Chapter 188

Cheap Tricks

Annie charged into the tunnel mouth, ducking her massive head beneath the glowing edge of the blast hole. The passage was wide enough to fit her body, barely, but the ceiling scraped against the top of her sail, forcing it to bend flat against her spine. Stone walls pressed in on both sides, her metal scales grinding against limestone as she pushed forward.

Lights lined the tunnel at uneven intervals, casting the space in dim light. The passage curved ahead, sloping downward.

She rounded the bend and broke into an open chamber.

The room stretched maybe thirty feet across. Tables filled the center, cards and cups scattered across their surfaces. Chemical lanterns hung from hooks driven into the stone ceiling. Sleeping mats lined one wall. A rack of weapons, mostly old rifles and ammunition boxes, occupied another.

Eight people were on the floor. Some on their knees, hands over their ears. Others stumbling to their feet, dazed. Blood trickled from several sets of ears, courtesy of the fireball’s concussive blast punching into the tunnels.

Annie snarled.

The sound filled the chamber, reverberating off every surface. Primal, resonant, and far louder than anything that should exist underground.

The reaction was immediate. Two of the closest scrambled backward on all fours. One tripped over a chair and went down hard. Three others bolted for the tunnels branching off the far side of the room without looking back.

The two nearest to her froze.

Annie lowered her head and charged. Her skull caught the first one center mass, launching him into the far wall where he hit with a crack and slid to the floor. Her shoulder clipped the second, spinning him off his feet and into a table that shattered under the impact.

Her tail swept behind her. She felt it connect with something solid and heard a yelp followed by a heavy thud.

By the time she turned, the chamber was empty except for three unconscious bodies and a lot of broken furniture. The rest had vanished down the branching tunnels, their footsteps fading fast.

She snorted. That wasn’t even a workout.

Footsteps sounded behind her, casual and unhurried. Augustus stepped into the chamber, wand in one hand, a faint shimmer rippling across his body like heat haze. Shield magic. He surveyed the wreckage with raised eyebrows.

“Nice work.”

Annie growled in response, which she hoped conveyed thanks but probably just came across as threatening.

Augustus pointed his wand toward the right tunnel. “I’ve got this one. You take the left.”

She growled again, lower this time.

He chuckled and headed into the right tunnel, the shimmer flickering around him as the passage narrowed. His footsteps faded quickly.

Annie turned toward the left tunnel and pushed her head inside.

It was narrower than the entrance. Her skull fit, but the passage cinched tight around her shoulders. She pushed harder, angling her body, trying to wedge herself through. Stone groaned against metal. Her sail scraped the ceiling and folded painfully against her back.

She pushed again. Gained another few inches. Her front claws dug into the stone floor, dragging herself forward.

The tunnel walls held firm. Her shoulders caught, scales grinding against limestone on both sides. She couldn’t move forward. Couldn’t turn her head enough to look back.

She roared in frustration, the sound deafening in the confined space. Chunks of stone rattled loose from the ceiling.

One more try. She flexed everything, straining forward with every muscle. The stone didn’t budge.

Annie let out a long, rumbling growl and began to shrink. The transformation rolled through her in waves, the Saurian form dissolving. Tail receding. Sail collapsing. Mass pulling inward as her body condensed, the metal reforming into a much smaller frame until she stood in the tunnel at her full, unimpressive five-foot-two.

She sighed. Being a big, bad-ass dinosaur hunting her enemies was way cooler. Her Output had climbed high enough over the past months that maintaining a complete metallic conversion was no longer a dream, but that still didn’t beat being tall and intimidating.

The tunnel curved deeper, the lights growing sparser. Shadows pooled between them. Her footsteps rang against the stone floor, echoing ahead of her.

Two heads popped out from alcoves on either side of the passage. Rifles swung toward her.

They opened fire.

