Page 10 of Dragon’s Rebel

Thorne? she called out mentally as she headed for the door, and then she repeated it out loud. “Thorne?”

There was no answer to either call. Damn. They’d been prepared for the possibility that the security system covering the windows and exterior doors contained some kind of dampening technology that would block signals from coming in and out of the building, including telepathic conversation, but it still sucked.

It also made her feel suddenly alone.

Stop that,she told herself as she made her way into the dim, thickly carpeted hallway. This company must be making a crap-ton of money—even their hallways looked expensive. You’ve been alone all your life. It’s better that way. In the end, there’s no one you can count on except yourself.

She sprinted down the hall and around the corner to the office that fronted the vault. It was unlocked, courtesy of her hack, and as she entered she could see the heavy metal vault door with its combo lock and opening mechanism that looked like a miniature steering wheel.

For a second, nerves crept up Rebel’s spine. The last time she was in a vault, things hadn’t gone well. Of course, this time she wasn’t in a rogue witch’s house, going after an idol with the essence of an evil sorcerer in it, waiting to get his hooks in her.

So there was that.

She moved to the vault door and spun the wheel. Score. The security hack had worked here too, and the door was unlocked. The heavy bolts thunked as they disengaged, and she was in.

Her problem came when she got inside.

The vault was way bigger than she’d expected. It held thousands of tissue samples, vials, and jars of various substances. There were dozens of shelves and drawers, including three refrigeration units.

Needle. Haystack. Awesome.

She managed to narrow it down by about three-quarters when she realized all the liquids were kept in one section, but that didn’t help much. She still had to go through shelf after shelf, drawer after drawer, looking for what she wanted.

Shifter Serum UN-8825. Shifter Serum UN-8825. Come on.

Rebel glanced at her watch, her stomach starting to clench with anxiety. Normally she was calm while doing a job. Even happy—she loved her work. But the mission timer was ticking down the minutes until the security cameras would need to be back online, and she could feel that this was all about to go sideways.

Bail, her instincts told her. Normally she followed that instinct without question, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it now. Thorne needed this serum, and Rebel was the only one who could help him. Not the witch, not his magical brothers. Her. She couldn’t let him down.

She opened up another drawer, searching through the rows of vials, one eye on the minutes relentlessly ticking down.

There. Shifter Serum UN-8825.

She grabbed the flat metal transport box out of her vest and opened it, carefully packing the two vials of serum between the foam inserts. She was about to close it up when something in the next row caught her eye.

Shifter Toxin DRA-4269. The same substance that had been stolen in the recent break-in.

DRA for dragon? Could it be a toxin that specifically affected dragons? That thought made the back of her neck prickle. Her instincts were telling her this was important, and this time she listened to them.

Rebel tucked the two vials of toxin into the remaining empty spaces in her box, then flipped it shut and snapped the locks, slipping it into a zippered pocket in her vest.

Time for her to get the hell gone. She had two minutes to get down the hall, out the window and back up to the roof.

She was out of the vault and headed for the office door when she heard the crackle of a radio in the hallway, and a man’s voice, faint with static.

“Sector 40, I do not have you on visual. Verify your position.”

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. The guards were early for their sweep, and as soon as they verified where they were, the control room would realize the security cameras had been messed with.

They were also between her and the office where she’d entered—and the cable and winch that would get her back to the roof.

Rebel needed a Plan B.

Good thing she always had one.

She was already moving when another voice crackled through the radio, right outside the door. “Breach in Sector 39. I repeat, breach in Sector 39. Intruder may still be in the building.”

No time to lose. Rebel leaped up onto the desk and pulled a slim tool out of her vest, prying the vent cover off the ceiling. She hoisted herself into the ventilation shaft just as the office door slammed open and two security guards entered the room, guns drawn.

As she crawled frantically through the shaft, she heard one of them snapping into his radio, “Intruder is in the ventilation system, origination vault room, Section 39. Security protocol A-12.”

A second voice came back. “Roger that. Emergency security troops deploying. Lethal force authorized. Intruder is to be stopped by any means necessary.”