The gunfire had stopped a few minutes earlier, and it had stopped in that way gunfire sometimes does. Not the abrupt silence of an empty magazine, but the more decisive silence of a problem that has ceased to exist.
What reached him now as he moved along the third-floor corridor was something else entirely. Rhythmic. Wet. The sort of sound the brain courteously mislabels once, then again, before reluctantly admitting what it actually is.
And threaded through that unpleasant percussion was her voice.
It had the cadence of someone speaking because the words demanded to be spoken, regardless of whether anyone was left to hear them.
As he drew closer, fragments surfaced from the noise.
-mine, he's mine, you don't get to-
Followed by something that had stopped being language altogether.
Proxy slowed.
He reached the balcony doorway and looked through the gap in the frame.
Dust lay on his back across the tile.
The gunshots had reached him first. The burst pattern across his chest was tight enough to qualify as professional, which was the polite way of saying it. The exit damage on the far side had been less polite.
The tile beneath him had been soaked by the results long enough that the spread had already crept past the drainage crack near the balcony edge and was now on its way toward the rail.
His arm was bent at an angle that anatomy would strongly object to.
His leg was folded beneath him in a configuration suggesting the round Nyx had placed into his thigh had conclusively made his femur give up on being recognizable.
His face was...
His face was what happens when a question receives an answer delivered repeatedly with the stock of a submachine gun. By being smashed again and again.
Nyx was crouched over him with both hands on the grip, still working with mechanical dedication. She had clearly been doing so for a while.
Dust's optical implants, which had been expensive cutting-edge military hardware earlier that morning, were now distributed across the surrounding tile in a pattern the manufacturer likely had not included in the warranty documentation.
She was speaking to him. More accurately, she had been speaking to him for some time.
He was not currently capable of responding, and had not been for several minutes if one judged by the available evidence.
That did not seem to matter.
The speaking itself appeared to be the point.
"-thought you could just-? He's mine. Everything about him is mine. You looked at him. You aimed at him and thought that was something you were allowed to do-"
Proxy stood in the doorway for exactly one second.
Then he took a quiet step backward into the corridor.
He placed his back against the wall. Looked up at the ceiling. Conducted an internal review of the situation.
The analysis took roughly two seconds and arrived at the only answer that possessed any sanity.
He had not seen anything.
He had walked up the stairs and reached this corridor for reasons entirely unrelated to the events currently unfolding fifteen feet away on that balcony.
He would remain here until the sounds stopped.
Afterward he would enter and behave as though encountering the scene for the first time.
This was correct way.
More importantly, it was the only way that did not involve a conversation he lacked the equipment to survive.
She had not seen him.
She was occupied.
He was fine.
"Hey~"
She was beside him.
Proxy did not move immediately.
After a moment he turned his head.
Nyx stood at his left elbow with her head tilted slightly and a small warm smile on her face.
Her hair had come loose and several strands clung to her cheek with something dark that had begun the slow process of drying.
Her shirt had transitioned from its original color into something that language preferred not to catalog politely.
Her hands, still hooked into the SMG sling, were dark up to the wrists.
A fine spray dotted her collarbone in a pattern that could almost pass for freckles if someone were inclined toward optimistic interpretation.
A longer smear stretched from her jaw to her left temple.
Either she had not noticed or she had noticed and considered the matter under unimportant.
Her eyes, however, had returned to their usual pale softness, looking up at him with the expression she reserved exclusively for him.
He watched her for a moment.
"You're covered in blood," he said. "Again."
She glanced down at herself and made a small cutesy sound of mild inconvenience. It was the exact same sound she had made earlier in the courtyard when she had discovered the same issue.
"It's not mine."
"I'm aware of that. That's why I said it."
"You say it like it's a complaint."
"I'm pointing out a habit."
She scrunched up her face and tugged lightly at her collar, examining the damage with the seriousness someone might apply to discovering a coffee stain.
"It's fine. It comes out."
"Does it."
"Mostly."
She released the fabric and looked back up at him, then reclaimed his sleeve with her familiar two-finger grip, like reconnecting a cable that had briefly come loose.
Her expression suggested she was entirely, completely, profoundly unbothered.
