Chapter 28 #2
The guards on the gate turn. One reaches for a radio. The shadows wrap his arm before his fingers find the button. The second raises a silver-loaded sidearm and I pin him flat against the fence post. Kael's wolves come over the fence line and finish both.
The roof guards. Two of them, rifles up, silver rounds glinting in the moonlight.
I pin the first flat against the roof surface with the telekinesis.
The second gets a shot off. The crack splits the air and the silver round sparks off the gravel three feet from Simone.
She doesn't flinch. She doesn't slow down.
Good thing they shoot like Stormtroopers.
Two Fae scale the building. I hear the impact. No more shots.
An alarm. High-pitched, electronic, cutting through the yard from the central structure. Someone inside triggered it.
"They know we're here," Alexei says.
Alexei is at the main door, reading the lock, hands moving fast. Click. The door opens.
Inside.
The smell hits first. Blood. Old blood, new blood, the chemical tang of IV tubing and antiseptic layered over something organic and wrong. The lights are fluorescent and buzzing. The hallway stretches. Doors on both sides. Closed. Locked.
The alarm is louder in here. Red light pulsing from a panel on the wall.
Maximus and I move together.
His shadows go left. I reach right, mapping the space with the telekinesis, finding bodies behind walls and furniture that could be cover.
Three guards rush from the corridor ahead.
Fast. Armed. Silver-loaded. The first one fires and Maximus's shadows snatch the round out of the air, wrapping the barrel, folding the weapon sideways.
The guard stumbles, and the shadows wrap his arms to his sides and pin him against the wall.
The second guard pivots toward me. I rip the weapon out of his hands.
It flies across the hallway into mine. I put a silver round through his head.
He drops. The third makes it two steps before Maximus closes the distance and rips his heart out of his chest.
He's already turning toward the stairwell, but his eyes find mine, and the bond hums between us like a wire struck.
Movement from the stairwell. More of them. Five at once, organized, spreading to cover positions. These aren't standard guards. They move in coordinated pairs.
The first pair advances from the left. His shadows surge.
One guard goes down hard, slammed against the wall.
The other ducks and swings a blade. I catch the blade with the telekinesis, stop it mid-arc, and wrench it out of his grip.
The blade flies across the hallway and embeds in the wall. Maximus finishes him.
The second pair flanks right. I sense them before I see them.
Armed and moving fast. I rip the stair railing free and drive it across the corridor like a barricade.
The first guard runs into it at full speed.
The impact folds him over the metal. The second vaults the railing and Maximus is there, shadows wrapping his legs, pulling him down mid-jump.
His shadows brush my arm as they pass. Cool.
Familiar. They curve around me instead of through me because they know me, and I feel them the same as I feel his hand at my back when we walk through a room.
The fifth guard. Bigger. Harder to hold. He charges straight at us and I grab him with everything I have and he keeps coming. Three steps. Two. My arms burn. The hold strains.
Maximus's shadows hit him from both sides. Not wrapping. Slamming. Two walls of shadow that compress him between them and hold him still long enough for me to find the fault line in his stance and rip his feet out from under him.
He hits the floor. Maximus is on him before he can rise.
He grabs the guard's head with both hands, plants a knee in his spine, and pulls.
The guard thrashes. Maximus's arms strain, the tendons in his forearms standing rigid.
He pulls harder. The head separates from the shoulders. Maximus tosses it aside and stands.
We stand in the hallway. Ten guards down. The alarm still screaming. The fluorescent lights buzzing through the red pulse.
"Ground floor clear," I say into comms.
"Take the basement," I say. "I've got the second floor."
He nods once. The shadows peel off the walls and follow him down.
Lanthar's fighters flow in behind us. They secure the ground floor, positioning at every entrance. I hear Kael's wolves clearing the outbuildings. Short snarls. Brief.
"Julian, status?"
"Southern facility. Silver rounds. They were ready for us." A pause. "We're through. Clearing rooms now."
"Marcellus?"
"Western facility is a mess. Heavy resistance. Tides are handling the exterior. My people are inside." A grunt. Something crashes through the comms. "We're fine. Keep going."
