“Argh… Striker, I’m sorry.”

Phantom’s voice. It was somewhere over him. The rank odor of old garbage stuffed Striker’s whole head. He dared to crack his eyelids and caught a glimpse of the sky between the silhouettes of two lofty buildings. Early-dawn sunlight streaked across pink clouds. Morning was coming.

Hadn’t it been evening?

Phantom was there too, although once he came into focus, Striker saw with a start that he looked like he’d been tossed through a shredder. Blood trickled from his nose, as well as the network of tiny cuts all over his face. The skin was split across the corner of his mouth. None of that seemed to bother him, though. He knelt beside Striker, focused on something in his hands.

Phantom’s words reached through the thick pain. Striker furrowed his brow.

“Wait... sorry about what?” he slurred.

Phantom glanced at him. “Don’t try to talk. I have to do this before you bleed out.”

“Do what?”

Phantom didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted a modified syringe—quite larger than a normal needle, reinforced with a blocky metal casing and filled with a blue, glowing liquid. He flicked the glass with three, quick movements. A storm of tiny bubbles raced to the top and popped in unison, a burst of brief white inside the blue. At the sight of it, Striker stilled.

“Where did you get that?” Striker rasped.

“I’ve had it,” Phantom said. “Don’t move.”

Striker had no intention of following such orders. He tried to pull his arm away, but it wouldn’t move more than an inch. Fierce, fiery pain erupted in his shoulder. He dropped back, gritting his teeth.

“I said don’t move.” Phantom pinned him by the other shoulder. “Please, I can’t mess this up.”

“No,” Striker mumbled, shaking his head. “Don’t inject me with that... crap. I can make it without turning into a robot.”

“It won’t turn you into a robot. Now please, just stop moving.”

“That’s not true. It’s bio-metal. I know what it does.”

Phantom hesitated. They both knew what bio-metal could do. Its creators had developed nano-bots that would flow through the bloodstream and clot around major wounds, keeping victims from bleeding to death. It was the new science of the age, the medical breakthrough of a curative revolution, if only a small one. Any progress was good progress.

But it was flawed, and the flaws became rapidly obvious. By design, the nano-bots could fuse with human cells. They became, in theory, organic. It was a way to allow the inhuman to melt away into the human, eliminating the need for removal surgery altogether. However. When those cells divided, they copied themselves, forcing the body to create more bio-metal until the entire body was composed of synthetic flesh. Fantasy and science had to collide somewhere, and the human body could not produce artificial and living material in one form. All spontaneously-created bio-metal cells were already dead. In the long run, the victim would die anyway.

It was also illegal, for obvious reasons.

“There’s no other choice,” Phantom said at last. “We can find a way to reverse the process once we’re out of here. Right now, you’re about to die behind a dumpster just off the grid where the police are looking for us. Either you give up here, or you trust me.”

He glared at Striker as if daring him to say anything else. Striker wanted to argue, but the longer he waited, the harder it was to think. He could feel himself losing blood. Phantom was right about one thing—he didn’t want to die behind a dumpster.

“Fine,” Striker said. “Do it.”

Striker didn’t feel the needle break his skin, but he felt the frigid rush along his veins as the nano-bots slipped into his bloodstream. It was like a quick shot of ice. He shivered. Phantom’s hand eased back, but remained on his shoulder like a grounding point. The look on his battered face was a dark one, and Striker could understand that, but at least he’d had the gall to make a quick decision when the need arose.

Something occurred to Striker through the haze. “The others?”

Phantom exhaled. “I think Zealot and Yellowjacket are dead. Venom and Klick made it away with the girl… barely… but I’m not sure where.”

A sudden weight settled on Striker’s chest. “…I see. What about the two boys?”

“Gone.”

“Then we still have leverage.”

“A little. Now stop talking. The last thing you need to be worrying about right now is the mission.”

“This is what we do, moron. It’s my job to worry about it.”

“Just shut up, will you? You almost died. I’m not going to listen to you babble about a stupid job. Be quiet and let the medicine do its work.”

Striker obeyed, but only because his strength was sapped. He could already feel the bio-metal working.

He remembered this stuff. The concept of it had been around a long time. It had sparked so much controversy when he was a kid. He could still remember walking past holoscreens on the street and seeing the always-prominent headlines on ‘THE NANO SCARE.’

He remembered hiding on the streets. Shuddering in fear. He remembered cowering away from the “robos” who staggered up and down the sidewalks with their telltale, scraping gait and their stiff legs. They weren’t usually violent. They just wanted help. He’d seen plenty of them die in his time—they’d shuffle up and down the street, sobbing, until their bodies were too dense and unwieldy to move. They’d fall with a solid thump and whimper for a few hours before becoming silent.

Later, when he was a bit older, he learned the political side of it. Once the public had gotten ahold of bio-metal, it spread like suicidal wildfire, as if thousands of people had simultaneously left an important warning label unread. It possessed communities overnight, stretching law enforcements to its limits. It didn’t last long, but it was brutal. Only strict search-and-seize policies, and a brief period of martial law in some places, were able to bring the affair to its shaky end. Striker had been about nine years old.

It had been a strange craze, he thought. Bio-metal serum wasn’t addictive. He’d heard rumors that the bigger gangs wanted to use it to make themselves impenetrable for turf battles. He could sympathize with that. Losing men hurt. It hurt just to think about.

He pictured Zealot’s and Yellowjacket’s faces. If Phantom could have gotten to them, too…

Then he banished the thought.

Bio-metal always ended in the same thing—a slow, cold, unnatural death. He would’ve thought people could find cheaper ways to die. The stuff had been so strictly banned and eradicated over the past decades, he didn’t think it was even possible to obtain anymore, not even for people like Phantom. He supposed he was wrong.

Striker closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath through his nose. There was less pain, now, but he still felt that odd frigidity along his veins. His consciousness was tumbling again.

“I’m still here,” Phantom said, as if sensing Striker needed the confirmation. “We’ll sort this all out when we can.”

Striker silently agreed. For the moment, there was nothing else he could do.