Phoenix Rising (Dragon Legacy) by Previn Hudetz

across the street toward the real officer Huckleberry who sat asleep in his chair. She took out the metachip ring and threw the empty box at the sheriff, hitting him square in the chest. He woke up in a furor, perplexed and angry, but before he could see who'd done it, she was already inside the pub.
    There were shots fired outside, and Fox knew her plan had worked- bait and switch. She breathed a sigh of relief, but didn't take time to relax. She needed to find somewhere private, and fast. In her haste past the bar, Fox ran into a bulky bear of a man, spilling half his brew onto his oily shirt.
    “Excuse me,” she said urgently, already feeling the first signs of transition.
    The man looked at Fox with murder in his eyes and slammed his mug down on the bar.
    “You're gonna regret that!” he spat and pulled back his arm to take a swing at her, but two other men intercepted him.
    “Sorry, officer,” a gristly older man apologized, helping maneuver his large friend back towards the bar. “Bluko's been drinkin' fer a spell. He don't mean no disrespect to the law.”
    “Carry on,” Fox grunted with a nod, and quickly made her way toward the men's room, which was thankfully unoccupied.
    Her hands trembled as she locked the door behind her, and her temperature kicked up a notch as her immune system went into overdrive. A sharp pain in her chest radiated outward like a knife through every part of her body, and she sank to the floor in a writhing ball of agony, wedged into the space between the toilet and the wall on the cold, wet tile.
    Fox felt her teeth grinding as they shifted shape and position. Bones rearranged themselves under her skin, and her flesh pushed and squeezed itself back into place. Her tongue swelled up, gagging her before retracting enough to fit right again. She leaned to her right and vomited into the toilet. If there was anything that could possibly cause horribly debilitating pain to radiate within her, it was happening.
    Then, all of a sudden, the grueling ordeal was over, and Fox was trembling on the cold floor. These unassisted flushes left her completely drained, but her focus returned to what she held in her clenched fist. Yes! The ring!
    Finally, in a place where no one was shooting at her, Fox held up her golden prize to inspect it under the flicking fluorescent light of the privy. “This better be what I came here for,” she muttered, and slid the ring onto her thumb. It instantly began to upload its precious information to her earbud. As the files rushed in, Fox was surprised by what she saw.
    It looked like she'd have to get herself to Altonas, a virtually uninhabited mountain-world. Her optical screen displayed the rotating image of her target, Raya Silverbane. Raya led a small dragon cult, and was beautiful enough to have been a real celebrity if that had been what interested her.
    Raya had what Fox needed...evidence that could incriminate one or more high-ranking officials in the Brigadier Empire. As someone who lived at the border of uncharted territory, Raya had been trading intel with some unsavory characters, and had apparently managed to sink her claws into something juicy. It was Fox's job to retrieve and destroy the intel, whatever it was. The credit being offered was princely, and strong evidence that whoever placed this job had some serious political pull. Fox used her earbud to place a call over her secure private channel.
    “Yes?” Turk's smooth baritone slid onto the line. Fox must have interrupted him doing something, and it made her smile.
    “Hey, just thought you should know we're still on for that next engagement.”
    “Really? That's great, baby. So you found the ring, then?”
    “Oh yeah,” she answered. “You could say that.”
    “Everything go smooth?” he asked.
    “Smooth?” she laughed. “Other than being shot up and having to flush out some Mayberry on the fly? Yeah, it went silky.”
    Turk laughed. “So a normal day for you, then?”
    She snorted.