The Cinderspine convulsed one last time before collapsing.
Stephen kept his palm pressed against the creature's body for two more seconds. The heat cut through the layer of carbonite spines, melting them into a grey paste that dripped between his fingers. The core pulsed weakly beneath the surface. He closed his eyes and pushed.
Hss-tkk.
The core gave way. The creature shuddered and stopped moving.
Stephen stood up slowly. His legs trembled from something more intrinsic than fear. Exhaustion. His vitality levels had dropped to fifty-three percent after the Veinskimmer, and the Cinderspine had taken a few more points with those damned spines. Three shallow cuts burned on his left forearm, left behind before he understood that the creature attacked by rolling toward heat instead of fleeing from it.
Kill count updated, Milla informed. Brineshade, Rank C. Veinskimmer, Rank D. Cinderspine, Rank D. Total: three.
A half-smile tugged at his lips. He couldn't muster enough excitement in that moment. Stephen looked at the body at his feet and rubbed his forehead. It looked like a hedgehog the size of a medium dog, covered in black spines that were now crumbling into fine ash. The smell was of wet charcoal.
"How much farther?"
Three hundred and twelve meters to destination. Revised estimate: nine minutes.
He wiped his hand on his pants and kept walking.
The house looked the same.
Stephen stopped on the sidewalk and looked at the house as a flood of nervousness swallowed him. Paint peeling at the edges of the windows. The number 447 in cheap metal nailed to the door. The cracked ceramic pot where his mother insisted on planting herbs that never survived more than two weeks.
The pot was empty. Dry, compacted soil at the bottom.
He climbed the two steps to the entrance and tested the doorknob. Unlocked.
"Mom?"
Silence.
"Jenny?"
Nothing.
A shadowed darkness greeted him as he entered, half-open curtains providing the only light that reached the room. Everything in its place. The sofa with the plaid blanket folded over the arm. The coffee table with the cup rings his father never let his mother cover with a tablecloth. The television off.
Six months, he thought. Six months and no one moved anything.
"Or no one was here to move it?" he murmured.
He crossed the living room to the hallway. His parents' room, closed. Jenny's room, closed. Bathroom, door ajar.
Stephen pushed the bathroom door open and turned on the light.
The mirror reflected a stranger.
Dark hair falling over his forehead, longer than he'd ever worn it. Sparse beard covering his jaw, uneven, a bit thicker at the chin. Sunken eyes with dark circles that looked like ink stains. And the face. Dried residue on the cheeks. Blood from the Veinskimmer. Ash from the Cinderspine. Sweat accumulated in layers.
The janitor uniform was still intact. Grey pants. Blue shirt with the company name embroidered on the chest. The fabric was torn in some places, stained with things he preferred not to identify.
Stephen turned on the faucet. Cold water. He shoved his hands under the stream and scrubbed his face until the skin burned.
When he looked up again, the stranger in the mirror was still there. Only now he looked cleaner.
He went to his room. The door creaked the same way it always did. The bed was made with that irritating precision only his mother could achieve. He could remember debating the pointlessness of it with his mother, since he would sleep and it would get messy again. The wardrobe still had the same clothes from six months ago. Stephen changed out of the uniform into a black t-shirt and old jeans. The sneakers he kept. They were the only ones he had.
He returned to the front of the house and sat on the two steps.
The sky was grey. The Dragon's Tail mist hung above the rooftops like a layer of static smoke. No sound of cars. No voices. No dogs barking. Nothing.
Stephen rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang while his heart sank so deep his stomach felt trapped.
His father worked the night shift at the refinery. If the mist had descended in June, he was probably home when it happened. His mother taught at the state school three blocks away. Jenny was thirteen and was probably reading something in her room.
Probably.
He tried not to think about the other possibilities. About the statistics Milla had mentioned. Ordinary people in the exposure zone had two options. Transmutation or death. Neither ended well.
But the bodies. If they had died here, the bodies would be here. And the house was empty. Untouched. As if everyone had simply left one day and never returned.
Stephen rubbed his neck with both arms and squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't break. Not now. Collapsing was accepting defeat, accepting they were dead. They were not. They could not be. His arms trembled as he squeezed his neck, as if suffocating could push the anguish away.
He tried to think.
Maybe they had managed to evacuate. Maybe they were in some shelter outside the containment zone. Maybe Jenny was annoyed about missing her fourteenth birthday in December. Maybe his mother was worried. Maybe his father was looking for a way into the zone to find him.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
The scream tore through the silence before Stephen gave in and did the same.
Stephen opened his eyes and raised his head. The sound had come from the east. Two, maybe three streets away. High-pitched. Female. Cut off in the middle as if someone had covered the person's mouth.
Or as if something had done it for her.
He stood up.
"Milla?" Stephen asked as he walked.
Analyzing.
Stephen quickened his pace and spotted a silhouette behind trees and wreckage. He turned right.
The creature occupied the entire street.
The sight of the monster made the air flee from his lungs. The thing was four meters tall. Six articulated legs supported a torso that seemed made of liquid metal, its surface rippling like glass under dim light. Two heads sprouted from a bifurcated neck, each with mandibles that opened in three directions. The grey skin exhaled vapor. The ground beneath it was melting.
Creature identified, Milla said. Designation: Amalgam. Rank A. Detected affinities: Mercury, Antimony, Cinnabar, Silver. Probability of survival in direct combat: below two percent.
Stephen blinked.
The girl was behind an overturned car. Reddish-brown hair, pale face, blood running from a cut on her forehead. She was holding something in her right hand. A metal bar, maybe. Her eyes were fixed on the Amalgam.
