The building was in chaos. A guard in the lobby was trying to direct the flow of panicked employees, now crowding around the elevators. Tex and Jim passed him without a word. Their agency had sent out notifications about agents pursuing the fugitive Lopez, wanted on numerous charges, but the chances of a low-level guard keeping up with such alerts in the midst of this mess were slim. Time was of the essence.

  Tex had downloaded a basic layout of the building from the analysis department. It lacked detail but would suffice. She and Jim moved down a side hallway toward the maintenance elevator. Someone was descending in it.

  "Perfect," she said to her partner. "We'll take it to the roof."

  "What about access? Don’t we need to notify someone first?" Jim asked, frowning.

  "Don't worry about it," she replied with a sly half-smile.

  Moments later, the elevator stopped on the ground floor, and a startled maintenance worker emerged. Tex stepped inside and, with a smooth, practiced motion, ripped the access card from his belt. Patting him on the shoulder in a mockingly reassuring manner, she explained, “Get out of here. Criminals are in the building—we’ll handle it.”

  The man hesitated, his face a mix of confusion and the urge to protest, but Tex was already pressing the card to the panel and hitting the button for the roof. Jim followed her in as the technician, after a moment of indecision, bolted toward the exit, clearly unwilling to return to where the danger lay.

  “So, what’s the plan up there?” Jim asked, his tone tinged with admiration.

  “Don’t get shot, help me disable their AV. The goal is to ground them—make sure they have no way of escaping with Lopez. That’ll buy us and the police enough time to secure him,” she replied briskly.

  Jim nodded, adjusting his grip on his pistol and checking his sights. Everything was in order.

  On the roof, they had to climb a short flight of stairs to a door. Luckily, the technician’s card worked there too. They emerged to see the back of a hovering vehicle. While it wasn’t a military model, it had clearly been customized.

  Tex nodded toward one of the large enclosed ventilation fans, signaling Jim to take position there. She sprinted silently to a similar cover on the opposite side.

  “Give me a moment,” she whispered into their comms.

  “Got it,” he confirmed.

  Tex leaned out slightly, using the zoom on her cybernetic eye to scan the rear of the vehicle, looking for a weak spot. She settled on the left engine nozzle, which was accessible from her angle. Peering through her sight, she squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession. The first two shots pierced the casing; the third triggered a small explosion. The AV was grounded.

  A masked man jumped out of the cockpit but stepped directly into Jim’s line of fire. A few precise shots dropped him where he stood. The lightweight armor he wore was no match for the penetrating rounds from their Mercer 12s.

  “Tango down,” Tex confirmed quickly, noting on her scanner that the pilot’s vitals had ceased.

  “Cover me. We’re moving closer to the vehicle,” she said, advancing in a crouch while scanning the area, particularly the elevator doors. She reached the vehicle without incident, pressed her back to it, and signaled Jim to follow. Now it was her turn to provide cover as he approached. The damaged engine was still smoking nearby.

  Tex picked up the short assault rifle the pilot had been carrying and handed it to Jim. She quickly patted down the pilot’s body but found nothing useful for their mission.

  “Give me a moment. If anyone shows up at the elevators, lay down suppressive fire,” she instructed before climbing into the cockpit. She connected her interface to the vehicle’s systems and began hacking into its cameras. A few minutes later, she had access to views of the main elevators and the cockpit itself. After completing her task, she positioned the pilot’s lifeless body back in the seat.

  Their adversaries still hadn’t shown up, suggesting the building’s security team was performing better than expected. Tex and Jim moved toward a glass pavilion that shielded the main elevators and emergency stairwell, where they could pin down anyone trying to escape. Tex connected with HQ, delivered a brief report, and requested a direct line to the building’s head of security. After a short wait, he joined the call, speaking quickly over the sound of gunfire in the background.

  “This is Fiodorovski. I’ve been told two PDJA agents have taken control of our roof and are offering assistance in repelling the attackers.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Confirmed,” Tex replied.

  “We’re engaged on the fiftieth floor. We could really use reinforcements. I’ll send you a route to safely reach us. Take the stairs.”

  Tex and Jim exchanged a glance before heading down, covering each other as they descended. Upon arrival, the security team was still holding out. They had one dead and two injured, whom another guard was treating, while four others exchanged fire from behind a makeshift barricade of tables and cabinets at a hallway corner. Tex and Jim had notified them of their approach to avoid any misunderstandings and were greeted with visible relief.

  The medic, who turned out to be Fiodorovski himself, was tending to a subordinate’s leg wound as he explained, “We’ve got six hostiles down there. They’ve got superior armor and firepower, but we’re holding. We’ve cut off the main elevators; only the service ones are functional, and they require an additional access card.” He wiped sweat from his brow and tightened the tactical tourniquet on the guard’s leg, reducing the bleeding.

