Ten minutes had passed since Candy gave me her warning. I told Shaggy that people from the Order were on their way. She cursed, loudly, and started preparing. Her brain was barely awake while she dashed around the room. It was almost mechanical, a high speed nearly frantic mechanical.
"Put these in the stairwell, hurry!" The short gun toting brunette ordered.
"The stairs?" I was trying to look through the cabinets and find more food to pack.
"Yes. We'll have to cut power to the elevator while they're inside. It should buy us enough time to slip away." She said.
We were on the fifth floor of the building. It wouldn't take long to charge down the flights of stairs. If the stalled elevator held out long enough we could get to the car and back onto the freeway.
I grabbed the bags and ran them outside, leaving the door open behind me. Shaggy met me in the stairwell with the other two bags and a freshly stocked cooler. The stuff we had from a few days ago was almost gone. Kahina’s change was burning through blood bags at an insane rate.
"Can we do this in one trip?" I looked over the railing. There was enough space between the stairs to make the bottom visible. If I could jump down without hitting the sides, or breaking myself on the landing things would be easier. A wolf could do it.
I had done it once before. That wasn't a feat worth trying to recreate deliberately. Failure would mean fractured legs. A broken neck was more likely.
"We'll lower it all by rope once they're in the elevator." Shaggy pointed up at the bar hanging across the ceiling. "Then you grab the Lady and run her downstairs while I clear the area ahead and get the car."
She wasted no time digging out a long nylon rope from one of the bags and handing it over. It looked too thin in my eyes. I yanked on different segments of rope trying to test the strength.
"That's Kevlar, it'll be fine. Toss it over the bar there and grab ahold of the clip." I stared at her, the rope, and the large bags we had been repacking. We were a regular mobile hospital of nonsense. The bag with all the ammo was the heaviest one.
"We're on a timer." She reminded me.
We had roughly six minutes left. I made one last trip inside the room and looked at the monitors. Shaggy disconnected the remaining equipment from Kahina and left it hanging there. She should be okay, there was enough in the bags that we could last the remaining days somewhere else. According to the numbers, we only had one more safe house after this anyway.
I lifted Kahina and Shaggy bundled up items under the covers and tried to make it look like a person was there. She ran over to the security system and slammed buttons on the keyboard. Another display I hadn't known about popped up and she started triggering things. Words flashed across the screen too fast for me to keep up. A moment later and we were huddled in the stairwell.
"What did you do?" I whispered.
"The elevator will lock up, alarm systems will activate, a silent alarm for the police and most of the doors in the building will start locking and unlocking at the same time." Shaggy was leaning over the rail and looking down. A moment later she pressed against the wall trying to listen for the elevator gears.
"It will make them go slower if it seems like we could be hiding out anywhere. I also opened the window in the guest room so it'll look like we snuck out.” She kept listing off items from a never ending series of safety measures. “Then we'll hit the basement and take a catering van through the service entrance opposite the main parking lot."
"How many are there?"
"I thought you knew," She said.
I shook my head then noticed something was wrong with the wall behind Shaggy. It looked like some sort of television screen had been inserted and was tuned into the news. The problem was that screen hadn't existed a moment ago. My eyes squinted at the image.
Candy’s face popped into the projection. This time, she was in news anchor attire, a business suit that ruffled in the front. Her light green skirt stopped right above the knees.
She waved and looked chipper. Then whipped out a pointing stick and smacked it against the wall. Never once did the news broadcast theme go away. There was even a channel number and a little picture of her face in the corner where a normal logo would go.
The pointer slapped against the top left showing a countdown. Two minutes. It kept ticking. Another slap of the pointer against the bottom right showed an energy bar. She pointed at herself, then back at the bar. I nodded, Candy was saying her energy wouldn't last forever. Projecting images like this had to be draining.
Shaggy turned around from the stairwell at looked at me, then tried to follow my gaze. I was locked onto the illusionary screen where Candy was giving us information. The female elf whacked the stick against the top right this time and showed a head count.
"Twelve, all human." I immediately relayed it to Shaggy.
"Great. They won't all be taking the elevators then. Two teams or three?" Shaggy stuck her head back over the side of the railing and immediately went to clipping items onto the rope. After the item was clipped in she edged each bag between the rails so that lowering them wouldn't require lifting first.
