[Title - Mimic Hunter (Uncommon, I-Grade): Killed multiple mimics with a single attack, signaling hostility and/or dominance to the weakest members of their kind—while active, The bearer's eyes automatically track the movement of previously identified creatures hidden by equally or lesser graded Skills, making it impossible for them to escape peripheral vision once seen. The more numerous, unique, or powerful mimics defeated, the further this titles grade will increase and the more varied and potents its effects.]

  ‘Mimic Hunter’, her second title after ‘the Null.’ Prophecy immunity from The Null sounded great—if she wanted to make a bunch of fortune tellers hate their job. It was a neat little loophole in fate itself. In theory.

  But in practice? The workarounds were everywhere. 'Seers' didn't need to predict what she'd do next. They could just look at everything else. Her friends. Her past locations. New York itself.

  Hell, if someone wanted to get creative, they could divine whether her next pizza would arrive cold and track her from there.

  Meanwhile, Mimic Hunter had immediate, tangible use. The title straight-up tracked mimics once she spotted them, stopping them from slipping into blind spots or escaping her sight through perfect mimicry.

  "Alright," she cleared her throat, decision made. "Uh. Status, Set primary title to Mimic Hunter."

  Nothing. The remaining mimics began to rise, finally noticing her.

  She squinted. "Activate Mimic Hunter? Load Mimic Hunter? Bear title, Mimic Hunter? Enable Mimic Tracker 3000?" Still nothing.

  "God, just—fucking equip Mimic Hunter.”

  [Title Equipped: Mimic Hunter (Uncommon, I-Grade)]

  Kelly grinned. "There we go."

  She eyed the mimics as they twitched, eating the remains of destroyed machines, some jittering in anticipation, their legs coiling like springs. Her EQ lenses showed readings of 3.8 and 4.5 times stronger than baseline. The higher score was probably true for seventy percent of them. Maybe less.

  Creature EQ readings were unreliable at the best of times, outright bullshit at the worst—when something could double its mass in an instant or sprout an extra set of limbs mid-swing, people tended to learn real quick to stop trusting non-human numbers and start playing things by ear.

  But still, it showed their dormant state—what they were before things got weird. What that guaranteed was they were faster than her. Stronger than her. If they rushed her all at once, she was dead. But they lacked strategy. They were animals, predators reacting.

  Kelly noticed how the mimics had reacted to her first grenade, tracking every movement. When it hit the ground, they didn't scatter—instead they braced, lowering their heads to shield themselves without fear. A defense mechanism baked into whatever twisted biology ran under their plating.

  They instinctively understood that regardless of what happened next, their heads had and would protect them.

  That was all she needed.

  "Alright, let's see how dumb you are." Kelly unclipped a grenade and lobbed it straight into the cluster.

  The mimics reacted instantly, heads down, legs locking, bodies going rigid to tank the blast.

  Kelly didn't wait.

  She crossed the gap in three strides, monomolecular blade swinging down before the first could lift its head. Diamond-hard plating split clean through. Two halves hit the ground before its brain caught up.

  "Not that smart."

  That was the trick.

  They were built to adapt. They blocked explosions with their heads. They stopped moving when they braced. That meant she could control exactly when and where they froze—and when they froze, they died.

  They were strong. They were fast. But they were impressively stupid—a shame the train’s security units hadn’t been armed with explosives, though Kelly supposed you couldn’t worry about collateral damage and still blow up dangerous creatures.

  "This is fun," she muttered, shifting angles.

  The remaining mimics started adjusting—some flinching at the sound of the grenade, but not bracing fully. Learning.

  Good. They could learn. Too bad she learned faster.

  She threw another grenade at the edge of the pack, forcing them toward the center. Then she repeated, but this time she didn’t pull the pin; instead, she lobbed it past the next group, forcing them to pivot to protect their vulnerable lower bodies. Their heads whipped toward the sound, legs locking again. The pause was small—just long enough.

  Her blade whistled as it cut through air.

  She lunged, weapon carving through reinforced plating before they could shift back into motion.

  One severed clean through: The next crashed forward, still mid-brace, already dead before it fell. The instant they died—she moved. A single horizontal slash. Four fell at once.

