Dirty Work: Volume 1

Siala: Part 2 - 5

I shot first. I remember that much. Afterwards, with a whole gang of thugs firing at me, it became very much a blur.

I was crouched halfway down the first flight of stairs, and as the doorway opened to reveal the shape of a man through the crack, I fired, not waiting for the barrel of a gun to poke through. He ducked back inside, now using his leg to kick the door wide. He crouched down and two girls behind him shot in my direction. Chips of metal blasted up from the floor and scratched my face, shrapnel lacerating my clothes. I shot back and slithered down and around the corner.

I waited for a second before firing at the corner of the wall, expecting at that moment to see something poke around. I just managed to hit the hand of one of the girls, my timing perfect. She screamed as blood splattered the walls of the stairwell, the gun clattering to the floor. It banged against the side and bounced off, sliding down the steps towards me. With one gun still trained on where I had just fired, I scooped up and pocketed the new gun. A 52 Alpha. Not my favourite, but decent in a pinch. The canister was half full, good for a few blasts later on.

I was itching to continue retreating down the stairs. It occurred to me that, once the stairwell was blocked, it wouldn't take long for a few of them to realise that going down the fire escape, the way we had come up, would be a good way to cut me off. Silently I began to move down the steps, weapons still drawn and raised. I let off a blast to keep them in the knowledge I was still there. With feet inching around the landing towards the next flight down, I shot again. A second later return fire came, but I was no longer there. I had begun to scramble after Siala and Rena as fast as I could go.

Siala had defected. That was what Rena shouted as they ran down, Harly hobbling down with an ear missing, the remains dissolving away. Defected from whom? Red Rose? Was that possible, for her to be a part of Red Rose on another part of the Empire? I hadn't even considered that Red Rose operated out of anywhere else except Celestria, and it now occurred to me what stupid thinking that was.

Perhaps it wasn't Red Rose specifically that she was a part of. Perhaps she belonged to one of the larger organisations that Red Rose was affiliated with. Vayn himself had said that they were part of a new branch of a larger group. Had Siala, having decided to leave Dirty Work and go off-Celestria, gotten involved with another group and, upon learning who their targets were, decided to come back and help, against their wishes?

Those men in the black kars following us on the 1-17 would have been told she was coming in. Young men hijacked off the street by Vayn Baron and told to shoot to kill, for a fee. Thinking about it, as long as he had the money to finance it all, Baron had no shortage of numbers to recruit from. All you had to do was go lower than Region 14 and you could find outcasts in the water-logged darkness, their hands covered in the filth from the walls and pockets stuffed with broken switchblades.

I stopped and fired up again, just to keep them on their toes, and continued my descent. Floor seven became six, then five, and quickly the first floor came up to meet me like a drunkard's bed. I threw myself through the doors into the main lobby, sliding down the banister of the main stairwell to the lobby's balcony. I trained my dual weapons on the door I had come through and shot at the second of the two girls that had appeared as my greeting party at the top of the stairs. She had both her hands intact, I was both glad to see and also annoyed to notice.

I ducked and rolled as great blasts hit the floor and mosaic tile shot dust clouds into the air. Colours danced as red blasts continued to fire back from my new-found brothers, a 54 and a 58 fighting side by side, with a baby-brother of a 52 in my coat pocket. It was just a few steps back to the main door. Keeping one barrel trained on those coming down to meet me I turned the other one behind and shot. The glass shattered behind me, a great geyser of tiny prismic fragments swirling around me like rain droplets.

'Watch it!'

Firing from behind me, Markro came to my side and the two of us took pot-shots at the gang, five of them, taking up stances around the balcony that ringed the lobby.

'Two coming down the fire-escape,' I yelled as we spun, constantly shooting as we ducked out of the doorway.

'Ashrore's got it,' Markro said. 'Hidra's got the other two and has driven off. There's a two-person Zoomus for us out there, Ashrore has her own.'

'I'll hold,' I said, trading my 58 with a now-depleted canister, for the Red Rose girl's 52. Like all 52's, it felt beautiful. I quickly took a shot and, even from outside the building, got a headshot on a man peering over the railing to fire.

'Got it,' Markro said, sliding a leg over the Zoomus and starting it up.

I held my guns trained on the figures beginning to swarm down the stairs, one of them missing me by millimetres and hitting the pavement just under the blue Zoomus' fuel tank.

'Jump on!' Markro yelled. I didn't need telling twice. I leaned behind me and my bodyweight hold me in place as Markro began to move off. Once we were almost out of the firing line, I clambered over to the passenger's side seat and shot one last, parting blast behind me as the hooded figures spilled out.

'Is Ashrore going to be able to make it?' I asked.

'That's her up ahead,' Markro said.

Sure enough, heading towards the main HeadCore Area highways was a red single-seater with a familiar Trovation shape astride it, tail tucked in for aerodynamic efficiency.

'What's the plan?'

'We get the fuck out of here,' Markro replied. 'From there it depends on where the boss is.'