A creaking sound groaned from the ceiling, sending a massive strut at her head. Alyssa’s scream mixed with the shriek of bending metal and bursting glass as the strut crashed into a horizontal support beam that wrapped the tower, tearing a gaping hole in the glass wall. Shards of glass sailed skyward amid flames.
In a daze, Alyssa staggered to her feet and stared at the gaping hole and the steel beam that had saved her life. The wind whipped into her, fueling the fire in the room.
Alyssa lifted an arm to shield her face from the heat and neared the fiery inferno that churned between her and the door. She staggered back, coughing, fumes burning her lungs.
“Dharr!” she called out. “Wen!”
No answer. She had no way of knowing if Dharr and Wen had survived the blast. But either way, there was no getting through. She was cut off.
The smoke was turning thicker by the second as the air flowing through the gash in the tower fueled the blaze. She coughed again, tasting ash and smoke.
Her eyes darted to the shattered window. She inched forward and peeked down. Her stomach clenched. The beams and ledges were wide enough to climb, but she’d never make it all the way down. She was good, but not that good. She looked up. The overhang to the rooftop was less than fifty feet up.
Charred debris swirled in fiery eddies as the wall of fire advanced. She had only two choices, stay and burn or try to make it to the roof. One meant certain death, the other gave her a fighting chance.
She crept out onto the narrow ledge.
Paul and Tasha rounded the corner into the vast atrium. Crowded with hundreds of Rathadi only an hour ago, it stood completely deserted.
Without warning, Paul’s vision dimmed, and his feet gave out from under him.
“Tasha!” he cried, crumbling to the floor.
Tasha glanced over her shoulder.
“Paul!” She doubled back and bent over him.
Paul looked up in a haze. Above Tasha’s head, flares sparked on the glass copula. What are those strange lights?
The beating of helicopter blades reached him an instant before the dome shattered into a thousand pieces.
A dark flash in his peripheral vision was his only warning as a black-clad body slammed Tasha to the ground and another covered him, protecting them from the glass shards raining down. When the lethal shower ended, the figure pushed him against a marble fountain.
“Stay down!” Paul recognized Tef’s voice from behind the visor. A second later, a dozen ropes uncoiled from the sky, followed by figures dressed in tactical gear, rappelling down.
Tef pushed off him and knelt in a shooter’s stance. She fired three rounds from her automatic rifle then ducked behind the cover again. One of the intruders slid down the rope and crashed to the ground with a thud.
A moment later, bullets strafed their cover. Paul pressed his body against the cold marble, trying to stave off the panic.
A battery of automatic weapons fired from behind him. Paul panicked, checking his body, but he had all his arms and legs. A moment later several thuds rang through the atrium as more of the attackers fell from the ropes. Paul risked a glance back. A dozen Hybrids fired in formation from behind a short wall. Tasha and the Rathadi who shielded her were retreating for the cover.
Tef grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back. “Stay behind me!” she ordered.
She moved back, shielding him with her body as they fell back. Mid-step, Tef staggered and collapsed.
“Tef!” Paul cried. He summoned his remaining strength and dragged her behind cover again. She lay on the ground, writhing.
He lifted her helmet. Her skin glistened with sweat and blood filled her eyes. She wheezed.
“Tef!” he yelled, grasping her shoulders.
She snapped back at the sound of his voice, seeming to recover for a heartbeat. She reached down and pulled a pen-sized cylinder from a thigh pocket, curled her fist around it, then drove it into her leg.
Her body contorted with another spasm, and she screamed. A moment later, her eyes regained focus.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Infection,” she breathed.
Infection?
He pointed at the cylinder. “Is that a cure?”
“No,” she said. “It boosts the immune system, slows it down…” she said between breaths, “and endorphins.”
Paul pointed to the attackers. “Are those…?”
“Pureans,” Tef hissed. She took another two breaths to recover then pushed to her knees and reached for her helmet.
“Let’s move!” she ordered.
