by Kait Nolan
Weeping, incoherent pleading.
Harm was entirely too good at playing this part.
Not real, he reminded himself. Stick to the plan.
He still couldn’t get a handle on the fifth signature. It worried him, but the plan was fully in play now. There was no breaking role or all their efforts would be wasted.
“What’s it gonna be, Ryker?” asked Harm, holding out the gun like an offering.
“I won’t do it.”
Harm shrugged, shifting his grip in an instant and redirecting his aim straight at Ian’s chest. “Fine. I’ll just kill you instead.”
“No!” Marley leapt in front of him, a living shield.
A muscle ticked in Harm’s jaw.
Ian knew the gun was loaded. Knew he didn’t like this part of the charade, though she wore Kevlar beneath her hoodie. He stepped forward, gently setting Marley aside. “This is between me and your father. Assuming he’s willing to settle this like a man instead of hiding behind innocent people? How about it? A fair fight. Just you and me. No weapons. If I best you, these people walk away.”
Cocking his head in acceptance, Harm lifted the nose of the gun. “Fine. Have it your way. But a fair fight means no dematerializing, no slipping into shadow.”
He tossed an anchor cuff. Ian caught it in midair. The real deal. He didn’t like it, but he’d make it work. He strapped it on.
“You’ll have to put down the detonator too,” Ian pointed out.
Harm’s smile was an icy blade. “You’ll have to be careful I don’t press it accidentally, won’t you?”
Everyone watched as he laid down the gun.
Number five stepped out of the dark behind Marley. Ian was already turning as the Hunter reached for her, but he wasn’t fast enough. Hands snagged her, yanking her back, a knife pressed to her throat.
“No!” Ian shouted. He tried to dematerialize, his heart slamming into his ribs as nothing happened. The goddamned anchor cuff. Ian started to leap for them, to intervene, but the squad chose that moment to act, bursting free of the shadows.
Bullets ricocheted off of concrete pillars. Two squad members flanked Ian, cutting him off. The other two engaged with the false guards. Someone was shouting at Harm to drop the detonator. But he only had eyes for Marley, and those eyes had gone feline. He leapt for the Hunter, claws out.
Ian lost control of the illusion as Harm connected. Terror exploded through him, but the knife was knocked away from Marley’s throat. Still, the Hunter didn’t let go, and the three of them struggled in a deadly dance across the floor. Harm propelled them into a column hard enough that fresh concrete dust puffed up at the impact, but the Hunter still held fast, spinning away toward the far wall.
Shit, shit, shit. Everything’s going sideways.
Ian struck out at the nearest Shadow Walker, feigning a body shot and following up with a punch to the man’s jaw that snapped him back, careening into a column. All around him, fighting continued. The illusion hadn’t collapsed, it had taken on a life of its own, fueled by his memories of that nightmare mission. More illusory fighters poured out of the shadows, rushing the squad with kamikaze screams. Shots were fired. Ian felt his own body jerk as the bullets connected with the constructs and fell.
He had to pull the illusion back, regain control, but his mind was blunted with terror for Marley as she was jerked and dragged along in the Hunter’s wake.
Too much distance. Too much interference. Get the goddamn anchor off.
Struggling one-handed to remove the cuff, he fought his way to the nearest pillar. With focused intensity, he bashed the anchor against it, bruising his wrist. The damned thing didn’t budge.
Across the room, Harm buried his claws in the Hunter’s arm and yanked. Blood spurted and the Hunter roared as the arm gripping Marley was very nearly severed. Before she could pull free, tendrils of muscles shot out and the arm knit back together.
Fuck. It would be a Chamael. The goddamned lizard shifters regenerated faster than most people could kill them.
He couldn’t take the time to remove the anchor. He had to get to Marley, had to back up Harm. Whirling, spinning, jabbing, Ian no longer cared whether his opponent was real or fiction. Bodies fell and rose again, a seemingly unending tide of obstacles. And always, always, his goal seemed just out of reach.