The muzzle flashes lit the tunnel in strobing white. Bullets struck her chest, her arms, her face. Some pinged off at sharp angles, ricocheting into the walls. Others flattened on impact, mushrooming against her skin before dropping to the floor with tiny clinks. A few melded into her surface, the rounds partially bonding with her metal where they hit hardest.

Annie kept walking.

It stung. Each impact carried a sharp little bite, like that time Alexander flicked her forehead with his stupid cybernetic finger. Annoying more than painful. She glanced down at her chest where three flattened rounds had fused to her skin and brushed them off with an irritated swipe. The bits separated cleanly, the deformed bullets clattering to the floor.

The rifles clicked empty.

Both men stared at her. Then at each other.

They dropped the rifles and ran.

“No, you don’t.”

Annie Redlined her legs and launched forward. Every fiber in her calves and thighs fired simultaneously, zero hesitation between thought and movement. The twenty feet between them vanished in a single explosive leap, the stone floor cracking beneath her push-off.

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Her right fist caught the first man in the hip. She pulled the punch as much as she could, but Redline didn’t do gentle. He screamed and hit the wall with a meaty thud, then crumpled to the floor and stayed there.

Her left hand shot forward, fingers elongating into a single smooth spike that punched through the second man’s calf. He went down shrieking, hands grabbing at his leg as blood pooled around the wound.

Annie retracted the spike and stepped over both of them, flicking blood from her fingers as she passed. She rolled her neck, feeling the metal shift and settle.

The tunnel opened into a wider corridor. She slowed, taking in the details as she passed.

Bedrooms carved into the limestone, each one fitted with actual bed frames and mattresses. A communal bathroom with plumbing that ran somewhere deeper into the rock. A cooking area with pots hanging from iron hooks, the remnants of a meal still on the counter, and a stone chimney that angled upward through the ceiling toward what she assumed was a concealed surface vent.

For a bunch of traffickers hiding in a cliff, they’d built themselves a surprisingly comfortable nest.

She moved deeper. The corridor branched twice, both times into dead ends serving as additional storage. Everything organized and labeled in Arabic. She’d cracked a few open to check, finding food, water, and medical supplies.

Movement flickered ahead. Someone ducked out from behind a support pillar at the corridor’s end, leveling something at her that wasn’t a rifle.

The energy bolt caught her in the shoulder.

Annie hissed. That one actually hurt. A sharp, burning sting that radiated outward from the impact point, the energy dispersing across her skin in crackling arcs. It wouldn’t slow her down, but it made her pay attention.

The man fired again. She raised her hand, shielding her face as the bolt splashed against her open palm. Heat flared across her fingers. She didn’t slow.

His expression shifted from determination to disbelief as she closed the distance.

Annie kicked him in the knee. The joint buckled sideways with a wet crack. He dropped, mouth open in a silent scream, and she caught him with an uppercut on the way down. His head snapped back, and he hit the floor.

She shook the residual heat from her hand. Energy weapons were still a little dangerous. But only a little. She’d reached a point in the growth of her powers that most of her internal organs remained constantly phased. That meant that unless she was asleep, she could survive even a sniper round.

“Augustus,” she said over comms. “How’s your side?”

“Found their main storage. Explosives, weapons, supplies, electrical equipment. Also dealt with about a dozen of them. None had powers.” A pause. “They are well supplied. Mil-spec gear mixed with civilian surplus.”

“Same on my end. One of them had an energy weapon.”

“Interesting. I’ll secure this area and start cataloguing. Keep pushing.”

“Sure.”

Felix’s voice cut in. “I have eyes on three individuals who escaped through a secondary exit on the north face. They are moving quickly on foot. Wait.” He paused. “They just uncovered tiny little cars. With handlebars and four wheels.”

“ATVs,” Augustus said. “All-terrain vehicles.”

Talia responded. “Track them as far as you can. If they’re running to another location, I want to know where.”

“Understood.”

Annie pressed on. The corridor narrowed again, then opened into a junction where three passages met. She paused, listening.

Silence from the left and center passages. But from the right, the faintest scrape of a foot on stone.

