No matter which life you're living, it is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

  ~Andre Gide, author and Nobel Prize winner for literature.

  Gregorios followed Tomas quickly out of the elevator on the twenty-second floor, and Sarah slipped out a couple seconds later. The entryway faced a single, ornate door but was otherwise empty.

  Gregorios used his card device to open the door, and Tomas led the way carefully inside. A slight scent of incense floated in the air.

  As the men moved silently down either side of the entry hall, weapons at the ready, Sarah trailed behind, gripping her bear spray so tight her fingers ached. She focused on trying to keep her breathing calm and avoid panting.

  Every muscle felt tense and a little shaky. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her hands shook. What were they doing breaking and entering? How much did she really know about Tomas anyway?

  He’d saved her life twice. How much more did she need to know?

  As they stopped at the threshold of a large kitchen that shone with stainless steel and granite surfaces, a woman’s voice called from deeper within the expansive suite. “In the salon.”

  Sarah jumped and took a step toward the exit, expecting the men to retreat now that their cover was blown.

  They didn’t. Tomas glanced at Gregorios, who shrugged. Then they continued their careful advance, efficiently swept the kitchen and living room, and moved into the hall on the far side.

  When Tomas ignored Sarah’s silent waving, she wanted to scream at them to back up and think about it. Obviously someone knew they were coming. Continuing into the suite had to be a bad idea. If the paintings weren’t so clearly expensive, she’d have snatched one off the wall and hit Tomas over the head with it. That would get his attention.

  They passed a plush library and paused in the entrance to a grand salon that could have been taken from any palace. Several overstuffed chairs and a long couch took up the center of the room near a gleaming black grand piano.

  More antique wooden chairs were positioned around the perimeter of the room, along with ornate little tables. A large black canvas roller bag stood next to the piano.

  Tereza sat in an overstuffed chair near the piano, facing the doorway. She had been one of Mai Luan’s assistants, one of the women Eirene had been hunting. That did not bode well. Worse, Tereza looked unconcerned by the pistols aimed in her direction.

  “You’re late. I expected you at least half an hour ago.”

  Gregorios shrugged, “You’ll wish I’d taken longer soon enough.”

  “One of us will,” she replied with a little smile.

  Sarah followed Tomas into the room, each step a struggle. She wanted to leave, but she felt more scared for Eirene than ever. If Tereza had hurt Eirene, Gregorios would take her apart, Tomas would stomp flat anything that remained, and Sarah would volunteer to burn the remains. She focused on her anger, using it to quell some of her fear.

  Tereza glanced in her direction. “Sarah, my dear. So glad you’re alive and well.” Her tone made the words a lie. She gestured at a nearby table with tiny sandwiches and several little bottles of fancy water. “Won’t you join me?”

  “I think we’ll take it to go,” Gregorios said, advancing farther into the room, Final Transfer dart pistol trained on Tereza. “On your feet.”

  “You do realize I’m sponsored by the council in today’s activities?”

  “All of them?”

  She smiled and tapped her crystal glass twice with a tiny silver fork. “Absolutely.”

  The bedroom doors on either side of the salon flew open and men dressed in street clothes charged into the room.

  Gregorios reacted with startling speed, pivoting to face the three men emerging from the left, and drawing his forty-five. Even as Sarah was still digesting the unexpected assault, he shot the first attacker in the chest with the Final Transfer.

  The gun made a surprisingly gentle whooshing sound that merged with Tomas’s first shot. He had moved just as fast as Gregorios and turned toward the three men charging from the right. His twin projectiles caught the lead attacker in the face, and the man collapsed with a scream that became a garbled, inarticulate cry.

  Sarah watched in terrified fascination as the man Gregorios shot staggered under the electric shock, but did not fall. He was a grotesquely-muscled giant and the knock-out drugs apparently were too weak to drop him.

  He honestly reminded her of the cat in the tutorial, swollen into a monster by a magic stat-boosting symbol. Uh oh. Could people do that to themselves too? If so, they were in serious trouble.

