Mardock Scramble

Balot’s head flipped to one side to dodge. The sledgehammer blow grazed her forehead, ripping her skin open. The searing pain should have been immense.

But Balot had decided to stop feeling pain. Even if her skull had caved in at this point, she was moving with such sureness that she felt confident she would still finish her action.

She found the chink in Boiled’s armor and carried out her sequence of attacks.

She threw her invisible fangs, her snarc, at Boiled’s PGF wall to open up a hole.

A small opening, but it was enough. It took only one small card to spell the difference between defeat and decisive victory. Balot’s left hand fired the gun into the opening.

The shock of the recoil caused her metal brace to shudder and fall off. Such was the caliber of the gun. And it was the bullet from this gun that now bored a hole all the way through Boiled.

The bullet pierced his left femur—and with it, the core of one of the four devices implanted in his limbs to generate his PGF.

Boiled’s left leg swelled up from the inside like a balloon—and ruptured. The leg exploded into a mass of flesh and bone and blood, creating a shower of red and white somewhere above Balot’s head.

The very next moment, Boiled had his leg—severed from the thigh down—in his hands and was brandishing it as a weapon.

Then some invisible force kicked Balot in the chest with tremendous power.

She flew from the sidewalk and her back slammed down onto the road. She jumped back up as quickly as she could.

Her body felt no pain. Her senses were clear, her heart calm.

Even so, she was somewhat taken aback at the sight she now faced.

Boiled walked down from the wall onto the sidewalk. His left leg was missing from just above his thigh. But this hadn’t stopped him one iota; he walked on a phantom leg in its place.

Boiled had cranked up his remaining four antigravity devices to the fullest and made a leg-shaped PGF field where his real leg had been. He was barely bleeding, either—Balot could see that his PGF acted as an antigravitational tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from the exposed arteries.

“I won’t be stopped just because I lose a limb or two, you know,” Boiled whispered in a deep voice.

Then he charged.

Balot trembled. She fired quickly with her right-hand gun. Had she been able to use her voice, she would have screamed something between a shriek and a war cry as she fired over and over. Boiled’s PGF was still there and it still deflected the flight paths of the bullets, but only just, and it wasn’t perfect. Small gaps were opening up. Several bullets weaved their way through the openings and managed to skim Boiled’s flesh.

But Boiled wouldn’t stop. He ran straight at her, bringing down his blood-soaked right arm.

The air seemed to distort, and a physical mass of antigravity bore down on Balot.

Breathtaking force descended on her from the left, from the right, from the front.

Boiled’s blow caused Balot’s whole body to hurtle backward. She flew across the road and through the shop window of the building opposite. Oeufcoque covered her body as best he could, but Balot snarced so that he focused his protection on a few vital areas. Boiled had thrown caution to the wind and half-surrendered his shield. If she didn’t respond and do likewise, she wouldn’t be able to truly face him down.

Balot clambered straight back up. Her surroundings were littered with broken glass from the window, and a number of stereos and other boys’ toys were lying around on the floor.

Boiled pushed his PGF wall further in order to bring down pressure on Balot’s surroundings.

Boiled drew near, and the moment he had his gun up again and ready to strike, Balot snarced. She turned all the building’s lights on in a flash, dazzling Boiled as he drew near.

Again, Balot was virtually invisible against the backdrop of the bright lights, and again Boiled fired at her, not with any semblance of aim or accuracy, merely to keep shooting, to keep the pressure up. A stereo beside her exploded, but even as Boiled fired she was running out of the shop onto the pavement, falling to her side, and she fired at him again and again with her right-hand gun.

Balot didn’t bother using her eyes either. She just sensed her opponent’s position—his existence. She felt her own existence. She felt the flow of life and death that the two of them created by the mere virtue of existing.

Her opponent—the other existence—jumped into space and landed on the wall just above the shattered shop window.

Balot continued firing at him, tracking his movements accurately, and she jumped quickly to her feet.

A bullet that Boiled fired back grazed the top of her shoulder. Her bodysuit, Made by Oeufcoque, was ripped open, and the shock-resistant material fluttered around in fiery pieces, ignited by the heat of the terrifying bullet.

Then, without hesitation, Balot did the thing that she needed to do in order to take advantage of her situation.