Chapter 25 #2
The unfinished bond gave him no thoughts or emotions, but he didn’t need either. Connal shifted his weight, and Luke knew which direction he intended to move. Luke ducked, and Connal’s sword passed above him. Connal turned, and Luke protected the space he left behind.
They had never trained together.
They fought as though they had.
Movement reflected in the black surface of a server panel. Luke turned as an attacker came at Connal’s exposed side.
“Left.”
Connal moved without looking back. Luke caught a length of cable dangling from the damaged tray and snapped it across the attacker’s shin. The man stumbled into Connal’s path. Connal ended the threat with one precise strike.
Another attacker seized Luke from behind. An arm locked around his throat and dragged him backward against a hard chest. Luke drove his elbow into the man’s ribs, but the grip only tightened. Pressure built in his head as he fought for leverage.
Connal turned. The expression on his face gave the attacker one instant to understand his mistake before Connal caught him by the back of the neck and tore him away from Luke. There was no elegance in what followed. The man struck the floor and did not rise.
Connal faced Luke. “Breathing?”
Luke coughed. “Nagging already?”
“Breathing.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Connal stepped back into the fight as though the word had cost him more than killing the man at Luke’s feet.
Tyson shouted a warning. One of the attackers had slipped past Keir and reached the console. Instead of trying to restart the system, he pressed a narrow black device against the screen.
Lines of green light moved across the display.
Luke started toward him, but two more men blocked the aisle.
The device emitted a sharp tone.
“Local archive destroyed,” the attacker reported. “Routing disabled.”
A voice answered through his radio. “Confirmed.”
Luke stopped. The strike team hadn’t come to take control of Hale’s system.
They had come to make certain it was destroyed.
Black-green light erupted in the corridor. The burst slammed into the doorway and threw Keir back two steps. Tyson hit the wall, the metal panel clanging from his hands. Asterius caught himself against the nearest server rack.
A voice rolled through the room, amplified by magic.
“Objective complete. Withdraw to the secondary position.”
The remaining attackers pulled back immediately, one after another. There was no panic in the movement and no attempt to carry their wounded. They abandoned the server room with the same discipline they had shown while trying to enter it.
“Retreating,” Zer said.
Keir regained his stance. “Repositioning.”
“To where?” Luke asked.
No one had an answer.
The last enemy in the room smiled through blood on his teeth.
Then he bit down on something.
Connal saw it and moved, but not fast enough. The man’s body convulsed, black-green light cracking beneath his skin. Connal seized Luke and drove him backward just as the corpse burst into smoke and ash.
The blast wasn’t large.
It didn’t need to be.
It filled the server room with choking grit and a stench like burnt herbs, hot metal, and rot. Luke coughed hard, his eyes watering. Connal kept one hand locked around his arm until the smoke thinned enough to see.
Bodies lay across the grated floor. The server-room door hung broken from one hinge. Beyond it, Hale lay crumpled against the corridor wall, his eyes open and unseeing. No living attackers remained in sight.
For now.
A faint cough came from above them.
Avaneel fluttered down from the top of the server rack, her wings and hair coated in gray ash. Zer held out one hand, and she landed in his palm.
“You are hurt?” he asked.
Avaneel shook her head, coughed again, then climbed onto his shoulder and disappeared into the protection of his hair.
Connal turned Luke toward him.
The fight had given them a breath, and Connal used it to confirm what the first frantic glance could not. His hands moved over Luke’s shoulders and arms before one settled against the side of his neck. Connal’s thumb brushed the bruising there, sending heat through the unfinished bond.
Luke caught his wrist. “I’m alive.”
Connal’s jaw tightened. “I noticed.”
“You looked like you needed the reminder.”
“I need many things.”
Luke’s laugh came out rough and almost broke in the middle.
Connal leaned forward until their foreheads met. The contact was more collision than tenderness, held still for one stolen second amid the wreckage.
Tyson coughed behind them. “I hate to interrupt whatever terrifyingly romantic thing this is, but ‘secondary position’ sounds urgent.”
Connal closed his eyes briefly, his breath warm against Luke’s cheek.
Then he pulled away.
Battle focus settled over his expression again, but he kept one hand around Luke’s arm until Luke stood steadily on his own.
Asterius moved to the doorway and looked into the corridor. “They’ve cleared the corridor.”
“That is never good,” Zer said.
Keir crouched beside one of the fallen attackers and removed a black device from his belt. The screen was cracked, but a map of the building remained visible beneath one pulsing symbol.
Tyson took the device and compared it to the plans he carried.
A glowing route climbed from the sublevels toward a marked point at the top of the building.
“That’s not an exit,” Tyson said.
Luke moved closer. “It’s the roof.”
Connal looked at him.
“The receiver is up there,” Luke explained to the others. “The system said its core has to be removed manually.”
“And now the strike team is heading toward it,” Keir said.
Luke touched the pocket holding Hale’s keycard. It had gotten him into the basement controls. With any luck, it would open the secured route to the roof as well.
“They knew the local system had been destroyed before they withdrew,” Luke said. “We have to assume they know the receiver is still active.”
“Do they intend to destroy it?” Asterius asked. “Or take it?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the problem. The strike team had attacked Hale and the buyer, verified the destruction of the basement system, and moved immediately toward the only functioning piece that remained.
They weren’t merely fleeing. Whatever waited on the roof was the next phase of their plan.
Connal tightened his grip on his sword. “Then we go up.”
Luke wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped beside him.
“Good,” he said. “I’m really starting to hate this building.”