  The man slowed and picked the darts out of his skin as his companions continued past. He grinned. “That tickled.”

  The man Tomas had just shot also started struggling back to his knees. Sarah retreated and expected the men to join her racing for the exit.

  They did not.

  Gregorios called out in a surprisingly calm voice. “Enhanced.”

  “Not enforcers,” Tomas snapped.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Things started happening almost too fast for Sarah to follow.

  Gregorios emptied the magazines of his Final Transfer pistol into the closest of the advancing attackers while at the same time repeatedly shooting the second with his H&K. The sharp cracking of the pistol sounded soft and distant through the ear plugs she wore, and Sarah was grateful for them.

  She’d heard pistols fired up close at the shooting range, and they were so loud they hurt even in open spaces. She wished she had vision filters to block the image of the man staggering under the onslaught, blood spraying with every impact.

  Both men slowed, then collapsed almost close enough to touch Gregorios’s feet.

  His guns clicked empty just as he turned them on the third attacker. The giant lunged and punched Gregorios so fast his hand seemed to blur in the air. The fist slammed Gregorios in the chest and sent him flying past Sarah to crash into the wall.

  The attacker raced past Sarah, even as she raised her bear spray and fumbled with the safety. Just as Gregorios rose shakily to his feet, the man swept up a heavy, overstuffed chair and threw it.

  Gregorios managed to get one arm up before the chair smashed him back into the wall so hard he cracked the wood paneling.

  The big brute lifted him out of the wreckage, and Sarah was horrified to see the bone of one of Gregorios’ arms protruding from his broken flesh. Instead of screaming in pain, Gregorios calmly kicked the attacker between the legs.

  Even that brute couldn’t ignore a kick like that.

  Gregorios slipped out of the huge man’s grasp as the giant staggered, clutching at his groin.

  Sarah shoved the bear spray into her pocket, swept up a broken chair leg, and clubbed the brute in the back of the head. It thumped off his skull, but didn’t seem to bother him, despite her enhanced strength.

  He started to turn in her direction, but Gregorios punched him in the throat. That finally dropped him to the ground where he writhed and gagged for breath

  A shouted curse drew Sarah back around to where Tomas had been firing both guns at one of his attackers. The man had collapsed into an unmoving heap. The last man had paused, to cut into his leg with a slender knife, slicing right through his pants.

  Whoa! He was adding a symbol of power. Sarah was disgusted and fascinated in equal measure. It was horrible to see a person mutilate themselves like that, but she couldn’t help wonder what effects he would produce.

  She felt surprisingly relieved to see real-life echoes of what she’d trained in the tutorial. She hadn’t gone insane. This was living proof of that.

  Tomas dropped the spent magazines and slammed home fresh ones just as the bleeding marks on the man’s leg began to glow with blue-white light. The man leaped forward and blurred across the room in a super-fast rush.

  Somehow Tomas anticipated the move and threw himself to the floor. The fast-running attacker couldn’t stop in time, tripped over Tomas, and tumbled past Sarah all the way to the far wall.

  Tomas chased him down and when he rose, Tomas beat him over the head with an ornate chair.

  Then the first man Tomas had shot rushed past Sarah and tackled Tomas so hard he drove him right through the wall and into the library. Books thundered down off the disrupted bookshelf and drywall dust billowed into the room.

  The sight of Tomas fallen, blood on his face, shocked Sarah out of her frozen surprise. The same thrill she’d felt when facing the monsters in the tutorial swept through her and she shouted and jumped onto the back of the attacker.

  Her weight knocked him forward, but he didn’t fall. Instead he spun and heaved on one of her arms. She lost her grip on his shoulders and tumbled back across the room toward the piano.

  She came to a painful stop close to Tereza, the soft carpet cushioning the impacts. Tereza put down one of the tiny sandwiches and mocked her with a clap. “Valiant effort. Stupid, but valiant.”

