Enola had lived most of her seven hundred and fifty-nine years in service to her master and to the organization now called Gnosis. She’d spent much of it as Ichabod’s right hand after her predecessor was killed.

Since then, she’d lived a life of carefully picked battles and political maneuvering. Vampires were long-lived and their societies were proportionally slow and calculating.

As one grew in power, there were naturally fewer beings of equal measure. At Class 4, there were few vampires or supers that were strong enough to give Enola a good fight—fewer still that she could fight openly without risking political fallout. Her last few fights could scarcely be called that; they were shows of force against an uppity mage’s guild.

It had been roughly thirty years since Enola had been able to fight in earnest. To let loose, as they say. Not that it mattered. Vampires didn’t lose potency with age like humans did. If anything, Enola was at her ever-growing peak—slightly stronger and faster than she was three decades ago.

Still, Enola had found herself excited at the prospect of a fight—

Even more so when she saw her master’s reaction.

She saw the same excitement and anticipation flicker across his face. When Enola saw it, she assumed Ichabod would intervene directly, but he didn’t. He seemed content to watch… He’d been in a strange mood the last few weeks. Enola couldn’t say when it started, only that it was a marked difference between his usual thoughtful disposition and this new brooding one.

Could it be related to the intruders? The prospect seemed absurd. What possible connection could Ichabod have to them?

But Enola couldn’t quell hundreds of years of intuition so easily. And she couldn’t quell her own excitement for a fight.

So, she’d went against her master’s orders like an eager and unruly child. Instead of testing Gnosis’s deployment-ready subjects, she’d skipped straight to some of their combat ready, less-than-legal ones.

And herself, of course.

It had taken Enola only a moment to decide which bioweapon to test first.

Before the success of Mutagen-X, there was Mutagen-V4. Once injected, it resulted in a product almost as strong, but one that lacked all reasoning and nearly all restraint. It did retain a predator’s instinct and superior senses, a combination that earned it a niche in tracking and assassination. Their built-in killswitch and biodegradation were icing on the cake.

Gnosis scientists called it the hound.

For three decades, they were one of the company’s flagship products. Then Mutagen-V4 was banned internationally. By that time, Mutagen-X had already been developed and surged in demand.

They still had one hound in torpor storage.

Enola ordered it woken up and released, then she used pheromone lures to guide it to the intruders. It arrived just behind Enola.

Enola hadn’t been impressed by the intruders—not at first. Enola had wondered whether she’d even be necessary. Together, she and the hound had faced down the intruders.

And they’d lost.

Ichabod was right. Two of them were artificers—Enola could smell the metal. And the other was a mage or a telekinetic. For a brief moment, Enola had enjoyed herself. She’d stood toe-to-toe with the two artificers. She could’ve ended them—should have ended them. Enola thought herself superior.

Then she saw the hound get butchered. A creature as strong and durable as she, cut down like a lamb.

A breath later, Enola found herself hurled into the air, then juggled and being shot like a clay pigeon.

It wasn’t the worst pain she’d been in, but it was a frightening position to find herself in. Enola wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge bullets, but she was fast enough that targeting her was nigh-impossible—so long as her feet were on the goddamn ground. No matter how she twisted in the air, the artificer’s aim was unerring. She would’ve expected machine-like precision like that from an elder, not a human.

When Enola finally landed, she was on the other side of the cavernous room, watching the intruders escape deeper into the compound. Her suit was bloody and in tatters. Practically, all that was left was her body armor. Enola tore the suit jacket off and let it fall to the floor.

Then she walked to the broken double doors. The ones that the intruders had forced themselves through and forced it shut again. Enola saw clearly now that the lock and hinges had been sliced through by the telekinetic.

That super is going to be a problem, she thought.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Enola grabbed the broken door, her fingernails digging into the steel. And she pulled.

It didn’t matter that the blast door was wedged shut. Thousands of pounds of metal squealed as Enola pulled the door free. Behind the door, other test subjects jostled for position, each pushing and trying to be the first to get through.

As soon as the door came free, Enola let it fall. It hit the concrete with a crunch.

And horrors poured through.

The entire cell block of test subjects had been unleashed. They’d follow the pheromone lures to the lower levels, seeking out the intruders. At the same time, the response teams for mages and artificers were coming down from the other sets of elevators. Their targets would be caught in between.

She didn’t care what their capabilities were; they were only human. They wouldn't stand up to the combined might of Gnosis.

