Ferenzi's face became a pained and baleful red. Whatever else he felt or planned to act out was tempered by the presence of the gunship facing the entrance way.

He turned to face the officer of rank and he pleaded.

"Dead? After everything we arranged? We had an understanding. Everything we have done for you, every risk we took was based upon that understanding."

The officer of rank shook his head.

"I wasn't told many details of what transpired. She got in some altercation with another inmate. All I know."

Tasìa tuned out the back and forth between the two men. She needed to make her move, now. All three of her weapons, the Desert Eagle, Škorpion, and stiletto were within easy reach. She peaked over to Annebél who appeared to be at peaceful slumber.

Annebél's presence limited Tasìa's choices.

Start a shootout and a stray bullet, as there would likely be many of them, could wound or kill her friend.

She would need to lead them back to the storage lot.

Ferenzi leaned his arms into a table as if to keep his stance upright. Sal gripped his gun in a squeeze, kneading it like it was a tension ball.

Sweat ran off of his brow. Was it out of familial concern or was it the withdrawal setting in?

No time like now to hit that back door. With three strides she managed to make it into the hallway and grab her Desert Eagle before the officer of rank yelled out a, "hey!"

The path ahead was a familiar one for her even before her latest escapades. Tasìa passed the storage room where compost feed was stored.

She rounded another corner, the first door was followed by Annebél's chamber, but she would have to pass several offices, a conference room with a big open window, the breaker room and the four open cubicles at the end of the long hall before she made it to the exit gate. It was a long stretch ahead for her.

She heard the footfalls of combat boots behind her. She would not be able to reach the back exit before they had a clear line of sight on her.

Tasìa ducked into the small office she had retreated to previously in her encounter with the spiderbot. It occurred to her, the droids were likely still out in the back lot on patrol.

Shit.

Tasìa examined her gun. Full magazine, one in the chamber. This gave her nine .357 rounds of stopping power to keep her pursuers in check.

She crouched down behind the office doorway, leaned her arm out into the hall, and shot the Desert Eagle twice, aiming each of the bullets to skim against opposite walls.

A Spetsnaz-based tactic Kutuzov taught her.

Ricochet tended to cause a terrifying psychological effect for those subject to their randomness. She hoped it would give them pause.

The soldiers crashed against the hallway walls, and hit the floors.

"Get up," yelled the squad leader to his men.

Another soldier spoke up.

"Would you look at that chunk in the wall. That Sweet Little Thing has some fire power in that hand cannon she's holding."

"So do we, Paro," the third soldier of the bunch interjected.

The squad leader hushed his men. He cleared his throat before he spoke.

"Ms. del Alma Gris, I have a combat shotgun aimed to smack that hand of yours if you so dare to pop it out again.

"It would be for the best if you throw it out, throw out all of your effects, your fanny pack, shoes, every stitch of clothing on your back, and walk out backwards with your hands up."

"Never! I'm going out like Butch and Sundance!"

The leader guffawed.

"You got heart, but this isn't nineteenth century Bolivia, Ms. del Alma-Gris. Sit tight, we'll get you out one way or the other. Maybe even in one piece.

"Yo, Paro, make a call in. Get an extraction team on the other side of that exit. Call Alphabird, too. We need to do an advance sweep in that back lot before we get the technicians involved."

Tasha looked down at her makeshift Carnivàle costume. I'm going out dressed like this? Headline: Cute As A June Bug Goblin Girl Makes Her Last Stand.

As tactics were being relayed back to the gunship, Tasha became miffed with the disinterested professionalism involved in the set-up.

She was being treated as an after thought to it all when in fact Tasìa was the main attraction.

"You do know that I can hear you boys plotting against me, right?"

The three soldiers laughed in near unison.

The squad leader responded.

"It is not like you can do a damn thing about it!"

Can't do anything about it?

Tasìa laughed in turn.

"Can't do anything about it? I have never been in that situation before."

"Oh, man does she ever have moxie," called out Paro.

Tasìa patted her belly as she lay waiting. Her index finger felt along the smooth scab.

She considered her analytics-mode. What was the limits of usage before her bladder was turned to mush and her vagina was blown out by a geyser of piss?

She had just minutes ago stress tested the analytics-mode when she pushed the venom from her body.

That speed-up. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

Did she just imagine that her catalytic state of being accelerated as to hug against the speed of light? Did she really accomplish this by merely pushing it harder than what seemed possible?

She had seen and experienced too many oddities in her mortal God-fearing existence to reject anything out of hand but that was a fetch too far to accept.

