Bubbles and his clone ran back into the collection room. He triumphantly raised a holo key.

“Noah, Saka, I found it!:

“Great!” I replied. “Hurry, let’s get Noah out.”

Bubbles went over to a panel in the wall that presumably controlled the cages in this room. While he was fiddling with it, he started talking.

“Alright, guys, Keshi’s crew contacted me while I was grabbing the key. They got swarmed by security guards, so they had to abandon their sabotage attempt and escape. They got away safely, but it means that the security systems will be back online soon. On top of that, the security guards are covering the lower floors, so our original escape route is cut off.”

“So we’re doing plan B?” I asked.

Bubbles nodded. “Keshi, Sil, and Needle are all headed to their ship now. They’re going to bring it up here as soon as they can. We have that window of time to release the people here, and take out Yaro.”

“Why don’t we prioritize escaping?” Noah asked. “Shouldn’t that be our number one concern?”

“Even if we get away, Yaro will keep looking for us. There’s going to be bounties all over the place. This may be our only chance to kill Yaro and get rid of anyone gunning for us. I’m taking it.” Bubbles said.

“What about the sapients here?” I asked. “How are we going to get them out?”

“We’re just going to lead them to the extraction point. Hopefully, they’ll realize they need to stay here and wait for the ship. While they wait, we go take out Yaro. Once Yaro is dead, we regroup and get out.” Bubbles explained.

I cracked my knuckles. “I feel like it’s a little half baked, but sure. Let’s do it.”

Bubbles inserted the holo key into the panel and all of the enclosures in the room opened with a slight hissing sound. Noah stumbled out because he was leaning on the glass, so I caught his arm.

“Thanks.” Noah said. “You got a spare gun?”

Bubbles had left Noah’s spacesuit on the floor when he left the room, so I picked it up and threw it at him. Bubbles’s clone handed Noah the submachine gun it was holding.

“There you go. Get ready as fast as you can.” I said.

“Already on it.” Noah grunted as he pushed his legs into the suit. After a minute, he was fully geared up.

“I’m not used to this gun at all, but it’ll do.” Noah complained. Bubbles’s clone also handed Noah a few magazines for the submachine gun.

While Noah was getting his suit on, Bubbles was helping the newly freed sapients out of their cages. He coaxed them out with soothing words. The eyestalk quadruped, the small bipedal alien, and Bubbles’s kin cautiously left the cages. As we had predicted, they didn’t speak Standard at all. We were going to have to communicate with gestures.

Noah and I let Bubbles handle all of the communicating. He was the most familiar with uncontacted alien species. After a minute of back and forth hand waving, it appeared as though Bubbles managed to convince the aliens to follow us.

“Okay, let’s drop them off.” Bubbles said. “Everyone, follow me.”

Bubbles led the way while Noah and I brought up the rear. The newly freed sapients were sandwiched between us. We all jogged through the hallways and towards the nearest gigantic window. The quadruped alien visibly slowed themself down to match our speed, while the goop alien and the short bipedal alien struggled to keep up. We quickly made it over to the window wall.

Bubbles stopped us and started gesturing to the aliens once more. He pointed at them, and then down towards the floor. It took a few tries to register, but it appeared as though the aliens agreed to wait here. Bubbles left his clone with them. It wasn’t armed anymore because Bubbles gave the submachine gun to Noah.

“Are we ready?” Noah asked. “What’s the security system looking like?”

“There’s no alarms blaring yet, so we can assume that we haven’t been detected yet. Let’s hurry up and go upstairs to Yaro’s penthouse floor. We’ll most definitely find her there.” Bubbles answered.

We immediately started looking for the nearest stairway up. Bubbles has never been up there himself, so we were going to have to find it with pure luck first. Our guess was that it was at the center of the floor somewhere, so we moved away from the window wall first.

While we were running, I asked Noah a question.

“Are you sure you want to be coming with us? I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see Yaro again. Would you prefer waiting with the aliens?”

Noah shook his head. “Yaro put a bounty on my head and got me captured. It’s pretty personal now. I’m coming to make sure Bubbles gets the job done.”

I shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s get this done.”

I sighed. After this, I was going to have to take a break. I was getting tired of fighting. The Haivu war, doing odd jobs after our escape, and dealing with a bounty on Noah’s head exhausted me. I no longer felt the thrill that came with gunfights. As a mercenary, I enjoyed doing my job, but once I became a soldier, my attitude changed. It seemed like Noah was the opposite, though. Since the war, Noah became more prone to run headfirst into danger. I didn’t know if it was because of the confidence he built from his skill, or the environment forcing him to adapt, but it was dangerous. We were going to have to chill out and lay low for a while after this. It felt like Noah had forgotten what it was like to feel safe.

