Brevan
The lights died.
Total darkness. The kind that came from a local system override, not a building-wide failure. Every light in the office died simultaneously. The desk’s displays. The emergency backups.
Three seconds of absolute, silent black.
Then red emergency lighting kicked in. Dim. Intermittent. Casting the office in bloody shadows.
I burst from the maintenance shaft.
The panel clattered to the floor. I was already moving. The guards turned toward the sound but their eyes hadn’t adjusted. They were blind.
I hit the first guard low. Drove my shoulder into his midsection and used his momentum against him. He went down hard. His blaster skidded across the floor.
The second guard fumbled with his blaster, his face confused as he pulled a useless trigger.
Flinx’s lock. It had worked.
I didn’t give him time to fix it. I closed the distance. Grabbed his wrist. Twisted. The bones broke with a crack. He screamed. I took his weapon and drove the butt into his temple. He dropped.
Four seconds since the lights died.
Tarsus had moved. Not toward me. Toward Carys. His blaster pressed against her, using her as a shield.
“Very clever,” he shouted, his voice echoing in the small, quiet room. “But pointless. This building is locked down. Security is already mobilizing. You have nowhere to go.”
I raised the stolen blaster. Aimed at his head. The shot was possible. Tight angle. High risk. But possible.
Carys stood perfectly still between us. Her eyes met mine in the red emergency lighting. Brown. Calm. Waiting for my decision.
Flinx moved.
His synthetic black form darted between my legs and straight at Tarsus. Low. Fast. A blur in the red shadows.
Tarsus’s attention shifted. Just for a moment. His blaster tracking toward the new threat.
I fired.
The pulse caught his shoulder. Not lethal. But enough to make him stagger. His grip on Carys loosened.
She moved. Dropped low. Rolled away from him.
I crossed the office in three strides. Grabbed her arm. Pulled her up.
“Can you run?”
“Yes.”
Flinx leaped onto my shoulder, his claws finding purchase in my jacket as his weight settled against my back.
I yanked the office door open. The corridor beyond was quiet, bathed in the same pulsing red emergency light.
We burst through.
Now the alarms shrieked. Building-wide. Triggered by the unauthorized door breach and the weapons fire.
“Lock down the villa!” Tarsus’s voice screamed from the office behind us. “Seal every exit! Find them!”
The corridor stretched ahead. Branching paths. Service doors. Access panels. I’d memorized the general layout, but Carys knew it.
“The service tunnels,” Carys said, her breathing controlled. “Flinx has a route.”
“Lead.”
Guards appeared ahead. Two Krelaxians in security uniforms. They saw us. Raised their weapons.
I fired first. Two quick pulses. Both guards went down.
We jumped over their bodies and kept running.
“Left at next junction!” Carys shouted, Flinx already feeding her directions. “Then second right. Service access in forty meters!”
I followed her lead. We rounded a corner. More guards appeared behind us. Shouting. Weapons ready.
I fired backward without looking. Suppression fire to slow them down. The pulses hit walls. Equipment. One caught a guard and he went down screaming.
“Second right,” Carys said.
The turn came up fast. I took it hard. My shoulder hit the wall. Pain flared but I pushed through.
The service access door stood ahead. Reinforced metal. Biometric lock.
“Flinx!” Carys shouted.
The synthetic cat leaped from my shoulder to the door’s control panel. His data-ports extended. Connected. The lock’s indicator shifted from red to green.
The door opened.
We plunged into the service tunnels. Dark. Cramped. The walls pressed close on both sides. Emergency lighting was sparse here.
Behind us, guards reached the door, their weapons’ targeting lasers cutting through the darkness.
“Keep moving,” I said.
The tunnel branched.
“Flinx, status,” I ordered, aimed at Carys.
Flinx’s voice came from her comm, tinny and strained. She relayed it instantly.
“He says it’s bad. Tarsus is mobilizing his entire security force. Full building lockdown. Three-minute timer. His scans show eight of his elite guards at the hangar entrance. They know where we’re going.”
Three minutes. A blocked exit. And Tarsus’s private army at our backs.
“We’re trapped,” Carys said, her voice tight.
“Not yet.” I had to make a choice. “Flinx. The lockdown. Can you delay it?”
Carys listened. “He says maybe. But he’ll have to divert all power. He’ll lose navigation and sensors. We’ll be on our own.”
“Do it.”
Back on my shoulder Flinx’s eyes dimmed, all his processing power diverted to fighting Tarsus’s building security systems.
I grabbed Carys’s hand. “Stay close.”
The corridor opened into a junction. Four paths. No Flinx to guide us.
“Carys!”
“Left! The hangars are on the perimeter. Left!” she yelled, pulling me with her. She knew this. This was her plan.
We ran.
Guards appeared ahead. Six of them. Mondian. Armed.
I pulled Carys into a side passage. Pulses hit the wall where we’d been standing. Molten metal. Scorched stone.
“We’re pinned,” Carys said.
The guards advanced. Covering each other. Professional movements. This wasn’t the Krelaxian patrol. This was Tarsus’s personal guard. Mondians, all of them. Armed with military-grade gear.
I checked my stolen blaster. Forty percent charge. Maybe six shots left.
Not enough.
Another group of guards appeared behind us. Closing the trap. We were caught between two forces with nowhere to go.
Tarsus’s voice came through every speaker. Every comm. Everywhere. “You’re surrounded, Brevan. There’s no escape. Surrender the Regalia and I might let the human live.”
Carys looked at me. Her expression calm despite everything. “What do we do?”
I measured the odds. The distances. The angles. Two groups of Tarsus’s elite guard. Limited ammunition. A lockdown protocol counting down.
No good options.
But I’d been in worse situations.
I hoped.