"Bloody hell!" Ryan scraped under his breath, his footgear pounding against the rain-slicked cobbles.
"Reinvented their ammunition just for us, the absolute bastards!"
His mind worked at a feverish, frantic tempo. "If it's an alloy, it's still metal." Struck by realization, his senses flickered like a spark in his chest—a compound of lead, zinc, and whatever manufactured material Grishile had engineered to bite through hardened flesh, but metals all the same. If he could catch the speed of the magnetic weave mid-flight, he might be able to unravel the rounds before they hit, twisting the lead into harmless, hollow foil.
Before he could test the theory, a sharp, ragged gasp tore from beside him causing holly's feet faltered with heavy metallic strides giving way as her strength buckled. The dark sheen across her skin flickered, fractured like cold ice under a hammer, and dissolved entirely. She reverted to her vulnerable flesh and bone in a heartbeat.
The moment her transformation wore off, the deep, cauterized grazes on her shoulder and upper arm tore open, a bright spray of crimson painting her ruined jacket sleeve.
"Aiye!" Ryan caught her elbow, pulling her weight onto his shoulder as they ducked behind a heavy masonry pillar outside a closed bank.
Footsteps echoed down the empty plaza—careful, and unhurried.
Rose stepped around the corner, her stance eased and eyes unblinking holding Ryan in her sightline. She didn't raise her arm to strike, nor did she open fire. Instead she mocked full with confidence,
"You're making this dreadfully messy, Ryan," scarlet said, her words delivered with a chilling fake warmth. "You run as though we're here to slaughter you. Besides, you know we have kept Klaus comfortable while the rest of you played house in the shadows?"
Ryan's throat tightened, his grip on Holly's arm locking solid. "Don't you dare speak his name, and it's not like you people aren't the ones who made us into fugitives."
"I speak it because I knew him," Rose countered, her voice filled with vague pauses which left every sentence in deliberate ambiguity.
"Before the transfers. Before the containment shifts. Well o guess you're already aware that Your brother isn't rotting Ina cellar rather he's working with us to create a better world".
Her words hit Ryan hard blow releasing a suffocating weight settled onto his chest. "My brother Klaus? Switched sides?" The thought paralyzed his resolve.
"He chose the lab over the runaway life years ago and stepped into the light while you lot remained scavengers in the mud." She added.
Holly on the other hand began to ruminate on the possibility. "If Klaus had truly surrendered and was cooperating with those rotten greedy government bastards, then what were they fighting for? What was the point of running through alleyways. Also Mama Mia would have already told them and focused more on elimination than on the mission instead of investigation". She for a moment also believed but gave herself a painful pinch.
" We've got to pull ourselves together!" Holly hissed through gritted teeth, clutching her bleeding shoulder with her free hand.
She shoved her wrist toward his face, pointing at the cracked glass of her digital watch.
In the dark, angled reflection of the screen, Ryan caught the shadow of Scarlet creeping around the far side of the pillar, her silenced piece raised to take a clean, flanking angle.
Holly's face flushed with fierce, unyielding panic darted her hands outward, pointing straight at an industrial steel fire escape attached to the four-story brick building directly above Rose and Scarlet.
Ryan's eyes widened, the fog in his brain instantly burning away into survival instinct.
Without hesitation, Ryan extended both palms toward the upper wall, unleashing his ability at full, unbridled power.
A high-pitched, metallic screech tore through the afternoon air as the heavy iron rivets anchoring the four-ton emergency staircase sheared straight off the brickwork.
Driven by Ryan's violent pull, the entire four-story steel structure tore away from the building with a deafening roar, collapsing downward like a falling iron cage directly above Rose and Scarlet's path.
"Look out!" Rose yelled, lunging sideways as the massive framework crushed the concrete pavement below in a catastrophic shower of sparks, twisted metal, and shattered stone.
The impact shook the entire plaza. Windows rattled in their frames, and nearby shop fronts groaned under the tremor. Civilians blocks away screamed in terror as the terrifying sound of rending steel echoed across the district.
Within seconds, the panicked commotion from the earlier outdoor cafe merged with the destruction of the building's facade, triggering a wave of frantic emergency calls.
From four different directions across the lower city grid, the sharp, wailing shrieks of police sirens began to rise, piercing through the air as law enforcement rushed toward the scene of the unscheduled warzone.
"Run!, to hell you gobshite " Ryan yelled, grabbing Holly around the waist as the cloud of dust and debris billowed out, using the chaos and the incoming sirens to vanish deep into the labyrinth of the secondary side streets.