“Come on!” Andi yelled from behind him, moving toward the stairs.
Dex looped an arm around Valen, pulling the three of them into the stairwell. He slammed the door behind them, quickly fusing the lock with the electric heat from his short-whip.
Fists pounded the metal behind them.
“One more level, and we’ll be out. Soyina will be waiting at the door, if we’re lucky,” Andi said, already pulling the three of them down the eerie staircase.
Something whizzed past his face.
Andi yelped as a knife sank into her shoulder.
In a blink, she yanked it out and held it before her.
“Hold Valen,” she growled.
Before Dex could stop her, she rushed down the stairs, swinging the knife.
There were too many guards. Even as Andi fought her way down, more poured up the steps toward him and Valen.
He was out of weapons. Out of options.
*
“Sorry about this, friend,” Dex said.
With one grand shove, he pushed Valen down the remaining stairs.
The guards toppled in Valen’s path.
The guy was unconscious. No harm done unless he died on the descent—it was only one flight of stairs, not twenty.
Dex leaped over the railing to the floor below, scooped up a whip from a fallen guard, and swung his way to Valen’s sprawled form.
Andi was already there, wrestling a final living guard away. The guard swung with his gauntlets, electricity spitting blue. Andi ducked, then came up swiftly enough to knock his head backward against the wall.
A final grunt, as she kicked him into silence.
Then, nothing. The alarm cut off.
Silence swept over them as a door creaked open behind Dex.
On the other side was a sight for sore eyes. Soyina, holding a key and standing beside a rolling cart. Her mismatched eyes flashed as she looked at the aftermath of the fight.
“Looky looky,” Soyina said. “The gang got out.”
*
“You threw him down the stairs?” Andi asked.
Dex helped her lift Valen onto Soyina’s waiting cart. “I had to get creative.”
Beside him, Andi’s breath came out in ragged huffs. “We need to go,” she said. “Finish the job, Soyina, and get us the hell out of here.”
Soyina stared at them, a sickening, sideways smile on her lips. With a strange cackle, she said, “Alright then. This may hurt a bit.”
She reached behind her, pulled out a gun and, with a single shot, sent Dex reeling into darkness.
The last thing he saw was Andi’s head hitting the ground beside him, her pale eyes wide as moons. Then white light enveloped him, and all semblance of the world melted away.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
* * *
NOR
THE QUEEN’S LAB was a space born of desperation.
A pathetic echo of the grandeur that was long ago destroyed in The Cataclysm. The remnants were mere scraps of her father’s once glorious dream—a place meant to heal the planet of Xen Ptera, to bring back abundant life before it was too late.
That dream had died with her father. Now his old lab had morphed into the birthplace of death.
Nor was a queen, bred from the purest of blood, and she couldn’t bear stepping foot inside the lab unless absolutely necessary. It had taken Darai ages to convince her to come down here herself, ages more for Nor to actually do it.
Now, as she walked down the crumbling spiral staircase beneath the planet’s surface, she could almost feel the walls caving in on her, threatening to crush her once again.
She froze as an image of her father ghosted into her mind. She could see his eyes bulging from their sockets, his skull caving in under the foot of a broken stone statue, blood staining the crumbling toes. It was as if Arcardius, and the rest of the Unified Systems, had stomped the life right out of her father when they dropped their final bombs.
“Nhatyla?” Zahn asked, stopping beside Nor to place a warm hand on her elbow. “What is it?”
She’d almost forgotten he was there beside her in the darkness. “I’m fine,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she shoved the memories away. She breathed deep, despite the tightness in her chest, and silently recited the words Darai had raised her on: Fear Is Only an Illusion. Nothing would crush her or stop her until the fates had had their way. And they’d decided, long ago, that Nor would be the one to bring about Xen Ptera’s revenge.
“Should we turn back?” Zahn asked. His fingertips spun gentle circles across her skin.
Nor looked over her shoulder, where the faint light of day waited, beckoning her to turn back. To give in to her weakness.
The claustrophobia was one of her best-kept secrets. Only Darai and Zahn knew the truth about the trauma she’d faced the day of the attack, and the physical and mental scars it had tainted her with.
There hadn’t been many places within the vicinity of Nivia where they could put the lab, so when Darai found the ancient bomb shelter, still holding strong despite the crippling quakes, they started fortifying its boundaries to last.
“I am a queen who seeks to be a conqueror,” Nor said as the image of her father, and the sharp spike of fear, still begged entrance to her mind. She closed her eyes and focused on Zahn’s hand, soft and warm. “There will be battles far worse than this one.”
“And rewards for winning them,” he whispered, “should my queen wish it.”
Despite herself, Nor smiled. Silently, she walked past him, deeper into the torch-lit tunnel where Darai waited ahead.
The structure was run-down, and it didn’t improve the farther one went below. Nor’s metal heels clacked on the crumbling stones. Dark, putrid water ran beneath her soles as she hurried to keep up with her uncle, Zahn trailing behind her like a moving wall.
At the base of the steps, Darai turned right into a narrow hallway. The rafters creaked above them as subtle shockwaves shuddered their way through the ground. Nor pulled the hood of her cloak lower, shielding herself from the falling pebbles raining down from above, the edges of the hood like blinders to keep her at ease. One could easily get lost in these tunnels, so deeply carved that none would hear their call.
A few more steps, and they turned left at the end of the hall.
Straight ahead was a silver door, at such odds with the scenery around them it was almost laughable.
“They are expecting you,” Darai said. “I think you will be pleased at what you find inside.”
He held out a hand, ushering Nor toward the retinal scanner on the door. Faint green light illuminated the space as it beeped her in, and the door swung open with a heavy groan.
As she stepped inside, the pungent fumes of preserved bodies and toxins immediately overloaded Nor’s senses. She quickly covered her nose and mouth with a scented handkerchief.
It smelled like fire callas. They were her mother’s favorite flower, grown by gentle hands in the courtyard of the old palace. Now their scent brought a fresh wave of memories that only fueled Nor’s urge to seek revenge.