“That will mean nothing if your planet is destroyed and dead,” Leta snapped.

“She’s not wrong,” put in Dez, to Leta’s deep shock, though she didn’t say it. “Both contingencies will be more successful with the support of the Ellegian populace.”

“Gods, even he agrees with me,” Leta growled, rolling her eyes and then seeking out the woman who had brought her in. “Where’s my pack?”

The woman looked startled and then searched around the room for someone to assist her, but no one did so she pointed down the hallway. “Eh–it’s in the storage room on the left, but–”

“Great,” Leta cut her off and headed back to the hall just as Ezra stuttered, “W–what are you doing?”

“Taking my stuff, freeing my med team and getting back out there,” Leta called back as she walked straight past the stunned guards into the storage room and sought out her medical bag. Slinging it over her shoulder, she made a pointed glance at the man guarding the holding room where her team was waiting. He nervously cast a glance at Ezra who didn’t seem to know what to do, and then Dez, who nodded. The door swung open and Leta smiled, heading back into the main room.

“And if anyone tries to stop me? Like this guy said,” she jutted her thumb at Dez, “You can wave goodbye to your Plan A.” Whatever that meant. It didn’t matter. There was work to be done and damned if she was just going to sit here as someone’s captive. She made for the door, her team, confused but ready to go, filling in behind her.

“Wait — is she — is she really?” Ezra sputtered in desperation and Leta could have sworn she heard Dez laugh appreciatively before he said, “I did warn you not to pick her up.”

—————–

Fiearius ducked beneath the arc of Ophelia’s blade, but left himself completely open for the mean right hook she delivered to his ribs straight after. He recoiled and lashed out for a counterattack that she easily side-stepped to slash at him again.

Fiearius had fought Ophelia before, a few times actually, but this time something was different. The woman’s style could be categorized only as ‘relentless.’ Even back in his days in Internal, she was known for her ability to just keep going and going and going without a pause for breath. ‘Inhuman’ was a word often assigned to her, although only behind her back. Fiearius had often gotten the impression she didn’t like the description.

Relentless and inhuman, however, were not applicable now. Though she was currently swinging a blade furiously in the direction of his abdomen, Fiearius sensed something surprising as he stumbled backwards away from her: hesitation.

There was a subtle hint of distraction in her eyes as she continued towards him, this time slashing at his leg which he slid out of the way and used the momentum of to pummel forward with his fist. And though she was paying attention enough to dodge him, her elbowing counterattack was clearly delayed and not even aimed at a vital organ. She had made a few contacts in this scuffle, but Fiearius was still mostly intact and not out of any skill of his own. He was a scrappy fighter and could hold his own against normal brunt force, but Varisian? She was a creature of grace. And distracted or not, she should have been kicking his ass.

So why was she holding back? Why had she wanted him to leave? What was with that look she’d given him? were all questions he might have wondered had he not been too busy trying not to fall down the stairs she’d managed to back him up against.

He tried in vain to raise his arm enough to get even a decent shot with his gun, but Ophelia’s blade came down on his wrist, forcing his hand back. Fleetingly, as he used her momentary preoccupation to slide away from the stairwell’s edge, he caught glimpse of the Councillor at the other end of the hall. She leaned against the doorframe, her dress whipping around her ankles from the wind, watching with her chin propped in her hand and a smile curling her lips.

She was fucking enjoying this, he realized, narrowly avoiding having his shoulder sliced open.

That fucking asshole.

Fueled by a sudden spurt of rage, Fiearius looked back at Ophelia, coming at him again with her weapon and felt that familiar thought rise into his head: fuck it. She may have been faster, but he was still bigger. He tensed himself and ran straight at her.

The collision hurt even more than he had anticipated as her blade cut through his shirt and into the flesh of his side, but it had worked. He planted his feet firmly in the ground as Ophelia staggered backwards, no match for his full force. He gripped his gun and raised it again, but not at her. Fuck her, she wasn’t what he was here for. He spun around and aimed at the woman in the doorway whose expression flickered from amusement to, infuriatingly, curiosity. It wouldn’t last long, he thought to himself. Time to end this.

His finger pulled the trigger just as another force plowed into him from the side. The bullet shattered the top of a pillar in a cloud of plaster.

Smaller she may have been, but unprepared as he was for Ophelia leaping on him, Fiearius lost his footing in an instant and the two of them tumbled to the marble floor. She seized his wrist and twisted until the pistol fell from his grip then kneed him in the ribs. She wanted to wrestle? Fine.

