Rui Rulvan's enhanced hearing caught footsteps two blocks away. Three shadows moved down the cobblestone street like smoke given form, but something was wrong. No heartbeats. No breathing. His synthetic fingers tightened around the brass bell he'd been polishing.
"Rui?" Lydia's voice drifted from the back room of their antique shop. "You're making that face again."
The face that said he was remembering things he'd rather forget. Rui forced his expression to relax. "Just tired, love."
The bell above the door chimed, and she emerged carrying a paper bag that smelled like melted cheese and spinach. Her dark hair caught the amber light from the Edison bulbs, and for a moment he forgot about the approaching danger.
"Brought dinner." She set the bag on the counter between a 1920s radio and a mechanical clock whose brass pendulum caught the light. "And before you ask, yes, I used the last of our money."
Rui tried to smile. "We'll manage."
"With what? Your charming personality?" She spotted the cherry beer bottle in his hand. "Hey! That's my last one. Do you know how hard it is to find decent beer in this neighborhood?"
When had he grabbed it? The bottle felt cold against his palm. "Sorry. It tastes like... comfort."
"Comfort that you owe me." She leaned against the counter, studying his face. There was something different about her lately. Dreams that made her wake up screaming. A scar on her shoulder that hadn't been there a month ago. "What's really wrong?"
The footsteps stopped outside their shop window.
Ice water replaced the blood in Rui's veins. Three figures stood silhouetted against the glass, their shadows stretching across the wooden floor like grasping fingers. The lead figure raised his hand.
"Lydia." His voice came out sharper than intended. "Back room. Now."
"What? Why would I—"
The door exploded inward.
Glass and wood erupted in a crystalline shower. Rui threw himself in front of Lydia as three shapes poured through the doorway like spilled ink. They moved with inhuman precision, each step calculated, each gesture efficient.
The leader wore the gray uniform of the Association, but the insignia on his chest made Rui's synthetic heart stutter. A skull pierced by lightning, engraved in platinum. American division. Elite hunters.
"Rui Rulvan." The man's voice buzzed with electronic distortion. Vocal implants. Military grade. "Game's up, freak."
Rui raised his hands, playing confused. "I think you have the wrong—"
"Cut the act." The second hunter, thin as a razor blade, pulled out a device that looked like a pocket watch crossed with a Tesla coil. It screamed with electronic feedback. "Bio-signature's lighting up like a Christmas tree. You're one synthetic son of a bitch."
The third hunter, a woman with burn scars spiraling up her neck, circled left. Her movements flowed like water. Too fluid. Enhanced reflexes, probably military surplus from the European conflicts.
"Please." Rui kept his voice level. "My wife doesn't know anything. Let her—"
"Wife?" The woman laughed, a sound like grinding gears. "Things like you don't love. You just imprint on the first human who doesn't run screaming."
Lydia pressed against his back. Heat radiated from her body. Her skin felt like it was burning through his shirt, but there was something else. Purpose. Like she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life.
The leader stepped forward. His dead eyes reflected the shop's amber lighting like coins. "We know about Project Lazarus. About the test subjects who escaped when the facility burned. Other teams are sweeping the city tonight. You can't run from what you are."
Something cold crystallized in Rui's chest. They knew. Somehow, they knew everything.
"Behind the cabinet," he whispered to Lydia. "When I move, you run."
She squeezed his arm. Her fingers felt like they were burning through fabric and synthetic skin. "Rui..."
He spun and shoved her toward the Victorian armoire. Their eyes met for one impossible second. Fire flickered in the depths of her pupils, literal flames dancing where there should have been nothing but brown irises.
The leader drew his sidearm. Tesla coils ran along the weapon's barrel, crackling with barely contained energy. "Last chance. Surrender, and maybe we'll make it quick."
Rui's skin began to dissolve.
Synthetic flesh peeled away like old paint, revealing the gleaming alloy skeleton beneath. Servo motors whined as his frame expanded, hydraulics hissing. His human disguise fell away completely, leaving something that belonged in a fever dream.
"Guess we're done pretending."
Lightning fast, Rui dropped low and moved.
The Gauss pistol fired, a bolt of electromagnetic fury that should have taken his head off. Instead, it carved a smoking trench through the wall where he'd been standing.
His fist connected with the leader's jaw.
Bone and cybernetic implants cracked like eggshells. The hunter flew backward into a display case full of antique clocks. Time scattered across the floor in wheels and springs and shattered glass. The mechanical clock on the counter chimed eight thirty, its brass pendulum still swinging despite the chaos.
