I grabbed at my nullifying cuff.
Constantine’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, trapping the cuff. His other hand was already raised, his wrist bare.
“No,” I said. “You’ll be—”
But his magic was already spreading out like a pair of giant wings, throwing the storage paper I had given him fall term toward the spellbox. It wrapped around it at the last second, and a muffled boom burst the paper into confetti.
“You’re going to have to make me a new martini set,” he said, almost idly.
“Your magic.” He had just sunk his magical signature directly into the mountain.
“But not yours. And let’s see my father try to cover up this one with the government,” was the vicious response.
“Move out, move out,” Olivia shouted. “Incoming.”
I could see a shadow shrieking along a mountain in the distance. One bad event on top of another.
“It’s Kaine,” I said. Constantine swore.
“That’s not all. Department reinforcements just arrived on the summit. Shoot, shoot, shoot, you’ve got to get out of there.”
The building shook.
“I have no idea how you are still alive, but a terrorist got through 03,” Dagfinn said tightly. “Direct hit on the Kinsky.”
“Forget the Kinsky!” someone yelled. “The Department and praetorians will take care of the sanitarium—get out of there.”
The layer began slowly grinding.
Kaine's shadow suddenly shot faster than I'd ever seen it, shooting straight up to the room we'd just left.
“The Kinsky took another hit! It’s related to the sudden layer instability!”
“We just lost 03.” I could hear the fear in Dagfinn's voice. “And all surveillance on that level.”
Constantine swore again.
We didn't bother with id spells, doors, or assistance—Constantine simply lifted his hand upward and pulled down with his unbound magic. A hole ripped through the floor above, then the floor above that, tearing a large, jagged pathway. I grabbed a carpet from the transport dock and we tossed ourselves on top and shot upward.
The reason for Axer’s silence became apparent as soon as we flew into the destroyed room. Our own comms sputtered and broke under the cloud of spreading shadow.
A few of the Awakening cells had been split open in the fire and their mages were either splayed on the floor or walking around in a daze, magic sparking off them in devastating waves.
The rest of the Awakening mages were alert in their cells, and they stared in terror. The walls separating the Awakening areas had been demolished, so that every Awakening mage in a cell was now in crumbling view. The magic that ran along the sides was sputtering.
The cell grids weren’t going to hold. And the combined shockwave of four thousand Awakening mages and their magic springing free, without direction, would be devastating.
“Come to join the fun?” Kaine smirked at us.
He and Axer were dueling in the center of the unnaturally enlarged room. Terrorists were taking potshots at them from the side. Kaine’s shadows lifted one after another from the ground, breaking their necks midair before dropping them to the floor. “Mustn’t let the terrorists win.” A shadow sliced toward Axer and he dove and returned fire.
“I will finish my father's plans and the greater ones that I've been given!” Godfrey said viciously, trying to destroy them both.
Five more spells were shot from the sides, and both Kaine and Axer took precious time to deal with each while trading their own blows. Axer’s cloak was smoking with the number of hits it was absorbing. There were only so many killing blows it was going to be able to absorb.
Everyone in the room was throwing killing magic. Our carpet taxi took an immediate hit and Con and I tumbled off. I raised our best shield to cover us. Constantine shoved me behind a terminal and began ripping apart a massive cat’s cradle he pulled from his pocket, string coiling in his grasp. He twisted three strings together then threw them outward. A net opened and secured around four mages—two terrorists and two Department security officers.
He nodded grimly and grabbed the cat from his coat and an enormous handful of string. “Everyone out there but the hero is an enemy,” Constantine said viciously, then shot all the string in a magically enhanced arc straight at Axer. “Go!”
The cat bounded into the air, three spade tails flapping in slowed motion as it hit the first net with a clawed paw, then the second with the middle tail, and a third with a back foot, rotating in the air like some weird bluish-purple cat ninja as it punted each net toward a different section of foes.
“Wha…” I couldn’t even finish the word as the cat flew along the thrown arc, past a ducking Axer, tumbling as it hit its final targets.
“I have serious problems,” I mumbled, raising another shield behind Axer as a mage took aim, and another in front of us as we were targeted too, all while watching my creation secure the forces around the main show group by group. “And so do you.”
“I accept your gift. Thank you, darling,” Constantine murmured. The cat streaked across the floor, spit acid at one of the mages targeting us, then dove into Constantine’s open cloak. The string maneuver would only work once. The rest of the forces—the best of them—were already tweaking personal shields to account for it.
Axer got in a shot on Kaine, sending his shadows shrieking, and our communications returned for a moment.
“Watch to your left, 01. Forty unaffiliated soldiers incoming from the west. One hundred from the east. Fifty from—”
“Ren, it’s Helen! Transport room! They aren’t there to save—”
Kaine yanked Godfrey Jr. into the path of Axer’s overpowered killing blow, then swirled into smoke.
I frantically looked at the spread of the smoke to see Kaine in front of the Kinsky. He gave me a taunting wave. Behind him, the woman closed her eyes as if in great pain, and a parcel ejected from her hands as Kaine swirled into the painting.
The painting pulled inside of itself with an unnatural crack. Axer’s spell hit the wall a split second too late.
Patterns bloomed, spreading like a plague along the wall. Rumbling started from deep within the layer. The walls and floor began to shake. I stared at the ejected parcel at the base of the wall and held out my hand.
“RUN!” multiple voices screamed.
“Full destabilization has occurred. Readings marked and logged for posterity. Enacting Order 5376.15.94 under power of the Prestige,” Helen Price ordered from far below, her command running through the systems and blaring into the air due to some predefined security measure.
My gaze was on the patterns expanding along the floor as the Kinsky parcel zipped toward me. I heard Olivia’s soft, unnatural, “No, that’s not, no.”
“Olivia?” I asked. “What—”
“No.”
My gaze shifted downward almost unwillingly, through the break in the floor, not allowing the jagged rips and beams to hinder my gaze.