Marley screamed, a high terrified sound that cut through the chaos and had everyone jerking their attention in her direction just in time to see her, Harm, and the Hunter, still locked in combat, go tumbling down the open elevator shaft. Ian lashed out at the nearest gun, jabbed an elbow into the face of its owner as her scream finished in a horrible, crunching thud.
Then silence.
“No!”
~*~
Terror squeezed its icy fist around Marley’s heart as she plummeted into the unending blackness. Her scream echoed in the shaft, bouncing off the walls, giving no clue how many more seconds she had before impact. Life didn’t flash before her eyes. There was no room for regrets. There was only the fear and the dark.
Pain sliced white hot through her calf and the sudden stop cut off her air supply and her scream. Something crashed far below, a sickening crunch of bone and sinew. But not her.
“Hang on, hang on, I’ve gotcha.” Her father’s voice, low and strained.
His claws dug into her ankle, holding her dangling some distance from the bottom of the shaft. Blood coursed down her leg. The agony of shredded muscle pulsed against her mind, threatening to drag her into unconsciousness. She had no idea what her father had managed to snag on the way down. She didn’t care. All she could do, as the blood continued to rush to her head, was listen in horror at the faint scrape and rustle of the Hunter at the bottom of the shaft as he slowly got up like the not quite beaten level boss of a video game.
Far above she could hear Ian screaming, an agonized sound of grief and pain that morphed into a battle cry.
Please don’t do anything stupid, she prayed.
Below, the Hunter’s eyes gleamed in the dark of the shaft and he began to climb.
“We’ve got company coming,” she gasped.
“Can you grab on to the cable?” he grunted.
Twisting her body, Marley realized the cables to the elevator ran about a foot behind her. Harm swung her back toward them, and her hands scrabbled.
“Got it.”
“I’m gonna disengage my claws on three. When I do, you’re going to swing down fast. I’ll come down the other side and grab you.”
Marley didn’t argue. The Hunter was gaining, his glinting eyes coming closer.
“One, two, three.”
Her body dropped in a rush. Another scream clogged her throat. Her father’s arm came fast around her, stopping her fall again.
“Grab on with both hands. Twist your good foot in the cable. Good girl.”
Her head spun as the blood rushed back out of it, but she clung to the cables as he instructed. She thought dimly of her alleged accelerated healing and wondered how long the miracle was supposed to take, wondered if it had been a one-off thing.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he ordered.
Before she could reply, Harm dropped, twisting in the air with feline grace to land on the Hunter’s back. She could just make out their silhouette as he rode the assassin back to the bottom. They fought with deadly silence, the only evidence of the conflict a series of quiet thumps and thuds, the faint impression of motion below. Or maybe it was louder and she just couldn’t hear for the louder fight above and the blood roaring in her ears. The coppery scent of it clogged her nose. Her own, probably. Her hands ached, beginning to slip as sweat and blood from her abraded hands stole her grip.
Not gonna make it, she thought.
“Heads up, pretty girl. Need a hand?”
Marley blinked, sure she was hallucinating from blood loss. Corin leaned toward her from the ladder bolted to the side of the shaft.
“Anybody ever tell you your timing is impeccable?”
<
br /> “The ladies say so all the time. Give me your hand.”
Curling her foot tighter in the cable, she stretched a hand toward him. Her fingertips brushed his but didn’t connect. She tried again and the hand still gripping the cable slipped. Her body jerked as she slid another foot down the cable, lost more skin from her palm.
“I can’t reach.”
He shimmied down the ladder another few feet until he was positioned below her. “If you can’t reach, you’re gonna have to jump.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Certifiable,” he agreed. “And you’re part cat. You can do this. You don’t, you’re gonna land in the middle of that fight down there.”
Marley glanced below but couldn’t make out if either man was winning. He was right. If she didn’t try, she was going to fall.
“You got this. C’mon.”
“You better catch me.”
“I am well aware that if I don’t, my own life expectancy will be cut very, very short.” He leaned out from the ladder, into the shaft.
