Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The second rocket reached my cover just as I activated Red Light, leaving me two seconds to decide whether the empty loading bay behind it looked less lethal than staying where I was.

I chose the bay. The rocket resumed, struck the block and filled the lane with heat and broken stone while I flattened myself beneath a parked cargo trailer.

A hot fragment caught the edge of my fin. It didn’t tear the fin off, but the burn felt sharp enough to make me reconsider several recent opinions about how entertaining this man was.

[System: There you go, mate. He’s found the important gap between knowing what’s about to happen and getting your arse out of the way before it does.]

I would have preferred a gap shaped like an exit, but I appreciated the educational theme.

Bridget reached the guarded transport station through the side route and called with its actual location. She could get a cart to the lower freight entrance, provided I arrived without bringing a direct firing line through the public waiting area.

I told her to stay behind the barrier. Horass had followed me into the deserted bay and was now moving toward an angle that threatened the trailer’s fuel housing instead of wasting a shot at the narrow space beneath it.

He didn’t need to hit me. He only needed to make every place I could hide become worse than surrendering, and he appeared annoyingly good at the work.

I extended my lure’s light around the far support to draw his attention, then slipped along the opposite side in smoke. He shot the support behind the glow without following it blindly, forcing me to move before the falling frame could trap me.

The trick had bought a glance, not control of his mind. I wanted to file that distinction somewhere useful while my body continued being introduced to the floor.

A loading trolley rolled down the bay’s slight slope after the blast. Its center passed within three meters, and I stole it into the clear ground touching my tail between us.

It arrived still moving. I shoved against its handle, redirecting the full weight into Horass’s approach rather than pretending the skill had made a stationary shield for my convenience.

He stepped aside and caught the trolley with one pale arm. The impact cracked its front rail while his feet barely shifted, providing a clear physical explanation of why C-rank optimism didn’t automatically defeat A-rank employment.

”You looked very firm for tofu, mate. I was starting to feel your branding might create unreasonable expectations at a supermarket.”

”The siege of Brindle Pike ended over a similar misunderstanding,” he replied, pushing the wrecked trolley aside. ”The defenders thought the white blocks were cheese.”

I had no idea whether Brindle Pike existed. Old Mate suggested asking the cheese how it felt, then admitted he was mostly talking because the koala patches made him uncomfortable.

Horass switched from the launcher to a short blunt weapon when I moved closer. He wasn’t going to hand me a large projectile at the exact moment my skill returned, and his first strike caught my coil hard enough to throw me against the trailer wheel.

Pain spread through my side. I went partly smoke to ease out of the space before the next blow, losing ground rather than magically allowing every attack to pass through me.

Bridget’s voice stayed on the call. She asked for my position, listened when I answered and told me the bay’s lower drainage tunnel opened beside the transport station’s protected service wall.

The tunnel was narrow, wet and deeply unattractive, which made it the most appealing thing I had seen in several minutes.

I moved toward it while Horass changed his angle to cut me off. My lure flashed bright red behind the trailer, drawing his eyes for a fraction of a second, and I used that fraction to dive through the drain opening with my fins tight against my body.

The pipe didn’t make me invincible. It scraped the burn, pressed my bruised side and forced me to keep moving while a shot struck the entrance behind me.

Horass couldn’t fit his whole body into the same space, but he didn’t need to if I stopped halfway and became a convenient target. I kept going until cold water carried me out beside the guarded wall, where Bridget waited beyond the protected corner.

She helped me into the cart without asking whether I now respected the danger. The answer was visible in the way I struggled to keep my body from shaking while I settled onto the padded floor.

We left through the public route after reporting the armed attack. Horass stayed beyond the guard line, watching rather than firing into a crowded terminal for a contract that had never promised him payment for a public massacre.

That bought an escape, not a permanent sanctuary. I sent his description to Lyra and Cherry, told Lukas exactly how badly the first meeting had gone and refused to let pride turn useful information into silence.

At the club, the girls helped clean the burn and check my side. Bridget kept the room calm while Cherry called the local treatment service and Lyra secured the business entrance.

Horass sent a message through the same public account I had used to stream. He attached a photograph of a shipping case from my paid storage berth, marked with the stock tag I had recovered before opening the club.

The sealed bait-fish tank and remaining spare fittings were inside. His contract covered recovering family-linked assets, and the collection boss had persuaded the storage handler to release my paid crate using another false seizure sheet.

The case was going aboard a surface auction vessel the next evening. Horass suggested I bring the money if I wanted to discuss returning it, then added a photograph of a koala eating a leaf because he apparently believed negotiations benefited from deeply inappropriate shared personal interests.