Blyke grabbed Cagaro's arm and guided him away from the railing.
"We move," he said.
Cagaro hesitated one last second then followed. The elevator shaft waited at the far end of the corridor.
Arcee's work assisted them a lot. They walked without running.
By a distance,
Henry landed lightly from his elevated stance, boots skidding across fractured steel. The tiger-masked brute tore his arm free from the crater with a metallic shriek.
Henry hopped back once no, twice.
Creating distance without turning his back.
He flicked his wrist sharply. From the seam of his pant leg, a slim dagger snapped into his grip mid-motion.
Without pause, he spun and released it sideways like a shuriken aimed for the eye slit of the mask.
The tiger moved faster than something that size had any right to. He caught the blade mid-air like fielding a pitched ball.
The dagger split in two. Henry exhaled slowly. "Ah. So we are doing that."
The brute lunged again.
Henry slid under a crushing hook, coat grazing warped steel. "You know," he added casually while pivoting away from a knee strike that cracked the railing, "most people start with a fine introductions. But, we were 'introductionless' from the beginning."
Another punch passed inches from his face.
Henry smirked behind the mask.
"You are skipping straight to demolition. Buddy, that's rude."
Henry had never been dodging at random.
From the first crater, he had felt the sensation of enormous vibrations after each hit.
The pedway didn't just shake under impact. On the floor, uneven vibration traveled through the suspension cables each time the tiger's fist collided with reinforced alloy.
Micro-fractures it was.
The earlier punches had done more than dent metal. They had introduced stress lines into specific anchor joints—the load-bearing nodes that distributed weight across the suspended span.
Henry's retreats had not been retreats. They were alignments. Each hop backward angled the tiger's momentum toward the same quadrant of the structure.
The sidestep ensured the downward blows landed inches closer to a pre-weakened suspension pin that connected the pedway to its upper brace.
He let two more full-force punches land.
Each time, he made sure the tiger believed he was barely escaping.
The anchor node began to alarm in a frequency only someone listening for it would notice.
The guards at the far ends of the walkway hesitated, rifles raised but none fired. The entire section was destabilizing slowly. One wrong bullet could cascade failure across connected spans.
Good.
Henry wiped dust from his sleeve and smirked awkwardly.
"You were very tough whoreson," he remarked lightly, ducking under another shockwave-inducing strike.
"Alas, you don't think ahead."
The tiger's breathing grew heavier and warmer.
Henry took two more steps toward the weakened suspension point. The tiger followed, driven by the simple equation of target proximity.
Henry staggered intentionally. A half-misstep for a visible opening.
His shoulder dipped as if balance had failed.
The tiger committed, maximum torque.
The punch descended like a meteor.
At the last fraction of a second, Henry pivoted sideways around the vector of force.
The fist missed him by a whisper. It did not miss the anchor. The impact detonated the already compromised structural pin. A violent metallic crack split the atmosphere in suspense.
For one suspended heartbeat, the entire pedway stood stunned in disbelief.
The section beneath them sheared free. Steel shrieked as cables snapped in sequence the platform dropped.
But Henry had already calculated the swing arc from the remaining upper supports. As the floor vanished beneath him, he launched upward toward a surviving suspension cable he had marked minutes earlier.
His hand closed around it mid-fall.
Momentum carried him into a controlled pendulum swing away from the collapsing span.
Below, the tiger masked one tried to stabilize. His mass accelerated downward faster than correction allowed.
He crashed through the collapsing segment and disappeared into a lower containment level in an eruption of dust and debris.
Guards shouted from stable sections, unable to fire without risking total structural failure.
Henry swung once, twice, then used the upward momentum to climb vertically along the cable with controlled efficiency.
Below him, the monster had been defeated by his own strength. Henry pulled himself onto a higher brace and stood calmly.
Henry hit the brace running.
Boots struck steel in controlled rhythm as plasma bolts tore through the air behind him. Blue-white streaks carved across the dim maintenance lighting, exploding against walls in bursts of ionized crackle.
One bolt clipped his side. The bulletproof jacket absorbed the penetration but the electrical discharge surged through him like a lightning bite. His muscles spasmed mid-stride.
"Annoying." he muttered through clenched teeth. More shots followed his butt.
He veered sharply left, then vaulted over a maintenance console. Plasma splashed against metal, detonating in bright arcs that left the air smelling scorched.
He couldn't lead them to the elevator. If he did, Arcee, Blyke and Cagaro would inherit a firing squad. So he changed the board.
Henry slapped his smartwatch twice in rapid sequence but still like a menace. Emergency lighting in the sector flickered.
The arcology's overhead panels began cycling through staggered brightness levels, creating overlapping shadows that moved half a second out of sync with physical motion.
He sprinted straight through one of the strobing bands and his silhouette split.
Reflections multiplied across glass panels and polished steel. Three Henrys appeared for a fraction of a second at different angles.
Guards were stunned and confused.
Plasma bolts scattered toward separate targets. Henry ricocheted off a vertical support beam, rolling under a shot that scorched the floor where his spine had been.
He kicked a loose metal panel mid-roll, sending it spinning down the corridor. In the strobing light, it looked like another moving body.
He reversed direction abruptly backtracking two meters before springing upward onto a maintenance ladder. The lighting stabilized suddenly.
The guards fired again at fading afterimages. Henry flattened himself along an overhead conduit, silent now.
He let the noise drift past him down the wrong corridor. Illusions weren't about invisibility.
They were about convincing hunters they had already seen what they were looking for.
And now he moved the opposite way.
.
.
.
From the narrow maintenance way, a shadow moved first, then a figure leaned on, emerging near the elevator where Cagaro, Arcee and Blyke had been crouching.
The flickering lights caught the edge of his coat, the subtle glint of his knives tucked along his belt.
Cagaro's mouth went dry. His mind tried to process it.
Could this really be him? The four-star operative, the one known as a candidate for the next leadership of The Atlantis? Even standing here, seemingly casual, the aura around Henry was magnetic and if he was a high ranking why everyone is talking to him so friendly...
Henry stepped fully into view, adjusting his shirt with a shrug, glancing at Cagaro with exaggerated innocence like he had did nothing a minutes ago.
"Hey… do you think elevators are secretly judging us?" he murmured, voice casual but eyes scanning every corner like a predator enjoying a chessboard.
Blyke rolled his eyes and leaned forward. "Don't start with your nonsense again. You are lucky I'm not in the mood to—"
"Lucky, huh?" Henry interrupted, tilting his head as a slow grin spread. "Or unlucky? Because I was planning to steal your seat, your snacks, maybe even your virginity by rapping your ex-girlfriends in pubs. Tough luck, right?"
Cagaro blinked, caught between amusement and awe, unsure whether to laugh or just stare.
Blyke's jaw tightened. He leaned closer, tone edged with irritation and curiosity, "You have got five minutes before I start regretting every choice in life that led me to tolerate you. You know that I was married and..."
Henry let out a small, exaggerated sigh, mock-horrified. "Oh no… I see what's happening. Rage bait in the wild. Fascinating. Very diabolical of you, Blyke, truly. I may have to… counter. Strategically, of course."
Arcee threw her hands up, cutting through the tension. "Seriously, these two are never stopping. Ever, and for nothing. You could drop a nuclear bomb right outside and they would still debate whose turn it is to annoy the other first."
Henry chuckled, spinning a knife idly in his hand, eyes dancing with mischief. "Oh but you know… chaos is fun."
Cagaro could only observe, as these two titans of wit, strategy and unrelenting banter clashed verbally.