Candy’s form gestured with overly dramatic arms to three boxes that appeared around her. The screen was getting crowded now, but trust Candy to find a place to stand out. Her clothes seemed to be getting skimpier. All three screens flickered to life, showing SUVs rolling up to the front door of our empty hotel.
We had a picture in picture situation. Television manufacturers would kill to get this kind of imagery, only the elf's version had no audio. I flicked my eyes towards the energy screen where Candy was keeping tabs on how long she would last. According to the bar that one trick of showing us the invading teams had taken a lot of power. Maybe she was including the drain of our little hallway interaction earlier and tracking me down.
"Three groups," I told Shaggy. She looked grim but secured the last of our bags.
Candy was actually helping out this time. Of course, if she failed I would renege on our deal and be happy for the limited help we received.
My eyes drifted down to the unconscious Kahina in my arms. Her body still shimmered, but the heat didn't bother me. It was comforting. We were about to try and sneak past a group with an unknown level of training. Judging by the gear on the display screen, they had at least some idea of what they were doing.
"Any other details?" Shaggy whispered back.
Candy’s countdown timer reached zero and vanished. A moving picture showed four people headed straight for the elevator. Another group went for the stairwell. The final one sat outside in the front and fanned out, watching the side exits.
Below us, people stomped up the stairwell. I looked at the image one last time for any sort of guidance. Newscaster Candy pursed her lips in thought then brightened. The rest of her display floated away and left the elf alone with a pile of items that looked exactly like our bags.
The bags on the wall illusion gradually vanished. I turned to our pile and didn't notice anything different. One eyebrow raised and looked back to the phantom Candy. Footsteps below grew louder and closer. No one showed signs of noticing the rigging and rope hanging off to the side. Candy nodded and made a shooing motion.
Our big bags were no longer visible. Shaggy looked at me with uncertainty. I shrugged and tried to make a hand over hand motion while cradling Kahina’s form.
Footsteps clomped up another flight. We could hear the elevator engines going. It went up a floor then stopped abruptly with a jerk of locks and gears. Mumbles broke out among the four below us as they paused.
Shaggy gently lowered the bags over the edge. The combined weight had to be more than hers. Luckily the rope had been woven through the rails to take off some of the pressure. Her only goal was to get things to the ground safely. Hauling them up this way would have been painful. Still, the fact that Ann was managing all that weight spoke of how toned those arms truly were.
There was a ding in the penthouse foyer. I nudged the doorway to the stairs shut. Shaggy closed her eyes and then lowered the rope with even more urgency.
A clanging symphony of sound poured forth from the elevator shaft. Shaggy grunted and let the bag drop the last few feet to the floor. Below us, the guards started talking into their comms. It was a lot easier to hear them in the silence that followed the elevator being sabotaged.
"Check in." A voice whispered. Shaggy and I quietly held our breath and tried to figure out what steps were next. She pulled out a mirror from her pocket and leaned it over the edge to try and get a good look at the people coming up.
"Spider, check in." The voice below said. They tried to be calm, but you could tell something had upset them.
"Stairs rigged too?" Another one of the group asked.
"No. We knew the elevator was a risk. We'll continue up and secure the penthouse."
"How solid is this intel?" No amount of whispering could disguise their words. Not this close. Shaggy was squinting into her mirror and counting. She stood back up with her gun ready to go.
"Solid. Overwatch, what’s the status?" The voice paused and we listened intently. "Confirm, is the target at the location?" Another pause. "Understood. The traitors are stationed in the kitchen and secondary bedroom. The count is three hostiles." His words threw me. Why would he think we were inside still? Was Candy misleading them?
The footsteps started clanging up the stairs again. All attempt at silence was gone now that the elevator had broken down. I stood there with Kahina in my arms and had no idea how we could play this one.
With all the activity happening, I had forgotten about the wall image and glanced up to see Candy's form waving frantically. After making eye contact, she sighed heavily and then pressed herself up against the wall. Her body turned invisible for a moment then reappeared and pantomimed running. The elf's normally playful face was sweating profusely. All the illusions she was sending out must be draining her resources.
