Kira - 81

Az had pulled off an impressive four-point landing when the earth tremor shook them all off their feet. Hands and feet planted around them, his body held just above Kira’s, butt up in the air as if he’d decided to pull off some yoga moves while the Facility shook itself to pieces. He offered a hand to Kira, to help her to her feet but she waved him off.

‘I’m good. It’s Vail’s body-buddy I’m worried about.’ Kira sat back on her haunches. Her hand was shaking. ‘Vail, tell me that didn’t break any more pieces off this chick.’

Weylen’s head flopped a little too hard to the right as Vail adjusted the headscarf. ‘All still in one piece,’ he said.

Kira took hold of Weylen’s wrist and pulled them both back onto their feet. Weylen’s soles left the ground, and a gasp left her blue lips. ‘Geez, Kira,’ Vail cried. ‘Take it easy.’

‘Sorry, sorry. My bad.’ Kira danced on her toes, quickstepping her weight from one foot to the other. ‘Holy crap, are you guys not feeling this?’

A buzzing beneath her skin. Not a Nina or Az kind of thing, one that left her bones like jelly, this was ten cups of coffee on an empty stomach.

‘I am feeling it, and I fear we are too late.’ Azrael clearly didn’t share her high. He led them down the long corridor, the gashes in his back faintly glowing, like warpaint marking a shredded-up warrior. ‘Hurry, Kira.’

‘Too late?’ Kira hesitated. ‘That’s what it was? The tremor . . . Inanna is here?’

‘The heightening of energy would indicate so, yes.’

Her caffeine levels dropped. ‘Shit.’ After all this fucking effort, that was it? Just, yep, goddess of war is here. Night, night. End of days starts, now.

‘Vail, hurry the meatsuit up, dude!’ Kira shouted at the figure in the gloom behind her. The kid made trying to navigate a dead body look like really hard, really uncoordinated work.

‘Do . . . do . . . ing . . . my . . . b –’

‘Do better. Az could carry you—’

‘N…n…no. Too, too much energy. I…might…g, g, get kicked..out.’

‘Why are you even still in her anyway?’

‘Thou . . . thought . . . it . . . might . . .’ Weylen stumbled and Vail ghost-lifted her arm to brace against the wall. A very broken arm. Vail had lied through his ass about his meatsuit not taking any damage in the fall when the quake hit. Her left arm had snapped at the forearm. And was now useless. The woman toppled forward.

Kira dove in, wrapping an arm around Weylen’s waist to stop yet another faceplant, and managing to grab the broken arm in the process. The pointed bone hadn’t pierced the skin but it was damn close. ‘Oh Jesus, Christ, fuck.’

No amount of Maiden mojo could cover the sensation of bone and goop against her hand, and her stomach contents agreed. They raced up her throat, hot and nasty at the back of her mouth.

‘Kira . . . you . . . k?’ Vail managed to brace Weylen’s shoulder against the wall, the angle of the lean way too wide to appear even remotely natural.

Kira turned away, blinking against the Morse-code-manic flickering of the emergency strip lighting along the floor. ‘Az, wait for us.’

He’d not stopped when they had and was some distance up ahead.

‘There is no time, Kira. Come.’

The jittery emergency lighting didn’t exactly lend itself to super-fast movement, but at least the ground had stopped shaking. Thank fuck for whatever it was that was hyping up her system right now. Any other time, a quake hitting when Kira was a kilometre underground would have sent her batshit crazy. Granted, her panties were a little damp, but show her someone who hadn’t loosened a sphincter back there and she’d show you a bald-faced liar. Or Az. So long as the lights were on, the dude was cruising. Mostly. A shadow of the panic from earlier still clung to him, a lingering niggle. But it didn’t stop him charging down the hallway right now like a general leading his army.

Vail edged Weylen past her, waving his meatsuit’s working hand, but the limp wrist movement was a tad too reminiscent of the other limb’s fish-flop style. ‘Go . . . K . . . keep up . . . faster. Rossiter has . . . back.’

The corridor was empty. Way too empty and way too silent. Definitely no sign of the human tree trunk.

‘Rossiter?’ Kira said. ‘What about him?’

An aftershock rolled down the hallway, and Kira tightened her sphincter. Vail braced Weylen like a newbie skater on the ice. ‘The comms sy . . . sys . . . system . . . is down . . . you . . . c . . . c . . . an . . . thank . . . h . . . im . . . for . . . th . . . th . . .’

‘Stop talking, you’re gonna bite your fucking tongue off.’ Kira pulled at the metal against her throat. So damn tight. ‘We need to get a hell of a lot deeper in this place. We need to move faster.’

‘Wh . . . what . . . I . . . said.’

‘Then get out of the meatbag.’

‘No . . . not . . . yet . . .’

