The Mercenary Queen Strikes Back novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Tower
Swinton Tower had sixty floors, and Astrid walked in through the front door.
It was ten at night.
She crossed the marble lobby with Vaughn at her shoulder, a rifle in her hands and two hundred of Cinder's crew coming up behind her through the loading bay.
The guards at the desk saw her, and one of them reached for an alarm.
Duncan shot the alarm off the wall from the doorway.
"Floor by floor," Astrid said. "No one who drops a weapon gets hurt."
The first six floors fell in eight minutes.
Swinton security came down the stairs in pairs, and she met them on the landings with her rifle and her fists.
Vaughn fought beside her, one arm held tight to his bandaged side, and he never fell back once.
On the twelfth floor, a man twice his size got a hand around his wounded side and squeezed.
Vaughn said a very short word and broke the man's nose with his forehead.
"Show-off," Astrid said, and put the man on the floor.
"Dirty fighter," he said.
"You taught me that."
"I never did."
"You taught me by example."
He actually grinned.
The big woman and her people cleared the offices, and the two brothers cut the power on the guards' radios.
By the thirtieth floor the Swinton guards had stopped fighting.
They sat against the walls with their hands on their heads, and a few of them whispered one name: Cinder.
At the fiftieth floor, the elevators went dead.
"That's the last of their tricks," Duncan said over the earpiece. "The roof door is on a time lock until ten to midnight. I can crack it, but I need ten minutes, and I need you out of my way."
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