Shaggy was ready to put bullets into the group. Her finger hovering over the trigger when I made a noise at her. She turned and looked over for the briefest moment. I shoved myself against the wall opposite the stairway and tried to take up a small amount of room. Ann ran over and pressed up near me with her gun still out. She must have put two and two together, and assumed we were going to do the invisible trick again.
My lungs grabbed one final breath of air before our attackers turned towards the last flight of stairs. The guns they had weren't little peashooters. These were assault rifles.
I held my breath while they rushed by. Shaggy tracked them with her gun. All four moved forward into the foyer like we didn't exist. A second later we heard some sort of spray, then silence. Shaggy tried to peek around the corner and see what was happening, but our angle didn't allow it.
She looked at me and then nodded. The gun was put away quietly and her fingers went up in a countdown. For a second my mind replayed the memory of Thomas doing the same thing a few months ago. I looked down at Kahina and realized that the way she was being carried wouldn't work out well for running. Not really.
I slung her over a shoulder and prayed that Shaggy would never mention this part of our adventure to anyone. My hands were all over Kahina's legs and ass, how could I explain that I felt up my nearly lifeless girlfriend? Some things you just shouldn't do without active participation.
Shaggy's countdown hit zero right as a loud explosion came from the penthouse doorway. Another bang and flash followed. Thankfully my other senses didn't work right now or the blast alone would have given me a splitting headache. The sound of bullets followed.
She ran down the stairs and I moved quickly while holding Kahina. Numerous bullets sprayed out above us along with shouts. Four floors later and we flew past the clump of sitting bags. Shaggy picked up one bag, and I jostled Kahina to a secure resting spot then picked up another with my free hand.
"Garage?" I asked. It had been the plan after all.
"This way. Basement level. Other side of the elevator shaft." She slunk off with the heavy bags and carefully made her way across the lobby.
There were four others outside watching the exits. Our hotel lobby was too narrow but we kept to one side. I had Kahina on my right shoulder, away from the primary entrance.
As we passed by the elevator Shaggy noticed it was part way open. A gun poked out first, then a man was lifting himself up from where he had fallen. With a grunt of effort, he managed to get one knee underneath, ready to lift himself up. All that effort went to waste as my partner put her gun next to his head.
"It would have been easier if you had just laid there," She said. Her words were cold and detached.
He looked over in surprise. Shaggy didn't hesitate. A bullet later and the man slumped forward, half in the elevator doorway. A quick check cleared the elevator, no one else was conscious inside. Maybe they were all dead. Shaggy stripped the man of his earbud and the attached receiver then placed it in her ear like she'd been wearing one her whole life. It only took her a second to holster her gun and pick up both bags.
I kicked the man back into the elevator as we passed by.
"Are they coming?" I whispered.
Shaggy held up a finger and listened to the earbud. Her eyes were busy checking the next room. I stood there stupidly with Kahina and a large bag.
"They're checking in. Trying to figure out what went wrong.” She swept into the next room right before the garage.
"Do they know we're here?" I asked.
She paused again and listened.
"They know someone’s here. They don't know if it's their target, we need to get to that van." The bag in her hand made it difficult to point, but it was obvious without her attempted guidance. There were only a couple of cars down here and one van. It belonged to a catering company.
"Red Velvet Deliveries?" I tried not to laugh at the name. It was difficult enough to muffle my voice as we crept around.
"It's a real company," Shaggy said. Behind us, I could hear footsteps carefully going through the lobby. We were out of sight for now. Whoever it was would see us soon if they kept sneaking this way.
"Go," She said. I poked my head out gradually and looked in both directions for any sign of life. There was none so far. We managed to slip over to the van before Shaggy winced at a noise.
"They found the one I shot." Shaggy threw a set of keys at me and set down one of the bags. "Start the car."
A minute later she had a nasty looking pair of grenades ready to go. It was another object I didn't remember showing up in any of the training classes. Kahina had been teaching people how to use explosives? Sensei was an ex-Sector agent so it was plausible that he had the skills. Passing them on was another question entirely. I was starting to regret not attending those classes.
