The crowd at the street corner kept growing.
The flower seller clutched her empty basket, bending down again and again to pick shattered glass off the ground and toss it inside. The taxi driver sat in the wrecked front end of his car, both hands gripping the broken steering wheel, his right foot still pressing the accelerator. The boy in a school uniform stood before the bus stop sign, raising his wrist every five seconds.
They maintained the poses they had held in life.
Golden particles seeped from their ears, nostrils, and collars, propping their collapsed Skinbags back up.
A military vehicle barreled into the intersection, its roof-mounted machine gun sweeping through the crowd. Bullets tore through clothing and pierced skin, but there was no blood inside. No bones, either.
Large swaths of particles fell to the ground and crawled up the wheels onto the undercarriage.
Gunfire soon erupted from inside the cab.
The military vehicle crashed into the mall, and its glass curtain wall crushed half the people on the street. Less than ten seconds later, those Skinbags crawled back out from the shattered glass.
Piyu landed atop a bus with Bai Zhu on her back.
She kicked away an incoming Husk and ran forward across the roof.
Shuto followed close behind, somehow holding a military folding shield that blocked the left side. Two Skinbags in police uniforms leaped onto the bus roof, but before they could steady themselves, the shield slammed into them.
They tumbled onto the street, their bodies rapidly collapsing.
The particles hidden beneath their skin slipped into the sewer, then emerged again from the edge of a manhole cover ahead.
Shuto turned his head and shouted, "They can't be killed!"
Piyu leaped over two cars that had rear-ended each other. Her legs sank when she