Over to my left, Cassie pulled herself up from where she’d been lying—on a desk in one of the cubicles and partially into one of the walls. Then she jumped over the next cube and into the next. For a mont I wondered where she was going, but then I knew. She was going after her sword.
I’d added tracking devices to it and other pieces of equipnt that were likely to get lost. She could see it in her HUD just like I could if I wanted.
The chs on the left side on the far side of the cubicles next to the windows fired at her, but not soon enough to hit. Pieces of the cubicles exploded outward as the bullets blew through.
If that weren’t enough, the ones on the right started firing as well, taking chunks out of the cubicles and the big rectangular block holding the elevators—which on this floor had been painted red for so reason.
But, this was no ti to think about interior decoration. Besides the two chs to my left that were firing at Cassie, there were three more to the right that had co around the other side of the elevator block. Those three, of course, were firing at .
This was sothing I’d anticipated as soon as a saw them. So even though I’d been keeping track of Cassie and her problems with chs, I’d activated the rocket pack on the way down and aid myself out over the vast sea of cubicles, whipping around so that I could co at them from behind.
However effective those chs were, they weren’t great at tracking quickly moving objects inside. They tried to aim their gun arms in my direction, firing constantly, shattering the windows behind , and taking chunks out of the cubicles below. In so cases, the bullets hit where the panels joined, blasting chunks out of the tal, causing the panels to sag or even fall off.
I hoped no one was hiding in the cubes, but at this point, the best I could do for those possible victims was to take out the chs—which definitely contained victims.
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Curving around in the vast room, I watched as the chs slowly turned in my direction, adjusting position, but constantly aiming at where I’d been. I aid a barrage of armor-piercing bots at the nearest one’s joints and gun arm. It had worked with the other one, though these chs were moving.
On a gut level, I didn’t see any more competence from their operators than the last one, but I’d only been down on this floor for seconds. They might be better or at least have had ti to activate better defenses.
The bots worked. They tore the gun arm of the ch directly ahead of into three different pieces that fell to the floor. At almost the sa ti, more bots hit the ch’s legs, causing them to explode and the ch to fall over.
As the other two chs turned toward , I flew toward them, bobbing and weaving in the air to make it harder for them to aim. At the sa ti, the ch that was furthest from and closest to where I’d co from, lifted in the air and flew backward, hitting the other ch that had been standing.
“Had been standing” because when the flying ch hit it, both fell to the ground on their sides.
I’d been planning to land next to the closest one and see if I could tear it apart and use it to block from being attacked by the other. With them both struggling to stand up, I flew past them, but not before firing off more bots aid at the nearest one’s legs—which blew up.
I flipped in the air to turn around, finding that none of the three chs were moving and that Daniel had flown in my direction. He’d probably put the person inside the ch to sleep—which was interesting. He’d said that the building had telepathy blockers when we were outside, but he’d talked to telepathically upstairs.
If they’d protected the outside, but not the inside, it could only an that they had telepaths visit often enough that they didn’t want to inconvenience them—which made think of the Dominators.
That’s my thought too, Daniel told as I looked over toward the two chs on the other side of the building to see how Cassie was doing.
She was fine. So was Yoselin.
The two chs lay on the ground, one of them with all four limbs shaved off and lying on the floor. The other ch was still standing, but smoke drifted up into the air from the inside—which was open. A woman lay on the ground in front of the ch. Whoever she was, she wasn’t Ana. This woman was a stocky, 40 sothing wearing a blue suit and coughing.
Yoselin stood in front of her, but unlike the mind-controlled people upstairs, the woman didn’t even try to attack.
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