Liam stood in the middle of the court under the flat white light and looked at the empty space where the quiet one had been standing a second ago.

His eyes moved across the court slowly. Left. Right. Near. Far.

’Okay,’ he thought. ’Invisibility. Two daggers. The etched blade. The speed he moved with before he disappeared.’ He turned it over in his mind. ’Anyone who didn’t have what I have would already be on the ground right now. That’s just the truth.’

He kept scanning..

The back of his neck tingled.

’But not for me though’

He just moved, snapping his head backward and dropping his chin to his chest in the same motion, and something passed through the air directly in front of his face with a sound like fabric tearing.

*Shhhk.*

The slash left a visible line in the air where his neck had been half a second before. He felt the wind from the blade brush across the bridge of his nose.

Liam flash stepped backward immediately, both feet leaving the ground and covering distance in a single movement, putting a solid gap between himself and wherever the quiet one was standing.

A second passed.

Then the quiet one appeared. Right there in the spot Liam had just vacated, standing completely still, both daggers in hand, visible again.

His red eyes were fixed on Liam and his expression had shifted. Not recalculating this time. Something sharper than that.

From the sideline one of the others made a sound. "How the hell did you dodge that?"

The shock in his voice was real. Liam could hear it clearly from across the court.

’Why would I tell you,’ he thought.

"Luck probably," Liam said. "Instinct. I don’t know."

"Bullshit," the quiet one said.

His voice was still low but there was an edge in it now that hadn’t been there before. "You reacted like you could see me. That wasn’t luck."

Liam looked at him. "Is he serious, how could have seen you?" He kept his voice completely even. "Did you see my face when you disappeared the first time? Did that look like someone who was expecting it?" He tilted his head slightly. "That was definitely the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that. You can believe whatever you want."

"You’re lying through your teeth," one of the others said from the side. "Doesn’t matter though." A pause. "You’re dying either way."

Liam looked over at him. "So this stopped being a simple fight somewhere along the way."

"It was never a simple fight, i was always planning on killing you," the quiet one said.

"Fair enough." Liam looked back at him. "That’s why you kept going for my neck."

"Yes." The word came without hesitation. "My boss would love your head. Literally. A gift. You know proof of swatting the fly that’s been buzzing in his ear."

"Someone sent you," Liam said. "I figured that much. What I want to know is whether this is revenge for killing Iggy or something else."

The other one on the sideline made a short sound. "Don’t call his name, also you ask a lot of questions for someone who’s not going to need the answers much longer."

"That’s exactly why I’m asking," Liam said. "At least give me name to curse when I’m dying. Be fair about it."

A beat of silence.

Then the talker shrugged. "Why not. We’re what you’d call an elite group. The tattoo is the marker. That’s how you know who’s who."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "That’s not much."

Before Liam could say anything else the quiet one had already started making his move

*Fwp.*

The sound was almost nothing.

Like a page turning in a quiet room.

The tingle hit the back of Liam’s neck at the same moment and he was already moving before his brain had caught up with the decision, stepping hard to the left, and the blade came down through the space his shoulder had just occupied with a sharp downward *shhk* that caught nothing but air.

"That’s enough to take with you when they ask how you got there," the quiet one’s voice said from somewhere to Liam’s right. No body attached to it. Just the voice hanging in the flat white light.

Liam straightened up. "I don’t think I’ll be the one using it."

A pause.

The quiet one reappeared. Now standing close to his friends, several feet ahead of Liam, both blades still in hand. He looked at Liam with those red eyes.

"Why’s that," he said.

Liam smiled.

And then he moved.

Not flash step.

Something faster and more direct than that, closing the distance between them in a straight line with no wasted movement, and before the quiet one could process the shift in positioning Liam was already inside his guard.

*POW.*

The punch landed clean in the center of his stomach, straight in, full weight behind it, and the quiet one folded forward with a sound like the air leaving a punctured bag.

His feet left the ground slightly from the impact and then he was moving backward, staggering, one of the daggers falling from his right hand as he tried to grab his midsection, his body carrying him past the other two men and all the way back until his spine hit the chain link fence at the far end of the court with a loud metallic *clang.*

He slid down it slowly and stayed there, one hand pressed to his stomach, the dagger on the ground a few feet away from his open hand.

The other two looked at him. Then they looked back across the court.

Liam wasn’t standing where he had been.

They turned.

*Shhk.*

Liam had the quiet one’s fallen dagger in his hand and he drove it into the quiet one’s stomach from the side in one clean movement, the blade going in to the hilt.

The quiet one made a sound that wasn’t quite a word, his whole body seizing, his hands grabbing at the fence behind him.

"What the—" one of the others started.

Then the sound came.

A wet compressed noise, like something being forced through a very small space, and Liam looked up to see the second one with his mouth open, something green and thick moving between his mouth, catching the floodlight as it came out.

It had a viscous pull to it, the kind of substance that held its shape as it moved, and it was aimed directly at Liam.

Liam was already gone.

*Fwp.*

He moved clear in a single step and the green substance hit the quiet one’s body where Liam had been crouching a moment before.

It landed across the quiet one’s arm and the side of his ribs and the reaction was immediate.

*Ssssss.*

The sound was quiet and continuous and deeply wrong.

The fabric of the quiet one’s shirt dissolved first, then the skin underneath it, the green substance eating through both with the same patience, thin smoke rising from the contact point.

The quiet one stopped making sounds entirely.

Liam was already behind the second one.

He had the dagger up.

*Shhhk.*

Clean across the back of the neck. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

The second one’s hands flew up to his throat immediately, his eyes rolling upward, his knees going out from under him. He hit the asphalt face first and didn’t move.

The last one turned around.

His face was a completely different thing from what it had been five minutes ago when he had been standing on the street looking confident with a gun in his hand.

Every bit of that was gone.

His eyes were wide and his mouth was open slightly and his hands were up already, not in a fighting position, just up, palms forward, the universal signal.

"Please," he said. His voice had gone small. "Please don’t. I’m done. I’m done, okay. Please."

He dropped to his knees on the cracked asphalt.

Liam looked at him for a moment.

’I can’t leave you alive,’ he thought. ’You already know about Clara and also about Kelly which might put them in danger.’

Then he took one step forward and the dagger moved.

*Shhhk.*

The last one grabbed his own throat with both hands and his eyes went wide and then empty in the same second and he fell sideways and was still.

The court was quiet.

Liam stood in the middle of it and looked at the three of them spread across the asphalt and the fence in various positions of stillness.

The floodlight hummed on its pole above him.

The chain link fence ticked once in the night air. Somewhere outside the perimeter a car passed on the street and kept going without slowing.

He looked down at the dagger in his hand. The etched goblin face on the blade caught the white light, the snarling teeth and slitted eyes looking up at him.

He turned it once in his grip.

Then he looked back at the three bodies.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. ’I made a mess. A significant mess.’

He looked around the court.

The chain link fence.

The empty hoops. The cracked asphalt with weeds pushing through it. The flat white light showing every detail of everything with no shadows to help him.

’There’s only one person I can call for something like this.’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He opened it and typed.

He sent it.

Then he put his phone back in his pocket and stood in the middle of the empty court with the dagger still in his hand and the green substance still eating quietly through fabric and skin somewhere behind him.

’Now I wait,’ he thought.