The thin one lashed out with a whip of pure energy. The weapon crackled through the air, and Rui barely twisted away. Energy carved through his shoulder instead, exposing circuitry and black synthetic blood.
Pain flooded his nervous system. Real pain. They'd done something to him in the labs, made sure he could suffer like the humans he was supposed to replace.
The woman came at him with a knife that glowed like a small star. Plasma edge. It slid between his ribs with surgical precision, and Rui screamed. The sound echoed through the shop like a mechanical banshee.
"Now!" The leader spat blood and titanium dental work. "Hit him with the restraint field!"
The thin hunter's device whined to life. Blue energy lanced out, wrapping around Rui like electric rope. His limbs locked up. Paralysis crept through his systems like ice water in his veins.
"No." The word came out as a mechanical growl.
If they took him, if they sealed him away, Lydia would be alone. Defenseless. And whatever was happening to her, whatever Project Lazarus had done to both of them, she'd face it without him.
Power surged through his right arm. Circuits overloaded. Synthetic muscle fibers snapped under the strain. But he broke free long enough to grab a shelf and hurl it at the thin hunter.
The restraint field died in a shower of sparks.
The three hunters regrouped with military efficiency. Pack animals, surrounding him. The leader's Gauss weapon charged with enough energy to punch through a car engine.
These weren't just killers. They were survivors of the same project that had created him, twisted into hunting their own kind. The woman's scars told a story. The thin one's mechanical precision spoke of conditioning that went beyond training. They hated him because they saw themselves in his chrome reflection.
Rui knew he was finished. Even at full power, he'd never faced anything like these broken mirrors of his own creation.
The rear wall of the shop exploded outward.
Something red and terrible poured through the hole like liquid fire. It moved wrong, too fast, changing shape as it flowed. Rui's optical sensors couldn't process what they were seeing.
"Lydia?"
The creature that had been his wife stood eight feet tall, covered in chitinous armor the color of fresh blood. Her face was still recognizably hers, but elongated, with teeth like broken glass. Her hands had become claws that could open a man like a letter.
She fell on the thin hunter before he could scream.
Claws punched through his chest armor like tissue paper. His scream cut off in a wet gurgle as alien anatomy did things human anatomy was never meant to do. Blood and hydraulic fluid painted the walls in abstract patterns that belonged in a nightmare museum.
Her tail, a segmented thing with too many joints, whipped around and took the woman hunter's head clean off. The skull bounced across the floor like a discarded toy.
The leader emptied his weapon's power cell into her. Gauss rounds hit with enough force to crater concrete. The creature that was Lydia absorbed them like raindrops on steel.
She backhanded him through the shop window.
Glass exploded outward in a glittering cascade. The hunter's body hit the cobblestones and didn't get up again.
Silence fell like a theater curtain.
The creature turned toward Rui, and for one terrible moment he thought she might not recognize him. Her eyes were furnaces, burning with something that had never been human.
Then the fire dimmed. The armor began to crack and fall away like a molting shell. In seconds, Lydia stood there again, naked and shaking and covered in other people's blood.
She stared at the crimson coating her hands. It should have horrified her. Instead, she felt... complete. Like she'd been holding her breath for months and finally exhaled.
"Rui?" Her voice was tiny, lost. "What did I do?"
"You saved us." He went to her, wrapping his coat around her shoulders. She felt fragile as spun glass, but power still thrummed under her skin like a caged beast. "You saved us both."
A groan from the wreckage made them both freeze. The leader was still alive, somehow. His body was broken, but his eyes still held consciousness. And resignation. He'd known what he was hunting. Known the risks. Rui almost envied him the certainty.
Rui picked up the fallen Gauss pistol. The weapon felt right in his hand, recognizing something mechanical in his nature.
"I'm sorry." He meant it. "You were just doing your job."
The shot echoed through the ruined shop like a final judgment.
Lydia was staring at her hands again. They were clean now, but she kept turning them over and over. "I killed them. I killed them and I... I liked it." She looked up at him, pupils flickering red like dying embers. "The dreams make sense now. The hunger. What they did to us in that place... we're not the same anymore, are we?"
"No." He took her hand. "But we're together."
They walked out into the San Isidro night, leaving their old life scattered across the shop floor like broken clockwork. Behind them, sirens wailed in the distance, but they were already ghosts, fading into the maze of art deco shadows and gas-lit streets.
Whatever Project Lazarus had made them into, whatever the Association wanted with them, they would face it together.
Even if it meant becoming the monsters everyone already thought they were.