I didn’t waste any time resting on my laurels. In fact, I was already retracting the other line and dragging the gun back to the right. Any second, Scipio was going to realize that—
A glimmer of purple to the left of me caught the corner of my eye, and I yelped, detaching the line on that side just as a volley of plasma erupted from the smoke, and threw myself to the right. The burst slammed into the opposite side of the gun, and I had just enough time to throw a second line and start to surrender my weight to it before the gun exploded, the heat and concussive force physically changing my trajectory.
I cried out as the world spun for a second, and then sucked in a deep breath, my lungs begging for oxygen.
I immediately began choking on the smoke filling the air and took a moment to reach into my pocket for the black rubber mask. I hadn’t wanted to use it earlier, knowing that the mask would show up as a dark spot on thermal scans. My body heat would be difficult for Scipio to see through the plasma fires, and a black moving spot on his sensors would only give him a target, but I needed to breathe. The mask went on smoothly, and I took a breath of fresh air as I threw another line, knowing that every second I was still was a second for Scipio to target me.
I was two lash lines away from the gun behind me when another shot came for me, but it missed narrowly, and I could see my next target looming up ahead. It was swiveling toward me, but I was faster, and I slammed into it with both legs, putting as much force as I could into the blow.
It worked. The gun turned away from me—and toward the gun that was shooting at me. There wasn’t much time to aim, but the plasma burst was large. Hopefully large enough to hit the other gun. As long as the containment chamber was breeched, it would explode like the others had.
The gun jerked, firing a round, and I held my breath as I watched it. For a second, it was swallowed up by the black clouds now filling the room. Then another explosion rocked through the decimated Council Room, clearing some of the smoke long enough that I could see that the gun was still there, the shot having missed by several feet.
I gritted my teeth and pushed off the gun, expecting Scipio to take another shot at me, but instead I heard a static pop, followed by, “Liana, I’ve got control of the guns.”
“Rose!” I exclaimed, surprise rippling through me as I threw another lash. “I thought Scipio took you!”
“He did. I willingly copied myself before he could take me, so that a version stayed here. I thought you might need some help.”
I was descending when a serious concern hit me. “Rose, why isn’t Scipio stopping you?”
“He’s distracted. Now, hurry up. Three out of the seven humans in the other room are already deceased. You let me handle my sister.”
I dropped to the floor and landed in an inferno. The fires here raged, the color no longer purple but a bright orange that seemed to consume everything. I could see the door. The hole Dylan had been cutting was open and had been made wider by the plasma shots Alice had been urging Scipio to make.
I didn’t see any sign of the sentinels as I raced across the floor toward the hole, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing my gun from where I had stuck it in my belt earlier, and chambering a round. I only had seven left in the magazine, and I doubted that my little gun would do much against one four-hundred-and-fifty-pound death machine, let alone two of them, but my Knights were dying, and Sadie was going to make her escape. I had to do something.
I stopped just short of the hole and peered through the flaming wreckage to the scene beyond.
“Carnage” was the only word to describe it. The table in the center had been overturned—likely by Dylan, in an attempt to create cover—and smashed to pieces. Blood was splashed everywhere, along with the limbs and body parts of the Knights I had brought with me to help make the arrests.
A wet gurgle caught my ear, and I took a few steps forward and saw Dylan on her back, Emmanual Plancett straddling her. His hands were locked around her throat, the veins on his muscular forearms practically jumping out from under his skin with the intensity with which he was strangling her. She was grabbing his wrists, her legs and hips struggling beneath him, but I could tell she was losing strength.
Standing with its back to me was one of the sentinels. I couldn’t see the second one, but I couldn’t see Sadie, either. They were either hiding in a blind spot on the other side of the room, or they had already escaped.
It didn’t matter. I raised the gun, took a slow breath in, and then exhaled and squeezed the trigger.
I caught Plancett right behind his ear. The effect was immediate. He went limp and slumped to one side, tumbling off Dylan like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The blond woman jerked to her side, exhaling sharply, but then the sentinel was turning.
The red of the fire behind me turned the silver lines of its body crimson, and they glinted wetly, as if it were dripping rivulets of blood. The gold of its eyes flared.
“Target reacquired. Exterminate with extreme prejudice.”
Then it was sprinting toward me, exploding into motion faster than I thought could be possible. I backpedaled, my finger tensing on the trigger, my sights dead set on its eye. I squeezed the trigger, but the bullet ricocheted off the left side of its head.
I fired again, and this time it streaked along its cheek, creating a trail of sparks.
The sentinel raced toward me, drawing close enough that I could see my death reflected in its silver hide, and I clenched my finger around the trigger and squeezed again, trying to hit its eye.
Miss.
Another miss, sparks flying across the silver dome of the sentinel’s head.
Stumbling on something behind me—a burning piece of debris—I fell on my butt just as the sentinel stepped through the door. I scrambled back, checking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t about to crabwalk through any plasma, but was forced to stop when the fire coming from the walls became too intense.
I looked up toward the guns, and then back at the sentinel. “Anytime, Rose!” I shouted, my voice muffled behind the mask.
