<P>For a moment she was still. Then guards above her found the hole she had created and began firing down it.
<P>
<P>Jess sprang up and ran - So fast that each footfall proved capable of blowing the glass out from beneath her - And then she leaped, and fired downwards again, and fell in such a way that she landed inside the corridor at its end, upon metallic floor.
<P>
<P>She bled. Her flesh proved not so durable as Dominic's.
<P>
<P>--- --- --- ---
<P>
<P>Men rose out of a hole in the floor - Dominic saw that it was a panel before the statue which had opened. Stairs descended from it.
<P>
<P>Somewhere, he heard a shotgun blast - Then a second, and the shattering of glass.
<P>
<P>He rose. Running for the hole in the floor, he leaped towards its stairs.
<P>
<P>A rocket sliced the air above him - So close that he felt the rush upon his head - And then it impacted stone, and exploded with such force that fine, piercing shards lodged themselves deep in the flesh of Dominic's back and shoulders. He collapsed, striking the floor before him, crumpling into a ball. He shouted between tighly closed teeth.
<P>
<P>Pain was no less real than it had ever been. He had maintained that much.
<P>
<P>Rising and turning simultaneously he drew his knife and threw it. It lodged itself in the mechanical man's neck. Blood oozed through the cracks in the metal and glass, organs spilling through bone, rotten core pouring through the healthy outer shell of a fruit. Indeed there was a man somewhere in there, and he was dying.
<P>
<P>Dominic vanished.
<P>
<P>He was a man of power, and miserably so.