If all else failed, they could unleash Subject LH. And if by some horrific chance that didn’t work, then her master would intervene.

But Enola wasn’t going to let it get that far. She let the horde of test subjects barrel through the broken door, then she went inside the hallway. She went to the acoustic channel board and flipped two switches. Then she called to Spawn Storage on Sublevel 25.

“This is Enola. Override code 81. Align your pheromone controls with ours and open the vampire spawn tanks. Let them out.”

The pause on the other end dragged on for far too long, and Enola repeated her command again.

Finally, someone replied in a shaky voice, “Ma’am, how—how many do you want us to release?”

“All of them.”

~ ~

Athena strained as she cut two chunks out of the Testing Ground door. With the one door in smaller pieces, it took no time at all for Mod and Arsenal to push their way through. Then the trio climbed through the opening.

Mod spared a glance back and saw the vampire pulling open the blast doors across the room by herself.

A second later, he heard the wail of dozens of test subjects from the cell block. He didn’t need to see them to know that all of those Gnosis subjects were coming after them. Dozens of footsteps and frenzied shouts echoed through the halls.

They were going to avoid as many fights as they could. Fights would only waste their time.

So Mod, Arsenal, and Athena tore through the red-lit halls toward the last group of elevators. They rounded the corner of the hall, expecting a fight.

This time, there weren’t any enemies waiting for them. The hall was empty.

“Where is everybody?” Arsenal muttered.

Mod’s group ran to the end of the hall and tried the elevators. Expectantly, the keypads didn’t light up. So Mod wrenched open the closest set of doors.

And found only darkness in front of him.

“No enemies. No elevators either,” Mod said.

“Where are they?” Athena asked.

“At the bottom.”

Arsenal forced open the next set of doors. “This one’s midway.”

TINA’s voice came through their earpieces. “All four elevators go to sublevel 29. None go directly to sublevel 30.”

Athena flicked her wrist and cut the wire. The elevator near Arsenal plummeted and crashed to the floor.

“Let’s go,” she said, running toward Mod’s elevator and waving for them to follow.

“What was that?”

“Diversion!”

Mod, Arsenal, and Athena plummeted down the elevator shaft. Mod slowed himself with his whip. Athena hopped from barrier to barrier.

Arsenal plummeted the last three stories and crashed through the elevator hatch. Arsenal slowed herself with her thinsuit until the very end when she aimed for the elevator’s top hatch and crashed through it like a cannonball. Mod followed right behind and Athena a moment later.

Mod barely had a second to process their surroundings after they landed—

But he only needed a millisecond.

A group of guards had taken position at the end of the long hallway, and they were already leveling their rifles. And thanks to Athena’s diversion, they were looking at the wrong elevator shaft. Gunshots rang out and stun grenades sailed down the hall.

Two of the grenades landed nearby, but Mod batted them away with his whip. They exploded harmlessly in the middle of the hall.

The guards had goggles on, which meant his smoke grenades wouldn’t work. So instead, Mod responded by tossing a sonic grenade. He used the ensuing confusion to hit three guards with kinetic shots from his rifle before the rest of the guards jumped back around the corner.

“They caught up to us!” Athena shouted.

“Can you block the elevators?” Arsenal asked.

“Depends on how long you want to stay here.”

Mod grit his teeth. They were one floor away from Lock—there was no way they were getting caught now. They needed to move, so Mod called out a play.

“Wrecking ball!”

A blue barrier appeared at the end of the hall, and Mod and Arsenal hurtled toward it. A handful of the guards peeked around the corner in time to see two supers before they slammed into them. In such close quarters, Mod didn’t bother using his nanite rounds. He used the nanites across his body so that every punch, kick, or whip was enough to incapacitate.

Without speaking, Mod and Arsenal divided up the enemies. She was a blur, knocking guns out of their hands and guards off of their feet until Mod could get to them. Their bodies passed inches from each other as they circled around like a well-practiced dance.

They dropped the twelve guards before they could fire a shot.

Now they had a decision to make. The hallway branched off in two directions, and both would take them to the final stairwell. That would take them down to Sublevel 30.

Athena jogged over to them. She condensed her barriers, concentrating on a single one at the end of the hall.

Test subjects poured out of the elevator shafts, but quickly ran up against the barrier. At a glance, Mod couldn’t tell how many there were, but they wasted no time in trying to cut and bash their way through.

That was fine. In a second, they’d be halfway across the floor—

~ ~ ~