Reflexes rolled me out of the tank’s path. Judging from the impact when it crashed to the floor behind me, it must have weighed a couple hundred pounds, but that hadn’t stopped the creature from throwing it like a smashball.
They were strong.
Carlisle stepped to meet the one charging us. It threw a wild, clawed slash that probably would’ve killed him, but he pivoted in perfect control, slammed the creature to the ground on its own momentum, and pinned it by the arm while he liberally applied his stun baton to its neck.
After several seconds of growling and spasmodic convulsing, the creature lay still.
The one who’d thrown the tank roared an awful challenge, preparing to charge Carlisle. I gunned it down before it got the chance.
Several more chambers were popping open around the room now, their ghastly inhabitants stumbling out, shaking off their disorientation. Focusing on us.
“The lift,” Carlisle sent. “I’ll get the doors. Let’s move.”
I wasn’t going to argue. Especially not when the first creature I’d shot stirred and began pulling itself back to its feet, and the others shortly followed its lead.
Definitely time to go.
We ran for the mag lifts, Carlisle falling in on my flank as we reached the stairs. At the top, I spun to fire on our pursuers and cover Carlisle, but he was already there. I backpedaled toward the lift with him, firing off a few choice rounds, and nearly fell over backward when one of the creatures crashed to the platform almost on top of me from the catwalk above.
The swipe it took at my head, I ducked more out of luck than anything. Then my brain caught up, and I drove a high kick straight into the thing’s face.
It was like kicking a hardwood statue. The reaction force sent me staggering backward for balance, but at least the creature stumbled back too. I prayed for it to hit the railing and flip over to the floor below. Instead, it caught its balance and shook my chest with a furious roar.
I raised my gun as the creature lunged. Before I could fire, though, the creature halted in midair, caught by some invisible force, and was flung off the catwalk to the ground floor below with a strangled screech.
“Move, Hal,” came Carlisle’s voice.
I turned to cover the last stretch to the mag lift at a sprint, thanking Alpha that Carlisle had already pried the doors open. They closed as soon as I was through, and it was only then I saw that we were standing not in the lift car we’d rode down in, but the dark, empty shaft. I toggled my torch on and saw that the lift cars were all waiting several stops above now, probably at ground floor.
Carlisle looked down from his own inspection with a frustrated furrow in his brow and considered me. “How are you doing?”
I almost wanted to laugh—right until something hit the shaft doors with a harsh bang.
Trapped in a lift shaft. Bloodthirsty monsters pounding on the door. A private army most likely waiting above.
I swallowed. “I’m doing great. Just grea—”
Another something slammed into the door, followed by violent pounding. The lightsteel was starting to dent inward when a hum from above announced the enemies outside might be the least of our worries.
The mag lifts were descending toward us. All of them.
“Flowers and gropping sunshine,” I growled.
“Don’t move,” Carlisle said, his eyes already shut in concentration. “I’ve got it.”
Monsters pounding at our backs. Alpha knew how many hundreds of pounds of lift car speeding down on our heads. I did my best to refrain from pointing out that he’d better have it in the next two seconds and instead reached out, preparing to try to help him play catch.
There were a pair of tiny thunder cracks—which I hoped to Alpha were the motors blowing—then the brakes engaged, and the lift car lurched to a halt fifteen feet above us with a hair-raising screech. The shaft filled with the acrid scents of burnt rubber and electronics. I was about ready to cheer when the adjacent lift cars reached the bottom of the shaft on either side of us, boxing us in.
But at least we weren’t smashed.
Then another crash and the wrench of deforming metal yanked my attention to the shaft doors, and my relief evaporated. Pale red eyes appeared at the dented crack in the shaft doors, followed promptly by a frustrated howl.
“Up,” Carlisle said, moving into position to give me a boost onto one of the lift cars beside us.
I took the boost without question, scrambled onto the bare top of the car, and was just turning to offer Carlisle a hand up when he flew up from the darkness and landed beside me.
