Chapter 26 · Extraction Goes Live

The floor under my boots was still smoking.

I couldn't stop staring down through the crack Nox had carved open. Rows of them. People. Strapped to tables in a sub-level I didn't know existed five minutes ago. Their chests rose and fell. Slow. Too slow. Whatever they were breathing wasn't air.

"Mara." Sloane's voice came from behind me. Tight. "We need to move."

I didn't turn around. "How long have you known about this?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah." I finally looked at her. "It does."

Sloane's blade familiar coiled around her wrist, all silver edges and nerves. She looked past me, down at the sleeping bodies below. Her jaw worked. "Three weeks. I found the blueprints in my brother's files."

"Three weeks." I laughed. It came out wrong. "And you just what, kept fighting? Kept smiling for the cameras?"

"I kept looking for a way to pull them out without getting us all killed." Her eyes snapped back to mine. "Which is what we're doing now if you'd stop—"

Nox surged up between us.

Not the flat shadow I was used to. He rose three-dimensional, black light bleeding off his edges, and the temperature in the hall dropped ten degrees.