  Kelly flicked blood from her blade.

  Then her eyes tingled.

  [Title: Mimic Hunter Grade I → II]

  [Additional Effect: Enhanced light sensitivity allows the bearer increased chances to detect subtle irregularities in surface reflection, increasing chances to detect mimics or hidden creatures even when perfectly camouflaged among objects.]

  "So they do upgrade." Just as she'd suspected, and based on roman numerals, too. Which was odd, and raised a number of questions. For later. Now wasn't the time. Especially not while being outnumbered by creatures that could bite her in half with a single lunge.

  Her Trait, 'Troll Marrowed,' made her tougher-it made her hit harder, move faster, and absorb force without snapping like cheap plastic. She was thirty percent stronger, thirty percent faster, and thirty percent more explosive than before she'd broken reality. A few loops ago, these things would've pushed her to the edge. Now? They were still stronger, still faster—but she could keep up.

  If Titles could be upgraded, then Traits could too, which opened up a world of possibilities—things she was dying to test out.

  Kelly pulled the pin and tossed another grenade toward them, watching as the largest ones did something unexpected—rather than react, they anticipated. Their bodies tensed the instant she moved, legs compressing like coiled springs. The moment the grenade left her hand, they launched themselves back in perfect unison, clearing the blast radius before it even hit the ground. Without wasted motion or hesitation. They'd learned. The first wave had died bracing against explosions. The second had adapted. If they got close, it would be because they'd already decided the risk was worth the kill.

  The remaining creatures lifted their heads, broad and slick, armored with materials copied flawlessly from military casings. These ones were massive, dwarfing the ones she'd already sliced apart, their muscular legs coiled and dense like industrial pistons. They regarded the broken bodies of their fallen peers with careful assessment, adjusting stances, clearly learning from what they'd witnessed. Taking these down was about to get much harder.

  Kelly yanked another grenade free, rolling it between her fingers, watching. The bigger ones didn't flinch, didn't crouch. They coiled instead, weight shifting, legs flexing like high-tension springs, confirming what she already knew. The grenades wouldn't work anymore.

  Kelly yanked a stun baton and soundgun from her bag, hotwired police-issue gear she'd grabbed off the wreckage on her way here. Not exactly military-grade, but she wasn't about to complain—free was free.

  The stun baton was extendable and very high-voltage, meant for putting down anyone too stupid, drugged, or augmented to go down with words. It had settings, technically, but cops always cranked them to max anyway. Nothing said "comply" like getting your nervous system hijacked by enough electricity to make your muscles forget who was in charge.

  The soundgun was worse. Handheld, sleek, designed to make resisting arrest not worth the trouble. It fired concussive blasts of selective frequency, scrambling the inner ear to cause extreme dizziness, collapsing balance, and making most people rethink their life choices as they hit the ground unable to tell up from down. Standard issue for riot cops, because why waste bullets when you could incapacitate an entire crowd with a glorified speaker dialed straight to ‘get wrecked.’

  Kelly spun the baton in her grip, feeling the weight. Good enough.

  She clicked the stun baton to maximum, blue sparks sparking along its length, and tested the trigger of the soundgun, feeling its subtle hum vibrate against her palm. "Alright," she muttered, eyeing the largest mimics circling cautiously. "You clever little idiots learned your lesson about grenades—but let's see if you remember what a bad idea it is to chase shiny things." She spun the stun baton casually, the charged tip flashing.

  Three of the larger mimics lunged instantly, responding to sudden movement like predators chasing prey. The first hit the baton head-on. The moment of impact sent a violent jolt through its structure, muscles seizing as it crashed to the ground mid-stride, skidding from its own momentum. The other two snapped their limbs into a hard stop, nearly tripping over their downed packmate as they adjusted, but the delay was all she needed. Kelly raised the soundgun and fired—a concussive burst rippled through the air, striking both in their center mass. The effect was immediate: their balance snapped like severed cables, legs faltering as their own weight worked against them, sending them sprawling to the ground in uncontrolled tumbles.

