The mood is grim in the main secure lab where everyone has gathered, and Angela notes this place looks like a trauma center. Nick and Levine had done a fantastic rounding up survivors with the irregulars, but even they had faced overwhelming firepower before being forced to retreat. People are being treated with dwindling regen potions, and salves to alleviate burns and acid attacks that have left some with visceral wounds, only obscured by bandages and makeshift curtains. A few have serious injuries by shrapnel or debris fragmenting. The floor has spots of blood, empty wrappers of gauze packs, and people on makeshift cots for those unable to sit up.
Seeing this is almost too much to bear. She’s shifted back to her human form, and she should feel fatigued by now–even exhausted. But there’s nothing but a tingle of energy in the tips of her fingers. She should have been horrendously mana-burned by now. She looks at her skin, noting the healing cuts from Val’s razor-sharp talons in the tears of her shirt. Joey doesn’t miss the examination and pulls back her sleeve before rolling gauze over the largest wound.
“Angela, you alright?” She can feel that tether of something again, she can feel Joey’s concern not in her words, but in something intangible. A whisper beyond the space between them.
“I was going to ask you the same. You and Julia got shaken up pretty bad about Lavernius.” Julia is busy protesting as Drenar and Nick patch up her still-recovering wounds. For now, the Talons had wisened up after losing significant amounts of soldiers and were massing again at the bulkhead doors. The one closest to the connecting hallway to the teleportal chamber–what’s left of it–had held. James is in the security office just next to them, cycling through the golem camera feeds, looking grim. This lab is the most secure in the facility, and Kyle is…building something with Levine’s help.
An exit plan. One they desperately need, and they’re still not done. Volkir’s journal is down in the depths of the archives, and they need a way down to it, fast, as soon as all the others are out of danger.
“Angela he was…I don’t know what he was. I just know at the end…Lavernius stood with us and gave his life so that we would live. And King…I don’t trust him, but I wonder if he’s still manipulating us down this path.” She rubs at a grazing wound on her shoulder, where an autobow bolt had skimmed by and left a gash that is slowly fading.
“I’m sorry, Joey, this must be awful for you.” She doesn’t resist further while Joey helps her, and she gazes at Reeves, conscious but in bad shape. “How long do you think we’ve got, before–”
“We need Kyle’s plan to work, or Reeves won’t make it,” Joey responds calmly. Her eyes are in sharp focus on the triage before her, and she can feel her burying down her inner turmoil. Why can she feel what she perceives as Joey’s internal thoughts? Does this psionic connection go both ways now, or was it something she never knew she was capable of? She doesn’t know if Joey is aware of it, either–if anything, she’s been afraid to use her abilities. She lets out a soft sigh, and calmly rests a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I’m sounding dour, Angela. It is…difficult to be optimistic right now. Except for you putting a dent in Val’s scaly hide. That was impressive. How did your scales become…well…”
Angela shrugs. “Your sample did that.” Joey’s eyes widen slightly at that assertion, even as she rolls back her ruined shirt sleeve back over the bandaged injury. “That crystal you grabbed by Drenar’s house. It… did something really weird to me. As soon as I touched it with my bare hand, it supercharged me. I can’t even begin to unpack what it did to my body, Joey.”
“So, that’s never happened before this?” Joey examines her arm, and nods satisfactorily.
“No. I’ve never touched a mana crystal before this. But…Drenar’s dagger…it hums when I hold it. I don’t know if that’s tied to the fact that it’s a Valkyrie artifact, or there’s a shard of mana crystal embedded in it, but every time I’m near these things…I feel some kind of pressure or vibration.” She rubs at her chest anxiously, there’s still a residual charge that feels like it’s radiating from her heart, even though her pulse is steady. She still has unanswered questions about what happened. “Joey, some really weird stuff keeps happening to me…and I have zero explanations for it."
Joey gives her a reassuring pat on the arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re not the only one strange things are happening to. You wouldn’t believe what I saw earlier tonight, and I’m not sure I’m ready for an answer on that one. Any other distress, burns, injuries?”
“No. I should have had a serious mana burn from that endeavor, but nothing happened. That’s weird, too. So, I had a question about what a soul-touched is. What is that, by the way?”
Joey leans back a bit, as if reluctant to answer. “Joey, Sam knows something about you, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, whatever it is. Maybe she knows it has to come from you?”
I am still here, you know. I believe that I might have spoken out of turn, earlier. Sam's reassuring words cause the creases in Joey's expression to soften, just a little.
“Well, that is…quite kind of her, actually,” Joey sighs softly. “I’ll tell you later, okay?”
“Guys. I need everyone here but Kyle, Levine, and Zameren. We have problems.” James calls for them from the safety of the security office. He motions for them to observe one of the golems overseeing the barricaded door.
