Chapter 381: The Free Trial Ended in Structural Damage

I dragged James sideways before the brass rail tore loose, and the piece of luxury bathroom trim crossed the driver’s station exactly where his face had been advertising poor decisions.

It smashed through the open side doorway toward Rex, leaving two bolts behind and a useful new ventilation feature around the frame.

James kept one hand on the controls while Lukas braced him from the other side. The bathhouse bounced against a curb, and I learned that a stolen steam room could make several expensive noises at once.

[System: That’s the premium facial treatment, mate. Removes wrinkles, confidence and most of the bloody face in one convenient appointment.]

The brochure had been very vague about the exfoliation.

Rex stood at the junction with the broken rail near his feet. The remaining nearby mark glowed faintly on the steel cover beside the heater controls. The cart was back at reception, and the rail now lay beside Rex.

He had marked separate pieces. He hadn’t turned the whole enormous vehicle into something he could drag around by a bathroom screw, which was useful because I had enough problems without being personally repossessed.

Eight seconds passed before the heater cover brightened. James turned behind a thick support wall as the pull began, and the cover jerked once before falling still when Rex lost sight of it.

Lukas ducked beneath it before the broken mount reached his shoulder.

"He needed to see it," he said, checking the rear window. "The camera didn’t help when the wall got between them."

I counted the next gap while James kept the vehicle behind the supports. The marks warned us a moment before each pull, but Rex still had legs, speed and an increasingly personal reason to use them.

He moved along the parallel road, trying to regain a view through the gaps. His guards followed in the white car while the soaked camera crew struggled to catch up.

"Keep the walls between us, James, and tell us before you run out of wall."

"I’ve got loads of wall, bruv. What I haven’t got is much steering lock."

The next corner proved his point. A folded balcony scraped the concrete, shower doors banged inside the corridor, and the relaxation recording gently asked us to report any discomfort to a member of staff.

Lukas shouted that every member of staff had become discomfort.

Lukas found a tool roll beneath the console while I caught an unmarked towel rack that had come loose during the turn. I held its weight away from him, then pushed it through the rear service hatch onto an empty strip of road.

The heater cover needed four screws removed. Galaxy Brain helped me keep track of Rex’s visible positions and the timing between pulls, but Lukas’s ordinary screwdriver still had to turn every stubborn screw.

We got the cover free just before the next gap in the walls. I dropped it clear of the wheel path, and Rex pulled his own discarded panel across the empty lane while our vehicle kept moving.

James laughed hard enough that I warned him the next piece we discarded could be the driver.

A guard on the pursuit car raised a weapon as we passed the end of the final wall. The car drew level with our open service hatch, close enough for me to see the gun barrel and the man’s finger tightening behind it.

My humming returned while James called out a turn.

I took the exposed weapon with Mine Now before the guard fired, placing its full weight against my lower length on the floor. Then I drove the blunt end through the hatch against his forearm when he reached for a second weapon.

He fell back into the car with a broken grip and no interest in another attempt. James stopped laughing and kept both eyes on the road.

[System: Lovely tune, mate. Really brought the customer experience together.]

Ahead stood one of Rex’s advertising sets, a fake roadside palace built around an empty steel frame. James had delivered it the previous month and knew the service lane passed straight through its broad rear opening.

He warned us to get low, aimed for the open frame and took the bathhouse through the unmanned display. Foam columns burst across the windshield, and a huge smiling picture of Rex folded over our roof before sliding into the road behind us.

We emerged with the front lounge full of decorative gold dust and the advertising cameras recording a ruined attraction instead of our faces.

The service lane split beyond the set. James took the lower turn beneath a row of covered salvage bays, where the bathhouse finally stopped beside a closed workshop.

We removed the route console, the recordings already copied to Lukas’s phone and James’s agreed share of loose, portable fittings. Nobody took a guest’s belongings or imagined the stolen building had become a convenient permanent base.

James called a local recovery driver he used for contract work. We paid for a ride back by the maintenance lanes, leaving the battered bathhouse beside its owner’s ruined display with its emergency lights still flashing.

By evening, we were back at the repair yard. James stayed to collect his black car and argue over its coolant housing, promising to contact us if Rex offered an interesting reward for his head.

Lukas and I loaded our crawler alone. Two days of my life felt like enough room for that man, although I suspected the insurance industry would remember him longer.

James tapped the crawler roof before we left and told Lukas to keep me out of trouble. Lukas looked between us, then said he had finally found a problem too large for unpaid work.

We drove beyond the yard before opening the stolen console again. Its saved route plan showed Rex’s relay depots, fuel stops and a large production frame traveling toward a worker settlement on the Glasswake flats.

The file called the event a rescue demonstration. Beneath it, a second folder held cage-release times, evacuation signs and the prices for different camera angles.

The most expensive package included close footage of the settlement believing Rex had arrived to save them.