Thomas holstered his revolver.

  The motion was deliberate, thumb on the hammer, easing it down, sliding the weapon into the leather with the slow, visible care of a man making a point. I am not a threat. It was one of the first things they taught you during training when approaching an unknown combatant who had just done you a favor. Hands visible, posture open, voice easy. Don't give them a reason.

  He stepped around the edge of the overturned oak table, his boot crunching softly on broken glass. As he moved, his left hand found Florence's shoulder, a light touch, barely there, two fingers pressing down and back in a gesture she wouldn't consciously register as an instruction.

  Stay behind me. Move back.

  Florence shifted. He felt her weight settle further behind the table, and the knot in his chest loosened by a fraction.

  "Hell of a night," Thomas said, his voice carrying the easy, conversational weight of a man discussing the weather. He stepped over a chunk of fallen plaster, limping slightly but keeping the gait as smooth as he could manage. Casual. Unhurried. Just a fellow survivor taking stock.

  "I don't know about you, but I had plans this evening that didn't involve any of this. Steak. Wine. Civilized company." He gestured vaguely at the ruin around them. "The universe had other ideas, apparently."

  The masked figure stood motionless on the far side of the chandelier. The tablecloth hung from their frame like a makeshift cloak, one shoulder exposed where the fabric had pulled loose during the fighting, revealing dark clothing beneath. The metal mask was a blank, featureless plane, no expression to read, no eyes to meet. Just the faint, flat glint of polished steel catching the light of the small fires that still crackled in the wreckage.

  They were watching him. He could feel it.

  "I appreciate the assist," Thomas continued, stepping over a twisted length of chandelier arm, closing the distance by another few feet. His hands swung loosely at his sides, open, visible, unthreatening. "Seriously. If you hadn't been here, those civilians would be dead. I'd probably be dead. So—thank you."

  The figure said nothing. They hadn't moved. The revolver was holstered at their left hip, and their hands hung at their sides in a posture that could have been relaxation or readiness. It was impossible to tell which.

  Thomas kept walking. Ten feet now. The debris field between them was thinning, fewer overturned tables, more open floor. He angled his approach slightly to the right, putting the chandelier's bulk to his left, giving himself a clear line.

  "I'm Thomas, by the way," he said, and smiled. "Thomas Bannerman. Senior Inspector, D.A.A. Northern District. Thought I should introduce myself properly, since we just — "

  He closed the distance in a single step.

  The limp vanished. His right foot drove off the rubble and his hand shot forward in a precise, professional seizure. His fingers locked around the figure's right wrist, his thumb finding the pressure point below the heel of the palm with the practiced accuracy of a man who had restrained hundreds of suspects and knew exactly where to apply force to make a hand go numb.

  The figure flinched. A sharp, involuntary jerk, the startled reflex of someone who had not expected the lame man to move that fast. Their free hand came up, but Thomas was already inside their reach, his grip cinched tight.

  The wrist in his hand was narrow. Light. The bones felt fine-boned beneath the leather of the glove, the tendons taut but slender.

  A woman, Thomas registered. Or a teenager. Or both.

  "Easy," Thomas said, his voice dropping out of its friendly register into something quieter. "I just want to — "

  Heat.

  It bloomed in his grip like a coal being stoked, a sudden, fierce warmth radiating through the leather of the figure's glove and into his palm. He felt the mana gather an instant before it manifested, a tight, spiraling lattice forming in the tissue beneath the skin, the molecular vibration of air being superheated from the inside out. Pyromancy. The signature was unmistakable, that dry, aggressive burn-taste at the back of his throat that fire mages always carried.

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  Tier 6. Novice-level output. The lattice was crude, instinctive, more panic than precision.

  And familiar.

  The recognition hit him like a slap. He knew this signature. He had tasted it twenty-four hours ago, standing in the rain on the Old King's Road, scanning the wreckage of a destroyed carriage while Eliza held a barrier over the crime scene. A faint trace of pyromancy near the road, she had said. Barely enough to light a cigar. He had dismissed it. Background noise. A spark charm.

