She tried the handle. Surprisingly, it was unlocked.
She opened the door a crack. The narrow hallway beyond was empty.
Strange.
Was DragonHunter helping her in some way?
No. It was a trap.
She realized there was zero chance the mayor remained in his office. The security forces would have evacuated him to a bunker or other safe room the moment she escaped, or shortly thereafter, when it became clear what her destination was. They would have taken the stairs, or some service elevator that wasn’t exposed on the exterior.
There were probably security robots hidden behind all the innocuous seeming doors of the hall ahead, with only more of the machines waiting for her inside the mayor’s office.
What was I thinking? Why did I rush headlong into this? Recklessly, like some hotheaded young recruit.
She wasn’t sure where that latter idea came from, but there was some truth to it.
Yes, he’s in a bunker.
A strange image filled her mind, accompanying that latter word. Padded walls. A triple locked steel door. Two robots guarding it.
There was a bunker in the basement.
How did I know that?
She slammed the door shut and swung around. She leaped down the entire flight of stairs. Past the next bend, three robots were clambering up toward her.
She dove at the feet of the first, knocking it over as it opened fire.
The two of them slammed into the second and third robots, bringing them all down. She fired randomly into them as she descended; before hitting the floor of the next flight, she grabbed onto the handrail beside her, wrenching free of the tangled mess.
She continued firing at them, targeting the power cell regions as best she could, and then switched her aim up to the door handle.
She scrambled to her feet and took a running leap over the pile of robots. More of the machines were coming up the stairs, and fired at her, but she hit the door and passed through. She landed rolling on the ground.
She got up, firing at the inward-sloping elevator doors beside her. She took a leap before she had melted through the white-hot metal, and when she struck, it collapsed. The hot steel wrapped around her feet, and she had to shuck off the pieces when she landed inside the sloped shaft beyond.
She slid down the same glass tube she had been in before, carried by gravity; the upper surface of the shaft was pockmarked with holes from the drone attacks. Those craft were still out there, and when she emerged, they immediately swooped down upon her position and began firing anew.
She made an easy target, since her slide was steady and predicable, so she began running instead, randomly swerving to the left and right as she did so.
A sloping elevator door opened directly in her path. She leaped over it as robots emerged and fired down into them.
She continued shooting over her shoulder, keeping them pinned. She repeatedly glanced forward, keeping an eye on the shaft in front of her. The drones rammed plasmas into the shaft around her.
Ahead, the elevator blocked access past the sixth floor. She swung in through the open roof panel anyway, since she wasn’t going to stay put in that shaft.
To her surprise, it immediately descended.
DragonHunter.
The drones concentrated their attacks on the elevator. Holes appeared, and she was forced to constantly dodge. Well, dodge wasn’t really the word: more like randomly move, she didn’t dare remain in the same spot.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and dinged.
The doors opened.
She spun around, expecting to be greeted by security robots, but the hallway beyond was empty.
Thank you, DragonHunter.
She leaped outside before the drones made charbroiled steak out of her and shot out the handle of the stairwell door located to her right. She kicked in the door and began racing down the stairs.
So far, there were no enemy units in sight. They would be regrouping, perhaps making their way to the basement— they would’ve realized her intended target by then.
She encountered no resistance to the basement level. The basement door remained unlocked, courtesy of the previous time she passed this way. The CommNixer was still in place.
She paused for a moment before passing through.
What if I’m wrong about the bunker?
Well, it was too late now. She was committed.
She emerged and hurried through the twisting halls. She paused before each bend or intersection to carefully peer past, but so far, the place remained empty. Apparently, she’d beaten all the robots down here.
She reached the bend that led to her destination.
She ducked, quietly flattening herself upon the ground. Then she leaned past and let off two quick shots, targeting the pair of robots in the power cells. Both collapsed.
There was also a deadly laser turret hidden in the roof—again, she wasn’t sure why she knew that. So, she adjusted her aim higher and fired.
The hidden panel opened, and the turret tried to deploy, but it was too late: her energy bolts made short work of it.
She scrambled to her feet as she heard footsteps rapidly bearing down from behind and raced toward the door. She leaped over the wreckage of the turrets and robots and studied the three-way locking mechanism as she ran.
She didn’t have time to shoot through the thick steel with her pistol, not when the arrival of more robots was imminent, so instead she retrieved the gamma scalpel. Instinctively, she knew it was the perfect device for picking locks such as these. Or rather, dissolving the latching mechanisms.
She adjusted the convergence depth, beam width, and intensity of the scalpel and held it to the door in just the right spot to disintegrate the first lock. She activated the scalpel and heard a loud pop. She repeated the process on the remaining two locks, and then shoved her shoulder into the door. It ceded, opening inward.
She continued pushing for a few moments, as the door was
