“That’s not necessary,” Beck said, nodding after Alisa. “Why don’t we chat about it?”
Alisa worried that the campus police truck would be waiting for them when she and Leonidas came out of the library, but she hustled to catch up with him, hoping they would have time to find Alejandro and also hoping that she could do her research. Maybe security would be more likely to remember and hunt down the men, and she could slip unnoticed into the stacks.
Leonidas paused on the sprawling marble tile floor of the grand foyer and tapped his earstar, murmuring something. A few students using the physical materials check-out stations glanced at him, but unless one noticed his military jacket and Corps patch, he was not as strange of a sight as Beck in his armor.
“Which floor?” Leonidas was asking as Alisa joined him.
She glanced back toward the entrance. She had set off the door alarm, too, and doubted it was a good idea to linger so close.
“Basement Three,” came a hushed whisper that she could barely hear. “Two of them are blocking the door, so I can’t get back to the elevator. There are at least two more looking for me in here.”
“On my way.”
Leonidas did not immediately start walking, so Alisa assumed he had not been here before and needed to call up a map.
Glad to be semi-useful, she said, “This way,” and headed around the corner to where the closest elevators waited.
Several students were already waiting. When the chime dinged and the doors opened, Leonidas glared at them and strode inside. A couple of boys started after him, but he hardened his glare and flexed his muscles to make his looming stance even more intimidating than usual.
“We’ll get the next one,” one of the boys said, both of them scurrying back.
Leonidas looked at Alisa and pointed at the floor next to him.
She walked inside, but to be contrary, she stood on the opposite side of him from where he had pointed. Silent rebellion. He hit the button for the appropriate basement level and drew his destroyer.
Alisa eyed the big handgun, imagining the charges that would be brought against them if they shot up the library, not to mention leaving bodies on the carpet. “You think that will be necessary?”
She expected him to glare and tell her to leave the combat to him, but he looked down at the weapon and seemed to reconsider. He holstered it.
“Perhaps not. I don’t know who exactly is targeting the doctor.” As the elevator neared the basement level, he added, “Stay behind me.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, giving him a perky and completely insincere salute.
He glared at her. “Did the Alliance truly promote you to captain?”
“War makes for desperate times.”
He grunted. “I see.”
Leonidas stood to the side of the elevator doors as they dinged and opened, waving for her to stand against the wall behind him. She did so. She might be insouciant, but she wasn’t willfully stupid. Or at least, she tried not to be willfully stupid.
The lights were out. They shouldn’t have been. There were lots of archives in the basement, and the rooms weren’t as populated as the upper levels of the library, but Alisa had retrieved materials down here as a student and remembered lights.
After looking and listening for a few seconds, Leonidas eased out of the elevator. Alisa did not hear a thing, but he burst into motion and disappeared from her view. She rested her hand on her Etcher and held the door open, but did not step out. The area around the elevator lay open for several meters in all directions before the rows of desks and towering bookcases started up. She didn’t want to be exposed, especially when all she could glimpse were shadows and the vague outlines of the furniture. Dots of red emergency lighting lined a walkway on the floor, but nothing brighter came on.
Thumps, grunts, and a short broken cry of pain came from her right. The noises did not last for more than three seconds, and then it grew utterly quiet again.
Trusting that Leonidas had been the one inflicting the damage rather than the one receiving it, Alisa eased out of the elevator. He stood in the shadows to the side, two unmoving men in unremarkable clothing lying at his feet. Alisa assumed they were not dead, but she didn’t ask, not positive she wanted to know the answer.
The doors closed behind Alisa, the elevator being called up to another level. She found the basement room unsettling without the lights on, but told herself Leonidas could handle any trouble they came upon. She joined him, stepping over someone’s legs to do so. It was too dark to see much of the man’s face, but she doubted she would recognize him even if she pulled out the flashlight on her multitool.
After listening intently for a few seconds, Leonidas waved two fingers at her, gesturing for her to follow. This time, she didn’t salute him or make any snarky comments about his propensity for taking command and giving orders. She doubted they were alone down here, so she stayed quiet.
He followed the wall away from the elevators, around a corner, and past dark aisles of old books, the air having a musty and dusty smell, even though Alisa knew that robotic cleaners kept all of the library’s floors tidy. One couldn’t tidy up age. She had been told that some of the original books brought from Earth on the first colony ships were in Staton Hall, preserved and protected throughout the centuries. She was glad her people hadn’t bombed this building.
Something stirred down one of the dark aisles they passed, and Alisa jumped, reaching for her Etcher. Leonidas caught her wrist before she could draw it, his calloused hand rough against her skin, though his grip was not tight. He held up his other hand to his lips.
A soft beeping came from down the aisle, and two beady red lights swiveled into view a foot off the floor. Alisa let go of the hilt of her gun. It was one of the floor cleaning robots she had just been thinking about—she would have felt like an idiot for shooting it.
A thud came from deeper within the library, like a book falling to the floor.
Leonidas released Alisa and veered down the next aisle, heading in the direction of that noise. Alisa followed more slowly, careful to tread softly. As large as Leonidas was, he was good at running without letting his combat boots make a sound.