Fiearius ripped his arm from her grasp and pushed, flipping her off of him and onto her back where he pinned her down and returned the favor, forcing her blade from her hand to clatter onto the ground. She struggled with her hands for a moment, desperate to release herself, but without the advantage of weight or gravity, she was stuck. That is, until she realized he’d accidentally left a key opening available for her to kick.

As Fiearius recoiled, resisting the urge to howl in pain, he thought he heard something that only made this worse. Laughter? Seriously? It was bad enough that he was rolling around on the floor with this goddamn woman trying to kill him, but this Councillor had the audacity to think it was funny? He’d felt some sympathy for the Ascendian official. A little respect even for the Synechdan, managing to stay hidden in plain sight for so long. But this one? This was the first Councillor since Vescent he’d wanted to murder so fucking badly.

Which was probably why, after fending off Ophelia for another few seconds, when he was finally granted just a split second of reprieve after getting in a punch to her collarbone, instead of going for another attack as he should have, he stretched his arm out in a desperate reach for his gun. Just shoot her, that’s all he wanted to do. Shoot that damn Councillor and finish this.

But his fingertips never touched the gun. It was the wrong move. It put him off balance, it gave Ophelia  the edge, and when she put her palms on his chest and shoved, he didn’t have the chance to resist. Within instants, he was on his back again, pinned to the floor by her knee with her gun pressed against his forehead.

Neither of them moved. Fiearius stared up at her, breathing heavily. She stared back, unreadable as ever, her face stone. The laughing, thank the gods, had stopped, but now the sound of clicking heels on the floor met his ears. They stopped a few feet away and a barking voice snapped, “I gave you an order, Varisian. Kill him.”

Ophelia still didn’t move. Her shoulders were rising and falling hard, her nostrils flaring with each breath. She continued to meet his gaze, unwavering.

“Kill him!” shouted the Councillor again and this time, he saw Varisian ever so slightly flinch. Then, she took a deep breath and moved her gun from his head to his heart. She mouthed, “I’m sorry.” And fired.

Before he could move, before he could think, fire blasted cleanly through him, more painful than anything he’d felt before. And then — numbness spread through his limbs. Warm, wet blood started to seep over his skin and, dimly, he registered that he was probably in shock — he made a choking sound, he had to press his hand against the wound — his lungs were starting to feel heavy, full —

But then his thoughts became nothing. A curtain fell over his mind; he only saw noise. Ophelia, the Councillor, Ellegy, melted away, his head slumped back onto the ground. He exhaled one shaky last breath and then breathed no more.

The Councillor smiled and then laughed. “Varisian?” she called across to them, her voice nearly garbled by the wind and the outside sounds of battle it carried. “Kill him.”

Fiearius met Ophelia’s eyes just briefly and he could have sworn he saw a hint of apology there before she brandished a blade and attacked.

——————–

Leta didn’t argue when the Ellegian rebels escorted her and her team towards the neighborhood they had holed up in. She didn’t argue either when they were herded into the back room of a house that could have belonged to any normal Ellegian family. Nor did she argue when the woman who’d brought them all in told her she’d have to wait to speak with their leader.

No, Leta saved her arguing power for the exact moment when she was brought out of holding and into the house’s dining room to face Ezra Norran, the man she had been in contact with for over a month, the man Fiearius had been in contact with for many months and the man who had apparently decided to take his rebellion and flush it all away.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded the minute he looked across the room and locked eyes with her.

Ezra was an older man, lines marring his tired face, his greying hair pulled back into a ponytail. Still, despite his age, he looked like the kind of person you didn’t challenge to a fight, specifically because you’d lose.

He regarded Leta curiously, but said nothing so she went on, “Kidnapping Carthian forces? What exactly is that going to accomplish? We’re on your side. We’re here to help you. But you’re blowing up your own city and rounding us up.”

Still, Ezra remained silent, as did the other rebels standing around the table watching in some sort of wonder as Leta, finally exploring her rage and frustration, let out a bitter one-note laugh. “I hope to the gods you have some sort of plan here, at least an explanation for why you’re capturing your allies.”

The man blinked his grey eyes curiously. “Allies. That’s an interesting notion, isn’t it? From what I understood, Carthis had decided they wanted nothing to do with us.”

