“Why the hell did he choose the third floor?” Creed complained. “It's an abandoned office building, surrounded by nothing but fragging abandoned office buildings. Couldn't he hold the meeting on the ground floor?”
Blades ignored the stocky rigger. The stairs didn't particularly bother him anyway.
“Maybe you should ask Schmidt for compensation,” Scathach suggested with a grin.
“For the record, that was sarcasm. If you actually try that, I'll personally kick you out the window,” Dragonfly said, and glared at them. “Anyway, we're here now, so if all of you could act professionally, please?”
She opened the door. Inside, Herr Schmidt was already waiting.
“You're late,” the Johnson said, looking at his watch. “I hope you at least have the package.”
“Took us more than enough to get it,” Dragonfly grumbled, but handed the device over to him. “I prefer to know beforehand if a run is going to land us in a Zero Zone.”
“You'll get your reward soon enough,” Schmidt said, taking a closer look.
Then everything happened at once. The Johnson blinked, and turned his back to the large window that took up one of the walls. A fraction of a second later the window exploded into a hail of shards. Schmidt straightened back up, decked Dragonfly in the face, and lunged out of the window.
Blades started moving before Dragonfly finished shouting “Get him!” from where she was lying on the floor. The Johnson had jumped six metres across an alley, and through a missing window into a neighbouring office building.
Blades grinned. The magic was flowing through his veins, strengthening his limbs, carrying his body. He drew his sword from its sheath as he started running. Six metres was almost nothing to him. He pushed himself off from the edge, sailed through the air... and realized with a start that his trajectory was off. He just had time to spit out a curse before crashing into the plastcrete half a metre to the left of his target.
His fingers grasped uselessly after some kind of ledge or windowsill as gravity made itself known and he started falling towards the pavement. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs and bruised his ribs. He silently thanked both his armour and his magic for lessening the impact and preventing serious injuries. He rolled onto his knees while gasping for breath. Despite his helmet the impact had made him dizzy, but he focused on his sword, which was lying a few metres away from him. Finally managing to draw a breath, he pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his sword and made his way to the door of the building he'd intended to jump into. He drew another deep breath, opened the door and started running up stairs as fast as he could.
In the end, it had turned out he needn't have hurried. They had found the Johnson cornered by one of Creed's drones and had managed to get a good amount of money out of him.
Scathach alternated between rewatching a video of Blade's chase attempt and looking at him as Creed took a look at his bruises.
“You know, I think I've got a good name for you,” she said. “The way you flew through the air like nothing could ever happen to you right before crashing gloriously gave me an idea.”
“You're still going on about the name thing? Can't you give me some rest?” He asked.
“For the last time, calling yourself 'Blades' makes you sound like an edgy 14-year-old. You need a proper nickname.”
Blades sighed, “What are you thinking about?”
“Icarus.”