Orient’s alarm whistle screeched with dread.

  The spirit-train had entered the city, riding phantom trails across the remains of a railroad crossing the entire settlement. She drove as fast as she could, smashing through debris and wrecked vehicles that blocked her path at blinding speed; but it wouldn’t be enough.

  The Gun had always been faster.

  Yuan immediately grabbed his revolver and loaded it to the brim with bullets, while keeping Arc’s final creation in the last chamber. Gunsmoke thunderclouds soon flew over the toppled skyscrapers as their pursuer slowly but surely gained ground on them. Bucket ran into the metal wagon so fast he struggled to breathe beneath his helmet.

  “Sir!” His eyes gleamed with fear and panic, the trauma of Fleshmarket’s destruction alive in his gaze. “Sir, is this…”

  “Yes,” Yuan replied flatly as he locked in the revolver’s cylinder. No need to sugarcoat the dire truth. “Everyone bunkers down, and don’t bother firing back. It won’t work–”

  His body tensed up instantly, his qi senses detecting a surge of energy coming straight at Orient. Yuan barely had time to throw Bucket to the ground before a bullet hit the locomotive with more power than a missile strike.

  The impact’s sheer power rippled through the entire spirit-train’s length, shattering windows and bending steel. The locomotive nearly derailed, with Orient’s whistle turning into a wail of pain and suffering. Qi smoke erupted from the spirit-train’s front and obscured Yuan’s vision of the outside.

  “Miss Holster!” Orient shrieked through the wagon, the fear in her voice sharper than any blade. “Yuan!”

  Yuan’s oily blood turned colder than ice. “Go back to the passengers!” he told the spooked Bucket before rushing to the locomotive. “Tell everyone to take cover!”

  His bullet-core pounded in dread within his skull as he coursed through the remains of Arc’s now unused fire car. The feeling of growing tension at the Gun’s approach paled before Yuan’s concern for his young charge and Orient.

  Why? Why did the Gun strike the locomotive instead of attacking Yuan directly? The Gunsoul had sensed the demigod of ultraviolence’s glare across the distance. His pursuer should have been able to fire at his wagon with no issues. Was it trying to immobilize the spirit-train so it could finish Yuan at its leisure? Or did it pursue another objective?

  A terrible possibility formed in Yuan’s mind as he remembered Revolver’s final warning.

  “It wants to kill your hope.”

  The Gun was after Holster and Orient.

  Yuan smashed through the locomotive’s door to find it utterly devastated. The Gun’s attack had blown a hole through the right side of the engine room, destroying the walls and part of the roof. The benches and table on which Yuan had played a B&C game only yesterday had been blasted to pieces. Smoke from the engine filled the wagon and flowed out into the air. The area keeping the Cube of Natho sealed had barely avoided destruction.

  “Holster!” Yuan shouted in alarm, his qi sight immediately detecting her buried beneath a bench’s rubbles. He tossed them away with one hand to swiftly unveil his charge and Gotama. Her cat had shielded Holster with her body, leaving her shaken but still breathing. “Holster, are you wounded?!”

  His charge looked back at him with a mix of fear and relief. Dirt covered her face, and a faint drizzle of blood dripped down from her hair to her cheek. A deep dread seized Yuan as he immediately checked the wound. It was thankfully only superficial, but still worrying. Without Orient’s heavy walls to protect her and her cat’s quick thinking, debris could have hit her in the skull and killed her.

  “It’s okay, I’m here,” Yuan comforted his charge, holding her against his chest with his free hand. She gripped his clothes so tightly that she almost tore them off. “I’m here.”

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  Gotama skittishly meowed in alarm at something outside. Yuan’s head snapped sideways to glare at the hole in the engine room with immense fury.

  Far away in the distance, behind four rows of toppled buildings, broken bridges, and collapsed passerelles, stood a highway crossing the ruined city the same way the railroad did.

  Revolver drove across it, his gun pointed at them, waiting for an opening.

  He fired a shot at Yuan and Holster the moment the train passed between two buildings. Yuan immediately pulled Holster behind as the projectile surged through the air, only to hit a Barrier surrounding Orient. Having experienced the Gun’s power once before, she created a shield powerful enough to resist the impact.