Leta opened her mouth to retort, but the words caught in her throat. It was true, after all. Carthis had denounced the Ellegian rebels and cut them out of the attack plans. But Fiearius hadn’t. Leta hadn’t. And from the messages they’d shared just before they’d abandoned the CORS, Ezra had known that. He’d agreed to continue supporting them. And yet…

“Look, Ms. Adler, don’t get me wrong,” he went on, moving around the table toward her and leaning against it. “I have a lot of respect for you and for Admiral Soliveré and what you’re trying to achieve. And I know, truly,” he held his hand over his heart, “that what you’re here for is the freedom of the Ellegian people. But forgive me if I feel the need to call a spade a spade. This?” He gestured vaguely towards the window, the outside, the burning city under attack. “This is not a rescue mission. This is an invasion.”

Leta wanted desperately to argue. To prove him wrong, to defend their purpose here, but she found she couldn’t. Not without lying. Or at least dramatically stretching the truth.

“Of course, we’ve no real ill intent towards Carthis and certainly not you,” Ezra continued. “The enemy of our enemy is our friend after all. We want the Society dismantled as much as you do and even as we speak, our forces are aiding yours in that fight. We’ll help win this battle. It’s just…what comes afterwards that I worry for.”

“And that’s why you’re kidnapping soldiers,” Leta finished for him, her tone still bitter. “As an insurance policy?”

“More like a bargaining chip,” Ezra corrected and though what he was saying made her angry, she couldn’t quite hate him for it. He spoke so earnestly, as genuine as he always had been in their messages, she couldn’t entirely fault him. “When the smoke clears and our victory is secured, it’s going to be us against a massive military force ready to sweep us out in one fell swoop. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“But–Ezra, like this?” Leta rubbed her palms against her temples. “You know as well as I they’re going to just see this as an act of aggression. They’ll use it as a reason to attack you. They’ll just spin the entire planet as Society sympathizers.”

Ezra shrugged and said something that left Leta speechless. “Maybe we are.”

“What?”

“It’s different on Vescent, I know,” he tried to explain, pushing himself from the table. “The Society’s presence was new and imposing, something swooping in to take over an existing system. But on Ellegy? The Society isn’t some outside force taking over our government. It is our government. It’s a fundamental structure of the Ellegian way of life. There’s no one on this planet that doesn’t know someone within it. My own sister is the head of the Ellegian Department of Science and Technology. My father worked for fifty years in the Department of Transportation. My mother, the Department of Health. It’s not us versus them. It’s just us.”

Leta was shaking her head before he’d even finished. “But you’re a rebellion, you’re fighting against the Society.”

“We’re fighting the current Society regime,” he corrected. “The one that’s lost sight of what Ellegy should and can be. Now I’ll admit that without the actions of you and even of Carthis in the rest of the Span, what we’ve started here wouldn’t have been possible. But nonetheless, this remains, at its heart, a civil war. And these supposed allies of yours offering ‘help’?” Now it was his turn to shake his head. “Opportunists.”

Leta could not point to any particular sentiment she disagreed with, but the entirety of it still left a foul taste in her mouth. Opportunists or no, Carthis was still the driving force behind this effort and this tiny rebellion hadn’t stood a chance against the Society fleets or even the ground forces without their intervention. And now acting like their help was an inconvenience? Attacking Carthian forces? On top of it all, lying about their allegiance until they had already arrived?

Leta grit her teeth. “We had an agreement, you and I. We were on the same page. We’d fight the Society together with Carthis and negotiate where things landed politically afterwards.”

“I know,” Ezra sighed. “And I’m sorry we neglected to tell you when that changed, I really am. But we couldn’t risk the overall plans falling through.”

There were few things Leta liked less than feeling used, but the uncomfortable feeling edging in on her from all sides was coming in a close second. “And dare I ask what made you change your mind?”

Ezra’s eyes flickered past her and Leta drew a deep breath as she turned around to find Dez standing in the corner of the room, arms crossed over his chest, watching in interest. “Of fucking course.”

“Careful with this one,” Dez advised Ezra, stepping out of the shadows. “Any harm comes to her, we can wave goodbye to our Plan A.”

Leta balled her fists at her side and lifted a brow at him. “Plan A?”

“You’ll see,” Dez assured her and then smiled emptily. “Welcome to Plan B though. I can tell you’re not a fan.”

