She aims it at me, but I notice all the safety devices are still enabled. Still, it’s a Levin gun, and it’s going to hurt.
She fires, striking me in the right shoulder. I scream as my shoulder blade fragments from the energy pulse, causing me to drop onto the floor. Blood gushes down my arm, staining the gold leafed carpet below my feet. I begin to heal, the pain slowly subsiding as I stand back up, anger flushing my face. Artemis examines Kedua’s hand. The look of confusion on his face tells me he doesn’t understand why it didn’t work. Before he can question me, the building’s alarms begin to ring.
Bodyguards rush inside moments later, and inform Artemis that there has been a breach in the outer rim security.
“How could this have happened?” Artemis demands.
“Midge found the body of Kedua’s guard in the broom closet at the club. Someone has been masquerading as her Regulator. He’s been spotted with several others who were involved in a disturbance earlier today. They’ve managed to retrieve their boat from the lock-up and are attempting to breach the perimeter.”
I move back towards the window, my eyes glancing down to the water below to see where the security boats are currently located, noticing several are engaged in a fire-fight with another vessel. The long metal craft has managed to penetrate the security shield around the platform and has destroyed one of the patrol boats.
I smile inside, figuring it was Jagger who alerted the others about where I was.
I look over at Artemis and Kedua, then begin to move. He grabs the gun from Kedua, and fires at me, hitting me in the leg and torso. Even with the injuries, I manage to throw my entire weight against the fractured window. The glass breaks and I plummet the four stories into the icy water beneath.
The impact feels like it did when the shuttle exploded.
My head is aching as I sink deeper into the water’s depths, but this time I feel arms around my shoulders, pulling me skyward. Jagger reaches his hands over the side of the boat as Quin jumps into the water to push me up. Cass and Naomi are firing propellant rounds at the security boats, aiming at the hulls in order to rupture them. As I collapse onto the boat’s deck, Quin climbs aboard right behind me. Jagger heads below and guns the engines, moving us out of the perimeter, and into open water.
Chapter 17
“How do you feel?” Quin asks, as he lies on the deck next to me.
“Like a human target.”
He looks over my almost-healed wounds.
“What went wrong?” he asks, as he sets my arm gently down by my side.
“Artemis was there,” I squeeze out of my lungs, coughing up water. “After having the High Ruler assassinated, he caught me and forced me back to the palace, where he had Kedua shoot me with a Levin gun. But the safety devices were still on.”
“Why did she shoot you?”
“To get this,” I say, rolling up my sleeve and pointing to the serpent crawling up my arm. “He thought he’d figured it all out. You should’ve seen the look on their faces when it didn’t work.” I begin to laugh, trying to make light of the situation I’d found myself in, then cough up a little blood.
That’s concerning. What long lasting internal injuries will I have? How much more punishment can my body take before it stops healing?
I sit up and watch as Acheron fades away behind us, the rain coming down in a steady pour. Their timing for the rescue was perfect, but….
“How did you know which building to be under? How did you get past the perimeter?”
“Jagger found us and told us what had happened. He described the building and its location, so we knew right where you were. We took out the timing switch to get past the blockade,” Cass says, as he helps me to my feet. “The barrier won’t operate without the timing switch.”
I look to see if any vessels are chasing us, but I see none.
“Won’t they follow us?”
“No, their boats are pretty damaged and they don’t travel any further than one mile from the city.”
We move below deck to get out of the rain.
Naomi hands me a blanket to wrap myself up in as Quin goes into the engine room to assist Jagger. I notice as I stand in the doorway of one of the cabins that several of the steel canisters are still on board. I walk over to one and open it, seeing cans of preserved fruit sitting inside. Naomi locates a can opener and we begin to eat. I look through the other containers as I slowly eat my peaches. Two hold more cans of food, a few sealed pouches of dried meat, crackers, and some nuts. The final container has four Beta guns, two Levin guns, a Pugio blade, and about a dozen detonators. This doesn’t include the two Dorongan weapons that Cass and Naomi were using on the other boats.
I’ve never actually used a Dorongan, a weapon that shoots propellant rounds, though Devlan did keep a couple in his workshop.
The boat begins to decelerate as a chill cascades down the steps. Quin walks past me, heading up top. He shouts down to Jagger to go ahead and shut off the engines. I walk up the steps, still wrapped in my blanket, to see where we are.
Snow is falling gently from the cold gray sky above. Several inches cover the land we are now anchoring to. Dense forest blocks us from seeing past the shoreline. Naomi calls for me to come back down below as the engine goes silent. She hands me two satchels to fill with food. We empty the canisters of their contents while Quin and Jagger handle the weapons container, hoisting it onto their shoulders and walking up to the deck. Jagger jumps
