“Fuck you,” and I sounded just as short of breath as he did.
He ignored me, and started up the second flight of stairs. I didn’t hear the sound of anyone searching on this floor, which either meant that this Skymander didn’t need to search, or that his men hadn’t reached this floor yet.
Hey, I could live in hope, right?
We reached the floor we needed, without incident, and spun right, running as fast as our suddenly wobbly legs would take us. I’d thought I was fit, but it was looking like I’d need a lot more time in the gym to be even close.
16—One Blown Mission
Neither Mack, nor I made it much further. We were belting towards the corner, just as fast as we could go, when the doors along the corridor’s edges began to open.
“Go back!” Tens roared in our ears. “Get to the roof!”
I wanted to argue, but I recognized some of the figures coming out of the doors—and no way in all the worlds did I want a single one of them to get within spitting distance, let alone touch range. Somehow, Skymander and his people had gotten far enough ahead of us to free the women in Blaedergil’s upper floors, and put them down here.
“They fucked with the security footage.” Tens was explaining, as we ran.
Well, of course, they had.
“Skymander knew about us taking Blaedergil. He knows we delivered Blaedergil’s body to the Corovans. The only way I can think of that happening is if Lord Corovan told him.”
“I’ll deal with him, later,” Mack said, and his voice was a cross between a growl and a struggle to breathe.
Laughing didn’t even cross my mind. I was in exactly the same boat as he was. Get to the roof Tens had said. Fuck! I’d be lucky if I made it to the next floor, let alone past the next three.
I hadn’t known exactly how true my words were, until I saw movement on the floor above.
“Mack!”
“I see it.”
He was firing before he’d finished speaking, and I tried not feel sorry, as I watched the women above us start to drop.
“Move, Cutter!” he roared, and I did my best to obey.
We scrambled up to the next level, and I shot a glance at the balconies outside the windows. They were starting to look downright inviting. We’d only have to shoot our way out onto them...or bull our way through a hundred meters of diseased and highly infectious victims of Blaedergil’s experimentation.
That last thing? That sooo wasn’t happening, but neither was running another flight of stairs. They were already above us, and moving to cut us off. If we wanted to make it up to the next level, we had to make each shot count. I slowed my pace to take one step, aim and fire, and then go the next step.
It was slow, but it was more efficient than running into a waiting or descending mob. Without taking out those closest to the stairs, we’d never have made it up the last two flights between us and the top floor. I hoped the feed in my implant remained uncontaminated, this time, because I wanted to find out the name of each and every one of the people I’d been forced to shoot, and then I wanted to find a way to make Skymander pay for their loss, since he’d put them in harm’s way to start with.
For us, it was kill or be killed, but for him, it had been a pure exercise in obstruction. I vowed he’d pay for that, just as soon as I could find a way to make it so. Right now, Mack and I just had to get out of here alive. I was guessing this retrieval mission was blown.
“Yup.” Mack’s voice was quiet in my head—but angry, so very, very angry.
I didn’t blame him; I was angry, too.
“Does this thing have a rapid-fire setting?”
“It’s indiscriminate.”
I waved a hand at the next flight of stairs.
“You got an alternate route?”
No sooner had I asked than a map rolled to the forefront of the implant, a line tracing a route to a second stairwell. Tens.
“It’s empty,” he said, before either of us could ask. “We locked it down, before Skymander could get any of his people inside.”
Mack and I didn’t wait to hear more, flicking the settings of our Blazers to full auto, and moving up the stairs at a faster pace. Way back in the Nineteenth or Twentieth, humans had had something they’d dubbed a Room Broom. Odyssey had covered it in a brief history of one of their weapons suppliers. I couldn’t remember the name of the gun, but ‘Room Broom’ had stuck. It rolled through my head as I swept the Blazer across the path in front of me, in a single sweep, Mack’s line of fire following my own.
When it came time to reverse direction, the way ahead was clear, even if there were others shuffling forward to fill the gaps. They weren’t moving fast enough, and I didn’t want to think about why. Mack scanned the ones ahead, and reached out to lay a hand on my shoulder, as we came up on the fallen.
I’ll give him this, he was efficient, switching out the Blazer for the smaller Glazer, and putting a single round into the head of each body we had to pass. It reminded me of what he’d said about Delight’s team: “With them, it’s become second nature to put an extra round in the head of every corpse they see.”
Delight’s team I could understand. They’d have gone places I didn’t want to imagine—and if they were anything like Delight, they’d have had to double check everything was dead, because pretty much everyone they met was going to want to kill them, first.
I followed Mack, wondering where, exactly, he’d picked up the habit—but there was no time for questions. We’d hit the top of the stairs, and there were more
