I take her next punch on my forearm and step inside her reach. Too close for her to generate power. I drive my forehead into the bridge of her nose. Cartilage flattens. Blood sprays across both of us. She staggers.
I grab the back of her head and slam her face into my rising knee. Her teeth break against my kneecap. She goes down to all fours.
The blade is still in the ceiling tile. I pull it down with my telekinesis. It drops into my hand. I drive it through her back and into her heart.
She goes flat. The corridor goes quiet.
I'm breathing hard. The forearm cut is closing but the hand wound is deep. I flex my fingers. They respond, but slow. My ribs itch where the skin is knitting back together.
Damn. That was close.
Maximus is already ahead. He pushed toward the core while I was fighting. I can feel the pull of him deeper in the corridor.
Behind us, movement. A blade scrapes against the wall. Julian doesn't call out. I hear the impact. A body hitting the floor. Then Julian's voice, flat. "One came from the east stairwell. He's down."
Six down. Two left.
Maximus's shadows push ahead of us down the corridor.
One more body beyond that. Hub security. He went down fighting. A blade still in his hand, a gash across his temple seeping red into the collar of his shirt. The wound is closing. Slowly. Still alive.
The door at the end opens into the cold.
Condensation billows where the air from the corridor meets the room, a fog that reaches my shins and smells like iron and antiseptic. The units line both walls, floor to ceiling. Half of them are dark. Glass doors smashed. Bags torn from shelves and scattered across the floor, punctured, leaking into the drains. The east wall is gutted. The west wall is still intact. Still humming. Still holding what's left of the clean supply.
Two left. One at the control panel with a device in his hand. Black. The size of a deck of cards. A red light on the face, solid, not blinking. His other hand is on a switch. The second one is between us and him.
The one at the panel sees me. His fingers tighten on the switch.
Don't let him press it.
Maximus moves before I do. He crosses the distance to the second one in a step. A sound like wet stone breaking. The body drops.
I hit him with everything I have before his fingers can find the switch. My telekinesis catches him in the chest and sends him backward into the shelving. Glass shatters. Bags of blood burst and spray across the wall behind him. A broken shelf bracket punches through his back and out through his chest. He hangs there. The device flies from his grip.
I catch it with my telekinesis before it hits the floor. Hold it steady in the air. Bring it to me slowly, carefully, and set it on the floor inside the doorway.
Don't drop it. Don't squeeze it.
"Ethan, relay to Seraphina," Maximus says. "Device recovered on the fourth floor. Unknown origin. Treat it as an explosive. Marcellus, get up here and secure it. I want it in Seraphina's hands."
"Copy," Ethan says.
"On my way," Marcellus says.
Maximus moves to the west wall. Checking what survived.
The fog from the open door curls around my boots. My blood is mixed in with the rest on the floor. The wounds on my forearm and ribs are knitting closed but they haven't finished. No movement. No sound. The floor is clear.
Maximus turns from the west wall. His gaze moves from my forearm to my ribs to my hand. His jaw tightens.
"You're bleeding," he says.
"Healing."
Maximus looks at the device on the floor. It lifts. Rises slowly, rotates once in the air, and floats across the room to the far corner. Away from the damaged shelving. Away from us. It sets itself down without a sound.
He didn't touch it.