“Which floor?” I asked, readying my grappling module.
“James,” Carlisle said to his earpiece.
Silence.
“James? Phineas? Do either of you copy?”
I glanced at my palmlight. Nothing. “They’re probably—”
“Jamming communications down here?”
“And waiting with their entire guard core above,” I added.
Carlisle looked up. “We need to get to the roof.”
It was a deviation from the original exfil plan, and it might leave us in a tight spot if we couldn’t contact James and Phineas above, but I agreed. Better that than take our chances against Vantage’s private army on the ground floor. Our armor skins would theoretically stop at least a few slugs, but they’d still hurt like demons’ danglers, and it’d be a whole lot more than a few slugs we’d be dealing with if we played into their hands like that.
As if we’d needed any more encouragement to get moving, a pair of clawed hands snaked through the widening gap in the shaft doors below, blindly groping about for any nearby flesh.
To the roof it was.
The red warning light on the grappling module’s rangefinder was informing me we didn’t have enough line to make it more than about four floors at a time when Carlisle laid his hand over my gun and moved in as if to embrace me.
For a brief moment, I was just shocked. Then he said, “Hold on tight,” and understanding set in.
My shock barely had time to shift flavors before we left the roof of the lift car and rose into the open shaft above, propelled only by Carlisle’s will and energy. It was a bizarre ride, gliding smoothly upward through thin air, held in a tight embrace by a man with whom almost all my prior contact had involved one or both of us trying to inflict bodily harm on the other.
It struck me as laughable that I could actually manage to feel awkward about a hug even as we underwent telekinetic flight between a hostile army and a pack of bloodthirsty monsters. Then a door a couple shafts over and a few floors down pried open to admit an armored head, and the world righted itself straight back to Grop Town.
“They’re in the shafts!” the head cried. Then he seemed to process our flight. “They’re… They’re… Never mind!” The head disappeared and the doors began to slide back shut, but not before we heard, “Just get in the lifts, you steel sippers!”
The shaft filled with resonant humming, and within seconds, every lift but the one Carlisle had wrecked was arriving at the ground floor, ready to carry a good six or eight soldiers each straight up to join us.
Carlisle deposited us on a shallow ledge several floors above, reaching for his pendant. He paused, seeming to think better of whatever he’d had in mind.
“Scud,” he whispered.
I think it was the first time I’d heard him swear. It didn’t inspire confidence.
“This will have to do,” Carlisle said, extending a hand toward the door across the shaft. The door parted with a reluctant groan. A placard on the wall beyond declared we’d reached the sixth floor. “Get to the roof and hail Phineas and James. I’ll be right behind you.”
I tore my gaze from the lift cars. “Wait, what are you gonna—”
But he was already plunging down the open lift shaft, arms spread wide and tunic billowing in the wind. He did something that slowed his fall and sent one of the waiting lifts plunging downward as he landed on its neighbor.
“Go!” his voice drifted up to me.
I looked from him to the stomach-clenching drop between me and the sixth floor. I couldn’t just leave Carlisle to handle the lifts and Alpha knew how many soldiers on his own. But I probably couldn’t get down there fast enough to help, either. And none of it would matter anyway if our ride wasn’t there when we needed it.
Demons to the gropping wind.
I drew the pulse gun. Judged the toss as best I could.
“Carlisle, catch!” I cried, lofting the gun and its grappling module gently his way.
He looked up from the smoking wreck of his current lift car, and the plummeting gun shot to his hand like a magnet. I didn’t wait to see what happened after that. I steeled my stomach and leapt across the open shaft.
For a terrible second, there was nothing beneath me but empty space and the promise of a horrible death. Then the dark shaft gave way to bright hallway lighting. My feet hit soft carpet. I tucked into a roll and popped up, fists raised in challenge to a blessedly empty lift bank that looked to empty into administrative offices.
