Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Something was wrong with every teleporter I had ever met. They all suffered from the same delusion: that disappearing made them unpredictable. It didn’t. It just meant you stopped reading the person and started reading the pattern.

Mute had been level three. Toddy was level five. Higher level, same fundamental mistake.

"What are you going to do about it, bitch?" Toddy sneered, clearly savoring the word as it rolled off his tongue.

"Teach you a lesson your parents were too lazy and too rich to bother with," I replied calmly.

"Fuck you." He raised his middle finger, thick and deliberate, the gesture practiced and comfortable.

"After today," I said, locking eyes with him, "you won’t be raising that finger at anyone for a long time."

He disappeared. I lost him immediately.

Level five was faster than level three, the intervals shorter, the repositioning cleaner. I tracked the air where he’d been and found nothing useful.

Left. Left. Left. Right.

He materialized behind me and slammed his full weight into my back, driving me hard through the wooden bookshelf. The impact was brutal. Wood splintered, books cascaded down in a chaotic avalanche, and I crashed to the library floor with several heavy volumes slamming onto my chest. Pain flared along my spine and ribs.

Okay, I thought, staring up at the ornate ceiling through the dust and falling pages. Now I have the pattern.

"Preacher threatens me with words," Toddy laughed from above me, his voice thick with contempt.

"This is Central. You grew up in some stray town, spent your miserable life at Hogsby getting milked dry by extraction, and you think you can stand between Toddy and whatever the fuck he wants?" He shook his head, grinning. "Pathetic little bitch."

He grabbed my ankle with surprising strength — his fat hands were stronger than they looked — and flipped me upside down like a rag doll. With a grunt, he hurled me across the aisle. I hit the far wall hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs, then slid down in a heap, books raining around me.

Dizzy. Not broken. Calculate.

Left. Left. Left. Right. The pattern was clear now.

[Launching Electrical Body.]

I shut it down immediately. Not yet, I told it. I don’t need defense. I need one clean shot.

[Resonance: Tracking active.]

The plain had sharpened something in me, an animal awareness of movement in space. The system turned that into something surgical.

I could feel the pressure changes in the air, the tiny distortions where Toddy was about to reappear, like the way you feel a storm coming before the first drop falls.

Left. Left. Left.

He materialized with a heavy punch aimed straight at my face. I wasn’t there anymore.

His fist smashed into the shelf behind me instead. Wood cracked. He let out a surprised, pained grunt and vanished again.

"Seems that fat body of yours is used to hurting other people," I called into the empty space, voice low and steady. "Not used to getting hurt back."

He reappeared in the far corner, breathing heavier now. The smug smile was still plastered on his face, but it was straining.

He launched again. Same predictable pattern.

The moment he materialized in front of me, I drove my fist deep into his soft gut with everything I had.

[God-Hand Punch]

The impact was savage. My knuckles sank into yielding flesh, driving the air out of him in a wet, explosive wheeze. I kept my grip on his collar as the force carried him backward and hammered two more brutal punches into his ribs and solar plexus while we were still in the air.

When we crashed to the floor, blood was already spraying from his mouth, thick and dark, splattering across the polished wood. The smile was completely gone.

I stood over him as he gasped and retched, trying to curl into a ball.

I thought about Daphne standing at the front of the classroom, hands pressed to his chest, calmly telling him that all he had inside was pain while he performed for an audience.

I thought about Azure stumbling backward between the shelves, lip split, blood on her chin, because this entitled piece of shit decided her book belonged to him.

I kicked him in the ribs. He hit the shelf. It held. The upper books didn’t.

He was on the floor making sounds that had nothing to do with dignity when I reached him.

"Please..." His voice had completely changed — high, trembling, stripped of all arrogance. "Spare me. I’ll give you a gold card. Two. Whatever you want."

The gold card from the Kim job was still in my room at Hogsby, probably, in a bag I had packed in thirty minutes on the last day. The mention of it pulled me back from wherever I had been heading.

"This isn’t about a card," I said. "This is about learning to treat people like people."

I crouched. Found his right hand. Found the specific finger he had raised at Daphne and at Azure and at me and probably at every person who couldn’t immediately stop him from raising it.

I broke it. The scream that tore out of Toddy was raw and animal. It filled the entire library. I was sure it carried into the next room.

I stood up, hauled him to his feet by the collar of his now-bloodied shirt, and drew my fist back for another strike.

"Stop it, Abram Nadez."

The voice was calm, authoritative, and completely unafraid. I turned.

Sophia Vale stood at the end of the aisle with the composed expression of someone who had arrived at exactly the right moment and knew it.

She wore a long black dress that clung to her figure with quiet elegance, the fabric flowing over the curves.

I looked at her. Then at the bleeding, whimpering Toddy still dangling from my grip. Then back at her.

I dropped him. He collapsed to the floor in a pathetic heap.

Sophia crossed the distance between us without hurry, the measured, unhurried walk of someone who had already decided exactly how this situation would end before she took the first step.

How the hell does she know my name?

Breaking Toddy wasn’t the problem. Being seen doing it was.