Chapter 1 #3
It had settled itself on the windowsill again, an orange sentinel with its tail wrapped around its paws. The female was nowhere in sight. Just the cat, staring down at him with an expression he could only describe as amusement.
He folded his arms and glared up at it. "I don't suppose you'd like to come down here and make this easy for me."
The cat yawned and made a show of ignoring him.
"Draanth."
And then it started to rain.
Not a gentle rain either. A soft, cleansing drizzle might have washed the smog out of the air and left everything smelling fresh, but this wasn’t it.
Instead, this was a hard, driving rain that came down in sheets, as if the sky had a personal vendetta against him.
It hammered against the pavement, drumming against the rusted metal of the fire escapes, and soaked him through in seconds.
He pulled his jacket tighter around himself with a grumble. The leather was treated against most things—blood, plasma fire, light acid—but it wasn't designed for this. Water found every seam, every gap, every place where the collar didn't quite meet his jaw.
"Draanth this planet," he muttered, "and draanth its weather."
The cat was still watching him. It had not moved from the window. He could have sworn it was enjoying this.
He glared up at it through the rain. The sensible thing would be to storm up there, grab the cat, and leave.
He was a sub-commander of the Imperial Guard.
He'd fought blood-crazed Krin and survived…
which meant that he could be up those stairs and through that door in under a minute, and then he'd have the cat in a carrier and be on his way back to the shuttle before the female even finished screaming.
He took a step forward.
The female appeared in the window again, and the earth tilted under his feet.
Literally.
The slab of concrete he was standing on gave way with a crack. He had just enough time to register this was bad, like really monumentally bad, before the ground opened up beneath him and he dropped, arms windmilling to save his balance.
He landed in water.
It was shallow, thank the gods, but that was the only thing about it that could be described as good. It was cold and dark and it stank… a thick, organic, rotting type reek that coated the back of his throat.
Pushing himself up with a cough, he sat in a sinkhole that had opened up in the street. The walls around him were jagged concrete and exposed pipework, dripping with things he didn't want to identify.
He looked up. The hole was maybe three meters deep; the streetlamp above illuminating the extent of the damage. The slab he'd been standing on had sheared away cleanly, as if it had been waiting for an excuse.
Or for a heavier-than-human Latharian warrior to stand in the wrong place.
He was wet and muddy. And he stank.
"Draanth."
He climbed out, shaking water and worse things off himself. Great, just draanthing great. His uniform was going to need professional cleaning, and he was reasonably sure something had moved into his left boot.
He looked up at the window.
The cat was gone, the female was gone, and the apartment had gone dark again.
He stood there in the rain, dripping, and all he could think about was the brief glimpse of her he’d gotten before the ground had opened up.
He'd caught maybe a second of her before the ground ate him.
The curve of her cheek. One bare shoulder where her shirt had slipped.
Enough that his gut had clenched, and it had nothing to do with the fall.
He shoved up out of the muck. She was a thief. He kept telling himself that, all the way across the street. She was beautiful, yes, but she was still a thief. She'd stolen the property of the Emperor’s…
He stopped with a frown. Draanth, what was Lady Emily, exactly? The Emperor's ex-bride? The ex-empress? Close enough, he decided, his jaw setting. Which meant this female had stolen the ex-empress’s property… Imperial property.
Which meant he should take her back to face Imperial justice.
He crossed the street.
The apartment block's front door wasn’t locked.
He stepped into the entryway, still dripping water.
It didn’t matter; from the looks of it, the floor had definitely seen worse.
His nostrils flared at the smell of vomit covered with some kind of chemical cleaner, and that was definitely a bloodstain on the wall.
What on Lathar was a valuable female doing with such lax security?
He shook his head and headed for the stairs. The elevator was out, with large signs that screamed ‘out of order’.
The stairs groaned under his weight, the walls covered in peeling paint and water stains. He wrinkled his nose. No wonder it was scheduled for demolition.
He emerged onto the fifth floor and paused for a moment to get his bearings. Okay, it was the door at the end of this corridor.
He stopped in front of it. The lock was slightly better than the one on Emily’s apartment. He pulled a small tool from his belt, the kind every warrior carried for… reasons, and set to work.
The lock gave up in under ten seconds.
Straightening up, he pocketed the tool. Okay, nearly there. All he had to do was get in there, grab the female and the cat.
What could go wrong?