I drew my backup sidearm, took the first stairwell I found, and climbed at a sprint. Three floors up, James’ voice crackled into my ear.
“—uys hear me? Hello?”
“James! Sweet Alpha am I glad to hear your voice.”
“Hal! What’s going on? Are you guys okay?”
“Sort of. They must’ve jammed communications below. Tell Phineas we need exfil from the roof.”
“The roof?”
I turned the last flight of stairs and paused, speaking between panting now. “Small army problem on the ground floor. I don’t think we’re getting back over the wall without your help.”
“Ah…” James said.
“It’s fine,” came Phineas’ unmistakable rumble. “We’ll meet you on the roof.”
“Thank you, Phineas,” I said. “I’m almost there now, but Carlisle went back to slow them down. I don’t know if I should—”
“Don’t,” Phineas said. “You might just slow him down. Clear the roof and keep your head down, kid. We’re heading in.”
I bit back an indignant retort. Keep my head down? I’d just fought my way out a lab full of mutant beasts and they were talking to me like I was a damned child. Still, he wasn’t wrong about the plan. Carlisle had the grappling module, we needed to know our getaway route was clear, and I was only half a floor away.
Roof first. Head back for Carlisle after that, if necessary.
The first flicker of hope touched my chest as I cracked the rooftop door and the cool night air kissed my face, sweet and welcoming after the smell of slow death in the lab and the stagnant dark of the lift shaft.
We’d gotten what we’d come for. We’d escaped the monsters below. Now we just needed Carlisle to make it up here.
I pushed the door the rest of the way open, sidearm raised, sweeping the closest of the ventilation housings and other obstacles for any hidden surprises first.
Something prickled at the edge of my awareness. I swept my weapon around and was about to reach out with my senses too when I caught sight of the dark figure at the far edge of the rooftop.
My stomach fell.
Even wreathed in shadow, I was sure I knew who it was. The figure turned, a faint red glow lighting the darkness where his eyes should be.
“Well, well,” a smooth baritone called. “The rooftop escape, a timeless classic. And all alone, I see. Whatever happened to our dear friend Carlisle?”
“Phineas,” I murmured quietly to my earpiece, “sooner is better than later.”
Across the rooftop, Alton Parker stepped into the dim lighting and began stalking towards me with a murderous smile.
21
Showdown
“Say again?” James’ voice crackled in my ear.
“Alton Parker’s here,” I said quietly.
“Get out,” Phineas rumbled. “Find Carlisle.”
Watching the ember-eyed demon strolling leisurely my way across the rooftop, I sincerely considered listening to him. But I couldn’t. I had no idea where Carlisle would be, for one thing. If I went running trying to find him, there were any number of ways we could pass each other without realizing. And that was assuming Alton didn’t just put on a burst of raknoth speed and catch me before I even made it down from the rooftop.
Running from a predator wasn’t a smart idea. Not that not running was a brilliant idea, either. But I wasn’t completely helpless prey, was I? This was what I’d been training for—with Carlisle, and for all my life before that.
Whether the Sanctum realized it or not, I knew now that demons were absolutely real. And I was staring straight at one.
“I’ll handle it,” I said softly.
“Don’t be an idiot, kid,” Phineas said in my ear. “He’ll kill y—”
I muted my earpiece with a double tap.
That was probably the most idiotic decision of all, considering it might mean missing a life-saving bit of information in the next minute or two. But if I was going to survive, I needed to focus, and that wasn’t going to happen with a three-hundred-pound bear rumbling in my ear that I was going to die.
“Handle me, will you?” Alton called, still taking his time.
Alpha, had he heard that? He was still a good fifty yards away, and I’d been nearly whispering. But that hardly mattered. What mattered was surviving.
I’d keep him talking. Take my shot if I found it.
