Weslan Genny was the last hostage, but he wasn’t released. VennZech staffers had been sent out of the besieged operations office for days, and he had steadfastly refused. He insisted that he remain until the inevitable surrender, when the terrorists—that’s all they were to him—put down their guns and let the police move in.

  At least that part went smoothly. From his locked office room, he heard the crash of the entry teams, a great deal of yelling, then the stomping of boots until someone kicked in his door. They checked him over for injuries and booby traps before a small crowd of tactical-suited officers gathered to escort him outside.

  When sunlight hit his face, Weslan’s defenses dropped, and he stopped processing. There was an ambulance, a paramedic and a bottle of water that he emptied immediately. At some point, there was an empty takeout box on the seat next to him, but he didn’t remember what was in it. He grunted answers to questions but spaced out when he was left alone. Most of the time he seemed to be waiting for something. Agent Whist was hanging around nearby, deep in conversation with fellow Sentinels. Once in a while he looked over and smiled. Had they talked? Weslan couldn’t remember that either.

  Some kind of doctor spoke to him about his experience. He wanted to know what he felt, but Weslan couldn’t feel anything, so he gave them the answers he thought would make them go away, until they did.

  Eventually they took him to a hotel room where he showered. Only then did his barriers collapse, and the full horror invaded every fiber of his being until he was vomiting into the toilet. He cried for a while but eventually found a strange calm settle inside him. It was as though a beam of light had pierced the darkness fogging his mind, showing him the way out of all his pain and fear. When he left the bathroom, he found the dark lady sat on his bed, next to the change of clothes that had been procured for him.

  She said nothing; only waited patiently.

  Weslan flicked on a display and let the news feed drown out the silence while he dressed. Reporters were calling the terrorists vigilantes now. Had they lost their minds? Or was something more sinister going on?

  He shut off the display and sat in a chair, exploring the thoughts that began to show up in greater and greater numbers. When he looked up, he caught the eye of the dark lady, who smiled.

  “You know what must be done,” she said.

  Weslan opened his room door and found the agent posted to keep an eye on him. He was told that a command center had been established in the building’s lower floors and conference rooms. Officers from several services were waiting to debrief him. The agent escorted him to the elevator, then led him through the crowd to a small room and let him enter first.

  The first person Weslan saw was his father. He froze, and for a moment was certain that he was in trouble.

  But his father seized him in a hug and held tight even as his sobs threatened to drown out his words. “I’m so sorry, so very sorry, son,” he said, once he had managed to catch his breath. “I didn’t mean—no I was wrong. I was pig-headed and monstrous and wrong. Hieron has told me everything and… I can only ask for your forgiveness, one day.”

  Hieron was there behind him, offering his own somber reassurance. The men stayed in a quite huddle while Weslan shared everything that happened.

  “I don’t care what the media is saying,” he insisted. “Tensall was tortured. They forced him to say those lies about girls, and they shot him much earlier. Before the execution. I know I—” He gulped back a sob. “It happened right in front of me.”

  “I don’t doubt your word,” Hieron said. “But why?”

  Weslan shook his head. “I don’t know. There was some kind of plan, some kind of secondary mission they had to complete. I didn’t hear enough.”

  Was he lying? Did he even remember what had actually been said? He couldn’t say for sure. All he knew was that something of profound importance had happened. The League had to know—had to be made to understand. They were all in terrible, terrible danger, so did the details really matter?

  “You’re tired, my boy,” his father said. “You’ve said enough to us, and you must save the rest of your energy for the debrief. Let me get you a coffee—”

  “Did they interrogate the girl?” Weslan said. “Just tell me that much.”

  The two older men glanced at each other, but only confusion showed in their faces.

  Hieron’s brow furrowed. “You mean one of the hostages, or…?”

  “No, the terrorist,” Weslan said impatiently. “The leader. Are they still processing them? Maybe we can—”

  “They only arrested men,” Hieron said slowly. “Ex-marines, from that mercenary group.”

