The helicopter didn’t even come to rest. Instead, Kat slammed the door open, wind whipping at her stylish skirt as she hastily cast Levitation on herself. Somewhere behind her, Heather was shouting, but Kat didn’t pay her any mind.

She kicked off of the metal floor of the helicopter, sailing through open space for a second or so before landing in a roll inside the penthouse. There were still some hints of fire clinging to the rooms wood paneling, but the force of the blast that had shattered the window had blown the glass outward enough to make Kat’s arrival relatively safe.

Outside, the helicopter’s rotor whirred into high gear as it pulled away from the penthouse. Kat knew that Heather would be landing it on the roof of the building shortly, but that was also where the attackers would expect a response. If she moved quickly, there was a good chance that she would be able to disrupt the raiders before they could get set into defensive positions.

Mana flowed out of Kat, wrapping itself around her as she cast Shadow. It wouldn’t be enough to make her completely invisible, but after leveling up Light Magic I to the maximum the spell would conceal her and blur her outline to the point where most casual observers wouldn’t notice her.

Kat hopped up and down once, bouncing on her toes to try and get the feel for her outfit before reaching down and ripping a strip off of her dress. As stylish and ruinously expensive as the fabric was, it limited her movements. She’d apologize to Emma for damaging the carefully selected dress later.

She activated Shadow Step, almost disappearing entirely before reappearing at the door to the burned out office she had been standing in. Kat peeked around the corner, taking in a smoldering hallway with no one in it. A floor or two above her, a muted burst of gunfire was answered by the crack of two higher caliber shots.

Gliding forward, knife in hand, Kat surveyed her surroundings, keeping an eye open for any traps or ambushes. Despite the occasional gunfire upstairs, she didn’t find anyone except one of the servants trapped under a collapsed clock. She dragged the man out from under the expensive antique, using Cure Wounds II to ensure that he wouldn’t expire from his injuries before moving on.

There wasn’t much of interest on the eighty second floor, the first level reserved solely for Kat’s use. It was mostly storage, servants quarters, kitchens and servers for her penthouse’s secure uplink to GroCorp’s databases.

Kat’s mind raced back to her previous infiltration efforts, and she swore quietly under her breath, veering toward the uplink. The first step toward any successful operation was getting either a hacker or a remote shunt into place to compromise a facility’s electronics. If her attackers were savvy, the servers would be their first stop.

The door to the server room was closed. Kat wasn’t entirely sure about the specifics as she had never specialized in demolitions, but the explosion that rocked the penthouse had slammed every other door off its hinges or open. Theoretically the closed entryway could have been the result of the server room’s extra defenses, but she wasn’t inclined to take the chance.

She put a hand against the door. The metal was tarnished and warm from the blast, but simply touching it didn’t yield any secrets. Kat took a deep breath, letting her hand trail down to the door’s handle as she put her shoulder against it.

In one smooth motion she pushed the handle downward, slamming the door open with her body. It took a fair amount of force, the heat from the explosion had partially deformed the metal, causing it to stick in its frame. The instant there was a crack, Kat activated Shadow Step, practically teleporting inside the room.

The door slammed open with the sound of a gunshot, not to be mistaken for the actual gunshots that rang out at the same time.

Sparks lit the dim room as bullets stitched across the door. A pair of knee high turrets faced the entryway, whirring as their barrels swung around to track Kat. Behind them, a figure in an infiltration suit was crouched next to the uplink, the back of their suit’s neck unzipped with a cord running from their head to the complex machinery lining the east wall.

She activated Shadow Step once again, burning stamina to jolt halfway across the room. It wasn’t entirely clear whether the ability actually altered space itself, but the upgrade of Cat Step not only upgraded her stealth while using it, but it also made her move even faster between points of concealment. So far, Kat hadn’t been able to map her speed via lasers or radar guns while using the ability, the measurements came back inconclusive, but she did know that it let her move far faster than a human should.

The figure began standing up only to catch a thrown knife to the chest. The force of the blade knocked them backward, hands clutching at the metal sprouting from his torso.

A Pseudopod swept in, ripping the blade free and returning it to Kat’s hands. They fell to their knees, blood oozing from the hole in their infiltration suit as they stared down at their scarlet hands.