The creature knew she was there. One of the heads turned toward the car while the other scanned the buildings around. Looking for more prey, he assumed.
Stephen looked at his own hands. Sulfur Spark had worked against the Brineshade. Cauterize had destroyed the Veinskimmer and the Cinderspine. But those were Rank D and C. This was Rank A.
Two percent. He breathed.
The creature took a step toward the car and the asphalt hissed under its weight. The girl backed away, pressing her back against the crumpled metal.
Stephen decided not to think.
"Sulfur?"
On the pillar to your left. Analysis: Sulfur Spark will not work.
He also decided to ignore it. He took two steps and placed his hand under the charred body of the pillar, already accustomed to the heat when Sulfur reacts.
Then, Stephen ran.
Sulfur Spark ignited in his palm before he crossed half the distance. The heat climbed up his arm and exploded in a tongue of fire that struck the creature's side. The impact produced a white flash.
The Amalgam didn't even turn.
The metallic surface absorbed the fire like water absorbing a drop of ink. The flame spread, sank, disappeared. One of the heads rotated to face him. Liquid silver eyes blinked once.
"Fu—"
The blow came too fast to see.
Stephen felt the impact on his chest before registering the movement. Something struck him with enough force to lift his feet off the ground. The world spun. Colors blurred. Wind in his ears. Then came the wall.
He crashed through a shop window and collided against a metal structure at the back. Shelves collapsed around him. Glass and debris rained over his body. Something punctured his left shoulder. Something else tore at his ribs.
Silence.
Stephen blinked. The ceiling was cracked. Dust floated in the air. He tried to breathe and a sharp pain shot through his chest. His stiff hands wouldn't obey.
Critical damage detected, Milla informed. Three fractured ribs. Puncture wound to left shoulder. Moderate internal hemorrhage. Vitality at twenty-one percent.
He should be dead, the thought came with strange clarity. A blow like that should have broken his spine. Crushed his organs. Turned his bones to dust.
Anomaly detected.
Stephen turned his head. The metal structure he had collided against was a chemical products rack. Torn bags spilled white powder around him. The powder covered his right arm, his legs, part of his face. With some effort, he raised his left hand and felt the powder slide off. His palm trembled at the contact, a crackling tingled across his skin.
Composition: sodium chloride. Estimated purity at ninety-six percent.
Salt.
The damage absorption rate was significantly reduced at the moment of impact. Temporal correlation with exposure to sodium chloride. Hypothesis: the Resonant possesses latent affinity with Salt.
Coupbound.
Stephen looked at the white powder in his hand. Table salt. Bags and bags of table salt.
Outside, the girl screamed.
He stood up. The pain nearly knocked him down again. His ribs protested, his shoulder throbbed, but his legs worked. He staggered to the destroyed window and looked at the street.
The Amalgam had reached the car. One of its articulated legs pierced through the metal like paper. The girl rolled to the side, escaping by centimeters. The metal bar fell from her hand.
The creature raised another leg. The tip dripped something that smoked when it touched the ground.
Stephen looked at the salt in his palm. He didn't know how to use it. Didn't know if it would work. Didn't know anything. The only thing he knew was that improvising had already saved his life.
The leg came down.
He closed his fist and thought about stopping.
The air between Stephen and the girl hardened. White crystals formed from nothing, expanding in a fraction of a second, solidifying into a translucent barrier that intercepted the creature's leg mid-strike.
Tsssk-krk.
The sound was of ice forming. Of something liquid becoming solid in an instant.
The Amalgam recoiled. The leg that had struck the shield was covered in white crystals. The creature's metallic surface hissed where the salt touched, bubbles forming like burns. Both heads emitted a sharp sound, something between a screech and twisting metal.
The shield cracked. Salt fragments fell to the ground.
Stephen felt the cost. His vision darkened at the edges. His knees gave out. He fell on all fours on the asphalt, breathing in short gasps. His hands could barely support his weight, but he couldn't black out. He grunted and forced his weight onto his eyes to see.
Vitality at eleven percent. Severe alchemical exhaustion.
The girl moved.
She grabbed the metal bar from the ground and raised it with both hands. The surface of the metal glowed. Something more silver than light. Something that moved beneath the surface like mercury in a broken thermometer.
"Close your eyes," she said.
Stephen obeyed.
Even through his eyelids, he saw the flash. A silver glow that lasted less than a second. Then came the sound: a wet burst followed by a prolonged hiss, like water hitting boiling oil.
Hsss-KRRK-sssssss...
When he opened his eyes, the Amalgam was coming apart.
The metal bar pierced through the center of the creature's torso. The metallic surface around the impact point was crystallizing, cracking, crumbling into pieces that evaporated before touching the ground. Both heads hung at impossible angles. The six legs folded one by one.
The creature fell. The impact shook the street. Grey vapor rose from the collapsing body, forming a cloud that dissipated in the still air.
Silence.
Stephen remained on his knees, staring at what was left of the Amalgam. A shapeless mass of solidified metal, covered in white crystals and silver stains. The bar pierced through its center still glowed faintly.
The girl approached. She was limping. The cut on her forehead was still bleeding. Her hair was stained red. Her pale skin dirty with residue. Her lips trembled.
"You're an idiot," she said.
Stephen tried to respond. His vision darkened.
The ground came to meet him. The last thing he heard was a static voice.
Kill count updated: Amalgam, Rank A. Total kills: thirty eight.
It wasn't Milla.
"She got the kill" was the last thought before blacking out.