Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Seven - The Breaking Storm: Part 2 - 6

She danced through the room, bred for war. Every pull of the trigger was as natural as the sweep of her leg, every duck perfectly timed for her personal symphony. She was perfectly in tune with the natural ebb and flow of the battle.

I, on the other hand, stumbled in like a falling building and managed to be more hindrance than help. Not that it mattered. Bodies fell from my path without me lifting a finger, limbs missing and eyes boiling, and I stepped over them like a carpet laid out before me.

Euphero grabbed Baron by the collar and hauled him out of the way. They cowered inside the kar as it took hit after hit. The kar revved and put wheels on the ground, kicked up a smokescreen and obscured our vision. Its lights disappeared soon after as the brake dropped and it carried Euphero and Baron away.

The woman unloaded a few shots at its departing ghost but nothing landed. 'Bitch.'

A guard groaned beside me. I put another shot into his chest and silenced him. Almost threw up when the blood and bile splashed back onto my face, but at least I felt like I contributed.

The woman hurried into the darkness behind a row of pillars. 'Help me.'

She had spied Zoomus in a considerable state of disrepair, but intact for the most part nonetheless. Air flight a no-go; this one's strictly for the ground in this condition. Screws and bolts were swept off a workbench as she looked for the key.

I sat on the pillion seat, weary, and looked behind me over the top box. I flipped it open, took out the keys and waved them at her.

There was a hint of a smile, but restrained, as if actually smiling would waste valuable milliseconds. She snatched them from my hand, jumped on board, started the thing up and we took off up the ramp after the kar. Boots stomped into the room as we cleared the doorway.

The route up was long and spiralling, like a chute in a multi-storey up and down the levels, but without the stops along the way. We heard them up ahead echoing down to us. The woman had the Zoomus at full throttle. Acrid smoke billowed from just beneath my left leg and I held on for dear life as the speedo crept higher.

'What's your name?' I bellowed over the noise.

She said something the wind snatched away.

'What?'

'Z9!'

One of Z11's colleagues. Explains it all really.

In that minute ride to the streets, my eyes started to close. I imagined myself belly-flopping onto my bed and gripping the sheets. The softness. The weight taken off me. The need to be on my constant guard taken away for just a few hours. Bliss that might never come again.

Then there was artificial light against the walls, and their engine noise grew louder. We were catching up.

Celestria's dissonance punched through the echoing scream of our dying Zoomus as we passed through the floor of a kar park, up another ramp, and through an energy wall ripped apart only seconds before. We followed the taillights down a dirty, unobtrusive back alley and spilled out onto the road.

Through the relentless, pelting rain, we followed them like a predator smelling blood. A hand out the back of the kar aimed at us a few times but Z9 moved as if she could see the future. The shots hit streetlamps, scattered pedestrians, scorched roads. We didn't care.

They came towards us slowly as we careered through the streets. Every corner they ripped around we banked, knee on the ground even with the anti-grav, and bounced off the pavements to right ourselves again. With the speed, rain, and fatigue, I saw almost nothing in detail. Anything I saw past her back was a blur, blotchy vibrant lights streaking past my vision. My head screamed. I didn't know how much I could take.

I lost track of it all. Time and speed and distance became irrelevant. I started to feel myself falling into the clutches of exhaustive sleep. My limbs got weak in seconds as the wave of fatigue rose up in front of me, higher than the city's towering steel and glass. Stars danced in my vision. Noise muffled.

Z9 reached behind her and punched me. I shook myself awake and re-gripped her waist. She took her arm back and kicked out the rear of the Zoomus to take a particularly nasty corner. Horns blared behind and fairings crunched. In the tiredness I remember hoping that I wasn't going to get given the bill for the damage. I laughed. That woke me up a bit. Not much, but a bit.

Down the other end of the street were sirens going blues and twos. Roadblock being hastily constructed. Gunfire in the making.

Euphero's battered kar smashes through the line before it can properly form. It's smoking off down the road but other kars replace their destroyed comrades. We're too small.

'Hold on.'

She cranks on the power. Something snaps underneath us and rips free, shooting off into the road and piercing through a glass shop front like a bullet. The smoke pouring from the side of the thing now has licks of flame chasing it.

She aims for a police kar and yanks on the front to lift it off the ground. The zoomus's sensors take over when it clears the grill, and they tell the rear to do the same. We're airborne, flying over the top of it, then quickly coming down. Thing lands like a punch to the face and the shock through my back feels like it as well. The anti-grav doesn't have time to hold, and it hits the ground. Sparks fly dangerously close to my eyes, but I bury my face in Z9's back as she turns the thing around and goes off after Evangra. It's slow, but moving, and the police take time to regroup. We're gone before they're mobilised and on our tail.

The zoomus is launching more than just formal protests now. It's screaming down our ears that it's coming apart at its riveted seams.

'This won't take much more,' I shout to Z9.

'Don't need to. Look.'

We went a street down and found the kar parked in front of a disused warehouse, which happens to be my favourite type of building in the world because nothing bad ever happens there and nobody ever repurposes them for nefarious reasons. The kar's doors lay open and the thing was empty. Warehouse front was lifted up and open for business.

Z9 tried to take the zoomus inside but the poor machine gave up the ghost at that moment. It conked out and the anti-grav died. Only quick thinking to put her feet down stops it spilling us onto the ground.

Z9 clambered off the bike. Ejects the cartridge from her gun. Reloads. Heads inside.

I followed.

The whole building was dark, save for flickering lights and noises coming from a doorway in the far distance. Secreting ourselves behind pillars as we go, both with weapons ready to fire, we slowly advanced towards the doorway. Shadows danced on the wall in a blue glow. Voices. Euphero and Baron. Calm.

I could tell something was off as we were stalking the final few feet. They weren't rushed in any way. Nobody was spinning around the doorway to fire at us. The whole place was completely unprotected. Even with the police roadblock fortuitously coming to their aid, both Vayn Baron and Carea Euphero weren't stupid enough to think that we couldn't possibly get here after them.

We stopped by the door. Waited. Nodded. Went through guns out.