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a
frequency that disrupted the offspring’s nanites and kept them from
regenerating. More importantly, it let me kill without using more of my own
power than was absolutely necessary.
    Instead, I used a tiny bit of power to boost my speed and
reaction time. I slashed again as it lunged, barely avoiding its claws.
Predictability didn’t make them less dangerous. My own nanites could repair
most wounds with enough time and heat, but a strong hit from those claws or
teeth might do too much damage too quickly for me to survive. The new girl must
have been worried about this, too, since she was running towards me with a lit
propane torch.
    By the time she reached me, I had landed a few more stabs and
slashes, and the fight was over. The offspring had collapsed into a pool of
sludgy flesh and goo.
    “You ok?” she asked, offering the torch.
    “Thanks, but I can’t do that anymore,” I replied.
    “Oh,” she replied. Her expression went from concern to sorrow,
and she looked at her feet. “I’m so sorry.”
    Since the nanites used thermal energy to replicate, we could
burn a bad wound to kick them into overdrive. The damaged living tissue would
be scorched away, painfully, I might add, and replaced with nanites. When the
nanites reached a certain percentage of our mass, they would require more heat
than our living tissue could produce, and… game over. I was somewhere very near
that critical ratio, and didn’t want to push it.
    “How many is that, now?” she asked, looking at the carnage around
us.
    “Can’t tell,” I said. The gelatinous corpses from our previous
battle had pooled together, making it impossible to count how many we had
killed. I had kept count, of course, but Xipe used to say that it didn’t matter
how many we killed, only how many were left. He was right, and there could be
anywhere from a thousand to a million just in Manhattan.
    “I’ve never seen anyone move like you. It was like you were in
three places at once; stabbing, slashing, and parrying all at the same time.
Who are you?”
    “All the speed in the world doesn’t matter if there are too many
enemies to track in a fight. One hit from the one you didn’t see is all it
takes. That one was stronger than most offspring I’ve fought, but that’s why I
stay out of cities, and that’s why we need get out of this one. Did you find
the humans?”
    “I didn’t look for them. I was watching you,” she replied. “I’m
Diane. I’m real glad you showed up when you did.” She stuck her arm out to
shake my hand.
    “Crane,” I said, reluctantly. I pretended to clean my knife,
though it was already spotless. Nanites slid off of its blade like water off a
hot skillet.
    “Crane?” she repeated. She stared at me with Tiffany’s eyes
again, weighing what she had seen, and deciding whether or not to believe me.
“As in… Crane? Did you pick his name out of respect, or to try and pass as
him?”
    I guessed she made up her mind. “I took the name my parents gave
me,” I said with an unblinking stare. I forcefully turned my thoughts away from
my family.
    “Huh. I’ve been fighting side by side with a legend. Wait ‘til
my friends find out.”
    Her sarcasm took me off guard, and I almost laughed aloud, but
this was no time or place to let my guard down.
    “Look, we need to find the humans and get them back to wherever
they’ve been hiding. If we stay here we’ll bring hell down on this place, then
you can die side by side with the legend.”
    She stared at me again, reconsidering. She wanted to ask if it
was true. I could hear her thoughts as easily I could her words. She
desperately wanted to believe it.
    “Is it true?” It was almost a whisper. She was scared to
believe. “They say Xipe knew how to stop it. I never really thought he was
real. If he was, or is real, and he did know how to kill them all, he would
have done it, right? If you are really Crane, then you know Xipe. Are you
really him?”
    “In the flesh,” I said. I