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"I hear you came up with this"

Cole turned Penny stood behind hiht as liquid steel

"Yeah," Cole said, beaet lifetime clever points for this"

Penny pouted "If it works" She appraised the box skeptically, one hand perched on her hip, the other reaching out to touch a vertical strut "You actually think anyone’s gonna risk their lives in one of these things?"

"Are you kidding?" Cole smiled at her "It’s flawless C’mere, step inside" He ducked under one strut and stepped over another, entering the cage of steel Penny followed She even accepted Cole’s proffered hand and allowed hih When they stood up, they found themselves in a box just two meters on a side, divided in half by two solid walls of steel, pressed up together Cole’s head had just enough clearance to stand upright

"A little tight to ju our legs Besides, we shouldn’t have more than one person in them at a ti vertically in the center of the box "You’ve got two steel plates facing each other, right? At the moment, they’re just tacked in place with a few spot welds There’s grav panels in each one, just like the panels in a ship’s decking"

He reached up and traced the wires co’s wired in parallel and with three separate power sources, just in case the box jule cell froh juice to drive the plates away frorav plates ju?"

"It won’t matter," Cole said "That’s how they’re built in a ship’s decking, anyway" He slapped the steel wall "Besides, that’s the whole point of the design We can’t ju in the way However, if these puppies beco all that rav panels fire It’ll create an empty box, noinside of a few seconds later"

"I’e, the plates fly apart and drag open a cube of empty space You jump in a second laterso now you’re inside a box of solid steel What next?"

Cole put his hands together and swished a perfect third angle attack "We pop our swords, cut our way out, and take care of the crew"

Penny ran her fingers back through her hair and surveyed the struc-ture thoughtfully She turned and looked Cole up and down "You thought of this?"

"Don’t sound so surprised," he said, grinning "Though, I do think I had soht? This is totally his sort of thing"

"No, I think it was froinary sword and slashed at her with an angle-two "Repulsion," he said, s close She reached around Cole, her face approaching his

"I, uh--"

"This is wired wrong," Penny whispered She pursed her lips, then grinned at hi He looked down at the wiring harness behind hirav panels were reversed, the polarity completely backward The panels wouldn’t have flown apart--they would’ve been perether! He looked around for a screwdriver to loosen the terminals, then decided to bend down and check one of the other two battery feeds

Salanced around the workshop to see if anyone atching As he conte two panels backward, he felt a chill run up his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling with danger He turned to tell Penny, but the workshop’s double doors were already swaying back and forth from her departure He looked around for Ryke, who had just been supervising another welder, when he saw the torkers in the neighboring cage peering up at hi on: another wiring harness

"Hey--" Cole said, standing up

The duo reacted as if shots had been fired They took off, running toward the double doors leading out of the workshop Cole crawled out of the cage and gave chase One of the workers shoved open the doors as the other linted in the fluorescent lights, twinkling as it spun through the air Cole felt the iistered A loud crack reverberated through his skull He fell to the ground, dazed, as an adjustable porench clanged to the floor beside him

Cole tasted blood in histhe inside of his lip like a swollen ridge of tenderness He shook his head clear, grabbed the wrench, and scas still resistant to keeping the rest of hiht--he shouldered open the workshop doors, one of which slammed into someone on the other side