The slow beats of mechanical hearts grinding to a halt echoed up to her from deep within the refinery. Mechanisms that spun molten steel for final refining grew still. The room would cool, then Revo grunts would guard the Alchemists as they replenished the reagent chambers anew. Which meant that right now, two floors above her, they were preparing the next batch of reagents for refining. They had been taken from a chilled stasis locker and were waiting, ripe for the taking. Ari’s fingers twitched.
With impeccable timing, Ari reached the grated door of one of the refinery’s four supply elevators. The New Dortam refinery could process four separate chambers of reagents, but the smokestacks on the north end had been cool for over a month. As expected, the elevator was still and silent, just waiting for her.
The motor glinted high above, at the top of the shaft. Its large wheels nearly glowed through the filter of her goggles. Ari focused on it carefully, willing it to life. The cogs obeyed, slowly churning in the darkness. She stepped onto the roof of the elevator as it eased by, and rode it two landings up.
When heists were this easy, it almost felt like she hadn’t done anything to earn her infamy. The “impenetrable fortress” of New Dortam had presented a challenge no greater than the one posed by a standard bank vault.
The elevator put her just where she expected: a dark wing of Alchemist laboratories. Magic hung heavy in the air, nearly suffocating. It made her skin crawl with the sensation of rot. Experiments they had been working for far too long were locked away in some of these chambers.
She stopped at the twelfth door, spinning the map of the refinery in her head. Each room was five pecas wide. On the diagonal heading she’d made after entry, she should be just above the reagent preparation room.
The door lock was plain iron—not a trace of gold about it. Ari clicked her tongue against her teeth. Unrefined and nonmagical. She’d have to open it manually. It was trickier than the Rivet padlock, but just slightly, and equally ineffective at barring her entry.
The room was thick with the nearly visible haze of magic and chemicals. Worktables stood littered with records and research. Beakers sat out, some full, some empty. Ari reached into her inner breast pocket and pulled out the metal disk that had been digging into her chest all night beneath the straps of her harness. She tossed it into the center of the room haphazardly before strolling back out.
Some Alchemist was about to have a really bad morning.
With a thought, the gold at the center of the disk turned molten and the heat activated the powder packed around it. The bomb exploded with a BANG of satisfyingly epic proportions. With it, Ari’s relatively quiet heist was thrown full steam ahead.
She started to run.
She clipped her line to the handle of the door that had just failed to keep her out, jumping through the now gaping hole in the floor. She landed on rubble and the remnants of half the reagent preparation room. The blood of an Alchemist oozed from underneath the pile, and Ari was careful not to step in it. Blood left tracks that were too easy to follow by Fenthri, Chimera, and Dragon alike. The other Alchemists were still reeling, coughing, wheezing—trying to figure out what was happening.
“Th-the reagents…” one wheezed.
“Have been so beautifully prepared,” Ari praised brightly. “Still cold and encapsulated, their magic preserved just so… Perfection!”
She grabbed the three golden tubes from the floor where they’d landed after the explosion. Her prizes had been destined for refining, but now she would whisk them away from the hands of Dragon dogs.
“White Wraith, die!” one of the Alchemists shouted.
Ari scrutinized the woman. Her hands were long and bright red, a thin scar around her wrists where they met pale grey flesh. Ari’s eyes fell on the woman’s face. Two triangles—one pointing up and the other down, connected by a line that intersected their off-set points—were tattooed in black ink on the woman’s cheek. A bold circle encased them. “You’re young for a circle. Don’t throw your life away.”
The woman charged with a cry.
“I warned you,” Ari sighed dramatically. In one swift movement, she stepped to the side, drew her dagger, and plunged it to the hilt in the woman’s gut. Ari hated murdering talent; the world had such precious little of it. But the woman had been warned. Ari pulled her magic back, only lacing her dagger with enough to make the wound difficult to heal but not impossible. The Alchemist was a Chimera and, if her Dragon blood was strong enough, she’d manage to survive such a wound.
The doors to the room burst open, the grunts behind it freezing at the sight before them. Ari grinned wildly. Their cheeks bore the tattooed symbol of a revolver chamber, with one of the six holes filled. Revo grunts.
“Too late!” Ari gleefully withdrew her dagger from where it still nestled in the woman’s gut. The winch box on her hip sprang to life with a thought and she sprang upward, back through the hole and up onto the floor above.
Gunfire pelted the opening she’d just traversed, leaving singed and pitted marks.
“Incendiary rounds, for little old me? You shouldn’t have.” Ari pulled her head away just in time for another volley of shots to light up the ceiling above her. Barely marked Revos. It took nothing to goad them into wasting a precious canister on her taunting.