Arena 8 by Logan Jacobs

Author:Logan Jacobs [Jacobs, Logan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Hank intercepted us just a few doors down from the apartment building. His kindly, golden-skinned face wore an expression of concern, and he carried a stack of clipboards in his hand.

“I’m glad I saw you coming down the street on my smoke break,” he said as he held out the stack of clipboards. “Hold these over your faces.”

“Let me guess,” I said as I put the clipboard up to the side of my face, “there are a bunch of reporters in the lobby who want to interview me about my allergies to Alpha Centaurians.”

“Oh no, I got rid of that crowd much earlier,” Hank said. “No, these are police. They said they just want to talk to you, but it’s that 'just' that worries me. Wouldn’t show me their badges either. I told them I didn’t know when you’d be back. If you’d like me to call a cab for you--”

“Too easy to follow,” Hann-Abel interrupted.

“We need to get up to the apartment before those guys decide to head up there themselves,” I said.

“Then I’ll take you through the workman’s entrance,” Hank said. He led us to a door in the back of the apartment building that I had never noticed before, probably because it was the same color and pattern as the rest of the building and didn’t even have a handle. He pressed his palm to the door and it opened into the very back of the lobby.

I held my clipboard up extra high as Hank led us past the elevator banks and to the back stairs. I could see three big, jacked dudes in the lobby dressed in police uniforms which were decidedly too small for their muscles.

“Cops come in twos,” I muttered, “Skalle Furia come in threes.”

We made it up to the apartment without running into any cops, but I was still on edge as I entered my pad.

“Welcome back, sir and madams,” Woodhouse said in his plummy British voice as he met us at the door. “Are the other three residents still... with us?”

“Don’t go erasing their bedrooms just yet,” I said as I headed for the kitchen. “We need more weapons and we need jetpacks. Whatcha got?”

Woodhouse’s eight metal tentacles flew over the console of buttons on the over-under ovens built into the wall of the kitchen, and the ovens slid down to reveal a neatly organized cubby full of gleaming weaponry. He spun the cubby around to reveal PoLarr’s jetpacks.

PoLarr’s jetpacks were a cool perk of her past as a Val’Kyrie, an elite all-female Special Forces branch of the feared Nemmdian Raiders. It looked like a slimmed-down cyberpunk version of the jetpack from the Rocketeer, with a flared base and a streamlined induction hood on top.

PoLarr took one of the jetpacks out and handed the other to me, then tossed me a pair of cool mirrored goggles. She strapped the jetpack’s web-belt assembly over her shoulder and around her waist and thighs, and I copied her movements as I slipped the jetpack and goggles on.

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