“Everyone everywhere is reacting,” the man went on as the stranger rolled off the table. Some of the reps had been carrying guns, and fired back. The car retreated back out the window and into the night. Another rep fell, and another, and the other feeds showed guards rushing along the hallways.

“We see that too!”

The hacker beeped.

“This could be our chance to-” Kreb began.

“Money first!” Freel said, and rushed over to the safe. He opened it, and within were the stacks of melaurum that Freel had glimpsed during a months-ago meeting with the boss.

Gold, taken and refined and perfected in strange and incredibly energy-intensive ways that made even a single plate one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy. Kreb joined him, and together they shovelled them into two simple bags.

Treating this kind of treasure so roughly felt strangely perverse, but in a gleeful kind of way. Freel felt like a kid getting to break stuff without consequences. Although the rumble of another explosion put a slight damper on that.

“Guys, status!” Yules said.

“We’re almost done!” Freel told him. “Just-”

He happened to glance around, and the still-enlarged feed from the meeting room showed him something interesting. Jakino had been closest to the window pane when it collapsed inwards, but he’d apparently been able to duck down. Because now, with the fighting out of sight of the meeting room cameras, he had crawled back out.

The man frantically patted a wall, and opened a secret door. Freel hadn’t know about that one, but he knew it led into the viewing room the boss had taken him to the other day.

“Oh, hello. Kreb, finish this real quick, then guard the door.”

He put his bag down, and hurried over to that one particular pelt on the wall. He took up position next to it and drew his gun. Kreb closed both of the bags, then ran to the main door with one in each hand.

“I’ve lost visual,” Yules said. “But the fighting seems to have moved a floor below. Most of the guards are headed that way, and-”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

The secret entrance opened and Jakino limped into the room. He was breathing heavily, close to panic, and that was all the observation Freel took in before clocking the bastard on the head with the gun.

Jakino’s skull made a nice little bang, and the man fell limply onto his side. Freel kicked him a little, moving him over onto his back. Then he aimed square at his face.

“Replaceable, am I?”

Jakino’s eyes bugged out, and his mouth opened. Freel pulled the trigger before more than a gasp came out. He’d had more satisfying kills, but most people couldn’t make the floor eat you.

“What’s going on?” Yules asked.

“I tendered my resignation.”

He started walking to Kreb.

“What’s the climate like out there?”

“It’s pretty wild. Things just look confused. Oh, hey, you got some coming to the office!”

“Time?” Kreb asked.

“Right now!”

Kreb dropped the bags on the floor, and Freel drew the gun again. Two guards burst into the room, and one shouted “Boss!”

Kreb drew his chainsaw and swung it. It caught the one closer to him in the neck, and travelled down. The other one never saw Freel coming as he poked the gun into his back, and fired.

He closed the doors as Kreb yanked his weapon free. One had to look close to see any splatter on him, which Freel supposed was good enough for a quick trip to the roof. He took his own bag and slung the strap across his torso.

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“We’re coming,” he said. “Meet up with us in the pillar room.”

“Will do.”

The bag’s weight made his jog rather awkward, but he found a tempo he would be able to maintain all the way to the roof. And then he would deploy the scorcher bomb, and the stranger would burn up, along with any annoying witnesses or loose ends. It wasn’t as satisfying as a more personal approach, but Jakino had already obliged him on that front.

Three guards came running from the opposite end of the main hallway.

“Guys, guys!” Freel said, and made his voice sound a little frantic. “He’s not back here!”

“Well, isn’t the boss?” one of them asked, and slowed his pace rather than stop.

“No! I think the guy might have grabbed him! As a hostage or something!”

“The guy?” another one said as they passed one another. “It can’t be one guy doing all this!”

They seemed to be coming to a stop, but Freel didn’t stop to observe it. If they just didn’t enter the office quite yet, and if they just didn’t immediately link the scene within to the two of them…

The double doors had closed automatically as the trio had come running through, and Kreb rammed his weight into it. They were in the forest of pillars, and one of the slowly twisting lights in the ceiling fell on Yules for a moment.

“Oh, what do you have there?” he half-yelled. “Picked up some groceries?”

There was that shrill laugh again.

“So, you erased everything?” Freel asked as he joined them.

“Everything. Nothing digital to say we were ever here!”

“And where was the guy when you left?”

“I had lost sight of him, but things seemed to be moving down below.”

He motioned to the floor, then forwards.

“All very hectic. Very dramatic.”

The floor opened.

“Oh.”

Freel came to a stop that was made somewhat shuddering by the heavy bag of melaurum. A sizable hatch was opening a little bit in front of them, and from down below came sounds of feet and high-strung voices. He hadn’t even known about that opening.

“Hurry hurry hurry!” a guard yelled as he led three more up a flight of stairs.

“What is it?” Freel asked. “Is it him?”

“The dragon is loose!” the second one in line shouted.

“What?”

“He let the dragon loose!”

One of the galaxy’s apex predators rumbled angrily, the sound made all the worse by echoing in tight quarters, and then it emerged.

The dragon has been shot several times, as evidenced by smoking, stinking scorch wounds. He could see into raw flesh, but multiple layers of fat and tough scales had prevented the shots from penetrating any deeper than that.

The last man in line managed a short shriek before the blood-stained snout clamped around his torso. The dragon shook its head back and forth, like a dog playing with a toy. Freel had never heard bones shatter apart like that.

The other two guards raised their guns and fired over their shoulders. Their shots were wild and panicked, but two of them hit home, scorching the dragon even more. It bit completely through the corpse in its mouth, and darted at them with a furious roar.

Freel ran around the hatch, and the whole scene, and kept on going towards the hallway on the other side of this stupid, stupid room. His eyes stayed on the dragon, and although it had gained weight since last he saw it, thanks to that bizarre metabolism, it still moved shockingly fast. It caught another one of the guards, and tore into him with a swipe of its claws.

“Fucking rich people pets!” Yules opined.

They were about halfway across the room when Freel heard the final guard let out the scream of one who knew he was about to die. Then came the footsteps. The rapid, thumping footsteps of three or four tons of hate and hunger. The dragon was gaining rapidly, and the melaurum was really taxing Freel’s stamina.

He patted Yules’s shoulder to get his attention, then pointed to the pillars on their left-hand side.

“We’ll take cover, shoot it together! Or we’ll never make it!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Yules said.

They both slowed down, before Yules skidded to a stop. Freel pointed at a specific pillar with a breathy “That one”, and pointed at another one for himself. Yules took cover by his pillar and stuck his gun out. Freel moved to his own pillar… and then kept on running. Kreb apparently hadn’t noticed the exchange, as he looked back with a hint of surprise.

“Freel!” Yules shouted as light dawned on him. But there would be no making up the distance between them now. Not in the time he had. “FREEL, YOU ASSHOLE!!”

“You are so ungodly annoying, Yules!” Freel shouted back.

He heard a gun go off, and was a bit relieved that it wasn’t aimed his own way. There was another shot, and then the dragon caught up with Yules.

Freel reached the doorway, and banged his fist on a large button that brought a door down from above. Kreb gave him a look.

“What, did you like him? Did you?”

“Mm.”

They switched back to a more sustainable movement speed. Faint sounds of fighting could be heard, their origins impossible to place, partly due to the far less faint sounds of the dragon fuming.

They passed by those transparent, swirling walls, and then reached the final hallway, with the high ceiling, balconies, and rows of raised tree pits.

“You hear that?” Kreb asked.

Free did hear it. The noise of combat was growing decidedly less faint, and with each step he became more sure that it was coming through the wall on their right. The fighting had stayed mobile.