I barely had the driver's door open before she primed the grenade and tossed it into the doorway behind us. It was timed nearly perfect. Two men had shown up in the little room. There was a split second for them to yell out before a deafening boom rocked the walls. I made the mistake of looking directly into the explosion as bits of concrete shot around the room.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Load her in now!" Kahina was still slung over my shoulder. I crowded through the front part of the van and set Kahina on the back row of seats.
Shaggy ripped open the side door and threw her bags in. The bag with the explosives was treated with a lot more care than the others. She hadn't had time to close it. I looked inside and found an object worth my time.
Gunshots came from behind us but were way off the mark. One of the men must have survived the explosion. The short knife I pulled out was ideal for throwing.
The next round of gunfire grew closer and a few managed to glance off the van. Whatever it was made out of was probably bullet resistant.
Shaggy hopped into the front seat and kicked the car into gear. The woman didn't even bother sliding the door closed. She likely expected me to do it.
Instead, I clutched the blade and closed my eyes. My senses were nearly absent but with enough concentration this could work. Stepping out of the van, I braved the gunfire and swung my arm forward like a pitcher throwing a ball. The blade released from my grip and spun end over end towards the far side of the garage.
Our assailant's head nearly exploded as the knife caught him in one eye. The force of the weapon carried him backward a few feet into the wall. Blood splattered outward from the mangled form that had been his face.
I turned to see Shaggy wide-eyed. Sure, she could shoot a man in cold blood and I barely blinked. When I killed someone with a thrown blade though it was a reason to pause in amazement. His eye hadn't actually been my target, but Shaggy wasn't going to hear that from me. Only hours of drunken betting against elves gave me any practice with throwing knives.
The van’s side to closed behind me. I sat down in the back and waited for us to move. Shaggy looked unfocused but had both hands on the wheel. Hopefully, she was listening to the earpiece. Candy hadn't shown herself since we left the stairwell and I had no clue what was going on.
"Where to?" I asked.
Shaggy had both eyes squeezed shut and a vein near her forehead ticked. When this was over I'd buy the women a spa trip, if we survived.
"Shaggy?"
"One moment, sir." Her teeth grated. Clearly she needed a full weekend relaxation package. "Okay, we're going to slowly drive out. Keep your head down. Surely we can make it to the freeway."
"Last safe house?"
"Yes." She accelerated and started driving out the back entrance.
I kept my eyes on the rear windows. This van didn't have any sort of side view and looking out the front made me sick.
"What about the four outside?" I asked.
"Two." She corrected.
I shrugged, Candy hadn't given me a new head count. We weren't likely to get anything from her either. I was hoping that whatever energy she had left was going towards throwing off the Seer.
"Shit." Shaggy ground her teeth once more. Our van was making little progress on getting out of the hotel’s parking garage.
"What?" I asked.
"Fifty Five got wind. They're on their way." She said.
"We'll be long gone." In five minutes, we'd be lost in a crowd of cars on the freeway. Provided we managed to get away from here without incident. It was unlikely that these guys had spike strips or anything else.
"Get down!" Shaggy yelled. I hunched myself over Kahina.
Shaggy slammed the gas before we emerged from the parking garage. I warily looked out the front to see what the problem was. The two remaining that had been patrolling the outside stood in our way. One was fumbling with something in a pouch. The other took aim and fired.
His bullets should have crushed the windshield, but the glass seemed to be resistant. It wasn't thick enough to stop every shot. Two were close enough together that they pierced through and whizzed by my head.
We practically ran over one of them on the way out. At the last minute, something banged against the side of the van with a loud thunk. More shots followed us down the road. The scanty amount of traffic became chaotic as cars swerved out of our way.
Only a few rules of traffic were followed. Shaggy signaled when we switched lanes but it rarely lined up with the direction our van went. Speed limit and right of way laws were violated thoroughly in our rush to the freeway.
Reaching the van's front seat was hard given our constant swerving. Our rearview showed two of the cars from earlier following us. Bullet holes and a ruined windshield probably didn't help us hide.
"This piece of shit..." She muttered and slammed on the gas trying to get additional speed from the engine. Shaggy wasn't about to let the light in front of us turn red. We had been lucky, no cross traffic to deal with thus far.
She kissed her hand and pressed it against the ceiling. The light stayed amber long enough for us to pass through. Not that the two cars chasing us paid attention to regular traffic laws. Tires and horns went wild with noise behind us.
