Miles and his MPs cowered as more bits of debris fell on them. The sniper couldn’t hit them with a direct shot, so he was focusing on blasting the building over them with his quake rifle, sending bits of debris showering down on them. The Warden would drop the building on them before he let them escape.
Miles wiped dust from his eyes. He had new blood on his hand, but he didn’t know which latest part of his body was injured. He was covered in scrapes and cuts; another one didn’t matter. This Brigand raid had turned into a slaughter of the Commonwealth’s MPs.
He looked at his remaining three officers. Most of his team was dead now. Only a miracle could save the rest of them.
Where is Dani?
He hadn’t seen Dani since her warning about the Warden on the church roof. He prayed she wasn’t lying under a chunk of concrete.
Petersen had been injured in the last exchange they’d had with Wardens, before retreating to their current position. Garcia and Elmore had still been uninjured and fighting then, but severely outgunned. That was even more true now that Garcia was gone. A shot from a Warden had slipped through the rubble, killing her, five minutes after their retreat.
Together, the three surviving MPs crouched on the first floor of the building behind an entire section of the second floor that had fallen. The cinder-block wall protected them to a degree, and they returned fire when they could, but the Wardens’ more advanced weaponry was keeping them pinned behind their wall—especially the quake rifle one of their attackers was firing at them from up on some debris across the way.
Coulson had answered his call for backup, but Miles didn’t believe she and James would arrive in time to help. Now, after the latest collapse of debris on them, Miles wondered how much longer they would survive. Petersen was bleeding profusely from the wound to his thigh. Elmore had tied his belt around his leg, but that wasn’t doing much to slow the bleeding.
The barrage of shots fired on their location lessened, and Miles assumed Coulson had arrived. She and James had either killed a Warden, or they were drawing the Wardens’ attack to them. The sniper’s attack didn’t waver, though.
“What do we do?” Elmore asked.
Miles checked Petersen’s pulse; the man was dead. He took the dead MP’s pistol and passed it to Elmore. Miles retrieved Garcia’s weapon and kept it. He leaned against the wall and rested on one knee.
“As soon as there is the slightest pause from the sniper, we bolt. This is our only way out,” Miles said, waving one of his pistols to his left. “We can’t stay here.”
Elmore nodded.
“Then we find Coulson and James. If they’re still alive, we help them kill the rest of these bastards. If they’re dead, we leave. The Wardens won’t show mercy to any human.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sniper’s rifle fell silent, and Miles and Elmore scrambled to leave. The loud crash of another part of the ceiling collapsing surprised Miles, however, and he paused a moment too long. As Elmore escaped, a block of falling concrete clipped Miles’s leg, tearing a long gash through his trousers and calf.
Miles crawled back to Petersen’s body and removed the belt from the dead man’s thigh. By the time he finished tying the tourniquet around his leg, the sniper had resumed firing on his position. He’d missed his chance.
More parts of the wall broke apart with the continued blasts from the quake rifle, and Miles decided he wouldn’t wait for the sniper to finish bringing the wall and building down on top of him. He pushed himself to his feet, and pain shot up his leg. He took a few tiny steps, limping with each one. Miles readied both guns in his hands and prepared to leave the protective wall.
The sniper’s rifle was quiet again, and Miles limped away from the cinder-block wall. He held both plasma pistols upward, but he didn’t have a target. He couldn’t see anyone on top of the angled slab of concrete above him. His eyes scanned what was left of the second level, but nothing moved. He moved away from the slab to search for the sniper’s new location. With each slow, hobbling step, he left a single, bloody boot print.
Miles spotted the other Warden and glimpsed Coulson returning fire at her enemy. He didn’t see James or Elmore anywhere. He wanted the sniper dead. Coulson’s continued firefight with the other Warden created enough noise to obscure his grunts and curses as he limped around piles of concrete and twisted metal instead of climbing over them and exposing his position. The last thing he wanted to do was make himself a better target for the sniper.
He noticed movement in his peripheral vision. The sniper was standing at the edge of the slab, the rifle in his hand.
Miles fired.
In the brief second the sniper’s body twisted with the impact, Miles realized his target’s clothes were wrong for a Warden. He’d shot a woman in a T-shirt. His gut tightened when he noticed her short hair and the bandage on her right hand. Dani’s body fell over the other side of the slab.
Tears burned his eyes, and without regard for the remaining Warden, Miles rushed to find her. “Please, no,” he said repeatedly as he moved toward the slab, ignoring the dangers around him.
He reached Dani. He dropped both pistols as he sank to the floor beside her. She was lying face down, and pools of blood had already formed beneath her upper body and head. With trembling hands he rolled her to her back and groaned. “Dani. No, no, no. Why were you here? This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Tears fell from his cheeks to her face as he leaned over her corpse. The hole in her chest was from his weapon. He groaned and placed his hand over the wound. It wasn’t bleeding anymore. He lifted Dani and pulled her close.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he moaned. “I’m sorry, Dani. I’m so sorry.”
He lowered his head and wept, still clinging on to her. Then a sudden pain tore through his back, and he rocked forward, stunned into releasing Dani from his arms. As he turned, another strike caught him in the head. He collapsed across Dani’s body, unconscious.
“Killed by her lover this time, eh, Miles? Thanks for that,” Jace said. He grabbed the back of Miles’s collar to pull him off Dani. After lowering the MP to the ground, Jace reached into his bag.
A blue glow started at the core of Dani’s body and grew brighter. Jace threw a tattered blanket over her to hide the light. The broken bones in her arm and skull shifted beneath the skin. The color spread to her face and limbs. Jace placed the two pistols Miles had dropped in his bag, then slung the pack over his head again, adjusting the strap so it fell across his chest. His arms free, he leaned over Dani’s shrinking form and wrapped her tightly with the blanket, leaving enough fabric to drape across her blood-smeared face.
Dani’s body continued to heal as she changed from a twenty-five-year-old woman to a ten-year-old girl. Jace pulled her now-oversize boots off and threw them several feet away, into the plethora of litter around them. He’d get her out of the adult clothes later.
All sounds of plasma pistols stopped, and Jace hoped the MPs had defeated the last Warden. He slipped the quake rifle’s strap over his shoulder and scooped Dani into his arms. Her body moved inside the blanket as she drew in her first breath in her healed form.
Jace took a final look at the MP who had accidentally shot her. “I knew you were trouble,” he said with a frown.
Miles stirred but didn’t wake. Dani wouldn’t remember him anyway.
As he’d done twice before, Jace carried his regenerated sister’s body away from where she’d been killed.