Then, several things happened at once.

A muffled gunshot sounded, and the man before Celia fell back with a bloody hole in his forehead.

The gas bombs dropped to the floor with a loud clang, and the green vapour quickly filled the air, making the other guards cough violently. Still, they managed to fire their rifles.

Celia fell flat on her stomach and put on her breathing apparatus.

The gunfire was cut short, and the loud thuds indicated that the remaining guards had collapsed.

She waited a few seconds more for good measure and stood up. As the green gas slowly thinned out, Celia confirmed the three motionless bodies on the ground. But one of them was accompanied by a fast-growing pool of blood.

Celia scrunched her nose. "You shouldn't have killed him, Zed."

"He would have hit you," a calm, low voice, muffled by the breathing mask, replied. 

"I would manage if only someone would have moved faster," she grumbled, turning to Vash, who had just slid down the rope from the catwalk.

Noticing the accusatory glares from crewmates, he shrugged. "What? They are down, no?"

"Yes, but it wasn't exactly quiet. Let's hope the gunfire won't drag the Law Enforcers to our heads." Celia nodded to the other woman. "Make it quick, Lyra. I don't think we have much time."

"On it, boss!" The Disruptor strode toward big metal doors, and her long fingers quickly traced over several mechanical locks. "Oi, there's an additional alarm. How very nasty of them!" She slid goggles on her eyes and grabbed a tool that looked like a small pistol. When she pulled the trigger, a metal net splashed at one of the mechanisms, and the electric charge ran through the surface, frying the electrical circuit. Lyra waved the smoke away. "Now that will need a good fix to work again."

"Stop showing off and get a move on," Celia prompted, looking down the hallway, revolver in hand.

The Disruptor took another tool from her belt and started fiddling with several locks that clocked open. It took only a couple of minutes, but Celia felt all the hair on her body standing up. They were running out of time. She felt it in her gut. When the door finally opened, she rushed her crew inside.

The depot was a big square chamber full of wooden boxes with numbers on their sides. The only light source was a lone lightbulb in the ceiling, casting eerie shadows everywhere.

"So, which one has the weapons we are looking for?" Abner asked, rolling his moustache and looking around with a troubled expression.

"Look for the E101 code," Celia instructed, already going through the crates. "Make it quick."

They scattered to cover more ground, the flashlight dancing between the piles of crates.

"Come on, come on," Celia mumbled, moving to the back of the room. All sorts of weapons were stashed here, but there was no sign of the new prototype they were after. She was so close to calling the whole thing off when the glimpse of red caught her attention.

Intrigued, she went to the last row of boxes, where a smaller metal case sat on top with the lid slightly ajar. When she turned the flashlight to it, it gave an unmistakable red glow.

"No way!" she whispered, heart hammering in her chest. She gently lifted the lid and looked at a pile of beautiful raw red crystals.

"I found them!" Lyra called excitedly from the other side of the room.

Celia grabbed the metal box and ran to her companions. Zed was already packing the big, sleek-looking rifles into a steel-reinforced backpack. She grinned and raised her prize for them to see. "And I've got something even better!"

"Is that..." Abner's eyes widened.

"Yes." She opened the lid a fraction. "Unprocessed crystals. A whole bunch of them."

"And they just kept them here with all the weapons?" Vash asked with disbelief. "It's a miracle this place wasn't blown up to bits."

Before Celia responded, an ear-splitting siren filled the factory. The crew froze for a split second, and then panic flooded their faces.

"Quick! Grab the guns and run!" she urged her crewmates while stashing the crystals onto her belt's sack. The metal box was far too bulky to carry while running. "Go to the designated escape routes, and we'll meet once we get out of here."

The siren kept blaring, but now it was joined by the shouts and thud of heavy steps on the metal floor. 

"Come on! Pick up the pace!" Celia shouted, throwing the metal box to the ground. No point in staying quiet now.

"What the hell are you doing?" Vash asked when he passed her, looking at her stashed bag. "You know those things are highly combustive, right? You don't want to carry them around like that."

"Careful, or I will think you actually like me." Celia grinned and pushed the man towards the door. "Now go, get out!"

They finally packed all their bags and rushed out of the storage room, each running in a different direction. Celia lagged, waiting for her companions to disappear into the dark corners of the factory.

Zed looked over his shoulder. "I can stick around if you want?"

"Go. I've got it."

The big man nodded curtly, disappeared into the foundry room and left Celia to take her usual role.

Being a decoy.

The dull thud of feet came closer from the hallway, and Celia put her breathing mask back on, grabbed the small metal ball tucked into her belt and waited.

When the Law Enforcers rounded the corner, with their pistols raised, she threw the ball to the ground under their feet. It exploded with a loud crack, and the hallway filled with black smoke. While the officers shouted in surprise and coughed, Celia grabbed a gun from the leather holster on her side, aimed up and pulled the trigger. The rope shot out, and the grappling hook lodged into the metal railing on the above catwalk.

One Enforcer made his way out of the smoke and, trying to see through his tearing eyes, aimed a gun at her.

She blew him a kiss and pulled the trigger again. The gun pulled her up rapidly while the mechanism rolled the rope back into the gadget. Gunshots sounded, but all the bullets went wildly away from her. 

Celia swiftly climbed to the catwalk, detaching the grappling hook with a button, and ran further into the factory. She needed to give the Law Enforcers a little chase before she ditched them to ensure they focused on her, not the crew. As she expected, the shouts and gunfire followed her soon after. One bullet even came close, whizzing past and grazing her shoulder.

"My rotten luck," she mumbled. Celia got to the end of the footbridge and stopped. The Enforcers had already climbed the catwalk, and the whole structure was trembling under so many heavy armoured feet.

"Hold right there! You have nowhere to run!" shouted one of her pursuers.

"Oh honey, you are so wrong." Celia aimed at the support beam holding the ceiling and fired. When the grappling hook lodged securely, she grabbed the gun with her other hand and jumped over the railing, swinging to the opposite wall toward a huge window. Followed by shouts and gunfire, she flew feet first, shattering the glass and rolling on the factory's flat roof, and retraced her hooked line. 

Celia ran straight to the roof's edge without wasting time to see if the pursuers were following her. The blazing gunfire indicated that the Enforces had found their way to catch up with her already, so there was no way she could take her planned route involving a slow climb down the wall. She gritted her teeth and looked around for any possible grappling point. But there were no other buildings in the immediate vicinity, and her rope was too short of reaching the farthest ones.

Another bullet whizzing past her head made her run faster and quit deliberating. There was only one possible escape for her.

Down to the murky sea waters.

Celia ran to the roof edge and jumped.

The air rushed at her as she plummeted down at a breathtaking speed.

But before she hit the water, something bumped into her, and strong arms closed around her, breaking her fall. Her nostrils filled with fumes of burning fuel, and she watched as the water's surface moved away as they sailed back up. 

"You were supposed to scale the wall, not jump, boss," Zed complained as they flew in a wide arc to the little speeder boat waiting nearby.

"I got a little short of time." She shrugged. "Good to see that our new jet packs work."

But as soon as she said it, the bulky machine on Zed's back coughed, and the propeller died down, leaving them in ominous silence.

"Oh no," the man said, and they plummeted down to crash at the boat deck in a heap of limbs and heavy equipment.

"That was one epic crash landing!" Abner exclaimed, rushing to them and helping dazed Celia back to her feet. "I can't believe you pulled that off, boss!"

"And not got blown to pieces," Vash added, propelling the speedboat forward into the safe dark of the night, away from the factory.

Celia looked down at the unscratched bag of precious crystals on her belt. "What can I say? Lady Luck must love me."