The sentinel began to run, taking great, bounding leaps across the floor, and I brought up the gun, and remembered how to pray.
The plasma shot caught it in the side just ten feet before it reached me, making me leap back in surprise. The machine slid a few feet and then dropped to its knees, the purple plasma clinging to its body. I stared at it, waiting for the metal underneath to melt away, but to my surprise, the metal only grew red.
“Is it dead?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet.
“I modified the plasma charge intensity so that I didn’t do too much damage to the sentinel. But Alice’s control over it was fried by the EMP that a plasma burst generates. It was a gamble, but I didn’t want to destroy it if I didn’t have to. I need a way out of here.”
That made sense. But it also filled me with unmitigated fear. “Rose, the last time you were in a sentinel…” I said, trying to keep the pain out of my voice as I spoke. I intended to say more, but that was as far as I got.
“I realize that, but Jasper and Leo have been working tirelessly to restore me to what I once was. I’m not going to hurt you, Liana. I intend to protect you. But I need your help. You have to hook the sentinel up to the terminal. And quickly. I’d prefer not to burn to death.”
Suddenly I remembered that the entire Council Room was burning down, and realized she was right. This wasn’t a time to argue. I needed to move—to start her download, and then go check on Dylan and Lacey. Get them all out, and then head up to the Citadel to help the others.
“Tell me what to do,” I said, putting my gun in my pocket and stepping toward the terminal.
5
I fumbled around with the bundle of wires I had just ripped from the back of the terminal, trying to ignore the fact that the room was burning down around me. Hot pieces of debris fell from the ceiling, and I expected one to hit me at any moment, while I fiddled around with the sentinel. And though I was wearing a fi
ltration mask, the heat was consuming too much of the oxygen in the room. The smoke wasn’t the problem; lack of oxygen was. I was starting to get dizzy, my mouth dry, but I had to focus.
“Green-and-blue wires,” I muttered to myself, reminding myself of Rose’s instructions instead of the worry that Dylan could be unconscious in the next room, and slowly suffocating to death in the smoke. Or worse—that the fire was spreading to her. A minute or two had already elapsed since I started following Rose’s instructions on how to download her to the sentinel, and at the rate the fire was spreading, I didn’t think we had more than three left before the entire structure began to collapse.
I flattened the bundle of wires I had yanked out of the back of the terminal in my hand, fanning the slim things out, and squinted through my watering eyes. There—the blue one, right between the purple and the red. I grabbed it, separating it with a finger, and spotted the green one a second later and separated it, too.
“I’ve got them!” I gasped.
“Good,” Rose replied. “Now hook them into the circuits and get out of here. I’ll join you as soon as I’m downloaded.”
I nodded and turned to the prone form of the sentinel, and the exposed circuitry on its back. Prying the panel off had been the first step in Rose’s instructions, and frankly, it had been the easiest. The rest had been comprised of searching out the right wires and hooking them into the right port. And there were a lot of little wires, and a lot of little ports. Luckily, I now felt familiar enough with it (and driven enough) to navigate through the forest of previously connected wires to find the correct port, while twisting the metal ends of the wires in my hand into smooth lines. I slipped them in, smooth as butter, and slid down the small plastic tab over them, locking it in place against the node inside.
Then I got up from where I had been kneeling and began staggering toward the door, one hand up to try to block the intense waves of heat. I was sweating, but the flames were so strong that it was evaporating almost instantly, leaving me feeling like my skin was baking in the heat. As much as I wanted to take my uniform off to try to get some relief, I knew I couldn’t. It was the only thing shielding my skin and body from the flames. As it was, the skin on my hands and face felt ready to combust at any second.
I made it to the door and threw myself through the hole, which was barely visible through the flames shooting up around it, the tips of them reaching toward the ceiling above. The fire had spread into this room, too, through the walls of the chamber room, but I was relieved to see that Dylan was slowly dragging herself toward the door leading out.
I moved to her, knelt down behind her, and put a hand on her back, intent on helping her up. The girl gave a hoarse shout of surprise and flipped onto her side, one hand balling up in a fist.
“It’s me!” I gasped through the mask, holding my hand up. “C’mon!”
She blinked and then nodded and threw one arm over my shoulders so that I could pull her up. I grunted under her weight—she wasn’t fat, by any definition of the word, but she was muscular compared to me—and began moving to the door that led to the outside world.
Smoke was pouring through a gap in the door, and as I shoved Dylan through, I realized it had been torn open. The locking mechanisms had been shattered by something pushing against it. This must have been how the sentinel and Sadie escaped the room, then—and that put me immediately on guard as we stepped out. I worried that they were still lurking outside in wait. Or worse, that Sage had managed to send more sentinels. But there wasn’t anywhere else for us to go, and I still had to find Lacey to see how she was doing. So we had to risk it.
