Chapter 392: The Showman Did Not Get an Encore

The weight was already moving when Rex caught me, and Lukas kept the release open instead of obeying the order Rex shouted across the lane.

A lower brace struck the raised pistol and drove Rex’s arm down. His grip shifted with the impact, tearing the edge of my wing instead of holding the whole length in place.

I threw myself toward the still-open portal while Old Mate counted the remaining seconds. Pain burned through the turn, but the opening stayed clear long enough for my head, body and trailing tail to pass.

I came out beyond the weight’s path with the same desperate momentum, hit the deck and slid against a timber block. The portal closed after me, leaving Rex beneath the descending machinery with no shortcut to follow.

He touched the guide frame and tried to pull. Its mark brightened, but the fixed structure and twelve-ton load stayed where the machinery put them, far beyond the limit printed on his own demonstration certificate.

He tried the side opening next. The crosspiece he had bent while clearing our cover blocked his clean escape, and the lowering brace caught him before he could force it aside.

Lukas held the lever through the rest of the drop. The weight pinned Rex against the deck, the damaged lower frame folded under the strain, and the showman disappeared beneath his own equipment with a final noise I wouldn’t forget.

I watched until there was no movement left to mistake for a trick. No smiling double stepped out of the dust, and no secret employer called to congratulate us for passing a test.

Rex Rattle had died in the yard he built to manufacture other people’s emergencies.

For a few seconds, I heard only the settling frame and my own ragged breathing. Then Lukas left the lever locked in its final position and climbed down beside me.

He asked where it hurt. I told him to choose a region and work outward, which earned a laugh that broke halfway through because his hands were shaking.

I pressed my head against his arm until he stopped trying to hide it.

"You held the lever, mate. I needed you to hold it, and you did."

"I knew where you were meant to come out," he said. "I kept looking there instead of at him."

That answer stayed with me while the workers began moving around us. One brought clean cloth, another called for the yard medic, and the guard who had lowered his weapon earlier asked whether the other cages were still secure.

They weren’t all checked yet. The main objective remained open, and the surviving cargo didn’t become harmless because its owner had finally stopped talking.

I stayed seated while Lukas worked with the loading crew. They isolated the departure power, confirmed the wheel blocks and checked each remaining cage latch against the transport list.

A handler took control of the smaller natural animals. Another crew locked the release remotes in the office safe and disconnected the automatic event timers while recording each step for the watch.

The settlement dispatcher confirmed that the false beacons remained off and the public assembly routes were clear. Nobody had followed Rex’s cargo into the wash, and none of his loaded frames would reach the homes under their own power.

Only then did Old Mate close the main objective.

[System: Seventy thousand EXP and a hundred fifty IP, mate. That’s the show finished, the cargo parked and the white-suit wanker permanently unavailable for interviews. Now let someone patch you before you leak on the reward screen.]

My total reached one hundred eighty-five thousand out of two hundred thousand EXP, with nine hundred seventy-five IP. The numbers looked beautiful, but for once I wanted a medic more than another menu.

Lukas sat beside me with the useless toy box in his hands. He had somehow kept it through everything, and I asked whether he intended to claim it as a medal. He said somebody needed proof that my real wings had been bigger before I spent the trip tearing them off.

The yard medic cleaned the torn wing and checked the bruising along my side. She charged three hundred ten credits for treatment and supplies, then told me that flying on it for entertainment would be a deeply stupid choice.

"What if the entertainment was somebody else’s final career mistake?"

She looked at the wrecked frame and said I had already used that excuse for the week.

The watch arrived while we were still giving statements. They took the original recordings and the sealed monster packet as evidence, which made the evidence officer inspect his gloves before accepting the second item.

Lukas retained copies of the files and the receipt for everything we handed over. We kept our personal bags and the crawler keys, and the officers recorded the stolen route console for later collection after copying its navigation data to Lukas’s device.

I called the girls once the medic finished. Lyra asked to see the dressing and stayed quiet while I explained how it happened. Cherry demanded a photograph of Lukas standing safely beside me. Bridget asked whether somebody official had secured the remaining machinery before she let herself sound relieved.

None of them congratulated me for getting hurt. All three wanted me home eventually, and I found I wanted that future badly enough to take the medic’s instructions seriously.

We stayed in the guarded rest bay while the yard was cleared. The trip still belonged to Lukas and me, but continuing it no longer meant proving we could ignore every sensible limit until somebody died.

The following morning, Lukas opened the copied navigation file to plan the route toward the coast. Three survey markers had shifted since the console’s last saved map, each moving the same distance in the same direction.

I checked their labels, expecting a convoy route or badly recorded equipment positions.

The middle marker belonged to a peninsula marked as solid ground, and the newest reading placed it several kilometers out to sea.