Scud, maybe I could throw him off the roof with telekinesis if I played it right. Of course, that would mean extending the sphere of my cloaking field enough to let Alton in, which was something Carlisle would’ve no doubt vehemently recommended against. But still…
An idea was forming in my head—a ploy to lead him closer to the nearest edge—when he rendered the plan moot and covered most of the remaining distance between us in an impossible thirty-some-yard leap.
His impact shook the permacrete beneath my boots. Demons below, how strong were they to be able to move like that?
“Tell me, Tyro Raish,” he said, flexing clawed fingers, “how exactly do you plan to handle me?”
I had no gropping idea. But I needed to keep him talking, so I went with, “Just like we handled your scaly children downstairs.”
That seemed to amuse him. “You know,” he said, shaking his head, “I was thinking I’d hand you over to Kublich when he gets here, but this is all starting to—”
“The General’s coming here?”
The world collapsed down around me, condensing on that one idea. Kublich. Here. Tonight? I squeezed my gun tight, the familiar rage creeping into my heart.
Alton Parker sneered at me. “That’s right, Haldin. Mommy and Daddy’s killer is on his way to finish the Raish tree. Does that anger you? Does it fill you with rage? Will you beat your chest like the rest of these ridiculous humans and—”
I raised my gun and shot him in the face. Or tried to.
I’d been hoping to hit an eye, figuring that was the only spot my suppressed, subsonic rounds might actually do real damage. But Alton jerked defensively at my motion, and my slug hit his raised hand instead.
“Gah,” he growled, shaking the crumpled slug free from his hand. “Petulant little fly. I might actually enjoy killing you with my own hands.”
His eyes were fully alight with scarlet demon fire now, and a change was coming over his face—the skin darkening, the angles shifting to something reptilian, like the creatures we’d seen below.
The sight flashed me back to the night of the attack, and the change that had come over Kublich as he’d torn my parents apart. Fear gripped at my limbs. Quickened my breath. Laughed away all attempts I made to talk it down as he prowled forward.
“They’re not yours,” I said, almost without meaning to.
That caught him off guard. “What?”
I barely even knew where I was going with it at first. But the words came. “Those hands you want to rip me apart with. They
don’t belong to you.” I shook my head. “None of this does.”
It was hard to tell past his increasingly alien appearance, but that seemed to genuinely amuse Alton. “No? I suppose it’s your Alpha-given right to rule this planet, yes? To harvest your crops and eat your livestock.” He chuckled and started forward again, showing me glistening fangs. “How perfectly human of you to condone your own morals simply because you are no longer at the top of your own food chain.”
I searched for something to say—anything to derail him a minute longer. But the talking was over. Alien or not, I could see it in his movements.
So I raised my gun and fired.
He threw his arms up and dove at me like a humanoid wrecking ball. I hit the permacrete and flinched at the sound of him smashing straight through the ventilation housing behind me. Alpha, he was powerful. But at least I was faster to my feet. Before I could think better of it, I charged in and threw a heavy kick at the recovering raknoth.
His head might’ve been a softsteel punching bag for all it yielded.
The glint of a red eye was my only warning as Alton spun into a savage backhand aimed at my head. I dropped into a backward roll, too off-balance from the kick to duck without falling.
Alton stomped at my retreating form hard enough to rattle my teeth through the permacrete.
I rolled to my feet with an angry raknoth bearing down on me, eyes ablaze.
Telekinesis crossed my mind, but there was no way. No time.
I ducked a brutal swipe and put a pair of slugs in each of Alton’s knees. Fine shooting. But not fine enough to drop a raknoth.
He threw his arms wide and let loose an utterly inhuman roar. The sound hit me like a thumper blast.
I took the best snap shot I could at his gaping mouth.
Judging by the cracking sound and the pained screech that replaced his roar, I’d gotten lucky and hit his fangs. The small victory, however, evaporated when the stairwell door I’d come from burst open and three guards rushed onto the rooftop, weapons raised.
“They’re here!” one shouted. “Tell th—”
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