by E L Strife
“Copy,” her voice crackled through.
A bullet whizzed over Tanner’s shoulder. He lurched out of the way, Cutter dropping back to the tarpaper in the other direction. Whipping their heads around, they found a man in dark clothing, a tattoo peeking out of his collar, crumpling to his knees on the far side of the roof. A handgun slipped from his fingers.
“He came up the wall,” Cutter rasped, silver eyes wide open. “That was her, had to be her!”
While Cutter jerked himself to his feet to patrol the roof, Tanner collected his e-rifle and drew the mic closer to his lips. “Tan skin, olive tank top is a friendly! I repeat, woman at six-three-five, is a friendly!” He hesitated, knowing he was going to sound crazy. “Assailants are climbing the walls!”
Chapter 37
PINNING HER SIGHTS on the building four blocks down a side road, Josie reset her e-rifle on her shoulder beside Panton. “That’s not who I’ve got!”
“Well, if you see her, don’t shoot her! She saved our butts!” Cutter stammered through their speakers.
Panton caught movement off to the side of one of the air conditioning vents on the roof. He leaned forward to squat behind Josie, readying the shotgun in his hands. “Company.”
“Understood.”
Gunfire popped over their wristbands. An ID flashed and darkened on their screens. A shepherd was dead.
“We need details.” Bennett’s voice was calm but urgent.
Another code pinged. “Not much fabric to their outfits, sir. The ones changing color. They have burn scars on their necks. Can’t identify the marking.” A shot rang out of another shepherd’s SI in the background. “I don’t think they’re all Kronos, sir.”
Scuffles rattled the coms followed by Azure’s booming voice. “Time to go.”
Panton scanned over the edge of the roof and out to the masses. A thick row of hooded figures was advancing on the stage where most were staggering away. He stood up to get a better look. Before them, climbing the steps, was a flood of Kronos in their typical layers of dark clothing, metal adornments and guns glinting aggressively in the sunlight. The ground level exploded with fiery shots.
Their wristbands illuminated with a double-flash.
Initiate: Rampart Alpha Three
Unknown Mass Assailant
He glanced at the messages dropping down on his screen. “They’re moving the Coordinator.”
“Holding for the shot,” Josie said.
A man’s confused yell played over their wristbands, followed by a gurgling cough, and a thump of something soft against something hard. The speaker swished and a deeper voice crepitated through. “Kronos are a pathetic excuse for Verros.”
The shepherd’s com chatter silenced.
“There’s a reason we kicked Krage out,” The voice seethed. “He can’t infiltrate a fucking preschool right.” Two blasts broke up his words. “We are Verros, Linéten, and we will destroy every last one of you for what you’ve done.”
Panton scoffed, watching hoods fly back in near unison, exposing pale skin stretched over bony skulls. They poured out from the crowd like angry albino ants. “What the hell did we do to Linétens?”
A cluster of Verros cleared the roof, bounding at them in a springy manner that reminded Panton of Linoans. Each drew a long, chrome cylinder from between their shoulders.
Panton lifted his shotgun and opened fire. “We need to go, Yalina! We’re surrounded!” He took out three, spraying flaming shot pellets across the rooftop.
“I have to get this guy! He’s following Atana and the Coordinator!” she protested. “I’m not letting her die after all that shit! No shields, remember?”
Panton shifted behind her. Arguing was futile.
He took them out as fast as he could, empty wad shells repeatedly kicking out of his ejection port. Panton watched a man’s body crumple from behind the A/C vent stacks. Then the door to the stairs. The roofline. “They’re all over, Josie. We’re out of time!”
Tanner and Cutter crested Panton’s periphery when the bullet entered his chest through the armor plates. The force knocked him back a step. Pain exploded in his side. The shadow slipped back around the stairwell.
Shit. Panton grunted, slapping a hand to his ribs. Protect Josie. He tried to lift his shotgun. Blood spurted through his fingers, and his fading strength made him slink to his knees.
Heat flooded his lungs, solidifying the air inside. He coughed. Blood coated his mouth in juicy iron, turning his stomach. He slunk to his side, dropping his weapon at his feet. Yalina.