  Yet Yuan saw the Gun reload his revolver before vanishing behind a building. He already knew that the next bullet would carry a different qi charge.

  “My barriers won’t hold him off for long!” Orient warned Yuan through the loudspeakers, her voice heavy with worry. “If you can blow up the highway, I should be able to outrun him!”

  Yuan clenched his jaw. Destroying the highway would hardly win them more than a few seconds’ respite. The Gun didn’t need Revolver’s cruiser nor a clear path to chase them; Yuan suspected that it only used that vehicle because of its current host’s old habits or to save qi for the inevitable confrontation. If it couldn’t drive, the Gun would simply fly after them.

  And Orient was very much aware of it. Her proposal was simply a last-ditch attempt to deny reality, to prevent what she knew was inevitable. And though it tore Yuan apart, a quick look at Holster clutching him with all her strength told him what he had to do.

  Deep down, a part of him always knew it would come to this. His half-life and the happiness it brought him were never meant to last. He had always been a reanimated ghost existing on borrowed time after failing to save his companions.

  Not again.

  This time, he would protect those he cared about. He would ensure his crew survived, and that the cursed artifact which they protected would remain lost forever to the warlords of the world.

  “Holster, stay down,” Yuan said gently as he pushed his charge away from him. It proved harder than wrestling with Manhattan. Her grip was strong, and his hands were so weak, but he eventually pushed her back. “Take cover.”

  Holster began to cry.

  The sight weighed on Yuan’s bullet-core more than Arc’s death or Revolver’s transformation into a monster. It took all of his willpower to look away and soldier on. Her safety, and that of so many others, rested on his shoulders.

  “Orient, drive as far away and as quickly as you can,” Yuan said as he walked towards the hole in the wall. “Keep Holster and the cube safe. I’ll hold the Gun back while you make your getaway.”

  His foot had reached the locomotive’s edge when he heard a faint voice call out from behind him. He heard two words, two simple words that hit him harder than Manhattan’s fists and Slash’s bullet.

  “Don’t go!”

  Yuan froze in place, his feet a step from falling off the spirit-train. His heart wavered for a second, his head peeking over his shoulder to look at the child he had saved.

  “If you go,” Holster whispered, her faint voice weak, her hands pleading with him not to leave her alone. “If you go… you will die.”

  And she was likely right. The odds that Yuan would come back alive were indeed slim, and even if he survived… it might come at a terrible cost that would separate them forever. Part of him demanded that he reconsider, that he close his eyes to reality and stay with the hope that the Gun wished to shatter; that he remain with her and Orient to drive into the sunset, heedless of the hungry death racing after them.

  Yet Yuan Guang had made up his mind long ago.

  His second life as a Gunsoul had been short, but he could ensure that Holster’s would be long.

  “Maybe,” Yuan conceded, before turning back to face the city outside. “But you’ll live.”

  He jumped overboard, gun in hand.

  He weaved a Sniper’s Bore barrier around his revolver’s barrel and then fired at the Gun the moment the abomination appeared from behind a building. His projectile hit the highway before the demigod of ultraviolence could fire back, blowing up its cruiser and throwing its rider forward in a disastrous crash.

  Yuan flew through the air with one Recoil Kick after another. The spirit-train continued its course behind him, far too slow for his liking. He could sense Orient’s hesitation in the way her speed diminished slightly, as if expecting him to change his mind and turn back.

  He didn’t.

  Yuan landed upon the highway of a dead city, the concrete trembling beneath his feet. The pieces of Revolver’s cruiser were spread across the road.

  The driver was already back on its feet and turned to face its challenger.

  The Gun offered no word nor threat. Yuan found no traces of Revolver within the creature’s burning glare, no hint of the man he used to be. He didn’t see any fear in its crimson eyes, no recognition; nothing other than his reflection in a cold sniper’s scope, and the mechanical heartlessness of a firing squad about to execute a target.

  The thing in front of Yuan was a soulless killing machine. Death at the end of a barrel.

  Neither of them hesitated.

  The two duelists raised their weapons and fired at one another.

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