They pulled back for the cover once again. Another salvo of shots opened up. Tef jerked as several bullets impacted her body armor. One bullet whizzed by Paul’s head and shattered a glass panel a few feet behind him. After what seemed like an eternity in the hailstorm of bullets, they hurdled over the short wall and collapsed behind cover.
Paul’s vision blurred. Tef winced. “Paul, your eyes!” she called out.
One of the Rathadi rushed for him as the others continued firing, holding back the Pureans.
“You brought this on us!” Heru-pa screamed and pinned him to the ground. Paul gasped for breath.
“Stop!” Tef yelled. “The enemy is out there, not here!”
“We can’t trust them!” Heru-pa fired back. “They brought the disease with them!”
“Let him go!” Tasha pleaded. “He didn’t do anything! I think it was me…”
Heru-pa released Paul and pointed his weapon at her. “You?”
“You don’t have the symptoms,” Tef challenged.
“I… I don’t understand it either, but Yuri Korzo, the scientist who works for Nephthys, he injected me—”
Heru-pa rushed Tasha.
Tef stepped into his path. “Enough! We have a job to do. We must hold them off until the civilians evacuate!”
Heru-pa tensed before backing off. He waved over another Rathadi soldier.
“Guard them,” he spat.
“But we can help!” Tasha cried.
“Do not let them get away,” Heru-pa addressed the soldier, ignoring Tasha. “I will deal with them later.” He stormed off.
Tef put a hand on Paul’s shoulder and followed Heru-pa.
The Rathadi soldier positioned himself at the wall and eyed them warily as Tasha knelt beside Paul.
“How are you?” she asked.
Paul swallowed, trying to hold back the bile in his throat as he lay on the floor, panting. He shifted his gaze over Tasha’s head when a flicker of a movement on the tower above the shattered dome caught his attention. A cold wash swept through him when he recognized the shape clinging to the glass wall. He pulled Tasha closer.
“We’re looking for Alyssa, right?” he whispered.
“Yeah?” she replied.
“I just found her.”
Tasha followed his eyes. “What…?”
Paul squeezed Tasha’s hand. “You have to get up to that tower,” Paul said. “I’ll never make it—” he glanced at the Rathadi—“but I can help you get there.”
Tasha nodded in understanding.
A moment later Paul screamed, thrashing his body.
Tasha recoiled. “Help him!” she yelled to the Rathadi soldier.
The soldier rushed to Paul and sank down next to him. He leaned over. Paul marshalled all the power in his shoulders and heaved himself at the Rathadi, pulling him down into a bear hug.
Tasha lurched up and into the corridor.
The Rathadi freed one of his arms and slammed his elbow into Paul’s ribs. What air Paul had left was knocked from him and pain danced in front of his eyes. The Rathadi pivoted and lifted his weapon at Tasha. Paul drove his leg into the back of the soldier’s knee. The Rathadi fired, but the shots went high, slamming into the ceiling above Tasha’s head. An instant later, she vanished into the stairwell. Paul breathed out, trembling. He glanced up—just in time to see the stock of the soldier’s weapon plunge at his face.
A
nother gust hammered into Alyssa as she scaled up the wall of glass. She fought to ignore the throbbing in her hands and the cuts from the rough edges of metal protruding from the building. Steel and glass were nothing like any rock she had ever tackled, but the drop beneath her was a strong motivator for learning quickly and for adapting her moves.
Soon, her fingers and feet found useful notches and grooves. She didn’t think about each action, she just kept moving. Before long, she was twenty feet above the shattered window. Adrenaline flowed through her veins, and she surged with body heat despite the frigid wind biting at her. She forced herself to keep her eyes above her hands, but the darkness of the glass and multitude of reflections confounded her vision, enveloping her in a vertical glass labyrinth.
Another explosion shook the building. Her right hand slipped, and she lost her grip. She somehow managed to find a ledge with the tips of her fingers. She clung to the wall, too afraid to move or breathe, her heart pounding like a gavel, sending cold shivers to every extremity.
