2.13.2

A Race to Rescue

Astrid saved her strength and opted for her pistol to clear the last from her small corner of the yard. The Guardians swarmed together with the soldiers the more the enemy dwindled.

“We have to go in,” Astrid called to others.

A woman in white armor at her right turned to the call, eyes alert. “They still have to come back out this way to leave,” the Guardian informed her.

“They’re not going to go in and ask nicely, and we’re not staying out here while they kill more!”

She cast her eyes to Anders, Tenya, and Romo, who, though they kept their eyes and weapons engaged with the battlefield, already worked their way closer to the vault door.

“You guys have this?” Astrid pressed.

“We do now.” The woman, a short, but stacked guard under sandy blonde hair nodded. “Eames!”

The Guardian shouted to a fellow off to the side, a man hunched over a body of one of the foes. Red splotched the white polymer of his gear.

The man, presumably Eames, heard the summons, and bounded over. Hair colored brown to gold in the sun collected into tie at the man’s nape. Dark brows knit to be summoned, but the Guardian looked alert, if serious.

“Take them inside!” The woman instructed. “They’ll get there faster with a guide.”

Grateful, Astrid nodded to them both, and the male immediately headed to the top of the vault door without further question.

“Anders!” Astrid cried to her own leader.

Upon seeing the current conditions under control, the lieutenant-commander rounded up his own men to follow. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

More than ready to hunt ticks to dig out of another Channeler home, Astrid, Tenya, and Romo, followed Anders and Eames to the small opening the insurgents pried from the vault.

Astrid took the rear, to cover them and sense anyone that tried to sneak up on their tail. The Opposition managed to work the door just barely aside, over a spiral staircase below. Just before Astrid ducked inside, in her peripheral, she caught one of the invaders trying to angle around to the back of the blonde she’d just left.

The specialist shot him before he could surprise his target. Then descended with the others.

The ground team, and the Guardian that guided them, thundered down iron cast steps for the next level of the Sanctuary.

“Anders, did you see?” Romo called from his position in front of Astrid.

“S.O.” Tenya named from between him and the lieutenant-commander. “We should have figured. Looks the gloves have come off.”

“Then we take off ours, too. They’ve brought it on themselves.” Anders declared.

They nearly flew down the spiral so quickly Astrid almost grew dizzy. When they reached the bottom, the Guardian bolted into a cavern opening carved into a coarse rock of deep blue grey.

Below, light came from sparse, mounted lanterns, powered by batteries. As few as possible, it seemed, for the caves still cast themselves in shadows. Away from the sun, Astrid willed her eyes to adjust faster.

In fact, just ahead, she felt the presence of a Static charge headlong in their direction, probably for the stairs. But she could not discern friend nor foe. Instructor, guard, or insurgent.

Eames, however, at the front, grabbed the stranger by the scruff of the neck and handily hoisted the oncoming man against the cavern wall.

He delivered a brutal punch, followed by a second. Then a slam of the Static’s body and head against the rock. The human slumped on the edge of consciousness, before the Guardian cast the man back down the hall. And at range, Tenya put an end to it with a bullet.

When Astrid’s pupils finally dilated in the dark, she could make out the form of a Static Opposition fighter, dead in their path.

“Well, that was decisive,” Anders commented to their guide. “Where to?”

Eames said nothing. He brought them deeper, and the crew turned into a winding tunnel, dark and ominous. But their guard followed the tunnels as though memorized. As they likely were, Astrid reasoned.

They pushed as quick as they dared, and passed several off shoots and caverns, but they could only trust the man that led them to know where they would be most needed.

Soon, large windows of fitted glass passed on their left. Between frames of cliff rock and sealant, their frames offered broad outlooks into a scenic blue below sea level.

A deep royal hue cast their shapes in shadowed light. Astrid would have loved such a landscape over the barren grey stone of Endra. But there could be no time to admire the view.

Eames charged them through a series of halls cut into the stone, dead set on their destination.

But after another turn, Astrid’s senses tickled with a nearby tug. Off the path Eames led them.

“Wait!” She called. Her own team stalled, but the Guardian pushed.

“This way,” he insisted. His voice rang lower than Astrid expected, as he neglected to speak until necessary. “There’s three places the instructors might have gathered the children. We need to get to a chokepoint, so they can’t get past us.”

But Astrid turned her face to the presence of others on her nerves.

“There’s some down there,” she pointed down an unknown passage. “And some Statics. We have to check.”

Eames immediately started to argue, but Anders talked over him.

“You’re sure?”

Astrid nodded fervently.

The officer considered her request, but a second longer than anyone could stand.

“You take Tenya,” Romo suggested with a step forward. “I’ve got her. We’ll catch up.”

That seemed to suit their leader. He nodded to the agent and pointed to his comm to remind them to keep in touch. Then Anders turned back to Eames before the Guardian assumed he staked any say in the matter. Tenya, too, bobbed her head to the pair, then chased after to the lieutenant-commander to watch his back.

“Alright, Lightning Bug,” Romo redirected. “Where we headed?”

Relieved, Astrid rotated in the dark and set her eyes dead ahead. She followed her energy sense more brazenly, trustingly, than her vision. With Romo on her heels, she darted through the passage to the sensation of static, accompanied by untamed wildling energy.

Like the pull of a magnet, she let her gut choose every turn, until, with satisfaction, she stumbled onto a room with a young boy curled with another. Aged no more than seven or eight, the friends clutched one another under a dangling lantern, their eyes wide. They crouched in a chamber beyond a door fitted on hinges to dense, wooden support beams, left wide open to the hall.

But before the pair, stood another man. Not a Guardian. And he looked primed to spring upon them.

The S.O. finished a prodding demand with a threat, as though he grew tired of coaxing them. Then impatient, he reached for one of the boys.

They recoiled with a cry.

Astrid’s fist lit in a flare, powered by her fury and the batteries she still packed with her. The pull came too easy, too natural, for her to think about it. Especially with the display before her.

“In front of the kids?” Romo hissed to her.

“No,” she conceded. But her voice seethed. “Get them. I’ve got him.”

She threw a bolt, not at the man directly, but over his head. Enough to garner his attention.

Romo slipped into the cavern’s shadows, and Astrid baited her target with a snarl over her teeth.

“Come on, you son of a bitch!”

“Channeler.” The man growled back with his tone painted with a hatred that matched hers.

They only needed a few precious steps into the hall, the man drawn by Astrid’s light, before Romo slipped past him.

The agent tucked himself into the room beyond, with the boys, and immediately herded them away from the doorway. Then the agent kicked to door shut to shield them from the fight about to ensue.