Roy caught up with Bastion at the end of the corridor, where it branched off in two directions.

  “There’s no signs saying which way to go,” Roy said, scanning the blank walls.

  “Of course not,” said Bastion. Big Time’s not gonna hang up a sign that says ‘Mayor’s Office This Way, Please Come Yell at Me.’ His staff probably just memorize the route. How do you know those gray-suit guys are heading there anyway?”

  “They came to this floor for a reason. The stairway by the elevator didn’t go up any further, so there’s probably only one set of stairs up to the Mayor’s office. They were running down the corridor. I can’t think of anywhere else they’d be going.”

  Bastion squinted down both halls. “Damn, you’re right. Hey. Before we pick a direction at random, tell me what we’re going up against. Did you get a good enough look at their gear to work out what their theme is?”

  “Not really,” said Roy. “They had gray suits and like, sci-fi stuff. There was that big energy weapon you shot at, but it wasn’t really as powerful as it looked. Oh, and the sunglasses had a button that absorbed the surrounding light and then shot it out as lasers. So the theme is sharply dressed gadgeteers, I guess. I’ve never seen anything like that in any movie, though.”

  “What, you’ve never seen ‘The Shades’?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about this secret government organisation, working in the shadows.”

  "Government organisation?" asked Roy.

  "Yeah. You know how the Star Republic has its army and cadets, but also smaller groups like the Rangers and the Presidential Guard? The Shades are like one of those, except nobody knows they exist. They fought supernatural beings with high-tech experimental weapons and gadgets. If these guys are like that, expect guns that don’t do what they look like they’ll do and lots of little things that explode.”

  “That actually sounds like a lot of fun,” said Roy. “Maybe we’ll find a copy at the video store Big Time’s sending us to.”

  “Yeah. One more reason we need to keep him alive. Fuck it, let’s go right.”

  “Wait,” said Roy.

  “What? Why?”

  “Let’s think about this. When I was reading about theme parks, it said that since most people are right-handed, they turn right when entering the park.”

  Bastion leaned against a wall. “What are you getting at here?”

  “If those guys didn’t know where they were going, they probably turned right,” Roy paused. “Unless they knew about the right-handed thing, and turned left so we wouldn’t follow them.”

  “Honestly Roy, I don’t think they would know that. I didn’t know that. It’s an obscure fact, and I think the only reason you paid attention to it was because you’re left-handed. We can keep second-guessing what they’d do, but that doesn’t actually get us to Big Time’s office.”

  “Hmm. The direction of the office would depend on the guy who designed the hotel, and we don’t know enough about him to say for sure.”

  “Wait,” said Bastion. “Which way do we even want to go here? The direction of the office, or the way the guys in gray went? Do we want to ambush them before they get to Big Time or get to him first?”

  “We’d go left for a better chance at getting there first, but it’s also more likely there’s just a dead end that way.”

  Bastion threw up his hands. “Fuck it. We’ll go right.”

  At the end of the right corridor, they reached a stairwell. Wind howled through a gaping hole in the wall behind it. The main staircase heading down had collapsed into a pile of rubble, exposing a clear drop to the floor below, where chips of plaster and splinters of wood floated away in a stream.

  Beside the ruined stairway stood two heavy metal doors, both had swung inward into a small room with high ceilings and bare brick walls. Inside, a wrought-iron staircase doubled back on itself, climbing to a mezzanine that took up half the square footage halfway up the wall.

  The right-hand door bore a sign marked “PRIVATE”, and a small hole where the lock had been melted through.

  "Looks like you were right,” said Bastion.

  As they stepped forward into the room, Roy heard footsteps and immediately ducked behind the doorway.

  Pew pew. Flashes of green light zipped past.

  He jumped back further, putting the steel door between him and the energy weapon.

  Pew pew, clang clang. High-pitched pulses slammed against steel, vibrating above his head.

  Roy squatted. He didn’t think those bolts could penetrate the door, but he wasn’t going to risk a headshot, especially since a helmet was the one piece of armor he didn’t have yet.

  To his left, Bastion stood behind the opposite door. He raised his crossbow and cautiously leaned out.

  He was a better shot than anyone Roy had seen. There was a good chance he could win the shootout, even against two opponents.

  Before Bastion could take a shot, something small and dark flew past and landed on the floor between them.

  Roy recoiled, Bastion dove forwards. If that was a grenade, there was no way they could outrun it. The only place safe from the blast would be on the other side of the doors, right in the line of fire.

  Beep. Beep.

  Roy looked closer. It was a digital stopwatch. Not something that immediately screams grenade, but with a gadget-based theme, that was no guarantee it wouldn’t explode in their faces.