Hardly in the mood to talk to Dez of all people, Leta spun back around on Ezra. “This is who you’re listening to now? Do you have any idea who he is?” She let out a groan and dragged her blood-stained hands down her face, not even wanting the answer. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter who it came from. How could you even entertain a plan that involves blowing up your own city? How many people were hurt in those explosions? And for what? A distraction? How many had to die so you could get the edge on the Carthian troops?”

Beside her, she heard Dez open his mouth to speak, but she held up a finger to him and snapped, “If you even think of saying it was ‘necessary’ I swear I will take you down with my bare hands.” The man regarded her curiously for a moment and then obediently shut his mouth.

“But Ms. Adler, it was,” Ezra argued and she rounded on him with fury in her eyes. “If we hadn’t set off the explosions, we never could have made the extractions we needed and without the extractions, if Plan A fails, even if it succeeds, we’d have nothing to negotiate Carthis’ exit with.”

“So the people out there, your people, as you pointed out, that are dying and suffering, mean nothing? Instead of helping them, you’re blowing them up and hiding away with your political negotiation assets?”

“They don’t mean nothing,” Ezra argued. “But we have a bigger goal–”

“Do you trust Carthis?” he said again. “To do this right. Win Ellegy’s freedom and return it to her people.”

No, was Fiearius’ instant internal answer, but he didn’t speak it aloud. No, he didn’t think Carthis was going to back off once this battle was won. The way they’d backed off their agreement with the Ellegian rebels was enough to prove that. Carthis wasn’t interested in lofty goals like freedom. They were after territory.

But what he said to Dez was, “We’ll deal with that when we come to it.” He gestured towards the next stairwell. “C’mon.”

But Dez still didn’t move. He continued to stare out that window until Fiearius marched back down the hallway to retrieve him, but just before he seized his arm, Dez turned. He fixed his stare on him and froze Fiearius in his place. “Do you trust me?”

Fiearius regarded him skeptically. It wasn’t the kind of question he expected from Dez. Since when did he care about what anyone thought of him? Especially what Fiearius thought of him. He didn’t like the implication.

“Sometimes,” he answered, meaning it to be flippant and still gesturing that they should move on, but Dez’s stare hadn’t wavered. The intensity of it made him unsettled. So finally, he relented, “Sometimes I don’t agree with your methods, alright? But if I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have brought you into this. Now can we go?”

Dez was nodding slowly, but he still wasn’t moving. Something was wrong, Fiearius realized too late. “I’m sorry,” Dez muttered under his breath.

Fiearius’ mouth dropped open. “What did you–”

He didn’t need to finish the question. The city answered for him. The first explosion he couldn’t see, but he felt it shake the ground beneath his feet. His eyes searched out the window in horror just in time to see the second tower of fire and smoke erupt from the horizon. And the third. And the fourth. The entire city laid out before him became blanketed in black smoke like someone had painted over it.

The explosions were still sending shudders up the spire when Fiearius spun around to Dez, an accusation already on his tongue, only to find the hallway behind him empty. Dez had disappeared.

Fiearius’ heart pounded in his chest. “Shit.”

————————–

The explosion had caught them all by surprise, Carthian and Society alike. Leta only barely managed to drag her current patient, one of her own med team who had taken a bullet to the shoulder, under the cover of a downed shuttle in time to avoid the main brunt of the blast. A chunk of concrete larger than the shuttle itself had landed directly where they had been just a second before. Her hands were still shaking when she climbed out of the crevice between the two and into the chaos.

Black smoke filled her lungs and she choked it out, pressing her wrist against her mouth as her watery eyes blinked hopelessly through the unnavigable scene. She could see nothing and her ears were still ringing from the blast, turning the shouting voices around her into little more than the distant whispers of ghosts. She stumbled forward, her feet tripping over the scattered debris so she clutched onto whatever she could find for support.

Another explosion, somewhere in the distance, shook the ground and she grasped onto the concrete block more firmly. She needed to see. She needed to take stock of who was still standing. Who needed help. Who was no longer with them.

Her foot hit something soft and she looked down at the lifeless body of a Society agent. Head trauma, she listed off diligently, noting the blood spattered across the ground. Another agent lay a few feet away. That one had been dead before the bomb even went off, the bullet hole straight through her chest still leaking.

Finally, her hearing started to return to her. The ringing began to subside and out of the din she heard a call for help. Quickly, she scanned the space around her and staggered towards the voice. Her sealant gun was still clutched in her hand from stabilizing her teammate and she hit the switch to charge it up preemptively.