The stampeding general stopped dead farther up ahead, turning towards an adjoining corridor. ‘Az? We all good?’ The coffee buzz was giving Kira the shits now. Making her itch where the armadillo met skin.

‘We must go this way,’ he said.

‘Then that way we shall go.’ Kira jogged up the hallway. Like, actually jogged. She’d despised running since the day she was born, but now had to force herself to stop at the door Az waited at. If she’d let them, her legs could have sprinted through this place for days. Seeing the closed door, Kira fumbled for the security pass she’d swiped from the freckle-faced girl. The one with the broken neck. Kira blew out a breath. Danced her feet, trampling the memory away. She pressed the pass to the scanner. A big juicy ‘fuck off’ flashed up on screen, and an obnoxious beep made her jump. Kira scanned again and the answer was a resounding nope.

‘Me . . . me . . . this . . . why . . . still . . . here . . .’ With each agonisingly drawn-out word, Vail lumbered Weylen up the hall, one hand lifted. ‘Help . . . finger . . .’

Help his finger? What the fuck? Then it dawned.

‘Oh, ten points you delicious nerd-wizard.’ Kira took Weylen’s hand, the one attached to the arm that didn’t threaten to fall off any second. ‘Christ, you smell bad.’

She guided Weylen’s index finger to touch the scanner.

Nope. Fuck you. Have a nice day.

‘Shit.’

‘I shall break down the door.’ Az shifted side on, bracing himself.

‘Wa . . . wai . . . wait . . .’ Weylen dipped forward, head-butting the door.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Kira grabbed a waist that had way more squish factor than it should do.

‘E . . . eyes . . .’ Weylen’s head banged against the door again. Catching on, Kira slid in behind her, taking hold of her upper arms, bracing her knee against a butt with even greater squish factor than the waist.

‘Oh god,’ Kira gagged. ‘Make it quick. Az, get her eyes near the scanner.’

The panel was only slightly lower than Weylen’s head, so it didn’t take long. But a few seconds was a lifetime more than Kira needed. The door slid open onto a darkened hallway.

‘Woo . . . woo . . . hoo.’ Weylen wobbled like a tower of flesh jelly with Vail’s self-congratulations.

‘Yeah, all right,’ Kira said. ‘I’ll give you that one.’

The Facility was big on biometric authentication, and nowhere bigger than down on the lower levels. Having a high-security-clearance corpse on your team was helpful. It also meant that it was going to take three years to get to level eleven if Vail couldn’t speed the walking dead up. And if the security team had half a brain between them, someone was going to notice the access activity.

‘Let’s keep it moving, people.’

Kira headed into the hallway. Nowhere near as many lights here. In fact, it was bare minimum in terms of emergency lighting, just a couple of red dots along the floor that didn’t pierce the darkness up ahead. Vail navigated Weylen through the doorway with a speed that was promising. But Az stayed where he was, framed by the light.

‘Az?’ But Kira got it. Couldn’t miss it. Mixing in with all of her own jangling nerves was the low curdle of Az’s fear. This place was too dark, and he was still too raw. ‘Az, it’s okay. Please. I’m right here.’

They so didn’t have time for this shit. Blake didn’t have time for this shit.

‘You need to move.’ Kira raised her metal arm. She needed to glow. Again. Of course she did. It was what every girl dreamed of. Becoming a human torch. ‘Come on, come on. You want my help in this, Mrs Maiden then fucking help me out.’ She closed her eyes, going back to that hellhole she’d found Az in. She’d been mad. Really fucked off. But there had to be a more controlled way to use this thing. Turning into a berserker every time she wanted to do something seemed like a surefire way to give herself an aneurysm. The image of Santa Claus darted into her head. Well, at least the witchy equivalent of him: William, the kaftan-clad guy from the farmhouse. The guy who exuded a calm that Kira could only ever dream of. No wonder those fireflies had done his bidding, lighting his way with the most beautiful torch she’d ever seen. He was walking Zen music. She drifted back to that moment. Felt the coolness of the grass, and the softness of William’s voice on the air.

‘Kira?’

Her eyes fluttered open. Weylen watched her, as wide-eyed as Vail could make her. Kira’s arm was raised, and the armadillo filled the hallway with subtle firefly-yellow light. So freekin pretty.

‘Thank you, Santa,’ she whispered, a ludicrously large smile on her face. ‘Az, look. You gotta love this right? Stick with me, you’ll be all good.’

Please be good. Please be good.

In a rush, the damn, debilitating fear swept from his face, and their connection. Allowing her to exhale. Her two-tonne scaredy-cat stepped into her light. ‘Kira, I’m sor –’

‘Yeah, yeah. I know. Let’s just find an elevator and find my sister. I want to show her this new party trick, she’ll shit bricks.’

‘We need to keep going down,’ Weylen declared.

