Alarms crashed through the concrete room, rebounding on every wall. Henry’s voice was there, somewhere underneath all the noise, and so was Soro’s, but the shapes of their words were lost.
And then they were gone, and Kate was alone in the cell, painfully aware that she was still chained to the floor. She bowed her head toward her hands and dragged the blindfold down. No one ordered her to stop. That was the first sign of trouble. The second was that the world beyond the cloth was just as black.
For ten long seconds there was nothing but sirens and darkness, and then, just as suddenly as the alarms started, they switched off, leaving only black space and the ringing in her head.
An emergency power source kicked in, rendering the cell in a bluish half-light.
“Hey,” she called to the plastic insert in the wall, but no one answered.
Kate tried to stay calm as she bowed her head, fingers sliding around to the back of her neck. Along the collar of her uniform, she’d slipped two pins. The first bit of metal came free in her hand and she set to work on the cuffs.
The ground shook, a tremor running through the concrete. The power faltered again, and the pin slipped from her fingers, skidding out of reach. Kate swore viciously and freed the second pin, forcing herself to slow, and her fingers to stay steady.
After a few seconds, the cuffs released, and Kate shot up from the ground, but the cell door was locked. From the outside. There wasn’t even a handle, only a plate drilled into the steel.
She turned, looking for another way out, which was ridiculous considering the room was six slabs of concrete and a strip of shatter-proof plastic. She had no weapons, nothing but a pair of pins and the clothes on her back. Her boots. They had metal in the soles, maybe with enough force she could—
The power guttered a third time, and the lock inside the door clicked off. Kate threw herself against it, the steel falling open before the generators came back up. She was out.
The hall beyond was empty, lit by the same bluish glow, and the ground trembled again beneath her feet, like the faint aftershocks of an earthquake, as Kate surged up the stairs.
There was too much noise.
The sirens echoed through August’s head even after they were shut off, and the command center was a wall of soldiers talking over the buzz of the emergency power and the voices on the comms as reports came in and orders went out.
Someone had attacked the transformers.
The metal towers that routed power to the Compound and the surrounding barracks. The metal towers located south of the FTF’s buildings, far from the Seam. In six months, the Malchai had never ventured that far, hadn’t made a concerted strike—
Until now.
“Squads One through Eight report to the power block,” ordered Phillip.
“Ten through Twelve report to the Seam,” said Marcon.
“Thirteen through Twenty take the UVR strip,” added Shia.
“Twenty-one through Thirty, evacuate the barracks,” instructed Bennet.
August was already moving toward the stairs, already issuing orders to his own squad. They had a plan for this. They had a plan for almost everything. But plans and realities were different things. Plans were crisp, clean—the stuff of paper and drill—and realities, August had learned, were always, always, always messy.
Soro appeared, supporting Henry, who was white as a sheet and still coughing. This time he couldn’t seem to stop. The cough became a retch, and then a spasm, and Henry was fighting for air—and then Emily was there, calling for a medic, and Soro was pulling August away.
“We have work to do, brother.”
And August knew that they were right.
“I’ll be okay,” gasped Henry. “Go.”
So August went, plunging down the stairs with Soro at his side. Leo’s voice was a stream in the back of his head, a smooth and steady current of orders, and August let himself lean into the efficiency of his brother’s thinking. He hit the ground floor and for an instant he thought of going down instead of out, but Kate was safer in a locked room than up here, whether or not she would agree.
Harris, Jackson, and Ani were already in formation by the main doors.
“Alpha team.”
They saluted him, Harris grinning as if they were on their way to a party. Harris was always happy about a fight. Ani looked grim but determined. Jackson looked like he’d been caught in the middle of a shower, his wet hair plastered back.
A line of jeeps idled on the strip, their high beams up. The grid was only three blocks away, but with the power being diverted to the main facilities, it would be three blocks of solid black.
“Let’s go.”
Kate took the stairs two at a time, trying to scrub the last of the dried blood from her face as she reached Sublevel 1.
The armory was an exercise in organized chaos. In the low light, soldiers bustled, suiting up while team leaders issued orders and subordinates talked around and under each other.
“—an attack on the central grid—”
“Transformers one through four are down—”
So they’d gone after the power. Darkness was a dangerous thing in a place like Verity, which made power the most important resource, the only thing that kept the monsters at bay. Sloan was upping the stakes. Bringing the fight to them.
“The first wave is en route—”
“—some kind of explosive—”
Was that what she’d felt?
“—reports of Malchai on the scene—”
Kate’s mind reeled as she fell in with the current of soldiers.
She was still dressed like an FTF, and the half-light of the emergency generators cast the same muted glow over everyone, erasing details and reducing the soldiers to shadows in FTF suits.
The corridor was lined with armored vests and—not helmets, exactly, more like modified sparring gear with visors that shielded the eyes and left the bottom half of the face exposed. They made her think of the Wardens, of Liam’s attempts to design a proper suit, something that would protect her.
She was reaching for a vest when she realized—this was her chance. She could take advantage of the chaos, suit up, and slip out.
They knew about the sickness now, and when this was over, they’d probably throw her right back in that cell. She should run. But she thought of Ilsa, helping her at every turn. Of August, almost certainly on his way to the grid.
She could go.
Or she could stay and fight.
Show them she wasn’t a monster.
Someone pushed a gun into her hands, and her blood sang, vision narrowing as her thumb slid over the safety. Her finger drifted toward the trigger.
Kate ejected the clip and holstered the weapon and ammo separately.
She longed for her spikes, but settled for a baton coated in iron, a pair of knives, and an HUV beam, and followed the stream of FTFs up to the lobby, pulling her helmet on as she went. She knocked the visor down over her eyes and trailed the soldiers out, past the doors and onto the dim stretch that had, hours before, been a vivid line of light.
Jeeps were peeling away toward the site of the attack—marked against the dark skyline by gray smoke and the flicker of fire. Her father’s tower loomed in the opposite direction, a beacon of shadow.