Perhaps an inch and a half across, the Allomantic grenade hummed as she burned cadmium — and it absorbed her energy. She wasn’t swallowed by a bubble of slowness; with these new designs, all the power went into the box. She’d charged it earlier, but that had been hours ago and she wanted to top it off.
Then, judging the distance carefully, she tossed it toward a group of enemies who had gathered behind some boxes for cover. Her months of practice paid off; she managed to land the device right in the center of the gangsters, who — focused on Wayne — barely noticed it rolling among them.
The grenade used ettmetal, which was tightly regulated by the Malwish, so she didn’t blame the gangsters for not knowing what to do; even among the Malwish these were rare. If the men had heard of the devices — and they might have, since the Set was known to employ them — they had likely never seen one.
A second later, a bubble of slowed time popped up around the device, trapping about ten of the men and women. She quickly topped off, then threw, the second of her three grenades — this one aimed at a group of enemies farther along. Her aim was true, and she ensnared another eight.
Calls of “Metalborn!” echoed through the cavern as the rest of the gangsters noticed that over half their number were frozen. Those would move in turgid slow motion as they tried to escape the bubble — but the ten-minute charge on the grenade would run out before they managed it.
She unslung her rifle and laid down covering fire — even picking off two of those remaining — as Wayne slipped into the main chamber. He moved in a blur of speed for a moment, then popped out of his speed bubble and leaped over a cleft in the rock. It took a bit between uses for him to recover his talents and put up another bubble, but she swore that time was shrinking.
He avoided the trapped people; she and he would deal with them later. For now he took advantage of the confusion to get in close to a couple of enemies. They noticed him, but he became a blur again — then came in from above, dueling canes held high.
Their shouts of pain distracted the others, which let Marasi pick off two more. Then she dashed back around to the main tunnel. Here she glanced into the warehouse cavern, then ran in a low crouch — careful to avoid the faintly shimmering perimeter bubbles of the grenades. She knew all too well how it felt to be surrounded by that molasses air while everything around you moved like lightning.
Marasi found her own cover near some packing equipment, and as the remaining gangsters reoriented, gunfire began pounding the stone and metal around her. As a girl, she’d read all about Wax’s exploits in the Roughs — and the more she practiced her trade, the more inaccuracies she spotted. Sure, the stories mentioned gunfire. But they usually left out how loud it was when bullets struck. With them pelting the equipment around her, it sounded like she’d given little Max a set of drumsticks and let him loose in a kitchenware shop.
A second later the sounds slowed — like a phonograph playing at a fraction of normal power. The air shimmered near her, and Wayne slumped up against the equipment, a grin on his face — and a bloody wound on his shoulder.
“Sloppy,” she said, nodding to the wound.
“Hey now,” he said. “Any fellow can accidentally get shot now and then. ’Specially if he’s runnin’ around with a pair of sticks in a room with lotsa guns.”
“How much bendalloy do you have left?”
“Plenty.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“Wayne, I’m proud of you,” she said. “You’re actually saving it, being frugal like I asked.”
He shrugged like it was nothing, but she was legitimately proud of him. He received an allotment from the department, and during the early days of their partnership he’d always run out on missions. She’d been planning to talk to Captain Reddi about increasing the allotment, until she’d discovered that Wayne used his bendalloy for all kinds of non-combat, non-detective work. Playing pranks, changing costumes to delight children, the occasional casual thievery …
It was good to see him doing better.
“How many idiots left?” he asked.
“Eleven,” she said.
“That’s higher than I can count.”
“Unless you’re doing shots in a drinking contest,” Marasi said.
“Damn right,” he said.
Together they peeked out from around the equipment — which was for nailing lids to crates. Wayne immediately yanked her back under cover. A bullet moving in slow motion hit the perimeter of the speed bubble, then zipped through the air above them in a flash before hitting the other side and slowing again. Bullets behaved erratically when they hit speed bubbles, and you could never tell which way they’d turn when entering one.
“Guy in the suit is escaping out the back,” Wayne said. “You want to grab him, or do you want to stay here and fight the rest of them?”
She bit her lip, considering. “We’ll have to split up,” she said. “You’re better with groups. You think you can handle this lot?”
“Aren’t most of these boxes full of stuff what goes boom?”
“Yes…”
“Sounds like fun to be had!”
“You should have another eight minutes or so on the grenades.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll see if I can take those sods alive. I can grab them one at a time from their slowness bubbles, using my bubbles to counteract. See, I’ve been practicing, been gettin’ good at making mine bigger and smaller. Should be able to walk to the edge of one of your bubbles, put up mine in a way to overlap one person, then pull them out.”
“Wayne!” she said. “That’s amazing. Have you told Wax? It’s really hard to control the size of your bubbles like that.”
He shrugged. “You ready?”
She retrieved the flash-bangs from her pouch and handed one to him. Then she pulled the pin on the other to light the fuse. “Ready,” she said. Even if he had “plenty,” bendalloy was rare and expensive. They needed to be careful with it.
Wayne dropped the bubble, and she tossed the flash-bang. After it detonated, they scrambled out on opposite sides of the machine. Wayne went for the last group of gangsters while she dashed after the Cycle, who vanished through a reinforced metal door at the rear of the cavern. She reached it a moment later and picked the lock fairly easily. She spared a glance for Wayne — who was quickly being surrounded by enemies. He’d found cover behind a box marked EXPLOSIVES. He winked at her, then pulled the pin on his flash-bang and dropped it inside.
Delightful. Hopefully he knew what he was doing. Wayne’s healing abilities were extraordinary — but it was still possible for him to take so much damage he couldn’t heal. Any blast that separated his metalminds from the bulk of his body would leave Wayne dead, just like the Lord Ruler when he’d lost the Bands of Mourning centuries before.
Well, she couldn’t monitor Wayne all the time. And she most certainly couldn’t survive an explosion of … well, of any size. She slipped through the door and pulled it closed with a loud thump. The entire cavern complex shook a few moments later, but she focused on her task: heading into the dark cavern tunnel after the Cycle, who — among everyone in the cavern — was most likely to have answers for her.
5
Wax trudged across the floor of the Senate, and others gave him space. They seemed to not want to face him — even those who had voted with him. They turned away as he passed, stretching and chatting.