  It was not a spark charm. It was this. The same mana, the same frequency, the same thermal mana residue, stronger now, considerably so, burning with a clarity and intensity that the roadside trace had lacked, as though whatever had been smoldering yesterday had been stoked into something fiercer overnight. But the underlying signature was identical. He would have staked his badge on it.

  Thomas snuffed it.

  The nullification pulse was reflexive, surgical, a flick of will that collapsed the lattice before it could reach combustion temperature. The heat in his palm died instantly, the glove going cool and inert.

  "Hey," Thomas said, his grip tightening. His eyes narrowed behind the dust and grime on his face. "Were you at the — "

  The figure moved.

  They didn't pull away. They stepped into his grip, a sharp, angular motion that closed the remaining distance between their bodies and put them chest-to-chest. Thomas registered the shift a half-second too late. A boot heel, hard, precise, driven with mechanical intent, stamped down on the top of his left foot, grinding directly into the swollen joint of his damaged ankle.

  White light detonated behind his eyes.

  The pain was transcendent. Florence's healing had reduced the swelling, stopped the hemorrhage, bought him function, but the ligament was still torn, the tissue still raw, and the impact of a heel driven into the joint with what felt like considerably more force than a Tier 6 frame should have been capable of producing sent a shockwave of agony up his leg that buckled his knee.

  His grip on the wrist loosened for a fraction of a second.

  The figure's left fist came up in a tight, compact arc and connected with the hinge of his jaw.

  It was a good punch. Clean mechanics—the rotation came from the hips, not the shoulder, and the knuckles landed flush, driving his head sideways with a sharp crack that rattled his teeth. Thomas staggered backward, his injured ankle folding under him, his arms wheeling for balance as his boots skidded on broken glass.

  He caught himself. Barely. His right heel found the edge of an overturned chair leg and he used it as a brace, planting his weight and absorbing the momentum.

  His jaw throbbed. He tasted copper where his teeth had cut the inside of his cheek. The punch had been stronger than it had any right to be, not the wild flail of an untrained civilian but a controlled, focused impact delivered with a physical authority that did not match the slender wrist he had been holding two seconds ago.

  Something augmenting them. Artifact. Tier 5 output from a Tier 6 frame.

  His hand was already moving, dropping to his hip, fingers closing around the grip of his revolver in the smooth, automatic draw that seven thousand hours of range work had burned into his muscle memory. He cleared the holster, brought the barrel up, and leveled it at the center of the figure's chest.

  "All right," Thomas said. His voice was steady, clipped, carrying the flat authority of a man who had reached the end of his patience and found a gun waiting there. "I don't want to hurt you. But you need to stand down. Now."

  The figure did not move.

  Thomas did not blink.

  Silence stretched between them, broken only by the hiss of the ruptured gas pipe and the distant, muffled wail of a siren somewhere in the city. Thomas's finger rested alongside the trigger guard, not on the trigger, not yet, but close enough. He held the revolver in a two-handed grip, his aim centered, his breathing controlled.

  Something was wrong.

  The weight was wrong.

  His right hand was gripping air.

  Thomas looked down.

  His holster was empty. His hand was curled around nothing, his fingers locked in the shape of a grip that held no steel, his thumb resting on a hammer that did not exist. The draw had been perfect. The motion had been flawless. But the revolver was not there. It had not been there. The leather was smooth and flat against his hip, as though the weapon had simply ceased to occupy the space it had inhabited for the last three years.

  He looked up.

  The masked figure was standing ten feet away, one arm extended, Thomas's service revolver dangling from their index finger by the trigger guard. The heavy weapon swung gently, pendulum-slow, the matte steel catching the firelight.

  They tilted their head. The blank mask offered nothing, but the tilt spoke volumes. It was the posture of someone enjoying themselves.

  Thomas stared at the gun. He stared at his empty hand. He stared at the figure.

  How?

  No mana signature. No lattice, no cast, no draw on the ambient field. The gun had simply moved. From his holster to their hand, across ten feet of open air, without his fingers registering the departure. Another damned Artifact.

  Thomas really wished the D.A.A. allowed their off-duty officers to carry artifacts, but of course that would be unreasonable.

  "Huh," Thomas said. "You got me."

  The figure's free hand came up to steady the grip. The barrel began to rise.

  Thomas charged.