The corridor ended without ceremony, which one suppose is the architectural equivalent of a jump scare. One step they were in a narrow hallway, the next they were released into the pool complex, a space that technically had a ceiling once but currently seemed undecided on the matter.
Half of the retractable roof had collapsed inward at some forgotten point in history, and the surviving half had been enthusiastically adopted by climbing vines that clearly believed structural failure was less a tragedy and more an invitation.
The result was a courtyard that couldn't decide whether it was indoors or outdoors, so it compromised by being both poorly.
A wide tiled deck ran alongside three empty lap pools, while a fourth pool at the near end, circular and shallow, had once been a leisure feature and had since reinvented itself as a planter.
Along the right wall stretched the bar, a long dark-wood counter with bottles still racked neatly behind glass shelves, their labels faded into near-anonymity by years of trapped heat.
The pools themselves displayed variety.
The lap pools were dry and cracked, the tiles split like old paint.
The circular pool had managed to collect rainwater and maintain a stagnant little ecosystem, reflecting the humid sky like a lazy mirror.
Proxy walked into this scene at the same pace he always used, which I had come to suspect was not so much a pace as a philosophy.
Without visible effort he performed a threat assessment, the sort that happens automatically when someone's mind treats every environment like a puzzle with hostile solutions.
Nyx unhooked her fingers from his sleeve for the first time in twenty minutes.
She walked a half-circle around the nearest dry pool, studying the place with the curiosity of someone arriving somewhere they'd imagined beforehand.
She looked at the green water in the pool for a moment.
Then she looked at the bar.
"We could have a vacation," she said.
"We could also have a firefight. The island appears to be offering both."
"But it's a resort." She gestured broadly at the space, at the collapsed elegance of it, the vine-choked grandeur. "Look at it. It's sad that we can't actually use it."
"I find very little about our situation sad," Proxy replied. "Mostly because we are still alive, which tends to put other emotions into perspective."
Nyx turned and fell into step beside him again, reclaiming his sleeve with the familiar two-finger grip.
She stayed quiet for about four seconds.
Which, admittedly, is the conversational equivalent of winding up before throwing something.
"I had a swimsuit," she said.
He did not respond, which in conversational terms meant he had noticed the bait and declined the hook.
"For the trip," she continued patiently. "The one that got interrupted when we got kidnapped. I had it packed."
"That seems unfortunate."
"It was really cute."
She paused.
Another four seconds, just to maintain rhythm.
"Pink. Little bow in the back."
"Mm."
"You're not going to ask?"
"I wasn't planning to."
Nyx made a small dissatisfied sound and stepped slightly in front of him, walking backward so she could examine his face directly.
It's a maneuver that works surprisingly often because most people dislike colliding with things.
Proxy, unfortunately, adapted by continuing forward anyway.
Nyx was forced to adjust her speed.
"I think you would have liked it," She said, observing him with what I considered admirable patience. "The swimsuit."
"I think I would have looked at it and continued walking."
"You'd have looked," She said, and her voice changed slightly into the tone she uses when she's not technically asking anymore. "Mm. You always do. You just pretend you don't."
"I'm a netrunner. I look at everything. That doesn't determine my interest."
"So you would have looked. At my swimsuit, at my little perky-"
"Nyx."
"Just admit it."
She had stopped walking backward and returned beside him, very close now, shoulders almost touching.
The sing-song tone had fully entered her voice, which meant she was enjoying herself.
Nyx tilted her head upward to study him.
"You'd have looked twice."
"I would have glanced and moved on."
"Twice though."
"Once is typically sufficient for-"
Nyx stopped.
Not the casual stopping people do when they decide they've reached a teasing point.
The other kind.
The kind where a system halts because something interrupted the process.
Every soft, teasing, warm thing she had been doing a moment earlier vanished instantly, like a signal disappearing from a map.
My hand slipped off his sleeve.
My chin lifted.
And my eyes changed.
Proxy saw it because he was already looking directly at my face.
It happened in under a second.
My normally pale irises ignited from behind with cold luminescent amber, the color of a targeting system shifting into active mode.
My optical implants pushed combat processing forward and shoved everything else out of the way.
My pupils contracted sharply.
Whatever I had been about to say simply ceased to exist.
I placed one hand flat against his chest and shoved him sideways with zero restraint.
He staggered into the space between two lounger frames and dropped to one knee.
Then the shot came through.
It crossed the exact space his head had occupied half a second earlier.
Not approximately.
Not metaphorically.
Precisely that coordinate in three-dimensional space.
The round struck the pillar five meters beyond with the sound of metal striking stone.
Tile fragments snapped off the base and skittered across the deck.
The echo ricocheted around the pool complex and faded into the vines.
Proxy remained still for exactly one breath.
Then his brain finished understanding the sequence of events and he moved.
Low.
Fast.
In the same direction Nyx was already moving.
They reached the bar together, dropping behind the counter so the solid wood and shelving separated them from the direction the shot had come from.
Nyx crouched behind the near end of the bar.
Her eyes were still that cold amber.
When she looked at him, there was no warmth in it, none of the softer expressions she usually aimed his way.
She had the sort of focus someone directs at who they are determined not to let get hurt.
When she spoke, her voice contained only the parts necessary for understanding.
"Stay behind this," She said. "Don't move."
"I was going to suggest-"
Nyx was already gone.
He heard the movement before he tracked it visually.
A lounger frame creaked as she vaulted it.
A half-second pause.
Then the SMG opened in a tight three-round burst aimed toward the eastern elevation.
The sound inside the tiled pool complex carried loudly, amplified by every hard surface.
Silence followed.
Then movement again.
Through the opening at the bar's edge he caught a glimpse of Nyx crossing from the lounge stack to the far pool divider in less time than the distance should have allowed, her implants forcing her legs into speeds that ignored human preference.
She reached cover and paused only as long as necessary.
Burst.
Move.
The SMG spoke again towards whoever occupied that balcony, not trying to score a hit so much as suppressing his capability to fire back.
Proxy turned his attention inward.
He expanded the deck of his neural interface outward, pushing beyond the comfortable range where he usually ran passive scans.
Past that.
Farther.
His signal spread through the resort's dead grid and into the eastern face of the building.
The network there resembled everything else on the island.
Derelict systems, ghost routines drifting through abandoned access points.
But ghost routines weren't what he was looking for.
He was pinging for something alive.
And he found it roughly forty meters away and three floors up.
A tight pulsing signal.
An optical targeting system running full combat protocols, constantly pinging for targets, calculating depth and trajectory, and transmitting those through a neural relay into the nervous system of the person behind the scope.
Expensive hardware.
The type built to convert a human into a weapon.
More importantly, it was a networked device.
Which meant it was an opening.
"East side," Proxy called, projecting his voice over Nyx's next burst of gunfire. "Third floor balcony. Northeast corner. He's using optical targeting."
A brief pause.
"I'm going for his eyes."
He was already inside.
Proxy entered the output layer of the targeting feed and spammed it.
Static.
False signals.
Phantom depth measurements.
Fabricated targets appearing across the visual feed at irregular intervals.
Whatever he saw through those implants now wasn't the pool deck, wasn't the bar, wasn't even the island.
Proxy exhaled slowly.
Through the gap at the end of the bar he watched Nyx react to the information in real time.
She didn't need to turn back toward him.
The cue in his voice was enough.
She broke from the pool divider at a burst that led directly toward the northeast corner of the building.
Her eyes remained amber.
The SMG stayed raised.
She passed through the far door of the pool complex without slowing.