Chapter 242: Do Not Feed the Ventilation

The fan caught me halfway through a rescue that had already become much less clever than I’d intended. I had seen Orin shoved towards the office and Lukas moving for the fence, but the guard’s foot switch was hidden beneath the loading desk until the motor started.

Air dragged my mist sideways, pulling different parts of me towards the same grille before I forced myself solid. My tail struck the floor while the fan kept tugging at the loose edges, and panic made it difficult to remember which part of being smoke had sounded convenient.

[System: Stay solid and get behind that column, ya drongo; I’m your system, not a fucking vacuum technician, and nobody’s putting your ashes in a dust bag.]

Then stop reviewing the cremation options and tell me which way to move while I’ve still got a face worth saving. A guard advanced with a catch pole, giving me something new to hate while I knocked its loop aside and dragged myself towards cover.

Across the yard, Lukas landed between Orin and the second guard. He told the man to leave the customer’s paperwork alone, but the guard answered with a baton to his ribs that took most of the personality out of his next breath.

I activated Nuh-Uh as the catch pole came down again, and my body dropped against the concrete with enough weight to crack its surface. The pole struck my side with the sound of a pan hitting steel while Old Mate started counting the fifteen seconds I had to make that useful.

"You should have brought a bigger handle, because I’m about to show you what happens when the customer objects," I told the guard. I twisted around the shaft and pulled until his shoulder hit the column, making him release it and reconsider the distance between us.

[System: The fan’s on wheels, mate, and there’s loose packing sheet behind it. Turn the frame towards that mess and let the bastard choke on its own housekeeping.]

If this works, we’re selling the footage as a cleaning tutorial and making the repair bill somebody else’s sponsorship deal. I pinned the cable beneath a coil and pulled, shifting the wheeled frame until its grille faced the loose plastic beside the bay.

The sheets flew across the intake, covering it until the motor’s pitch changed and a warning light came on. Lukas webbed the second guard’s wrist before he could strike Orin again, but the effort brought another painful sound from the spider as both men hit a wheeled cart.

I dragged my heavy body across the office threshold with three seconds left on the stance. Renn stood beside a metal bin holding Orin’s plastic folder over a lighter, and he looked straight at me before dropping the burning receipts into it.

The weight vanished as the skill ended, leaving me unable to use it again for eight minutes. Renn kicked the door into my side before I could move through, then slammed it again hard enough to force me back into the yard.

I could have kept fighting for the door, but Orin was holding a wrist that looked wrong while Lukas struggled to stay upright beside him. "Get him towards the street and keep away from the metal, because we’ve already tested enough bad ideas for one morning," I told Lukas.

We reached the pavement under a chorus of shouting while the depot alarm drew Rook and another officer towards the gate. A medic took Orin’s arm, Lukas sat on the kerb, and Renn came outside carrying a tablet as though he’d been waiting to report a customer problem.

His edited clip began with my entrance and ended with Lukas throwing a guard into crates, giving the little prick a promising future in political advertising. It left out the locked gate, the baton and the burning folder, producing a version of events where the largest teeth also belonged to the worst person.

[System: Don’t bite him in front of the camera, champ; he’s already made one film about you, and I refuse to help with the fucking sequel.]

I’m pricing the teeth, not biting him yet, and I think the front two would cover Orin’s appointment nicely. Before I could say something more useful aloud, Bridget walked through the gate carrying an unplugged security monitor.

The guard following her demanded the screen back, which brought Renn towards her faster than any question we’d asked. She explained that the receptionist had let her review the camera feed, but the attached computer required a password before it would export anything.

Renn started smiling until she handed her phone to Rook. "I filmed the screen while it played, so your officer can see what happened before the part you chose to share. You may also want to ask why the office camera stopped before the smoke alarm."

"Please tell me you took the screen because he was still enjoying his afternoon," I said. Bridget set it on the pavement and explained that his staff had demanded the recording back, so she’d brought enough equipment for Renn to point at the problem himself.

Rook watched the recording, asked for the complete original and took Orin’s statement while Renn threatened to contact Bridget’s family. She suggested her family might enjoy seeing where their missing cabinets went, then checked my scraped side. Her anger stayed with Renn, while the hand she offered me was gentle.

Orin asked whether losing his original receipts meant losing the van as well, and Bridget reminded him that his bank records and the copies sent earlier still existed. The medic kept working on his wrist while he called his daughter, sounding less afraid once he had something useful to tell her.

"Tell her the van was still in the yard when we went in, because that part hasn’t changed just because her father’s met a bastard with a lighter," I added.

Bridget showed me the edited clip on her phone, now spreading under a headline about a violent beast attack. Her correction hadn’t caught it yet, and the depot’s public sales page had just moved the remaining disputed stock into a private auction that night, giving Renn a deadline for making the evidence disappear.