“SURRENDER OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON,” the lead drone repeated in a bassy, robotic voice. Another drone turned and aimed upon Bunker’s prone form. One gun spooled to life with a mechanical whine, unleashing a spray of glassy grey orbs that expanded once they hit his body. Within seconds he was cocooned from the neck down in grey goo.

  Adhesion gel, I grimly noted. It was the cornerstone of law enforcement when it came to Apexes, a glue that could restrain Dreadnoughts with high grade superstrength, or halt Speedsters mid-sprint like catching them in a glue trap.

  You needed to be damn strong to tear it apart, and the substance was highly resistant to heat and energy attacks. Some powers like intangibility and shapeshifting could bypass it, but those were rare. Most people, and I unfortunately had to count myself among them here, were shit out of luck if they got hit by it.

  “Fuck...” I muttered.

  “You got a plan Toymaker?” Foresight asked in a low murmur. None of us moved, staring silently at the drones.

  “Not yet.”

  “YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.”

  “Well... fucking think of one!”

  “Oh, now you want my plans?” I growled.

  “SEVEN.”

  “We need to move,” Stretch said, twitching anxiously.

  “FIVE.”

  “I don’t think I can destroy three of those things,” Dynamo said, an uneasy edge in her voice.

  “THREE.”

  “Oh, fuck this!” Foresight’s visor glowed brightly, the edges trailing garnet light.

  “No!” I shouted, all too late as a burst of heat and force slammed into the lead drone. The impact made it wobble in the air, sleek plates briefly glowing... but the light faded fast, the drone unharmed from the blast. “Their armour is built like Titanium’s, it’s energy resistant you fuck!”

  “YOUR LACK OF COMPLIANCE HAS BEEN NOTED. ENGAGING DETAINMENT PROTOCOLS.”

  The springs activated in my heels, launching me to one side so I could dodge a flurry of adhesion gel bullets as they struck the sands. My shoulder screamed in protest, pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before lancing through my body. Stretch had grabbed Foresight, leaping away on spring-like legs, while Dynamo turned and broke into a jog.

  “Make for the streets!” I said, lancing and breaking into a dead sprint. Adrenaline overwhelmed any pain or fatigue I might have felt, though my lungs were already sore. Another pair of jumps launched Stretch and myself far from the sands, covering several meters toward the raised sidewalk that bordered it. More shots went wide of us. One drone focused on Dynamo, winging her with a few rubber bullets. They bounced off harmlessly, but I knew Foresight and myself wouldn’t be so fortunate.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “MEDIUM-GRADE INVULNERABILITY GRADIENT DETECTED,” the drone barked. “SWITCHING TO HIGH CALIBER ROUNDS.”

  The people on the sidewalk screamed and broke away from us as we charged through, but their presence gave us some measure of protection from the drones. Fring into a crowd of civilians would be bad for PR, after all.

  We turned, weaving into a tight alley. Too narrow for the drones to fit through. Not that this stopped them. Two of them flew high over the buildings to intercept us at the other end, while one hung back to cut off any retreat.

  Dynamo snatched a dumpster up and held it aloft as a makeshift shield, blocking an incoming flurry of gel bullets from behind. The rapid thudding sound made me swallow harshly.

  “Where the fuck do we go?!” Foresight hissed.

  “I don’t know, I...” My heart was hammering in my head. Trying to get away from these drones would be easier said than done. They just had to get lucky and land one clean shot of adhesion gel to take one of us out. My phone buzzed in my pocket.

  I would have ignored it, but... nobody ever called me. I fished it from the hardcase on my belt, shocked to see Cassie’s name on the screen. Or ‘C’ as she was simply labelled in my contacts. I answered it quickly all the same.

  “Get to the roof of the Argent Realty office.” Her voice was stern, devoid of any of its usual humour. Then, just like that, she hung up.

  I stared at my phone then swiftly picketed it. “We need to get to the roof of Argent Realty,” I said in a stained hiss, barely audible over the thudding of the gel on the dumpster.

  “Gotta get on the roof of one of these buildings and head westward! It’s a spot that looms over Amusement Quay, has these big billboards up top,” said Foresight. He turned, glancing to a fire escape door beside us, and blew it clean off its hinges with one blast of his eye laser. We bolted inside the building and immediately startedup the winding staircase. Even through the thick brick walls I could hear the whine of the drones climbing upoutside.

  “Little further,” Dynamo said, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

  “Why did Chesh want us going that way?” Foresight asked.

  “I’m Toymaker, not ‘Mindreader’, you stupid fuck!” But whatever Cheshire had planned, it was better than anything I could think of. I stole a brief look to my raygun. The microwaves could, in theory, fry some of the mechanisms of the drones... but I’d need to hit between the plating for that. And to make that happen I’d need to stop and take aim, running the risk of getting hit.

  I was already exhausted as we reached the top floor. Eight flights of stairs, on top of everything else we had gone through, was not fun. Dynamo hit the roof accessway with one shoulder, smashing open the door and sending a hail of bricks scattering to the wind.

  She was greeted by a few high-caliber bullets exploding against her hide, making her grunt in discomfort. Stretch broadened her palms as an aegis, moving ahead of us as we broke through the opening. “Shit, shit,” Stretch said, wincing and gasping as bullets struck her rubbery flesh.

  A glob of adhesion gel slammed into Dynamo’s shoulder, expanding around her muscles. “Fuck,” she huffed. The next shots only went wide because Foresight shot the drone in the undercarriage and sent it spinning across the open sky.

  I hurried to a nearby air conditioner unit, wincing at the roar of gunfire in my ears as a salvo of rubber bullets barely missed me. They hammered the metal like rain on a tin roof, punching a slew of dents into it. Rubber or not, I wasn’t in any hurry to get hit by them.

  We had to get across the rooftops, but that just wouldn’t happen with three drones on our asses. Taking at least one out would give us a chance. So, steeling my nerve, I took aim and squeezed the trigger. Crackling orange light cleaved through the air, part of it grazing the plates of one of the drone’s wings. But enough of it pierced the gap to kick up an explosive roar of sparks on one half of the vehicle.

  The lights flickered on the hull, the drone dipping and whining as it began to smoke in different orifices. It went tumbling down, trailing smoke behind it, and the ensuing crash kicked up a chorus of screams from the people below.

  “We have an opening!” I shouted.

  “Good!” Dynamo hoisted a chunk of the floor form its moorings and swung the slab of concrete like a baseball. It exploded against the hull of one drone with a thunderous bang, hard enough to jerk it back through the air but not enough to so much as scuff the plates. The other drone was soved back by a blindingly bright beam from Foresight. “Grab onto me!”

  “Wh-”

  Before I could react, Dynamo yanked Foresight and myself under her arms as if we were sacks of potatoes. Stretch lashed her rubbery arms around Dynamo’s neck, reeling herself in close. And then she was off, leaping from roof to roof in a series of swift bounds, avoiding more shots from the drones as they righted themselves.

  Each buck made my whole body jolt, my stomach doing somersaults. Fucking hell I wanted to puke... But with each leap we were fast getting close to the Argent Realty building. A grey industrial looking spire, ten floors tall, with two faded billboards facing north and south.

  Our way to freedom... at least, I hoped that’s what Cheshire was setting up for us.