"At least it's not raining. Hang on!" Shaggy kept up her complaints from the front. I was still trying to get past all the bouncing and buckle up Kahina. Seatbelts were important, especially when we could tumble end over end from taking a corner too fast.
I had time to clip in Kahina but not myself. The van hit a corner hard and started to tip. My body slammed into the far wall as we landed on four wheels again.
"Why the hell did we take a van?!" I complained loudly
"It's camouflage!" She shouted back while yanking the wheel. My body slammed across the van and into our bags. I prayed that our explosives hadn't been overly jostled.
I scrambled back to my seat and looked behind us at the cars following us. "It's not working!"
"No shit, sir!" The volume of her voice was stuck on high.
"We have to lose them before we get to the next place!" I said.
The resulting shift across traffic was a lot extra violent. She completely ignored the red lights now, trusting her reflexes to get us away from our pursuers.
"Got it!" She swerved onto a freeway exit and tried to drive her foot into the floorboard. I wanted to explain that cars only go so fast no matter how hard you press the pedal but now seemed like a bad time.
"We're headed to SeaSide!" She turned and looked back at us. Kahina’s head lolled to the side and I still hadn't figured out where the spare belt buckles were. We sped along with the two cars behind us. They hadn't missed a beat in following.
"Great, and then?!" The adrenaline was starting to kick in, finally. I hadn't felt much when sneaking by the guards, going down the stairs, or even throwing that knife, but this car chase was making me pumped.
"We blow them up before we get shot to death." She was gaining control of her voice as the plan came together.
I looked out the window and noticed one of the people chasing us was trying to lean out the passenger window with his gun. Shaggy's timing was dead on, every time they had a clear line of sight she switched lanes to put another car in the way.
That meant someone else might take the bullet for us. Surprisingly the action was enough to keep them from shooting in our direction. Miles flew by and I lost track of where we were. SeaSide had to be getting close, and traffic was starting to thin out. It was a weekday and only desperate tourists headed out to the beach this time of year.
"Almost there." Shaggy said through gritted teeth.
"Great." I wasn't sure about this plan.
"Grab some grenades and get ready near the rear door." Shaggy said.
Explosives were not one my skills, and I informed her. "I can't use them."
"What?" Shaggy was startled enough to look back at me then remembered she was driving at high speeds.
"Yeah."
"Get up here and take the wheel." She said.
"That's probably worse." I came forward anyway. The choice between handling live explosives and dealing with my dislike of motorized vehicles was an easy one.
"It's not hard. Foot on this pedal," She pointed down with a free hand. "Hands on the wheel, it's power steering, don't turn too hard. We've got a straight away coming up soon you just need to hold it steady." Her words were rushed and barely comprehensible.
I slipped my foot in beside Shaggy’s and put a hand on the wheel. She was tiny enough that getting out and moving to the back of the van took no juggling. My ass planted right into the freed up seat.
"Don't let up on the gas!" She yelled from the back. I looked in the mirror briefly and caught a glimpse of her with one hand on the door and another holding a row of explosives.
Driving a car was nerve wracking enough without that extra visual. The cars behind us were full on shooting now. Why hadn't they started shooting before I was driving? Probably because no one else was on the road. With no one else on the road, there was no fear of getting humans involved. No humans meant no Sector.
"Shaggy..." I groaned between bouts of barely suppressed agitation and panic.
"FOOT, PEDAL, NOW!"
My foot pushed down on the gas pedal that I had unconsciously eased up on. The engine jerked. In the driver's side mirror, I saw the cars chasing us had started to catch up. Those two little sports cars had speed far beyond this modified brick I was trying to drive. They were probably the wolves from Fifty Five.
"Keep us on the fucking road for a few seconds..." She muttered. It was difficult to tear my eyes away from the road and look into the rear view mirror. My brief glimpse showed Shaggy peeking out the back windows.
Rounds of shots hit the road and our van. When the bullets stopped she cracked open the door for a second to let the explosives slip out. Almost immediately I heard the door close.