  Kelly moved before they could right themselves. The molecular blade cut down in a seamless blur, cleaving through the first as it writhed, its reinforced hide parting under the impossibly sharp edge. The second mimic scrambled, one leg kicking out as it fought for leverage then connecting clean against her ribs, sending her tumbling backward in a controlled sprawl.

  She felt something fracture.

  Kelly let out a grunt, skidding against the ground, then snorted. "Alright. That's unexpected. Didn't know you guys were handing out free flights today."

  The mimic tensed, preparing to lunge again. Kelly was already raising the soundgun. A concussive burst slammed into it, rippling through its dense structure. It staggered, limbs jerking in disarray, equilibrium shattered—which meant it wasn't dodging what came next.

  She surged forward, blade snapping up, driving the edge clean through the top of its armored casing. It twitched once, momentum dragging it another foot forward as it stumbled for a final time, dead on its feet.

  [Rare Title: 'Giantbane (I) gained!]

  [Title - Giantbane (Rare, I;Grade): Killed a being a sub-Rank higher than the title bearer. Grants a 5% increase in attack speed when engaging an opponent of a higher Threat Level.]

  Kelly's eyes widened with surprise at the ease with which she'd gained a new title. Given that basic firearms and advanced weaponry could close such small gaps in strength pretty easily, killing a being a mere sub-Rank higher didn't seem like a rare achievement at all.

  If all of humanity held access to mana, every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a shotgun would have held that title.

  Maybe even a few kids.

  Most of legal humanity clocked in under the 6.0EQ threshold, or so the paperwork claimed. But for for anyone that refused to follow laws, shady implants and avoiding major cities were still the better option.

  Officials got legal clearance to push a bit higher—so did their friends, and anyone with an account full of zeros—, but real power lived off-grid, deep web, anonymous, and highly motivated. Kelly ran the numbers. So did the Internet. The highest recorded EQ was just over one-hundred, held hundreds of years ago. If Ranks ran F to A plus an additional 'EX' or superstar classification beyond that, with each letter sliced into minus, base, and plus...

  That made twenty-one subgroups total.

  That put a new sub-Rank boundary every 4.76 EQ.

  And a full Rank shift every 14.28 EQ.

  Which meant, given the highest enhancement record was set centuries ago, someone out there, probably smiling from an orbital chair made of reinforced ego, had blown past the charts and just hadn't bothered to upload the footage.

  She jabbed an injector into her side, medical nanotech flooding into her system like liquid scaffolding. She prodded at her ribs as they worked, feeling the sharp protest of bone that hadn't fused yet. All she felt, was the familiar, useless ache of damage still radiating from her side. The fracture wasn't healing. Or rather, it was healing so slowly it might as well be for show.

  The medical nanotech had one job: hold her together on an atomic level, patch over the impossible, keep her from slipping apart. That didn't leave much room for fixing basic blunt force trauma. She exhaled sharply. Damage mitigation. It was something she'd never needed to prioritise, but if she took too many hits, the bots would be too busy with her biggest problem, prioritizing the impossible task of keeping her molecules from taking a permanent solo career.

  She could still fight, she just had to make sure nothing important snapped in half before she secured the next reset.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The last mimic finally collapsed in two halves, flesh still twitching, but Kelly's attention had already shifted to the gunfight. Gunfire cut through the station's steel supports, ricochets sparking off mechs closing in from multiple angles. The Obsidian contractors moved like predators on borrowed time—tight formations, bursts of gunfire, calculated, synchronised steps.

  Their tactics carved a path through the station like a scalpel through flesh, exposing weaknesses, adjusting in sync, peeling back openings, weaving between cover like coursing hounds.

  One veered off, reaching for a discarded high velocity gun, only for a mech to catch him mid-motion, the impact folding him like scrap metal caught in an industrial press. The others moved without hesitation, weapons pivoting, firepower escalating, intent sharpening like knives drawn in unison.

  Their escape vehicles were dead metal, wreckage smoldering where the security teams had already done their job. Only one remained, parked just outside the chaos—their last viable exit still in sight.

  Momentum carried them toward the exit in a controlled sprint under fire.