  Beeeeep… Beeeeep.

  This time, the beeps came slower, low-pitched and distorted. One look at Bastion confirmed what the ‘grenade’s’ effect was.

  He was frozen mid-dive, sailing through the air so slowly Roy could actually track his motion. After three seconds, he was still lifting off the ground.

  Roughly ten times slower? Most likely, it was exactly ten times slower. Digital meant precision, as far as theming went.

  Something flashed to Roy’s left. By reflex, he started to close his eyes, but his eyelids only moved sluggishly. He could actually feel how long it took to blink. Halfway through, he reopened them

  A stretched-out roar came from the door in front of Bastion. A circle of steel glowed orange, then white. Molten metal began dripping down it. It warped and buckled, finally collapsing like wax before a blowtorch.

  With a drawn-out screech, a flattened ball of plasma emerged through the glowing hole it had made, trailing light as it flew toward Bastion’s back.

  Roy would have opened his mouth in shock if it didn’t take several seconds to do it. That shot had to be perfectly timed to hit the door right after the time grenade activated.

  He tried to shout out a warning to Bastion, but his mouth moved too slowly, and the words came out garbled.

  Next, he tried to run. Moving felt like swimming through treacle. With each step, he could feel individual muscles tensing and relaxing.

  It was frustrating, knowing how he wanted to move but having to wait to do it. It was easy to second-guess himself, wanting to change directions just for some variety.

  At least his form was perfect; he positioned himself like a champion sprinter.

  He still wouldn’t be fast enough.

  The orb of energy was still heading right for Bastion, already in front of Roy and moments away from flying past him.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  Bastion was twisting his body in mid-air like a gymnast. He must have heard the blast and reacted. It wouldn’t help him dodge the plasma, but it was still impressive.

  Wait, he had time to do that because he had time to think. They were moving slowly, but they weren’t thinking slowly. That would take a different theme to pull off, some kind of psychic, maybe?

  His mind was working at normal speed, and magic was all in the mind.

  Roy shifted his stance and began to move like a knight, deliberate, grounded, as though his armor weighed a hundred pounds.

  He felt a charge running through his muscles, and the soupy feeling of the air resisting his movements subsided a little.

  Still not fast enough.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He threw his shield. The silver plate arced through the air as though time hadn’t slowed at all, moving faster than flying shrapnel, faster than plasma.

  It flew into place at the exact right moment, and unlike the steel door, it had the power of theming to strengthen it. The plasma ball flattened against the disc, flashing and sending the shield flying at the wall.

  Roy exhaled. He’d done it.

  Pew Pew.

  Roy spun to face the shots. He was right in front of the opening between the doors. For the first time, he saw their attackers clearly.

  Two more men in gray, one with a Thunder Cannon and one with a lighter, carbine-like gun. No sunglasses this time, thankfully. Laser beams moving instantly would have been the worst possible thing under these circumstances.

  Still, that second gun was a problem. Less intimidating to look at, but more effective. There was something going on with the weapon theming here, where bigger didn’t necessarily mean better. It had a sleek, curved design and rapid-fired bursts of green plasma.

  Roy was exposed, but he felt the resonance filling him with energy, with speed. He was faster, not the ten times faster that’d bring him back to normal, but he didn’t need to be. The incoming shots got slowed too, the instant they hit the sphere of slowed time that marked the stopwatch’s range.

  He gripped his sword’s hilt with both hands, felt the energy ripple through them, and moved the blade faster than should have been possible. He used his wrists, tilting the hilt back and forth for maximum leverage.

  His blade moved faster than a normal one could have, even without the time grenade. Within its effect, Roy could actually see the plastic bending into place to deflect a plasma bolt. It flashed on contact, and the sound of ringing steel filled the air, with no distortion.

  The second bolt was easier. With the slightest flick of his wrist the sword was in position, moving as though it knew where it wanted to go. His skin tingled. It was a pure sugar rush.

  He'd never be able to do this under normal circumstances, when the plasma bolts were ten times faster. This was like seeing into his own future, if he kept practising with theme magic. A taste of power.

  Pew pew. Pew pew. Screeeeech.

  They both unloaded on him. Four shots from the Storm Carbine, all at different angles, and a big, slow ball from the Thunder Cannon.

  Tilting the blade sideways, he readied himself.

  He’d have to block multiple shots at once to pull this off, line them up along a horizontal plane. He took one hand from the hilt and moved it lower with resonance-enhanced speed.

  Fzzap. Two bolts fizzled against the blade. Then he dropped it and caught it with his other hand. His theme had sped up the sword’s descent, warping the already-warped gravity back to normal.

