X2-59 held high, she rushed the distracted assassin.
But the Scorpion had retreated to the edge of the building, and before she arrived, he leaped over.
She reached the rooftop’s rim and watched him crash through a window partway down the adjacent building. The assassin vanished within, leaving behind an enlarged window frame in his wake, the outline of his body broken into the surrounding cement.
Watch the street, she sent Horatio and Will mentally. I’ll flush him out.
Be careful. The robot also responded over a mental channel, because the speakers in her helmet wouldn’t operate without an atmosphere to transmit through.
Rhea retreated a few bounding paces, then took a running leap over the edge in pursuit.
She arced through the air and landed on the broken windowsill. She swept her blade inside, first to the left, and then the right, confirming that the Scorpion wasn’t lurking somewhere within to ambush her.
She proceeded inside, using the light from her X2-59 to see by. She augmented the glow with LIDAR, and white wireframes overlaid her vision, outlining the objects in the room. It looked like a bedroom.
She hurried to the hallway and checked the left side. Motion drew her gaze to the right, and she caught a glimpse of a hulking form as it ducked from view down another hall.
She bounded to the remains of a freshly broken door, and slowly peered past the right side, beyond which her target had vanished. In the tall hallway, a chandelier swayed to and fro, indicating the very recent passage of something big. A door on the far side of the hall slowly creaked closed.
Rhea took several bounding steps to that door, quickly reaching it. She kicked it open before it could shut completely and revealed a stairwell beyond.
She heard a thud from upstairs.
She vaulted up the steps, taking the entire flight in two bounds. At the landing, the steps turned back, and she similarly surmounted the next flight.
At the top, the door had been kicked off its hinges.
She peered past, checking both sides with her blade, and then slowly emerged. A window was broken not far from her on the left, which offered a view of the street below.
She rushed to the window and peered down. There was no sign of her enemy below. No hulking body. No footsteps in the snow.
She deactivated LIDAR, since it wasn’t needed, and glanced upward. She spotted the tip of a tail swaying on the rooftop she had only just left. She realized the Scorpion had doubled back to come at Horatio from behind. Though that tail swayed, it remained in the same general area, as if the Scorpion was pinning someone, and preparing to deal with them in a similar manner as he had planned with Rhea.
Horatio!
She had held her breath through all of this, and it was in that moment her vision decided to grow darker, slowly turning tunnel-like. She was becoming hypoxic. She needed oxygen.
Just a bit longer…
She pulled herself onto the window, but the angle was bad for an immediate leap onto the roof, so Rhea retracted the X2-59, and scrambled up the exterior of the building. It wasn’t difficult, since the Scorpion had left hand and footholds crushed into the surface for her. She quickly reached the rooftop and spotted the Scorpion on the opposite roof, his back to her. Horatio was pinned beneath him.
Gritting her teeth, she retreated, and took a running leap, arcing high into the air.
She came plummeting down toward the Scorpion. She activated her X2-59 again, and the glowing blade thrust forth. Its light must have given her away, because the Scorpion rolled to the side before she could strike, releasing Horatio to get out of the way.
She landed harmlessly beside the robot, and immediately saw the damage the Scorpion had inflicted: he had bent back Horatio’s forearms, rendering the built-in rifles inoperative.
She spun toward the Scorpion, who slowly backed away. The tunnel enclosing her vision had increased to consume half her perspective by then, so that all peripheral sight was lost. Everything remaining seemed murky, covered in a layer of black fog. She was forced to activate her LIDAR, but even that seem somehow less substantial, the white lines faint.
The Scorpion continued to retreat: the inert tail dragged along the rooftop before him, leaving a trail in the snow, while his working tail swayed back and forth patiently.
Then he stopped and remained still.
He was obviously waiting for her to come to him once again. He knew she was close to blacking out: the usage of LIDAR on a relatively well-lit rooftop must have given it away.
Horatio stood, and sent a mental message. I’ll try to distract him. His voice sounded distant.
Rhea couldn’t muster a response. The words wouldn’t come.
The robot started forward at a slow shuffle, which became a rapid bound. Horatio raced directly for the Scorpion, and at the last moment leaped up and over the assassin. The enemy spun to follow Horatio’s arcing vault, and that tail stabbed upward; Horatio twisted to one side, but was still hit, his body contorting as he was thrown even higher.
Two words filled Rhea’s mind.
Strike now.
Her vision had almost failed her entirely, but she bounded forward anyway. At least her body wasn’t any weaker: her artificial muscles relied upon electricity for energy, not oxygen, ATP, or glucose.
Operating mostly on instinct and muscle memory, she leaped at the distracted Scorpion. She focused her failing mind on her objective, and the lone stratagem that had come to her in these, her final moments. She couldn’t help but grin.
If she was going to die, she was going to bring the Scorpion with her.
The assassin’s head tilted toward her as she hurtled through the air at him, and the moment he met her eyes, she activated her headlamps at their maximum brightness. She had maybe half a second of blindness to work with before his light autogating circuitry kicked in,