She sucked in air and tried to calm herself, focusing only on her breathing. She erased all other thoughts from her mind and continued the ascent. By the time she reached the overhang for the roof her fingers were raw, her forearms hard as the steel beams she scaled. Breathless and trembling, she appraised the horizontal ledge above her with a pained stare. This part would be hard on a good day, with fresh limbs. She needed a break before challenging it.
She found a wide enough crack between two steel beams to lock off on her hands. She tried to rest by propping her shoulder against the building and letting each arm hang alternately until she regained some of her strength for the final move. She held on with both hands and swung her feet over her head, locking them into another crack on the overhang. Every fiber of her body screamed as she willed her torso to lift and surge beyond the overhang. She reached for the edge of the roof, adrenaline burning away her pain—and rolled onto the narrow ledge. Relief swept through her, chilling her to the bone like the wind that whipped into her body as she lay exposed on the cold stone, shivering, robbed of all strength.
She lost track of time when a cry of shock followed by a thud echoed from the other side of the short safety barrier that separated her from the roof terrace. She peeked over it just in time to see one of Nephthys’s black-clad soldiers crash into the ground lifelessly while another sprawled near the barrier, writhing. Horus covered the distance to a third soldier in a blur, seizing him before he even took a step. His head snapped, and his body collapsed to the rooftop.
The stillness that followed was interrupted by the sound of lazy clapping.
Alyssa froze when she recognized the figure emerging from behind the spire.
“Nephthys,” the word left Horus’s mouth like a curse.
“Brother.” The frost in Nephthys’s voice matched the icy glare from her golden eyes.
Horus lunged at her in a blur. Nephthys stepped aside, lightning fast. She drove a fist into his back. He staggered and fell to one knee.
“The millennia have made you nothing if not predictable,” Nephthys said.
“Why?” he asked, snarling.
“To repay what Thoth did to my people.”
“Your people?” Horus cried. “You are Rathadi! We are your people. You are Thoth’s blood!”
“No, Brother. My people are dead. Slaughtered by your hand. And tonight, you shall taste retribution.”
Without warning, Nephthys rushed him. The two thin scepters in her hands appeared out of nowhere. A series of rapid strikes and kicks drove him back. She kicked out with her right leg at his head, but he caught it and threw her back. She sailed through the air, flipping. Before she landed, he charged and connected a kick to her torso that sent her flying against the glass spire.
“I will not let you take her!” he growled.
Nephthys lifted her head, a trickle of blood flowing from her lip, but her eyes were victorious. “Her bloodline makes her strong. She will serve her role,” she said. “Alyssa will be my vessel.”
A bolt of terror passed through Alyssa, pure and undiluted. She rose to her feet behind the barrier, unable to take a breath.
“V-vessel?” she stammered.
Horus’s head snapped to her. “You should not be here!”
Nephthys’s eyes blazed with triumph. “So, he has not revealed the truth to you?” She rose to her feet.
“The truth?” Alyssa spat. “What do you know of truth?”
“You are the first female offspring in Horus’s direct bloodline,” Nephthys continued, wiping the blood from her lip. “Born of a union between your human mother—” she turned to look Horus dead in the eye—“and a Rathadi father.”
The words whipped into Alyssa harder than the wind. She staggered. “No…” she murmured, but couldn’t put any strength in her words. She reached for Horus. “She’s lying. Tell me she’s lying. She always lies.” A shiver of anger shot through her and her face hardened. “Kade is my father. My mother was a Hybrid!”
Nephthys sneered. “Your mother was human.”
Alyssa’s eyes seared into Horus. “You… and my mom?”
“He abandoned her when—” Nephthys started.
“Is this true?” Alyssa cried, bile rising up in her throat.
“I was only trying to protect her,” Horus uttered, his face caving. “I was—”
The soft metallic clink reached Alyssa’s ears an instant before Nephthys hurled one of her silver scepters. The thin rod snapped open, each end splitting into three thin blades. Horus twisted to avoid the lethal projectile. Nephthys closed the distance between them and pressed her other bladed scepter against his throat.