I take the stairs up.
On the ground floor behind me, Alexei stops at the processing station. I hear him through the open stairwell.
"I'm pulling the hard drives." The sound of metal being ripped from a rack. "Transaction records. Buyer lists. Distribution logs. Every intake, every batch, every name. They'll need this for what comes after."
The second floor. Doors. Locks.
The first room. Four cots, IV stands, a woman on the nearest cot who flinches when the door opens and then stares at me.
"My name is Celeste. I'm here to get you out."
She doesn't move. I don't push. I move to the next door.
The second room. Two men. One of them is on his feet before the door is fully open, fists raised, teeth bared. He's thin and shaking and his IV line is still taped to his arm and he's ready to fight me.
"Easy," I say. "We're here to get you out."
"That's what the last ones said."
"The last ones didn't rip the gate off the fence. I did. Check the window."
He moves to the window. Looks out. Sees the gate lying in the gravel yard and the Fae standing at the entrance and Kael's wolves running the perimeter. He turns back. His fists lower. The shaking doesn't stop.
"Get your friend," I say. "Follow the hallway to the stairs. There are people waiting to help."
The third room. A teenager sitting cross-legged on the cot. She looks up when I open the door. Looks at me. Looks at the open door behind me.
"Is this real?" she asks.
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
She stands. She walks past me into the hallway without looking back. She's barefoot. Her feet leave no sound on the floor.
The fourth room. Growth charts on the wall. Small cots. Children's cots.
Two of them are occupied. Small shapes under thin blankets. One of them sits up when the light from the hallway hits. A girl. She watches me without blinking.
I can't do this room. I can't be the right person for this room.
"Simone. Second floor. Fourth room."
She's there in seconds.
I step aside.
Simone walks in. She goes to her knees beside the first cot. She's shaking. Her hands, her jaw, her shoulders. She's shaking, and she doesn't hide it, and she doesn't stop.
"I was where you are," she says. "I got out. You're getting out now."
The girl watches Simone's face. Studies it. Then she reaches out and touches Simone's hand.
Simone breaks. Silent. Just her face crumpling and her hand closing around the girl's fingers and her other hand pressing flat against the mattress to keep herself upright.
The second child. Smaller. Curled under the blanket with only his eyes showing. He hasn't moved. He's watching Simone, the girl, and the open door behind me, and his body is pressed flat against the wall like he's trying to disappear into it.
Simone sees him. She doesn't move toward him. She holds still. Holds the first girl's hand. And she waits.
The boy's eyes move from Simone to the door. To me. Back to Simone.
He uncurls. One limb at a time. Slides off the cot. Crosses the two feet between his cot and Simone's knee and stands there. Simone opens her other arm, and he steps into it and presses his face against her shoulder.
Alexei stands in the doorway.
I keep moving. More doors. More locks. I pop each bolt with a focused twist, and I stand in each doorway, and I say my name, and I say I'm here.
Through the comms, Julian's voice. Steady. Tight. "Southern strike complete. One hundred forty-three. All rooms cleared."
I keep opening doors.
"Western strike complete." Marcellus. "Two hundred and nine. No human casualties."
The numbers land in my chest and sit there, and I keep moving because if I stop to feel them I'll stop moving.
Maximus is in the basement.
"Lower level. Iron door. Alexei was right about the template." A pause. Then the sound of hinges shrieking. "Door's open."
"Celeste."
"Go ahead."
"There are cribs down here."
The fluorescent light above me cracks. Glass rains down. The hallway goes dim.
I breathe. Pull it back. Lock it down.
"How many?"
"Eight. Five occupied." His voice is quiet. Controlled. Barely. "Tides healers. I need them now."
"Healers to the basement. Five infants. Now," I say through the comms. My hands are shaking.
I clear the last room on the second floor. The fluorescent lights buzz. The smell hasn't changed.
I walk to the machine at the end of the hall. It's still running. Still cycling. Tubes full of blood feeding into a centrifuge that separates and sorts and packages what it takes. The last bag is half full. Someone's blood, drawn from someone's arm, measured and labeled and ready for sale.