I've left the zealot compound, still hot on the trail of the black robe. I jog across a cobblestone and mud street in front of an oxen drawn cart. The sucking mud would have claimed a boot, had it not been a seamless part of my BMR suit.

I filter the cacophonous racket of the logging and fishing village in order to reduce the possible paths of my Chrome zealot. Out of a mixture of disgust and fear, normal life on Sizlack Prime pauses every time a zealot passes.

There. The fish market—an unnatural wave of silence progressing from the south end of the street toward the north. I tip my hat to an elderly lady on the front porch of the apothecary and use an alley to cut across from Main Street to the Fish Walk. I resist the urge to plug my nose from the reek of the local fish—a brackish breed by the name of Foishtervallgn.

I stride northward along the boardwalk and finger the hilt of my discharged water dagger through the fabric of my duster. Strictly taboo outside the temple compound, I had to dump the rising water. At least I got to use it once outside the training simulator on Al-Aqsa.

A bucket flies out of the shadows. I shatter the wood slats with my forearm, only to be slathered in tepid fish. Through the scales and slime, I see Black Robe disappear along a narrow boardwalk plunging unsteadily into the heart of a brine forest.

A Chrome will die the same among rotten timber grown from sewage, decay and salt water as he will in the pristine courtyards of the Krazlin zealots. And yet, my disappointment reveals I had been clinging to the hope of a second round with daggers.

Five steps into the forest and a foul humidity creeps into my clothing. Ten steps and the light of the sun flees. I feel for the irregular progress of the boardwalk with my feet. Even less permanent trails finger into the floating wood along every gap or width broad enough for a child to squeeze through sideways. Without the robe, my opponent might very well be slimmer than me—a problem I had not factored.

I stand still and close my eyes. Why had the black robe tarried in the fish market if his plan had been to hide here? Had he merely thought of it last second? Or had he lured me? This latter thought shoots my eyes wide open. How could such a thing be fathomable? Of course he couldn't know I'd been created for his destruction.

I check the time stamp in my peripheral vision—58 minutes until my elevator window. It'd take twenty-six to scrub the temple courtyard and remove Ranger 799 to the safe zone. And that meant humping it the whole way.

Out of completely irrational frustration, I pursue a gap through the brine forest at random. No more than two steps along the way, I notice a small scrap of black cloth dancing from a sharp snag on a slimy trunk.

Rhythmically the boardwalk rises and falls with the ocean, allowing the forest to expand and contract ever so slightly. Like human lungs, the brine forest breathes. Except with each expansion it sucks my breath involuntarily from within me.

It's hypnotic. I nearly stumble from the boardwalk at the spot of a fresh tree removal. Shocked fully awake, I check my time stamp. Seven minutes have gone by. I've wasted enough—

A misplaced crack draws my eyes downward just as a thrusting shard of boardwalk rises upward. Mired in the humidity and the stench, inexplicably, I see the shank coming and yet fail to respond before it embeds into the socket of my left eye.

Black Robe squeals as I shatter his forearm and heft him upward through the remains of the splintered boardwalk. With my right eye, I stare intently into the spent expression of my attacker. I see her face for the first time—a pale skinned female mottled with pink scars from the spray of my water dagger. A matt of black hair clings diagonally across her face, bisecting her two eyes—one brown, one green.