by Derek Landy
He froze. She froze. Gradually, the world came back online.
“Sergeant Yonder,” China said. “Well, that makes sense. Who else would be stupid enough to assault a personal friend of mine while she’s in custody?”
The City Guard officer leaped out of his booth.
“Well done, officer,” China said to him. “Great reflexes.”
Cradling his bloody nose with his left hand, Yonder jabbed one of his unbroken fingers at Valkyrie. “Escaped prisoner!” he said, his words garbled. “Apprehend her!”
“So you weren’t going to shoot her on the spot, then?” China asked. “You weren’t going to murder her where she stood?”
Yonder shook his head. “Just going to take her back to her cell.” He spat blood and mucus on to his shirt.
“It didn’t look like you were going to just do anything.” China nodded to the officer. “Take Sergeant Yonder here to the Infirmary. Don’t let him out of your sight. When his nose is mended, put him in a cell. Valkyrie’s cell, in fact. I’ll deal with him later.”
“Yes, Supreme Mage,” said the officer, and took Yonder’s arm.
Yonder shook him off, glared at China, and then at Valkyrie. “You …” he said.
“Please,” Valkyrie responded. “Make things even worse for yourself. Please.”
A reasonable thought must have found its way into his head, because he swallowed what he was about to say, along with a good deal more blood and mucus, and allowed the officer to take him to the elevator.
China looked at Valkyrie. “You can’t help but make friends, can you?”
“People love me.”
The elevator door opened and a man in a yellow jumpsuit shot the City Guard officer dead.
Yonder cried out, scrambled back, as Valkyrie and China both stepped into different doorways.
A voice. “Go after him.”
Valkyrie peeked across at China, who held up three fingers. Valkyrie nodded. She’d counted three, as well. Three people in yellow – two men, one woman. All holding assault rifles, but not a type Valkyrie was familiar with. There had been no gunshot, either – just a snap of a hum and a flash of red and the officer had fallen.
The jumpsuits were prison-issue. Coldheart.
Soft footsteps, coming closer. China pressed the sigils on her palms and they glowed red before she moved deeper into the other room. Valkyrie stepped away from the door.
She watched the lead shooter’s weak shadow move across the floor, and waited for the barrel of the assault rifle to come into view.
She breathed out. Slowly.
The barrel came round the door and she grabbed it, raised it as she stepped to meet him, blasting white lightning straight into his chest. The shooter hit the wall before crumpling.
At the same time, China stepped out beside the second shooter and put her hand to the woman’s head, and a beam of red energy seared through the woman’s skull. She collapsed.
Valkyrie stared. “Did you have to kill her?”
“Yes,” China said, picking up the woman’s gun and examining it.
“You could have subdued her.”
China glanced up for a moment. “Someone wants to kill me. I kill them first.”
There was a grunt, and a cry of pain, and Yonder and the third shooter came tumbling into view. They struggled for the rifle. It skittered away from them. Yonder dived for it while the shooter tried pulling a pistol of similar design from his jumpsuit pocket. It snagged, and Yonder shot him.
Yonder lay back, blood still running from his nose, his injured hand held close to his chest.
An alarm blasted for all of two seconds before it was shut off.
Valkyrie frowned. “What the hell’s going on?”
China closed her eyes, accessing the Whispering. “They’re … everywhere,” she said. “Hundreds of them. All armed. Camera footage has them on all floors.”
“What are they doing?” Valkyrie asked.
“Attacking my people, mostly.” Her expression hardened. “Abyssinia. She’s here with the Teleporter, in my apartment with … Caisson.”
“They’ve come for you,” said Valkyrie.
“They’ve got the exits sealed, and most of our operatives and Cleavers are pinned down. The Cleavers’ uniforms don’t seem to be adequate protection against those guns they’re using.” China snapped out of it, her eyes open and focusing on the rifle in her hands. “We can’t let these get out. A weapon that can take down Cleavers with one shot could mean the end of the Sanctuary system around the world.”
Valkyrie examined the rifle she held. Lightweight, with a scope and collapsible stock. A foregrip but no magazine. There were two small sigils etched just above the trigger guard.
“No bullets,” China said. “Powered by magic. How did they do it? We’ve been trying something similar for years. We’ve managed it with some of the doors and elevators and various bits and pieces in the building, but to actually power weapons this way …”
“Can you stop admiring it, and tell me what the sigils mean?”
“Of course,” China answered, pressing the first one. “They’re settings for variations of density.”
The convict Valkyrie had blasted moaned and stirred. They watched him get to his hands and knees. Slowly, he stood, his back to them. He took out a pistol. It dangled by his side.
He turned, blinking stupidly, as if he was trying to remember where he was. Valkyrie held up her hand to blast him again, but China shot him with the rifle, a bolt of blue energy hitting him in the chest, and he wheeled round and collapsed.
Valkyrie snatched the rifle out of her hands. “Will you stop killing people?”
“I doubt he’s dead,” said China.
Valkyrie hesitated, then hurried over, checking for a pulse. When she found it, she stood, and glared again. “You didn’t know that for sure.”