She wasn't an ignoramus in matters of physics, after all. A being possessing mass who comported to such a speed would come to reach infinite mass.

Her experience must have been merely analogous. It was likely a diagnostic preset in her wiring that dumped toxic chemicals out of her body through porous means.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Her brain must have been so affected as to fog her mind into a susceptible dream state.

Given the heavy use she had made of the analytics-mode in the last few hours, she would try to avoid using it again until she had another go at pissing the current toxins out of her system.

How was she going to defeat a fighting force without the assistance it gave her? Well, before she was aware of the modes existence she had essentially accomplished the same thing with her prison escape.

I have done it before, I'll do it again.

She glanced up at the corner of the ceiling where she had once perched to get out of the spiderbot's range of attack. As she assessed the prospects of her idea, eventually deciding that it was doable, Tasìa heard the army gunship fly overhead towards the back lot.

She wanted to wait and see if the squad dropping down on the back lot would run into the spiderbots before she took action.

There was one hunch she wanted to test first before she made any decision. Tasìa rose up with a quick jump and ducked her head back down. A shot pierced through the wall in front of her seven feet above floor level.

It went out of the opposite wall with no slow down.

Her test meant one of the three soldiers wore IR goggles and possessed a high caliber sniper rifle. The shot delay was 1.8 seconds.

"Settle down, Ms del Alma-Gris. No reason to get your head blown off before the inevitable."

"Damn, man, was that a Barrett or a TAC-50? I could use a new TAC-50 for my collection. Sadly mine got smelted by a freaking security bot."

A gravely voiced man spoke up. He was the third man on the squad.

"Sarge. I don't know if I want to shoot the girl or marry her."

"Lieutenant Carrera. Describe the specs of your rifle for the lady, please."

Carrera cleared his throat.

"Just a cheap, off the shelf DSR Precision mi pappi bought me for my birthday, ma'am."

She laughed to herself. She could not help but like these three soldiers. It was fucked what she would need to do to them to escape.

She reminded herself that they signed up to capture her. More than most anyone, a soldier is aware of the moral gravity of his own actions.

They would do what they needed to do. She would do what she needed to do. No hard feelings.

A commotion occurred outside in the back storage parking lot. A few days earlier, she had left the voltage gate open so the noise flowed on the breeze circulating down the hall.

She had a simple plan of attack. Simple enough for Tasìa, that is. Jump up to the ceiling using the desk beside her as a springboard, cling by her shins and knees against the back corner of the wall near the door. While upside down, aim a shot for each soldier, follow up for each man a shot in the space they would likely retreat toward if the first shot missed. Then drop down and run like a hound out of hell.

A voice over Paro's radio squealed.

"Five members of the squad repelled down to ground level. Experiencing hostile actions. Enemies engaged."

"Shit," yelled the sergeant. "Did you not scan the grounds?"

"Nothing showed up on IR. Now by the signal telemetry of drones, it appears to be spiderbots popping up on the screen."

She decided to change her plans for an evasive instead of a confrontational solution.

Tasìa undid the zipper to her fanny pack. She did so slowly and turned her fanny pack away from the soldiers, and perked her ear up to the door to appear as if her only intent was to listen in on a conversation that just got interesting.

As she bobbed her head, fainting interest in what she was hearing, Tasha reached into a fanny pack and removed three flashbang grenades. They were small and fit into the palm of her hands.

After zipping the fanny pack back up, she placed one of the flash grenades up against her lips, and pretended to be applying chapstick.

Tasìa bowed her head, place the Desert Eagle on the floor, tensed up, jumped and flipped upside down. Once her butt scampered against the ceiling her shins grabbed onto one corner her boot grabbed against the space above the door.

As bullet holes ripped into the wall below her, she fed the flash bangs one by one from the palm of her left hand to the fingers on her right where she hard flicked them each in its turn at the three soldiers below.

A scream, a curse, and a gagging sound followed her actions.

As Tasìa dropped down she had some choices to consider.

Back lot? Hell no.

Run back through them? That would lead back to where Annabelle slumbered, and give them an opportunity to grab her.

The third choice she took. Tasìa grabbed the Desert Eagle. She would have to run towards them for several yards to make it to the big conference room window.

She imagined the layout inside the room in terms of navigation. She noticed the hole in the ceiling the last time she passed through.

She could flip through the fallen debris with ease. The three soldiers would have a much harder time.

She quickly popped her head out the doorway, found their individual positions, pulled her head back inside the room.

None of them had recovered yet from the flashbang attack.

She leaned her arm out once more and fired two rounds at the floor in front of them.