  Kelly scanned the fight, exhaling slow. They were getting their asses kicked, but weirdly, most of them were still breathing—ten standing, two down, and the overclocked dumbass playing bullet sponge as if his life depended on it—which it did. He moved like the whole station was collapsing on his head, use a large crate as a shield to soak damage so the rest could keep swinging. The squad adjusted, closing ranks, tightening their formation—no longer scrambling for cover, but shifting with purpose.

  Cornered animals with one shot at escape—as soon as they saw daylight, they'd take it.

  She was about to make sure they didn't get the chance.

  With a thought, her equipped title changed.

  [Title Equipped: Giantbane (I)]

  A five percent speed boost. "I need more samples." She needed volume. Did it rewrite her DNA with every change, embedding sequences as it went, or stack and remove abilities like modular upgrades? The only way to find out was to earn more. She needed Titles. She needed to do more reckless, extreme, questionably sane things.

  She needed to fight.

  But of course, she had no intention on dying. She sliced a Kelly-sized slab from the diamond-hardened container in a single clean stroke. She hooked it over one arm, holstered the blade, snatched a rifle, and ran. As she drew close, weaving through the shattered husks of bots and mechs that hid her approach, her gun came up, target locked, and she aimed at a gunman too distracted to see her.

  One down.

  She fired.

  The overclocked brute's shield carrying arm blurred aside and took the rounds without a look, his head barely moving. Each shot vanished into metal held up by muscle reinforced beyond reason. One shot made it into his arm. Steam hissed from the wound, metal beneath skin swelling hot enough to shimmer the air. Vents along his ribs snapped open, bleeding pressure like a war machine between cycles.

  He turned with slow precision, and the scowl of something built to move through walls, his gaze fixing to hers with the stillness of a targeting system. His step forward pressed sound from the floor.

  The next thing she knew, a mountain of muscle and steam was bearing down on her.

  She reached for the high-pressure rounds—

  His fist found her first.

  It landed like machinery in freefall, a piston wrapped in flesh. Kelly threw the slab up by instinct alone.

  The blow drove her into the side of the train, metal groaning with the force. Fractures flared through her forearm—sharp, bright, and distant, like someone else's pain.

  Kelly drew a shotgun mid-step and fired blind—pellets slammed into his swinging arm, knocking the swing wide as she dropped low, broken gravel scraping under her roll.

  The brute's momentum ripped through the platform beside her, shearing metal floor and tile with the same arm, debris scattering like shrapnel. His free hand came up instantly, muzzle flash flaring—rounds hammered into her shield with the weight of a wrecking ball.

  Armour-piercing. She felt it in the recoil in the strain of her elbow.

  4.72 EQ. On paper, painful but doable.

  But he was overclocked. And that was a different genre of fight. It meant he had stacked high powered Als running in parallel—one predicting her aim, another correcting his movements, three more running full-time on threat modeling and movement automation, and some parts of body weren't even pretending to be organic. Like the purpose-built weaponry in his left arm, a guided ammunition system that corrected mid-flight the moment it fired. He hadn't used it yet.

  Thanks to his weapon augment, and the AI’s piloting his limbs, she couldn’t afford to get close. With a thought, her molecular switch shifted into a segmented chain-blade strapped to her side. She needed to move with precision and speed, using position as her weapon, because against him, brute force alone could not keep her alive.

  Kelly vaulted a broken barricade, boots catching the edge for height. Her frame cleared the gap in one motion—up to the train roof, gun already barking back. Shots flared down from above, forcing him to pivot, angle upward, adjust.

  Pain bloomed sharp in her side where ribs had cracked, every breath grinding bone against muscle. Her left arm hung slow and clumsy, nerves dulled to a heavy numbness that warned of deeper breaks beneath the skin. It wasn't the first time she had been injured this badly, but it was the first time in many loops that it mattered.

  Kelly drew her blade and locked it to the shotgun's barrel, the edge snapping into place like a bayonet.

  "Alright," she muttered, "let's see if your upgrades come with a warranty." She fired again.