"Are you okay? You weren't waiting long, right?"
"No," he said carefully. "I just got here."
Her expression brightened instantly.
"Good timing then!"
He matched her gaze a moment longer than strictly necessary before redirecting his attention toward the balcony doorway and deciding that topic had reached a sufficient level of completion.
He stepped out into the light.
The balcony itself served as a demonstration of what reflex boosters combined with a personal grudge could accomplish in a confined environment.
Proxy stepped around the central exhibit without comment and did what he generally did when presented with information he had already chosen not to discuss.
He searched for what was useful.
Dust's pack sat against the far wall where it had been dropped before the fight. That suggested he had arrived from somewhere else.
Inside were a sealed trauma kit, two ration packs, a water unit, and a secondary magazine pouch containing four loaded magazines that did not belong to the sidearm.
Likely a supply pickup somewhere along the route before he took position.
Proxy transferred the medical kit and food to his own pack and left the rest of the belongings to whatever philosophy governed abandoned property.
Then he noticed the rifle.
It leaned against the balcony rail exactly where Dust had left it when distance stopped being an advantage and he had transitioned to the sidearm.
Calling it a rifle felt like an act of charitable understatement.
The barrel alone was long enough to serve as structural reinforcement in a small building. The body was matte black composite with an electromagnetic charging rail running the entire upper length.
It was currently unpowered but humming faintly in the way expensive technology hums even when pretending to be asleep.
The vibration was subtle enough that you felt it more in your teeth than your ears.
The scope was fixed and roughly the size of a clenched fist, mounted with the seriousness of a device designed to read serial numbers at four hundred meters.
The entire weapon existed for the singular purpose of launching tungsten slugs at velocities that treated the concept of cover as a polite suggestion.
When charged and fired, the recoil demanded either a reinforced skeleton or a valuable educational injury.
Proxy lifted it with both hands.
Felt the weight.
Considered his own skeletal configuration, which remained disappointingly standard.
Considered the practical inconvenience of carrying something that large through a resort complex.
He leaned it back against the rail.
He looked at Nyx.
She was staring at the rifle with an expression he couldn't quite categorize.
"We could take it," he said.
"I don't want it," she replied.
"It's a significant weapon. That guy nearly removed my head with it."
"It's ugly."
She said this with complete sincerity, wrinkling her nose the same way she did when presented with vegetables she did not approve of.
"It's huge and graceless. It looks like a gun a man carries when he's compensating for something."
She snorted.
"I have standards."
Proxy looked at the rifle.
Then at her.
Then briefly at what lay on the tile behind her.
He decided not to pursue that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion.
"Right," he said, adjusting the strap of his pack.
He stepped to the balcony rail and looked out across the resort and the island beyond.
Jungle stretched dark and dense to the north and west. Pale shapes of coastal structures barely registered along the horizon.
Other resort buildings broke the skyline to his left.
Over the western treeline the sky had changed into that shade of orange that signals the sun has fully committed to leaving.
Above it the color faded through amber into a gray that would become full darkness within the hour.
He rested his hands on the rail and watched it.
"That was close," he said, not entirely to her, though she remained the only available listener. "The shot. If your implants hadn't flagged it-"
"They did," she answered from just behind his left shoulder.
"They did. This time."
He watched the orange band along the treeline grow thinner.
"We can't keep walking through exposed corridors and open spaces like tourists. The next attacker doesn't have to be a sniper. Could be anyone. From any direction. The moment we're in the open."
He brought up the deck and ran a passive sweep, scanning the building's ghost network for anything still active.
"We need a base. With enough coverage that I can wire early warning through the building systems and know about trouble before it reaches us."
Nyx stayed quiet for a moment.
He could feel her behind him, with the focus she adopted when she was actually listening rather than simply existing nearby.
"Before it gets dark," she said.
"Before it gets dark."
She made a small sound of agreement and rested her chin on his shoulder from behind, looking out at the same dimming sky while her hair slid forward against his arm.
She didn't say anything else.
She didn't need to.
The orange along the horizon was already fading at the edges, the gray above it slowly tilting toward black, and somewhere on the island there were thirty other people arriving at exactly the same conclusion.