Krell 44

Niala bounded off like a rabbit through the halls. She used speed and oblivion to her advantage. For strength, for the hard stuff, it had to be us. I said that, but Ni always caught me off guard. I prided myself on having never been shot, but this mission absolutely ruined that record for me. I set my aura of panic on high, dodged between Nodak and Quinn, and kept my eye out for Thanus, ordering his retreat.

Just like any other sweep, we moved in, killed, moved on. But, I kept getting motes of something. I kept feeling bits of rage, something that wasn’t me. Sure, I had been shot, and I felt angry, but this—

“Guys! I feel another aura,” I announced.

“I do, too,” Quinn said as he sniffed around. Ault had a distinctive smell. The petering scents of several things caught my nose, all sharp and unpleasant. Not a one of them a wanderer’s smell.

“Who all was sent out?” Nodak shouted.

Thanus tensed, a man under one arm with a head squeezed under his bicep. A short jerk and the man twitched on the ground.

“Just us,” I said.

“Where’s Ni?” Thanus shouted. I could see the panic in his eyes.

“Down the hall. I can hear—” I said, stopping short as I heard footsteps coming from a hollow stairwell.

I caught a glimpse through a fire-door window of black uniforms—militaristic, professional.

“SENTINELS?” I barely got out before they swarmed in.

Not these uptight fools.

“What the CHAK are you doing here?” Thanus barked out. “This was our assignment!”

“Who do you guys think you are, seriously!?” Nodak shouted. He had a gun trained on them, and it aimed a little too high for my liking. Nodak had no chill.

They didn’t talk to us, just glanced around before rushing through the doors.

On the other side, we glimpsed Niala and Gaff, surprised as the sentinels bustled through. She recognized them immediately and dropped her guard.

“Secured,” One of them spoke into an earpiece before grabbing her roughly by the upper arm.

“What are they doing with Niala?” I asked, frightened for but a moment.

“Let her go!” Thanus shouted out, but it was too late. I saw what they started to do, heard the static, the crackling. Gaff moved, quicker to react than I. He dove just as they all took rough light, Niala in hand.

I ran forward just as I realized, not even thinking, and the light nearly blinded me when I reached the door.

Flash grenades lay where they’d just come from. Bright lights, loud bangs, and disorientation sent me reeling back from the door.

“Ni!?” Thanus shouted.

“They took Ni?” Quinn asked.

“What the fuck?” Nodak breathed.

“Get to the roof. We have to get back,” Thanus said as they looked around. Our job, half done for us, needed to be abandoned.

We heard helicopter sounds incoming. We grabbed our bags, linked arms, and did what we didn’t want to have to do. We strained rough light. Though it hurt, Thanus still held excess of Kiromir’s energy from their binding and melding. The rest of us gave what we could, and we flashed back to Thanus’s camper.

The four of us stared at one another with horror. Then we went for the camper, and Thanus noticed something before we did. Pausing, his eyes scanned it as he threw his arms out.

“Back up,” Thanus spoke in Anil as he swept his arm out. We followed orders near blindly in Anil by instinct—Kiromir’s training.

He looked at what I did. Footsteps, not ours, dusted over around where we stood, obscuring our previous with suffs and tossed gravel. The door remained closed, but something about it seemed off.

“I tuck the curtain a certain way when I leave. It undoes when the door shakes. Someone’s been in there,” He shouted as we all retreated.

He led the charge to run away, dragging us behind a shipping container as he watched with unease.

“Wha-“ it barely made it out of my mouth before Thanus jerked me against him, tugging in Nodak. Quinn bundled up with us. I didn’t hear the boom, just the shock and the silence ringing in my ears. The shipping container we hid behind crumpled on one side as we bundled together and resisted worse damage. The container had blown over us, barely enough room for us all to huddle, a tent of deformed metal.

“Role call?” Thanus mouthed. None of us could fully hear. I raised my hand. Nodak raised his. Quinn raised his, and Thanus nodded before digging at his ear. He looked awful. Cuts writhed his body. His lip bled, and the gait of his stance wasn’t right. He’d braced the container with his own body for us.

We sat there for a few minutes, hiding beneath the folded scrap. We felt pain from early rough light, the impact of the explosion, and the utter shock. A few moments of shaken silence passed before the ringing subsided, and our eardrums normalized.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They took Ni. Gaf managed to go with her. Someone was trying to make sure we didn’t make it back home,” Thanus said as he panicked and ran his hands through his pockets.

“Phone’s broken,” He swore.

We all checked our phones, and with luck, mine worked.

I handed it to Thanus.

He called. Kiromir didn’t answer. We called Dimal, Letti, anyone we could get our hands on, Niala and Gaff. Nobody answered.

“We fly,” Thanus said as he shoved the metal up and jerked his shirt free. His wings lashed. All of our wings did, and we leaped to fly.