"Tell me who you work for, and I leave, and I leave you here," Lucky demanded, moving the bed one-handed to barricade the door further. The thug stuttered, too frightened to speak. A few more tries produced nothing coherent. She slapped him. "Tell me who you work for." More stuttering.
    A chopper was coming up to the building. Goddamit.
    Phoenix returned up the stairs, still shaking his head. Saw the cops at the door talking into their radios. Ran up to them.
    "Officer, officer, I just saw her, Lucky from the Revolution, she's down in the stairwell, in the stairwell!"
    They exchanged a look.
    "I'm still pretty sure she's in here, go with him, check the stairwell!" one ordered. "Stay here!" He pointed at Phoenix. "No, wait. Go to that elevator, get out of here! This is going to be a war zone in a minute. Go check the stairs!" The other cop ran off. "We're getting conflicting reports, she might be in the stairwell," he reported on his radio. "We have an eyewitness report in the stairwell."
    "Look behind you!" Phoenix pointed behind the other one. The cop turned. Phoenix triple-chopped him in the neck and left him stunned on the floor.
    "It's all clear, come on!" he yelled to Lucky through the door.
    She briefly contemplated putting her stick through the chopper's rotors, breaking this guy's neck and taking leave of the building—but that was the sort of thing the old her would have done. She wasn't going to get anything useful out of this guy, that much was clear. The whip disappeared, dropping the thug to the ground, and reappeared as her staff. She jumped out the window. For a moment she could look into the startled copter pilot's eyes, not five yards away, before she started falling.
    Phoenix kicked in the door despite her blockade and followed her with a whoop. His grapple wrapped around the helicopter's runner, playing out as he swung. On the backswing he was near enough to the ground to simply let go and bounce off a building in a controlled sort of way, slide down an awning and touch the ground lightly. Guns went off in a sort of half-hearted fashion, but on the whole the cops were too stunned to have a chance.
    The pavement cracked as Lucky landed. She headed for the nearest car and yanked the door off, thrust her hand into the wiring and... pulled it all out. Damn cheap foreign piece of crap—
    Phoenix headed for the nearest manhole. More gunfire chipped the pavement around them, a couple shots actually grazing him as he dodged madly and dropped down into the sewers, leaving the cover ajar behind him in hopes that Lucky would follow.
    The underground beckoned, leading to the safety of the cave. A bullet ripped past her and left a bloody track on her arm before the staff could reform in her hands. More bullets bounced from its blue glow. She sprinted away, far faster than any human without the benefits of her bond to Chandler. The cops watched her go, shocked. She, too, dropped down into the sewer and vanished from their sight.

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