  "I don't have time for this, it’s not you," the brute said as he casually tore at the grounds cosmetic layer to create additional cover, apparently assuming that Kelly wasn't the person manipulating the Hyperloop defenses by the fact that they hadn't swarmed to defend her. Tapping the side of his head as his eye swivelled and locked. His pupils dragged behind movement, recalibrating a beat too late—like the rest of him was moving faster than his face could follow.

  “Seriously? No—don’t,” he snapped as his arm jerked up in a twitchy motion and split open with a mechanical hiss, unfolding into a rack of smart-loaded chambers. “Yeah, I can see that—shut up. All of you stop talking at once; override whatever you want, just stop talking in my head and kill her.”

  Bullets launched in a staggered spiral like miniature missiles, veering mid-flight with knife-edge corrections, carving patterns through the smoke as they hunted their mark.

  Rather than letting the spiraling bullets surround her and pierce her from all sides, Kelly charged, firing a spray of high pressure rounds. Shells tore from the shotgun, white-hot and screaming, cutting space between her, the brute, and his missiles.

  But before she'd even aimed, he moved.

  Kelly raised the slab. The first impact struck like a hammer, the next burst in fire, heat blistering across steel.

  Smoke poured off the surface, covering her in a veil of rising black.

  Kelly broke left—into the smokes blind spot his AIs hadn't recalibrated for—using the cover bought with bone and pressure.

  The stock hit her shoulder. The blast ripped from the muzzle. Success. The brute staggered, moving too late, plates shifting as the round struck his unguarded center-mass.

  He had been looking in the wrong direction. She was on the edge of his periphery, covered in smoke.

  Even the muzzle flash was obscured from his vision.

  He didn't fall.

  He blurred, some rogue Al seizing his body and jerking him right, avoiding more fatal injury and keeping its host alive.

  But the bullets still hit.

  The rounds punched through, catching under the shield and plating to tear through soft tissue. Blood tracked down his side in clean, narrow lines. He touched the wound, ran his fingers through the slick, and looked at her.

  "I didn't expect to get injured this soon," he said. His grip shifted. The weight of him followed.

  "Not bad,"

  His arm snapped forward and fired again.

  Kelly let out a scorched laugh through the smoke and heat curling off the shotgun's barrel. "You and me both, big guy." She had failed to kill him, "but failure's just another bruise on the way to progress," she said, ducking beneath targeted fire. "You're bleeding, your AIs blinked, and now I know where you crack. Next time, you drop."

  She'd been bruised, broken, fractured, and her lower legs, arms, chest, and parts of her head were covered in second degree burns. Survivable, but pre-loop Kelly would have been out for the count, and post-loop Kelly still found it hard to breathe. But she'd opened him up, made that million-dollar targeting array stumble. Not a victory, but a lesson-brutal, repeatable, and always paid for in blood.

  [Uncommon Title: 'Fortress of Flame (I)' gained!]

  [Title - Fortress of Flame (Uncommon, I-Grade): Received 50% or more beyond-surface fire damage from a being of a higher sub-Rank, without losing consciousness. Whilst equipped, grants a 10% decrease in heat damage.]

  Kelly glanced up, just enough to let the panel flash across her vision. Her lips twitched.

  Progress. Confirmed and catalogued, even if the confirmation came wrapped in scorched nerves and charred outer muscle.

  She flexed her fingers. Raw skin pulled tight, stitching itself back with all the urgency of a union worker on lunch break. She really needed that damned troll tissue—preferably yesterday.

  She fired the soundgun as she moved, the blast slamming into the brute's chest. He didn't even bother to dodge, just recalibrated against her aim so the rounds hit something hard and metal. His frame jolted out of rhythm and his eyes rolled from the soundgun’s impact—just for a breath—before the Als inside him snapped his limbs back into motion, hijacking control like a squad of invisible surgeons scrambling to keep their oversized patient on his feet. Kelly didn't wait for the rerun. She sprinted toward the heart of the crossfire where the reinforced truck sat, a graphene crate chained to its frame, half-buried in smoke and shouting. Inside was the troll—the one she'd watched regrow half its spine before her pulse even slowed. She didn't put it there. But she could turn the lock.

