She left a smear of ozone in the alley behind the third pharmacy.
I caught the edge of it on the air at 1:14 AM. Not with my eyes — with the System, which had been pinging her signature on and off all night as she crossed the city in eight-second bursts and forty-second crashes. I'd been six minutes behind her at the first pharmacy. Three minutes behind her at the second. I was around the corner when the third one's alarm started.
I let her go through the front of it.
I went through the back.
The pharmacy had a stockroom that ran along the back wall the length of the building. I phased through the loading door at the rear, came up the side aisle, and stood behind a column of shrink-wrapped paper towels with my back against the cool tile.
She was at the counter.
A girl. That was the wrong word and also the right word. Twenty-two, twenty-three. Dirty hoodie. Hair in a ponytail that had collapsed to one side. She had her hand on the cabinet behind the counter and the cabinet was slowly opening because she was vibrating against it, the lock breaking apart in a way that wasn't picking and wasn't smashing — wear, accelerated, four months of cabinet-wear in three seconds.
She got the door open. Started pulling glass bottles off the shelf.
Dropped one. Picked up a second. The first one had broken on the floor; she didn't notice. Her movements had a wrong-frame-rate quality — she'd be still for half a second, then she'd be six inches to the left, then still, then her hand would be on a different bottle.
I stepped out from behind the column.
"Eliza."
Her head snapped toward me.
I'd guessed at the name from the third signature's harmonic and the records I'd pulled on a Mercury Labs lab tech who'd resigned three weeks ago citing health reasons. I'd been right. Her face changed — recognition, fear, recognition fear — and her hand went into the pocket of her hoodie and came out with a syringe.
"Don't."
"Don't what."
"Don't dose again. Your cells are degrading. Every dose now is permanent damage. Any more and you're going to drop dead on this floor."
"You're a cop."
"No."
"Then who are you."
"Someone who can take the pain and get you to a hospital alive."
She backed up against the cabinet. The syringe was shaking in her hand. Her teeth were chattering the way they did at the end of the cycle — I'd read enough of Vega's hospital records by now to know the shape of it. The drug burned out the body's heat regulation about ninety seconds before each crash.
"How do you know my name."
"Because somebody sold you that drug. And somebody is going to sell it to other people. I want them. Tell me where you got it."
"You — you're the Harvest."
I let the silence answer.
She laughed. It came out broken.
"They told me about you. Down by the docks. They said if you took the powers it stopped hurting. Is that true. Do you make it stop."
I'd never been asked that.
I'd never been recognized.
I held it together. The Harvest was a name on the news to almost everyone. To dealers in a back room of a building near the docks, apparently, it was something else. They said if you took the powers it stopped hurting. The street had built me a folklore I hadn't been keeping track of.
"It stops everything," I said. Truthful. "Tell me who sold it to you. Then I make it stop."
She looked at the syringe.
She looked at me.
She stuck the syringe into her own thigh, through the hoodie pocket lining, and emptied it.
"No —"
She blurred.
The pharmacy lights strobed because the air pressure dropped around her — Velocity-9 at full dose pulled enough atmosphere out of a five-foot radius to make the ceiling tiles flutter — and she hit the wall behind me in a crackle of blue lightning. I phased before she connected. Came out three feet to her left, Unbreakable already burning across my shoulders.
She came at me again.
She was fast. Faster than Vega had been. Faster than I'd guessed any V-9 user could be. The last dose had pushed her past the safe ceiling of the drug into a five-second window where she could hit Mach 2 and a six-second window where her cells would liquify. I had to lock her inside the first window.
Force Mastery. Eight-meter range. 200 kg max. She was 110 pounds of sprinting human.
I caught her at three meters with a lateral grip that punched the air out of her lungs and pinned her against the front counter.
She thrashed. Phased. Almost. Her shoulder went transparent for half a second and she nearly slipped my hold — Vega had never had the energy to phase, but Eliza did, and I'd underestimated the dose.
Phased with her. My phasing met her phasing in the same medium. Locked.
Her eyes went to mine.
I put my palm flat over her sternum.
[Velocity Rush — Enhanced variant detected.]
[Existing slot upgrade available. Caution: Cellular instability transfer risk.]
[Proceeding.]
The extraction was not the gentle pull I'd taken from Lutz or Sondergard.
It tore.
Not her. Me. I felt the speed flow out of her chest into mine — through the palm contact, through whatever bone-deep connection the System made when it harvested — and it came with a freight of something else. Cellular damage. Genetic damage. Heat.
I felt the inside of my own forearm get hot.
Held the contact anyway.
Counted to four.
Cut it.
She slumped against the counter. Slid down. Her eyes rolled back, came forward again, fixed on mine for a quarter-second.
"Thank you," she whispered.
She passed out.
I sagged. Caught myself on the counter. My right forearm under the sleeve was a deep dull throb that felt like a sunburn on the inside of the muscle.
[Velocity Rush — Enhanced. Sync: 12%.]
[WARNING: Cellular Instability transferred (partial). Sustained use will produce permanent cellular degradation.]
[Cellular Integrity: 97%.]
[Recommendation: Use sparingly.]
I dismissed it.
Stood there breathing for thirty seconds.
I'd never taken damage from an extraction before. Not real damage. Not the kind that lived in the System log as a permanent line.
Looked down at her.
She was breathing. Pulse fine. Powerless now — the System reported zero residual signature on her, the way Vega had read clean after I'd pulled her — and she was going to wake up cold and confused and probably starving.
I lifted her.
Carried her out the back.
Drove four blocks. Killed the engine half a block from St. Catherine's emergency entrance. Carried her across the lot. Set her down on the bench by the automatic doors. Pressed the call button for the triage nurse. Walked back to the car.
Drove out without looking in the rear-view.
When I got home I rolled up my right sleeve in front of the bathroom mirror.
The skin looked normal. Underneath, the System said the cells in my forearm were slightly off. Not visible damage. A floor I couldn't repair.
I'd taken something that hurt me.
I'd done that on purpose.
I sat on the edge of the tub for a long time and let the hot water from the tap run into the basin until it was at full temperature, and then I shut it off without using it, and I went to bed without dinner.
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― DECREE ―
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