I sent two rounds in their general direction and gave pretty boy a shove. He staggered, caught his balance, and began to run. I followed. The steel door was fifty feet ahead. The lifer slowed, used the wall as a brake, and fumbled with the keypad. His blood-covered index finger skidded from one key to another. He started over. I turned, aimed low, and sent three rounds down-hall. Eight, nine, and ten. That left me with four rounds and a spare magazine.

A rent-a-cop threw up his arms, tumbled head over heels, and grabbed his right knee. The Hispanic woman shouted something obscene, raised her gun to return fire, and stopped when she realized that even a slight miscalculation could result in her client’s death. I grinned.

The door opened. Pretty boy dived through in hopes of leaving me stranded outside. It didn’t work. Bullets clanged off the door as it closed behind me. I looked for and found the inevitable keypad. I clicked the “emergency lock” button five or six times and heard the heavy-duty bolts shoot home. The door shook as the rent-a-dorks discovered what I’d done and expressed their displeasure.

I looked for pretty boy, found him plucking Kleenex from a blood-spattered box, and whacked him over the head. He collapsed in a heap.

I checked for people, didn’t see any, and took a moment to look around. Art hung on the walls, plants sat just so, and the furniture invited me to sit down and relax. I didn’t.

“Welcome to Trans-Solar, Mr. Maxon.”

The voice came from behind me. I turned to find myself looking down the barrel of a hand-held cannon. My.38 hung straight down, so far out of position that it might as well have been home, sitting in a drawer. I wondered if I could bring it up before he was able to squeeze the trigger. The man smiled and shook his head. I let the.38 drop. It made a soft thump as it hit the carpet. The man nodded approvingly. “Wise. Very wise.”

The man was bald, or nearly so. What hair he had left was pulled back into a ponytail. He was handsome without being pretty and wore his clothes with negligent ease. His eyes were blue and very intelligent. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Really?” I said stupidly. “How’s that?”

“Come now, Mr. Maxon,” the man replied. “Even you are smarter than that. My men wore their jackets logo-out so you’d know where to look.”

Blood rushed to my face as I realized how stupid I’d been. It was so obvious, so god-damned obvious, and I’d missed it. But why? They had Sasha, and that was the objective, wasn’t it? I tried to sound nonchalant. “Yeah, that was pretty transparent, alright.”

“Exactly,” the man agreed. “But it worked, and you were a good deal more resourceful than my staff gave you credit for.” He gestured towards pretty boy’s crumpled body. “Curt will remember you for a long time.”

“Ibelsnork mopocky,” I said nonsensically, doing my best to maintain eye contact, while Sasha emerged from a side door and held a finger to her lips. She tiptoed in our direction, selected a piece of stone statuary off a side table, and closed the distance. She wore a bra, panties, and nothing else.

I was afraid she’d blow the whole thing by giving herself away, or by hitting the man so lightly that it did little more than piss him off. Little did I know. Sasha brought the statue back like a baseball bat, gave him a good thump to the side of the head, and stood ready to follow up if the occasion demanded. It didn’t. The lifer’s eyes went blank, and he hit the floor in an untidy heap. Good. Smug bastards piss me off.

I kicked the.44 out of reach, checked his pulse, and found it was steady. Sasha seemed somewhat casual for a teenaged girl. “Is he dead?” She retrieved the.44 and held it barrel down.

I frowned. “No, but you hit him awfully hard. I’m surprised his head didn’t fly off.”

Sasha hit the cylinder release, checked to make sure that all five of the.44’s chambers were loaded, and flipped the weapon closed. The whole thing was done with a degree of expertise that should have bothered me but didn’t. Her voice was casual but tight. “He tried to rape me.”

The bra and panties suddenly made sense. As did the swellings around the sides of her face. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged and smiled crookedly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Well it was my fault, or so I assumed at the time, but there seemed little point in dwelling on it. The door shook as something heavy hit it. “Get your clothes on. It’s time to leave.”

Sasha nodded, strode towards the side door, and disappeared inside. I drifted that way and caught a glimpse of a rumpled bed and the leather straps that had connected her hands to the headboard. She grabbed her tights and pulled them up around her waist. They were ripped. She nodded towards the straps. “They were long enough to use my teeth on.”

I nodded my understanding. The girl was more than I’d thought at first. She had guts, and I admired that. I gestured to our surroundings. “Any way out of here? Other than the front door?”

Sasha settled the miniskirt into place and turned her attention to the high-heeled boots. I tried to imagine someone running in them and couldn’t.

“Yeah, I think there is. I didn’t exactly have the run of the place, but there’s something towards the back.”

I nodded, hit the.38’s magazine release, and slipped the near-empty magazine into my pocket. The backup slid home with a satisfying click. I pumped a round into the chamber, checked to make sure the safety was off, and slipped through the door. Rats always have more than one way out of their nest. All I had to do was find it.

There was a dull thump, a wave of air hit my back, and the door crashed inwards. I turned, waited for the inevitable rush, and punched three rounds through the smoke and dust. Sasha appeared by my side, held the.44 with both hands, and loosed a round through the doorway. The recoil pulled the gun up overhead. She brought it back down. Someone screamed and she grinned.

“Come on!” I grabbed her hand and jerked her towards the rear of the office. There were cubicles, storage rooms, and yes, a door with the words “Emergency Exit” lit up above it. Bullets whipped past us as we pushed it open, spied the circular staircase, and started downwards. The corpies were only seconds behind us. I had my client back. The question was, for how long?

“We’re not proposing to pump it dry, for god’s sake…just pave it over.”

Land Commissioner Donald Siranni on plans to “cap” Puget Sound

A massive concrete pillar ran down through the center of the spiral staircase. One of Sasha’s spiked heels caught in the open mesh. She managed to pull it out and continued on tiptoes. A door slammed and the stairs shook as the rent-a-cops started down. We had a two-or three-minute lead. Not enough at the speed we were traveling. “Sasha! Lose the boots! We won’t make it otherwise!”

The kid grabbed the rail and stopped. I squeezed past, turned, and gestured for a boot. She shoved one in my face. I grabbed, pulled, and felt it come loose. The second boot was easier. I threw both aside.

I heard a shout, sent a slug up the stairwell, and headed down. Sasha followed. We took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time, always conscious of the fact that the corpies were close behind. There were lots of landings, and doors off each, but all of them were locked. I kept going, knowing the stairs had to end sometime, and hoping that maybe, just maybe, there would be a way out.

The landings were numbered and the numbers got larger. Finally we were on “Level 50,” and nothing but a door stood between us and whatever lay beyond. I pushed and nothing happened. We were trapped.

“Stand aside.” Sasha held the.44 in both hands. She was already in the process of squeezing the trigger when I yelled “No!” The word was lost in the boom that followed.