"That stupid little shit!" Jack snarled again, squeezing between Corona and Taura to get to the mop closet's door. Corona had pushed him and Taura into the closet as soon as the stairwell door at the end of the hall had opened -- and now the three of them had to fight their way back out of the Argus Defense Systems building only to go back to their headquarters empty-handed. All because Shadow had decided to do a little hotdogging and leave him and the girls flapping in the wind.
"Easy, Jack," Corrie whispered, resting a hand on his shoulder.
"When we get out of this, I'm gonna kick her fuckin' ass!" Jack peeked into the hallway and found four more of the seven-foot-tall security robots marching straight toward them. The mechs whipped their cameras to the left, spotted him, and snapped their guns around to aim at his head. He ducked back into the closet a split-second before a hail of bullets ripped chunks out of the wall and door frame.
"Keep your mind on the job or we might not get out of this at all." Taura tapped more commands into the hard-light display floating in front of her.
Corona leaned into the hallway and popped off a few shots from her hand cannon. Three of the bullets hit the floor at the robots' feet, one zipped past them and buried itself in the stairwell door, and the fifth grazed the nearest robot's right thigh. Corona ducked back into the closet and growled, baring her thumb-length fangs. Her tail lashed back and forth as she shoved the gun back into her holster.
"Screw this!" She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and launched into the hallway.
"What -- Corrie!" Jack reached out for her but she was already charging the four mechs, moving so fast that she was just a blur.
The robots opened fire and Jack's heart nearly jumped into his throat.
Corona leaped into the air and twisted into a horizontal spin and the bullets whizzed beneath her. Her feet hit the floor and she continued running. The robots raised their guns, trying to track onto the space she'd occupied a split-second before, and resumed firing. Their bullets zipped over her head and she dropped and plowed into their legs like a baseball player sliding into home base, knocking them all off their feet.
She leaped onto the nearest mech, clamped her hands around its head, and twisted its neck until its head had done nearly a full rotation. Metal and plastic snapped, wires ripped loose, and the head finally sheared off with a fountain of lubricants and hydraulic fluid. Its body collapsed and she stood, holding the head in her right hand. She turned to the next robot, cocked her hand back, and hurled the head point-blank into the bot's face, shattering its camera lenses and caving the front of its skull in.
Taura rushed past Jack, sprinted down the hall, and stopped in front of the two remaining mechs as they tried to pick themselves up. She raised her right leg and drove her hoof into the nearer one's head, smashing it into the floor and partially crushing it. She stomped it a few more times, turning it into a barely recognizable chunk of scrap metal.
The last surviving robot had gotten to its feet by now, but Corona kicked its legs out from under it. As it fell, she followed up by crashing her forearm into its chest, sending it rocketing into the floor. The tiles under it shattered on impact.
Taura pumped a half-dozen rounds through its head, destroying its CPU and memory modules, and emptied the rest of her magazine into the one she'd just taken down. She popped the magazine out and replaced it with a fresh one, took a deep breath and let it rush out.
Jack took a few deep breaths of his own until his heart stopped pounding. He shook his head and walked over to the girls. He looked up at them and managed a shaky grin.
"If you two think showing off like that is gonna take my mind off what Shadow did … well, you may be right." He gave their asses a quick squeeze before continuing down the hallway. "Let's get the hell out of here."
"Oh, crap -- hold on." Taura pointed at her holofield. "Most of the robots are taking positions on the ground floor and the rest are covering all the other exits on every floor, including stairs leading to the roof."
Corona sighed and leaned over to look at the display. "Where the hell did all those things come from?"
"This is just wonderful." Jack turned away from the stairwell and glanced at the scrapped robots as if expecting them to reactivate. "If we try to go through the lobby, we'll be blown into chunks of raw meat."
Corona raked her talons through her hair. "Hmm. Okay, let's head for the roof. I've got an idea."
"We can make that. Probably." Taura reached into the holofield and nudged the schematic of the ADS building, pulling it down until the top three floors scrolled into the window. She pointed at a set of six blips in one corner. "That's the nearest exit. If we can get past those mechs, we go through one door and we're on the roof. But then what?"
"Well, it's a work in progress." Corona shrugged. "I need to see if there are any buildings close enough before I know whether it'll actually work or not."
"I already don't like it," Jack muttered.
"I don't, either, but we'd hate the lobby option even more." Corona wrapped her wings around her shoulders like a cape and ducked through the doorway into the stairwell. "Let's go."
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