“Please! Someone!” the voice cried from the thick of the smoke. She was getting closer now, she could start to make out movement near her. “Help!”

Finally, she saw him. A young man on the ground with a bent metal bar, a building support of some kind, lodged straight through his abdomen and into the debris below. Leta felt her blood turn cold at the sight. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. There was a Society librera, thick and black, tattooed into his arm. Without hesitation, she hurried to his side.

“I’m here, I’m going to help you,” she told him as he choked up a lungful of blood onto the ground beside him. How, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe in a clean hospital she could save him. Maybe under controlled conditions. Maybe not in the middle of a warzone with new explosions going off every few seconds.

But she had to try.

“Hang on, I’m going to get this thing out of you.” She stood up and looked up and down the metal bar. It had to come out, there was no doubting that. She’d just have to deal with the damage it caused after the fact. The man was dying, there was no time to try anything else. So she gripped the bar with both hands, trying to line it up with the wound as much as possible, pleading it would be a clean extraction. But when she took a deep breath and tugged, it didn’t move.

“Shit,” she groaned, tugging again. It was lodged too deep into the ground. It wouldn’t budge. She tried one more time as in her ear, her COMM started to buzz.

“–eta!–re you–kay?” came the garbled voice.

“Fiearius?!” she shouted back into it. “Fiear, is that you? We were in an explosion. I don’t know what happened, I’m okay, but–”

“–ack to–ip–nee–get ba–to–sh–” his distorted voice tried to tell her, but Leta didn’t understand.

“Fiear, say again, I can’t read you, I–”

A loud bang cut her off and froze her in place. A gunshot, she realized a second too late, only as she looked down at the man at her feet. The metal bar was the least of his problems now, overtaken by the bullet that had gone straight through his head.

Leta looked up at the murderer, expecting to find a Carthian soldier and ready to berate them. It was unnecessary. He was innocent, wounded. She could have tried to save him. But when she met the eyes of the woman with the gun and the handful of people with her, she realized right away she wasn’t looking at a Carthian. No, the Carthians that had accompanied her out here were clustered between them, hands up, weapons stripped and being held at gunpoint by these new arrivals.

“Hands up, doc,” ordered the woman and Leta hesitantly obeyed, fixing her with a furious glare nonetheless. “Get in line with the rest.” She gestured with the end of her pistol towards the Carthian captives.

Leta ignored the second command, instead looking between her captors and working them out in her head. They were neither Carthian nor Society. No libreras marked their skins. They were the ones responsible for the bombing. And she knew who they were.

“You’re Ellegian,” she said at last, meeting their leader’s eyes. “You’re the Ellegian rebellion.”

“Genius,” remarked the woman carelessly. “Now get in line.”

“No,” Leta said at once, earning her a few more guns trained on her. “No, I know you. Not–not you. Your leader. Ezra Norran?” The woman’s brow creased. “I’ve been talking to him for the past month. My name is Leta Adler, I work with Fie–Admiral Soliveré. We have an alliance with you.”

The woman was still eyeing her curiously. She seemed like she wanted to shoot her, but at least had one or two reasons not to. She must have recognized at least one of those names, Leta thought. Leta hoped…

“Perhaps I’ve heard of such a thing,” the woman admitted slowly. “Perhaps I haven’t. You’ll meet Ezra soon enough regardless and you can ask him yourself. But I should warn you, Ms. Adler.” The woman took a step closer and propped the end of her gun under Leta’s chin to lift it higher. “Our allegiance? Has changed.”

“Hang on!” she shouted to a woman who had taken a direct hit from the blast grenade. Her eyes were wide and she was looking down at herself, her whole body speckled with red from where the debris had buried itself in her flesh, as though she wasn’t sure if it was hers. Leta inched towards her, careful to duck as bullets zipped over her head.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Leta’s team had been headed out to provide support to the survivors of a crashed dreadnought when they had been ambushed by Society forces. They had struck more quickly and more viciously than anyone, medical team or military escort, had been ready for. But they were going to get out of this. All of them. Alive. Leta was determined.

“You’re gonna be okay, just stay still!” she told the woman as she finally reached her. It wasn’t the ideal place to stage a rescue, but there was no way she could drag her to cover in her current condition. It would just have to do.