Marley leapt, trying to kick off the cables, but her numbed limbs did nothing but flail. For a long, breathless moment, she was certain she was about to die. Then a hand closed around her wrist, and she slammed against the ladder, jarring her bones. The sudden stop wrenched her shoulders. She didn’t have the breath to grunt at the impact or to utter thanks as Corin dragged her up, fitting her between his body and the ladder.
“Can you climb?” he asked.
Her leg was little more than deadweight. But she couldn’t think of that now, couldn’t think of what permanent damage might’ve been done. If she didn’t get to her position in time to set off the charge, none of them would survive long enough for it to matter.
“I can climb.”
The minutes it took to make it to the next floor felt interminable. She couldn’t think about Ian fighting the Shadow Walkers or her father fighting the Hunter. It took every ounce of her focus to keep moving through the pain. As soon as they reached the ledge, Corin edged out on it and shoved his fingers into the crack, prying the doors open. She had a moment of paralysis as he held out a hand to help her across the gap. Another jump.
“I won’t let you go,” he said.
Nodding, she took his hand and leapt. Her momentum carried both of them through the open doors. As soon as she was through, Marley collapsed to her knees and pressed her hands to the dirty floor.
“You okay?” asked Corin.
“I’m alive. That’s more than I thought I’d be five minutes ago.”
He stripped off his shirt, quickly wrapping it around her bloody calf. Marley didn’t look, couldn’t. If she actually saw how bad it was, she might finally go into shock, and they couldn’t afford that. The grim expression on the shaman’s face was bad enough.
When he was finished, he held out a hand, dragging her to her feet. “C’mon.”
“What about Dad?”
“Right here,” he grunted, hauling himself through the open doors.
Marley staggered to him, falling into his arms. He was bloody and battered, but alive. He gave her a fast, hard squeeze.
“Are you all right? Your leg…”
“I’ll be fine. We’ve got to get into position.”
This was one of the lower floors. Lead lines made a grid through the hallways, connected to blasting caps that would control the sequence of the detonation. The setup was designed to take out the support beams of the lowest floors in one big blast. Gravity would bring down the rest. But that wasn’t what they wanted. They needed more time, so they moved through the hallways, cutting lines, disabling the caps. With her father and Corin more or less carrying her, they made for the stairwell. A giant 4 was painted on the wall. Only a few dozen feet to the hard and unforgiving ground.
So freaking close to splat, she thought. Using Corin for leverage, she examined the dummy charges she’d laid earlier. They’d been disabled, exactly as she’d expected they’d be. They were amateur, obvious, and put the squad at ease, believing they’d neutralized the threat. They moved down the stairs, following her instructions on reconnecting the hidden lead lines as they actually needed to be, disconnecting the junctions on the lower floors. More small cannisters of thermite were set to go with the blast, taking out steel support beams. It would be a fast reaction, but wouldn’t cause the seismic shockwave that would take out all the lower floors. The building would collapse, but more slowly than the demo team intended. And that would give Ian enough time to carry through with the plan.
Marley was certain her chemistry professors never expected her knowledge to be used like this.
“Okay that’s it. Call Diego. We’re nearly ready.”
Harm waited a beat. “We can’t get back up there safely. There’s no way to get a messenger to Ian.”
Marley’s hands fumbled only for a moment as she attached the end of the line to the battery case. “He’ll make it. He has to.”
As her father radioed the warlock, she made the last of the adjustments, completed the wiring.
A flash of green reflecting off the wall alerted her to Diego’s arrival. “Time to go,” he said, holding the portal open.
Marley pulled the real detonator from her pocket and glanced toward the ceiling where, somewhere more than twenty floors above, the love of her life was fighting. Stick to the plan. Whatever you do, stick to the plan.
Harm stood at the threshold waiting for her.
Sending up a prayer, she flicked open the cover and pressed the button.