She turned right.

The passage widened into what looked like an office. A desk sat against the far wall beneath a battery-powered lamp. Filing cabinets flanked it. Papers were scattered across the surface, some spilling onto the floor. A map of the region had been pinned to the wall above the desk, covered in handwritten annotations.

A man stood in the center of the room.

Tall, lean, dressed in loose, dark clothing. He watched her with calm eyes. No weapon in his hands. No panic on his face.

Annie studied him. Something felt wrong, but she couldn’t place it. “You want to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

He smiled.

“Hard way. Got it.” She stepped into the room and swung.

Her fist passed through empty air. The man was simply gone, replaced by nothing. Annie’s momentum carried her forward, stumbling.

Behind her, a boot connected with her lower back. The impact jolted through her metal, jarring enough to make her stumble another step. She spun, arm sweeping in a wide, bladed backhand.

And found nothing.

A fist cracked against the side of her head from the left. She hadn’t seen anything. Annie snarled and swung toward the source, but her knuckles met stone. The wall. She’d been turned around somehow, the room’s geometry shifted in her perception.

She pulled her fist from the cracked limestone and reset her stance.

The illusionist appeared by the desk, leaning against it as if he had all the time in the world. He said something in Arabic, then switched to heavily accented English. “You are strong. But strength without sight is just noise.”

Annie launched toward him. He flickered and vanished. A kick caught her shin, and she tripped over a chair that hadn’t been there a second ago.

She caught herself on the desk, which was suddenly on the wrong side of the room.

He was good. Better than a Class C had any right to be.

“You’re a lot more than the reports say,” Annie said, straightening up.

The illusionist laughed. His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “I keep my best tricks in the dark. Where I can kill those who witness them.”

Another hit, this one to her stomach. Hard. The guy had ascended attributes backing up his strikes. She felt each one land with more weight than an ordinary human could produce.

Then a blade slipped between her ribs. It found nothing but more metal, but the casual willingness hardened her resolve.

Annie took a breath. Let the Combat Lock settle over her, sharpening her focus.

He was fast, and his illusions were disorienting, but she’d been tracking the pattern. He could only hit her when she committed to an attack, because he needed her off-balance and focused on the wrong target. The illusions were reactive, built around her expectations. And every real strike came from close range, because he had to actually be near her to land them.

He was a melee fighter using illusions to create openings. She’d fought his type in the arenas plenty. They were all the same. Clever, but limited to cheap tricks.

“Okay,” Annie said. “This is boring now.”

Annie Redlined both arms, raising them overhead, then bringing them down hard. Density Flux Control and MetaMetal Adaptation worked in tandem. Her hands bulged, flooded with extra mass until each one was nearly a meter across, bloated spheres of solid metal with increased density that hit the stone floor like twin wrecking balls.

The floor shattered. Cracks radiated outward in every direction. The desk jumped. Cabinets toppled. The ceiling rained dust and fragments as the shockwave tore through the room. Stone shards sprayed across every surface.

A figure stumbled into view three feet to her right, arms thrown up to shield his face from the debris. Real. Solid. No longer hidden.

Annie burst forward, hands already back to normal size. She threw a simple, straight jab that landed before he could react. Her fist caught him clean on the chin.

His head snapped back. Then he dropped like someone had cut his strings.

Annie stood over him. Victorious, but underwhelmed. She reached down and checked his pulse. He was alive, but he wouldn’t be getting up for a while.

She glanced around at the wreckage. The office was destroyed. Desk splintered. Cabinets dented and overturned. Papers everywhere. The map on the wall hung by a single pin, spotted with holes.

A glint of gold caught her eye.

One of the filing cabinets had split open on impact, its contents spilled across the rubble. Among the mess, a small vial had rolled free. The liquid inside caught the lamplight, shimmering with that unmistakable color.

Liquid gold.

Annie crouched down and picked it up, turning it between her metal fingers.

Serum.

“Talia,” she said quietly. “I found some.”

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