Dyna’s gun barked three times as she fired down one of the long aisles of the department store. She didn’t stand still after firing, immediately ducking down and moving, keeping a close eye on her mirror to know if she should dive for cover or swap directions.

Someone returned fire in her direction. The mirror didn’t change, so they didn’t have eyes on her, but she heard a nearby display case shatter and the bright muzzle flashes momentarily flashed the store with white-orange light. Distant cracks without any accompanying bullets hitting nearby likely meant that Hematite was still active and running around on the other side of the store. Theoretically, Dyna could try to get Hematite’s perspective up on her mirror to check, but she needed it for herself at the moment. It was her only real defense.

She weaved between two mannequins that were covered in robes like giant shrouds, hiding behind them when she saw another soldier round a corner into an aisle across from hers. Her mirror lit up as she shot him twice. She ducked behind the podium the mannequins were on and let loose another couple shots. A loud bang echoed in front of her, followed by a flurry of gunfire from... Hematite?

No. The shots were too fast. They came from a submachine gun.

The glass display cases all around her shattered in response, spilling jewelry everywhere as though she had just pulled off a very successful robbery. The second wave of shooting started again, this time much closer than before. She didn't know how many more rounds she had left in her magazine—she wasn't particularly interested in finding out either way right now. She reached back and took hold of one of mannequin legs and shoved it, knocking it back in the opposite direction from where she ran, hoping it would serve as a minor distraction.

She aimed for the legs, making the most use of the shadows and angles to hide herself while she fired until there was no point anymore. The one who turned into the aisle went down, but there were still others out there. Her gun clicked empty. No amount of squeezing would make it go any farther. Dyna reached back, grasping for one of her spare magazines, only to grab at nothing but air. She had grabbed two fifteen round magazines before leaving. Had she really run through them both already?

Deciding the gun was extra and useless weight, she tossed it aside on top of a pair of sunglasses which skidded away along the floor.

The mirror went dark.

She backed up against a wall and braced her feet on something that felt like carpet underfoot. In the distance, a bell rang once and then fell silent again. Hematite? Was that supposed to have been a communication of some sort? Did that mean she was safe? Or did she need to be running even faster?

First, she needed a new weapon. Even though this was Idaho, Dyna didn't think she had seen any display cases holding weapons. That meant there was really only one source for a new gun.

Looping back around, taking the wide path around as many racks of clothing as she could, Dyna headed back to the bedding section of the store. She found what she wanted just around the corner in an area filled with fluffy pillows and sheets in every size imaginable. The room was littered with them in heaps and piles, stacked high enough to reach from ground level all the way to the ceiling.

The soldier she had shot first was still there. He had moved somewhat, leaving a trail of blood as he put his back against one of the shelves. He was tying something around his legs. Bandage, tourniquet, or whatever it was, the action was costing him both of his hands.

His submachine gun sat on the floor at his side.

Moving again, careful to keep an eye on her mirror and an ear open for any sign of his friends, Dyna circled around him until she was coming up from behind. The shelf he had his back to would help hide her presence. She crept forward until she was standing beside the wounded man, just around the side of the shelf.

She could hear him grunting and hissing in pain. He mumbled under his breath. Probably cursing, though Dyna couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t English. She was fairly certain she had heard him say something in English just before shooting him, but supposed that she could have mistaken it.

A quick glimpse around the corner got her the information she needed.

The gun was not attached to him. It was on the floor, a completely free. It might have been attached with straps or a lanyard at one point, but it looked like he had taken that off to use it as his tourniquet.

In a flash, Dyna jumped around the side of the shelf, grabbed the submachine gun, then jumped away as fast as she could, keeping her new acquisition pointed directly at him.

The man let out an accented “Shit!” before going very still.

She peered down the dim red dot sight, finger firmly on the trigger. Her thumb found what had to be a safety on the side, but she didn’t know what position it was in. In the dim emergency lights, she couldn’t see well enough. She kept her thumb on the switch, just in case the gun didn’t fire when she pulled the trigger.

Dyna considered running off. She had taken done one other of the soldiers. Hematite must have taken down one by now too, though counting on that before getting into contact with her was a dangerous assumption to make. Still, if the board was right, there should only be two active soldiers left.

Based on the scattered yet distant gunfire, they weren’t nearby.

She should run off and deal with them immediately, but…

She had one of them right here in front of her.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Who sent you? Who do you work for? What are you after? Answer me, unless you want your face to look like your knee.”