  “But the leader was a woman. A terrorist—Calderan, I think. She told me they had spies everywhere.” Ice ran down his spine when he saw the alarmed looks his announcement drew. “I have to talk to Whist. If I’m right…” He swallowed. “If I’m right, then this attack wasn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.”

  Christie tried to stretch in her fully sealed combat suit and found it to be a fraction too small to allow the movement. It was the best they could find for her on short notice, and it would have to do. Around her, dozens of other gray figures, kitted out with weapons and large backpacks, crowded together under hastily assembled plastic sheeting—the engineer’s impromptu airlock. A light flickered, and suddenly the corridor ahead changed back to the Omega site. Only fifteen minutes had elapsed since they had left the same spot.

  The Raiders moved out first, carbines raised as they scanned their corners. Christie wanted to yell at them to run, but she would be ignored. Nobody was going to take a chance on reactivating the site’s super spiders.

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  Still humming away in the control room, Dr Gilah’s laptop was transmitting a live feed of several of the base’s data streams. Once the technicians in the Rackeye site—harassed by an impatient Urtiga, while her Raiders struggled into the handful of suits available—had declared the emergency protocol suspended, they reestablished the teleporter link. That procedure added more minutes to the wait, because everything had to be done with the utmost care.

  But here they were, and Christie, the only reliable guide, had donned a Ranger suit for the first time in her life. Deadly nerve gas still hung in the air, and, computer pronouncements aside, who knew what terrors were waiting in the shadows?

  Once the group reached the cavern they stopped for an endless moment of observation. The work-spiders were continuing their activities as though nothing interesting had happened. Apart from that, everything seemed quiet. With growing confidence, the Raiders broke up into groups and ran.

  The sprint to the control room seemed to pass in a heartbeat. They checked the access ways and found the main entrance open. Christie held her breath when she saw the bodies, while a PJ darted forward.

  Each woman was checked for injuries. Thandi, with a spike sticking out of her chest, seemed to be the worst, though the medic claimed that the damage was not severe. She wired them up to a complex looking machine from her backpack and activated the system. All of them were pronounced “stable”.

  Stable in death, Christie wanted to ask? Like someone who had jumped off a building but hadn’t hit the ground?

  “Do you want to run them back?” Urtiga demanded, her voice edged with static through the short-range radio.

  “Nerve agent is dissipating well,” the PJ said. “If we’re getting more bodies up here, we could maybe set up a mobile surgical unit. I don’t know; it depends how they react to this serum.” She began to inject the bodies with a nanite rich infusion—enough, she had explained earlier, to keep their cells from breaking down for a short time.

  Rayker was not injected. Nobody knew exactly what was in her bloodstream, or how it would react.

  Christie coughed and struggled to speak through her dry throat. “I’m sure I can carry someone myself.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” the PJ said more confidently as she studied her screen. “I like these readings for the moment. No sense in moving them—better to have runners bring more infusion packs up.”

  “I have someone in mind for that,” Urtiga said, then turned away while she spoke into her radio.

  “Christie, you should run back,” the PJ said. “Make sure the surgeons don’t get lost on the way up. And if they give you any trouble, tell them they’ll have to answer to Leech.”

  “Copy that,” Christie said and hit her stride by the time she passed the doorway.

  Kayla woke up to sun on her face and a hangover that made her question reality. Her whole body felt like a raw nerve, while her skull was pressure cooking her brain in a miserable stew of nausea and disorientation. Her ears, throat, sinuses, eyeballs and teeth burned like hot coals. When she tried to turn her head, lightning bolts of pain shot down her neck to join the merry firework display popping off across her nervous system.

  A dim figure fussed over her, and a terrible suspicion crossed her delirious mind.

  “Christie? Is that you?” she croaked.

  A hand touched her hair, and a low rumble sounded, as though heard from underwater.

  “Are we... dead? In hell?”

  The figure seemed to gesticulate expressively, then vanished for a short time. She returned with someone else, and after a brief delay, something happened that made Kayla feel much better. Her senses resolved a little, enough for her to make out the bed she was lying in, and the sterile ceiling above.

