I leapt on it. “That sounds bad.”
Brassard glared, but he was already directing his security personnel. After all, the engine was still up there. Within a minute, he’d swept out with three of the ruffians. This left Jagcoop, the vid-watching Erly, the dweeby tech, and the muscled woman. Better odds.
The tech dweeb had that scared bunny look that always put me on edge. His gaze darted from the remaining guard to Myka. Why was he looking at Myka?
I didn’t have time to think it through because Erly burst from the office with a roar.
Erly was, apparently, what one might term an Amazonian woman. Big. Burly. Brown curls wild around her head and broad shoulders. She was…well, she looked like she could kick my ass on accident. And right now, she looked real mad.
“The fucking explosion knocked the vid out.” She glared as if we were responsible. “Right in the middle of Ultimate Galaxy Champion.”
Jagcoop gulped audibly. “We’ll get it hooked back up. Cable knocked out or—”
Erly noticed the handcuffedness of me and Myka. “Hey, why are those two handcuffed together?”
The tech dweeb moved fast. Apparently, his scared bunny resemblance extended to darting speeds because I had only just processed the phenomena that was Erly before he was halfway across the room. The muscled woman—the one left by Brassard—must’ve been similarly distracted as she remained rooted to the spot. The tech dweeb slammed a button by the garage door, making it rise.
My brain was still catching up with this burst of activity as Myka yanked me under the opening door into the cargo backway. I followed without thinking. Yells echoed behind us, interrupted by the grind of the door screeching to a halt.
I yielded to Myka in her flight through a shadowy corridor punctuated with closed garage doors. She was incredibly fast. I built engines for a living so I didn’t have to be fast. My arm stretched painfully as I created a drag on her mad sprint. Eventually, she careened us across the hallway into the shadows. I yelped. Thought she was gonna smash us against a wall, but instead she shouldered through a door. Once through, she pulled a card out and swiped. Red lights on the door handle blinked.
I gulped heaving breaths at the pause. A grated stairway crawled upward to the ground level. A ridiculous conveyance that my knees did not at all approve of.
“We have some lead time, but we need to hurry before they recover.” Myka took the first step. She wasn’t even winded.
I pulled at her. “Wait. The tech dweeb was working with Cadinoff?”
“What happened, happened. Let’s go.” She tugged back.
I had to give her the victory in this tug of war. Our vertical dash began with Myka performing remarkably well for someone wearing a knee-length skirt. At least she’d traded out the heels for athletic shoes. Me? I was a sturdy—and frustrating—anchor on her climb. My lungs had adapted to smoking and engine fumes, not exercise. Myka yanked me every few steps, threatening to pull my arm out its socket.
A door marked the end of the stairwell, presumably our finish line. Myka didn’t hesitate to pull us through onto the expo floor. Smoke blossomed in the far corner, a clear sign of a bombing and a marker that this expo was now a corporate battlefield. Attendees must have already run for the exits as the surrounding area was empty of people. Rhythmic thuds promised the presence of corporate merc units, though. Not great.
Myka didn’t pause. We’d emerged near the hanging gondola, and she hopped the barrier, somehow not embarrassing herself in her short skirt. The same barrier momentarily dug into my gut, forcing her to an annoyed stand-still just long enough for me to drag my inferior body over it, legs aching.
I spoke my thoughts out loud. “Should we be getting on this while explosions are going off?” Especially as the route of the gondola went straight towards the smoke.
Myka just yanked me into the car like an unwieldy bag of luggage. She slammed a button, and the gondola motor burst into churning life.
“Duck down.” She dropped to her hands and knees.
I mimicked her. “Seriously, why are we dangling on a rope when explosions are going off?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
A jolt of gunfire hit the side of the gondola car, rocking us back and forth.
“This is dumb.” I hit the door button, and it whisked open to display a field of smoldering booths crawling below us.
Myka pulled. “What are you doing? This is part of the plan!”
I held up the handcuff. “Is this part of the plan?”
She pursed her lips, which gave me my answer.
I peeked over the edge. The drop wasn’t so bad. I mean, worse than what any reasonable person would want, but not as bad as to pulverize our bodies upon impact.
“Cadinoff is waiting at the end of this little gondola trip, isn’t it?”
Myka kept a passive face. “Cadinoff is waiting to recover its property, yes.”
Right. So I’d walked into the middle of a big corporate showdown. Good for me.
Like fuck was I gonna get caught by Cadinoff again.
I shook my hand, which shook her hand. “We’re gonna take a time-out. To negotiate.” I glanced down. “Now.”
I tilted my body and let gravity do its thing. My dead weight pulled her along with me. The fall was swift and the landing a full-body punch. I crashed through the edge of a booth, tumbling to the floor with Myka falling atop me. Then I was trapped between hard linoleum and the warm, outraged body of Glezos’s lackey.
Oh, yeah, the breath got knocked out of me, too, so I wasn’t moving very fast.