Somewhere in the background, he heard a crack, and the body of a Kronos member filled his darkening vision.
…
A shot rang out from Josie’s e-rifle, tearing apart a sniper with a K smudged on his bandana. Pathetic excuse or not, Kronos almost took out our most important people.
Her wristband rattled with alerts of fallen shepherds in the building below and several others throughout the plaza. There was only one she could help now.
Panton spluttered a groan, coughing up blood onto the tarpaper. “I’m DOA.”
Panic flashed through Josie in hot waves.
Tanner lowered his smoking e-rifle, Cutter guarding his back.
“Josh?” She spun around, to find a ghost ducking behind a vent. Clearing the chamber with force and racking in another shot, she braced her arms on her knees and took the shot. Josie saw daylight through the woman’s pale midsection before her bony frame toppled over.
Blood drained from Panton’s side. “Through the armor,” he gurgled.
Josie reached for him as more Verros sprung over the edge, coming at them from every angle, fast as frightened deer, a mad craze in their eyes.
She dropped her e-rifle with a clatter and ripped her two SI units from their holsters. Using her pant legs, infuriated, she pressed the gun’s intensity dials against her thighs. The friction rotated both controls to their highest setting. Lifting them up with arms locked, her eyes narrowed, and the world around her slowed.
Her guns let out successive blasts of blue-green fury, taking out twelve more Verros, stopping Tanner and Cutter in their tracks.
Acrid clouds drifted up from the bodies, the breeze gently disbursing it opposite the plaza. Josie set her SIs down, bringing the world back into sync with the others. Dropping to Panton’s side, her hands moved to his.
Panton’s vest was drenched. The shine of his blood drained the rage, leaving her shaking with fear. He’d never taken such a devastating hit in all their years of service together. Desperately looking to her teammates for guidance, she caught fast moving chrome behind them. “On your six!”
Chapter 38
“SHEPHERDS DOWN!”
Atana, Azure, and Bennett escorted the Coordinator under cover, a team of guards breaking away from the streets at her signal. Shots went off in buildings all around the plaza, leaving the civilians herded up like frantic sheep. Sirens blared, and people screamed as the mob swarmed.
Jogging over, his SI palmed inside tight fingers, Lavrion waved his free hand at the flashing screen on his wrist. “Mercy is reading the most hits. I’m going to help!”
Drawing her SIs, Atana turned back to Bennett and Azure. “I’m covering!”
“Copy. Moving to a secure site.” Bennett pressed a hand to the Coordinator’s back, an SI outstretched as he led them away. Azure’s glowing shield flickered to life around the three of them. Command had denied use of their unusual skills. With the Coordinator’s permission, they had agreed on an exception. If they had to separate due to an attack and the plaza was in stampede mode, they wouldn’t risk losing more assets.
Together, Atana and Lavrion climbed the stretch of low steps, weaving between fleeing civilians as they tracked down the injured.
Sharp, flickering light made Atana look.
Leaping up in front of Lavrion without a second thought, she lifted an SI and scattered the circular blades in a burst of aqua fire. “Go.”
Lavrion scrambled fas
ter through the bodies, stabilizing each bleeding-out sergeant and civilian, puddles of blood staining the heartless marble beneath. Taking only a few seconds at each, Atana pushed him on with a firm hand to his shoulder. Every time people ran by, she watched for the color fade. She caught a pair when they turned, just inside the first floor.
Her arm lifted, and two, successive knots of fire from her SI knocked the attackers flat on their backs, one right after another, tearing the life-force from their bony chests and the weapons from their arms.
Lavrion hopped up and hurried to the next person, slowing then passing his position.
“Why not him?” Atana asked as he crouched beside a female shepherd holding a bandage to her leg. Her fingers were covered in blood, eyes peeled open in shock. Lavrion wrapped a hand over hers, never looking away from the injury. She choked out her appreciation, and he stood.
When he’d done all he could on the first floor, they continued up to the second and third levels, finding slices from blades, multiple gunshots, and a handful of shepherds dead on impact. Kronos and Verros were everywhere. Atana had to pace her breathing with her shots. There was no time between.
