2024-09-26 09:01:49
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CHAPTER 683
“Clara!” Tedmond roared, reaching the base of the shaft.The elevator car hadn’t merely settled.A secondary ceiling collapse had dumped a fresh mound of concrete slabs and rebar directly onto the crumpled floor.Clara wasn’t in the hallway.She was still in the rubble, buried beneath the new fall.Tedmond threw himself at the debris.He didn’t use the crowbar. He used his bare hands.‘I didn’t bring her out of that chamber just to let the building finish the job,’ he thought, fingernails tearing as he heaved a fifty-pound slab of masonry aside. ‘Not another body. Not today.’“Lottie, stay with Molly and Hugo! Keep the light on the corridor!” he barked over his shoulder.“Tedmond, the timer!” Lottie shouted back.Her heart lodged in her throat as she hugged Molly close. The girl was hyperventilating, small hands clutching Lottie’s tactical vest.‘Please let him find her,’ Lottie prayed silently. ‘If we lose Clara now, after everything—’“I’ve got a hand!” Tedmond growled.Through the
CHAPTER 682
The darkness was absolute, a suffocating weight that tasted of pulverized concrete and old copper.For a long moment, there was no sound but the slow settling of tons of debris above them, an ominous grinding of stone against steel.Then a ragged, wet cough split the silence.“Tedmond?” Lottie’s voice was a thin rasp, barely audible over the ringing in her ears.‘Is this it?’ she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. ‘Buried in the dark while she watches from the light?’The image of Sorsha’s smug, blood-smeared face flashed behind her closed eyes.‘Not like this. I can’t die as her failure.’“Don’t move,” Tedmond’s voice came from somewhere in the dark, low and strained.He was pinned.A jagged slab of the elevator ceiling had buckled inward, forming a narrow triangular pocket of survival, but a twisted support beam crushed his left thigh, locking him in place.‘Move, damn you,’ he snarled inwardly, his thoughts sharp with cold fury. ‘I didn’t survive the
CHAPTER 681
She was clawing at the gurney restraints, icy blue eyes wide with manic, trapped-animal terror. She saw Tedmond and saw the silhouette of a man who looked hauntingly like the woman she’d been imprisoned beside, and her mouth opened in a silent scream."Hugo—the code!" Tedmond roared, the sweet gas beginning to blur the edges of his vision."I’m trying! The terminal’s slaved to the Spire!" Hugo’s fingers flew across the keypad, bruises dark under the flashing emergency strobes. "They’ve locked the local override!""Thomas! Albert!" Lottie shouted into her comms, her knees dipping as the gas thickened. "We’re at the door! Sorsha has the lockout!""Working on it," Albert’s growl came back, faint but steady. "Clara has a biometric bypass. If you can get her to touch the glass from the inside, the pressure sensor might trip the emergency release."Tedmond’s gaze snapped back to Clara.She was panicking.And they had less than three minutes.Clara’s fingers were bloody from clawing at the
CHAPTER 680
At that moment, the door in front of them hissed open as the bio-key finally overrode the Syndicate locks.They didn’t step into an empty corridor. They walked straight into a security staging area.Three guards, caught mid-preparation for the purge, spun toward them.Their eyes widened at the sight of the mud-caked, blood-streaked trio emerging from the maintenance tunnel."Intruders!" one shouted, reaching for a shock baton.Tedmond didn’t hesitate.The frustration of the false lead and the lingering sting of that shattered heartbeat condensed into lethal precision. He moved like a shadow snapping into form, closing the distance before the guard could lift his weapon. He seized the man’s wrist and twisted hard.Bone popped.Tedmond pivoted, dragging the collapsing guard into his chest and using him as a shield just as the second man fired a stun gun. Blue current crackled uselessly into the human barricade.Lottie flowed at his flank, her submachine gun barking in tight, controlle
CHAPTER 679
"You were always slow!" Sorsha hissed, stepping into Lottie’s guard to deliver a flurry of precise, agonizing cuts."I was never slow," Lottie gasped, catching Sorsha’s wrist mid-air. The sisters rolled in the muck, a chaotic tangle of black tactical gear and silver hair. "I just didn’t want to hurt you! But that girl is dead, Sorsha!"Lottie slammed her forehead into Sorsha’s nose. There was a sickening crack. Sorsha recoiled, blood, vivid and dark, smearing her porcelain face. For a fleeting moment, the goddess looked human."You… little… brat!" Sorsha snarled, reaching for Lottie’s throat.Tedmond moved to intervene, but a spray of suppressive fire from the treeline forced him low, shielding Molly. Vanguard reinforcements arrived. "Lottie! The pipe! We’re out of time!"Lottie didn’t back down. She landed a heavy, mud-slicked punch across Sorsha’s jaw, sending her sister sliding backward toward the edge of the ravine. Lottie stood her ground, chest heaving, her amethyst eyes
CHAPTER 678
The air in the clearing was thick, not just with the scent of wet pine and drifting smoke, but with a suffocating history. Lottie’s hands, usually steady when survival stripped her bare, began to tremble. It wasn’t the cold. It was the way Sorsha looked at her with that same mocking, older-sister pity that had shadowed Lottie’s entire childhood.Sorsha took a slow, predatory step forward, the muzzle of her sniper rifle unwavering from Tedmond’s chest, yet her eyes never left Lottie."Look at you, Lottie," Sorsha purred, her voice silk over a razor. "Shaking. Covered in mud. Playing soldier for a man who doesn’t even know your middle name. Do you really think this makes you ‘brave’? You’re just a runaway pretending the leash isn’t still there.""Shut up, Sorsha," Lottie hissed, but the crack in her voice betrayed her."I’m the only one who ever looked out for you," Sorsha continued, her amethyst eyes softening into a poisonous, fake warmth. "When you failed the initiation at the Aca
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