Angela recoils in horror. An armored knight has forced two of the staff to kneel in front of the door, and he leers at the camera and points to them. “James, get audio,” Drenar instructs. He reluctantly pushes one of the buttons and zooms the camera closer. She has a dreaded idea of where this is going, and knows it’s bad news.
That soldier that stands tall over them pulls out a pistol and racks the slide before looking upwards at the camera. “Hey, is this thing on? Open up, you stupid Conclave simps!” the man roars upwards. “Tilt the camera if you can hear this!”
“James, don’t move the camera,” Angela says forcibly. “You know what they’re about to do.”
“You mean shoot them in the back of the head if we don’t open the door?” Joey’s hand reflexes towards her alchemist hopper, fingers twitching in anticipation. “That’s David and Marcie, we can’t let them die!”
“We can stall. Buy time,” James says calmly. “If they think they can leverage us, they will press us at every opportunity. I also see King working his way to the barricaded door. Get this, his troops' armor markings are different. Looks like they do have different response divisions.”
“James, tell me you have a plan, other than me somehow barging in there and rescuing hostages. You know, while the room is filled with men armed with fireballs and lawn dart launchers,” Drenar states anxiously. James gestures with the armband, and he sees the golem wave on the screen with a small canister of shock gel. Joey grimaces.
“You want to shock one guy. In a room filled with hostiles?! How’s that gonna help?”
“Val’s guys don’t get along with King’s guys, remember Lavernius and Curtis?” James says with a calm tone. “These guys are disciplined within their divisions, but maybe I can spark a distraction.”
“That buys Marcie and Dave a few seconds of not being executed,” Joey growls. The soldier continues to speak to the camera and points the pistol at the view screen.
“Hey, I know you guys are gathering for the pay-per-view execution, but time is a little short here. Open these barricade doors, or I start cutting off fingers. When I run out of fingers, I’ll slit their throats. Nolan, cut off one of her fingers now.” One of the soldiers holds her forcibly and she shrills in terror, while he gets to work with a knife and Angela forces herself to watch.
The shriek sets her teeth on edge, and she clenches her nails into her palms so tightly she feels a trickle of blood. The man waves the finger in front of the camera in an even more grotesque display of barbarism, and the woman is sobbing and in agonizing pain. “You’ve got five minutes to open this door before I start cutting more fingers, one per minute. And if she doesn’t convince you, we’ll do worse to this unlucky sap next to her.”
“That guy just made my list,” Drenar growls, his arms crossed and looking like he’s about to start brutalizing the entire Talons’ army. “James, we need to get them out of there. Now. We have two minutes to plan, how do we get them out alive?”
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“Give me five minutes, I’ll get them out,” Nick says calmly while eyeballing a vent up on the wall, and strips most of his gear except for his dagger and a bolt pistol, and a few grenades of varying types. “Drenar, I need you and Angela.”
“Got a plan?”
“Yeah, a bad one. Can you use your teleport on-demand?” Drenar regards him warily, but taps his fingers on his arm.
“In theory, yes. But it’s been more by the gut reaction. I've also never teleported past a closed door, either."
“How far can you teleport?”
“Ten meters, I haven’t been able to go further than that,” he answers quickly. "Angela, give me that marker."
"What do you have in mind?" She grabs the marker, and he hastily draws a circle on the floor and puts a giant 'X' in the middle. "Visual mapping? Good idea." He nods in concurrence.
"We can try this once. I'm going to do this blind." He steps back several paces from the circle drawn by the door, and closes his eyes, and his body tenses like he's about to leap. He blinks out of existence, and then pops up with his feet planted on the 'X'. He opens his eyes and gasps, and looks around, almost twitch-like. "Okay, I've teleported Julia and Angela when they grab hold of me, which means we can piece this together. But if this goes wrong, we might teleport into a wall, and that'll probably be lethal. I haven't exactly wanted to test this theory out."
"Good enough. We need to hurry." Nick pulls at the vent cover, where a small utility shaft angles upwards, towards the top of the room.
“Uh, Nick, you want to go through the duct? That’s a bad idea.” Angela points out.
"We'll get one chance at this. I can take out the men holding them. I need Angela to maximize her barriers, and I need Drenar for our egress. Memorize the spot on the bulkhead door. The hostages are just on the other side.” Drenar looks at the camera, and then the other side of the metal bulkhead, and gives a long look at the mark on the floor. “I’ll pop smoke, James runs the bot as a distraction and zaps out one of the Talon's soldiers.”
“Don’t waste this shot,” James says grimly. “This is gonna work once, after that, they’ll start punching holes in vents and every nook and cranny.”
Angela regards her brother with cautious optimism. “You’ve never wasted an opportunity. You’ve got this.” She wastes no time other than keeping the short sword, a bolt pistol, and resin grenades–at the close range they’ll be at, anything else will be a hindrance.
