The doors opened onto a surprisingly pleasant floor, clearly better maintained than those lower, and even well lit, with signs showing the location of the various important locations—security offices, the floor’s single shop and the delivery room, as well as laundry and the “management suite”—all clear on the map.

“Where we going, boss?” Reign asked, and I grunted.

“Reign, you’ve got the rear. Luna left. Gessh right. I lead.” I stepped out into the hallway, noting the subtle dome that twitched in the corner.

I tagged it mentally and sent it to the others. My RI took the photo, classing it as a “Rover-16 perimeter defense model” of recessed turret.

There were others as we started to walk, and I got an uncontrollable urge to grin.

“Try not to take out too many of the turrets if we have to,” I said quietly.

“You crazy, boss?” Luna asked, and I reached into a pocket, pulling free the little hacking tool that Bowdoin had given us earlier.

They were single-use devices, each keyed to my ID, and once they were triggered, they were wiped. The ID that this and the guild hall one used was my fake corpo ID, making it even more amusing as I imagined ACE arguing over whether they dared to pester a corpo over such a thing.

Yeah, some guild had been wiped out, and probably some ACE as well, but this was a corpo. They’d know it almost certainly wasn’t that person who was involved, but hopefully that’d be their only lead. And I loved the thought of those assholes shitting themselves over who’d be sent to ask the questions.

“Oh, that’s just evil.” Reign laughed, and I nodded, slipping it back into a pocket.

“So, security office it is,” Luna commented, pausing and checking the map on one wall. “It’s here…Does that match your location?”

I paused, checking my internal map and using the RI to overlay it on the map, before grunting. “Manager’s office,” I replied. “It’s the room next to it.”

“Probably keeps it nice and close,” Reign agreed.

A ping sounded, and I glanced at an unknown connection request.

I almost refused it. My RI was set to refuse them generally, unless it came from a military ID, a locally geo-locked ID—so it was tagged as coming from somebody next to me; that way, if it was a shitty sales call, I could smash their face in—or answer if I was clearly expecting a call.

Otherwise, if I didn’t know the ID, it was automatically refused. No need to permit spam about my car’s extended warranty, after all.

This one, though…it showed as a restricted ID, so someone was hiding their identity, and yet was close enough to bypass my settings.

I opened it.

A middle-aged man glared at me, speaking quickly. “Listen, fuckface, turn around, and get off my floor.” Sirisena—presumably—snarled. “I won’t tell you again.”

“That’s not very friendly.” I nodded to the others and walked toward the security office.

“Fuck your friendly shit,” he growled. “I know who you are.”

“And who am I?”

“You’re the orc’s new hitman.”

“Uh…no,” I said firmly.

“Really? So you didn’t kill Lilith?” he asked sarcastically.

“Technically? No, I didn’t.”

“So you didn’t have your pet sniper—who’s that elf, I’m betting—do it then?”

“Oh, my sniper totally shot her in the head,” I admitted. “She was a bitch, though. I went to ask her some questions, and she threatened me. Guess how that ended for her?”

“You think you can do the same to me, boy? You think I’m as dumb as Lilith? You’re in the crosshairs of five turrets right now. One word from me, and you’re all dead.”

“Give it then.”

“You think I won’t?” he growled. “Get the fuck off my floor!”

“I think if you had five turrets, you’d have already opened up, not the three I’ve seen so far,” I pointed out. “I think you’re running, desperate to get here before I burn your lab down and kill your chemist.”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Sirisena snarled, practically frothing at the mouth. “You fucking know what I’ll do to you if you touch him?”

“I’m hoping your threats will be better than Lucky’s were, but feel free to go for it.”

There was a pause as he tried to make sense of that, before he responded a few seconds later.

“You’re not working for the orc?”

“Which one?” I asked. “I mean, I know a lot of orcs…”

“You’re working for Lucky?”

“Not so much,” I hedged. “I occasionally take a contract for him, if that’s what you mean.”

“A hundred meters, boss,” Luna said softly. “Next intersection, we take a right, then the next left…that’s the security office.”

“Well, I’d love to stay on the line and chat, but there’s a problem with that.”

“Which is?”

“You’re boring me. Run, little man, run.” I cut him off and blacklisted the local node he’d called through. My RI identified the ID that had been relaying the signal, and I blocked that as well. Then I cursed.

The RI had linked to the local subnet to ID them, and it picked up more IDs, a lot more.

“Boss…” Reign called out as doors opened farther down the corridor, both behind and ahead of us.

“Fuck! RUN!” I barked, seeing the turret on the wall ahead shudder then spin up, a small dome atop a cylinder that slid half a meter out of the wall. A pair of gun barrels extended and swiveled toward us.

