“Hey!” Colt shouted at the crowd, waving his arms toward the exits. “Go! Get outta here! Ninjas are comin’!”
Nobody moved. A dozen people stood around the hole in the floor with their little metal boxes raised, leaning over the edge to get a better look at the crater below. Flashes popped one after another. A man in a gray suit laughed at something his wife said and pointed down at the rubble.
Colt grabbed Clay’s arm. “We need to get ’em to run.”
He tried again, louder this time. “Hey! You gotta—”
BOOM.
Clay’s sawed-off roared toward the ceiling and the sound bounced off every wall in the room. Dust rained down from the rafters. A woman near the exit screamed. The man in the gray suit dropped his metal box.
“Get the fuck out!” Clay bellowed. “Museum’s closed!”
That did it. The crowd broke apart like spooked cattle, shoving and stumbling over each other to reach the doors. A woman went down hard under the rush and Clay hauled her back to her feet, pushing her toward the exit before she could thank him. Somewhere behind Colt, a man knocked a kid to the floor in his hurry to get past.
“Shit,” Clay said, turning back toward the crater. “Here it comes.”
The violet ball at the bottom of the hole shot upward. It hung in the air for half a heartbeat, pulsing, then tore itself open from the center. It flattened out into a circle, violet light bleeding out around the frame, and a shape came through fast.
Black cloth. Blade already drawn. Violet eyes locked on the room.
Colt didn’t hesitate.
DEAD EYE: ACTIVATED
0:05
The world stretched around him. Sound dropped to nothing. The ninja hung in the air with its blade raised, falling so slow it looked like it was floating through water. He could see the stitches on its mask. He could see the way its fingers wrapped around the hilt of its sword. Everything sharp. Everything clear.
A timer burned in the corner of his vision and he watched it tick down.
0:04
He pulled his revolver. The motion felt strange with everything moving so slow, but his arm came up smooth.
SIDEARM EQUIPPED
Colt Single Action Army — .45
6/6
0:03
He raised the barrel, lined up the front sight with the ninja’s head, and squeezed the trigger. The hammer dropped. The gun bucked in his hand but the recoil came soft, almost gentle, spreading up through his wrist in a long slow wave.
The bullet spun through the air and punched through the ninja’s skull.
5/6
0:02
Colt looked up at the portal. Another shape was coming through, a leg halfway out, frozen mid-step, the rest of the body still hidden behind the shimmer.
0:01
He aimed at the leg and fired.
4/6
DEAD EYE flashed twice in his vision and disappeared.
The world slammed back to full speed. Sound crashed in, screams, footsteps, the echo of his own gunshots still ringing off the walls. The first ninja hit the floor limp, its body skidding across the tile as violet energy ripped up out of its skull and punched through the ceiling. The second one came tumbling through the portal clutching its leg, rolling hard, blood spreading across the floor beneath it.
It looked up at Colt with those violet eyes. Colt put a bullet through its forehead before it could stand.
3/6
More violet light shot up through the hole in the roof and vanished into the sky.
He looked at Clay and felt a grin pull at his mouth. Clay was grinning back, that dumb proud look he got when they’d pulled off something stupid and lived through it.
“That was wild,” Clay said.
Then another ninja dropped through the portal. Then two more. Then three.
They just kept coming.'
Clay brought the sawed-off up and fired. The first ninja’s chest blew apart, the body spinning sideways before it hit the ground. He cracked the shotgun open and started thumbing in fresh shells while the rest of them hit the floor running.
They didn’t go for Colt. They didn’t go for Clay. They went for the crowd.
The people still trying to reach the exits didn’t stand a chance. A woman went down screaming with a blade across her back. A man tried to run and made it three steps before a ninja caught him from behind. Blood splattered across a display case full of old saddles.
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Each time a body hit the floor it was followed by a little flash of white.
Near the crater, the museum employee stood frozen. The man with the glasses, the one who’d told Colt about the compass. His mouth hung open and his hands were raised, like he was trying to push something back.
“This is…” He shook his head, backing up a step. “This isn’t…”
A ninja landed in front of him. The blade came down in one clean stroke and opened him from shoulder to hip. He dropped without finishing the sentence, his glasses clattering across the floor.
Colt saw it this time, the man’s eye, a bright white flash. Then blank.
Colt raised his revolver and fired at the ninja.
2/6
The shot caught it in the shoulder and spun it toward him. He fired again but the ninja ducked sideways and the bullet punched through empty air.
1/6
He thought about Dead Eye. Tried to pull it up the way he had before, wanting it, needing it.
DEAD EYE: INACTIVE
01:37
01:36
The words flashed twice and disappeared.
It didn’t work.
“Damn it.”
He was going to have to do this the hard way.
The ninja closed the distance fast, its blade coming up for a strike that would take Colt’s head off if he didn’t move. He raised the revolver and began to pull the trigger.
BOOM.
The ninja’s head disappeared in a wet spray of red and violet. Clay stepped up beside him with smoke curling from the sawed-off’s barrel.
“You’re welcome,” Clay said, already cracking the gun open to reload.
Glass shattered somewhere to the left.
Colt’s head snapped toward the sound. A ninja stood by display case forty-seven. The velvet cushion inside was empty. The compass, the module, it was in its hand.
“Clay!” Colt pointed. “He’s got it!”
Clay turned and fired. The shot caught the ninja in the chest and staggered it backward, but it didn’t fall. It turned and started running toward the portal with the compass clutched against its body.
