Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Six - The Breaking Storm: Part 1 - 6

We scrabbled away from the front room and into the hallway. I was on all fours into the bedroom, and Z11 followed and crouched behind the doorframe. She reached into a pocket in the inside of her coat. Boots trampled over twisted metal in the other room.

'Come on,' I hissed. She waved me away with a canister in her hand. The fluid was green, something I'd heard of in passing but never actually seen. Didn't know what it did but I hoped it was a rocket launcher. She slapped it into place and took aim.

I shuffled over and started to untie Markro.

'How fucked are we?' he asked.

'The usual. Your door might be a little more fucked than usual.'

'Wanted to move out soon anyway.'

Z11 brushed the sleeve of her coat out of the way and aimed through the doorway in the opposite direction to the front room.

'The fuck're you doing?' I hissed.

'Just watch,' she said.

Then there were footsteps in the hallway. Z11 was watching for something, probably a sight which accompanied the three other footsteps, grunting and groaning as they shifted their wall-disintegrator, which was a massive thing on wheels with a little podium behind it.

Then she smiled and squeezed the trigger. The green blast left the muzzle, headed into the hallway, then bounced back down the hallway. A boom, a hit, and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

Z11 quickly adjusted her aim and squeezed again. The blast bounced off one of the panels of the machine's podium. She squatted and waited. 'I'll cover you,' she said.

I'd managed to get the ropes off Markro by then. 'You'll just hit us in the back.'

'Trust me. I'm a good shot with this stuff.' She shot again and once more the blast rebounded around to ping off a different pedestal panel.

I sighed and checked my canister. 'Well, go out fighting, at least.'

'Good boy. You too, Markro.'

'Yes, ma'am.' He sounded less convinced than the prospect of eating vomit.

The two of us waited... three... two... one... out into the gun smoke. Flashes and bangs in the dust, shots traded before we squatted down behind a cabinet which had already had part of its ripped away. It wasn't much protection, and it disintegrated by the second.

'Little help, Z11?' I stuck my arm out and fired blindly towards our aggressors. A couple of green flashes went over our heads, then back again the other way. Someone screamed down the end of the corridor and that was all the invitation we needed. Markro and I leapt out from behind our flimsy screen and looked death in the face, armed with prayers over accuracy. Within five steps we were in the front room, and the two Red Rose remaining manning the cannon stopped trying to aim the big boy and scrambled for their pea-shooters. But we were too close. Markro leapt over the protective screen and landed a kick to the face of a man. His nose crunched under his foot. I whipped around the other side and a woman met me with a wild punch. I ducked under it, lashed out with an arm that was quickly blocked, then followed up with my gun hand sneaking under her guard. I nestled the muzzle underneath her ribs, pointing diagonally up, enough to rip a hole through her she'd never recover from. She stopped, eyes wide.

'Who sent you?' I asked.

'Shoot me,' she said.

'Don't tempt me. Was is Euphero? Vayn Baron? Someone else? Give me a name.'