Chapter 55
Conin
The van bounces along the winding boreen. The road worsens the farther we go, instilling trepidation in my chest that can’t be placated. The farther the distance from Ezra, the more that fear grips me. Distancing from Atlas is certainly not helping, either.
“I thought you said you didn’t know Proctus’s location,” I say, exuding some of Ezra’s signature sarcasm.
“It wasn’t a lie,” Matt admits sheepishly. “There’s miles and miles of dead trees and forest. Without a GPS or signal, it’s easy to get lost.”
“Besides, Ambrosia’s the only one here with the coordinates,” Mafu says. He chuckles.
I turn to her, peeved. She doesn’t seem perturbed at all. “Why aren’t you a part of Leeanne’s elite, then?”
Ambrosia ponders this question for a minute.
“Because I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be where Matt was,” she replies.
I wondered. Matt’s face flushes.
“And I grew up with these guys. We know each other well, and work great together as a team.”
“Wait, okay. How do you know the coordinates and no one else does?”
“Esther’s my aunt,” she deadpans.
Shocker. I stare at her dubiously, but no one denies it.
Instead, the van hits an uncomfortable patch of road.
The mountainous area is dead, void of civilians and cars.
What turns out to be an additional half-hour stretches to feel longer, but we arrive at last, and at a warehouse no less.
Next door is a rusted, abandoned gas station and an old cottage down the way.
A pair of trucks are parked underneath the roof housing the gas pumps. Ambrosia is the first to exit the van.
I grip my HK harder.
“Voices low. Weapons and powers at the ready. We should be in the clear, but you can never be too careful. Mafu, check the perimeter.”
Mafu stalks off while Ambrosia motions for me to follow her and Matt, a suitcase in her grasp.
She raps a specific set of knocks on the warehouse door.
It opens a second later to reveal someone wearing a black balaclava.
Their eyes pierce through the cover’s slit, training on me before looking away and asking Ambrosia for the password.
She recites something I can’t quite hear, but we enter the warehouse shortly thereafter.
Inside is dark. In the center is a floodlight illuminating a stack of cargo and four other men. The leader, dressed apart from the rest, watches us impassively.
“Just you,” says Balaclava, pointing at Ambrosia.
She nods and steps forward, but Matt’s hand holds her back.
“Wait—”
“It’s fine,” she says.
He lets her go and watches with worry as she crosses the dark expanse to the man in the middle. Matt’s canteen is slung around his belt while I clutch on to the HK for dear life.
“You take a corner. I’ll take another,” Matt whispers.
We part ways. Outside, another vehicle approaches.
“What’s that?” asks the man.
“More Angelics. Don’t worry, they’re here to help pick up the supplies,” Ambrosia says.
They’re here in case this run goes awry.
Something tells me it might.
“Now, let’s talk money,” the man says.
I recede into the corner where the darkness envelops me. The sound of boots clatters beyond the warehouse’s thin walls, muffling all traces of voices and obscuring the discussion ahead. Even surrounded by nothing but shadows, I feel more exposed now than ever.
My chest hurts, my throat closes in, and my mind shuts off.
Matt is hardly visible from so far away.
“Esther discussed payment with you, I assume?” Ambrosia questions.
“She did,” the man drawls. Top hat, pedo-stache, glasses tinted black. “Fifteen million.”
Fifteen-fucking-million? Is she insane?
Ambrosia hesitates with the suitcase, then lowers it back to her side.
“We agreed on twelve million.”
“Fifteen million,” Pedo-stache hisses. “For all the trouble we go through to help you.”
“Fine,” she says. “Twelve million is all I have on me right now. We’ll wire you the rest.”
“We need full payment now. Esther knows how I feel about indirect transfers.”
Ambrosia’s quiet, too quiet, resulting in an eerie silence as everyone holds their breath, waiting to see how this will unfold.
“I’ll radio her. She can have it sent to you in seconds.”
“You and I both know there’s no signal here.”
Then why the hell did we come out here?
The HK rattles in my grasp. I’m grateful for the suit’s gloves because my hands would be sweating up a storm by now.
“We have a problem here. How do you reckon we solve it?” Pedo-stache says.
Ambrosia disservices him by not answering. Pedo-stache takes a deliberate step forward.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she warns.
He raises his handgun.
“Was that a threat?”
“No—”
“Fucking recidivists!”
Ambrosia swipes her hands in sweeping, opposite directions.
The crate of equipment in the middle remains mostly unscathed, but Pedo-stache and his men aren’t as lucky.
They careen through the air, landing brutally on the cement.
That’s when it starts raining hellfire from beyond the warehouse walls.
Bullets clang on metal, some creating sizable dents in the structure.
I fell to my knees, letting the strap of the machine gun loose, which was weighing me down.
The drum of my heart is louder than the chaos that breaks out.
Our supply mission crumbles before my very eyes.
Matt’s on his feet, moving with grace as elegant as the water he masters.
The water soars out of his canteen, hitting the nearest man to start getting to his feet.
He molds the liquid into a bubble, the same as he did that day in Eureka.
Mara flashes in my vision, her body crumbling to the ground, her venomous stare, the lightning crackling in between her fingers.
All of a sudden, I’m frozen. The HK hangs uselessly, draped over my torso. I blink. Lost.
“Conin, get the hell out of here!” Ambrosia bellows.
Her voice pulls me from my waking nightmare and I’m hauling myself up, machine gun in position.
She tosses another of Pedo-stache’s men to the roof, followed by a booming crash.
The man drops to the concrete, his bones squelching from the weight of the impact.
Blood pools at his head. Meanwhile, Matt releases the water, and the person he’s trapped falls, seemingly dead.
I have the instinctive urge to vomit—my feet glued to the concrete, my mind racing a million miles a second, and I can’t formulate a thought long enough to move into action.
A group of Pedo-stache’s backups files into the warehouse with guns raised.
I’m a deer in headlights, a perfect offering, but my hands instinctively react like they did on the interstate, and I’m suddenly firing several rounds.
Someone drops. The others are not yet aware I’m here.
“Ambrosia! Matt! Get outside!” Mafu screams.
The two Angelics dodge and weave while the men release a hailstorm.
Ambrosia uses an enormous amount of strength, pushing them aside.
Stray bullets gut the interior, tiny pinpricks of light illuminating their mark.
I narrowly dodge the blast of hail. Ambrosia urgently motions at me.
My body reacts and I’m at her side, racing out of the warehouse into the pines.
“Get back!”
We stumble to the forest floor.
Something aches in my abdomen. There’s a wetness inside my suit.
It blossoms fiercely, spreading throughout my midsection.
I turn on my back, reaching for the breached chink of armor, but I can’t reach, and instead watch Mafu mold the warehouse to his will—it crumbles into metallic heaps over Pedo-stache’s crew.
My peripheries are starting to blacken. My vision blurs. My senses numb.
“Conin!”
I close my eyes and there isn’t a world to return to.