I’ll never tire of the taste of blood...

  Vorteth vaulted over the rail, a blur, death made flesh. His knuckles white around the throat of a mercenary—knee in the human's gut as they fell—until a frail spine shattered against the terrastone.

  Caught between a rock and inevitability.

  The man's body seized, stilled with a whimper. Vorteth's fangs sliced into his carotid artery, quenching a terrible thirst with the fresh essence of life. Sweet. Warm.

  Ambrosial.

  It gushed from Vorteth's lips as Griston’s men scrambled down the steps on either side. Two dozen or so. Pipes. Pulse-blades. Whatever simple implements were allowed them. Obviously the Garrison's bottom rung of recruits, for very few had earned the right to firearms.

  Far better trained than the drunkards before them. Teamwork. Tactics. Rather cohesive for disloyal mercenary filth. But even so. Fear gnawed at their discipline like everyone else.

  Vorteth snarled, flipped sideways, and elbowed the next victim's jaw. Like thunder. Like Mj?lnir. The strike rocketed him upward, showering down crimson froth and jagged bits of teeth.

  Another's blade hungered for his neck—pulsing blue and livid—a rabid strike caught mid-swing. Vorteth twisted him around, burst his skull like a ripened grape against the nearby generator. Sparks sprayed as umber darkness fell upon the training chamber. Over the many obstacle towers, shooting ranges, and CQB courses modeled after buildings.

  “What are you waiting for? Kill him.” Griston grumbled on the overhead comms. “And a set of neuro-sync armor is yours. Five percent pay boost if you simply survive. Though the odds are stacked against you.”

  A machine-gun opened fire at Vorteth. Blind, wild bursts of fully-automatic fury that erupted in strobes of yellow light. He summoned darkness itself, shrouded his body in shadows, weaving through obstacles and gunfire smooth as smoke.

  Like a wraith, he saltated to the top of short a model residence, circling around its flat roof quick as a cheetah. Quiet as death. His eyes shut, not wanting their titian fire to give him away. In place of his sight, his other senses picked up the slack. A steady thrum of bullets and a shuffle of boots. Breaths and heartbeats. He could taste the sweat on their brows.

  Feel the warmth of their flushed skin beneath him...

  His umbri?or flashed as he leapt from above—cleaving the gunner in two before his boots hit the terrastone.

  "Flank him!"

  "Lead around him this way!"

  With an electric surge, the emergency power kicked on. Twenty-one humans remained—black-crimson fatigues perfect for the now hellish lighting, hard faces twisted with thinly veiled fright.

  They surrounded him, slow steps, buying precious time to muster their courage.

  Then, they charged as one.

  A fist. A sword. A sporecaster.

  Three fell in a blink, decapitated, headless necks like geysers. Vorteth exchanged blades in a flurry with two others, their wrists too weak, minds too slow—disemboweled like swine for their troubles.

  Bullets pinged off his umbrefa??, tore through his torso in rhythmic succession. Painful? Yes. Enough?

  As each body fell, so too did Vorteth. Deeper into a haze that encroached on madness, a delirious blur of laughter and murder. Another pleasure often denied. It was beautiful. Every cut, every scream. A macabre dance, an altered state superior to every drug and lust known to man.

  But like all good things...

  ...it ended.

  When at last he fully returned to his senses, not one dance partner remained. Not on their feet at least. Not in one piece. No hurried shouts or barked orders. Only labored moans and death rattles.

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  Vorteth smiled warmly as he appraised his handiwork. A carpenter after a hard day's work. An artist proud of the beauty wrought by his own hands.

  Bullets wormed free of his knitting wounds. He groaned. More annoyance than agony. They caught in the folds of his robes, until he shook them clattering to the blood-soaked floor.

  Most fun he'd had in months. He'd have to visit again sometime soon...

  A door on the high ceiling hissed open in a flood of white light.

  Armored commandos rocketed down like bats out of hell, back-mounted jet-boosters spitting liquid fire. They thudded atop the taller training obstacles one after another. Heavily armed gargoyles. Weapons trained at him with green precision beams and staggered fields of fire.

  Then a deeper roar drew closer. Louder, more deserving of his attention.