Kat’s leg snapped up, kicking the wounded samurai in the bottom of their jaw and rocking their head backward. The force of the blow ripped their cord from the uplink and sent them sprawling. Before they could hit the ground, she was upon them, drawing her knife across their neck and finishing them.

She reached down, wrenching the body of the hacker up into the air in front of her as a shield. The turrets whirred and clicked, their barrels finally pointed at her but unwilling to fire and accidentally hit the opposing samurai.

Very carefully, she edged her way around the outside of the room. Both of the turrets tracked her movements, laser sights bending enough around the outside of Shadow to prevent them from getting a clear bead on any of her extremities that weren’t completely covered by the dead invader.

The minute she was out of the uplink room, Kat tossed the body aside. Her dress was covered in soot and blood, but the threat was eliminated and as best she could tell, the floor was secured. Above, she heard another muted rattle of gunfire as the attacking samurai engaged with her security detail.

She sighed and began jogging toward the nearest stairwell, not trusting the building’s elevators to work properly after the explosion. Her security team was skilled for corporate soldiers, but Kat was more than a little worried about how they would measure up to the sort of hardened, named samurai that would perform a raid like this.

Barely a minute later, she was a floor up. Gunfire and muted shouts were becoming more common. By now Heather and the two soldiers in the helicopter must have landed on the roof. Kat didn’t know how many samurai and surviving security officers were in the building, but the pressure from above certainly made her job easier.

The hallways of the eighty third floor weren’t in nearly as bad of shape as the eight second. In spots, the floor was bowed upward, wood paneling cracked and damaged from the force of the blast that had wracked the lower level.

She made it past the first four doors, gliding silently down the hallway as she kept an eye out for samurai. Just as she was about to pass an otherwise unremarkable intersection, Kat froze. Muted voices floated down the corridor. She couldn’t quite make out any specifics, and the occasional gunshots didn’t help the situation, but there were at least two people talking not that far away.

Kat pressed her back to the wall, refreshing Shadow as she edged closer. Slowly, she began to make out specifics, the voices growing louder as people approached.

“Shouldn’t we be upstairs?” A man asked. “Iceflash sounds like he has his hands full up there. It doesn’t make sense to shoo us away from the upper floors in the middle of combat.”

“Regaining control of the security systems is more important,” a woman replied. “Panoptica was giving us good intelligence on the surviving security team’s movements before he went offline. Ice is going to need us to restore communication, and if something happened to Panoptica we’re going to need to let him know right away.”

“Still don’t see why Ice needs two of us down here,” the man said with a grunt. “Either of us could have restored contact with Panoptica on our own.”

“Before he stopped responding Panoptica identified some heat signatures on this floor,” the woman responded. “It might be some of the security team hunkering down for cover, it might be staff hiding out until the fighting dies down, or it might be something else entirely. Either way, Ice decided that it wasn’t worth the risk to send one person on their own.”

They were getting closer. Kat took a deep breath, lowering herself into a crouch as she counted their footsteps as debris crunched under the attacker’s feet.

“Whatever,” the man snorted dismissively. “The security around here hasn’t been much more than a distraction. I swear none of them have-”

Kat didn’t let him finish the sentence, bursting around the corner and hooking the speaker behind the back of his leg with a Pseudopod. The magical tentacle pulled sharply upward, yanking him off of his feet and spelling him onto his back even as she rushed past him.

A scream of instinct sent her Shadow Stepping to the left just as the woman fired a shotgun in her general direction. The samurai had a big rifle with a massive box clip and a short barreled pump action shotgun welded to the bottom.

Buckshot seared past Kat, turning some of the remaining wood paneling into mulch. Another Shadow Step brought her completely behind the samurai. The woman was wearing a ceramic breastplate, pauldron, greaves and bracers, all over what looked like heavy kevlar.

She stepped in smoothly, matching the other woman’s movements as the raider tried to spin and face Kat. Her knife glowed red as she activated Penetrate darting toward the other woman.

The samurai tried to spin away from Kat, but compared to the monsters she fought daily in the tower, the woman’s movements were slow and clumsy. A gauntleted hand swung at Kat’s head, and she easily ducked under it, wrapping her Pseudopod around her target’s forearm and holding it in place.

