I believe she is dead. The blood has slowed, darkening where it gathers beneath her. Her eyes no longer hold anything. One strike was enough. It usually is.

  I understand that she must have had a life before this connections, affections, small habits she never imagined losing. I can picture them easily. I don’t feel obligated to care. They belonged to her, not to me. In her final moment there was shock on her face, sharp and intimate, the look of someone realizing too late that trust had been misplaced.

  Only after the stillness settles do I notice the space around us. The warehouse is torn apart. A wall to my right has collapsed inward, stone and metal scattered across the floor. Outside, the ground is scarred: craters, broken earth, overlapping footprints moving in different directions. Four, maybe five. She wasn’t alone. She was overwhelmed.

  It matters. I just don’t have time to think about it. If what she said was true, her allies could arrive any moment.

  She remains exquisite. Death has simplified her. I feel sour, few men like to see beauty burn and beauty she was.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I lift her. My body reacts without consulting me. Nausea arrives, abrupt and unceremonious. I bend, empty my stomach, straighten again. The interruption passes. There is something else to finish.

  At the riverbank, I remove the armor and set it aside. Beneath it, the body is open where it failed to contain what it was meant to hold. I don’t pause. I use the rubble nearby, arranging it inside her until the weight feels right. I make a few small adjustments. When it settles, I stop.

  That is enough.

  I am covered in blood. The armor has survived. I take it with me. There is no reason to remain.

  I send a brief message to my family to relieve their worry and leave the warehouse behind me. I head north, following the river into the forest. The Underground lies that way, far enough out that the city stops pretending it has control. I’m meeting a friend there.

  I run.

  When the warehouse is far enough behind me to stop mattering, long before anyone could follow a clear trail I step into the river. The water is cold. I let it wash over me until the red thins and disappears. I clean the armor as well. When there is nothing left to see, I move on.

  It takes a little over an hour.

  The banyan trees rise around me, identical in their age and scale. Leaves conceal a trapdoor at my feet. I don’t slow down. Everyone knows about that one.

  I climb instead, moving through the branches until I find the correct trunk. I tap the bark in a precise sequence. Five seconds pass.

  The tree opens.

  I step inside.