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This fight wasn’t for the weak.
No fights were, really, but when I slammed my body against one of the guards, I was reminded that this was especially true tonight. The guards had taken off their gloves, meaning the Warden had finished playing games.
Instead of tranqs or other non-lethal options, the guards had moved to real bullets. Thankfully, Bowen had already proven his worth. It had only taken a moment for him to use his powers to put up a shield that stopped the guards from using their guns. They could still pass through it, but it stopped anything that moved too quickly—meaning bullets.
Not that it discouraged them. They’d simply moved over to blades, which I didn’t mind a bit.
And I was far from the only one.
Kit moved through the battlefield like a lion, taking down anything that ventured too close. Of course, he wasn’t the target of most of the guards.
They probably didn’t want to risk being the idiot who drew his focus.
If they went up against one of the rest of us, they might just survive it. I didn’t try to kill, though I would if I had to. It was the same with the others. Kit, however, was entirely lethal. Turning someone into ash wasn’t the sort of thing a person came back from.
A pain in my arm made me let out a rough, low noise. A glance down showed blood, and to my side? A young-looking guard whose hands trembled around the knife clutched in his hand.
His eyes held all sorts of ‘what the fuck did I just do?’
It was why I responded with a closed fist sucker punch to his jaw. It put him down—I doubted he’d get back up after that. He was too young to lose his life over a fight that wasn’t even his.
I knew how it worked here—they recruited young guards with nowhere else to go, people who the military didn’t want, people without options. They isolated them and indoctrinated them. Enough time at a place like this would twist them into the sadistic people they eventually became.
At least this guard still seemed to have some of his humanity left.
Still, more and more enemies poured into the yard. Not just normal guards, either. The black uniforms of the North Tower showed up, which made my heart speed.
What did that mean for Hera? Was she okay? She’d been drawing their focus to split their response, but what did it mean that they were here?
I forced my thoughts away from that. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it anyway, so why split my focus? The Warden probably wanted to ensure this got put down, which was why she sent North Tower guards here.
That made it clear how hopelessly outnumbered we were. No one else had shown up, no Larkwood residents ready to fight beside us. Hell, during the escape, they’d been just as quick to turn on others of their kind instead of joining with them.
“This isn’t looking good,” Wade said through the radio, a slight tremor to his voice. He’d taken a spot near the wall, mostly hidden from view. It let him keep an eye on the situation while also handling any security measures that came up. He could slow down guards by locking doors or end alarms if notice got put where we didn’t want it. It was for the best, since he wasn’t all that useful against human enemies. Alongside him, he had Aaron and Moa. The last thing I wanted was for the humans to get caught up in this bloodbath.
“There’s too many of them,” Knox said, panting hard into the radio. It reminded me that while Knox was far from helpless, he wasn’t made for full-scale drawn-out battles like this.
“Giving up already?” Bowen asked into the radio. “I wouldn’t have come all this way if I’d realized you all surrendered so easily.”
“No one is surrendering,” I snapped back. “But it’s suicide to pretend like things are different then they are. You can’t deal with a situation if you don’t even acknowledge it.”
Someone charged me, a blade in his hand. When he got close enough, I quickly wrapped my hand around his throat, stopping his forward momentum. A flick of my arm tossed him to the side as if he weighed nothing.
A crash behind me made me turn to find another guard, a knife in his hand as well, on the ground.
I peered across the way toward a smirking Bowen, telling me he’d used one of his shields to stop the man.
I lifted my lip in a snarl back. If he expected a thank you, he’d be disappointed.
Still, Wade’s words rang true. Across the field, we were starting to lag.
Well, most of us. Kit seemed even more powerful than he’d been at the start, as if each person he turned to dust strengthened him. Then again, he had used the termconsumewhen talking about it.
I didn’t care for the idea that he ate them like snacks, but if it helped us, I could look the other way.
Bowen helped to isolate the guards, to throw them back when too many converged at once. It let us not get overwhelmed despite how outnumbered we were. Still, a war of attrition never went well, and we had far fewer people. It was only a matter of time before we lost.
It had started to appear hopeless. I felt like we’d all been too cavalier before, too assured of our plan, too quick to assume we could handle it all.