“Lucky, you asshole!” I shouted, unthinkingly, as dozens of people stepped into view, guns tracking.

Reign had her sniper rifle over her shoulder, with the grazer in her arms, and faced back down the corridor. She dragged the rifle from left to right slowly, trigger held down, burning through half the battery loadout in a single evil crackle of energy. But the effect?

Grazers, or gamma-ray lasers, destroyed unshielded flesh and electronics alike. The solid beam that she dragged across the corridor at roughly chest height killed easily seven people, and it could have been several times that, considering that the walls in here barely attenuated the beam.

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Screams rose, even as I locked in on the turret, firing off three armor-piercing rounds, shredding the dome and camera. The gun got off only a single shot that staggered me slightly. The dragon scale of my left shoulder armor—under the laser reflective trench coat—was damaged, but besides a curse dragged from my lips, I was all right.

Gessh let rip with the grazer assault rifle. The crackle of atomic reactions as she fired off thirty shots into the corridor in half a second was enough to make her grunt in surprise.

Luna pumped her shotgun and filled the air with fléchettes, making people scream—those who Gessh hadn’t literally fried—and we raced forward, the corridor blurring as the fight began.

The corridor itself was nothing special: shitty plastic linoleum or fake stone or whatever it was covered the ground, and raised up the wall a few centimeters, with the wall from there a solid grey color. Doors stood offset from each other—one on the left, then the right, then the left—and every twenty meters or so, another turret.

I could see that next one drawing a bead now, and I raised my rifle. The targeting suite in the rifle—fuck, I loved Centronics gear—was already linked automatically to my eyes, providing a slightly disorienting, but damn useful third point of perspective.

If I’d never worked with anything like this? It’d probably have thrown me off. I’d used them before, though, for years at a time, and to make sure I got used to it, I’d been using the scope in the lift to check out Reign’s ass.

Life was all about the little bonuses, after all.

Right now, I zeroed in and fired again, single shot this time, one hitting after the other. Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.

The bullets slammed into the delicate housing for the electronics in the next turret, punching clear through. Then the point of aim adjusted, sliding down as a bearded face appeared around the corner ahead, shotgun raised and trigger pulled already.

Fléchettes sliced the air, passing each other in a blur as both he and Luna fired. My rifle barked; the armor-piercing round took him in the right cheek and exited the back of his head, sending him spinning in a shriek of blood and shattered bone.

Others appeared, left and right, and I sprinted, skidding, and kicked off, jumping and planting one foot on the wall. I leapt; two bullets passed by my right, missing entirely, before a third hit someone following me. I heard a strangled curse from Luna or Gessh, and then the crackle of the grazer and screams, followed by the painful electrical hum of Reign firing on full beam again.

More screams rose, and I sighted. Two half-goblin-looking fuckers raced out of a room with knives…I fired and moved on.

To stay still here was to invite death—there was no two ways about it. We were in the corridors, with almost no cover, and a fuckload of people we weren’t expecting coming for us.

The next left was only a dozen meters away, and I yanked one of my flash-bangs free of my chest, ripping the restraining bolt free in one smooth motion and bank-shotting it off the edge of the adjoining corridor, headed in the opposite direction. It clattered, bouncing out of sight and to the right, even as I continued to slide my rifle right, lining up on the next figure in line: a screaming drug addict, most of his teeth missing as he sprinted at me, right hand held behind his back.

I pulled the trigger, almost without thinking, my natural—well, augmented, but fuck it—eyes tracking to the next in line even as the gun sight remained on him, making sure he was hit before moving. I crashed to the floor, taking two quick strides before throwing myself onto my back as the door to my right opened and a shotgun swung out.

It fired. The boom of a scattershot filled the air as a thousand tiny pellets took the already dead and tumbling back druggie in the side, hurling him into the far wall.

I rolled, trusting those behind me to get the fucker with the shotgun as I popped back to my feet, presenting my back to the door. My skin crawled and the hairs on the back of my neck lifted in terror as I forced myself to stay on target.

I fired twice more at the fuckers who appeared around the corner. The one on the left’s black body armor caught and stopped my shots, but sent him staggering.

Cursing, I fired again, this time flicking the selector to triple shot, and took him in the shoulder, upper chest, and neck.

He flew sideways, blood spraying as his friend leveled a rifle at me and opened fire. The bullets were standard, not armor-piercing, but fuck they hurt as he took me in the chest on full auto.

I dove sideways, hitting the floor and rolling, releasing my new rifle on instinct, the roll pressing the rifle flat against me on the floor as I ripped my handgun free.

