“Your scent changed.” Andrea moved in even closer and took a deep whiff from his shoulder. “It smells like y—oh. Oh! On edge.”
Andrea turned a bright shade of red and sat back into her chair. “On edge. I get it now. Yes, she was trying to make me put you on edge, then.”
“Honestly, originally, I thought she was playing power games for the sake of playing power games. Now I’m not so sure.”
“That’d make sense. Her scent changed recently, too. She kinda—”
Andrea broke off as every pair of eyes was drawn to the lobby on the main screen, where a flurry of activity was taking place.
Out of nowhere, people dressed in dark fatigues came in with sledgehammers. Walking alongside them and protecting them were others with portable ballistic shields.
Those shields were pressed to the kill slits. The men and women inside those reinforced security bunkers had been a primary point defense for keeping people out of the lobby.
With the shields so close, it made it a problem to fire, as bullets were unpredictable and could easily come back at them.
“Need energy weapons,” Felix said, watching the feed.
“That’d help. Though they would send in energy reflective shields instead. Should get an over/under weapon. Energy weapon with a rifle under-barrel.” Andrea’s voice had taken on the professionalism of Myriad.
A few minutes passed in relative peace as the people with sledgehammers did… something. They were off screen and couldn’t be seen.
He was lucky the camera left up in the lobby had been disguised as a water sprinkler. No one had paid it any attention, and it was their only means of seeing in right now.
Unbelievably, an armored car rolled into frame. Then a second. Before Felix could hit the PA and warn his people properly, both vehicles were off at full speed down the security hall, one after the other.
Slapping his hand down on the button, he shouted into the microphone, “Incoming! Take cover!”
Everyone on the exit point of the security hall took their positions.
On each side, the Wardens came to life.
They were, by all accounts, what people would call a mech. Something out of fantasy stories and fictional worlds. They were big enough for a person to be inside and pilot, similar to an exo-suit or exo-frame. Except that they were completely covered from head to toe.
They weren’t the huge versions in movies.
Yet.
Felicia had come up with the idea when Felix had asked for the ability to have an entire section locked down by a single team of heavily armed and armored people.
Coming in at eight feet tall and humanoid, they were intimidating. Built out of an alloy the Dwarven inventor refused to explain, they were incredibly tough. The power source she’d created for them, once again stolen from Lily’s power, was built for the Wardens specifically.
Each pair of Wardens worked as a team and had been built to assist its partner.
The far scarier-looking one was outfitted with a sword with a plasma edge, of all things, and a tower shield. That sword could eat through most metals and polymers with a frightening degree of ease. Thicker metals took longer but eventually could be gotten through.
The second Warden’s armament was a giant railgun. The power needed to discharge the weapon was one of the reasons the power source was built into the Warden.
Its secondary purpose was that of medic. It had a small pod attached on its side that contained electrical repair tools, self-heating lower-grade alloy of the same type that the Warden was made of, and a diagnostic tool. The idea was that it could make spot repairs and keep them in the fight longer if they had a moment to take a step back.
The armor on the ranged Warden was slimmer and less thickly made. The idea was for it to be agile, and keep itself on target with its weapon.
All four Wardens went “heads up” at the call. Both Shield Wardens trundled forward, their swords held out at their sides as their counterparts brought their railguns to bear.
The armored cars screeched into the area and the back hatch dropped down.
“Shit.”
Supers flooded out of the dropped gate, the cannons on the armored cars opened up, and the security hall was filled with enemy troops.
“Andrea, send the Others.”
“On it.” Andrea pressed a hand to her ear and turned her head to one side.
His people lit those armored cars up like they were range targets. The camera started to fritz as the armored cars continued to boom out round after heavy-caliber round.
The supers took cover behind the armored cars and began organizing themselves quickly.
His Shield Wardens got into place and neatly snipped the tips off the barrels from each of the armored cars. The barrels melted from where they were struck, the red-hot glow deforming them.
The next round from one of them exploded in the damaged barrel, while the other one failed to fire at all.
A gauss round tore through a super who tried to get a peek around the armored car, his head disappearing in a splatter of gore.
Then everything went to shit as the Others flooded in from the sides.
Felix simply couldn’t keep up with what was going on as the whole thing devolved into chaos.
Hitting the comm button, he dialed into the Shield Wardens. “More coming down the security hall. Hold them there and keep them out. We need time to deal with the supers.”
He got two acknowledgments in return as the Shield Wardens turned off to face the tunnel.
Lightning crackled one way, then fire in the opposite direction. Explosions detonated throughout the room as the battle raged.
Telemedics popped up here and there as they were able to, vanishing with a wounded comrade.
Feeling the weight of his lack of combat experience again, Felix had to turn to Andrea for help. “How’s it looking? I’m no strategist, Andrea. I’m just a pencil pusher.”
Andrea’s glanced over at him, her mismatched eyes piercing through him. She gave him a warm smile, then looked back to the monitors. “We’re winning. But not without losses. It shouldn’t be much longer. It just looks like this because everyone is unleashing all their trump cards.
“Lily is scary as shit. I genuinely underestimated her.”
Felix couldn’t tell what she was talking about, but if he had to guess, it was the mass of lightning that was dominating one side of the room.
“Yeah, she hides the monster well.”
“As to being a pencil pusher, that’s okay, dear. You be you, you do you. You’re not here to fight, you’re here to help us fight. I enjoy the idea that you depend on us for your safety.
“It’s not every day we get to rescue the damsel in distress. You’d look terrible in a dress, though.”
“Yes, yes I would. I’ll leave that to you and Lily. You two have certainly set a new standard for attractive and professional.”
“You flatter me. Do it some more.”
Felix frowned for a moment as he watched the mess that was the screen.
Andrea changed whenever she flipped her Myriad switch. Almost to another person. The intelligence boost only made it more obvious.
Might as well ask, I guess.
“You’re like a different person.”
Andrea blinked twice, her eyes unfocusing. She gave herself a tiny shake of her head, her eyes flicking back to the monitors.
“That’s because I am. I’m me, of course, but, the one you call Andrea Prime isn’t Andrea Prime. I died and we absorbed ourself through our oldest Other. We are Andrea, yet we are—I am—not.”
Andrea’s eyes scrunched up and she looked pained.
“This isn’t easy to explain, and I’m making a mess of it.”
“No, no I get it. I get it. It also makes a bit more sense. We’ll talk more after this. I’d like to ask some questions about your Others and Death Others, too.”