Chapter 153: Too Many Variables

Kellan leaned away from the strike and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, forcing both of them several steps from the woman. Red light flashed across Kellan’s Mark, but he kept the exchange close instead of releasing anything that could hit the crowd around them.

Marek reached the woman as the second man tried to pull her away from the door. He caught the man’s wrist. The stranger turned and struck him across the side of the face with his free hand.

The blow snapped Marek’s head to the side hard enough to split the corner of his lip. He tasted blood almost at once, and a dull ache was already spreading across his cheek.

He tightened his grip before the man could hit him again, but the woman was still trapped between them and the open door. He could have thrown the man into the vehicle, but there was a decent chance he would take the woman with him.

His first instinct was to judge the man’s position from himself, but Marek caught the mistake before committing to it. Rhovan’s lesson came back to him: he needed two references, and neither of them had to be Marek.

He focused on the man’s wrist around the woman’s arm and the edge of the open vehicle door before reaching for Space. Spatial Parallax sharpened the relationship between them, allowing Marek to sense the distance and angle separating the two points and how both changed as the man dragged the woman closer.

Marek waited until the opening was wide enough, stepped into it, and drove his forearm beneath the man’s elbow without crashing into the woman.

The grip broke.

Dario arrived before the kidnapper could recover and caught the man around the upper body, hauling him away from the woman with enough force that both of the stranger’s feet left the ground.

“Take her!” Dario shouted.

Marek grabbed the woman’s free arm and pulled her away from the vehicle. She stumbled against him, still clutching the strap of her bag.

The third man abandoned Kellan’s opponent and rushed toward them.

Marek tried to establish another pair of references, but with the woman still beside him and another man rushing toward them, he couldn’t keep either point fixed. His attention slipped back toward his own position, exactly as Rhovan had warned would happen once too many things started moving, and Spatial Parallax fell apart before he could stabilize it.

Before he could recover, the attacker was already closing in.

“Left!”

Kellan’s voice came from the man’s other side, making him turn toward it out of instinct. Kellan wasn’t there. Nadia stood several meters away, having borrowed his voice just long enough to pull the man’s attention away from Marek.

Silas appeared from the opposite side and swept the man’s leg before he could understand what had happened. The stranger hit the pavement, rolled once, and tried to rise, but Kellan reached him first.

“Stay down.”

The man ignored him and tried to get up, so Kellan hit him again and forced him back onto the pavement. “I said stay down.”

The woman beside him pulled away without trying to run. Her breathing was uneven, and one side of her sleeve had torn where the first man had grabbed her.

“Are you okay?” Marek asked.

She nodded, though her uneven breathing and torn sleeve made the answer difficult to believe.

Before he could ask again, Rafe shouted from near the curb. “Vehicle!”

The driver had started moving.

For a second, Marek thought the kidnappers were trying to escape without the men outside. The vehicle rolled forward only a short distance before turning toward the open lane beside Dario.

Dario was still holding one of the men, with several civilians only a short distance behind him.

Eren changed the position of his boundary, forcing the nearest pedestrians farther from the lane, while Rafe pointed toward the driver’s intended path.

“Dario, right side!”

Dario released the man he had been restraining and moved with the warning. The vehicle passed close enough that the air displaced by it pulled at his jacket, but it missed both him and the crowd.

Marek glanced toward the vehicle and instinctively reached for Spatial Parallax again, fixing on its front corner and the edge of the lane. He could sense how the distance between them was changing as the vehicle moved, but the Technique only told him where it was going. It gave him no way to actually stop it, especially with civilians still scattered around the lane.

“Let it go! Civilians first!” Rafe shouted.

Marek remained where he was as the vehicle accelerated away from the plaza and disappeared into traffic. The man Dario had released tried to run in the opposite direction during the confusion, but a pale Libra line appeared across his path before he could get far. He hesitated at the sudden boundary, giving Dario enough time to catch him from behind and force him back down.

With the immediate struggle finally under control, Marek took a moment to catch his breath. The side of his face had begun to throb where he’d been struck earlier, and he could still taste blood from the cut on his lip.

People were already calling the authorities, while several others behind Eren’s boundary had raised their devices to record what had happened.

Marek ignored them and kept his attention on the woman.

Kellan stood over one of the attackers while Silas checked the other man’s hands and clothing without removing anything. Nadia remained near the civilians, calming a woman whose child had started crying during the fight. Rafe watched the road in case the vehicle returned.

Rhovan had remained near the edge of the confrontation, ready to step in if anything went wrong. When Marek glanced his way, the man only gave him a small nod.

Marek turned back toward the woman they had pulled away from the vehicle.

She was staring at the men on the ground, still visibly shaken.

The woman still had one hand wrapped tightly around the strap of her bag when the man Dario was restraining suddenly stopped struggling and stared at it.

“Get it!”

The other kidnapper reacted to the order even though Kellan had already forced him down. Instead of taking the open chance to get away, he twisted free enough to lunge toward the woman, reaching straight for the bag hanging against her side.

Marek stepped into his path and struck him across the face, sending him back onto the pavement before he could grab the strap. Kellan caught hold of him again while Marek moved closer to the woman, who immediately pulled the bag against her chest.

Both men had already lost their chance to force her into the vehicle. One of them could have run when Dario released him, and the other had just been given an opening of his own. Neither had taken it. The moment they saw that she still had the bag, getting it back had become more important than getting away.

The sound of approaching Civic Measure Service vehicles carried into the plaza. The woman turned toward it, and Marek saw her arms tighten around the bag rather than relax.

He kept the question to himself. She had only just been dragged away from a vehicle by three strangers, and officers were already entering the plaza. Whatever was inside the bag could wait until she was somewhere safer and somebody had taken a proper statement from her.

Marek remained nearby while Dario and Kellan kept the two men under control. A few moments passed before the woman finally looked at him.

“Irial Venipra,” she said quietly.

Marek nearly answered with his own name before remembering the identity printed on the Standing Card in his pocket. “Newton Machiavelli.”

Officers began clearing a path through the gathering crowd as the first Civic Measure vehicle reached them. Marek stepped aside to give them room, but his attention returned to Irial for a moment as she continued holding the bag close to her body.

Whatever those men had wanted from her, they had been willing to risk capture for what she was carrying.