There had always been a marked difference in how fast things moved when I was about to get hit. If I was against someone, if I was in a fight, then I would see them coming at me at speed. Everything would be blurs and twitches, blood, iron and being unsure of where those cuts came from.

When the world posed a threat, everything seemed to slow down to a crawl. Adrenaline stretched seconds just short of minutes and twitches into considered reactions. Frozen water sprayed through the split metal siding of the basement we were in. The upper half of the Ottinio I shot tumbled toward the floor, falling through its missing midsection. Ice and foundation groaned under the sudden pressure of supports shot away.

It was deeply inconvenient that this wasn’t the other way around. Nature happened in a flash, but people fought in slow motion. I would have avoided a lot of trips to the medical bay that way.

How long did I have before the fall wall burst and water stopped spraying and erupted into the room? Could I trust the rest of the building to hold fast? Or did I have to consider that we might get wrapped up in warping steel? Should I bother trying to get to Yinde, or should I just write those credits off as gone and focus on Victoria?

“Fuck, Kingston!” Victoria yelled, jumping back toward the desk as blood poured to the floor and was washed away by the spreading water. The Ottinio behind my victim pulled further behind the door, slamming it. Based on the limping, they weren’t exactly healthy. “What the fuck was that?”

“Gun,” I explained, keeping my own trained on the door as the mix of red and arctic water started to pool under the door. Steel groaned around us.

“Oh fuck,” Victoria managed, her voice shaking as she stepped back toward the desk. She needed something to do before I lost her to panic.

“Door,” I commanded, nodding toward the way we’d come in as I backed away from the door they’d left while keeping my gun pointed at it.

Victoria didn’t move.

“They were going to sell you out,” I added, “now DOOR.”

Victoria swallowed spit and ran to the door, covering the distance in just about two steps. She pulled on it, once, twice, then the third time with a growl.

“Locked?” I suggested. The Hammerhead dinged, letting me know the dampener was back at full power.

“Yeah.” She tried again anyway.

“Anyone on the other side?” I asked. The water pouring in stopped being mixed with blood, now just pure freezing water. Whoever made thermal shielding deserved all the money he’d made off of it.

“It sounds like it.”

“Okay.” I tried to remember how wide the hallway down here had been. It hadn’t quite been claustrophobic, but it certainly hadn’t been wide. There was a good chance that enough firepower to clear the door would give us a second hole to worry about. “Guns,” I said, taking one hand off the Hammerhead and pointing Victoria to the back wall.

“What?”’ Victoria pulled her ear off the door and went to grab the gun at her side as if to say, ‘I already have one.’

“That one’s shit. Let’s not field test if it works or not. Find something,” I instructed. There were shouts on the other side of the door Yinde had run through, but they were getting further away. It made sense; coming through a door I had overwatch on would be suicide unless they wore a high-quality shield.

“Third row, second from the right,” Victoria mused to herself. The structure groaned under its own weight again. The water rushing in must have been making it heavier. Did this thing rely on buoyancy to keep from tumbling to the bottom of the ocean? Did it have support structures? “There we are.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“What?” I asked to keep from pulling my eyes away from the door.

Instead of answering, Victoria pulled up beside me and held out an over-sleek Fotuan assault rifle toward me while holding another in her hand. “A Fotuan gun?” I asked.

She read my tone and pulled the offered one away from me. “At least I’ve held one of these before,” she pointed out, “felt right.”

I caught the way she’d said that. “Have you fired one before?”

“No.”

I took my eyes off the door for a second to look at the rifle, giving my personal assistant time to translate the Fotuan text on the side. It was just a string of numbers, but it wasn’t a strong enough gun that I’d committed the string to memory. “Shoot that wall,” I flicked my Hammerhead over to show that I meant the far one.

“One second,” Victoria turned the gun over and removed a small chip, likely the safety, and then turned to place the gun she’d offered me on the desk, aligning it carfefully on the edge like she was putting it away. The building rumbled this time as it groaned out another complaint into the cold water around us.

“We have a time limit,” I pointed out.

“Sorry,” she said, but the end of it was swallowed by the piercing high-pitched cry of the rifle as it fired. Three bolts of brilliant red light shot out and pierced through the run she’d fired at. A moment later, water poured out of the small holes she’d left.

I looked at the Hammerhead in my hand and swore, “Take the safety off the other one,” I instructed. There weren’t any voices behind the door anymore, so I pulled my attention from it for a moment to jump over to the back wall, letting my arms relax for the first time in the past minute as I did.

“What?”

“I’m taking that one,” I opened the first box I got to. Ventinari junk.

“I thought you did-”

“Don’t need to blow off every door in this place,” I pointed out, trying to make it sound like I wasn’t frustrated and that not using Fotuan weapons had always been a decision based on practicality. The second box was all Anteraxi, which would need Dune Ammo I didn’t have on my person or have the time to find.

“On it,” Victoria decided as a response after a moment. She was probably deciding whether it was worth pointing out the annoyance that had slipped through.

“Hello,” I opened up the third box and found something that would work. Old Ovishir weapons from time before they consolidated their weapons production to energy based rounds. Specifically, tucked in the corner of the box was the handle of an Ovishir hard-light harpoon.

Just in case things went aquatic.

I unclipped the safety on the side and pressed the switch, turning it off again after I saw the golden hard-light begin to form at the end of the baton-like handle. Functioning was good enough for now.

“Here,” Victoria held out the Fotuan rifle to me. I grabbed it and then a strap from the Ovishir box, wrapping it around the center of the gun so I could throw it over my shoulder. Victoria didn’t pull her hand away from me right away. It was shaking.

“Thank you,” I said, pushing her hand down and back onto the rifle she held. I put my gun over my shoulder and took a deep breath before taking a step straight into her personal space. Her grey eyes were flickering back and forth. Too wide. “‘Are you good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said a little too fast.

“Victoria,” I said, reaching out and putting my palm on her cheek. She only half pulled away. “I’m getting us out of here, but I need you with me, Okay?”’

“Okay.”

“So, are you good?”

There was quiet for a moment, only broken by the sound of rushing water. “Yes.”

“Good,” I affirmed, “there are two ways out of here. We go back the way we came. We know the way out, but there are going to be people there. Or we see what’s behind that door,” I nodded to the way Yinde had gone, breaking eye contact with Victoria for the first time since I’d stepped close. “But we don’t know if that leads out.”

“What do yo-”

“Choose,” I cut her off. The smart thing was to head out into the hallway where we’d heard people and take our chances against their shields. We knew it was a way out, and we weren’t risking everything past the door underwater.

“I-” she paused.

“Which way?” I repeated. If we were going to be shooting at people, she needed to be the one to make that call. I wasn’t forcing her into that.

“Up,” she confirmed. I nodded. “Let’s get out.”

“Smart. Good to go?”

“No,” her voice wasn’t shaking as much, and her eyes had fallen still on mine, “but we have a time limit,” she echoed to me.

I nodded again. Any amount of sass told me Victoria was as ready as she’d ever be for this sort of thing. “Alright,” I pulled out the Hammerhead again, pointing it at the soon-to-be unlocked door. “Time to start this party.”

The last wisps of blood diluted in the water around my boots, and I pulled the trigger to start spilling more.