The familiar hum of the drone chorus now became more staccato, like the wings of a swarm of insects approaching her. To this thought, Tasìa ducked down into the garden with a swift kick of her legs; she hugged into the loose black soil in a scramble to dig down into it as deep as she could plant herself.

A drone tried to mow her down in a one-shot maneuver. Its pilot sacrificed it like a Chessmaster sacrificing a pawn.

Tasìa rolled to get out from beneath the shower of metal fragments and chemical spray as it scattered debris from where it smashed into the wall in front of her.

A double set of metal loops holding a twin set of ball bearings from what was formerly the drone's gyros kicked up dust in her face. Tasìa was forced to wipe her eyes and forehead clear before she could focus her eyes on the remaining assembly of drones.

Though it stung her eyes to squint, Tasìa quickly determined from the simple patrol pattern and lock-step flight symmetry that there was only one pilot for all eight of the drones. He could only effectively manually override and control a single drone no more than one at a time.

This increased her chances of survival by a fair margin. Or, at least, Tasìa did so hope.

There was something else this discovery she made implied. There must have been an autonomous team of operatives working on their own who caused this latest lockdown. As the prison complex had eight drone pilots during any given shift. They could have easily pooled together with overwhelming force against her.

Tasìa had even met one of them. She had used her feminine wiles to question him with what must have seemed to the pilot to have been harmless flirtation.

Do you ever race the drones against the other pilots?

That question alone got her half the intel she needed to exploit at this very moment.

Today, with the specialist team on the grounds, the facility pilots would be working in a diminished capacity. Most likely on standby.

She needed to get going. Whomever it was controlling the drones would certainly lock another drone on to her position soon.

Tasìa made her way to the corner of the structural concrete wall beside a toolshed. Two feet of separation spanned between the two edifices. Tasìa leaned against the wall as she planted her feet against the wooden boards of the shed.

The drones would not be able to squeeze through the space to reach her if they tried another kamikaze attack. However, she would not be there for very long.

Tasìa pushed herself up the nine feet of the shed's height; she grabbed onto the roof. Shifting her arms underneath her, she poked her head out.

A drone scanned around from where it hovered above the bullet-riddled greenhouse rooftop.

She glanced over to the radio tower. She could not see its foundation where it set upon an annex to the medical center and, unfortunately, that was her intended destination.

Tasìa considered her course of action as she recalled how the path appeared from above, on the medical floors.

She had studied the surrounding layout enough times in her many visits up on the floors to get a good idea of what she needed to do from here, at her current vantage point.

Her memory confirmed Felicity was right; the counterlever top where the wall sloped would connect her to the annex if she got on top of it and she followed it out to its end on the far side of the medical center.

From there she could reach the Spore Isolation Unit.

The hum swelled in echo as it approached from her right side. Tasìa had only taken her eyes off the drone for no more than three seconds.

She got a glance at it before she had to react.

That was enough time to get the geist of its tactical approach, then plan and execute a countermeasure.

Tasìa spun ninety degrees as she dropped down into the crevice by two feet.

She pushed out on both the shed and the wall surfaces with her elbows and arms to stop her descent.

The tri-prop drone was above her, now, where her head had been. She had determined in her glancing study the drone maneuver was a feint, to scare her and force her to fall.

It was close enough for Tasìa to attack. She spun upside down and gave its metal battery pan a mule kick with a hard thrust of her twin steel-toed boots.

The drone shot up several feet, but its gyros could not correct for being forced off balance as it arced in a pummeling descent.

It volleyed against the greenhouse glass panes in a crash that shattered it.

Tasìa pulled herself up to the top cornice work of the wall. She stood up and had a look around. The lattice gridded supports that rose above the radio tower foundation was less than three hundred yards away.

Her target, however, was small. She had only four square inches of surface area to exploit; if she hit it solidly a few times, it would be enough to take the drones out of communication with the pilot and scramble communications for the rest of the complex.

With her .32 in hand, Tasìa dashed towards her target.

That being a cable fastener that connected two cables linked to the antenna that relayed back to the drones.

The fastener between the two cables was designed to serve as a one-way diode. It kept the signal clean from distortion feeding back into it.

Tasìa determined it was also the only part of the assembly that was not impact proofed. Anything less than a .50 would be useless against the cable, antenna, or the control panel where two heavy-duty locks dangled.

A caterwauling hum reverberated from several yards out.

Tasìa was forced to duck as another drone tried to drill into her back. It zagged it's flight angles before she could get a bead on it.

The .32 she now had in her hands gave her a defensive edge. It likely made the pilot more cautious; however, she was also more exposed to the drones attack as she made a path forward along the wall's cornice surface.

Thankfully, the cornice surface was more sheathed and smoothed than decorative so it did little to obstruct her path.

The drone was about to circle back around.

The aim she intended to place on the fastener support would be outside of Tasìa's comfort zone for the weapon she had in hand. She had little choice but to make it work, as she understood what the pilot had in mind for the next attack.

It was taking the pilot several more seconds to angle a flight descent that would cause the drone to crash its bottom plate into the cornice surface just a few yards before it reached Tasìa, like a skipping rock, before it slammed into her.

The maneuver, Tasìa realized, was intended to render any attempt at ducking on her part futile.

She used the extra time to her advantage. Tasìa dropped to one knee. Aimed her .32 in a tight grip at a bolt head that held the lattice grill onto a girder at her exact eye-level.

She shot it, aiming dead center. It hit the bolt, but nipped it on the bottom instead of in the middle.

From the much higher than usual recoil, Tasìa knew the round itself was not at fault. The bullet, as it was being fired from such a high-octane load-out inside the round, would fly even and steady for several hundred yards before it started its descent.

The fault was in the snub design of the barrel.

However, It did not matter. Tasìa aimed one inch above the fastener jacket when she shot it four times.

The fastener nearly ripped in two.

Behind her, the drone angled too steeply. It crashed and bounced up. Tasìa had to run forward to avoid the debris.

The flight patterns of the other drones grew more and more unstable until they each, one by one, dropped out of the sky.

Tasìa grew elated with a giggle she could barely control. It hurt her in her side when she laughed.

She grabbed her abdomen to ease herself, as she stumbled forward, nearly exhausted, across the annex roof to the lattice grill. She had a few more tasks she needed to complete in her goal to render the radio tower completely useless.

She merely had to climb eighteen feet up to reach a control box for the master set of cables. By taking out the fuse breakers and a schematic set of resistors, every cable would blow out spectacularly.

As she grabbed the side of the grill to rest a minute before she began her climb, Tasìa noticed the surface where she had touched the grill was smudged red in a half print of her palm.

Her mouth gaped in confusion; how had she missed feeling that until now? Her hand was wet with warm blood.

A small blood splotch formed slowly as it soaked into her shirt at her abdomen. Tasìa unfastened the bottom three buttons of her work shirt, and she lifted up the t-shirt beneath.

No wonder it hurt to laugh, she could see where a needle-like piece of shrapnel pierced through her skin.

It must have been pretty long and scraping against the muscular walls of her abdomen to hurt only when she laughed, Tasìa surmised.

It was her best guess, as her medical knowledge was limited. It could be fused into her kidney, and she would only know for certain when she began to piss blood.

Well, ain't that a bitch.