Even though it had been morning when I entered, the world outside was now in shadow. All the lights were off, leaving the entire Tower dark except for the angry red-orange of the fire behind us, and the eerie blue glow of the Core, telling me power was still going there. It cast dancing shadows against the columns in front of us and flashed bright crimson on the streams that surrounded the Council Room, even lighting up the edges of the forest that comprised the grounds. My heart pounded as I realized this was it. I was looking at one of my darkest fears realized—it was Requiem Day. Only now I understood the true purpose of it, and what was at stake.
I searched the shadows for several seconds, finding the abundance of them overwhelming, and then decided to take us around the building to use the columns for cover, just in case Sadie and Alice were lurking up there. I pulled Dylan forward, ignoring her grunts and gasps of pain, and moved quickly, scanning the gaps ahead of us and then behind us for any sign of movement.
“They’re all dead,” Dylan gasped. “All the Knights we came with.”
“I know,” I said, spotting a bridge across the stream that encircled the Council Room. “I screwed up. I thought we had everybody, but… argh!”
I stopped mid-step, a wave of turbulent emotions threatening to overwhelm me. I wanted to scream and rant and rave. To hit something and destroy. But I also wanted to break down and cry. I had pushed to end this, to try to stop every legacy at once, and because of one stupid oversight, it had backfired colossally. Thanks to me, Sage had been forced into accelerating his plans—again. But this time it was much worse. He seemed to know and have everything he needed. Except for Leo. And if he reached him, then it would be over for all of us.
It was my responsibility, my mistake, and I had to fix it.
“Liana.” Dylan coughed, and I blinked and looked at her only to find her giving me a fierce look. “Your fault or not, we need a plan. I need a medical kit, and then we have to—”
“Lacey has a medical kit,” I interjected, not wanting her to think I was breaking down. I’d done that enough in the all-too-recent past—and I was over it. “I managed to get her out, but she’s been shot.” I paused, took a deep breath, and then looked at the bridge. “C’mon, I left her nearby.”
Dylan nodded, and together we made our way down the handful of steps and across the bridge. My head was constantly swiveling as the shadows grew deeper and darker the farther we moved from the fire, searching for any sign of Sadie or the other sentinel, but the area seemed deserted.
I did, however, spot Lacey lying on the ground in front of a second bridge, and moved toward her. I wasn’t sure whether she’d crawled there and passed out, or walked there and fainted, but she clearly needed more medical attention than she’d been able to administer herself. I pointed her out to Dylan, and within moments we were moving toward her.
I slowed to a stop and started to lower Dylan down when we arrived, her weight beginning to grow oppressive. The girl cursed as she settled down on the ground, baring her teeth against the pain.
“Sentinel stepped on my leg,” she muttered. “It’s probably broken.”
“I’ll look at it in a second,” I replied, holding my gun out to her. “Take this and watch for any sign of trouble while I check on Lacey.”
She stared at the gun in confusion, and I jerked it up, fired once at a tree—making her flinch—and then held it out with one hand. I hated wasting the bullet, but because Dylan had never seen one before, I needed to show her what it could do. “Trigger,” I said, pointing at it. “You just point this end at the person you want to see dead and squeeze this. And if you see a sentinel with purple eyes, don’t fire. She’s our friend.”
“Our friend?” she spluttered. “Liana, what is going on?”
I ignored her question to focus on Lacey for a second, grabbing her shoulder to turn her over onto her side. She groaned loudly as I flipped her over, her eyelids fluttering.
“Liana?” she whispered, before giving a wet cough. “I don’t feel so good.”
“You don’t look so good,” I replied, unhooking her coveralls and pulling them down and her shirt up. She’d sealed up the wounds on her abdomen, but I could see dark bruises starting to form, deep purple against her skin, and knew she was bleeding internally. The bio-foam was great, but it didn’t work unless it had direct access to the damaged area.
L
acey had sealed the entrance hole, but not the internal damage.
“And you’re doing a lot worse,” I told her gravely, grabbing the medical kit to see what I could do for her with the medicine inside. “You’re bleeding internally. I gotta get you to a doctor, but the only one I know is Quess. We’re going to go to the Citadel.”
“Can’t,” Lacey panted, shaking her head. “We have to… Tony.”
“Tony’s gone,” I told her, grabbing a vial and plugging it in to the pneumatic injector. “Sage took him. This is a painkiller, and it’s going to make you feel a little better. Okay?”
She nodded, and I quickly pressed the injector against her abdomen, right next to the wound, and injected a dose. I did the same with her shoulder. I removed the vial and put in another one—one that held a medication that would slow a person’s heartrate considerably, to slow down traumatic blood loss, if I remembered correctly—and injected that into her neck. I finished her drug cocktail with a mild stimulant, to keep her awake and lucid.
She gave a shuddering breath with the last one, her eyes widening and becoming more alert, and started to prop herself up on her elbows, but I held her firmly in place. “Try not to move so much. I didn’t find any exit wounds, which means the bullets are still inside of you. You could damage yourself more.”
“Fine,” Lacey spat. “But we can’t go to the Citadel. Not yet. We need to get Tony first.”
I frowned as I pulled a medical scanner out and started running it over Dylan’s leg, using the X-ray function to search for broken bones. Lacey clearly hadn’t heard anything I just told her. “Lacey, I said—”