Then she stabbed upward, the red glow of Penetrate enveloping her knife as it sunk easily through the thin kevlar of the larger woman’s armpit. The weapon’s hilt slammed into the dark armor, summoning a spring of arterial blood that began to pour out of Kat’s injured target.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A purple glow surrounded the samurai, and she broke free of Kat’s grip, jolting a half dozen paces away from her before hovering briefly in the air. The aura cut out and the samurai was dropped to the floor, whatever magic she was using to float no longer sustaining her.

The woman stumbled, unable to catch her own weight as blood gurgled around Kat’s dagger, still stuck in the samurai, and down her side. Without taking her eyes off of her quarry, Kat’s Pseudopod lashed out, snagging the bullpup style rifle of the man on the ground and ripping it from his hands.

Kat dove to the side, grabbing the gray composite stock of the weapon as she landed in the corridor going the other direction. A burst of gunfire chased her, slugs tearing apart the ramshackle wood paneling but unable to find Kat’s blurry form through the shroud of magical darkness that surrounded her.

In the hallway the woman slumped against the wall, breathing heavily as she let her rifle hang loosely in its sling. She reached up and grabbed Kat’s knife, ripping the blood soaked length of steel free and letting it clatter to the floor.

Just as the woman regained her grip on her heavy rifle, Kat jumped from cover, triggering a hail of bullets into the chest of the injured samurai. Most of them struck sparks on the ceramic, slugs deflected and turned aside by her target’s armor, but at least a couple found the kevlar covered gaps in her armor.

Kat wasn’t sure how much damage her shots had done, but her target was still upright, albeit staggering backward. Tossing aside her stolen rifle, Kat sprinted at the samurai, kicking the downed man in the side of the head as he tried to regain his feet. The blow didn’t land hard enough to do any real damage, but it bought her a couple more seconds to deal with the invader that was still armed.

The woman swung her heavy rifle toward Kat drunkenly, struggling to track the cloud of darkness that surrounded the smaller woman as she used Shadow Step to grant herself a last second burst of speed. The gun barked, drawing a haphazard line of destruction across the wall, but it was far too late.

Kat’s hand darted out, grabbing the gun’s barrel. She hissed in pain as the metal seared her palm, twisting it off course and away from the wall. The barrel shook in her grip as it fired a final burst of shots into the downed samurai’s legs. Then Kat’s Pseudopod grabbed her still bloody knife from the ground and drove it into the back of the shooter’s knee.

As the woman fell, Kat thrust upward with her arm, the heel of her hand connecting with the bottom of her target’s jaw and snapping it shut with bone shattering force. The samurai gurgled, finally going still.

She jerked to the side, letting a metal blade stab through the hair where her head had been a moment before. The Pseudopod moved on its own, drawing sparks as it blocked a second attack.

Kat flowed backward, burning stamina to fuel Shadow Step as she fought to buy herself some range. Behind her, the Pseudopod blocked another slash aimed at her back. By the time she came to a stop and spun about, the male samurai was on his feet, favoring his right leg as blood began to soak through the woven kevlar of his left. Apparently, the ballistic fabric used in his armor wasn’t up to the task of stopping his partner’s rifle at point blank range.

He spread his arms wide, displaying a pair of blades that were almost twice the length of Kat’s knife sprouting from each of his wrists. Now that she was paying attention, she could easily see where the SynthSkin had split, revealing the chrome limbs underneath. Whoever the Samurai was, he was sporting some serious augments. Even with his injuries, she would need to be careful.

“So it is true,” He said softly, a wide grin visible under the visor of his helmet. “GroCorp’s newest shareholder is a samurai. Erinyes I presume?”

Kat didn’t reply, instead keeping her focus on the man’s arms. He was mostly still, but she’d seen a handful of furtive movements as he kept his blades on either side of his body, each of them almost fast enough to escape detection.

“My name is Cottonmouth,” he continued, shuffling his good foot slightly in order to continue facing Kat. “and you’ve got a bit of a reputation on you Erinyes. Well-earned no doubt. You took Geist apart like she was a trainee after all. Still, that little shroud of darkness covering you won’t be enough. I can see right through it. You might have gotten the drop on me and drawn first blood, but I’m going to take your head.”

