The convoy raced across the desert. The soldiers still couldn't understand why Daisy was so tense. Sure, lions and tigers had a kind of predatory menace that made even armed men nervous — but with firearms in hand, what flesh-and-blood creature could actually stop them? It was just some flying old man. One soldier was already daydreaming about beating the geezer until he was unrecognizable and planting a boot on his face for good measure.
Daisy saw their skepticism and misplaced confidence. She answered with silence.
The third pursuit came faster than the previous two. This time, Mandarin still opened with his customary "Who are you people?" — but his face was twisted with fury, and it was clear he wasn't planning to wait for an answer.
Daisy spotted a cold gleam on the ring of his left pinky. A small cluster of crystalline frost formed around it as the temperature dropped sharply around them. The Ice Ring was activating.
"Open fire!" she shouted into the radio.
The rattling clatter of automatic weapons erupted as the soldiers pulled their triggers in unison. Muzzle flashes bloomed from the barrels; a storm of rounds tore skyward. Two rocket-propelled grenades were mixed into the barrage, and then the mounted machine guns joined it — a wall of lead poured up at Mandarin.
Watching him engulfed in that metal storm, the soldiers cheered. Even Colonel Rhodes cracked a rare smile. Only Daisy stayed calm. At this level of firepower, Mandarin probably felt nothing more than a light breeze.
Sure enough, the barrage barely slowed him down. As the smoke cleared, they saw it: a thin, eggshell-like energy barrier had deflected every round. Then a withered left hand rose toward them — fingers long and gnarled, five rings blazing on five fingers. The pinky ring shone the brightest.
A translucent, fluorescent white mist erupted from it.
Everything the mist touched froze instantly — dirt, rock, gravel — all solidifying in seconds into a towering ice wall, five meters (≈16 ft) high and thirty meters (≈98 ft) wide. The mist surged forward like a ravenous beast opening its jaws, devouring everything in its path, sweeping toward all three SUVs at once.
The mist moved fast. Even with some energy dispersing along the way, the temperature it carried was lethal.
"Incendiary grenades!" Daisy ordered.
The soldiers had been rattled by the display — their earlier bravado gone. Now they ran on autopilot, executing her commands without thought.
Her counter-tactic was sound in theory. But she had underestimated the cold. Four or five incendiary grenades froze solid in mid-air before they could even ignite.
"Pour fuel on the road — then fire the incendiaries!" She pivoted instantly.
The soldiers were well-drilled enough to respond. All three vehicles kept pace as two men in each poured fuel out the back while the others launched incendiary rounds at the road behind them. US military equipment was genuinely impressive — Daisy even found a flamethrower and let it rip across the ground in their wake.
Eventually the mist exhausted itself against their layered countermeasures. They'd burned through a fifth of their fuel and a third of their incendiaries.
"Interesting little insects," Mandarin said, eyes cold with amusement. To him, Daisy looked no different from any ordinary person. His rattled mind hadn't picked up on anything unusual.
Hands clasped behind his back, borne on the wind with the poise of a master, Mandarin watched his prey pull ahead. He wasn't angry. He just smiled — slow and crooked.
He never seriously considered using the mind-control ring on his left ring finger. It required close range, and enslaving a few foreigners barely crossed his mind. If it had, he might have noticed something odd about the girl who was wearing anti-telepathy gear in the middle of a war zone.
Because a person carrying mental-shield equipment in a firefight was definitely not ordinary.
He raised his left hand again. This time, the middle finger lit up.
A thin electric current began threading between his fingers. In under two seconds it coiled into a fist-sized mass of cold blue energy. Lightning crackled across the air with a sound like hundreds of chicks chirping in chorus.
Mandarin half-closed his left fist. A lance of pure lightning took shape in his grip. He hurled it — not at the vehicles, but ahead of them.
Mandarin was erratic, maybe even unhinged — but not stupid. His cunning hadn't dulled with his fractured mind; if anything, it had grown more unpredictable and dangerous. Daisy's trick of burning the road to neutralize the ice wall had given him an idea. A direct hit would just destroy the vehicles outright — but a crater blasted open in their path? That would strip them of mobility, and mobility was the only thing keeping them alive.
Daisy yanked Bobbi out of the driver's seat in one motion. Bobbi yelped — she wasn't light at around 120 jin (≈60 kg / 132 lbs), but in Daisy's grip she floated like a toy. One moment she was driving; the next she was in the passenger seat with no idea how she'd gotten there.
No time to process it. Daisy was already calculating the lightning lance's trajectory and blast radius.
"Vehicle Two, veer left. Vehicle Three, veer right."
Afghanistan had once had a few decent roads. Seven years of war had turned them all to dirt tracks.
In the split second before impact, Daisy wrenched the wheel and cut a wide arc, narrowly clearing the blast zone.
"Smoke grenades! Use them to kill his line of sight!" The lightning discharge had knocked out some radio reception — she had to shout herself hoarse. She had no idea whether Mandarin understood English, and she wanted to use another language, but thinking about the average American soldier's linguistic range, she stuck with English.
"Bobbi — try tear gas. See if his energy shield can stop a gas cloud." Daisy was doing three things at once: driving, tracking Mandarin behind them, and commanding a squad of US military personnel simultaneously.
Smoke grenades were standard issue — normally used to disperse locals, they came in handy now. The soldiers fired them in rolling salvos, and within seconds the road was swallowed in a dense gray cloud. The three vehicles navigated by GPS, keeping their speed up while popping additional grenades every few seconds.
Daisy glanced back. The smoke was thick enough. Mandarin, high above, had lost their exact positions — but it was only a delay, nothing more. The tear gas had never landed close enough to matter anyway.
"Split up?" Colonel Rhodes ventured. "Maybe give the other vehicles better odds?"
Daisy shook her head. Without her there to support them, the other two vehicles would be hunted down one by one.
"Ha! You little bugs sure can run!" Mandarin reappeared, blowing the smoke aside with a gust of wind. As was his habit, he opened with theatrical taunts. Then his index finger blazed red — the fire ring — flames coiling hungrily around his fist.
Daisy was calculating her counter when the cavalry finally arrived.