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“There!” Noah pointed down the hall. “I see a staircase.”

As Noah had said, there was an extravagant wooden, carpeted staircase that led up. It was even fancier than the one that had led to this floor. It was safe to assume that it would take us to Yaro’s penthouse floor.

Glass panels and marble walls separated rooms. Beige and silver rugs laid on the floor, beneath pristine, soft couches and coffee tables. There were several marble countertops lined with high chairs, and some of them served as bartending countertops. State of the art holo screens were practically on any wall that wasn’t made of glass. An excessive amount of sparkling chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A small stage that probably was meant for live music was in the corner. On the other side of the room, there was a glass spiral staircase with dangerously large gaps that led up to another floor. I couldn’t see much from below, but it was probably where the bedrooms were. The entire floor shone with extravagance. There were so many white things in the room that it was blinding.

Expensive furniture wasn’t the only thing in this room, though. It was also filled with a lot of mercenaries lounging around. They turned to look at Bubbles, Noah and I as we came up the stairs.

“What the fuck?” I blustered. “What are they doing here?”

It was my father’s mercenary crew. For some reason, instead of leaving after the job was done like I expected, they had remained here. And instead of staying in the hotel rooms, they were relaxing in Yaro’s penthouse.

“Shit!” Noah cursed. “What do we do? Should we just leave?”

Bubbles shook his head. “Yaro should still be here somewhere. We’re so close!”

“Do you remember the last time we were up against them? It didn’t go well.” I said tiredly. “Come on. We have proof of Yaro’s crimes. That should be enough, right?”

“No. It’s not enough.” Bubbles grunted.

A loud, annoying voice boomed throughout the room. “Look who’s here! Saka, I’m so glad you decided to join us!”

It was my father, Ocke. Of course he was here. He continued talking.

“The human is here, too. Did you bust him out? I’m glad. Someone as talented as him shouldn’t be on display like that. I was really impressed by his shooting. I want someone like that on my crew. I don’t have many sharpshooters.”

“You sure love talking, don’t you?” Bubbles snarked. “Where’s Yaro? I know she’s here.”

My father shrugged all four of his shoulders. “Yaro? Why do you need Yaro? Shouldn’t you leave now? I don’t think she’s noticed that she’s been robbed. Why are you picking a fight? Leave now and I won’t stop you.”

As annoying as my father was, he was right. My faith in our plan of killing Yaro was dwindling very fast. We already had Noah, and that was my objective to begin with. Why were we risking all of our efforts just for Bubbles’s revenge? Bubbles’s point about being hunted down again made sense, but I’d rather take my wins now and worry about bounties later.

I raised one of my hands to lay it on Bubbles’s shoulder and tell him to retreat. However, right before I managed to do that, Yaro appeared. She emerged from the second floor of the penthouse, wearing a silk bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. Like the paintings we saw before, Yaro’s scales were marble colored, and she had several gold piercings through her large head fins. She was short in stature, as most Aeon were, and had a thick tail that was well suited for swimming.

“What’s all this commotion?” She asked. “Ocke, I told you guys to not be too rowdy!”

Bubbles immediately raised his hand cannon and took aim at Yaro.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Bubbles’s hand cannon clattered to the ground, along with the gloved portion of his suit. A pink, viscous liquid leaked out of the glove.

Bubbles, Noah and I immediately ducked for cover behind the staircase, so our heads were beneath the level of the floor.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” Yaro screamed. “Ocke, I definitely said firing your guns was off limits!”

“Sorry, Miss Rein.” My father apologized. “One of them just tried to shoot at you. I thought it’d be best if I stopped him.”

“Oh, shit.” Yaro gulped. “Is it another assassin?”

“Dunno. Could be. I don’t know why they’re here.” My father lied.

For some reason, he wasn’t telling Yaro that Noah escaped. But that wasn’t my primary concern.

“Come on. Our chance is gone! Let’s go!” I whispered to Bubbles and Noah.

Bubbles picked up his severed flesh and shoved it into his stump. A new hand quickly formed, and Bubbles held his hand cannon in his other hand while he waited.

“We’ve come this far.” Bubbles insisted. “Let me take my shot.”

I sighed.

“Ocke, kill those guys!” Yaro shouted. “Intruders have never made it this far before. Make an example out of them!”

“Sure thing. As long as you pay me,” My father said, “Then I’ll deal with them.”

