The waves of defensive drones were apparently endless, minimal in their design, with only two or four legs and a basic weapon each, sometimes with their ‘brain’ circuitry or batteries exposed, and often with some of the alien metal used in the tower’s construction as extra armor.

What was the distance they’d said? Thirty-one miles? Then this was an ascent that could require them to travel for thirty-one miles up.

With drones every step of the way. Ten or twenty on every flight of stairs, and the firepower she’d brought to bear with Knallen and Mushroom threatened to destroy stairs, making the climb more dangerous.

She dismissed them. Two others. Thirty-Eight and Gobsmack. Thirty-Eight almost immediately matched up with Leadletter, the pair of them shooting in concert, trading off drone executions.

An uphill battle, in a sense. Edgeless took the lead, not out of any specific intent, but because he was the only one who didn’t need to slow down, as he pounded the villains with soft, doughy hands that could batter but which could easily struggle to finish even a lowly drone off.

Voltrage, however, could collect debris and absorb incoming fire, letting his electromagnetic shield charge up, and then release it all in a burst that wiped out a whole flight or two of drones.

One flight clear. Four hundred and thirty more.

She dismissed Esclavage the Rack, and called up Goose Down. A supportive ex-heroine who could buoy the team. She would climb four hundred stories on her own, if she had to, but the shattered remnants of drones threatened to sprain ankles or cause people to fall.

With the lift Goose Down provided, they moved faster. With a bit of time, they got better at dispatching the drones. The things were fragile and stupid, prone to repeating the same behavior without learning from the destroyed drones. The feint and kick combination that worked against one worked against another.

Beyond the stairwell, she could see daylight and the rush of the heated, condensed air along the tower exterior, being swept up and channeled by the design of the tower.

Zappatore the Underminer.

The shadows she’d already called out felt the appearance of the fifth of their kind. They would feel a fraction weaker and slower. The net loss was much greater, but she did have Cleo, Voltrage, and Edgeless.

“Bombs?” she asked. “Traps? I don’t want the tower to self-destruct when we’re at the top.”

“Guarderò.”

“Grazie,” she replied, in her accented Italian.

The drones were numerous enough that they could come down the walls, now, or fall between stairs and land on stairs below, with just enough surviving the fall to be a problem as they attacked from the rear. Cleo threw a knife at one, knocking it over. Three more appeared at that same step a moment later.