He turned at an intersection created by rows of bookcases, and Alisa lost sight of him. Though she didn’t want to make noise, she picked up her pace, having no doubt there were things more inimical than floor-polishing robots down here.
More thuds sounded, then something akin to a crash.
“Got you,” a man with a deep voice blurted.
Another crash came from the back of the room, and someone gasped in pain. Alisa hurried, trying to pick her way through the aisles toward the source. That had sounded like Alejandro.
She turned down an aisle, no longer trying to follow Leonidas since she did not know where he’d gone, and flashlight beams came into view, streaking about, cutting through the darkness. Someone was standing at the end of the aisle she had picked, his broad back silhouetted against the lights in front of him. Whoever he was, he wasn’t wearing a robe or a military jacket, and the way he crouched back from the mouth of the aisle made him look like a spy, or someone skulking and preparing a surprise attack. Alisa hesitated, not sure whether to backtrack and go down another aisle, or to rush forward and try to surprise him.
More thumps came from somewhere ahead of the man. Alisa could see something in his hand, but she wasn’t sure what it was. A weapon? Maybe a flashlight that wasn’t turned on? He switched it from his right hand to his left so he could reach for something at his belt. A blazer pistol.
Alisa crept forward as quickly and quietly as she could. The man slid his weapon out of his holster, lifting it to aim at someone.
She gave up on silence and sprinted the last five meters, tugging out her Etcher as she ran. As the man stepped forward, about to fire, Alisa clubbed him in the back of the head with the hilt of her weapon. Unfortunately, he did not conveniently crumple into an unconscious pile.
He grunted and whirled
toward her, his blazer still in his hand. She knocked his arm aside before he could aim it at her, then lashed out with a straight kick. The toe of her boot cracked him in the knee hard enough that it buckled. He snarled and tried to grab her as he went down, but she leaped back, adrenaline giving her speed she had rarely claimed in the army unarmed combat practices. As soon as her feet touched down, she launched another kick, this one taking him in the chin. His head snapped back, and he pitched to the floor. This time, he did not move again.
A second dark figure loomed into view at the end of the aisle. Alisa started to bring her Etcher up again, leaping back to give herself more room to fire.
“It’s me,” Leonidas said, crouching to spring away in case she shot.
Alisa lowered her gun and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself in the aftermath of the skirmish. Funny how she could maintain her cool easily while weaving among enemies and fighting for her life in the cockpit of a combat ship, but turn into a nervous mess during a flesh-on-flesh fight.
“Thanks for taking care of him,” Leonidas said, waving toward the unconscious man.
“It seemed like the thing to do.” Alisa crept past her victim, not wanting to be anywhere nearby when he woke up.
Leonidas removed the fallen man’s gun and searched him before following her out into a wider aisle that bisected the rows of bookcases. Alejandro leaned against a table nearby, his graying hair damp with sweat. Someone’s earstar rested on the table next to him, the tiny embedded light shining brightly enough to reveal a contusion on the side of his face and a swollen lip. Six men lay sprawled on the floor between Alejandro and Alisa. She allowed herself to think that Leonidas had needed her help and might have been shot if not for her distracting the seventh man, but she doubted that was true.
Alejandro pushed away from the table, looking shaky. Alisa couldn’t blame him. He had proven himself an able doctor when helping her and many others after the pirate ship incident, but he was no warrior. He seemed like someone who had gone through his whole life without anyone throwing a punch at him—or drawing a weapon on him. Until recently.
He stepped over two fallen men, one still groaning and clutching his belly, and stopped at a third. The downed figure wore a familiar satchel slung over his shoulder, Alejandro’s satchel. Alejandro did not hesitate to pry it off and return it to his own shoulder after peeking inside.
“A lot of people are interested in that orb,” Alisa observed.
“Yes.” His lips flattened into a line. “I’m not sure how so many have learned about its existence and that I have it.” He looked at her, his eyes closing to slits, his lips still pressed together in irritation.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” Alisa said, reading an accusation in that gaze. It was true that she had considered sending a message to someone in the Alliance government, but she hadn’t. Not yet.
Alejandro continued to hold her gaze, not breaking it until Leonidas finished removing the fallen men’s weapons and joined them.
He held out a blazer. “Doctor?”
“No, thank you.” Alejandro lifted a hand, refusing it. “I wouldn’t know how to shoot it even if I could stomach the idea of firing at people.”
Leonidas opened his mouth, but a soft ding sounded in the distance, and he did not speak, instead holding up a hand and cocking an ear toward the noise. Alisa was fairly certain that had been the sound of the elevator arriving. Had one of Alejandro’s assailants escaped and called down reinforcements?
She did not hear anything else, but Leonidas’s expression grew grimmer. He pointed at the flashlights. Alisa did not know what he wanted at first, but when he started turning them off, she got the gist. She called up the holodisplay on the earstar on the table, intending to turn off its beam. It asked for a passcode. She dropped it on the floor and ground it under the heel of her boot. The light went out.
Leonidas frowned at her, or perhaps the noise she had made.
“Just giving it my passcode,” she whispered.