The side view mirror went wild as flames flared to life. An explosion behind us tossed chunks of asphalt in front of our van. I tried not to stare at the reflection and watch the chaos. One of the pursuing cars ran straight into the guardrail and landed in a ditch. Two cars behind us were gone, but the two sports cars swerved around the crater and barely paused.
"Take this back!" I yelled.
Shaggy opened the door again and fired shots towards the remaining cars. Our perusers didn't return fire. A moment later she hustled past the seats up to the front. I didn't know how to get out of the way without releasing my death grip on the steering wheel.
"MOVE!" She screamed. Her voice was starting to sound hoarse.
I gave up figuring out how to switch us around and abandoned everything by diving out of the driver's seat. The van swerved as she settled back into the chair. Her foot found the gas and tried to make up for lost time. From the rear window, I could see both cars speed up. One stayed behind us while the other sped up to the driver's side.
A glimpse of the people behind us told me everything I needed to know. They were both wolves, had to be with that build, with those reactions on the road. Or remarkably well-trained meatheads, which was unlikely. The driver behind us was twitching like mad and didn't spare a glance in the other car's direction. Each motion a giveaway.
The man in the passenger seat had shifted halfway to wolf and looked like he was going to jump onto our van.
I searched through our bags looking for anything silver. My gloves, the thin wire that had been one of my favorites, a blade, anything. I was able to find a string of wire and a knife before something crashed into the vehicle's side.
Claws dug through the thick metal as the wolf anchored onto our van. It had to be in half beast form to have a grip like that. Seeing it leap at the van would be enough to unnerve any sane person. Shaggy and I weren’t the normal sort, though.
Shaggy swerved into the car to her left trying to scrape the unwanted passenger off. It was ineffective and the claw marks tore a trail of new hand holds up to the window. Glass shattered next to her head. A giant clawed hand reached in and started fumbling for something to grab.
The brunette shouted at me to do something while leaning to the right. I reached across to the driver's side window and shoved a blade into its arm. The wolf yipped in pain and yanked its arm and the weapon out my hands. A moment later it was clawing for purchase on the side of the van but failed. Our attacker landed on the car tailing us and bounced off their hood before ending up on the highway.
The wolf would live provided no one ran over it a few times. They healed ridiculously fast if the injuries stopped coming. Maybe a few cars would ram into it first.
"Two more wolves!" Shaggy was checking mirrors repeatedly.
New sets of hands latched onto the roof and driver's door. My mind raced for a solution while the sliding door was peeling off. Shaggy swerved the van into the nearby car again, but that hardly slowed them down. She dug out a gun and started shooting out her window. A car next to us peeled out, but it didn't stop the two from clawing at the sides.
I wound the wire around my hands to get a solid hold. This would hurt them more than it hurt me. One of them at least. Both sets of hands were ripping at the van's frame with an unnerving focus on our door. Finally, one got a good grip then pulled.
Our poor door cried out in screeching protest as it came apart. Next they completely destroyed the hinges. I wrapped my wire around the first visible head to poke through. Silver dug into my hands as the wolf's neck resisted the pressure being put on it. Its teeth tried to twist around and snap at anything close by.
In a battle between silver and a wolf's neck, there was only one victor. The thin metal was stretched and snapped right before severing the wolf's head. A final jerk separated the two chunks of body. Our attacker's head flopped into the van and the body hung by a claw while smacking against the freeway over and over. The second one hardly paused at its companion's death before coming inside the van.
This one got right in my face. Teeth everywhere. Strings of drool splattered against me. My free arm fumbled around for something, anything to help.
Shaggy shot it nearly point blank. The bullets didn't do the damage that silver coated ones would have. I wrapped my fingers around something. I found the decapitated head and thrust it into the second one's chest. My present was enough of a distraction that the wolf missed my fist, complete with the mangled wire remains, swinging into its face. I kept punching, ignoring the returning claw marks and drove it out of the van.
Cars still chased us, and everything was torn up. I looked out the side door when someone behind us opened fire. Our defeat of three wolves seemed to remove their desire to remain off Western Sector’s radar.
The second lifeless wolf flapped on the van’s side. I heard a sound that was almost gunfire but not quite. Screeching filled the air and the vehicle started fishtailing. Shaggy screamed in frustration as our ride lost all traction and started tumbling.
Here I was without my seatbelt.