Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
My mother was decomposing too, although much slower than the humans around her. I wrapped her in her robe, carried her into a side tunnel, to one of the dead ends, and placed her on the bottom of a shallow pool while Jovo stood guard. I used the last aetherium charge to collapse the passageway. Cold Chaos had no reason to go this way and with luck, her body would remain undiscovered.
I stood there by her tomb in silence for a long moment.
Thank you for your gift. I promise I won’t squander it.
The secret of the breach was hidden. It was time to go home.
Main blade, backup blade, four aetherium grenades…
Elias turned away from the table filled with his gear. Something was going on outside. He headed to the library’s entrance. Outside the window, the sunrise barely began, the street and the gate awash in the early dawn light.
Elias stopped by the tinted window. The gate was on his left. In front of it, Leo stood with his arms crossed. Kovalenko was on Leo’s right, lean, dark-haired, holding his bow. The cryo ranger was poised on his toes, the bow casually hanging in his hand. Kovalenko summoned energy projectiles, which his mind shaped into arrows. Contrary to the misleading name of his talent, they didn’t encase things in ice. When one of Kovalenko’s arrows struck, his target seized up, frozen in their tracks for a couple of moments, as if tased. The bow wasn’t strictly necessary, but it helped him aim.
To the right, at the mouth of the street, ten people had disembarked from a personnel carrier, grouping themselves around their leader. Tall and broad-shouldered, he towered over his team, and his bulky tactical armor, reinforced with adamant, only made him look larger. Anton Sokolov, a bastion Talent, a good solid tank with just the right amount of aggression. The woman next to him was older and willowy, her dark blond hair pulled back into a French braid. JoAnne Kersey, otherwise known as the Bloodmist. For some reason, a lot of women awakened as pulse carvers, high-burst damage dealers who used bladed weapons and diced their opponents into pieces in a controlled frenzy. JoAnne was one of the best.
Elias recognized a few other faces. All ten had the same charcoal and white patch on their gear: a dark square showing a shield with two stylized wings spreading from its sides. A faceless human bust rose out of the shield with a sharp corona of triangular rays stabbing outward from its head. It was meant to evoke guardian angels and general badassery, but to him it looked like some winged crash dummy thrust its head through the shield and was now stuck wearing it like a yoke.
The ten people on the street wore it proudly. The Guardian Guild had sent their A team to claim the Elmwood gate.
He didn’t hold it against Graham. It wasn’t personal. Graham was like a shark: always hungry and looking for something to sink his teeth into.
Krista walked out of the library’s depths and stopped next to Elias. A faint red glow traced her long dark fingers, a precursor to an inferno.
“Look at them all dressed up. Bless their hearts.”
“Are we ready?” Elias asked.
“We’re good.”
“London?”
“Geared and armed. If he isn’t happy about it, he’s keeping it to himself.”
“I’ll need you to watch him in the breach.”
She smiled. “No worries. If he sneezes the wrong way, I’ll be on him like a hawk.”
On the street Anton shrugged his massive shoulders. “You’re standing between me and my gate, Leonard.”
“Funny, I thought I was standing between you and our gate.”
Anton sighed. “Don’t be fucking difficult. We both know the DDC is going to announce the gate change.”
“If they reassign it and if the Guardians get that assignment, we’ll revisit the issue.” Leo’s voice was cold and light. “Until then, you are trespassing. This is your only warning: turn around, sashay back to your soccer dad minivan, and get the fuck out of here.”
“Your healer is stuck in Hong Kong,” Anton boomed. “And the old man isn’t here to pull your ass out of the fire.”
The old man, huh?
“We know he left for HQ last night.”
Elias’s eyebrows crept up. Last night he and Leo returned to HQ. It was late but he wanted to speak to Ada’s children one more time before the news broke. Leo came with him for that conversation and then went back to the site in the Cold Chaos vehicle. Elias stayed for another hour, finishing up some last-minute things. He’d taken a ride-share back, had it drop him off several streets away, then ran the last couple of miles to clear his head. It worked – he’d slept well for the first time in a week.
Someone from the Guardians must’ve been watching the site and noted Leo coming back without him.