  The woman pulled out her phone and started snapping photos as the men fought and shouted and cursed in close hand-to-hand combat. The man who had thrown Sarah across the room went after Tomas, but something hissed loudly from the library, sounding like compressed air, and the man staggered back, clawing at his eyes and bellowing in pain.

  Gregorios, who had just knocked the last of his assailants to the ground, slammed a fresh magazine into his Final Transfer and fired all fifteen shots into the screaming brute’s back.

  Gregorios looked battered, with blood running down one cheek and soaking his broken arm, but none of that slowed him as he turned toward Tereza. He focused on her with a look of such anger that Sarah cringed away.

  Tereza snapped another photo. “Best show in the house.”

  While Gregorios advanced, he grasped his broken arm with his good hand and, with a smooth, steady pull, set the arm. The sight of the jagged bone slipping back into his flesh nearly made Sarah sick. Gregorios didn’t even flinch.

  Several of the fallen attackers began to stir, despite the beating they’d just taken. Tomas rushed from one to the next, clubbing them in the back of the head with his pistol. He also pulled up the backs of their shirts. Most of the men had dully glowing red symbols tattooed onto their skin.

  He calmly shot each of them with his Final Transfer dart pistol repeatedly. With each double strike, the glow from the tattoos faded. He stopped firing when the marks changed to black.

  Instead of tattoos, the giant and the man who had knocked Tomas through the wall both wore slender black packs strapped to the small of their backs. Tomas ripped the packs off and tossed them away. The giant’s grotesquely bulging muscles deflated to half their size, and the other man slumped unconscious to the floor. It was just like when she’d cut the monsters’ symbols in the tutorial.

  “We’ve got a couple of Occans and a bunch of Charlies,” Tomas said.

  “That’s very interesting,” Gregorios said as he approached Tereza. “And you still claim to be working with council sanction?”

  Sarah looked from one to the other, confused by the cryptic conversation, barely holding back the flood of questions bouncing through her mind. Tomas clearly knew about body-enhancing symbols and how to counter them.

  Tereza, looking less sure of herself, lifted her camera. “One more shot.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Sarah sprayed her in the face with the bear spray.

  Tereza shrieked and tumbled from the chair, rubbing at her eyes.

  Tomas kicked her back to the ground as she tried to rise.

  Gregorios ignored the screaming Tereza, stepped past Sarah, and knocked over the large black roller bag she’d noticed when they first entered. He shoved it under the piano, then extended a hand to Sarah. “Are you all right?”

  Tereza shouted from the ground where she still clutched at her face, “I’m not through with you yet!”

  She raised her phone again and pushed the button. A thunderous boom shook the room and the piano rocked off the floor with a discordant jangle. A cloud of dust billowed out from under the piano, smelling of gunpowder and wood polish. Sarah stumbled away from the new disaster.

  Tomas emerged through the thick haze and took her hand. She wrapped her arms around him and asked through a coughing fit, “What was that?”

  “Military-issue weighted net, propelled with an explosive charge,” Gregorios said. “In that roller bag I pushed under the piano.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Sarah asked.

  He shrugged. “The placement was suspicious and I’ve seen them used before.”

  Tereza shouted something that sounded like a curse, but in a language Sarah didn’t know.

  Gregorios grabbed Tereza by the chin. “Enough games. Where’s my wife?”

  “I’m not privy to that information. Now unless you want me to file formal charges with the council--”

  He punched her in the nose.

  “To every level of hell with the council,” he growled. “Answer me or you’ll learn exactly how it feels to be dispossessed for a very long time.”

  That cowered her, but the outer door to the penthouse crashed open and the sound of many feet echoed through the trashed room.

  “You’re out of time, old man,” Tereza said with renewed confidence.

  He punched her again, hard, on the side of the head. She fell unmoving to the floor. Then he turned to face the approaching enemy.

  “I’m starting to get annoyed.”