William closed the last of the distance without acceleration — already moving at the speed it intended when it stepped onto the bridge, arriving at that speed without preamble.
The swing came from the right, the too-long limb sweeping across the bridge width, and Leon stepped left into the railing and let it pass. The limb moved through the space he'd been in and continued into the railing on the far side, bending the metal on contact. He fired the Matilda into the secondary mass at contact range — the impact visible, tissue displacing and then settling back — and stepped right to clear the return.
The bridge was four meters wide and William was using most of it. Leon had the railing on his right, the shaft wall on his left, and the locked door somewhere behind him, and he gave ground in small steps because the alternative was letting the limb find his center of mass.
He fired the last shotgun shell into the chest at two meters. The impact rocked the secondary mass backward, but the legs adjusted under it and kept driving, and he had to take a full step back to stay out of the follow-through. The Matilda came up — two shots into the primary mass, tracking but not slowing it.
His right side was failing him. The shoulder's range was down to where anything above the elbow was a question, and the bridge was too narrow for the footwork that would've kept his left side dominant. He compensated in ways that cost him balance he didn't have.
Step. Step. The door was close behind him now.
William swung again and Leon ducked under it, and the railing section tore from its mounting — not bending, separating, the bolts pulling through the floor plate and the whole section swinging outward over the drop before the last attachment held it. The floor plate lifted at one corner, and his right boot found that edge on the next step, the footing going wrong before he corrected left.
The left-side railing was still intact. He kept it in his peripheral vision.
William stepped forward and the plate dropped then lifted again under the weight, the bridge responding to the load in ways it wasn't meant to after the catwalk failure. A bolt beneath the grating gave with a sound that carried through the metal into his boots.
He looked at the gap where the railing had been, at the drop beyond it, and took a half step back.
Then the shot went wrong.
He'd been tracking the primary mass and his right arm contributed too much on the pull, the round going high and catching the secondary mass at the junction with the shoulder — not where he'd aimed. The mass shifted from the angle rather than damage, the force pushing it sideways on its axis, and for half a second the eye was exposed from the front.
Fully visible. Wet, large, tracking him even as the mass moved away from it.
He'd seen it before — in the sewer, briefly, when a shot had found the right depth. And before that, a room, a man, the moment something had opened in William Birkin's chest that hadn't been there an hour earlier. The mass settled and the eye was gone, and he didn't think he could win. He registered it as the only part that reacted, and William kept coming.
The bridge was moving now — not collapsing, shifting, the whole structure responding to the weight in oscillations the damaged anchor points couldn't dampen. Each step sent vibration through the grating into his legs, each one slightly larger than the last. Three meters behind him to the locked door, no railing on the right, the left rail his only fixed reference for where the edge was.
His breathing had moved past the rib ceiling into something worse — exertion layered over injury, the bullet still seated in his shoulder, the analgesic quietly wearing off. The full accounting was arriving.
William stepped forward and the bridge shifted four inches laterally, settled, and the plate under Leon's right boot lifted and stayed lifted.
He stopped giving ground.
The bridge was failing under William's weight, not his — every step pulling more load through anchor points already compromised since the catwalk went — and he'd been moving toward the door, away from the section that was failing. That was wrong. He held position, the plate under his boot still lifted, the gap at its corner exposing the structural member beneath it and the bolt that had already given on the far mounting. One mounting left.
William closed the distance and Leon let it close — one step longer than he should have, two — and when William committed its weight forward the secondary mass swung with the momentum and the eye came into view at the wrong angle, tracking him.
He fired into it.
His right arm dragged the shot slightly wide, catching the edge of the mass around the eye instead of the eye itself, but the impact there did what it always did — the creature pulled back from it, the weight that had been driving forward reversing onto the compromised plate.
The remaining bolt tore free.
The plate dropped, metal reaching its limit and releasing, and the structural member it had been connected to followed a half-second later. That member carried the load from the section William was standing on and the section tipped, taking William with it — too much weight, too far out — and the mass and the limb and the eye went over the edge and into the dark below. The sound came late, arriving without detail, and then there was nothing from below.
The tipping section had taken the plate under Leon's right boot with it, leaving one foot on grating and one on nothing, and his left hand found the railing and closed on bent metal that shifted in its mounting but held.
He hung there — left hand locked, right arm contributing nothing, boots pressing into the grating edge while the railing flexed under his weight and the mounting moved without failing. Everything had caught up with him. He breathed through it in the short fractions available and held on.
The mounting held.
When the shaking in his hand eased enough he pulled — left arm doing the work, right stabilizing without load, boots walking up the edge until his knee found solid metal, then his foot, then both. On the bridge again, one knee down, hand still on the rail.
He got up slowly, one knee then both boots, and stood.
Below, nothing — no sound, no movement, just the torn edge and the drop and the dark that didn't give anything back.
He checked the Matilda by feel and didn't count the rounds, not here, not on a bridge with a torn edge three feet to his right. He raised it and put two shots into the lock mechanism, tried the handle, and it opened.
He went through without looking back. The corridor beyond was dark and he put his left hand on the wall and moved.