Alejandro flicked off the last flashlight, and darkness returned to the area.
A touch came at her shoulder. Leonidas. He took her arm, linked it to Alejandro’s, then led both of them toward the back wall of the library, far from the elevators.
Alisa had not heard anything since the ding, nothing to suggest that someone had come onto the floor instead of leaving, but she had learned to trust Leonidas’s superior hearing, so she was confident that he had detected something ominous. She was, however, surprised that he did not tell them to wait there and go confront whoever it was. Her own meager martial contributions notwithstanding, he could clearly handle whoever these thugs were.
Yet he led them deeper into the library, through two more aisles of bookcases and to the back wall. The tiny red emergency lights lined the floor along a perimeter walkway, and Alisa could see him when he stopped to look both ways. He pointed toward a door lit with an exit sign that glowed a soft green in the darkness.
Alejandro walked that way without objecting, his hand clutched possessively over his satchel. Leonidas paused before following, tugging a small device out of his pocket. He tapped a couple of buttons, twisted something, then tossed it into the air. The tiny device flew off of its own accord. An aerial camera?
Alisa started to ask what he was doing, but he pressed a finger to his lips before she could speak. The presumptuousness would have irked her, but his face was grave in the faint red light illuminating it from below. He touched his ear and pointed again toward the door.
Silently, Alisa crept after Alejandro. He opened the door, and it creaked faintly. Alisa glanced over her shoulder, wondering if that had been too much noise. Who did Leonidas think was following them?
He shook his head grimly and waved for her to go through. The landing outside was just as dark as the library. Leonidas followed them out, closing the door softly behind them.
“We have a problem,” Alejandro whispered, turning his flashlight on.
“Silence,” Leonidas breathed. “He’ll hear.”
“Who?” Alisa mouthed.
His back to Leonidas, Alejandro directed his flashlight upward. This was an emergency exit, and there should have been stairs leading back up to the above-ground levels, but they were missing. A sign strung across the empty space read: Please use the west exit. East exit basement levels 0-2 closed for repairs. They were very closed. The doors were there, higher up in the dark well, but the metal stairs and landings had been removed for several levels. Alejandro’s flashlight beam bounced off the bottom of the landing three floors above. Thanks to the library’s high ceilings, it had to be close to forty feet. The stairs leading downward were intact, but Alisa had little interest in traveling deeper into the bowels of the library. Unfortunately, she doubted they could reach the west exit right now.
A holodisplay popped into the air at her shoulder, surprising her. Leonidas had his netdisc out, and it was projecting the view of a moving camera displaying the room they had left. Familiar dark aisles swept past, the view from above the bookcases. Alisa would not have guessed that Leonidas had spy equipment with him. Maybe he had intended to use it with whoever he had been making plans to meet later.
The camera slowed down as it neared people, a group moving away from the elevator, following one of the red-lit walkways. There was just enough illumination to make out military uniforms, not the plain black of the imperial army, but black highlighted with crimson. Alisa sucked in a breath. She hadn’t seen those uniforms often during her time in the military, but she knew them well. They belonged to—or had belonged to—the emperor, specifically, his imperial guard, bodyguards as well as a battalion of soldiers that worked closely with him, doing his work. Their reputation wasn’t quite as forbidding as that of the Cyborg Corps, but they were known to be very good at their jobs. These men all carried assault rifles on their backs and blazers in belt holsters. Apparently, the security guard hadn’t had any success keeping them out of the library, either.
A sing
le man not in a uniform walked beside the group, his neck thick and muscular, his dark hair cut short. Though most of his clothing was plain, he wore a jacket similar to the one Leonidas always had on. Alisa could not make out what the patches were, but his look alone was enough to make her whisper, “Cyborg?”
He nodded once.
“Someone you know?”
The cyborg in the video halted, raising a hand to stop the soldiers. He tilted his head, as if he had heard something. Them? Could he hear her whispers even across the library and through the thick metal exit door?
“No,” Leonidas breathed. “He’s young, probably a first- or second-year recruit. Nobody who served in my unit of veterans.”
“Does that mean he’ll be inexperienced?”
“It means he’ll have all of the latest technology, the best and most modern cybernetic implants,” Leonidas whispered, that grim expression on his face again.
“Oh. Does that mean he would win if you two fought?”
His chin came up, his eyes hard. “It does not.”
In the video, the cyborg turned toward the camera and looked up at it. He had hard, dark eyes. The flying spy device had stopped, as if sensing possible discovery, and probably was not making any noise as it lurked near the ceiling. That did not keep the cyborg from lifting his rifle and blasting it. The holodisplay above Leonidas’s netdisc turned black.
Leonidas stuffed his computer back into his pocket. “We have to get out of here.” He glanced upward—Alejandro had turned his flashlight toward the steps leading down, but Leonidas could probably see all the details of the missing stairs. His eyes were supposed to be as enhanced as his ears. “I can make that jump.”
“Congratulations,” Alisa whispered. “We can’t.”
“I have no rope.” Alejandro patted his satchel.
“What kind of researcher doesn’t bring rope to the library?” Alisa asked.