Sera’s mouth curved as she watched the glossy woman throwing a tantrum. "If people vanish in places like this, then your General needs better people. No one should be able to just up and disappear. Not when they belong to someone."

Something in the woman snapped. She thrust out her arm, open palm, as if she could claim the space by touching air. "You walk out with our goods and—"

"Enough," Zubair cut, and the word landed like a weight.

He kept her at the edge of his shoulder, attention on her men.

The pipe man had shifted left. The shotgun man—now unarmed—had edged away from Zubair the moment the other man was distracted enough to let him go. He didn’t bother to try and get his weapon back; he wanted to be as far away from Zubair as possible before he snapped again.

The fourth man had his hand in his jacket, his fingers twitching over a grip he wasn’t brave enough to pull.

"Back up," Zubair told them. "Hands out where I can see them."

They didn’t move.

Lachlan’s voice came light. "Do I need to count to three or do we skip to the fun part?"

The glossy woman laughed a little too loud. "What are you going to do, pretty boy? Tell jokes at us?" 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Lachlan smiled. It didn’t reach anything kind. "Something like that."

The quiet girl finally spoke, voice small but clear. "Don’t. Please."

The glossy woman didn’t look at her. "Stay out of this."

Sera brushed the back of her hand against Zubair’s arm. Not a command. A touch. He eased one half-step so her view of the glossy woman stayed clear.

The glossy woman turned back to Sera with that bright, cruel smile. "You’re not special," she said again, and it landed wrong in the air.

"That’s it," the bat man added, braced by her noise. "You’re done."

Lachlan lifted his hand. The blue under his skin climbed his wrist. The air tightened. It smelled faintly of iron and rain, wrong in a dead mall at noon.

"Last chance," he told them, almost cheerful.

The pipe man reached into his jacket.

Lachlan’s palm cracked the world.

The bolt was small and exact.

It snapped from his hand and hit the glossy woman square in the chest.

There was no warning, no flare, just white-blue impact and a bang of thunder that tore through the middle of the mall.

Light washed the storefronts and died in the same breath. The sound rolled back on itself and punched the banners into a slow sway.

The glossy woman staggered one step and folded to the tile. Her eyes were open and empty, causing her men to freeze as they stared at her dead body.

The silence hit hard as dust drifted down from the impact of Lachlan’s lightning.

Lachlan looked at his hand like it belonged to someone else. "Huh," he said, almost curious. "Okay. I can work with that."

The bat man swallowed as the pipe man’s face went gray. The quiet girl pressed the binder to her chest and didn’t move. She was like a little mouse when the light suddenly turned on.

Sera didn’t look away from the body.

When she spoke, her voice carried to the ends of the corridors. "Does anyone else have any questions or comments?" She turned slow to the survivors at the back, then to the men at the front. "Speak now or forever hold your peace."

No one spoke.

Thunder rolled outside, late to its own party.

It pushed through the empty fountain and shook the dead plants. A few flakes of plaster let go from the ceiling and fell through the hot shaft of a broken skylight.

The pipe man lifted both hands where everyone could see them. The shotgun man ignored the ruined weapon that Zubair had snapped in two like a twig. The fourth stared at Lachlan’s palm and didn’t blink.

Zubair stepped forward and laid the broken shotgun stock against the wall, out of reach.

"Here’s how it is going to be," he told the room. "We take what we want. What we don’t take, you are more than welcome to. But we are going to go through every last one of these shops, and you are going to keep your distance. You walk away now, or you stay and learn a lesson you won’t enjoy."

The pipe man licked his lips. "You can’t—"

"We can and we just did," Elias answered, his voice even and clearly tired of the conversation.

Sera took two steps forward, knelt, and checked the glossy woman’s throat with two fingers.

She didn’t bother with mercy. There wasn’t any to give. She stood and brushed the dust off her skirt with the back of her hand.

The quiet girl’s eyes tracked Sera like a compass. She looked at the body, then back up at Sera. "She would have killed you," she whispered, as if she had to explain the math to someone who didn’t need it explained.

"I know," Sera returned. "Trust me, I’m not upset."

Zubair looked to the edges again. Far end of the hall, two more men had stopped by a shoe store and pretended to be customers. He held their gaze until they dropped it.

"Elias. Alexei," he said. "Finish the sweep. No stragglers at our backs."

"On it," Alexei replied, already moving.

Elias stepped around the body without a pause, pulled the security gate halfway down on the leather shop so no one could flank them from that side, and returned to the group with a nod. "Clear for now."

Lachlan shook out his fingers like the buzz still lived there. He looked at Sera. "We should talk about that later."

She glanced at his hand, then at his face. "Later," she agreed.

The bat man finally found his voice. "You killed her."

"She picked the hill she was willing to die on," Lachlan told him with a shrug of his shoulder. "I showed her the consequences. It could have been a lot messier. She could have seen her death coming and still have been unable to stop it. If you think about it, I was really merciful."