“A quick touch or no touch in a war zone,” Lavrion finally said at her feet, wiping his sweating face on the back of his sleeve. His other hand was occupied healing the side of a man’s head, his co-shepherd lying dead beside him, neck and hip sliced open and lying in dark pools. Puddles that had stopped growing.
Stealing a glance at him between shots, Atana noticed the creases of focus deepening on Lavrion’s face.
His pink, fair skin was speckling white. “Dim screens mean they’re too close to death for me to save them all. I must work on the ones I know I can save until someone else can get to them, or I will not have enough energy to spread out to help more.”
Atana trailed close when he leapt up and ran to the next, passed three, before kneeling at another, propped up against a wall. The woman clutched a mangled arm, her head rolling in slipping consciousness.
A man in dark clothing lunged out from a hallway, a handgun pointed at them. Atana took the shot, sending his ricocheting off the ceiling as he fell.
Someone else stepped out behind them, without a sound. Verros. She knew from the cold, dense aura overshadowing that space in her mind. Atana hunkered around the three and tensed, lifting her shield.
Clink. The impact of a blade-ball sent a jolt through her body and a ripple through her blue barrier. Lavrion flinched and looked back at her while he held the woman’s arm.
“Don’t worry.” She didn’t know why she said it, other than he appeared to be feeling a mix of concern and fear, and her job was to protect him, mind and body, like any civilian. Atana’s eyes narrowed, enduring two more hits as she repositioned an SI. “I do not miss.”
Dropping their cover, she fired, disintegrating a flying ball. The second flaming wad knocked the man flat.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered awake.
Lavrion was up again, crossing the hall and kneeling to another shepherd. “I can heal five or ten lives from near death or fifty to a hundred lacerations without resting.”
Atana was growing concerned at his paling color. “Last few and you need to stop.”
“We do not have time for rest.”
Another Kronos member dropped down from the far stairwell, black clothes rippling like a grim reaper’s cape. Atana squinted and raised her shield around them without taking a shot. She spun and lifted an SI in the opposite direction. Nothing. Her shoulders fell. Maybe they were waiting for the signal, the shot.
Lifting the other SI, she lowered the shield long enough to shoot the Kronos member then returned her focus to the other end of the hall. A Verros member peeked through a cracked door, a flash from a chrome weapon jammed in the opening. She fired three shots to be sure. Metal thudded on wood, and the body slumped into a pile.
“Hotel Sierra Med-Evac, Sierra Sierra Eight Three. Sergeants down! Mercy Building! Foxtrot Golf Two Five Seven on Level Five!”
Atana glanced at her wristband, her rushing blood hitting a wall in her heart. “It’s Josie—with Panton’s code.”
Standing from the waking shepherd on the floor, Lavrion sighed heavily, blond brows drawn with determination. “Take me to him.”
She canvassed him for a moment then nodded and led the way to the stairs. Taking them two at a time, Atana rammed through the door and onto the rooftop.
A scrawny leg impacted Atana’s midsection, slamming her back against the concrete wall.
“Stay back!” Atana grunted from the force, hooking an arm around the ghastly knee. Thrusting her weight forward, she shoved the Linéten off its feet. SI still in her hand, she squeezed the trigger as they fell, punching a hole in its chest before they hit the tarpaper.
Rolling herself off, she scrambled up and motioned Lavrion onto the roof.
“He’s too heavy!” Josie squeaked twenty meters away. Her small hands pressed against Panton’s soaked ribs. His body convulsed with every strained breath. “We have to get him on his other side. His good lung’s filling up with blood!”
Atana and Lavrion scanned the roof as they crossed to Josie and Panton’s position.
“My job—” Panton coughed, sending blood spattering across Josie’s face. “Oh God, Yalina.” He wheezed between stained lips, his eyes flying open. “S-sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No,” he groaned. “I’m not r-ready.”
Blips of movement behind HVAC units put Atana on high alert. Tanner and Cutter were fast approaching Panton’s position, so she elected to make a move on their combatants.