Dyna spoke with a nervous haste. Her heart was hammering in her chest. It had been hammering since the gunfire started, but right now, it was loud enough that the soldier could probably hear it. If the soldier really didn’t speak English, or even had English as a second language, her nervous chatter was probably barely intelligible.

Still, he didn’t answer. Instead, he just growled some more before letting off another string of words in what might have been French. He let out an almost animalistic hiss between each word. The sound made her jump slightly, despite it likely not being directed at her. It was the pain.

Probably.

Deciding to test the status of the safety, Dyna pointed the gun off to the side and gave a quick pull of the trigger.

The submachine gun belched out bullets. It wasn’t full auto. Three round burst? The suppressor on the front kept them from being as hard on her ears as her own gun had been, but it was still enough to give away her position.

Though he sucked in a sharp breath, he clamped his jaw and didn’t say anything.

Deciding against sticking around any longer, she backed away, keeping the gun trained on him. With her offhand holding onto the front of the gun’s angled guard as a forward handle, it was a bit more awkward to hold her mirror in such a way that she could see it, but she really just needed to watch for any flashes of its single dark lens that might indicate someone else catching sight of her.

As soon as she was out of sight of the injured soldier—confirming that through her mirror—Dyna ran once again.

French. Were these people from the European Union? Or had it simply sounded French to her ignorant ears? The EU was supposed to be allied with the United States. Were they just mercenaries working for someone else?

Time to think later. For now, she needed to survive.

Though… sitting still and listening… Dyna didn’t hear any more gunshots.

Had Hematite finished the last three off? Or had she gotten captured or killed and now the three remaining soldiers were all after Dyna?

Dyna couldn’t risk calling out, but over in the bedding section, she knew roughly where Hematite had been headed when they split up. Turning herself in that direction, she started walking slowly and carefully, keeping an eye out for any sign of flashlights sweeping across the aisles, watching her mirror, and straining her ears for heavy footsteps or rustling gear.

What she heard was neither. She didn’t hear gunshots either.

Instead, she heard crying. Soft, whimpering, crying. It did not sound like it was coming from a grown man either.

“Hematite?” Dyna tested, voice barely above a whisper.

The crying hitched. “Who—Dy—Onyx?”

Keeping her newly acquired gun at the ready, Dyna pushed around a thick rack of spring jackets.

Hematite sat on the ground, gun clutched to her chest. Around her, there were two bodies. Both obviously dead. The clear goggles on one soldier, slumped against a broken mirror, had shattered where his face had filled with lead. The other was face down in a steadily growing pool of blood.

“Are you alright?”

Hematite hopped, fumbling with the gun. Dyna felt a knot form in her stomach, something that said that Hematite was beyond unsuitable for this kind of work and, especially, unsuitable to handle a firearm. Had she even had training? Just watching her hold it made her nervous and that was with the slide being locked back, indicating that the gun was empty.

Thankfully, Hematite noticed who was there and calmed down—though calm might not be quite the best word to use. Perhaps it was better to say that she didn’t freak out any further.

“They shot each other,” Hematite said. “I couldn’t hit them. I tried. Then I tried running. That one surprised that one—” She waved her empty gun from the face-down guy to the other. “Or… maybe it was the other way around? I don’t know. The bullets came so close. I…” She moved a hand up to her head, just above her ear.

Though her newly acquired weapon had a flashlight on the front, Dyna wasn’t aiming it at Hematite. Even still, the light bled over enough to see where some of Hematite’s dark hair had been… torn? Burned? Shaved? One of the bullets must have skimmed the side of her head.

Dyna looked from one body to the other. Was that how Hematite’s supernatural luck manifested? The two taking each other out?

“We’re not out of this yet,” Dyna said slowly.

Hematite gave her a quick look up, then turned away again, staring into space. Shock?

They didn’t have time for shock. “The board said five threats here. You… Two are here. I shot the knee out of one and took his gun—though he might have a sidearm. I shot another, but didn’t stick around to check if he was capable of getting back up. Even assuming he isn’t—a bad assumption—that still leaves one.”

Dyna took her eyes off Hematite long enough to look around. No sign of any other flashlight beams sweeping over the department store. At least not here in the men’s clothing section. Her mirror lenses were dark as well.

Were they still being hunted? Or had the incapacitation of a majority of their members frightened the last one off? Dyna couldn’t count on that, but it would have been nice.

“Are we still dying, according to your intuition?” Dyna asked.

She could hardly believe that she was currently alive as it was. Five special forces soldiers against her? Granted, she had only really engaged with two of them. But still, she didn’t even have supernatural luck unless Hematite’s aura of probability manipulation covered her as well.

