Wax smiled, the pain of his wounds retreating further as he grew more energetic. He heard footsteps on the wooden floor at the top of the stairwell. They were ready for him. It was a trap, of course.
He found that he didn’t care. He unslung both shotguns, then Pushed on the nails in the steps and blasted up the stairwell. He passed the first floor and continued on toward the second—he’d rather check up first, then down. If Steris was being held here, she’d probably be up at the top.
Now we’re burning, Wax thought, metal flaring, energy rising. He threw his shoulder against the door at the top of the stairs, breaking out into a second-floor hallway. Feet stomped up the steps behind him and men burst out of rooms nearby, fully armed, wearing no metal.
Wax smiled, raising his shotguns. All right. Let’s do this.
Wax Pushed hard against the nails in the boards under the feet of the men leveling aluminum guns at him. Planks ripped free by their nails, making the floor tremble, throwing off the Vanishers’ aim. He dodged right, rolling out of the hallway and into a room to its side. He came up and spun, leveling both shotguns back at the doorway.
Vanishers from the stairwell piled into the hallway after him, and his arms jerked as he fired twin shotgun blasts. He Pushed, slamming the men back and sending himself crashing out the window. This building was more an old warehousing shed; there was no glass in the windows, just shutters.
Wax blasted out into open air. There was a lamppost on the dark street, a little bit to his left. He Pushed on that while at the same time dropping his weight to nearly nothing. The Push sent him back against the outside of the building; he landed and half ran, half leaped parallel to the ground along the wall.
Reaching the next room over from where he’d been, he Pushed on another lamppost and crashed through the window feet-first, splinters spraying around him. He landed and came up in the building, then turned toward the wall between him and the room he’d just left.
He holstered the shotguns and grabbed his revolvers, pulling them out in a cross-armed motion. They were Ranette-made Sterrions, among the best guns he’d ever owned. He raised them and increased his weight, then Pushed hard on the nails in the wall before him.
The cheap wood exploded away, the wall disintegrating into a spray of splinters and planks, nails becoming as deadly as bullets as they ripped into the men in the next room. Wax fired, dropping any that the nails had missed in a storm of splinters, steel, and lead.
A click to his left. Wax spun as a doorknob turned. He didn’t wait to see who was beyond. He Pushed on the doorknob, ripping it out of its frame and through the door, into the chest of the Vanisher trying to get in. The door slammed open, and the unfortunate man crashed through the wall of the hallway—there were no rooms on the other side, just the wall of the narrow building—propelled out into the misty night.
Wax holstered the Sterrions, barrels smoking, chambers empty. He pulled out the shotguns, rolling into the hallway and coming up in a crouch. He raised a shotgun in each direction. A few straggling Vanishers climbed up the stairs to his right; another group were leveling weapons to his left.
He Pushed on the twin metal levers on the sides of his shotguns, cocking them with Allomancy. The spent casings flipped out into the air above the guns, and Waxillium fired while Pushing, driving birdshot and spent casings into the waiting Vanishers on either side.
The floor next to Waxillium exploded.
He cursed, throwing himself to the left as gunfire from below blasted chips of wood into the air. They were getting smart, firing at him from underneath. He turned and ran, firing shotgun blasts down through the floor, mists creeping in through the broken walls.
There had to be another dozen Vanishers below. Too many to fire at without being able to see them. A bullet grazed his thigh. He turned and ducked away, leaping over the bodies of the fallen and dashing down the hallway. Bullets chased him, the floor splintering, men calling below as they fired everything they had up at him.
He hit the door at the end of the hallway. It was locked. A healthy dose of increased weight—along with some momentum and a shoulder—fixed that. He crashed through and found himself in a small windowless room with no other doors.
A short, balding man cowered in one corner. A woman with golden hair and a rumpled ball gown sat on a bench at the back of the room, her eyes red, her face haggard. Steris. She looked utterly dumbfounded as Wax spun through the broken doorway, mistcoat tassels flaring around him. He Pushed on some of the nails in the floor back in the hall, causing the boards there to ripple, drawing much of the gunfire.
“Lord Waxillium?” Steris said, shocked.
“Most of me,” he said, wincing. “I may have left a toe or two in that hallway.” He glanced at the man in the corner. “Who are you?”
“Nouxil.”
“The gunsmith,” Wax said, tossing him a shotgun.
“I’m not actually a very good shot,” the man said, looking terrified. A few bullets blasted up through the floor between them. The Vanishers had realized they’d been tricked. They knew what he was looking for.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a good shot,” Wax said, raising his empty hand to the back wall and breaking it open with an increased-weight Push. “It matters if you can swim or not.”
“What? Of course I can. But why—”
“Hang on tightly,” Wax said as more gunshots erupted around him. He Pushed on the shotgun in the gunsmith’s hands, flinging him out the opening, throwing him some thirty feet in an arc toward the canal outside.