“So blue is stun,” said China. “Red is kill. Good to know.”
“We have to get out of here,” Yonder said, picking himself up.
“You don’t get a vote,” China told him. She turned to Valkyrie. “We have to get out of here. Once they realise I’m not in the building, maybe they’ll teleport away and stop killing my employees.”
Valkyrie handed her back the rifle. “Any idea how to get out without being seen? Or killed?”
“The Detention Wing has a secret entrance for the transport of especially high-profile or dangerous prisoners. It’s a pod, big enough for eight people, that goes from the floor above us to just beyond Shudder’s Gate.”
“That’s our way out,” said Valkyrie. She picked up the convict’s pistol. “If we’re going to be using these guns, set them to stun.”
China frowned. “Our enemies will not afford us the same courtesy.”
“I don’t care how rude they are,” Valkyrie answered. “I care how rude we are.”
China sighed. “Very well.”
Valkyrie stuffed the pistol into her waistband and hefted the rifle. “Yonder, you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, making a show of pressing the sigil. “There. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” She walked up to him. “And if I think for a moment that you’re about to shoot either of us—”
“I won’t.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I won’t, though.”
“Let me finish,” she snarled, and Yonder fell silent. “Thank you. If I think for a moment that you’re about to shoot either of us, I’m going to break all of your other fingers, do you understand me? Every single one of them.”
“OK,” he mumbled. “I got it.”
“Good. How’s the nose, by the way?”
“It’s really sore.”
“It does look painful,” she said, and slapped it. Yonder howled, and Valkyrie left him to his howling and walked to the staircase door.
Once Yonder had quietened down again, Valkyrie opened it a crack. No bad guys. No sound. She stepped through, the stock of the rifle firm aga
inst her shoulder. She swept the staircase overhead, finger against the trigger guard. When she was sure there were no shooters lying in wait, she gave China the nod.
“Where did you learn all this?” China asked, joining her, her own rifle dangling.
“Skulduggery, mostly,” said Valkyrie. “Tanith, some.”
China shook her head. “They didn’t teach you this stuff. You’re moving like you’re military.”
“Just some things I picked up.”
“During your time in America?”
Valkyrie looked at her. “Were you spying on me, China?”
“Not at all,” China answered. “I was keeping an eye on you – as much as I could.”
“I really don’t appreciate that.”
“It was only for the first few years,” China assured her. “Just until I knew you weren’t going to be too lonely up on that mountain.”
The door opened again and Valkyrie turned to Yonder. “You’re on point,” she said.
He paled. “You want me to go first? What if there are bad guys up there?”
Valkyrie frowned at the question. “Then they’ll shoot you,” she said. “Obviously. But it’s better that you get shot instead of me or China.”
“It’s very much preferable,” China agreed. “Now hurry up, Sergeant. There are people being killed as we speak.”
Yonder led the way up the stairs a lot slower than Valkyrie would have liked.
She overtook him as he reached the landing, and crept over to open the door. She could hear shouting and gunshots – the Sanctuary agents returning fire, presumably.
“Are the cameras picking up anything nearby?” she whispered to China.
China closed her eyes, and a look of intense annoyance crossed her face. “They’re taking out the cameras,” she said. “They must have a tech mage with them. There are only a few left, and …” She opened her eyes. “All the cameras are offline.”
“Wonderful,” said Valkyrie. “Where’s the escape pod?”
“Turn left out of the door, through the next door, keep the wall on your right until you come to the statue of the Cleavers. On the heel of one of these Cleavers is a switch that opens the door behind you. The pod is right there. It’ll seal once we’re in, and we’ll be at Shudder’s Gate in seconds.”
“OK, then,” Valkyrie said. “Let’s go.”
She crept out, keeping to the wall, moving low. They got to the doorway. The sounds of fighting were louder here. She peeked round. All seemed fine.
Holding the rifle to her shoulder, she moved on until she reached the next corner. There, across a wide-open space, was the Cleaver statue.
She motioned to China to stay put, and peeked again. No bad guys, but this was such an obvious ambush point that Valkyrie found herself hesitating. Then she thought of the tune from the music box and it relaxed her – and she broke into a run.
Red bolts sizzled by her and she swerved away from the statue and slid behind the opposite corner. Three shooters, maybe more, and they all had a clear shot of anyone trying to get to the statue.
Unless something took their minds off it.
Valkyrie got to one knee, peeked, ducked again as they sent another barrage of bolts her way. She looked over at Yonder, and nodded back towards the statue.
Yonder understood, and shook his head violently.
She nodded. Once. Insistently. He glared – finally nodded his agreement.
Valkyrie popped up, firing, and Yonder broke into a sprint. He lost his rifle somewhere along the way, nearly tripped over it, but managed to keep going. He dived behind the statue and Valkyrie ducked back again.
She watched him feel around for the switch. The secret door opened behind him.
Valkyrie slid her assault rifle across the floor and he scooped it up, rejoining the gunfight. She took the pistol from her waistband, fired at the convicts as China ran across the open space. Valkyrie leaped up, still firing, and together they ran for the pod as Yonder jumped in ahead of them.