It made her nervous. Like, if that was all that was after them, Ruby could have handled it in her sleep. Hematite’s power, apparently, could handle it as well. Dyna probably would have fallen if all five had converged on her at once, but she wasn’t all that special compared to the other artificers. And yet, if all three of them were supposed to die, there just had to be something else lurking around.

Hematite tensed, stiffening her back and snapping her head one way then another. The movement did not go unnoticed.

“See something?” Dyna asked, locking her submachine gun into the crook of her shoulder as she readied to fire.

“We… We need to move,” Hematite said.

“Intuition?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad?”

“Yeah.”

Hematite stood, slowly. She let her gun drop from her fingertips and made no effort to pick it back up. Though she stared after it for a moment, she eventually stepped over it, moving right next to Dyna. Dyna almost asked her to go pick up one of the submachine guns from the two soldiers on the ground, but decided against it at the last moment.

Having seen Hematite wield her pistol, both here and in the alley, Dyna rather thought they had a slightly better chance if Hematite was not armed. Besides, with her power apparently conspiring to make two opponents shoot each other, she probably didn’t need a gun.

“My phone,” Dyna said. “Right jacket pocket.” She wanted to get it out herself, but between the submachine gun being far more unwieldy than a pistol and wanting to keep her mirror ready and pointed in her direction for the fastest reaction time she could manage, she just didn’t have the hands to spare.

Hematite slipped two fingers in and slowly pulled it out as they walked. They stuck to the back walls as they moved back toward the employee only area they had started in, keeping far from the aisles to put as much cover between them and their potential opponents as possible.

“Beatrice?” Hematite said. “Alive, I guess. For now. Well, yes. I don’t know what is after us. Might be more soldiers. Five. I guess we’ve only downed four?”

“Ruby?” Dyna asked.

“Dy—Onyx wants to know about Ruby.” Hematite paused a long moment before sighing. “Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

Dyna tensed, sucking in a sharp breath.

Hematite quickly waved a hand. “She’s okay. Kind of. Regenerating at the moment. The team that was supposed to reinforce us found her kind of mangled and broken.”

“Mangled?” Dyna allowed herself to relax a tiny bit. At least Ruby was safe. For Ruby-centric definitions of the word ‘safe’ anyway. “She wasn’t just fighting soldiers?”

“I don’t know. She apparently isn’t in much of a position to talk.”

“Can’t Sapphire read her mind?”

“I think he needs an intact mind to read.”

Dyna grimaced, remembering Ruby’s encounter with the bowling ball.

“What about reinforcements for us?” Hematite asked, putting the phone to her ear again. “Whatever got to Ruby is probably heading toward us. Dyna and I can’t exactly put ourselves back together from a pile of tenderized meat!” Her voice pitched at the end.

Though the sentiment did not go unshared. Ruby was good with a gun and good with a knife. If something… pulped her despite that skill, Dyna wasn’t sure what good this submachine gun was going to do. And with both Hematite and the Ouija board indicating that Hematite wouldn’t be able to deal with it either with her super luck…

They needed something more than a gun.

A proper weapon to fight against a psychic, artificer, or entity.

Finding out what it was might go a long way. “Can Beatrice translate French?”

Hematite glanced over, one eyebrow up, but repeated the question. “Yes. And any other language that is commonly spoken around the world.”

“Great. There is a downed soldier with a blown out knee in the bedding section. I last saw him tending to his blown out knee next to the shelves of memory foam mattress toppers.”

“You sound like we’re splitting up again.”

Dyna nodded. “Don’t know how much time we have.” The board might be able to answer that, but that would also take time to run back and grab it. Time she needed to run through the store. “Try to find out what we’re fighting from him, but be careful, he might still have a sidearm or knives or who knows what. And there is still at least one threat in the building, according to the board.”

“Where are you going?”

Dyna took a breath. She honestly wasn’t sure just yet. This was a department store. She hadn’t seen any guns during her run through the store, but there were plenty of other things. They had Allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters, and a hundred other odd items. One of those would stick out to her. She might not be able to make a proper, full artifact, but she had made emergency tools in the past. Ado’s goggles stood out as a prime example.

And with Hematite here as an alternate source of psionic energy, she might be able to make them better or faster than she could on her own.

She just needed to find items with proper defensive or offensive themes.

All while keeping an eye out for other soldiers that were probably still wandering around.

“I’m going to find us some more weapons.”