Wax spun, grabbing Steris as she stood up. “The other girls?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen any other captives,” she said. “The Vanishers implied they were sent somewhere.”
Blast, he thought. Well, he was lucky to find even Steris. He Pushed lightly off the nails in the floor, propelling the two of them toward the ceiling. As they approached, he took advantage of the fact that it didn’t matter how heavy an object was when it came to falling. All objects fell at the same rate. That meant that increasing his weight manyfold would not affect his motion.
Raising his shotgun, he shot a concentrated blast of pellets into the ceiling. Then he Pushed on them sharply, his increased weight meaning the Push didn’t really move him much—just as when he was lighter, a Push affected him greatly.
The result was that he continued his momentum upward—but his Push blasted a hole in the ceiling. He made himself incredibly light and Pushed more strongly off the nails below. The two of them shot up through the hole he’d made, propelled some forty or fifty feet into the air. He spun in the night, mistcoat tassels splaying outward, smoking shotgun clutched tightly in one arm, Steris in the other. Bullets from below left streaks in the mist as it swirled around them.
Steris gasped, clinging to him. Wax drew every bit of weight he had left, draining his metalminds completely. That was hundreds upon hundreds of hours of weight, enough to make him crush paving stones if he tried to walk on them. In the strange way of Feruchemy, he didn’t grow more dense—bullets would still cut through him easily if they hit. But with this incredible conflux of weight, his ability to Push grew incredible.
He used that weight to Push downward with everything he had. There were numerous lines of metal below. Nails. Doorknobs. Guns. Personal effects.
The building trembled, then undulated, then ripped apart as every nail in its frame was driven downward as if propelled by a rotary gun. There was an enormous crash. The building was crushed down into the railroad tunnel on top of which it had been built.
The weight was gone from him in an instant, compounded upon itself in that moment, his metalminds drained all at once. Wax let gravity take him, and he dropped through the mists, Steris clinging to him. They landed in the middle of the wreckage at the bottom of the railroad tunnel. Smashed lumber and fragments of furniture were strewn across the floor.
Three Vanishers stood in the mouth of the tunnel, openmouthed. Wax raised the shotgun and cocked it with Allomancy, then laid into them with shotgun blasts. They were the only ones that had still been standing. Everyone else had been crushed down into the tunnel.
A small fire flickered in the corner where a lantern had fallen. By its light, he checked on Steris, the mists pouring down around them and filling the tunnel.
“Oh Survivor of Mists!” Steris breathed, cheeks flushed, eyes wide, lips parted as she held to him. She didn’t look terrified. If anything, she seemed aroused.
You are a bizarre woman, Steris, Wax thought.
“Do you realize that you have missed your calling, Waxillium?” a voice yelled from within the blackened tunnel. It was Miles. “You are an army unto yourself. You are wasted in the life you’ve taken upon yourself.”
“Take this,” Wax said softly to Steris, handing her the shotgun. He cocked it. One shell left. “Hold it tightly. I want you to run for the precinct station. It’s at Fifteenth and Ruman. If one of the Vanishers comes for you, fire the shotgun.”
“But—”
“I don’t expect you to hit him,” Wax said. “I’ll listen for the sound of the shot.”
She tried to comment further, but Wax ducked down to get his center of mass beneath her, then carefully Pushed the shotgun up into her middle. He used it to launch her up and out of the pit. She landed awkwardly, but safely, and hesitated only a moment before running off into the mists.
Wax scrambled to the side, making sure he wasn’t backlit by the fire. He pulled a Sterrion from its holster and fished out some rounds. He reloaded as he crouched down.
“Waxillium?” Miles called from deep inside the tunnel. “If you’re done playing, perhaps you’d like to come settle things.”
Wax crept up to the tunnel mouth, then stepped inside. The mists had filled it, making it difficult to see—which would work equally against Miles. He made his way forward cautiously until he saw the light from the big workshop at the end, where fires still burned.
By that light, he could faintly make out the silhouette of a figure standing in the tunnel, holding a gun to the head of a slender woman. Marasi.
Waxillium froze, pulse accelerating. But no, this was part of the plan. It was perfect. Except …
“I know you’re in there,” Miles’s voice said. Another figure moved, tossing a few improvised torches into the darkness.
With a freezing sense of horror, Waxillium realized that Miles wasn’t the one holding Marasi. He stood too far back. The man holding Marasi was the one named Tarson, the koloss-blooded Pewterarm.
Her face illuminated by wavering torchlight, Marasi looked terrified. Waxillium’s fingers felt slick on the revolver’s grip. The Pewterarm was careful to keep Marasi between himself and Waxillium’s side of the tunnel, gun to the back of her head. He was squat and tough, but not very tall. He was only in his twenties—like all koloss-blooded, he’d continue growing taller throughout his life.
Either way, at the moment, Waxillium couldn’t get a bead on him. Oh, Harmony, he thought. It’s happening again.
Something rustled in the darkness nearby. He jumped and nearly shot it until he caught the outline of Wayne’s face.