He turned, smiling.
Valkyrie screamed his name, but the doors slid shut a heartbeat before she collided with them.
China grabbed her, pulled her down behind the statue. She thumped her hand against the switch, but nothing happened. They looked at each other.
“Really should have seen that coming,” said China.
“What do you suppose the chances are of him sending the pod back to us when he gets out?” Valkyrie asked.
China arched an eyebrow. “Slimmer than me, darling.”
A bolt from one of those fancy rifles sizzled past them. The shooters were closing in, guns raised.
China clasped her hands, twisted them and pulled them apart, stretching a thin wall of sparkling energy between them. “This is usually enough to stop a bullet,” she said, and started to rise. A bolt of red went straight through the shield and she dropped down again, the wall of energy sputtering out. “Dammit,” she said.
“My turn,” Valkyrie muttered. She stuffed the pistol back in her waistband and pulled her magic into her hands, her fingertips tingling. The tingling turned to a steady itch and she straightened, holding a wall of crackling white energy before her.
She felt each one of the red bolts hit the shield – each impact was like an extra heartbeat deep within her chest – but the shield held and the bolts didn’t pass through.
China got behind her, and they started walking. China began slapping her back. “Your clothes are starting to smoulder,” she said.
“Yeah,” Valkyrie responded. “That happens.”
One of the shooters tried to outflank them, but he ran right into China’s line of fire. He dropped, unconscious, and the other two stopped shooting. They stepped out from behind cover, rifles still up, and followed Valkyrie and China as they backed into the corridor. The big one had a machete in his belt.
“Do either of you idiots know the trouble you’re in?” China asked. “Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?”
“Sure we do,” said the bigger one. “You’re China Sorrows and she’s Valkyrie Cain.”
“No,” said China. “I am the notorious China Sorrows and she is the infamous Valkyrie Cain. We’re more than you boys can handle, so do yourselves a favour: put down your weapons and walk away.”
The smaller convict grinned. “Naw, don’t think so. Killing her and capturing you will make us. After this, we’ll be up there in Abyssinia’s inner circle – making the decisions and reaping the rewards.” He nodded to his friend. “This is where we hit the big time.”
They threw down their rifles. The smaller one took a pair of brass knuckles from his jumpsuit – the bigger one took out the machete. Shadows swirled, and swallowed them.
Necromancers.
Valkyrie dropped the shield and spun, but they had already shadow-walked behind her, and the smaller convict gathered a fistful of darkness and flung it at China. It scooped her off her feet, slamming her to the wall.
The bigger convict wrapped his shadows around Valkyrie, pinning her arms to her sides and squeezing her legs together. The shadows constricted, and she almost toppled as the breath was forced from her lungs.
China got an arm free, managed to flick a dagger of red light into the bigger convict’s shoulder and he grunted, stepped back, the shadows that held Valkyrie dissipating. Valkyrie sucked in air and returned the favour, sending a bolt of white lightning into the smaller convict’s chest. He went flying, and China dropped to the ground.
The machete came for Valkyrie’s head and she lunged to meet the arm that swung it, the edges of her hands striking the big convict’s forearm and biceps. The machete clattered to the ground and he tried to pull away, but she had him now, and her arm was wrapped round his and she was firing elbows into his face. She turned his nose to mush and took him to the floor and continued striking him until he went limp.
She straightened. China was already walking away, machete in one hand, rifle in the other, and Valkyrie had to jog to catch up.
“The main elevator or the service elevator,” China said. “Both of which will probably be heavily guarded. Which leaves us with the stairwell.”
“So up we go.”
“I know Abyssinia. She’ll have a little squad of her best shooters on the top landing. Keep in mind that this section was designed to prevent a prisoner breakout. If they even hear a footstep, they’ll destroy us and there’ll be nothing we can do about it.”
“Is there a fourth option?”
“Not for me.”
“What does that mean?”
They arrived at a small hatch. China passed the rifle to Valkyrie before sliding the tip of the machete behind the hatch door. She started to pull the machete slowly back. “This shaft leads to an air vent,” she said.
Valkyrie frowned. “How big is the air vent?”
“You’ll fit.”
“I’m kind of claustrophobic.”
“You’ll be fine.” China glanced at Valkyrie’s shoulders. “Although it might be a tight squeeze.”
“I’m really not good with small spaces.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to put on all that muscle,” China said, giving the machete a final tug. The hatch door sprang open. China dropped the machete and took her rifle back. “You’ll crawl through.”
“I don’t like crawling.”
“I have an aversion to it also. But you’ll crawl through the shaft, until you reach the vent. Then you’ll fly.”
“I’m not very good at the flying thing yet.”
“Luckily for you, the vent goes straight up, so I doubt you’ll veer too far off course. You’ll need to stop at the third opening, then crawl along that shaft until you come to a section you can drop through. You’ll be in the car park.”
“And how are you going to get out?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said China. “I’m going to walk up the stairs after you’ve disposed of the squad of gunmen.”