She dismissed Shadow, eyes still locked on Cottonmouth. The man’s grin widened, blades flicking in and out of their sheathes in his forearms in an eyeblink.

“See?” He asked mockingly. “That wasn’t so hard. Now be a good girl and let me kill you. The boost to my reputation for taking down an infiltrator with your renown will double the price of my contracts, easy.”

Kat transferred her knife to her hand, coiling Pseudopod around her arm as she began moving in a slow walk toward Cottonmouth. He eased his weight onto his good leg, bringing his left arm up into a guard position while his right remained wide.

His extended arm quivered, like a leashed predator, barely restrained and waiting to pounce. Kat circled toward his left, trying to keep out of range of his readied blade. She wasn’t entirely sure what his chrome arm could do, but given that the samurai had named himself after a venomous snake, she suspected a quick, brutal strike was in the works.

Mana swelled inside her chest as she prepared her spell. Cottonmouth took a hesitant step toward her, wincing as he was forced to put weight on his bad leg. Kat shuffled backward, her knife held horizontally at about eye level.

“You can’t run forever little girl,” Cottonmouth crooned, a savage grin on his face. “Come closer so that we can cross blades. You managed to block my strike once. Who knows, you might even be able to do it a second-”

Blood fountained from the wound in his leg as Overpressure struck, spraying a coating of sticky red over the hallway’s wooden floor. Kat took a step forward, feinting with a slash toward the man’s armored helmet even as her Psuedopod,whipped around the back of his injured leg, hooking itself around the cocky man’s ankle.

His right arm rocketed forward, a blur of steel and SynthSkin that her eyes could barely track. Even with Kat watching for it, her enhanced agility and reactions were barely enough for her to jerk her torso back, just out of the attack’s reach.

Instead, she reversed the grip on her blade, activating Penetrate as she stabbed backward, shredding the delicate circuitry as her knife plunged through steel like it was room temperature tofu. Before the samurai could bring his left hand into play, Kat’s Pseudopod wrenched upward, twisting the limb and throwing him off balance.

Kat slammed into him, as he landed face first on the penthouse floor, ramming a knee into his lower back. Her Pseudopod released his leg, darting upward to grab Cottonmouth’s left hand.

The chrome limb was much stronger than her water magic, but between his more or less disabled right side and rapidly bleeding leg, he didn’t have the strength to fight her off. Kat’s knife glowed red with the power of Penetrate as she slammed it into the back of his skull, sinking it through metal and bone.

He jerked once and she pushed her knife a little deeper. A moment later, the tension left the man’s body as he went still permanently.

Kat groaned, rolling off of him. She sheathed her knife, instead picking up Cottonmouth’s discarded bullpup assault rifle. As Kat walked over to the slumped female samurai, her Pseudopod quested outward, pushing the woman onto her back. It nudged her head, pressing downward on the visor of the body’s helmet so that her chin would face Kat.

The rifle bucked against Kat’s shoulder as she triggered a three round burst into the unarmored underside of the other woman’s head. She slung the gun over her shoulder, grabbing another magazine from Cottonmouth’s belt just in case.

Then she went room to room, Shadow reactivated. The samurai had mentioned heat readings on her floor, and if she could find one of the three security guards assigned to the site, it would certainly help in any effort to retake the building.

Already, the gunfire and distant shouting above had reached a crescendo. Heather and the guards from the helicopter were engaging the samurai on the upper floors. If this were a standard four person team, they shouldn’t have much trouble mopping up resistance. Hell, even if it were an expanded six person team, she had already finished off half of them.

Finally, just as Kat took a glance inside the fifth door, her breath caught in her throat. This room must have been near the blast site on the lower floor. The ground was buckled, floorboards splintered and jutting upward like spikes near scattered and overturned chestnut furniture.

None of that truly caught her attention. Instead, Kat’s gaze was locked on the right corner of the room. Emma’s body was half trapped under a dresser, her chest rising and falling in quick but shallow movements.