‘Of course we do. Because saving the world in the sunshine and fresh air is just so yesterday.’ Kira bounced along, still partly zinging with the buzz, partly high on the fact that she could glow on command. Simple enough thing, but the simple things were going to stop her from heading where Az had just been. Swallowed whole by sheer panic.

Up ahead, two men emerged from an emergency access stairwell and stepped out into the corridor. Kira’s perky party came to a grinding halt. ‘Balls.’

One of the men hollered something at them. Something about staying where they were and putting hands in the air. Kira obliged.

Almost.

She flicked them a double bird. And the trigger-happy hired guns took it as an act of war. They opened fire. Kira dove at Weylen, pulling the woman to her knees and throwing herself over her. Azrael rushed past them, wings unfurling in whiplash speed, setting up a barrier that spread the width of the corridor. The spray of bullets collided with Azrael’s body, rain on a tin roof. Rat-tat-tatting. His body shuddered with the blows, but he held his ground. Kira risked an upward glance. Azrael rushed forward, feet barely brushing the concrete, his wings angled back in the narrow space, finding room to move. Shouts carried over the sound of gunfire, morphing into cries high with terror as Azrael bore down on them.

It was never going to be pretty. Kira should have buried her face in Weylen’s dead hair, but Az was on the poor bastards before she had a chance to avert further nightmares. Slicing, dicing, creating human sushi. The blood on the white walls either side of him, a grotesque artwork. Weylen made a choking sound, and Kira shifted her weight.

‘Tell me you didn’t see that, Vail.’

‘I . . . th . . . po . . . se . . .’

‘Forget I asked.’ Kira dragged Weylen to her feet. Dead people really were ice cold. ‘Just keep your eyes on me, okay. We need to keep moving, we can take those stairs.’

Oh Jesus, just the thought of Vail trying to negotiate his meatsuit down endless flights drained her buzz further. This was the worst rescue in history. Tamas probably had Inanna checked into a fancy hotel in the Maldives by now. They’d be rubbing each other with coconut oil, sipping martinis, and starting wars.

‘Come, Kira.’ Az waved them forward as if stepping through body parts was on par with stepping through a field of daisies. His wings concertinaed back into their hidey-holes with the hush of a knife on a whetstone. He was patterned with blood. It ran down off his shoulders, streaking his bare chest.

Churning up some almighty bad memories for Kira.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘We’re right behind you.’ Her foot sloshed in a crimson puddle, and her sneakers left unpleasant marks as she and Weylen staggered down the hall. Fuck. Enough with the blood. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the picture that clung to the inside of her skull: Eron’s face, her dad’s face, becoming one god-awful combination. When Weylen suddenly stopped, Kira had lost track of how far they had gone. ‘What? What is it?’

‘A problem,’ Az said.

‘The elevator.’ Weylen slumped against her.

What was left of it anyway. A tangle of metal and concrete surrounded a gaping hole. Steelwork, the skeleton of the underground complex, poked like red bones all around the hole – the hole that had once been filled with the cage of the elevator. A shudder rocked the corridor, dislodging rubble and sending it tumbling into the blackness.

‘Shit.’ Now Kira leaned against Weylen. ‘We’ve screwed this up so bad.’ Fucking dusty air, making her eyes sting.

A door slammed somewhere farther down the hall. Everyone leapt into defence mode, none quicker than Azrael. He edged in front of Kira and Weylen before either of them had a chance to do much more than shuffle their feet. His posturing had them a lot closer to the edge of the pit than Kira felt comfortable with. If the wings came out, chances were she and Weylen would end up like the rubble. Tumbling into an abyss.

‘Kira, it’s me. Nobody shoot.’

‘Rossiter?’ Kira frowned, trying to edged around Az’s body barrier.

‘Kira, show caution,’ Az said.

The approaching man drew closer, his shoulders the width of a cruise ship, yellow light bathing his bald head in a golden halo.

‘Fuck, it is Rossiter.’ She shoved Weylen against Az and bolted as fast as her goddess-infused legs would carry her, which, it turned out, was pretty damn fast. She crashed into the brick shithouse, wrapping arms and legs around him. Going full sloth.

‘You’re heavy.’ He grunted, staggering backwards. ‘And you’re glowing.’

‘Nice to see you, too.’

He wrapped her up in a muscle burrito that she could have melted into forever.

‘Kira, I heard what happened,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘Nina told me, before I came in here.’

She clung a bit tighter. Don’t say it, Big Man, don’t be saying Eron’s name. Don’t say sorry, ’cause there were enough cracks in this place already. He set her down, releasing his grip and letting silence do his talking. She liked to think he’d heard her thoughts – mind-reading didn’t seem like a big deal this week – but it was more likely that he just knew her too damn well. Knew her better than her own dad ever would. He’d nursed her, in his own boot-camp kinda way, through a whole tonne of bad shit.

