"I have to be there," Andu Caza declared as he strapped the polymer helmet to her leather operative cuirass.

  "I get that. Did you clear it with Elise?"

  Elise was testing the roped harness she assembled for Mel's cage by repelling to the next ledge down. She wasn't available to answer.

  After Andu clamped the helmet down front to back, Tasìa was up to an assemblance of combat spec complete. They headed towards the pumphouse entranceway while Andu answered her question.

  "Not a problem. She knows I need to do this. There isn't going to be much trekking involved for the nightwing retrieval. Getting down there and getting the bird back up here will be ninety percent of the excursion. Fortunately, Mel didn't glide far away. Just down."

  Tasìa nodded.

  "Alright, then, welcome aboard. Annebél and I are glad to have you, chief." Tasìa's tone changed toward a more grim disposition. "Andu, the firefight was messy. Very messy. I have my doubts she is still alive."

  Andu stuck out his chest. As if the operator didn't appear authoritative enough.

  "I don't," he declared. "She's alive. I've studied the heat signatures and the flow of pulse energy through the systems in there. The change-ups can't be explained away by a defensive system's daemon looping through the corridor's nervous system. She's alive, but if she gets to stay that way depends on the answers she gives me."

  The final words were accompanied by a tightly flexed shrug. Tasìa hoped Fiona was dead, or at least on the fade, so Andu would not have to bear the responsibility of execution.

  Hard to blame him for his anger, Tasìa considered. By far, of everyone involved in the Klinica Komplete heist, Andu was betrayed the most by the sabotage.

  "Andu. This is your operation. I'm just your security consultant, and Annebél here is your muscle."

  Andu smiled as he gave her a figurative glance.

  "I understand you were carrying around a 50-Split?"

  "Lost it in the last skirmish. The drone inside it exploded and took out half of the control room."

  Andu grimaced.

  "Shame. Would've been real nice to have it on hand if a turret popped up on us."

  He eyed Annebél's rifle and shotgun strapped to her back. The .38 bush rifle was mid-range in its practical application. The ammo for it was very effective against unarmored opponents. .38 was the standard round for cop revolvers for decades but would be mostly useless against a daemon's bag of tricks.

  The 10-gauge was a different story. Explosive slugs could prove effective against a turret.

  He gave a thumbs up.

  "Muscle, indeed. You wouldn't have fought in the octagon by any chance?"

  Annebél chuckled and leaned against a rail, cocky-like. "Yeah. Kind of a big deal at one time, but I killed too many opponents for the commissioner's liking. But we can talk about that later."

  At the same time, Tasìa eyed his load out. With her eyebrows furrowed, teasingly, she mockingly pointed to the .72 Saturnine.

  "That could prove pretty sweet with cryo rounds or any grippy plunker variant hitting your targets, but you've got it set to non-lethal. What are you going to do when you encounter that dragon down there? Put on a pair of velvet gloves and offer it a hand job in exchange for your lost data?"

  He shook his head trembly.

  "Oh Tasìa, you wound," Andu answered, feigning discomfort before he stopped their progress at the door.

  Andu continued to speak. "Al-Majhul in these caverns are protected by the VEAA so, unlike a maddog gunslinger like you, I've got to be careful about whom I kill. Rules of Engagement, you know.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "There should be about sixty of the Al-Majhul roaming about down there. After my boys take them out, we wont be skimpy-dicking it; see those trio of Americans with my tech Bruges walking up those steps together? They are carrying on them the switch-out for beasts-specialty stock with which we intend to take the dragon down."

  Tasìa raised her eyebrows at the stacked and packed transparent cases she was seeing. Though a wee lassy thief, she could handle .357 revolvers, 10mm repeater pistols, and .50 caliber anti-material rifles due to her rigorous use of climbing skills that gave her extra strength in core, limb, and grip muscles; however, the combat rifles that she now witnessed, whose gray metal forms she stared at longingly, alone were a grade or two higher than anything she could handle. They were designed for high recoil impact absorption on a combatant's fully armored suit.

  Her blue leather mesh that doubled as a chic little number didn't qualify for that level of layered deflection.

  She whistled for Andu's amusement before she assessed:

  "You're gonna create Hell on Earth, huh?"

  "Yup. A damn good team got chewed up last night by that dragon. We do not intend to suffer the same fate."

