"Fuck you," she says. Her voice is shaking but the words are clear.

  There's a pause. Then he makes a sound that might be a laugh.

  "Alright then."

  She swats at him. It's not a punch, not really - just her hand slapping against his chest, his jacket, like she's trying to push him away even though she's dangling by her hair. Completely ineffective. He doesn't even react.

  Then he shifts his grip from her hair to her arm. Specific grip. Thumb on her shoulder, fingers wrapped around her bicep. His other hand grabs her wrist.

  I'm moving before I understand what he's doing, but I'm too far away, my body's too slow, everything hurts and I'm not fast enough--

  He rotates her arm. Outward. Upward. There's resistance and then there's a sound.

  Pop.

  Tasha's scream cuts off almost immediately, replaced by this high, thin keening noise that doesn't sound human. Her whole body goes rigid and then limp, like all the strings got cut at once. The arm hangs wrong. The shoulder looks wrong, squared off instead of round, and her hand is just dangling there at a weird angle.

  "Better hurry," he says, letting go. She crumples but he catches her, almost gentle, and then throws her toward me. Not hard. Precisely. She hits the ground shoulder-first and the keening becomes a shriek. I push all the teeth out, letting them rattle onto the floor one at a time, like little glass shards.

  I catch her before she can roll, trying to cushion the impact, but it's too late. She's making these sounds, half-breath half-sob, and her eyes are rolling back.

  "After about an hour the nerve damage becomes permanent," he continues, walking toward the center of the auditorium. Away from us. Toward nothing. "Might want to get her to an ER. Unless you'd rather keep fighting?"

  I want to. God, I want to chase him down and bite through his fucking throat. But Tasha is shaking in my arms, her good hand clutching at my shirt, and her shoulder looks like a medical diagram gone wrong.

  He kneels down in the middle of the floor. Puts both palms flat against the wood.

  And pulls.

  The floorboards don't break. They separate. Fibers peeling apart in sections, nails still attached to the underside, whole planks coming free like he's unzipping them. Some pieces stay anchored but most of it just comes away, and then he's widening the hole, ripping a gap big enough to fit through.

  He looks back at us once. I still can't see his face through the bandages but I can see the blood soaking through the shoulder, dripping down his arm where my teeth went through his palm.

  "Every lead costs you something," he says. Then he drops through the hole.

  I track him with blood sense. Through the gap in the floor, landing in the first floor office, moving toward the side exit. The door opens - I can feel the displacement of his blood-map in space - and then he's outside, moving south, getting further away. Into a sit - a squat, sort of. On a bike. A motorcycle.

  And then, he peels out, fishtailing onto the road, and he's gone from my radius.

  Tasha makes another sound, this awful whimper, and I snap back to her.

  "Okay. Okay, we're going to the hospital, we're going right now." My hands are shaking. When did they start shaking? "Can you walk? Tasha, can you--"

  "Don't touch it," she gasps. "Don't touch my arm, don't--"

  "I won't, I won't touch it." I'm trying to figure out how to get her up without jostling the shoulder. Her arm is just hanging there and every time she breathes it moves slightly and she makes that sound again. She's dislocated her shoulder. I know how to reduce a dislocated shoulder. But can I? Practicing on mannequins is a lot different from practicing on civilians. And that's even more different than practicing on one of your best friends. "Okay. Okay, I'm going to help you stand, just use your other arm--"

  It takes forever. She's in shock, I think, or maybe just in so much pain she can't coordinate her legs properly. We get her upright and she sways, nearly goes down again, and I have to wrap my arm around her waist to keep her steady. Her dislocated arm swings a little and she gasps like someone just punched her in the jaw.

  The hole in the floor is between us and the main stairs. We have to go around, through the booths, picking our way past destroyed furniture and scattered equipment. My laptop is in pieces. Tasha's monitor is just glass and plastic shards. Everything we were working on, all that research about Silverstein and the shell companies, it's just gone.

  She stumbles. I catch her. Her shoulder bumps against my side and she makes a sound like a dying animal.

  "Almost there," I lie. We're nowhere near there. We have to get down the stairs, out the front door, to my car, drive to the hospital, and I don't know if I can drive right now because my hands won't stop shaking and my ribs are screaming and I think I'm going to pass out if I don't sit down soon.

  But Tasha is worse. Tasha needs a hospital. So we keep moving.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The stairs are a nightmare. She can't hold the railing with her bad arm and I'm supporting most of her weight, and every step makes her shoulder shift and she whimpers. By the time we reach the ground floor she's crying, proper crying, tears and snot and these awful hitching breaths.

  The front door is just gone. Torn off its hinges, frame twisted, metal shrieking in structural agony before it died. The security system is still beeping weakly, like it's trying to tell us about the emergency we're already living through. But then I see the red and blue lights flashing through the gap in the door, and my heart does this weird thing where it sinks and raises at the same time.

  Shit. The silent alarm. Of course. How long has it been? Five minutes? Ten? It felt like hours. I check my phone just barely with the tip of my free hand. Almost nine minutes exactly.

  "Philadelphia PD, anyone inside?"

  I look at Tasha. She looks at me. Her face is ashy, pupils blown wide, and her arm is still hanging wrong.

  "Here!" I call out. My voice cracks. "We're here, we need an ambulance, she's hurt--"

  Two officers come through the doorway, hands on their belts but not drawing. They see us - two teenage girls, one holding up the other, visible injuries, no threat - and their posture shifts.

  "What happened?" The first one is older, maybe forty, with a thick mustache and tired eyes.