A mad scramble of limbs took place to get the hell out of the hallway. Tasìa ran out into the corridor, shot another round at the corner to cause a searing ricochet back up the adjacent hall.

More chaos than the men could handle.

"Go, go. Retreat. Fall out," the sargeant barked an assortment of orders. Some of which made little sense in their current situational context.

Tasìa could not stick around to help them sort it out.

She reached the conference room window, jumped with her back towards it, pulled her body into a tight ball as she came crashing through the panel of glass. She rolled over and kept rolling until she was beneath the long slender conference table.

As she rose, Tasìa pushed the table up until it tipped over and pushed against the hole on the ceiling. Tasìa climbed up to the second floor of the building. She shoved the table back down onto the floor below with her legs.

Tasìa scrambled back onto her feet, and ran through a small cubicle farm, down the hallway, and up the stairs and to the roof access.

Hearing the rotors of the gunship hovering nearby, Tasìa crouched down behind the access shack.

A soldier mounted to the landing rail extension aimed a combat shotgun at the spiderbots below and pounded out sabot rounds at them.

She crawled to keep out of the line of sight of the shotgun welding soldier and his pilot.

Her escape would be a simple matter, really. Climb down the two storied building and make a fast break for her bike.

She crawled to the roofing cantilever. Transients and street musicians were now gone. So was Sal and Freddie. They all cleared out when the gunship showed up.

Enough excitement happened for them for one night, she gathered.

As she was just about the spring down to the parking lot, the three soldiers rushed out of the door.

Oh shit.

They figured out the plan.

"Paro, you take the south wall. Carrera take the north. We can't let her find a around us."

"There she is," Paro yelled, as he pointed her out.

"Holy shit, Ms. del Alma Gris. You are one resourceful little chica. Could you please, please drop your weapons and give up. I promise you. I promise you. The first night on base, we will all just hang out, drink some beer together, and have a good laugh at all of this.

"What happens next," she asked.

"Afraid I don't know. Salvage Administration comes to grab you in the morning."

"They want to turn me into a demon in their total control."

As the two other soldiers return to the squad leader, the sergeant shook his head.

"I'm sorry to hear that. It puts it damper on it otherwise fight evening of stomping out cannibals."

The sergeant's had exploded. Paro jerked his neck around in surprise, only to have it blown apart as well. Carrera tried to duck, but a round pierced through his heart and blew out part of his rib cage.

Tasìa did not see the last two events as she ducked down. The acoustics of the event made it quite probable her assumptions concerning the cause of death for the men was correct.

What surprised her most of all, however, during the near split second massacre of the three soldiers is how well she contained her analytics-mode from setting off.

She had no time to think about the danger she was in. Yet, the mode remained passive.

She saw now the familiar purpose outline that hid in the shadow of night.

The Wise One.

"Is Alex safe," she asked.

- I had him hide. We were preparing for the ceremony in the back lot when the gunship came.

She tensed at the sight of a ripple of red laser light spinning about the access shack side. A ranger finder likely for a grenade launcher.

- He isn't here for you.

The ripple found its way over to the gunship. It locked on. Two seconds later, the gunship was immersed in explosion and it fell from the sky.

Tasìa peaked over the cantilever edge.

She now spotted Lieutenant Colonel Sol standing on the ceiling of Annebél's home.

He leaned a Barrett on his hip. One like she had never seen before. A grenade launcher and .50 over and under construction. A technical kit for both a scope and a rangefinder.

Lieutenant Colonel Sol thew a salute towards the brownstones. Curiously, tears trickled down his eyes. It didn't take long for her to understand. The assault team had killed his brother.

He turned to her and nodded before proceeding to shimmy down the wall, and walked through the boat dealership lot, out of her sight.

"Well," Tasìa muttered through expired breath. "That's that."

Now that she was out of immediate harm, exhaustion over took her. She closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

Fingers grazed her forehead with a light, persistent stroke. How much time had passed, she had no clue. It was still dark.

She opened her eyes. Agu squatted in front of her. His sister Annebél stood behind him.

Tasìa smiled back at him. She closed her eyes.

Annebél's voice sounded like ambient noise.

"Tasìa? We are not out of the thick just yet. Damn. She isn't coming back from that anytime soon. Help me carry her to the jeep, Agu. We need to pack our shit and split."

The word packing triggered her. She could hear her own voice say the words.

"Get all those guns. They left some pretty guns for me. They would want me to have them. Pack them for me, okay?"

Tasìa closed her eyes once more and fell into a deep sleep.