Starfall by Cale Plamann

Author:Cale Plamann [Plamann, Cale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mountaindale Press
Published: 2022-11-16T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kat opened her eyes, letting the riot of sights, scents, and sounds of Humbrass Atoll fade from her senses. She sighed, the white plaster of the hotel ceiling returning her gaze as she shifted slightly in the twin bed.

Whippoorwill groaned slightly, rolling to the side and dragging a pillow over her head on the bed to Kat’s left. Near her feet, Emma was curled up in a ball on a tiny futon, pulled out of the hotel room’s couch. She slept soundly, one of the room’s blankets tucked in just under her chin.

Quietly, Kat rolled out of the bed, pushing the blankets aside. She stood up in the dark, pajamas whispering against her skin as she stretched. A moment later, she tiptoed to the suite’s coffee maker, picking her way past the collection of unopened bags that commemorated Emma’s many purchases from the previous night.

Removing the coffee pot from the machine, Kat turned the tap halfway and angled the glass container as she filled it with water. Outside their room, the early morning sounds of the Vegas strip filtered in, the honking of horns coupled with some shouting and the occasional gunshot.

She slipped the pot back into the machine, pressing a button to dispense the Dark Peruvian roast. Back on the nightstand, her smartglass vibrated as the hotel’s network charged her for the coffee.

Kat leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as the machine went to work with a burble and hiss. She yawned, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle the noise. It was barely five a.m., and more than anything she wanted to return to The Tower of Somnus.

Dorrik, Kaleek, and she had been killing time, finalizing their equipment while they enjoyed the Atoll’s shopping district on the fourth floor. The rest of the higher-leveled avatars were still filtering down from the upper floors while desoph scouts tried to narrow down and identify the stallesp base of operations.

Honestly? Even with Emma’s hijacking of their trip to Vegas, it felt like more of a vacation than her current circumstances. Kaleek had managed to find a string of three phenomenal street vendors in a row, and they had spent most of the night drinking surprisingly good fermented seaweed while eating any number of fried and grilled foods.

Unfortunately, she needed to cut her fun short. Davis had been clear in their meeting that Neon Dome’s night shift left around six a.m., and even though the morning shift checked in around the same time, it didn’t look like they properly got up to speed for an hour or so.

In short, if they hit the circus now, they would only have to contend with electronic security and groggy guards clustered around their own coffee mugs. They only had a day and a half of records on the patterns of the Neon Dome guards—Kat wasn’t sure she could have survived much more time than that shopping with Emma—but the information they did have was top notch.

Most of that was due to the quality of the gear they were using in the mission.

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