Crouching, she crept along the structures until she was lined up for a clean shot down the length of the building. SIs outstretched, she spun out into the gap between the vents and the roof’s edge and fired, dropping five: one man in dark clothes, four slender beings in shirts and shorts reminiscent of molten, white chrome.
She peered over the side and found a Linéten climbing up the stone, his pale color washing through like bleach on colored cotton, his cloak drifting off in the wind. Three more had latched onto drainpipes and ornate trim, closer to Cutter and Tanner’s end.
One at a time, she sent their bodies, smoking, to the ground below.
The air vibrated softly in the distance, the flashes of reflected light causing her to duck.
A ball of spinning blades embedded in the HVAC system beside her with a thunk. The metal splintered off in all directions, a shard skimming her arm above the elbow. A hot sting crawled up her shoulder.
Atana peered out, drawing an SI. At the boom of a shotgun, the Linéten launched off the roof in a spray of blazing pellets. Shocked, she retracted her SI.
Cutter stopped behind the drums of exhaust vents. His steel eyes glanced over to check the ground and then swept to her, a glimmer of uncharacteristic worry pinching his face. Tilting his head, he suggested she follow.
Atana hustled around the steaming HVAC unit to find Lavrion’s fair skin had cooled to a pallid blue. His hands trembled atop Panton’s chest. Oh no.
She bolted to them.
“I’m almost out.” Lavrion’s sunken eyes lifted to Atana as she skidded to a stop at his side. “What if there are others? I can’t help anymore if I’m—” He paused to lick his dehydrating lips. “He’s got a chance but not if I let go.”
Chapter 39
BLOODY SALIVA DRAINED from Panton’s twitching lips.
Josie’s body quivered, his head braced between her stained hands. “Can’t you do the forehead thing and heal him?”
Atana knelt beside them, Cutter maintaining the protective boundary, while Tanner popped off shots through his e-rifle at Linétens climbing other buildings around the plaza.
Lavrion held the entry and exit, slowing the bleeding. “I’m sorry; it only works for telepathic species.”
Atana inspected Panton’s injury. Lavrion was going to run out of energy before Panton dropped out of the red zone. Many shepherds were d
ead, countless injured. Civilians hadn’t been the focus of the attack, but she’d seen several suffer the consequences of Kronos’s carelessness.
The Unveiling was a mess.
This was her fault.
The heat from her angrily curling hands gave Atana an idea.
She reached for the bloodied cotton and clothing beneath Lavrion’s fingers, hers gloved in blue sparks. “Lavrion, in a few seconds, I’m going to have you let go.”
“What?” Josie shouted in confused defiance.
Atana disregarded her, focusing on the fury boiling within.
“Josie, you will need to push the air out of his lungs and then breathe into him at my command,” Atana directed. With a wary glare, Josie shifted into position. “Sergeant Panton, I need you to breathe out then nod. Josie will put pressure on your sternum. No air, or your lungs might explode when I do this.”
Josie stammered.
“He’s going to die,” Atana said, assessing Panton’s flashing wristband. “Trust me, Lavrion, and let go, or you’re going to black out. Then we’ll have two problems instead of one.”
Her brother’s gaze fell hopelessly to the tarpaper, and he released Panton, slumping back on his heels.
Pushing the air out, Panton nodded.
Josie leaned her weight onto his chest. A drop of water fell to his vest from her face.
Sticking a calescent finger in the entry and exit wounds, Atana felt the moisture of his body wane. Panton squirmed, a vein rising on his forehead.
The putrid scent of burning flesh made every person groan and turn away except Atana. Her eyes narrowed, watching the bubbling and frothing tissue dry out. With aching slowness, she withdrew her fingers until they were free.
Panton convulsed, and his eyes rolled shut.
“Breathe.” Atana jerked her head at Josie, who promptly leaned over, pinching Panton’s nose and forcing air into his lungs. His wristband registered a pulse: twenty-eight beats per minute.
The breeze strengthened from the thundering Med-Evac transport setting down on the roof. Multiple paramedic crews leapt off. One team rushed to Panton’s side. A shepherd waved Josie back, situating the manual resuscitator in her place. Counting off, the team lifted Panton’s unconscious body onto a litter and strapped him down.