  "Someone broke in," I say. The words come out automatically, no thought required. "Attacked us. He left. She needs an ambulance, her shoulder is disl--"

  "Already called for one," the second officer says. She's younger, maybe late twenties, and she's looking at Tasha's arm with professional concern. "Sweetie, can you tell me your name?"

  "Tasha," she whispers. "Natasha Reynolds. My Mom is a nurse at Temple Health. Natalie Reynolds. My Dad--"

  "Okay Tasha, ambulance is two minutes out. Can you sit down for me?"

  We get her sitting against the wall, carefully, trying not to move the arm. The younger officer is talking to her in that calm, professional voice they probably teach in training, asking questions about pain levels and numbness and whether she can move her fingers (she can't without pain, so she just lets them hang there).

  The older officer is looking at the destroyed door, the trashed interior visible through the opening. "You said someone broke in?"

  "Yeah." I'm trying to think. Need a story. Need something that makes sense. "Big guy. Bandages all over his face. He just... he broke the door and came after us."

  "Why were you here?"

  Good question. Why were two teenage girls in an abandoned building on a Friday afternoon?

  "It's not abandoned," I say, which is true. "We were volunteering. Councilman Davis is renovating it for a community center. We were doing inventory."

  Also true. Mostly true. We have permission to be here, we do help with the building, the community center thing is real even if it's not why we were actually here.

  "He say anything? The attacker?"

  Yeah. He said you dug too deep and every lead costs you something and we can hurt everyone you love and--

  "No," I lie. "He just came in and started destroying things. We tried to run, he caught my friend, hurt her arm. Then he left."

  "Which way did he go?"

  "Out the side exit. By the dumpsters." Also true. I can't sense his blood anymore but that's where he went. "There's probably a hole above the office."

  "Description?"

  "Tall. Six-three, maybe six-four. Thin but strong. Wearing all these bandages, like a mummy, and a vest. Couldn't see his face."

  The officer is writing this down. "Race?"

  "Couldn't tell. The bandages covered everything."

  "You see a weapon?"

  "No. He was just... really strong. Ripped the door off, tore through walls."

  The officer exchanges a look with his partner. The "powered individual" look. Great.

  Sirens getting louder. The ambulance.

  "You hurt?" he asks me.

  "No," I say. Then I realize I'm bleeding from somewhere - probably reopened something from the partition wall face-plant. My adrenaline keeps spiking with every pained noise Tasha makes, and that keeps the pain out of me. Yes, I am hurt. I've re-opened dozens of old injuries. I'm not bleeding internally but Shrike's spike wound isn't happy either. I think I have a couple of fractures. But, for me, this is just Tuesday. "I mean, nothing serious. She needs the ambulance, not me."

  The ambulance pulls up and suddenly there's more people, more questions, more movement. Two paramedics come through with a stretcher and a bag full of equipment that looks both reassuring and terrifying.

  "Shoulder dislocation," the younger officer tells them. "Happened maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago."

  One of the paramedics kneels next to Tasha. She's older, Black woman with her hair in neat braids, and she's got that same professional calm as the cop. "Hey honey, I'm Maya, I'm gonna take a look. Can you tell me where it hurts?"

  I try not to twitch at her name.

  "Shoulder," Tasha gasps. "Left shoulder. It's out, I know it's out, my mom's a nurse, I know what this is--"

  "Okay, good, you know what's happening. That's good." Maya is examining the arm without touching it, looking at the angle, the deformity. "We're gonna put it back in, alright? It's gonna hurt but then it'll feel a lot better."

  "Now?" Tasha's voice goes high. "Here?"

  "Better now than later. The longer it's out, the worse it gets. Fifteen minutes is good timing." Maya looks at her partner, a younger guy with a beard. "Get me the kit. We'll do a reduction."

  Tasha knows what that means. Her mom has probably told her stories, explained procedures, and even through the shock and pain I can see her face doing math she doesn't want to finish. They're going to pull her arm until the bone goes back in the socket. No anesthesia. No hospital. Just right here on the floor.

  "I don't want to," she says, and she sounds about five years old.

  "I know, sweetheart. But we gotta do it." Maya is pulling on gloves, prepping. The bearded guy hands her something. "You got someone who can hold her other hand?"

  I'm already moving, dropping down next to Tasha's good side. She grabs my hand so hard I feel bones shift. Her palm is sweaty and cold.

  "Look at me," I tell her. "Don't look at them. Look at me."

  "Sam--"

  "It's gonna be over fast. That's what my mom always says about shots. Over fast."

  Maya positions herself at Tasha's shoulder. "Okay honey, on three. One, two--"

  She pulls on two. There's this awful grinding feeling that I swear I can feel through Tasha's hand, through the air itself, and then a pop that's somehow worse than the first one because I'm expecting it. Tasha screams, properly screams, and then cuts off into these gasping sobs.

  "Good, good, that's in," Maya says, already moving. "I know that hurt. Worst part's over. You did great."

  The bearded guy has a sling ready. They get it around her, immobilizing the arm, and Tasha is just shaking and crying and holding my hand like it's the only thing keeping her tethered to earth.

  "We're taking her to Temple," Maya says, looking at me. "You riding with?"

  I look at the cops. The older one nods. "We'll need to talk to both of you, but that can wait. Go with your friend."

  They load Tasha onto the stretcher. She doesn't let go of my hand the entire time, so I end up climbing into the ambulance after her, sitting on the little side bench while Maya does vital signs and asks questions Tasha can barely answer. The doors close. The siren starts. And we're moving.

  Tasha's not looking at me anymore. She's staring at the ceiling, tears running sideways into her hair, breathing too fast.

  "You're okay," I say, and it sounds hollow even to me. "You're gonna be okay."