The kitchen door slammed with a practiced force that suggested more than one hand. The lights snapped on in the main hall and the hiss of radios cut the hum of the refrigerators. Brendon's heartbeat hit him, sharp and slow as though someone had plucked the string of his life. From the doorway the hyena man stepped in, but behind him were not two sleepy, confused workers. They were a dozen men in cheap black jackets, faces set in the kind of brutal patience that made you think of wolves in human skin. Drago's men — or so Brendon thought at first.
Camelia swore in his ear. "They're moving. East gate spike — not police, Brend. It's... something else. I'm getting a mass node activation. Drago's men just went live."
Ninja Fox's eyes hardened but there was no time for anger. "Back door," she ordered. "Now."
They moved like the practiced dancers of the alley, but the exit had been overwritten. Where the back passage had been in dark, there now stood two men with batons and a rhino anthro's silhouette filling the doorway like a wrecking ball. Another man wedged himself behind a line of stacked crates and raised a pistol — a small, ugly thing that smelled like new metal and older blood.
Brendon pivoted, the satchel slung over his shoulder. He had the fallback things: a short knife, a brass rod, the instinct to put himself between Ninja Fox and any blow. The first man lunged. Brendon met him with a palm strike to the sternum that knocked the air out of the man's lungs; the man staggered and Brendon drove a shoulder into his chest, sending him into a stack of boxes. The second man tried for the rod, but Brendon hooked his arm and twisted, sending the man's shoulder into a crate and the crack of a bone sounded dullly, under the clack of boots.
Ninja Fox moved like a melodious rhythm. She slipped behind a man with a baton and with a flick of the wrist took the man's hand, turning the baton into a lever that snapped the man's wrist and left him with a groan on the concrete. She used her weight, small and precise, to knock a second man off balance and then kicked the pistol from another's hand with a graceful, cruel kick. The gun skidded across the floor.
They had a few moments — enough, Brendon thought, to open the back hatch and make for the service alley. But every moment counted for the men now filling the room. A dozen faces surrounded them, all the cheap malice of men who'd been bought to do small cruelties and given the night's wages.
"Drago?" Brendon barked into his collar mic, fury undercutting the word. "Saint Drago, where the hell are your distractions?"
The comm crackled and then a voice — not Camelia — came through, the voice of Drago himself, smooth and indifferent. "I didn't want the mayor's men to know too early." Drago's voice said. "You were always a useful piece, Sheriff. Useful and expendable. I had to make sure the mayor's people got good and nervous. You know how this ends well for me."
Brendon's lungs remembered the cell-blocks. This was the old trick: the fixer who played both sides, a poker-faced dealer who double-crossed to buy himself a larger cut. Drago's men had closed the back and sealed the front. The noise at the street had not been properly distracting; it had been bait.
Ninja Fox's face had become unreadable, behind a mask. Her hand slid to the satchel and she pulled a thin length of wire and a small smoke pellet. She scored the pellet with a fingernail, a whisper of powder that smelled of bitter mint and hot metal. She broke the wire and looped it under her throat, using it like a curtain-puller.
"Plan B," she said, calm as a scalpel. "Camelia — go, now. Flood whatever you can with the stream. Make them see double. Brendon — we will break through on my mark. You hold them until I make it."
Camelia's voice was small but fierce. "I'm trying, but they've got a node on the comm loop. Someone is red-routing my feed. I can still fake two camera feeds — splice two different timecodes — but their net is patched. I can give you two sprinting minutes."
The room smelled of hot metal and bad jokes. Brendon counted the seconds like a patient counting pills. Two minutes were not much. It was an eye blink between dawns. He set his jaw and gripped the rod with both hands.
"On your mark." he said.
Ninja Fox's movement was a metronome. She wrapped the wire around the first man's ankles with a flick and a step, pulling like a trap. The man fell with a thunk. Brendon used the fall to roll and strike, elbow into jaw, knee into ribs — his moves were a long catalog of pragmatic violence: disable, disarm, move. He could hear the soft pop as bones met cartilage and the faint hiss of breath that meant someone was no longer calm.
A gun went off — a sharp, small report that made the light blink. The pellet smoke hit the air and went white like a small winter. Men coughed; the room became a strobing, coughing theater. In the confusion Ninja Fox slipped past the nearest pair and dove into the opening by the north wall they'd first entered through. Brendon covered her retreat until she was clear, then he turned to meet the next wave.
Two goons came at once, swinging rough hooks. Brendon parried one with his rod, converting the arc into a break that sent the man spinning. He planted a blow to the temple that made the man drop like someone snuffed a candle. But then another hand found him in the back — the scarred man, who had always had a way of appearing. He hooked an arm around Brendon's throat in a rear choke, teeth gritted. Brendon felt the world go narrow, a gray band of sound. He reached back blindly and found the man's wrist, twisted hard, and pulled until the joint screamed. The man cried out and fell away.