Joey is quick to sprint over with a gas mask from a cabinet in the lab, and quickly fits it over her head, same with Drenar and Nick. “These rebreathers should keep you from being harmed by the gas. Nick, these grenades aren’t damaging, but they’ll leave you incapacitated. Don’t lose your mask, and if you do, hold your breath as long as possible.”
“Thank you, Joey,” Angela says with a muffled sound through the mask. it feels…mildly restrictive, but Nick is quick to ease the panel open, and they clamber inside. Drenar gives one last glance and nods to James. “When we click our radio, that’s your cue.”
“Got it.” Without another word they crawl through the duct, past several meters of meandering pathways. It’s a bit more of a squeeze than she thought, and is right behind Nick.
“Angela, remember to use a full field barrier. Project it as well as you can. There might be a lot of gunfire if this goes bad,” Nick says quietly. His voice is distorted by the mask, and he’s breathing a little more heavily than he would normally. “Drenar goes down last. Everyone grabs him, we hopefully don’t get scrambled on this effort. You said you were able to teleport Julia?”
“Julia and Angela, at once. It took more effort. I uh…we tested it thoroughly, so I didn’t end up inside a wall,” Drenar says with hesitance.
“You seem to have good control over it. You’ve got this,” she assures him.
“I know. I’ve got you guys,” he says with a wry smile, when she looks over her shoulder. Nick motions for silence, and puts up two fingers. Two minutes left. This is going to be cutting it close. He slows down as they crawl several meters more, and he points down at a vent panel, where voices are coming up. They’re several meters past the bulkhead, and there’s a sobbing cry, and one man threatening more violence for a lack of silence. The hostage whimpers and is heaving, mere seconds away from possible dismemberment or worse, and Nick eases up the panel. It’s enough for them to hop down straight into the midst of their enemies, and he readies the grenade. He hand signals both of them, and waits for them to give an acknowledgment.
“They’re not opening up,” one of them mutters. He sounds like smoky cigars and a man who is impatient. “Skeeves, just cut another finger off. We know they’re watching.”
“Hey, timeliness is godliness, doncha know? I make a promise, I keep it. Maybe these mages are that stupid, and they’ll open the door.” It’s the muffled sound of the lead soldier, who had been brandishing a pistol at the back of their skulls like he didn’t have a care in the world for human life. She nudges past Nick’s flank and peers down, noting the positioning. It’s a few meters drop, and they’re oblivious. Nick readies his canister and Drenar tenses, dagger in hand and gleaming blue at the edges. Nick likewise has a bolt pistol in hand and practices the toss.
Nick nods to both of them and then clicks the radio. The armored soldier grabs a knife and stands up the hostage, who is pleading. “You know what, let’s have some fun with her this time, let’s make a few more cuts before we snap it off this time, yeah?”
“Buddy, you’re sick. I didn’t sign up for flaying people or cutting off pieces of their body,” one grunts.
“All of you hold up this instant! King is pissed, what the hell are you doing, carving up hostages?” a newcomer demands. This is then followed by an electric zap, and there are shouts of surprise.
Now.
Nick tosses the grenade and it explodes in a cloud of billowing grey smoke, filling the area with obstruction. Nick swerves down and lands on the back of one of the soldiers, and there’s the sound of a knife slicing through soft flesh. A panic fire nearly lands a bolt straight through her shoulder and misses by a few centimeters. She flares her barrier and drops down, short sword in hand, and slices at the first armored soldier, cutting through the body armor and leaving the man screaming–and coughing–from the fumes. She flares her barriers in a protective wall after knocking away the man closest to the hostages, and the hostages are coughing, and she gets her attention.
“Grab hold of us, we’re getting out of her!” she screams out, and feels bullets ping off her arcane barrier that is now enveloping Nick and the two hostages. They grab hold of her, and an autobow bolt cracks the barrier. There’s more than a spiderweb of blows on the barrier, and Drenar drops down and grabs hold of her hand tightly along with Nick. All he has time for is a quick nod and an expression of sheer determination.
Wish me luck. The world blinks in a moment of sheer white, and her body–and the world–disappear from her view.
But there is something here. A crystalline calling. She can feel Drenar’s hand still, even if she can’t see in this overwhelming white light. But the crystalline chime…it’s something different. A hauntingly beautiful note in this strange place.
And…something else. She can see a shimmer of silver. A flash of green eyes. But it’s not Drenar…he’s off to her left, and the hostage's hands are wrapped around her torso tightly.
Those eyes blink, and she hears a hauntingly beautiful voice.
It’s not your time to be here, child…
The vision fades, and she’s tumbling back to reality and a white tile floor, gasping for breath and her head feels like it’s spinning. She collapses on the floor in a sprawl of limbs–hers, Drenar’s Nicks, and the other mages. She blinks, and everyone is gathered around them in awe. “Did we...did we make it? Or did we just isekai into another existence?” she gasps. Joey quickly attends to the former hostages, and Angela is hoisted up by an amazed James, who gives her a brotherly hug.
“No. You’re home now.”