Kat ran into the room, fingers digging into the bottom of the wooden furniture as she strained to lift it off of her friend. For a second, it simply creaked, shifting slightly but unwilling to move from the spot where it had wedged itself. Then, with strength that belied her slim form, Kat found a second wind, heaving upward and sliding it off of Emma to reveal her blood-drenched lower body.

She dropped to one knee, chanting the word to Cure Wounds II even as she began pulling splinters from Emma’s thigh. Golden light spread from her hands, enveloping the injured woman.

Emma hissed, arching her back as the spell took hold. Kat didn’t envy the burning itch that she knew was spreading over her friend. The second level of Cure Wounds worked wonders, closing gashes and replenishing spilt blood in a matter of seconds. The cost was profound discomfort. A feeling of intense wrongness as the mana invaded every cell in your body, repairing and improving them. It wasn’t natural but it was effective.

A couple of seconds later, Emma’s eyes fluttered open. She moved to prop herself up on her elbows, wincing in pain as she shifted her still healing legs. Kat moved a hand up to Emma’s shoulder, pressing down with two fingers and forcing the other woman down onto her back.

She shook her head, mana rapidly draining from her pool as the spell did its work. A number of expressions flickered across Emma’s face, but her breathing was coming more easily and color was returning to her cheeks.

The ceiling shook as a pair of blasts, likely grenades or some other small explosive, went off in quick succession. Emma lifted herself up, mouth in a tight line as she surveyed the mostly destroyed room.

“What happened?” She croaked, looking expectantly up at Kat as Cure Wounds II ground to a halt after closing all visible wounds. “I was reading a report on the anti-gravity propulsion system when the lights flickered out. Then there was a thump and I was flying through the air. The net thing I remember, you were crouching over me and-”

Emma frowned, looking Kat up and down.

“You destroyed my dress,” Emma continued crossly. “Do you have any idea how long it took for me to find something that would match your hair and figure that well?”

Kat chuckled, standing up and offering a hand to her reclining friend.

“Four hours?” She asked, tensing her shoulder to help pull Emma to her feet.

She sputtered back at Kat, eyes wide with disbelief. “Four hours? It took me a full day to find something that was close to a good match for you. Then it took another day for them to tailor it to your specifications. That dress cost at least three thousand credits, even if you don’t take my time into account.”

“It was pretty?” Kat replied, trying to calm Emma’s indignation. “The dress you picked out for Whippoorwill was really pretty too.”

A smile slipped onto Kat’s face. Despite her injury, concussion, and blood loss, Emma was still the same person. Honestly, even if she had lost an arm in the attack, Kat fully expected the other girl to chide her for not bringing back the juiciest gossip possible.

“It had better be,” Emma said with a snort, brushing dirt and blood off of her outfit. “You have no idea how long I spent making sure tonight would be absolutely perfect. I’m just upset that whatever this is-” she waved a hand vaguely around the destroyed room- “happened to ruin a night that I put so much effort into.”

“It was perfect,” Kat responded with a chuckle.

“Good,” Emma replied, letting a sly look creep onto her face. “So how did things go, did you and Whippoorwill-”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Kat spun around, bringing her rifle up as Whippoorwill sprinted into the room, a blur of pink and turquoise as she practically tackled her, Heather walking a couple steps behind, an assault rifle pressed against her shoulder.

Kat opened her mouth to say something, but before she could get any words out, Whip was already talking.

“Oh God, you’re all right. I think my heart leapt out of my body when you jumped out of the helicopter. I saw that you landed safely, but then Heather made us go to the roof. There was a guy with a micro rocket launcher there, and he almost took down the copter. The pilot managed to shoot it down with one of the new point lasers we’ve adapted from the stallesp, but-”

“Whip,” Kat interjected, only for the other woman to clutch her righter, rambling disjointedly.

“Heather took down the gunner and we were able to land and get into the penthouse, but it was chaos in there. There were two people left and they were still fighting the remaining security guard. We lost one of the people in our team, he took a shot to the shoulder right in front of us, but we were able to clear the upper floors, then it was a-”

Kat leaned down, pressing her lips into Whippoorwill’s. She stiffened for a second before clinging to Kat like she was the only life preserver in a stormy sea.