  Griston crashed down on one knee like a bolt of lightning, bristling with firepower. Wrist-mounted machine guns. Folded pulse-blades and shoulder-mounted missile-pods. The barrel of a rocketer loomed behind his helmeted head, red eye-slits piercing the ebbing smoke in judgment.

  The neuro-sync armor gave him a bulky, nearly synthenoidic appearance. But there was flesh and blood underneath—a hunter more akin to an animal than a man. His emotive, digital eyes studied Vorteth. Curiosity mixed with ice-cold, but unfocused hatred.

  “That’s enough.” Griston grumbled as he stood. “Most of the expendable men are out on missions. Otherwise, I’d have plenty more for you.”

  Vorteth stepped closer through the sea of corpses, flicked the viscera from his umbri?or, then returned it to its sheathe.

  “You said the magic word. A mission is why I’m here. A search and retrieve job.”

  Griston tilted his head. “Odd. I seem to recall you having an army of your own? Aren't assassins supposed to be good at the whole looking for people thing?”

  Vorteth stopped a few feet away. Griston’s best still aimed at his head with professional ease.

  “Correct. But my men are stretched thin. And these are treacherous times. I require a few extra pairs of well-trained eyes to assist in tracking targets of import. Your eyes. Personally.”

  Griston paced around a man crawling along the floor. Both legs gone. A streak of viscera in his wake.

  "Please, urg, help me Griston, I need—"

  Pyoom.

  A red bolt blasted from Griston's wrist with a terrible echo, leaving a deep, sizzling hole where the man's head had been.

  "Be it...far from me to defend a human, but did he not technically survive the Culling? If only a precious minute from bleeding out?"

  “True. But nobody'll miss him. Skipped showers, smelled like armpits and assholes most days." He chuckled, a warbled, scratchy sound. "I’m no errand boy, Radu. I rarely leave this place unless it's something truly worthy of my time. Or if I'm bored. Which I'm not.”

  “They're high-priority targets. Thousands of years of combat experience between them. More than ample enough challenge.”

  “Really?” Griston rubbed his helmeted chin. “And, what else?”

  Vorteth smiled, then tossed a fissen-chit from his belt. It clinked until it hit Griston’s grimy boot. “Two marks. Ten million per capture. Thirty thousand for the head of any other mutt that stands in your way.”

  He paused, unable to mask the disgust in his next words. “I should clarify—the Unified Clans. Whiro and his ilk are my allies for now. Though one or two accidents won't hurt.”

  “Unified? That means Daffern? That's the outfit she's with, right?"

  “Yes. Though my spies haven’t heard her name for some time. Subtlety was never her strong suit. Likely, she's dead.”

  "A damn shame," Griston murmured, resigned and almost a little sad. "Would’ve loved to have watched. Or at least heard her scream once or twice."

  Vorteth sensed his interest fading, a prickle of apathy mere seconds from derailing his plans.

  “Before you think to kill me and simply take the chit? It’s remotely funded. Useless until I return to my base of operations. Though I personally wouldn't be too offended by the attempt."

  “You a mind reader now too? Well check and see if this is true—maybe I don’t care about your money. Maybe, I'd rather see if your ribs break easier than last time. Why travel all over for a challenge, when one strolls through your door?”

  Griston's myriad weaponry hummed, charged the air with palpable power, fists clenched in not-so-subtle threat.

  Vorteth removed his umbrefa?? with a click, revealing a calm smile that could draw blood. He stepped even closer, slow and deliberate, until Griston’s mechanically rhythmic breath warmed his nose.

  “First of all, I don't stroll, strut, or skip. And the ribs? A lucky blow.” His voice dipped to a thin whisper. “Two paths. One to life, challenge worthy of your talents. The other, failure. Your legacy ends here in a heap of shell casings. A fitting, but ill-timed end. There's so much more to kill before you die, wouldn't you say?”

  Griston stared long and hard, a sphinx with cuts etched into his armor's obsidian-crimson finish. His commandos matched him, their armor not as advanced, but deadly all the same, perfect mirrors of Griston's durtanium resolve.

  Finally, he knelt to retrieve the chit, rolling it smoothly over his padded knuckles in a dexterous flourish.

  “Always nice,” he said, tone edged with sly amusement. "When old friends take the time to visit."