  The brute's arm extended behind her, tracking rounds firing in pursuit as she ran the spine of the train. From the front, fighters opened up—she raised the slab, deflecting the impact as rounds hammered into the metal face. She unclasped the monomolecular blade, hurled it like a spinning warhead, and watched it cleave through crate, troll, and anything dumb enough to line up behind it. Then she dropped behind the train on the other side, hidden between train and wall, shield raised as explosives pounded overhead. The hits landed like sledgehammers, shaking through her bones.

  A second later, the sound of a troll roaring from the far side blasted through, deeper, angrier. The other side of the train erupted—roars, gunfire, steel torn sideways. Sounded like Mr. Gun-Arm and 'Roid Rage’ just met someone louder and less patient.

  She smiled. Let them scramble with their terrorist response—she needed a troll loose, and now she had one.

  Kelly pulled up her status and eyed her latest Title.

  ‘Fortress of Flame.’ Earned when her skin cracked open under the residual heat from blocking an incendiary bullets furnace, fired by a man with a higher sub-Rank partially controlled by superior AI pilots. The second Title came after she cut down a group of creatures rated several enhancement levels above her—their skin hard as diamonds, shape changing, with mouths that could swallow her whole and full limb retention under gunfire. While in comparison, she was barely augmented—3.8, better than baseline, but so far beneath either of them on paper it made a power-armored SWAT officer look like mall security.

  That meant something. The Status had flagged the outcomes where she'd survived what she wasn’t supposed to.

  It had rewarded her disadvantage.

  That made it usable. If the status rewarded asymmetry, then she'd build her experiments around it. Strip the advantages. Drop the support. Enter fights that chewed baseline humans to slurry and walk out just long enough to make the interface blink. Titles came from pressure. So she'd design it. Loss built into the plan, pain baked into the schedule. If her biology made it out, she'd call that validation.

  She’d queue a scan once she extracted the trolls genes and scour every line of helix. If disadvantage fed returns, then fragility had tactical value. She didn't want fair. What she wanted was measurable evolution.

  Kelly jabbed a vail of medical nanotech into her thigh, and sighed like she was about to cancel a gym membership.

  She vaulted forward, sprinting along the shaking carriage roof toward the roaring inferno ahead. The troll was on fire—literally flaming, its regeneration spiking faster than corporate stock buybacks—and the brute before it had his back to her, his shield grip faltering, highly overclocked but fighting to keep up, implants flaring under strain of the creature he faced.

  Kelly kicked off the roof at speed, flipped cleanly over the train as the world blurred, and snatched her molecular blade from midair—where she'd left it lodged in a now—dead Obsidian merc's chest thirty seconds earlier.

  "Alright, screw it," she muttered as she shot through the air. "Unequip Title."

  The status panel blinked. Something deep in her chest twitched, as if her existence had just been demoted. Good. That meant it was working. She cracked her neck and beamed as she tore through the air, blood streaming behind.

  "Science!" she laughed wildly, slicing downward in one swift arc.

  Both heads—troll and brute alike—bounced across the smoldering roof, eyes still blinking in confusion. Before gravity fully reclaimed her, Kelly plunged her hand elbow-deep into the troll's freshly opened neck cavity. There was a time when the very idea of what she just did would've made her balk, but she had been at war for months, and dying endlessly had taught her that if it wasn't them, it would be her—sometimes, it just had to be done.

  "Sorry, buddy," she said with an unreadable tone, "you've got a date with my genome."

  She yanked out the troll's pulsating heart, sealed it hastily in a containment pouch, and scooped out a generous handful of steaming brain matter with clinical detachment. Spotting a twitching lump of mimic tissue splattered nearby, she scooped that up too, stuffing it into another pocket as casually as grabbing snacks at checkout.

  Behind her, Rook called out, his voice cutting clean through the alarm sirens as the station's counter-terrorist functions locked onto the remaining Obsidian contractors.

  "Kelly, wait, what about the rest of the crates—“

  Kelly threw the soundgun into Rook's palms and spun, already jogging backward toward her exit route, pockets bulging grotesquely with samples. She waved cheerily, her blood-soaked fingers leaving streaks through the smoke-filled air.

