DROVA
The guards would show up any moment now, but the question was whether they would come from the hole above that was now much bigger than before, or through the ramp leading to the first floor of the mansion.
The ramp was still covered by the same two Guardians Yamanu had stationed there before the collapse, so if anyone came through that opening, they would sound the alarm.
"We need to move Brody and the extracted chests to the cove," Yamanu said.
It was a wise move. The two remaining chests would take a long time to dig out, and she had no idea how Yamanu planned to do that.
She could compel the guards who would come to investigate, and she could compel the excavating crew that would show up the next morning, and perhaps Kian could have Toven compel Losham to keep everyone away from the site.
But that still wouldn't solve the problem if they had to dig for more than a few hours.
"Duncan and Alfie, take one of those furniture covers and fashion a stretcher out of it," Yamanu said.
"Yes, sir."
The two Guardians ran over to where the furniture was stacked against a wall and pulled down one of the covers.
Drova spared the beautiful, antique-looking armoire a quick glance before shifting her gaze back to the hole above.
She'd expected the Brotherhood to operate more efficiently than this. Someone should have already shown up.
Six Guardians walked over to the three crates lined up on the floor where they'd been set down before the collapse, and the two with the tarp approached Brody, who was getting treated by Julian.
Given that the Guardian was passed out, the doctor must have given him a shot of painkillers so he wouldn't suffer while his friends carried him to the cove.
Drova adjusted her position closer to the center of the floor, where she had a clear line of sight to both the ramp and the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Behind her, two Guardians with one of the chests were trying to fit it through the door to the stairwell, and it seemed like it was stuck. She wanted to see what was going on, but she had to keep her eyes on the hole.
She heard the scrape of metal on wood, a grunt, and a couple of curses.
"Lift the back," someone hissed. "No, the back, you're going to wedge it. Pivot."
"There's no room to pivot!"
"Then take it off the harness and carry it without it."
"It'll slip."
Drova's hands flexed at her sides.
She wanted to go help them. Her whole body wanted to go, because she was stronger than the immortal Guardians, and she and Pavel could get it through the stairwell in a third of the time.
But that wasn't her job, and Peter, her former commander in the Avengers unit, had drilled it into her head that following orders was the most important thing she needed to learn before she could become a fully-fledged Guardian.
She was the compeller, and it was up to her to deal with the Brotherhood's guards in a stealthy manner.
"Pavel." She nudged him with her elbow. "Go help them. They're not going to make it in time."
"My job is to cover you."
"They need muscle, and I can't leave my spot. You can help. Go."
"My spot is wherever you are." He didn't look at the stairwell. He was watching the hole, and the ramp, and the dark edges of the basement, the way she should have been doing instead of fretting about the chests. "They will manage."
She wanted to argue, but there was no point because he was probably right.
When the scrape of metal on wood came again from the stairwell, followed by another curse, Drova gritted her teeth and was about to kick Pavel in the shin to make him go help them, but then she saw the two Odus heading toward the stairwell.
Finally, someone was using their heads.
The Odus could maneuver the chests with even greater ease than the Kra-ell.
The grinding stopped, someone commented something about angles, and then they were through.
When the third chest got through, and the door to the stairwell was closed, Drova let out a relieved breath. Whatever they had to face next, at least Brody and the chests were on their way to the submarine.
The 'whatever' came sooner than she'd expected. Voices sounded from above along with the scuff of boots on broken ground at the edge of the fractured earth.
Someone killed the last surviving light in the basement, and everyone moved away from the shaft of moonlight coming through the hole above.
"The hole got much bigger," one of the arriving guards said in the Doomers' language, which she'd learned during her Guardian training and had really immersed herself in as preparation for this mission.
After all, her compulsion would be quite useless if they couldn't understand what she was saying. It wasn't as if she was proficient, but she understood most of it, and the key phrases she'd memorized should do the job.
"Something must have triggered another collapse," another voice said.
"No one is supposed to be working down there," a third one commented. "Who has a flashlight? It's pitch dark in there."
Drova lifted the amplifier to her mouth. "There is nothing here," she said in their language. "Turn around and report that it was a structural collapse."
She held her breath until she heard them repeat what she'd just told them and then walk away.
Her relief didn't last long, though.
A face emerged at the edge of the hole, followed by another and then more, forming a cluster that threatened to cause additional collapse.
Perhaps they hadn't heard her?
She repeated the command. "There is nothing here. Turn around and report a structural collapse."
None of them moved, and panic tightened her throat.
One immune was an anomaly. An entire group of them was an impossibility. How was this happening?
Behind her, she heard weapons raised. The immortals were readying for a fight they'd thought they could avoid.
Pavel had his weapon up too, shielding her with his body, and across the floor the rest of the team had turned toward the hole with their guns trained up onto the faces staring at them from above as if they could see them.
Not even immortals should have been able to see them hiding in the shadows from such a distance.
Who were these guards?
Had the Brotherhood developed cyborgs? The Odus were immune to compulsion because they had computer brains, so that could be why they weren't responding to her compulsion.
They weren't doing anything, though. They'd just found a clan strike team in Navuh's basement, and all they were doing was standing or crouching near the edge and looking down.
Maybe these were the enhanced soldiers?
She didn't know whether they were immune to compulsion, but since they were compellers themselves, the odds were they were.
The soldiers above did not draw their weapons.
"Hold your fire," Yamanu ordered.
He must have realized the same thing she had.
The Guardians lowered their weapons. All of them at once, including Pavel. Every barrel was now pointing toward the ground as if a hand had pushed them.
Drova spun toward Pavel with her own weapon still half-raised and her heart slamming. "Yamanu said hold your fire, not lower your weapons. What are you doing?"
"I—" Pavel stared at the weapon pointing at the floor, his face slack with confusion. "I'm not. I didn't. Something—"
They had been thralled.
The realization hit her even as the word formed. The soldiers up there were thralling her team, forcing them to stand down. But because she was immune, she didn't feel their mental push. They had to be very powerful to affect Guardians like Yamanu and Anandur.
If they turned out to be unfriendly, it was up to her to defend her team.
She brought her own weapon up the rest of the way and put the front sight on the nearest shape at the edge of the hole.
If they could turn the Guardians' hands, they could turn the Guardians' guns, and then it wouldn't be a standoff.
It would be a slaughter, and she was the only one left who could still choose where her own weapon pointed.
She took up the slack on the trigger and opened her mouth to scream a warning to a team that couldn't lift its guns to heed it—
"We mean you no harm." The voice came from above, calm, collected, nonthreatening, and speaking American English.
She didn't remove her finger from the trigger.
"My name is Number One. I assume you know who my friends and I are. We are the Eight enhanced soldiers who have been communicating with Onegus, K, and others in the clan. We are here to offer our assistance."
The trigger was a hair's breadth from breaking under her finger.
Number One. The clan. The Eight. The words arrived and rearranged everything. She understood, all at once, that she had been a heartbeat from putting a round through the chest of a friend.
Someone who could help them.
The relief came so hard and fast that her knees nearly buckled.
She let the weapon drop, the muzzle swinging down toward the dust, and she stood there with the emotional storm of almost having killed the wrong soldier, breathing like she'd run a mile, while around her the Guardians' hands came back to them and Pavel sucked in a sharp breath beside her as whatever had held his arm let go.
"We're coming down," Number One said. "Please don't shoot us."
She wanted to ask what he'd meant by coming down when the first soldier stepped off the edge into the open air and dropped the twenty feet or so, landing in a pile of debris, absorbing the impact as if he was made from rubber and not bones and muscles.