Thebes quickly returned to a kneeling position once his vantage point had been sniffed out. He peeked through one of the holes the rail gun had made at Athena. He marked her on his team’s HUD. “Agent, give me some cover there. The rest of you, get some more grenades on my secondary marks.” The rail gun fired again, and another hole appeared right by his helmet. “Now!” He shouted.

595 popped out from behind a pile of rubble behind the wrecked car, with a sighted assault rifle. She got a few hits on Athena while she was reloading, forcing her to back down. At the same time, six grenades rained down on the middle ground, near where Knossos and half a dozen marines were keeping the area locked down. They all exploded at once, throwing a curtain of rubble twenty metres into the air.

Thebes grabbed one of the new holes in his mobile cover and pushed it so it was still facing the middle but was more diagonally oriented toward the inaccessible apartment block. Then, he used the hand hold to pull the car toward the side of the arena. Since he wasn’t picking the whole thing up, this went quicker than before, with him making up a few metres.