  "Vaughn'll handle it. Use that on the other contractors, without the big guy covering they'll either die or run. Wait—why don't you guys have soundguns anyway?"

  "Collateral damage. Soundguns are basically occasionally-lethal flashbangs. Our 'lethal' is more counter-terrorism and less permanently harmful to bystanders. Plus they have countermeasures," Rook said, aiming the weapon and firing anyway as Kelly headed for the exit. "But yes, they'll fall or surrender, or just ditch the cargo and run now that the overclocked one is gone, so thank you," he called.

  "Ok, peace! You've totally got this!" She smiled, genuinely amused. "Science-waits-for no-one-gotta-run!"

  Rook shook his head, watching as she vanished into the haze, her laughter trailing behind as though it had the world’s priority clearance.

  ***

  Kelly paused as she reached her truck, studying a panel that sprung to life with a thought.

  [Title: Giantbane Grade I → Il]

  [Grade II Effect: Grants a 10% increase in attack speed when engaging an opponent of a higher sub-Rank.]

  Before this, even with station security running support, it would've taken four loops minimum—maybe more if the brute decided to get creative. Hell, it had taken as many loops to get past Simon. Now, it was one clean sweep: troll, brute, fire, mechs, motion, success. She paused on the edge of the carriage, heart hammering with momentum rather than panic, and acknowledged it—this was a breakthrough. Dense-as-titanium bones, a ten percent speed spike, and for the first time, no immediate reset. That sort of boost used to mean signing away half a decade of intellectual property and waiting for an approval committee to finish brunch before each upgrade.

  This changed everything.

  It was application, tested under fire in a real environment, regardless of station support and distractions. She'd killed two high-level threats in real time—clean, direct, decisive. Pure field validation. And it worked.

  Kelly threw the samples in the passenger seat and headed deeper into New York City.

  The first time, she'd had to dodge Simon's men, a suicide squad, and a troll the size of a garbage truck tearing through steel like it stole his child support. The second, she'd had Jackhammer and full control of Vaughn Industries' security grid—drones, turrets, interior locks—all working in her favor. This time, she'd had Rook acting as a mobile command hub while the Hyperloop's anti-terrorist protocols cornered the contractors for her. Plus another troll. And still, her implant reported her at 3.8EQ, and the 'Status' panel called her an F- Rank.

  Against any of those enemies alone, she would've had to loop. Possibly dozens of times. Only god knew how many loops she'd have burned getting the timing right. Now, though—now she had the troll's heart and brain matter, and that meant one thing:

  Park Avenue. GeneCorp's HQ.

  GeneCorp was next—Park Avenue, ground zero for the most advanced genetic research on the planet. Their vaults held everything she needed to stabilize what was left of her molecular structure and force her body into compliance across loops. She had the heart. She had the brain matter. Time was running out. Her cells were still trying to pull themselves apart molecule by molecule, and every breath stretched the limits of her nanotech's ability to hold her together.

  The troll's regenerative pathways were buried deep in its cells, twisted into DNA like stars in squeezed in a safe. She needed GeneCorp's sequencing labs and maybe ten uninterrupted minutes before her internal structure reached "critical instability" and started spraying her organs across the nearest wall.

  But Genecorp was a controlled environment with biometric locks and surgical analysis teams, researchers trained to secure anomalies like her before they ever touched the floor.

  And her Titles and Traits could destroy the entire augment industry, her biology could spark the next Augment wars. It could drag every off-planet colony, every off-planet nation, and Earth into meltdown—unless she picked a side, it would be another apocalypse.

  But Kelly didn't do sides.

  She thumbed the ignition and her truck rumbled to life. Then she flicked on the radio as she drove, drumming her fingers lightly on the wheel while the truck surged forward, leaving caution smeared across the pavement in its wake.

  Entering GeneCorp would require finesse and tact—two skills she hadn't needed since dying stopped being a problem.

  And she'd be going in alone.

  Jackhammer was elsewhere. Rook was left behind. Every distraction ahead would have to start with her.

  She pressed her foot down, the engine humming louder as GeneCorp's towers rose into view.