  Fizzle. Two more shots, gone. He spun the blade, flat side forward, presenting the largest possible surface area against the plasma ball.

  Sci-fi blasters can’t beat a sword with a story behind it.

  The impact snapped his wrist back, and something twisted the wrong way inside. His blade slammed into his chest, and then he was flying backwards in slow motion.

  He tried to will himself to fall faster, but nothing happened. Off his feet, theme magic didn’t seem to be doing him any good.

  Pew pew.

  He could hear the shots, but he couldn’t see them. Helpless in free-fall, he waited, hoping the plasma bolts wouldn’t hit the part of his armour that was already damaged, or find their way to any unprotected joints.

  Then, everything happened at once.

  Sounds collided around him—thunderclaps, warping metal, and snapping plastic. The air turned into wind. Gravity returned like a hammer striking him down.

  He hit the ground hard. Friction burned his back as he was dragged across the floor.

  Sitting up against the wall, he watched as Bastion slammed one door shut and sprinted across the room, dodging incoming fire to reach the other.

  Roy saw the broken fragments of the stopwatch next to a crossbow bolt on the floor and pieced together what had happened.

  Bastion had shot it with his themed crossbow, firing at bullet-like speed. The time-slowing effect had broken in a wave, freeing Roy just before the plasma bolts, allowing him to drop beneath them.

  “Come on, we have to go,” said Bastion. “There’s nothing to barricade these doors with. They’ll be on us in seconds.”

  Roy sprang to his feet and scooped up his shield. As they ran for the stairs, he noticed he was still moving faster than normal. Interestingly, so was Bastion.

  “Hey,” said Roy. “Are you feeling it? The resonance?”

  “Yeah,’ Bastion said, vaulting a stair. “Once I shot the watch, I felt better at running and dodging. Like I’m lighter on my feet all of a sudden.”

  “Try to do more stuff like that. I have a feeling we’ll need the boost.”

  The stairway snaked upwards at sharp angles, hanging from the back wall on high-tensile steel wires. Roy didn’t like how flimsy it looked. The whole thing shuddered beneath their boots as they pounded their way up the first flight.

  Their climb turned frantic when they heard the doors below slam open.

  Halfway up the second flight, a green plasma bolt struck Roy’s forearm, melting the arm guard into steaming goo. Bastion ran ahead of him, dodging the other shots.

  At the top, they emerged onto the mesh-metal mezzanine. It swayed under their feet as they stepped onto it. Like the stairs, it wasn’t bolted to the wall but instead suspended from it.

  Across the mezzanine, another set of stairs led to a doorway.

  “Go go go,” he shouted to Bastion.

  Roy bolted straight for the stairs, while Bastion zigzagged off to his left, running serpentine style. He’d had the right idea, because Roy had to skid to a stop when a ball of plasma ripped through the floor in front of him.

  Roy vaulted the hole and picked up speed again. Hah, missed me.

  Beep beep.

  The sound came from the stairs below.

  At the same moment, Bastion shouted, “Roy, it’s another of those—thiii—”

  He trailed off as time slowed again.

  The time grenade had landed on the stairs, its spherical range catching them from below. No way to shoot it this time, and the two men in gray would be free to fire up through the mesh.

  Clever. But Roy could do clever too.

  In the climactic scene of “Pirates of Pendor”, a kraken had suckered on to the sails and attacked the hero in the crow’s nest. He’d slashed the rigging, dropping the kraken and making it his enemies’ problem.

  This was the same kind of battlefield: vertical and unstable. The key here was positioning — of themselves and of the time grenade.

  Roy moved as fast as he could, closer to half speed than one tenth, and cut the wires holding up the stairs.

  A moment later, he resumed sprinting, following Bastion to the other end of the platform.

  It was a strange feeling, when the stopwatch fell enough that he exited its range. His head was freed first, then the rest of him over the next few seconds, until only his feet remained slow and he felt like he was running through quicksand.

  When he jumped out of the last of the time-slowed space his feet lagged behind his legs, almost tripping him up. Roy idly wondered how blood flow worked in this situation. There had to be something going on with the magic so it didn’t kill him.

  Once they’d resumed normal speed, they quickly made it over to the next set of stairs, but they were still being shot at. Relentless suppressing fire focused in front of the stairway. Plasma bursts ripped through the mesh, making holes and scorching the metal. One shot narrowly missed Roy’s leg, while Bastion deflected another with one of his crossbow's steel limbs.

  While hopping around, dodging plasma fire, Roy looked down through the mesh and saw a section of the stairway falling in slow motion. The parts moving in real time had already crashed to the ground, but this last piece tilted as it fell. The stopwatch rolled off, falling at an angle.