  “What is happening?” she demanded.

  “Don’t exhaust her,” the other woman said. “Ten minutes at most, and then she’s going back to sleep.”

  “My dear, you’re finally awake,” Christie said as she leaned over and kissed Kayla’s forehead. “Did I ever tell you how stunningly beautiful, charming and brilliant you are?”

  Kayla’s thoughts swam. “Wha-? What did I do?”

  Christie wiped away tears. “No, no, don’t mind me, getting all emotional. Just rest for now.”

  “Thandi? What happened...” Her limbs jerked as she struggled to get up. “Thandi’s hit—she’s hit.”

  Impossibly strong muscles held her down.

  “No, no, Thandi is fine. She is perfectly fine. The spike punctured a lung, but she’s recovering nicely. Please try to relax.”

  “Where?”

  “Nearby, in a different room.”

  Kayla swallowed what felt like a mouthful of thorns. “Ray? Lyna? What about the others, did they get out okay?”

  Christie patted her arm. “They’re recovering too. Everyone got out, everyone made it. Though… ah… the Rangers and Collective ladies had to go out on the mountainside and are currently in the custody of the Barrochians. Not to worry though; they can’t tell them apart from the VennZech people, and Urtiga is already planning a raid, so… It’s taken a while because a lot of things were going on in the base, and we had to deal with… well they had to resuscitate all the ODTs and make sure the base’s systems were all under control, and the world wasn’t going to end and so on. Oh, and you aren’t there anymore, you’re at site seven because it’s better for the doctors. Something to do with chemical synthesizing. It’s remarkable—here we are up in the polar regions, but you can’t go outside because it’s a frightful blizzard and… oh… listen to me go on. I’m sorry. How are you feeling?”

  Kayla waited for her brain to catch up. “I-’m not dead?”

  “No. Nor suffering eternal damnation.”

  More thoughts crowded for her attention, and she let the most obvious one shove its way through. “Rayker… she… are you…?” Kayla swallowed again. “What happened?”

  Christie smiled warmly. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. A short adventure, of course, but nothing I couldn’t handle. We got on, as they say, like a house on fire.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She lives. But as our prisoner in a very secure vault, I’m told. They studied her nanites and managed to sort of mute them, I think. She’s in a very weak state—so don’t trouble yourself over that.”

  “Alive…” Kayla’s eyes focused on nothing, and her expression hardened.

  “She will be interrogated. She will tell us everything. There will be a general amnesty between the task force and the chiefs. Zhang is already working on that.”

  Kayla turned away from her friend and curled up. When she spoke she had to struggle through a tightening throat. “I did everything I could think of. I killed everyone who got in the way. I tried to find you.”

  A soft hand found her arm and squeezed. “You did find me, didn’t you? That’s why we’re here.”

  “But too late.”

  “No. At the right time.”

  “And I couldn’t kill her after... after what she did to you.”

  Christie inhaled and replied in a sterner voice. “Turn over, Barnes. Look at me, please.”

  Kayla did so, slowed by terror.

  “Why are you so… oh, good lord,” Christie said in frustration. She took another deep breath. “Are you in the wrong business? Tell me honestly.”

  “No,” Kayla said after a moment’s hesitation.

  “It’s ego then, isn’t it? Or narcissism? Everything horrible in the world is your fault, because you are supposed to be in control?”

  “No,” Kayla said petulantly.

  “What have we spent so many hours reading and chatting about? A gang of privileged cowards who couldn’t face the fact that reality was outside their power? Of course it’s terrifying to feel helpless, but no amount of talking can change it. Isn’t that what you always said to me? Isn’t it?”

  Kayla shrugged.

  Christie stroked her hair and smiled. “Perhaps I can’t help you figure it out. But what are they always saying in your culture? The hour of our death is set and no-one can outrun it?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Pull your head out of your backside, Kayla. And try to get some sleep.”