“I’ll pay you what I pay my useless security guards for this month. Hurry!”

“Shit. This is our last chance to run.” Noah warned.

Bubbles said nothing and dashed to cover behind a marble countertop.

“We can’t leave Bubbles here. Let’s support.” I groaned.

Noah and I moved in different directions and got behind cover. We were holding different angles so we could watch each other’s backs more efficiently.

“Alright, everyone. Shoot the pink one. Leave the other two alive. We have some other business with them.” My father shouted out to his crew.

I peeked around the corner of my cover. I saw Yaro retreating back into the second floor. Bubbles’s odds of killing Yaro seemed miniscule at this point. Fine. I was going to engage in this gunfight, but as soon as Keshi let us know that his ship was here, I was taking Noah and leaving. I wasn’t risking my life for this. Even if we killed Yaro, if we got caught afterwards, it wouldn’t end well for us. In the best case scenario, we’d go directly to prison. I personally thought we wouldn’t get that far, though. Yaro had a lot of allies, and those allies had a lot of strings to pull. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a revenge murder.

Bubbles peeked to shoot potshots at Yaro’s quickly moving figure, but he quickly had to retract before his head got blown off. Most of the mercenary crew was aiming for Bubbles, apparently. I would too, if someone was shooting at my very rich employer. However, this opportunity allowed Noah and I to reposition.

I wasn’t actually sure what to do, though. I didn’t have an incentive to kill my father. Even if he was annoying, a piece of ship, and Noah’s kidnapper, he’d actually protected Noah by lying to Yaro. If Yaro knew that Noah had escaped, things would be worse. On top of that, he was still my father, and apparently he was trying to spare me. I couldn’t sit right if I attacked him knowing he had no intention of killing me. It made me think that his earlier attempts and statements were bluffs.

Ignoring my father to go after Yaro didn’t seem like a good plan, either. It’d just put me in an inescapable corner. So the only course of action was to support Bubbles until it was time to leave. I didn’t want to kill mercenaries and make my father mad, though.

I peeked around the counter I was hiding behind and took careful aim at a mercenary who was waiting for Bubbles to emerge from hiding. I took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The mercenary’s rifle flew out of his hands in pieces, as the surprised Sabi yelped and dove behind cover.

I was only going to aim for weapons and non lethal areas. I was tired of bloodshed. It was going to be a challenge, aiming for those specific targets, but I was confident in my ability to pull it off.

In the confusion of my first shot, Bubbles and Noah were both able to reposition. Bubbles moved closer to the spiral staircase to chase Yaro, while Noah moved behind a marble wall that gave him an easy angle to protect our exit.

I fired off a few more shots with my hand cannon. Two weapons broken and dropped, and one Aeon rolling on the ground, clutching her calf. By then, the mercenaries had noticed what I was doing, so they started taking cover of their own instead of waiting for one of us to peek.

Noah took shots as well, but it was mainly suppressive fire. He wasn’t familiar with the submachine gun he was using, and it lacked the precision he preferred from rifles. Instead of going for kills, he chose to spray bullets anywhere mercenaries were hiding, to allow Bubbles to keep moving without getting shot. It was a pretty effective strategy. Bubbles moved and took potshots where he could. I disabled the opponents that were shooting at Bubbles. Noah made sure a lot of the mercenaries couldn’t shoot at Bubbles in the first place.

However, the mercenaries were starting to get a little more organized. My father barked orders from the back, also heading towards the spiral staircase that led to Yaro. He had quickly discerned that Bubbles was the only person gunning for Yaro’s head, so he was moving to cut Bubbles off and protect his employer.

When Bubbles was a few steps away from reaching the staircase, the comms device in my helmet activated. We had avoided voice comms for this entire infiltration because it was easy to detect, but now that we were in a gunfight, it didn’t matter.

Keshi’s voice spoke directly into my ear.

“Guys, we’re about to arrive at the pickup point. If you’re not there already, go over there now! The security guards are rushing straight to Yaro’s penthouse floor as we speak. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Fuck! Keshi, how long can you stay? Bubbles is in deep right now, and I don’t know how long it’ll take for him to retreat!” I shouted into my mic.

“I’ll try to stay as long as I can, but if it starts getting hot I’m going to have to leave. If you can’t get to the pickup point by then, you’ll have to find another way out.” Keshi replied.

I looked over at Bubbles, then Noah. Would I have to leave Bubbles here to fend for himself to save Noah? Or do I risk our safety to help Bubbles achieve his goal? I took a deep breath, and swiftly came to a decision.