  Andu graciously allowed Tasìa and Annebél through the pumphouse entrance. He appraised the damage and the Al-Majhul bodies strewn about in the simmering mess.

  "Whew. Looks like a pair of witches evoked a black mass using flamethrowers in this Lord forsaken place."

  "Santa Muerta," Annebél protested the comparison. "Careful, careful with that language. You'll tempt me into an Evocation Against Desecration to ward against it. That's a very lengthy ritual."

  "My apologies. Meant nothing by it, mi se?ora." Andu said through a long grimace. He turned to Tasìa. "Now that we are here, any ideas about breaching those door panels back down that way emitting the gray glowing hazard pattern? My dinky little tensile debilitator isn't going to cut it against magnetized steel cubits."

  Tasìa laughed heartily. If she had any idea. Who does he think he is with?

  "We're in a pumphouse, Andu! Remember how we breached Klinica Komplete? Same principle, but easier to assemble this time."

  Not so easy that they didn't run into snags. The console box was destroyed in the control room explosion. Tasìa found a small stack of circuit boards and a personal assistant set up to be a master controller to replace the half-melted manual switchboard while she searched the toolshed. She had to climb under the floorboard grids to get to non-damaged wires to hook the highly dated Arduino into the twin pump circuits.

  "Poppa would be so proud of you right now, if ...."

  Tasìa had to remind herself her father was still alive. That she only stayed away from her parents so as not to bring trouble on them while a bounty was on her head.

  She snapped a 3D-mapped pic of herself smiling beside the installed microcontroller board to send to him later.

  While thoughts of domestic tranquility roamed around her head, Tasìa reminded herself it was closing in on time to call Beauregard. He was starting a double shift when she left Asunción, and he would be getting up from sleep soon.

  After this business is complete. She decided as she prepped the board.

  Before long she could use its switches to control water and gas pressure, directional flow, and the mechanical stages of a solution-neutral capsule injector to install sodium hydroxide pods. This was used for circulatory maintenance, where the lye (sodium hydroxide) booster was used for declogging gunk buildup.

  She planned to use it to chemically strip out the steel alloy components in the door. Either to pump the lye all the way through or at least weaken the door's stencil strength to where a few rounds from the shotgun would take care of the rest of it if reverse suction proved futile.

  The sodium hydroxide pods had their own specialized rubber tubes hinged inside the pipe interiors to minimize contact with the volatile compound agent and the metal of the outer pipe.

  They could be refurnished to hook a set of sealed gaskets on the tubes between the pump and the door.

  Tasìa assigned to Annebél the job of removing the rubber tubes from the service pipes and fitting them for the steel door.

  Andu volunteered the task of going over the glowing steel panels that comprised the door with a fine laser pulse to tease out any hidden markers that revealed rapid assembly where turrets could pop up.

  She hated those sorts of surprises.

  Within thirty minutes, the entire assembly was ready.

  "Andu. Do you remember the hose parameters and penetration rates from the Klinica Komplete heist?"

  He appeared taken back that she even had to ask. Tasìa had developed a well earned reputation for mathematical precision.

  "Not really by memory. But I checked my old files on that mission against your setup here already. Assuming a 37000 kilopascal stream, we'll eat through three millimeters per second on average. Breech should occur in forty-seven seconds of consistent output. Recommended sunction reversal at forty-two seconds."

  Though she had grown weary of her superpower, Tasìa listened on with a wan heart.

  With the Modality as a guide, Tasìa could have recalled the original specs and then eyeballed the current setup to get a close approximation to that same answer within seconds.

  She glanced up and smiled.

  "Outstanding," she said.

  Tasìa set the .357 Clastic down to the side for easy access if she had to switch out the controler board.

  10 meters in front of her, the 38cm diameter hose was fastened in the center panel of the door. The pattern remained consistent, indicating the daemon was unaware of their presence.

  She throttled the controller on the PA gui, and the hose jumped rigid as it blasts the lye on full pump at the door. The pump itself screeched like a demon made of iron and steel behind them.

  Even Annebél shook at the menace implied.

  "Whew. There be ghosts in these machines," the brawler yelled above the cacaphony.

  Then the gray light pulsed a dancing macabre display as a thud boomed in the corridors behind the door.

  Annebél continued.

  "Sounds wicked, mis amigos. And it is coming this way."