Colt took a shot and grazed the ninjas shoulder, it still didn’t slow.
0/6
He couldn’t let that ninja leave with that compass.
He shoved his revolver back into his pocket.
Colt took off in a sprint towards the ninja, he tackled it from behind. They hit the floor hard together, rolling, the ninja’s elbow cracking against Colt’s jaw.
He tried grabbing onto the ninja. But his hands kept slipping off the ninjas bloody clothes. He wrestled the ninja, Colt was surprised by how easy it was to over power it. He straddled the ninja. Pulled his Bowie out.
MELEE WEAPON: EQUIPPED
Bowie
He raised it high and drove it down into the ninja’s throat.
The body jerked once beneath him.The compass slipped from the ninja’s fingers and rolled across the tile, spinning in a slow circle before it came to rest a few feet away.
Colt reached for it.
Pain hit him in the side, not a punch, something sharper. He looked down and saw two black metal stars buried in his coat, just above his hip. The coat had caught most of it. They hadn’t gone deep. But blood was already soaking through his shirt beneath them, he could feel the warmth against his skin.
His knees gave out. He fell off the dead ninja and landed on his back, his vision swimming for a second before it steadied. The compass was right there, close enough to touch. He reached for it.
A boot came down on his wrist.
Colt looked up. A ninja stood over him with its sword raised. One of its eye sockets was empty, just a hole where the eye should be, filled with raging violet light that spilled out and lit up half its face. The other eye stared down at him.
“Clay!” Colt yelled.
Clay’s shotgun cracked again from somewhere near the entrance. He was keeping them off the survivors trying to crawl out. He couldn’t see Colt. Couldn’t help him.
The one-eyed ninja raised its sword higher, both hands on the hilt.
Colt looked around for something, anything he could use. People were dying all around him. Bodies on the floor. Blood pooling on the tile. Screams mixing with the clash of metal cutting bodies. He saw a woman crawling toward the exit with one leg dragging behind her. He saw a man on his knees, clutching his stomach, trying to hold something in.
Then he heard a voice. Small. Steady.
“Hold it there, partner.”
The ninja stopped.
Colt turned his head.
The boy stood maybe ten feet away. The same boy from before, the one who’d asked for a picture. His cowboy hat sat tilted on his head and his dark hair stuck out in the back. He had his toy revolver raised in both hands, the barrel pointed right at the ninja’s chest.
He was smiling.
Colt’s throat closed up. He tried to speak but his voice came out cracked and broken.
“Kid. No. Run.”
The ninja turned toward the boy.
“Run!” Colt screamed it this time, loud enough to tear something in his throat.
The blade swung.
Colt watched it happen. Watched the smile disappear from the boy’s face. Watched his body fold in on itself and drop to the floor. Watched the toy revolver clatter out of his hands and spin away across the tile.
A bright white flash from boys eyes, he recognized it, he could feel it now.
Puha.
The white flash turned into an energy and it went up the ninjas arm. It settled into its chest and flashed white, then violet. Its eyes grew brighter.
They were collecting puha.
Something broke loose in Colt’s chest. His hand scrambled across the floor and his fingers found a handle, the dead ninja’s sword, the one he’d killed with the bowie. He grabbed it and pushed himself up.
MELEE WEAPON: EQUIPPED
Katana
Colt ignored the message.
The one-eyed ninja turned back toward him.
Colt swung.
The blade caught the ninja’s wrist and went through clean. The hand dropped to the floor still gripping the sword, fingers twitching once before they went still. Pain ripped through Colt’s side from the motion, the stars pulling against his skin, but he didn’t care. He wanted to swing again. He wanted to take this thing’s head off.
The ninja grabbed the bloody stump with its other hand. That violet eye locked on Colt, and for a second neither of them moved.
Then the ninja reached into its belt and pulled out a small ball.
It threw the ball at the floor.
It exploded outward, with thick smoke, filling the room in seconds. Colt couldn’t see. Could barely breathe. He stumbled forward with the sword raised, swinging at nothing, hitting nothing.
“Colt!” Clay’s voice cut through the smoke. “Colt, you okay?”
“Yeah.” He coughed, his lungs burning. “Yeah, I’m—”
The smoke started to clear.
The ninjas were gone. All of them. The portal had collapsed back in on itself and the crater sat empty, just rubble and dust and the fading glow of violet light.
Colt stood there with the sword still in his hand and blood dripping from his ribs. His eyes went to the floor.
The boy lay where he’d fallen. The toy revolver lay a couple feet away.
Colt looked at the spot by the ninja he’d killed with the bowie. The tile where the compass had rolled.
It wasn’t there. Nothing. It was gone.
He looked at Clay. “You got it? Tell me you got the compass, Clay.”
Clay shook his head. “No.”
Colt turned back to the boy. That small body on the floor.
“How,” Colt said. “Why?” His voice came out soft, cracked at the edges. “How the hell could they do this.”
He looked around the room. Bodies everywhere. A woman slumped against a display case with her hand still reaching toward the exit. A man face-down in a pool of blood near the covered wagon. Two kids curled up together by the wall, neither one moving. Thirty people, maybe more. Men. Women. Children. All of them dead because the ninjas wanted a compass and didn’t care who got in the way.
A sound cut through the quiet. It was high pitched, rising and falling.
Sirens.
Colt turned toward the windows. Red and blue lights flashed against the glass, sweeping across the walls, getting brighter.
Clay stepped up beside him, the sawed-off hanging loose in his grip.
“What now, Colt?“
