He heard a footfall just to the left of his head, but he could see no one there. He did feel a hand touch his chest. He was just realising that it had touched bare skin, and that the front of his uniform had been entirely destroyed by the invisible attacker, when his heart stopped.
~~~
‘Okay,’ Fawn said, ‘we have a radio.’ She was going through Maya’s possessions and the first thing she had found was an earpiece for a handheld radio. ‘They must have a hole in the jamming to let them communicate.’ She popped the earpiece in her ear and then started on the pouches strung across Maya’s stomach.
‘I’m not sure how you can put a dead woman’s earpiece in your ear,’ Melissa commented.
‘Needs must. They’re a noisy bunch. Let’s see… rifle ammo, rifle ammo, rifle ammo. Was this woman a magician or a gunship? Pistol ammo and…’ Fawn took a small bottle from one of the pouches and held it up. ‘Well damn.’
‘Is that Crystal Mana?’ Courtney asked.
‘Looks like it. So, she was a reject.’
‘They put her on that stuff to boost her power? That’s…’
‘Sick? They engineered a girl to be a walking weapon and tried to brainwash her into murdering their enemies. They half succeeded. The Redwings are not noted for being nice people. There’s a reason they were ejected from the Alliance.’
‘That’s a valid point. Are you hearing anything interesting?’
‘Well, they’ve figured out that the team they sent up to get us has gone silent…’
~~~
The delegates had been gathered into four lecture theatres with six men guarding each room. Nava had already found a few bodies, all of them civilians. Either it was making a point, or these people had tried to resist. Perhaps the terrorists were making a point by killing people who resisted. Now they would pay for that.
The first of them fell without warning and his partner just stood there, confused, until Nava’s touch took him down too. The other two pairs were not paying enough attention to notice by the time Nava had reached the stage where her next pair of targets were standing.
When the third fell, his companion let out a yelp which drew the attention of the last pair. It made no difference to the one who had cried out; he died before the echoes died away. Bullets sprayed over the stage, but they were aiming at something they could not see which was moving fast. Still, there was a chance they could hit a hostage. Nava paused at the edge of the stage to throw out an improvised Slice spell. Her target went down in a spray of blood, his unprotected neck slashed open.
His companion reared back as blood splashed over his face. Bullets riddled the ceiling panels. He brought his weapon back down toward the aisle he had been guarding, but he was too late. Nava’s fist hit his chest, doing no damage thanks to his fatigues, but nothing could stop the spell her punch was the vector for. His eyes widened, shock registering briefly on his face before he fell to the floor.
Nava started for the door. ‘Stay in this room,’ she ordered, just a disembodied voice to the hostages. ‘No one leaves here until the rest are gone.’ Then she was out and away before anyone could respond.
~~~
‘… under attack. Unknown…’
‘Sergeant Battle. Say again. Report, Sergeant!’ There was no response and Nikolas Wolfe glared at the radio. He pressed the transmit button again. ‘Anyone on the second floor, report.’ Pause. ‘Now!’ Nothing.
What was going on? They had complete control over the building, so… No, there was the room on the third floor and the possibility that the traitor was up there. Maya had apparently failed, but the other one, the traitor, would stay put. Right? There was no way she would expose herself. She was a traitor. A coward. An engineered thing put together in a lab… to be the most powerful sorceress in the faction’s arsenal.
‘We may have incoming resistance,’ Nikolas said, raising his voice to be heard through the theatre. ‘A teenager with white hair. She’s to be shot on sight.’
Beside him, the radio jammer vanished in a ball of white light which washed over him in an instant. The pain was indescribable, but it lasted for barely a second before he blacked out. Three metres away, across the stage, the wave from the Magic Burst explosion hit the men preparing for their first broadcast. Its force was diminished by distance, but they were still left reeling from the pain or lying on the ground, writhing in agony as the raw magic power shredded nerve endings and ate into flesh.
‘Was war das?!’
‘Wo sind sie?!’
Nava did not understand German, but she got the general idea. She was not where she had fired from anyway; she was heading for the Befreit soldiers guarding a select group of hostages who had been brought to the theatre. She only recognised a few faces: Oliver Barnes Garavain had been one of the panellists with Mitsuko and there was Auberon Ewart and Joslyn Harris. The others were presumably also members of the assembly or other political figures. Maybe important clan members. She did not actually place an especially high priority on rescuing them. Maybe the principal and VP. Maybe. Certainly no more than any other civilians at any rate. Having them die on her would be less than perfect, however; the remaining men on stage could wait for the guards to die. She launched a Slice spell across the seats at another terrorist’s throat, and then she was reaching out for her next victim.
~~~
‘Network’s back up,’ Melissa reported. She had been watching her ketcom screen for
