fighting Jean or letting him talk? Mioray would not have minded hearing the gunman’s story, but at another time and in another place. The hitman had taken down Farah only minutes ago. What was he expecting? Pity?

No, that wasn’t it. Jean was too relaxed for someone who had lost an arm and a leg. True, it wasn’t permanent, but he watched the setting sun dreamily, as if he had finally found a speck of relief after a long day of work. Mioray couldn’t unravel this man. Did he enjoy killing? Did he enjoy being killed? He did not look the part. It was as if he was detached from the concept of killing, as though it were something natural, just another occupation that needed filling.

“Nothing changed when I died,” Jean said with a straight face. “The world kept going, the people in it kept going, and my killer kept going. Nobody noticed me die, and that’s worse than dying alone. It makes you feel like you really aren’t part of it at all. Don’t you feel the same?”

“No,” Mioray shot back harshly. “I’ve got my family and friends. They don’t know I died, and I can keep living my life.”

“It’s just pretending,” Jean brushed his mustache. “You’re proving my point. The only reason you can ignore your death is because nobody noticed it. Including you.”

That was just mental gymnastics. Mioray decided Jean was one of those men who was perfectly fine twisting logic to justify his worldview. How else could he be so comfortable killing people for a living? The man was a hired assassin. Mioray had no illusions about that. There were no assassins who killed only bad people. He was pretty sure Jean would confirm it if he asked.

Jean was different from the Dismantler. Herman Clopton killed Mioray, Chris, and Julie, but he did not do it for pleasure or because of some silly beliefs. He killed because he lost control of himself. He had not been in his right mind, and that was the tragedy of it.

Jean? For him, it was business.

“You’re very talkative today, don’t you think?” Mioray changed the subject.

“It’s because I’ve never felt this alive before. Perhaps if I had known that was possible, my life would have taken a different turn.”

It was maddening not knowing what was happening. Did the Soul Collective eat everyone? What about Mia and Reyna? Were they safe? If only Mioray could go to them. But the moment he tried, Jean would shoot him with one of his finger rounds.

Should he take that risk anyway? Even if he managed to escape Jean and reach Mia, would that really help, or would he just become a burden to her? He was handicapped, and he had not practiced moving much without his legs. Maybe that was something to work on in the future, but right now he had to think about the present. Do nothing or do something? It seemed neither would give him a result he could be satisfied with, but if Mioray acted, then at least he would know he had tried, that he had not given up. His sense of justice would remain intact.

Heroes always act.

Foolish? Yes. But he would rather lose as a fool than as a failure. The mess they had made had to be fixed.

“What a load of crap!”

Both Mioray and Jean turned their heads at the same time toward where Farah lay. The auburn-haired girl pushed herself up on her elbows, bitter frost seeming to pour from her only green eye. Mioray’s mouth fell open. She was still holding on?

“What a load of crap!” she repeated, steadying herself as she sat up. “Dying alone, not being noticed, ignoring death by pretending to live your life. You know why nobody noticed my death? Because I didn’t let them. Because I stole that from them by coming back and tricking them into believing I’m alive. And you’re not taking that from me, got it?”

Farah straightened, looking menacing even with a crimson hole in her face. Jean’s bullet-finger had likely not damaged her brain enough to stop it from functioning. But why couldn’t Mioray see Farah’s soul above her head anymore? He glanced at Jean and understood at once. There was no green aura above him, or above Mioray either. The spiritual vision had worn off. The power Erinel had shared with them had ended.

“And you know that too,” Farah told Jean boldly. “You said it yourself. After death, you kept working as an assassin for hire, but you had to change your name. Which means your death was noticed, and you’ve got no right to claim otherwise!”

Jean pointed his middle finger at Mioray. It was unclear whether he meant it as an insulting gesture or not, but his intent could not be mistaken.

“I’m going to shoot him if you move,” he warned.

“I don’t care,” Farah glowered. “You’ll only make it easier for me. My blood is already boiling hot, and that keeps me warm enough.”

Jean was silent for a second, then laughed loudly.

“I said it before,” he hummed. “You’re soft on the inside, miss, but on the outside, you’re a tough nut to crack.”

He pushed off the ice with his remaining foot and slid away from Mioray, firing his finger at Farah. In a swirl of snowflakes, their deadly dance resumed.

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