  “If we hold them until the police arrive, we’ll be fine. Screw Lopez. What the hell was he thinking?” he said bitterly.

  “We’ll help you hold this position,” Tex declared. She crouched and joined the four shooters. After leaning out briefly to fire a few rounds, she recorded the view, then ducked back behind cover, letting Jim take her place. She crouched and analyzed the recording.

  The corridor was riddled with bullet holes. At its far end, the squad she believed she’d encountered at Alex’s apartment was trying to breach the defense to reach the stairs to the roof. They were also using cover, but something felt off. A shiver ran down her spine as intuition kicked in. She mapped the sound signatures of the gunfire, identifying four distinct weapons. After a brief lull, a fifth weapon fired during the next exchange.

  “Are you sure there were six of them?” she asked Fiodorovski sharply.

  “Yes. Why? What do you mean, ‘were’?” he replied, frowning.

  “One of them slipped past you, likely with Lopez. I’m going after them. Jim, stay and help hold this position,” she ordered, her tone brooking no argument. She rose and darted back to the stairs with inhuman speed.

  “Don’t let them get you, Jim,” she added over their private channel, a note of concern in her voice, as she leaped down half a flight at a time. Her synthetic legs and tendons absorbed the strain effortlessly.

  “Copy that,” he replied, his tone roguish.

  A floor below, she cut through an empty office to reach the opposite stairwell, suspecting the fugitives were descending there. She moved cautiously at first, listening intently. Hearing footsteps, she quickened her pace. After a few flights, her scanner picked up the signature of the familiar rifle. It was them. Knowing she might be heard, she opted for surprise.

  Tex knew how to fight on stairs, a skill she assumed her adversary would possess as well. She dropped three stories by leaping through the stairwell’s open center, a meter-wide shaft running its length. Her systems enhanced her reflexes, and her cybernetic eye stabilized the view, compensating for motion. In a heartbeat, a mercenary came into her sights, his rifle trained on where she would have appeared if she’d taken the conventional route.

  With her left hand reaching for the railing and her feet bracing for impact, her right hand aimed her pistol at his head. Half a heartbeat and three shots later, she landed smoothly, vaulting over the railing as his nearly decapitated body tumbled down the stairs.

  Lopez barely registered the sound of the body falling before the mercenary’s head exploded beside him. Splattered with blood and momentarily deafened, he stood in shock, which Tex shattered with a sharp slap. Grabbing his collar, she spun him around and pressed her gun to his kidney, shoving him toward the door.

  “Thirty-third floor. Not ideal, but it’ll do,” she said flatly.

  Using the technician’s card on a nearby panel, she disabled the local cameras, then forced Lopez into an office with a window.

  “Listen, we can make a deal. I was going to pay them two million to get me out of here. I’ll give you four if you help me escape the city,” Lopez stammered.

  Tex patted him down to ensure he wasn’t armed, then shoved him toward the center of the office.

  “How exactly would you pay me, Lopez? You’re a wanted man. All your accounts are frozen. Anything you had is already under the prosecutor’s control.”

  “I—I have a chip with encrypted currency, on the blockchain, untraceable,” he said, his voice trembling as he tried to project confidence. “Half is yours—four million. Just get me out of here.”

  In response, Tex pressed the barrel of her pistol against his closed eye, making him recoil against the desk.

  “Then show me the chip,” she demanded, holding out her free hand.

  “You think I’d carry it with me? I’m not that stupid!” he retorted, trying to sound defiant but failing miserably.

  “I think it’s better for you to be stupid than dead, Lopez,” she replied, tightening her grip on the weapon.

  “Alright, alright, just take it easy,” he pleaded, raising his hands. He entered a code into a small panel on his wrist and retrieved a chip from behind his ear.

  “Just get me out of here, and it’s all yours,” he said, defeated, handing over the chip. Tex pocketed it. The agency knew about the chip—keeping it wasn’t an option—but recovering it before the police could meant a hefty bonus and possibly a raise.

  “Now, you’re going out that window, Lopez,” she stated coldly.

  “What?! But—” he stammered.

  “You heard me,” she said icily, shoving him toward the glass. “It’s a quicker death than a bullet to the kidney.”

  “Damn it! I paid you! Just get me out of here and keep the money!” he begged, starting to sob.

  Tex smirked, mimicking his tone from a few days prior as she replied, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game. In my place, you’d probably do the same.”

  With his own words still ringing in his ears, he soon learned that she was right, it was a quicker death.