I came to my feet, handgun booming, even as the flash-bang went off. The massive sensory overload package was deafening and blinding anyone without protection.

That was most of them.

The floor seemed to be full of gangers. Not like Lucky’s floor that had a few dozen—here it seemed like fucking hundreds were coming from all sides. But what they gained in enthusiasm and apparent crack and angel dust addiction, they lost in skill and equipment.

People staggered this way and that, screaming as I lined up and shot them. The fire from behind me went from frantic overlapping sprays of gamma rays, slug throwers, pistols, and shotguns to screams. Suddenly, the gunfire was steady, the screams ending abruptly as the screamers were taken down.

I took the corner, seeing the security office ahead and the ready and deployed heavily armored turrets. As soon as I glanced around the corner, they opened fire. I leaned back, bullets chewing up the edge of the wall.

“Well, fuck,” I growled, trying to think about the best way around this. I’d have preferred the turrets intact, but…I jerked back again, then backed up a half meter as the bullets continued chewing through the walls, getting closer.

I grinned, querying the RI for the building layout.

“Boss, we need to move!” Luna called. The gunfire got louder again as people from the corridors who hadn’t been affected by the flash-bang started to show up.

“Gimme a fucking minute!” I snapped back, searching the public domain building plans and trying to find another way around the turrets.

“We don’t have a minute!” Gessh snapped back. “MOVE!”

“Fuck’s sake!” I snarled, before holstering the handgun, grabbing my rifle again and stepping out. I sprayed fire at the turrets, then dove back, cursing as two of the turret’s shots hit me, and my own armor-piercing rounds sparked off them.

One tore through the skin at the top of my right shoulder, the dragon scale already weakened. The other hit the stock of my rifle and ricocheted off, cracking it, though.

I cursed, glancing up the corridor in the direction we’d come, as Gessh fired past me at a form moving around the corner, out of my sight.

There were literally dozens of bodies strewn around. The once calm and reasonably clean corridors were a mess. Shattered turrets hung from walls, light fittings swayed and shattered, sparking electrics, and there was some seriously fucked-up Pollock-style repainting going on.

I focused on one wall, seeing the damage that shotgun blast had done, the tiny pellets having trashed it, and the damage the turrets had done to the edge of the corner I’d been hiding behind, and I grinned evilly.

I released my rifle; the strap auto-retracted and dragged it back against my chest as I stooped and tore the shotgun from the dead fucker’s hands.

“Boss?” Gessh called, rifle held in one hand, a medikit in the other, the needle already exposed as she spat the cover aside. “We really need some cover!”

She stabbed herself in the stomach with it. Blood ran down her side as she hissed in pain, the nanites deploying.

“Follow me!” I shouted, booting the door behind her open and running into the apartment, gun at the ready. There was nobody inside, fortunately, but the back wall that held the shower was dead ahead. I ran at it, pumping the shotgun and firing, once, twice, then the third time. The plastic coating shredded as hundreds of pellets tore through it, and the wall behind.

I ducked, running on, and charged through into the next apartment. The door on the far side was closed and it, too, was empty. I turned right, realigning against the map and, grinning, fired the rest of the shotgun’s magazine into the next wall.

The wall held out for a few seconds, but that was all as Luna, seeing what I was doing, shouldered me aside when I ran out of ammo.

I dumped the looted shotgun onto the floor, and she opened fire, full auto ripping through her magazine in a matter of heartbeats, but the reinforced wall of the security station was breached.

She dumped the magazine, and Gessh rammed her grazer through the hole, firing off a quick burst to screams from inside.

I dragged myself through, widening the hole as my armor took a couple of hits. My rifle replied to the sporadic bursts of fire as someone on the far side of the security station shared their displeasure with my method of entry.

Most of the hits so far had been minor, glancing blows mostly. We’d been that fast and unexpected. But now? I got another burst of gunfire out, mostly hitting the fucking expensive-looking chair he was hiding behind. But his return fire?

It was well aimed, and lucky.

I hissed, falling out of his sight behind a chair. My left arm, the fucking cybernetic one, twitched and shook as a flurry of pain signals overwhelmed it.

The armor-piercing bullets had hit me high on the left side. Three of them punched through my armor and out the far side in sprays of blood. Two got stuck inside me, one breaking my clavicle and one lodging in the bone where the cybernetic shoulder joint met my biological one.

The result was a serious level of pain. The weight of the artificial arm caused the shattered clavicle to split, pulling apart even more. The holes that had run through and through shattered my shoulder blade as well, and badly fucked up the top of my lung.

I slumped down, hissing in pain.

Gessh shoved through behind me, taking out the security guard who was fixated on me, and screaming back over her shoulder,

“The boss is hit!”