I looked around the room, recalling what it was for. It was the room with all the transformers and serious electrical wiring to support the server farm next door, as well as the rest of the building. One of the main power boxes lay just a few feet ahead of me, and I regarded it curiously for a moment—
That ended when Stepane and the Terminator came crashing through the wall. The Terminator had three big pieces of cubicle wall in his hands as a shield between him and Stepane’s flames, and as he came through he shoved Stepane forward, sending him into the back wall of the power room with sheer brute force and speed. Stepane impacted and bounced, flames sputtering a little as the Terminator roared and flexed his mighty frame.
Stepane burned through the cubicle pieces like they were nothing, and they stood just a few feet from each other, facing off like two bulls about to charge.
I sidled over to the electrical panel and casually ripped the conduit wire I’d been eyeing before, tearing it loose of the power box. I carefully gripped it by the insulated part, then I tossed it like a spear at the Terminator as he started to raise his fist to go after Stepane again.
The exposed wiring hit the Terminator just under the armpit and the reaction was immediate. He jerked and flailed, legs twitching as he did a dance that wouldn’t have looked much out of place on a headless chicken. Then the wire must have grounded out, because he stopped jerking after a few seconds and pitched over, landing in the rubble of the hole he’d made through the wall.
“Don’t think this will spare you from—” Stepane started to say, rising up again.
I hit him with a lightning-fast kick that sent him into the wall, and he crashed through the blocks just a little. A second hit—swift enough that his flickering fire didn’t burn me—sent him tumbling through, and I leapt after him, trying to keep light on my feet as I moved past him and into the server room.
Stepane rose again, hovering as I fished in my pockets and pulled out a handkerchief I’d borrowed from Harry (such a classic gentleman) and a lighter I’d picked up at a gas station on the way here. I casually lit the cloth on fire as he watched, probably wondering what the hell I was doing. “You know I control fire, yes?” I nodded, and he indicated the flaming handkerchief with one outstretched hand. “You think to battle me with … this?”
“Oh, this isn’t for you,” I said, waving it in front of him, then raising it up and wafting the black smoke pouring off of it into the dark ceiling of the server room.
A klaxon sounded, loud and furious, like a fire engine had been parked behind the dark servers behind us and now decided to turn its lights on and blare its horn.
Stepane’s black eyes blinked from beneath the flame shield. Dawning realization that he’d been had trickled in, but he didn’t quite see how. “You know I can control water, too—” he started to say.
Then the fire suppression system kicked in.
“And that’d be totally advantage: you … if this room used water to suppress fire.” And I grinned.
Halon 1301 flooded the server room, breaking the chain reaction that allowed combustion and fire. Tricky, interesting stuff, Halon—pretty much safe for humans to breathe, it still managed to defeat flames with ease. And preserve electronic equipment, which was why Deltan Data Systems had probably installed this kind of system. Sure, there were environmental concerns, which was why Halon 1301 systems were devilishly uncommon these days, but …
Hey. It put out fires as easily as breathing.
I smiled as the Halon descended, snuffing out Stepane’s flame shield and causing him to waver as he blinked, exposed at last.
Rushing in while he was still getting used to his shield being gone, I pummeled Stepane’s exposed flesh, beating him as hard as I had in my dreamwalk. The rage I’d been sitting on after Scotland, and now after watching my friends hounded and hunted by this clown, after being shellacked by both him and the Terminator, from being chased by the damned law for something I hadn’t even done … all that came out, channeled through the techniques learned in a thousand training sessions with my mother.
It all came rushing out through my fists, and I remembered as I shattered his orbital bone, as I broke his jaw, as I smashed his nose—
I remembered who Sienna Nealon was.
I brought up a knee and drove Stepane into a server, denting the metal. Then I hit him with a frenzy of punches, driving him into it over and over, watching his head rock back. He was woozy, bleeding, bones broken all over his face and body.
Ripping a server out of the ground next to me, I lifted it above my head and brought it down on him, mid-chest. It shattered ribs, rent open flesh, and buried itself halfway through him. I raised it again, brought it down as hard as I could—
And Stepane Abraam was split cleanly (well … not that cleanly …) in two just beneath his armpits.
Then, for good measure, I drove the server down again, splitting his arms off and raised it once more. This time, I was prepared to strike off his head.
I paused, the server raised high above me. I stared down at his eyes as he struggled for air with lungs that, uh … weren’t entirely there anymore.
For some reason, I cast my impromptu bludgeon aside and knelt next to the man I’d dubbed the Predator. There was panic in his eyes as he gasped to take a breath that would never come, as he tried to writhe and control a body that I’d completely shattered.
He couldn’t speak, so I brought my hand down to his face and touched his cheek, pressing my palm to him. I held my breath, staring down at this utterly destroyed human being …
Yeah. This was who Sienna Nealon was. Face-puncher was sugarcoating it. Sienna Nealon was a destroyer. An annihilator.
Death.
My fingers touched him, and my power started to work. I’d almost forgotten how this felt in the last months, burning through my skin like a pleasant flush, like I’d had a little too much to drink …
And then it went straight to my head.
I plunged into the darkness akin to the dreamwalk, and I found myself in Stepane’s mind. It was dark here, just as it had been before, but there he was, standing before me, pale as death, and clutching at himself.
He looked down, seeing his body whole once more, and breathed. “I am … dying?”
A vision of all the damage I’d done to his body flashed before my eyes. “Yes,” I said. Because what else was there to say?
He stood in silence a long moment, and then a resigned smile graced his lips. “Good.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Good?”
“He can’t reach me now,” Stepane said, smile turning to a grin. “Now … it doesn’t matter how strong I am, or how I weak I am … I move beyond his grasp.” He staggered, turning a whiter shade as death seemed to take hold of him. “But you …” he looked up at me, and his eyes were …
Haunted.
“I’m heading for a collision with ol’ Vlad, I know,” I said. I paused, trying to decide how best to say what was on my mind. “I could really use some help.”