“We can’t have drama right now, ladies,” Maggie spoke in a cold, serious tone, and then reached a hand into her purse. With another look at the security bot, she hesitated to proceed, and instead gave another call to see if she still had any allies alive on the station. “Darling,” Maggie spoke at someone on the other end of the comms, “Could you put some sense into this AI I’m with?”<br/><br/>All she needed was a tiny override to a protocol that Alice was bound to follow. Normally, it was in Maggie’s interest that the stationSec did follow this particular protocol, but it wasn’t the first time she needed an AI not to interfere with her reckless behavior, so the operator she had called knew exactly how to proceed.<br/><br/>“This is an incendiary grenade,” Maggie said as she produced one of the black spheres from the purse and held it on display in front of her, “As Alice here can confirm, they’re illegal to even possess. Unfortunately for you, she’s not going to do anything about it.”<br/><br/>The elevator reached the first floor of the maintenance tunnels below the district. As the door began to slide open, Maggie noted that there was movement on the other side, tossed the grenade without hesitation, and immediately closed the door. In three seconds, there was an explosion, and simultaneously, the station’s fire suppression system went offline. It pushed a flashing notification to everyone in the area, but with no actual message attached to the alert. Another grenade was taken out of the purse.<br/><br/>“If the next stop is clear, we’ll take it,” Maggie said, “If not, we’ll take the one after that even if it isn’t. We’ll navigate our way to any available ship that can get us the fuck out of here. I need your help, and you’ll give it to me gladly, or the last one of these puppies will drop before the door opens, and then we all die. I hope I make myself clear,” she paused for a moment, “There’s also a thoroughly thought-out evacuation plan for situations like this, but we’re not going to follow any step of it because people who know about it might be compromised.”<br/><br/>The next door opened, and the increasingly impulsive ambassador readied the grenade on the first sight of movement. Then she lifted her handgun instead and put a bullet into whoever the sole person in the tunnel happened to be, just in case it was a hostile.<br/><br/>“Shit,” Maggie hissed and let the doors slide wide open. Now that the way was clear, she tossed the grenade into the elevator instead just as everyone was barely outside.<br/><br/>“I hope one of you knows the way,” she said and glanced at Toshimi in particular, “I haven’t exactly escaped from a high security station before.” Maggie took the first few steps on her overly loud heels and then added, “Not from this one, anyway.”<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>