Trevor dropped out of the clouds on his anti-gravs to find himself in a bustling, futuristic metropolis.

     There were civilians everywhere.

     Shit!

     An algren soldier was right on his ass, too, on his own anti-gravs.

     Shit!

     He dropped to street level. The cars all looked exactly alike and traveled at the same speed. 

     He weaved between the cars. He wanted to give the algren as hard a target as possible. 

     The algren shot at him as he weaved. 

     KLAK! KLAK!

     One of the shots just missed Trevor's hip and instead took a chunk out of one of the computer cars. 

​     Damn!

     Trevor got a look down the side streets as he zoomed along. Veer left? Veer right? Would he shake the algren by going either way? Probably not, but...

     He took a sharp left, down an alley. He checked to see how well the algren followed his tail, see if he could gain a little distance if the algren faltered a bit on their own turn, or, even better, if the soldier, for a heartbeat or two, missed that Trevor had turned at all.

     Nope. Nothing like that. This one was good.

     Cool.

     Trevor had a little trick he'd worked out in training. 

     "Fuck!" he yelped in fake exasperation, then dropped for the walkway. He acted like the anti-grav disc under his left sneaker malfunctioned on him. He skipped on the sidewalk like a stone on a lake, like he was out of control. 

     The algren swooped in for the kill. 

     Trevor curled into a ball, hit the sidewalk with both feet, then used his legs to leap up right into the algren soldier that pursued him.

     Mentally, he called for his new weapons.

     They were so cool.

​     They solidified as they emerged from his wrists.

     Knives, one for each hand, with blades sharp enough to cut through fist-sized diamonds. 

     Once fully extended, their handles fit easily in Trevor's hands. 

     He caught the algren soldier in the process of turning to aim his blaster in Trevor's direction.

     With the first swipe of the blade, Trevor sliced at the arm that held the blaster. What Trevor wanted to do was cut the soldier's arm completely off, but that didn't quite happen. He knew he cut into some muscle, though, and blood spurted everywhere.

     The algren spasmed, and, as he did, he pulled the trigger of the blaster.

     Damn!

     The blast from the blaster hit a light pole at its base, ripping it loose from the ground like a weed from a garden. It crashed to the sidewalk, startling the pedestrians walking along.  

    Pedestrians. 

     Civilians.

     Innocents. 

​     Dozens of them.

​     Shit!

     Trevor and the algren soldier hurtled through the air way too close to the ground, which meant that, at any moment, they could really hurt somebody.

     Trevor took a second swing with his blade. ​

     This time he took the soldier's head off.

     There was nothing he could do about the skull itself. It flew forward to bounce off the back of a middle aged man with graying hair and a paunch.

     "Hey!"

     There was something he could do about the corpse, though, before it slammed into somebody and maybe hurt them. He grabbed the torso even as the neck gushed blood like a geyser, then mentally commanded his anti-gravs to take him straight up.  

     The gushing blood got all over the innocents below. Couldn't be helped. He'd fly the corpse to where it could be dropped without hurting anybody, and then he'd...

​     WHAM!

     A second algren soldier slammed into him. 

     Trevor never saw him coming. 

     The image of an azure jewel flicked in Trevor's mind as he hurtled for the ground with the algren soldier who'd attacked him. 

     It was the Azure reminding him of what his mission was supposed to be. You're wasting time, was what his teachers/superiors were telling him in their non-verbal, telepathic manner. They never gave him a break, the Azure. For the four years they'd been training him, they never stopped pushing, pushing, pushing him.

     Trevor twisted so that, when they all hit the sidewalk, both the algren soldier and the corpse were underneath him, taking the brunt of the impact. 

     Trevor rolled away from them to slam into four civilians who happened to be standing there. 

​     Damn!

​     Things weren't working out at all.

     He'd taken one pedestrian completely off her feet, a woman stooped over and looking just this side of elderly. Trevor slapped down on his hands and knees rather than land right on top of her, and fuck! that! hurt! 

     Trevor found himself surrounded by a half dozen shocked, frightened, and angry innocent civilians. One guy looked particularly pissed. He stood seven feet tall, and he had muscles on top of muscles, and he had a look in his eye that said, you just startled me, so therefore I have the right to pound you into the dirt with my fists. 

     At the same time, the azure soldier who'd gone to the ground with him rose back to his feet, blaster in hand. 

     And, at the same time as all that, four more azure soldiers appeared over his head, gliding on anti-gravs, blasters ready. 

     Okay, I could probably use a little help here, Trevor thought, I should probably call on Niki, get her in here, although, on the other hand, supposedly, if I make the exact right moves in the exact right manner...

     Trevor pointed at the aggressive civilian coming at him and let his stun-line go.

     It was like fishing line, only about a billion times stronger, and it, also, if needed, could be used as kind of a Taser.

     The line hit the civilian between the eyes, knocking him out immediately. Then, Trevor commanded the line to retract back into his wrist. 

​     "Bye," Trevor said, and with that he turned invisible.

     Which was something he should have done the second he dropped out of the clouds. Where was his head today?

     And turning invisible didn't really help at that moment as it, perhaps, might have, because civilians jumped him from four sides as he said, "Bye."

​     He swung on them defensively.

     A beam from a blaster singed his calf. "Ow!" 

     He went to fly up and to the right, but he couldn't because of a beam blast from an azure soldier above him. 

     Fuck! 

     He felt trapped!

     He needed a blaster of his own. That's what Trevor finally decided. Where did the corpse's blaster go?

     He looked around for it. 

​     Damn!

     A civilian had it!

     Trevor crashed into him to snatch the weapon out of his hands. He knew that he was hurting a lot of civilians in this exercise, but none were getting killed, and that was something. 

     An algren aimed a blaster at him, even though Trevor was still invisible. No time to think. Trevor aimed the blaster he held and pulled the trigger.

     Nothing. 

     Obviously, its owner was the only one coded to use it as a weapon. 

     Now, Trevor's only hope was to use it as a shield. 

     A blaster blasted Trevor's blaster to smithereens even as he let go of it.

     Trevor dropped to the ground, but he knew he wouldn't be able to stay there long. Civilians ran in panic in every direction, getting in the way, and, sooner or later, because of his invisibility, someone was going to step on him or trip over him and give his position away.

     He took a quick look at the four algren soldiers who circled everyone's heads on their anti-gravs.

     One soldier floated eight feet to Trevor's right and eight feet in the air.

     The soldier seemed to have a pretty good idea of where Trevor was lying on the sidewalk. 

​     He aimed his blaster in Trevor's direction...

     and then his head rolled off his shoulders as the soldier dropped dead to the sidewalk. 

     The other algren in the air focused their attention in that direction. For only a moment, but still...

     Trevor took that moment to stand, then rise up off the ground to attack the algren in the air. He called on his blades again, but the first algren he came upon must have had some sort of sixth sense or something, because he dodged the blades at the last moment. The two of them tumbled end over end, Trevor's hand on the algren's blaster, the algren's hands fighting to keep Trevor's blades at bay.

     As they tumbled, Trevor looked for the other two algren.

     He only saw one, though. 

     The other algren seemed to be in a life and death struggle with absolutely nobody. 

​      With someone invisible, in other words.

     "That you Niki?" Trevor asked.

​                                                   CONTINUE