“And so it ends,” she whispered. “You shall die knowing that I have taken everything from you. Your Rathadi. Your daughter.”
Alyssa’s vision blurred, heartbeat pounding in her temples. She spotted the pistol beside Nephthys’s slain soldier. She picked it up and lifted it to her own head.
“Stop!” she screamed.
Nephthys turned at her voice. Her eyes widened ever so slightly.
“Call off the attack,” Alyssa said.
Two other Purean soldiers rushed onto the roof, their weapons drawn. Nephthys lifted her hand, commanding them to stop.
“Call off the attack, or you can wipe your precious vessel off this roof,” Alyssa said, trembling.
Nephthys’s lips curved into a smile that iced the blood beneath Alyssa’s skin. “We will make a formidable pair,” she said, and she pulled the bladed scepter away from Horus’s throat.
He moved beside Alyssa.
“You truly are fit to be my vessel,” Nephthys said. She spoke a word. Alyssa did not understand it.
Then her body was not her own as she watched herself draw the weapon away from her head and point it at Horus.
She squeezed the trigger.
Again.
And again.
Horus froze. He grimaced, confusion rippling through his face, before he slumped and dropped to the floor. Alyssa pointed the weapon at his head. Everything inside her screamed, yet she stood paralyzed.
“Kill him,” Nephthys said.
Tasha cracked open the door from the stairwell. She moved into the hallway, inside the spire that rose a hundred feet above her head.
The entrance to the roof was blocked by two huge black-clad figures, facing out onto the roof, their backs to her. She swallowed and tightened her fingers around the hilt of the fire axe she borrowed from the emergency box in the stairwell. Not exactly her weapon of choice, but it would suffice. She closed the door behind her silently. She lifted the axe, stalking to the two men. A couple more steps and—
She glimpsed the scene on the roof. Tasha’s body went numb, the axe forgotten. Alyssa, moving as if in a trance, stood over Horus at the edge of the roof, pointing a pistol at his head.
“Alyssa!” the scream left Tasha’s mouth. The men turned as one and rushed her.
The scream cut through the trance, filling Alys
sa’s mind with memories of a past life.
Her eyes found Nephthys, the woman’s gaze piercing into her…
…like the dagger that Nephthys presses against Anja’s throat.
“Give yourself up, Horus,” my sister says, “and your lover shall live.”
Anja stares at me, her chest rising in shallow, rapid breaths. Gradually, calmness replaces the fear in her eyes.
“No, Horus,” she whispers. “Not for me.”
Her gaze brushes my soul.
“Take care of our daughter,” she says. “Take care of Alyssa.”
She wraps her hands around Nephthys’s wrist and drives the dagger into her own throat.
“No!” the night fills with…
…Alyssa’s scream. She pointed the weapon at Nephthys and fired. The woman’s face contorted as the bullet struck her shoulder, spinning her with the impact.
Alyssa aimed again when she spotted the two black-clad figures in the entrance to the roof and—
Tasha?
She didn’t have time to think as they lifted their automatic weapons. She dove behind the short wall and pulled Horus’s lifeless body beside her an instant before the Purean weapons opened up.
19 Hong Kong
Paul pressed his body against the stone floor, cowering beside the two remaining Rathadi. The smoke churned above his face in the burning air. He covered his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow to protect his lungs from the searing heat. A racking cough shook through him. He lifted the shirt away from his face. Angry red spots covered the material. He pushed up and leaned against the makeshift barrier, breathing heavily.
He glanced back to the last remaining evacuation pod, waiting to be released and sent down the escape shaft into the underground, joining the others. The Rathadi soldiers slumped inside it, senseless, strapped into their jump seats.
Tef popped up beside him and squeezed off several rounds then crouched down again. The Rathadi had been able to slow the advance of the Pureans, but the illness and number of the intruders were overwhelming them. They had long given up guarding him, needing every weapon to hold off the attack. It was only a question of time before they were overrun. Heru-pa ducked out and fired off several precise shots. For some reason, he and Tasha seemed to be the only ones not affected by the illness.
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