The SUV reached the opening and drove up the ramp, literally leaping from the exit. Broad daylight surrounded them, negating the need for LIDAR, and she shut off her overlay.
Will slammed on the brakes as the vehicle touched down. He didn’t stop completely, but slowed to a near crawl, swerving to the left. He drove up the pedestrian ramp that led to the skyscraper’s main entrance.
Meanwhile Rhea scanned the streets and surrounding buildings, searching for signs of Aradne security forces, or other Tasins. All she saw were a bunch of dead bioweapons strewn across the road. Or parts of bioweapons, anyway. That, and a whole lot of blast craters.
“Are we really sure we want to leave the vehicle?” Renaldo asked.
Rhea ignored the question.
Will halted next to the building’s main entrance. None of the bioweapons had yet emerged from the parking garage. Good.
The five occupants piled from the left-hand side of the vehicle at a crouch, using the SUV as screen in case there were some Aradne security forces watching nearby that she hadn’t noticed. They entered the broken revolving doors set amid the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The SUV’s AI took over at that point and backed up, swerving in front of the parking garage as programmed, and noisily driving away. Even from inside the building, Rhea could hear the wildly honking horn, and the tires squealing as it swerved around the debris, bodies, and blast craters inflicted by the bombing.
The bioweapons appeared shortly; past the windows, she saw them dash into the street from the garage and pursue the vehicle.
Rhea and the others ran deeper into the building’s concourse. Rubble was strewn across the floor in places, much of it broken glass from the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the facade. As she sprinted, she scanned the skies beyond, still searching for signs of Aradne security, but didn’t spot any drones or other airborne vehicles. The enemy forces had likely lost Rhea and the others in the confusion of the bioweapon attack and didn’t know their precise position at the moment. The SUV would soon attract their attention of course, and lead the Aradne forces to the area, which meant it behooved Rhea and the others to get out of sight of those windows as quickly as possible.
While climbing an inactive escalator with the others, she glanced over her shoulder one last time, past the glass to the street beyond, and watched the SUV turn into a side street, vanishing from view. The creatures followed.
The plan was for the vehicle to lead the Tasins to the far side of town. It was possible the bioweapons would outrun the SUV, depending on the obstacles and extent of debris in the vehicle’s path, or interference from the Aradne security forces, but the hope was that once the Tasins destroyed it, they weren’t smart enough to return to the building to pick up the scent of Rhea and the others again.
That the creatures had blindly dashed outside in pursuit of the noisy target, apparently having forgotten the painful bombing that led them into hiding in the first place, was a good sign.
She hurried forward, turning into a dead-end hallway lined with elevators. A stairwell provided foot access to the upper levels.
She immediately shoved open the stairwell door. Beyond, it was clear of debris. She glanced at Chuck. “There you go. Designed to resist collapse.”
“At least some of the architects were paying attention,” Chuck agreed.
Rhea raced up the steps three at a time, zigging and zagging up the different flights, passing a new level every four seconds.
After seven floors, she reached an area where the roof was ripped away and could proceed no further. She turned around to find only Horatio behind her. The others were nowhere in sight. A quick glance at her overhead map told her they were still a few levels down.
Rhea retreated to the floor below and waited next to the door, labeled “six.”
The remaining members of the party arrived. Renaldo and Chuck were panting, and even Will seemed winded. Sometimes Rhea forgot that she was different from other human beings…
Horatio of course remained just as unaffected by the sprint as she did.
She leaned against the wall next to the door, giving the humans time to recover.
“Don’t stop on our account,” Will said sarcastically as he gasped for air. “You’re not killing us or anything…”
“Actually, the flights end after this,” Rhea said. “The top portion of the building has fallen away.”
Will frowned. “Oh.”
“That doesn’t bode well for the stability of the rest of the building…” Renaldo said between gasps.
“It’s not going to collapse, Stick Arms,” Chuck said. The muscular man seemed the most tired of them all, no doubt thanks to all the extra weight he had to lug around. While his body fat was extremely low, muscles like that weren’t light. “Well, maybe the floor might give out under you in particular, but the rest of us are safe.”
“So very reassuring…” Renaldo said.
When they had caught their breath, Rhea opened the stairwell door beside her and entered a small hallway, a mirror image to the one they’d left behind below, with two elevators on either side. A pair of double doors blocked access to what was presumably an office area—this building was from a time when people actually went to work in office buildings.
She went to the doors. No handles.
“Manual overrides should exist somewhere in the walls,” Chuck said. “Otherwise, how else would the occupants get out during a power failure? There should be hidden panels here somewhere. You can—”
Rhea punched into the steel door above the lock, bending the metal inward. She did it again, and again, until she bent the locking latch; the final strike caused the doors to slam open.
“You can do that, too…” Chuck said.
She was right about it being an office area. She stepped into a realm of desks and cubicles that could have been a time capsule of the twentieth century.
“I’ve got Giz again,”