  The men in gray had been so focused on shooting that they’d ignored the peril flying straight toward them.

  He’d seen slow motion before, replaying sword duels over and over on his Ultra-Disc player. Those were normal motions slowed down. Here, when reactions were faster than movement, every reflexive motion was clipped. Instead of open mouths and wide eyes when the time-slowing field hit them, the men in gray’s dawning horror was reduced to an eyebrow raise and a lip curl apiece.

  “Haha. Yes!” said Bastion. “Looks like the shit’s on the other shoe now. How do you like it?” He aimed his crossbow through a hole.

  “Wait,” said Roy. “I have a better idea.”

  The swaying mezzanine had got him thinking. Roy pointed to the thick suspension wires spaced along its edge, three in total.

  He cut the nearest one. The platform groaned and tilted slightly.

  “Huh,” said Bastion. “I thought it would do more than that. Guess this thing isn’t quite as flimsy as it looks.” He grinned. “Try another.”

  Roy ran over to the middle wire, figuring this one would destabilise it more than doing both sides and leaving the center intact. As the second wire snapped, the mezzanine jerked downward. The upper stairs were pulled out of position, but still held to the doorway.

  “Wow, I really thought that’d do it,” said Roy. “This last one has to be it, though.”

  “Roy, they already can’t hit us. If we just go upstairs, they’ve got no way to follow. It’s really not a good idea to——”

  “Too late.” Roy severed the final wire. The platform dropped.

  Bastion clutched the stairs as they swung down into a near-vertical ladder, gasping. “Roy!”

  But Roy had remembered something. After a short drop, the falling mezzanine slowed its descent. Its center had dipped into the range of the falling stopwatch, holding up the rest of it.

  He ran back along it and jumped over to the vertical stairway, climbing past Bastion despite his head start.

  “Roy, you mad bastard. I love it. Look.”

  This time, the horror took hold of their enemies long enough to register on their faces. The men in gray tried to turn and flee back through the doorway, but the parts of the metal mesh beyond the time grenade’s boundary began to break off, snapping at the point of discontinuity and crashing down around them.

  They pivoted and tried to run to the other side, but too late. They were trapped beneath the remaining chunk of platform as it fell on them like a guillotine.

  The one with the Storm Carbine tried to shoot them one last time, while also trying to make a hole in the platform he could slip through.

  “Nope. None of that. You stand there and reap what you sowed,” Bastion said, firing a crossbow bolt before the man could line up his shot. It moved much faster than the plasma, failing to penetrate his enemies’ suit but knocking him back, sending his own shots wide.

  As he fell, the other man crouched low, bracing for what was coming. Roy and Bastion looked on as the platform continued to fall.

  Back in Wiley’s junkyard, they had a hydraulic press. The kind of thing bored boys with bad ideas liked to play around with. Roy had spent hours watching things get crushed. After a while, he’d started to notice patterns, learned how to anticipate the different ways things came apart.

  Plastic shattered. The first sacrifice had been a pair of 3D glasses that hadn’t made the world look any more 3D. The lenses had popped out as high-speed projectiles. Another time, a bowling ball had exploded into flying shards while they shielded their eyes with their hands.

  Metal deformed and crumpled in on itself. He’d watched a soda can with a grinning action star printed on its side fold like an accordion.

  Right now he was reminded of the halloween jack-o-lantern, of the way things made mostly of liquid just got…squeezed out.

  After a few seconds of the slow, drawn out crunch, Roy turned away in disgust.

  Bastion laughed until the stopwatch was destroyed and the slow motion destruction suddenly sped up, sending out a booming wave of delayed sound, followed by silence.

  “Damn, I hate these guys,” said Bastion. “They use the most frustrating bullshit possible. Laser glasses, bulletproof suits, time-slowing grenades. I’m half expecting them to throw a giant net over us next, or pour superglue on the floor.”

  “We just need our own themes to be good enough to counter it,” said Roy. “Like I said, resonance. When I deflected some of the plasma with my sword, I really felt it. You got it too right?”

  “Yeah. It was like my hands knew exactly where to aim the crossbow. Like these was a charge in them when they were in the right position.”

  “And this is just the start. Imagine what we’ll be able to do when we understand it better.”

  “Damn, it’s pretty good already,” said Bastion. “Hey, what do you think activates it for you? For me it’s trick shots and fast reactions.”

  “Swordplay and charging in to save people.”

  “Great. It should work for you right now then.”

  They approached the open door of Mayor Big Time’s office, where the sounds of crashing furniture and pulsing plasma could already be heard.