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Thanks a lot, guys! I'd put one of my usual long-as-hell speeches here, but it probably wouldn't be anything you haven't heard before. Honestly, I'm a little surprised people are still reading this book more than a year after its last update, but, hey, I'm not complaining.
Anyway, since we hit 1K votes on the book, I feel like doing something a little special. So here's an excerpt from what I've written of the side project so far. (Hopefully this will motivate me to actually finish it...)
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Later that night...
"Officer, I drop-kicked that child in self-defense!" [REDACTED] shouted on the other side of the hastily-barricaded bathroom door as she popped open her plasma pistol and replaced the battery cell inside. She flipped it closed again and heard a battering ram slam against the door. "You gotta believe me!"
"Remove the barricade and come out with your hands up!" a megaphone ordered from the hallway. "Let's not make a scene, now."
"You wanna talk about makin' a scene?!" [REDACTED] yelled back. "I'm not the one blockin' off the hallway with bombs and stuff!"
She heard another crash and saw the makeshift barricade start to come apart. "Shoot, shoot, shoot, I need a plan!"
[REDACTED] looked around the bathroom. She scurried around, hoping to find any loose junk on the floor or some other scrappy escape tool. When she looked in the last big stall in the corner, however, she found something even better.
"Sweet! A human-sized air vent!" she thought as she pocketed her plasma pistol, pulled out a screwdriver, and got to work taking the vent cover off. "I hope this won't be too suspicious once I'm out..."
The cover popped off, and [REDACTED] wasted no time jumping inside with a gleeful smile. Pulling the cover back on behind her, she started crawling away on her hands and knees just as she heard the door crash down and several voices storm into the bathroom. "Phew! Just in the nick of time, too!"
[REDACTED] quickly made her way through the vents and visualized the map of the ventilation system which she had memorized earlier that day. "So, if I was in the front girls' bathroom, then my escape vehicle should be...up here, up there, down there, down that way, left turn, right turn, left, right, then straight out of vent B and out door A. Perfect!" As she made her way through the vent system, she heard several clamors, alarms, and stampeding footsteps above her.
She tried her best to ignore them.
Once she had made her final right turn, she spotted the vent at the end of the air duct. "Yes!" she whispered to herself as she hurried—well, as fast as she could hurry on her hands and knees—to the vent.
CRASH! Clang!
[REDACTED] kicked out the vent cover and rolled out of the wall into a small storage room. There were three doors around her, one on each side wall and one in front, labeled "A", "B", and "C" from left to right. [REDACTED] knew that the other two doors led back into the building, so she turned left and gripped the handle of Door A. "Too bad, cops!" she exclaimed with pride as she flung the door open to the parking lot. "My guess is that they have no idea where I am—ACK!"
She felt a rough hand grab her by the collar and pull her out the door. In the blink of an eye, she found her face in asphalt. "Ow!" she grunted as her face burned from all the sudden scrape wounds. She looked up and groaned. "What the..."
Three combat shotgun barrels were positioned six inches away from her face, wielded by three officers with riot helmets and shields. The officer behind her holstered her pistol and shook her head with an annoyed sigh.
"Not even close, [REDACTED]. Not even close."
[REDACTED] rolled over and saw a disapproving, white-haired female face staring her down, arms crossed. She let out a sheepish laugh and tried to smile as she slowly raised up her hands. "Oh, hey, there!" she chuckled nervously. "I-I didn't know you were working tonight, girl! How've you been? It's been a while, hasn't it? Hey, by the way, how's, uh, what's-his-face? [REDACTED]'s brother? Oh, man, if I had known—"
The woman looked at one of the officers and gestured at their shotgun. "Shut her up."
WHACK!
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Hopefully that didn't spoil too much. I'm hoping this restores my motivation to work on it again. It's obviously subject to change, but this is how it is right now.
Anyway, thanks for 1K votes, guys! Y'all are awesome! I'll see you in the next one!