~*~
Half mad with grief, Ian fought back to back with his brother. The Underground cell was so much larger than their intel had indicated, and they were in way over their heads. Nico was dead. He’d lost track of the rest of the squad. But they could still save the hostages if only they could break the enemy’s line. He fired off another spray of bullets, emptied the clip and ducked behind a pillar to jab in another.
Auggie thumped beside him. “I’m out.”
Behind them, bullets pinged against the column, adding more dust to the air that stung Ian’s eyes, burned his lungs. “This is my last clip. I can lay down suppressor fire. Can you get to the hostages?”
Auggie twisted, peered over his shoulder at the debris and body-strewn route to their targets. He jerked back as another bullet whistled past his ear. “Clear a path to the seven o’clock. Two of them went down there. I can snag their guns on the fly, have something to cover you when I get there.”
Ian nodded. The two slapped palms. “See you out there,” said Auggie.
The first rumble was like distant thunder. Seconds later, the shockwaves sent Ian to his knees. Auggie lurched into the column. The hostages screamed. Everyone in the room stopped for a long moment as more explosions sounded and the building continued to shake.
For an endless moment, Ian was lost to the past, the building coming down around him, his body shrieking in agony as tons of concrete became a temporary tomb and silenced the screams of the innocent. A second explosion ripped through his memory, snapping him back to the present, back to reality.
It was happening.
The charges were going off.
Marley was still alive. Relief was stronger than the next shockwave that rocked the building and cleared his mind. He had to retake control of this illusion. Ian surged to his feet as the floor shook. “Go! Go now!” he shouted to Auggie.
The other man dove into the fray as Ian sent a spray of bullets into the cluster of Underground soldiers behind the hostages.
In his mind, Ian began to reconnect to all the constructs, feeling their panic. He sent the additional members of the Underground he’d fabricated running for the stairs, abandoning their post. Auggie snagged an assault rifle off one of the bodies and hot-footed toward the hostages like a fullback on the football field as he shouted orders at the rest of the squad. The floor bucked beneath them like a live thing. Debris fell from the ceiling. The concrete pillars cracked, chunks crashing to the floor. An urban wa
r zone.
The hostages might have been fake, but the danger was real enough as Ian fought his way toward the others. He worked with them, falling into the rhythm of a team one last time, as they worked to free the illusory people from the ropes, the bombs. The fake detonator had gone down the elevator shaft with Harm, so they were able to cut the ropes, remove the very real explosives without problem.
“To the roof!” he shouted.
He brought up the rear as the rest of the team shepherded the hostages up the shaking stairwell.
“No good!” shouted one of the Walkers. “Door’s jammed.”
“We’ll backtrack to the next floor, try to get a line across to the next building,” said Auggie. “It’s lower than this one.”
Another explosion went off. Their crew reversed, bursting out onto the next floor, another of the thermite-laced levels. The building listed to one side now. Ian was slowing, fumbling and exhausted, his leg aching, and an assortment of fresh injuries wailing in protest as he followed the group to the opposite side of the floor. Someone shot out one of the wide picture windows. The sound of shattering glass was lost in the rumble of chaos below.
A second Walker shot a grappling hook at the neighboring building. The hook caught, held. They tied off the line and began sending people across. Walker. Hostage. Hostage. Walker. Hostage. Hostage. Walker. Hostage.
On the last hostage, the building shuddered and the line broke. The man swung down, down, slamming into the opposite building, but hanging on as the other Walkers pulled him up. Ian could see the hostages hoofing it toward the emergency stairwell on the other roof. In his mind, as soon as they hit the lower floors, out of the sight and sound of the squad, they would fade, the illusion having done its job.
A rumble and a shriek heralded the lower level supports truly giving way. In the distance, he could hear sirens wailing. The building trembled, a colossus about to crash like a slain giant. They had less than a minute while the sequential explosions traveled up to these final floors.
“Time to dematerialize, man.” Auggie sliced the anchor cuff Ian had forgotten about off his wrist. “I’ll see you on the other side.”