‘Ross . . . Ross, hey . . . me. Vail.’ Weylen raised the broken arm, the bone had pierced skin. And it flipped a calcium bird to the air.

Rossiter’s eyes bugged and he took a step back. ‘Sweet Jesus.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Vail.’ Kira moved in between them, trying to block the view.

‘Why is the kid in a dead woman?’ Rossiter held up two meaty palms. ‘You know what, don’t answer that.’

‘No problem.’ Kira shrugged. ‘Vail said you’ve been screwing with the comms system?’

‘How did he know . . .’ Rossiter shrugged off his own question. ‘Yeah. Couldn’t think of much else to do while I waited for someone to show. Figured I might as well make life as difficult as possible. But there were only so many favours I could call in before people started getting edgy. After your arrival – impressive by the way – I had to go underground. Been trying to find a trace of you since, and gotta say those are some horrific breadcrumbs you’ve left back there.’

‘A threat had to be extinguished.’ Azrael stepped out of the shadows that hugged the perimeter of the armadillo’s light.

‘Well, mission accomplished, buddy,’ Rossiter said. ‘But those guys will be missed soon enough, if not already. You better do what you intend to do here.’

Kira didn’t miss the glance he cast her as he spoke. The brick shithouse was worried about her. Welcome to the club.

‘We need to reach the Tier in order to do that, ’ Azrael replied. ‘If we are not already too late.’

Rossiter adjusted his hold on the gun. ‘You’re not. Not yet. Last I could verify, Tamas and his tin men –’ He hesitated, searching Az’s face for sign of insult, but the metal didn’t give anything away, even if Az had given a shit. ‘They are all still in the chamber.’ He shifted his focus to Kira. ‘So is Blake, Kira. I couldn’t –’

‘How do we get to that chamber?’ Az was in full commander mode. No time for chitchat.

Kira gave Rossiter a nod. A go-ahead to focus on Az instead of her. So, Blake was in the lion’s den. Okay. Bright side, they knew where she was.

The big man cleared his throat. ‘Well, you could backtrack. Almost back to where you came from, the holding cells . . . there’s an elevator just down the southern corridor –’

Weylen’s shoulders slumped, and the scarf covering the head wound slipped. ‘We went left, I should have taken us right.’

‘Pretty much.’ Rossiter’s gaze narrowed in on Weylen’s exposed and broken skull. If the sight made him woozy he gave nothing away. ‘But chances are you would have run into a whole lot more trouble that way, too. Even more so now. That elevator takes you to the main entrance of level eleven. Your best shot, by my calculations, is right there.’ Rossiter pointed over their shoulders. ‘That’s your way in. The damaged shaft. One of those. . . gallu, you call them, right? . . . went berserk the day they . . . activated them, or whatever the hell they did down there. And that hole right there, that will take you straight into the level eleven chamber.’ He peered at Kira from beneath heavy knitted brows. ‘We’re on level nine, it’s a ways down, but I’m guessing at least two of you could survive the trip.’

‘You guess right.’ Kira tried a smile, but lead lips made it impossible.

Rossiter exhaled, his frown softening. ‘Damn, I wish this wasn’t happening to you, K –’

A sharp snap rang out and Rossiter jerked, mouth wide, his bulk collapsing towards her.

‘Rossiter!’ Kira screamed. ‘No!’

His dead weight hit the floor. And she had a clear line of sight to the asshole who’d shot him. A scrawny fucker with semi-automatic still raised. Multiple fuckers actually. Headed their way. Her glow-bug arm raised, and the sun shot from her fingertips. The force of it tilted her to one side, off balance, sending the energy tearing down the length of the concrete walls. She wasn’t the only one screaming now. Fuckers scattered, diving to the ground. She thrust her hand forward, fingers of fire, rays of her sun reaching for everyone who tried to outrun it.

Burn you motherfuckers, just fucking burn. Little pissants were running. Scattering like cockroaches.

‘Kira. Stop.’

A hand pressed down on her metal arm, and the sunlight extinguished. The last licks of it played against Azrael’s metal cheek. Kira’s breath hitched, and her fingers curled into tight fists. Rossiter lay at her feet. Perfectly still. Weylen knelt beside him, and Vail told her all she needed to know through Weylen’s anguished eyes. But there was nothing. No stomach roil, no lump in her throat. No tsunami of hellish grief. Absolutely nothing, save for certainty of what she would do next.

‘I need to go now, Vail.’

Vail-Weylen gave her a grim nod. ‘I know. I’ll find you.’

Kira took one last look at Rossiter. Storing up the memory. Putting it in a little corner where it could fester with all the other shitty recalls. Fuel for the fire.

‘Get me down there, Az.’

There was only one thing left they could take from her. And the fucking sky would fall before she’d let them destroy Blake, too.