Chapter 386: Being Clever Did Not Make Me Fast Enough

The shield hit the doorway hard enough to bend its lower rail, and Rex stepped around it before the noise finished, smiling as though he had arrived to discuss a disappointing room-service order.

I saw his weight shift. Galaxy Brain told me which shoulder would lead, where his hand would travel and how badly I needed to move before it reached my head.

My body still failed to get out of the way.

The blow drove me into the desk, splitting its cheap corner and sending the radio across the floor. Pain flashed along my side, bright enough to make every clever thought briefly sound like a complaint.

[System: Brain’s quick, body isn’t, mate. Get off the desk before he turns you into office equipment.]

I had worked that out during the furniture demonstration.

Lukas threw the empty chair between Rex and me. Rex shoved it aside, but the movement gave me a clear view through the broken doorway to a bare patch of loading deck behind the shield.

I opened Backdoor Bludger beside my head and on that visible patch, less than ten meters away. Lukas went through first, then I followed before Rex could reach around the desk.

The eight-second opening remained behind us. Rex could use it too, so we kept moving instead of treating our own portal like a locked door.

He crossed before it closed and caught the end of Lukas’s abandoned tool bag, tearing it away while Lukas dragged me behind a heavy maintenance drum. Our useful escape had bought distance, not a free disappearance.

Three minutes began counting down from activation. I had spent them before, but never while someone that fast was deciding which part of me looked easiest to remove.

Rex touched a short steel bar lying beside the drum. A fresh mark appeared on it while the shield remained marked near the station door. He picked up the bar and struck our cover hard enough to leave a deep dent beside my face.

No skill cooldown had stopped him from using his arm. It was a rude detail, and I intended to complain to somebody after surviving it.

Lukas pulled me around the drum as Rex moved to the other side. We used the equipment wall to break his view, keeping the route toward the central gantry open instead of retreating into another room.

"He wanted a memorable performance, so let’s make him walk for the good angles."

"You could stop announcing the plan in his hearing," Lukas said, hauling a loose hose out of our path.

"That was the cheap plan, and he hadn’t paid for the useful one."

Rex smiled at that. He enjoyed me even while trying to break me, which was somehow more irritating than hatred.

We reached a row of wheeled service bins. Lukas pushed one across the lane, forcing Rex to step around it while I checked the route beneath the gantry against the maintenance drawing we had studied.

The fixed brake station stood behind the right support. The suspended twelve-ton weight hung above the central lane, with its guide rails forming a narrow gap between two thick columns.

Rex touched the nearest bin. It became his third visible mark: shield, bar and bin. He pulled the bin toward him after its mark brightened, throwing it across our path rather than moving the entire wall behind it.

I counted eight seconds between that pull and the next. He filled the gap by climbing over the fallen bin and swinging the bar again, which made the timing useful without making him polite enough to wait his turn.

Lukas ducked beneath a crossbeam. I twisted around its support, and the bar struck steel where my head had been. The impact sent a vibration through my jaw that I felt despite not being hit directly.

My wing brushed the beam and reminded me that the healing edge still needed more than optimism. I kept it folded, using the ground and low hover bursts where the space allowed rather than trying to fly through machinery like a badly aimed kite.

At the next corner, Rex touched a loose metal plate to pull it into our escape lane. The old mark on the distant shield went dark as the plate lit up.

I saw it happen through the gap beside the station. One new mark had replaced the oldest, leaving bar, bin and plate.

"Three at once, Lukas, and touching a fourth dropped the first."

Lukas repeated the three marked objects under his breath, keeping his eyes on the metal instead of my explanation. I liked that he checked what I said, especially when getting one detail wrong could remove a useful part of him.

Rex heard me and kicked the fallen plate toward us before his next pull was ready. Knowing the limit didn’t prevent a heavy piece of steel from being a heavy piece of steel.

[System: Congratulations, you armed garden hose. You’ve learned the rules while the referee tried to murder you with the scoreboard.]

We split around the gantry support. Lukas headed toward the brake station while I stayed visible on the near side, drawing Rex’s attention with a complaint about the quality of his official merchandise.

His expression tightened when I mentioned the wing size. Apparently someone had explained the cost saving to him, and he had approved it personally.

That tiny piece of information made the next bruise feel worthwhile.

Lukas reached the detachable operating handle beside the brake housing. He had already seen the fixed handwheel below it, but the handle offered a quicker way to check the main release.

Rex moved with a speed I couldn’t match, cutting around the outer support instead of following me beneath the weight. His free hand brushed the handle before Lukas could close his grip around it.

The mark on the bar went dark. A new one spread across the handle beneath Lukas’s fingers, and Rex looked straight at my friend as the metal began to brighten.