The guards closed in on Bertha’s elevator—a few had broken from the line and pretended to wander the shelves, searching for the group of intruders who’d run past them so easily. But as soon as they felt they’d made a good show of it, they took off toward the copters to escape.
Bertha’s singing had quieted now—she must be running out of ammo. Mila charged.
As she fired at the line of men, a few fell to the ground, but a couple of them made a dash straight for Bertha’s elevator, guns swinging across their chest as they ran. Bertha was done for.
A copter lifted off the ground at the massive room’s other end. Its blades sliced through the air like butter, creating gusts of winds like hurricanes as it lifted toward the room’s high vaulted ceiling. I squinted and saw two figures plummet from its side, abandoning ship.
Phoenix had seen the figures too. “Sparky and Kindred,” he said.
The helicopter slammed into the ceiling, sparks flying from its blades as they cut through the warehouse, its burning wreckage lighting the other helicopters as it fell.
The room broke into chaos. The guards running toward Bertha’s elevator turned and headed for cover. Bertha, and now Dove I saw, took advantage of the opportunity to dash from their elevator toward the shelves. I waved to them, and they joined us in the shadows.
Bertha looked at Sage’s limp body and frowned. “What the hell happened to her?” Her eyes followed the cord from Sage’s arm to the orb in my hands. “Wait—where’s Charlie?”
I stared at the ground and took a deep breath.
Bertha stepped back. “Oh,” she said quietly amidst the chaos. “I’m—I’m so sorry, Kai.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I glanced at the red orb. “Phoenix says Charlie’s in here.”
“In a big-ass Easter egg?”
“Well—it’s not an egg, exactly,” I explained. “It’s an orb.”
“Right,” she said. “An orb.” Dove still looked confused, but Bertha whispered in his ear, “Already cremated her,” and he gave me a sympathetic nod.
At the other end of the aisle, I saw the shadows of Sparky and Kindred. “Over here!” I yelled. “Hey! Over here!”
More copters burst into flames like fireworks. Men were on fire, and ran like screaming torches. Kindred and Sparky limped over to where we stood. Sparky clutched Tim’s body tightly to his chest.
“You two all right?” said Phoenix.
“Affirmative,” said Sparky.
Mila grabbed Tim from Sparky’s arms—a tourniquet had been wrapped around his wound. The sloth stretched his uninjured arm toward her face and stuck out his tongue. Mila wiped tears from her eyes and laughed.
“How do we get out of here, Sparks?”
“I coded a glitch in the system,” said Sparky. “When the bomb goes off, the computer will reset itself. The restart should disable the lockdown, and open the building’s doors and windows as it recalibrates security settings.”
Phoenix nodded. “You’re a genius, Sparky. We can hijack a helicopter and be out of here in less than a minute. Simple.”
Through the shelves, I saw guards swarm the few remaining helicopters. Apparently having decided it was every soldier for himself, they fired bullets at each another and jockeyed for the limited spots, scrambling to get away from the stronghold that had become a prison. As one copter lifted from the ground, guards below threw themselves at its landing skids. It teetered in the air, the extra weight throwing it off balance, and then it slowly lowered back to the ground, its blades ripping into two other copters, lighting them into oblivion.
Phoenix was wrong—this would not be simple.
The building shook, and we were knocked to the ground. Supporting columns moaned and shelves fell like dominos, crashing into each other as the room continued to shake. We jumped out of the way as the shelf we hid behind toppled.
Bertha’s bomb must have gone off. The ceiling was falling down around us in chunks. Screams saturated the air as falling shelves crushed guards.
There wasn’t much time. The entire Light House was crashing to the ground.
Chapter 45
“Give me your gun,” Phoenix said to Bertha as we ran. She tossed him her weapon, and he caught it between his neck and shoulder, reminding me again that he was more Hercules than man. “You take Sage,” he said to Dove, and passed the girl over to him. “Don’t let her get far from Kai, or the cord will come undone.”
Phoenix fired a test shot from the gun, and the bullet hissed as it left the barrel. “What the hell are these?” He turned to Bertha. “Some sort of dart?”
She smiled. “Not darts—nails.”
“Nails?”
“Rusty ones,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Only thing they had in the basement.”
No wonder the guards had fallen so quickly—the nails had broken into shrapnel as they flew from the barrel.
Dove scrunched his nose. “God, did it stink down there! Worst smelling basement I’ve ever been in!”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t just a basement, Dove. There are catacombs down there.”
Bertha’s face looked queasy, but Dove nodded, unfazed. “Ah, catacombs,” he said, knowingly. “I thought it had something to do with cats. Litter boxes smell terrible.”
Kindred patted his arm. “Bless your heart, dear.”
We ran toward the burning chaos, entering the fray as guards killed one another, too preoccupied with their own survival to pay any attention to us. Phoenix fired nails at any guard foolish enough to get in our way. We ran to the warehouse’s other end, toward an area where the ceiling slid back into pockets, revealing open sky.
Behind us, guards clawed at one another. Fingers gouged eyes, feet crushed ankles, and blood coated the floor like syrup. Phoenix pointed to the closest copter. Its engine was already humming, and its blades fired up. Guards swarmed it, attracted to the engine’s hum like bugs to light.
Bertha whacked a guard with her pink flip-flops, and then spun them in the air like a pair of nunchucks, knocking more guards to the ground. Phoenix and Mila fired their guns, and nails and bullets flew through the air.
Kindred rubbed the glass orb in my hands. “I’m so sorry, dear,” she said. “But it is a lovely vase.”
I shook my head. “Charlie’s in here.”
She smiled knowingly—like it made perfect sense. “How wonderful, dear!”
We pushed through to the revving copter, Phoenix and Mila taking out most of the guards with their guns. A young man in uniform, however, remained in the pilot’s seat. Bertha elbowed past him, and he pointed his gun in her direction. Her hair stuck out to the sides in patches and her eyes were wild.
The young man snickered. “A girl in the pilot’s seat? Just crash the copter now, why don’t you?”
Bertha beat the shit out of him with her flip-flops, then tossed his abused body to the ground and slammed the door shut behind him. She wiped snot and sweat from her face before settling into the pilot’s seat.
Dove threw up his hands. “WOO!” he shouted. “GIRL POWER!”
Mila rolled her eyes. The ground shook again. The floor below the copter was cracking into pieces.
“Get us in the air, Bertha!” shouted Phoenix. “Now, preferably!”
The landing skids lifted, and we hovered. The floor we’d rested on moments before crumbled into pieces like bread. Men threw themselves at our landing skids, a few successfully grabbing on, and the copter rocked from the extra weight. But Bertha flicked the controls, and the men fell into the growing abyss.
Another copter hovered near ours, and its rotor caught our skids, jerking us in the air.
Bertha sucked in a breath. “Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls.” She glanced back at the cabin. “And sloths. Tim—I’m looking at you… I can wait.”