Delmair Street

  -

  Level 8

  It was a few minutes past midnight, and the small, charming little shop yawned with emptiness. The display window full of mannequins in elegant hats and the interior behind it were dark. Above the door, a wooden sign creaked softly as it swayed: Miss Marson’s Millinery. It was a respectable neighborhood. At this hour, the street was deserted. Every window was dark.

  A car stopped in front of the tiny shop.

  The front door opened. With a graceful motion, a young woman stepped out — blonde hair styled in a faux bob, wearing her favorite dark?blue petal?hem dress and a long pearl necklace draped around her neck.

  A man climbed out after her — tall, wearing an old fancy light suit that had definitely seen better days. A pork?pie hat in matching colors sat on his head.

  “Amber,” he whispered to her.

  Amber turned, and he tossed her a tommy gun.

  She caught it and gripped it firmly.

  From the back seat, another man heaved himself out. A huge, hefty brute in dark?brown trousers with elegant suspenders, no jacket — a man whose looks alone earned him the name Big Andy.

  With a determined look and thick, permanently angry eyebrows, he squeezed out of the car, chewing a big v?cigar between his teeth. He didn’t say a word, just motioned to Riven, who tossed him a tommy gun as well.

  The three of them lined up facing the tiny shop, Amber standing between the men.

  They raised their guns.

  Big Andy exhaled a thick cloud of blue smoke.

  Riven pushed his hat a little higher.

  Amber watched Big Andy from the corner of her eye.

  They listened.

  Silence.

  Big Andy nodded. All three pulled their triggers at once.

  The peaceful street shook under the gunfire. The display window shattered into a rain of glass. The door blew off its hinges. Mannequins in ladies’ hats toppled from their stands, broken and collapsing.

  Big Andy lowered his gun. They stopped firing.

  “No response,” Riven noted.

  “That ain’t a good sign,” Big Andy muttered around his v-cigar.

  The Miss Marson’s Millinery sign tore loose with a groan and crashed to the ground in front of them.

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  Andy jerked his head toward the entrance.

  Riven went first. Amber followed, glass crunching under her shoes. She stopped and looked around. Dust from the plaster and feathers from the hats still drifted through the air.

  Big Andy leaned over the counter to check if anyone was hiding.

  Not a soul.

  “Hold up,” Riven whispered.

  Amber and Andy froze and looked at him.

  “You hear that?”

  A faint hissing sound came from the back of the shop.

  “Big A,” Riven signaled.

  Both men moved carefully toward the rear, where total darkness swallowed the room. Amber stayed close behind them. Riven tapped a button on one of his forehead implants, and a beam of light shone out, illuminating the dark space.

  They saw the source of the sound — sliding doors repeatedly opening and closing, hitting something that blocked them. When Riven lowered his head and pointed the light downward, they saw that the “something” was a human hand.

  He looked at the others. They nodded firmly.

  He pressed the door control, and the doors slid open, revealing a narrow staircase leading down — and on it, the dead man whose arm had been blocking the mechanism. He’d clearly been shot in the back while running up the stairs.

  They stepped over him and descended.

  The room beneath the shop was filled with massive machines for processing raw velvet. The machines were still running — glass bottles full of gray liquid rolled along the belts, and on the other side, blood?red powder poured into buckets at the end of the line. The machines roared, gears spinning.

  Another man lay on the floor in front of them, bleeding out.

  “Looks like we missed the party,” Amber muttered to Riven.

  Then a click echoed behind them.

  All three snapped their heads toward the sound.

  Andy moved forward slowly, silently, stepping into the center of the aisle between the machines. And there, emerging from the darkness at the far end of the corridor, stood four skinny men in expensive suits.

  They froze, startled, one of them was holding a black briefcase.

  Andy’s round face twisted instantly into pure rage.

  “You dickhead!” he roared. “You stole our job!”

  He spat the cigar to the floor, raised the tommy gun, and opened fire.

  Bullets tore through the air, ricocheting off the raw?velvet machines. The men ducked behind them and sprinted toward the exit.

  Then Andy’s gun clicked empty. The shooting stopped.

  Bullet holes riddled the walls. Some lights flickered.

  The men reached the stairs, and the last one — a tall dandy in a long coat with feathered shoulders and implants covering his whole face — turned back toward them:

  “Sorry, Big A. But you didn’t really think some poor bastards from level 6 could compete with professionals like us, did you?” The grin on his inhuman face was chilling.

  He bolted up the stairs, and the doors slammed shut behind him.

  Riven, who had been hiding with Amber behind one of the machines, sprinted toward the doors — but they wouldn’t budge.

  “They blocked ’em!”

  “Amber, this one’s on you!” Big Andy bellowed as he lumbered toward them down the aisle.

  Amber jumped up and ran to the doors, her dark?blue dress whispering behind her. She dropped onto the steps in front of the panel. Her fingers slid across the jammed door control. She slammed her fist into it. The button cracked open, and she managed to yank out a cable, plugging it into the port on her forehead.

  “How the hell did those bastards find us?! Where the fuck are they taking that data now?!” Big Andy roared.

  “I’d bet my hat they’re running it straight to Sokovoj’s competition — or whoever’s paying more,” Riven muttered. “Those level-nine assholes are pros at this shit. Raw?velvet factories are their playground, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Got it!” Amber shouted, and the doors slid open.

  The group burst out and sprinted through the wrecked shop back toward the car, just as the screech of tires and the growl of an engine echoed from outside.

  By the time they reached the street, the bastards were already speeding off in their souped?up, oversized wheels.

  “FUCK!” Big Andy roared, fists clenched so tight his knuckles went white.

  From the far end of the street, police sirens wailed closer.

  “Just what we needed. Move!” Riven jumped behind the wheel.

  Amber slid next to him, and Andy sprawl into the back seat.

  Riven slammed the pedal before the doors even shut, and the car shot down the street — chasing the gangsters from level nine with police sirens screaming behind them.