Violence was flashing through the futures, and I knew that Onyx was within a sentence or two of jumping straight to the killing. “You know what?” I said. “Fine.” I pulled my knife from my belt sheath and started stalking towards Onyx. “You want a fight? That’s exactly what you’re going to get.”
Onyx had been expecting me to run. He hadn’t been expecting me to attack, and just for an instant he hesitated before a spray of blades flashed out at me.
An instant before Onyx cast, I switched directions, sprinting for the door. A monitor behind me exploded in sparks, an alarm went off, and I dropped my knife and threw gold discs to the left and right. I called out a command word, feeling the force barrier snap up behind me just in time to intercept the next spell; Onyx saw the wall, destroyed it with a spell, sent another volley of force blades to shred the whole area in which I’d been standing . . .
. . . and in that time I’d yanked the door open and ducked out of sight.
The door led into an empty corridor. The distance to the next junction was maybe fifty feet away, and against most people I could have covered that in time, but Onyx is fast, and he was already sprinting after me. I knew that I wouldn’t make it.
So instead of running, I flattened myself against the wall.
Onyx came charging through the doorway, his force shield radiating around him. He passed within two feet of me and I ducked in behind. Onyx caught the movement in his peripheral vision and whirled—too late. I slammed the door in his face and the lock clicked just an instant before Onyx’s next spell hit it from the other side.
I heard the wham of the force magic and felt the door vibrate. I let out a breath, feeling my heart hammering. Too close.
An alarm was beeping, loud and insistent: meep meep meep meep meep. Looking around, I saw that Onyx’s spells had done a number on the control room; a chair had been cut in half and shards of broken monitors covered the floor. A message was flashing on one of the surviving screens: LOCKDOWN ENABLED.
There was another wham and I heard the door vibrate behind me, and that galvanised me into action. Onyx would find a way through that door soon. I crossed the room to the other exit; it was the one Rachel had used, and I’d have to watch out for her, but I’d deal with that problem when—
I paused. The door wasn’t going to open.
I hit the button just to make sure; a red light blinked above the panel, but nothing happened. I pushed it again. “Come on, come on . . .”
Meep meep meep went the alarm. Over the noise, I heard a voice coming from the communicator. “—rus?” The alarm was drowning it out. “—there?”
I grabbed the communicator off the desk. “Yes.”
“Sounds a little noisy in there.”
“What?” I needed to get that door open before Onyx found a way in. I checked the monitors and found the local security settings. The doors were outlined in red, and I clicked the unlock button. An error message flashed: LOCKDOWN ENABLED.
Vihaela said something that I couldn’t hear over the meeping of the alarm. “Little busy!” I shouted. There was a button marked All Clear and I clicked it. The alarm cut off. All of a sudden, the only noise was the distant wham of Onyx trying to blast his way in.
“I said, everything all right in there?”
“I’m just great,” I said shortly. “Where’s Anne?”
“Standing right here.”
I glanced up at the camera feeds. I couldn’t see Vihaela or Anne on the displays. “I don’t see you.”
“Oh, we’re not in the vault yet.”
There was a weird noise in the background, something like an elongated hiss. “What’s that noise?”
“Hmm,” Vihaela said. “That’s interesting.”
“What?”
“Anne, dear?” It sounded as though Vihaela was speaking over her shoulder. “Time for you to earn your keep.”
“What’s interesting?”
“Guardian dracoform,” Vihaela said. “We should be five minutes or so. Don’t go anywhere.” The communicator went dead.
“Guardian what? Where are—?” I realised I was speaking into a dead microphone and swore.
Onyx was still hammering at the door. Okay, screw this. It was time to get to Anne and find a way out of the Vault before the whole Council came down on our heads.
The computer menu was demanding a six-digit code. I looked into the scenarios in which I typed every possible combination and saw hundreds of possible futures unfold in parallel, each terminating in the same message: Code Invalid. I focused, standardising the movements I used to type, zooming out. The hundreds of futures became thousands, the thousands became tens of thousands, the tens of thousands became hundreds of thousands . . . One future didn’t fit; a single white ball in a sea of black. I picked out the code, typed it in. The menu disappeared.
The communicator in my ear pinged. “Vari,” I said absently.
“Alex?” Variam said. “You guys need to get out now.”
“Why?” I asked. The lockdown menu had disappeared, but the door’s icon still wasn’t changing from red to green.
“The Council are refusing to release the Keepers to reinforce the Vault,” Variam said. “They’re still afraid that this is some sort of feint and the real—”
“This is the real attack!”
“I know! They authorised Sal Sarque to send in a reconnaissance team.”
I paused. “How big a team?”
“From what I’ve heard? All of them. You do not want to be around when they get there.”
Sal Sarque was the head of the Crusaders. It was a good bet that the “reconnaissance team” was going to be composed of the same sorts of people as the ones who’d taken Anne. “How long do we have?”
“They might be there already.”
Vihaela’s communicator flashed. A glance at the futures confirmed that it wasn’t Vihaela. “I’m going to have to call you back,” I said. “Alex out.” I grabbed up the handset. “This is Verus.”
“Got your message,” Cinder’s voice said through the speaker. “Trouble?”
“You could say that. I’m locked in the control room and Onyx is trying to smash his way in.”
“Del?”
“Was the one who left us here in the first place. Any chance I could get some help?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“Guard duty at the front,” Cinder said.
I swore. “There’s not much time. We’ve got a Crusader strike team coming in.”
“Where from?”
“Don’t know, but they’ll probably have some kind of back way.”
“Understood.”
“Wait! Can’t you—?” Cinder clicked off. “—help,” I finished, talking to the dead line. “Thanks.”
I became aware that the control room had gone quiet; the muffled wham wham wham of Onyx’s force spells had stopped. I couldn’t hear what he was doing anymore, and that worried me. I glanced up at the cameras that should show the corridor he was in, but they were black. Onyx obviously didn’t want me to know what he was doing. Bad sign.
I crossed the room and put a hand to the wall, concentrating. I could feel a force magic source from the other side; it felt powerful, and sharp. I looked into the futures of what would happen if I stayed where I was . . .
Great. Onyx couldn’t smash through the door, so he’d decided to cut through the wall. He’d break through in a little over ten minutes. I needed a way out of here.