“Am I–am I gonna die?” the woman asked, her eyes starting to glaze over.

“Not if I can help it,” Leta answered, scanning around her immediate area. She needed someone to cover her while she did this, but everyone in sight was too busy covering themselves. They were overwhelmed.

She gritted her teeth. It would just have to do.

“This is going to get a lot worse before it gets a little better, but you’re gonna be okay.” The woman didn’t seem to hear her, not that it mattered. She had to get the dirty shrapnel out and cleaned and sealed before infection started to spread. Bracing a hand on the woman’s chest to try and keep her still, Leta dug out the first piece of glass.

A horrific shriek filled the air and Leta winced. Please don’t draw attention, please don’t look over here, she begged internally as she went for another wound. And another. Just make this quick, everything will be okay, she promised, meaning it for her patient but reciting it only for herself.

She was still screaming and the noise was not going unnoticed. Leta could see in her peripheral vision Society agents turning her way, but her fellow teammates were managing to pick them off before they became a threat. Just a few more pieces to dig out, then hit her with antibacterial sealant and we’re done. Her screams were starting to subside. Too exhausted to continue, probably. Almost done. Almost–

Leta looked up just as she heard the gun cock. An agent was staring straight at her, decked out in full Society-issued body armor save the helmet and pointing the barrel of a high-powered rifle directly at her skull. Their eyes met for just a moment and time seemed to slow down. His muscles tensed, his finger on the trigger and Leta’s instincts sprung into action.

Her hand reached for the gun she knew was hanging out of her patient’s limp hand, she lifted it and fired, sending a bullet directly through the man’s head. A splash of blood landed on her skin as he fell backwards, crumpling to the ground with a thump.

The gun still in her hand, she aimed again at another agent further back and fired. She went down. And another. And another. And one more until the trigger clicked uselessly in her hand and she tossed the emptied weapon aside where it clattered across the ground pathetically.

Her immediate surroundings clear, she reached into her pack and pulled out the sealant gun to start applying it to the still bleeding woman in front of her. “Let’s get you back on your feet.”

——————–

Fiearius cracked his fist over the man’s face and kneed him in the stomach as he fell. He let out a groan of pain as Fiearius spun around and shot the next assailant in the arm. He recoiled, grasping his bleeding limb as Fiearius strode forward and slapped him across the cheek with his still warm pistol. There was one more that came stumbling towards him, but a well-aimed bullet from Dez put her straight on the ground instead.

Fiearius heaved a deep breath and shook the fight from his head to his shoulders, down his arms and out his fingers. He then glanced at that final agent who’d fallen.

“Ya didn’t have to kill her y’know,” he pointed out.

“Either kill them now or kill them when they come after you later,” Dez replied simply, aiming his gun at the other agent Fiearius had just knocked out and firing.

Fiearius winced. “I thought they were our ‘brethren’.”

“Not yet they’re not.” Dez aimed at another, but Fiearius grabbed his arm and yanked it out of position.

“Cut it out,” he snapped.

Dez regarded him curiously. “Don’t you remember what happened on the Ascendian Delta base? After you insisted I not clean up your mess?”

Fiearius rolled his eyes and spread his hands, backing away from Desophyles as he said carelessly, “If I’m meant to get shot, I’ll get shot, can we move along please?” Dez seemed to relent so Fiearius turned back around into the hallway and continued forward. They weren’t far. All of Ren’s research and all of his own digging through the Verdant CID had been pretty clear where to find the Ellegian Councillor.

Once a woman by the name of Tearan Norosa, an Information officer of the highest level, she was skilled at hiding in plain sight. Impressively skilled. Masquerading as a reclusive and eccentric billionaire, she had lived in the Ellegian Central Complex’s most luxurious loft in its tallest spire for going on two decades without anyone catching onto her. She wasn’t the only rich weirdo on Ellegy after all and as long as she continued to pay off whoever she had to pay off to reside on what was definitively ‘public’ property, no one would question her.

So far, they had made good ground. The ECC was by no means deserted, but Fiearius and Dez had managed to slip past the vast majority of Society agents and loyalists by simply taking alternate routes through the complex. The Society’s real heavy-hitters were out on the battlefront. These people were mostly bureaucrats.

It was only when they reached the spire itself that they met any real resistance. Fiearius had taken a few hits. His ribs were feeling a little bruised. Dez had a close call with a bullet past his shoulder, but nothing a little sealant hadn’t been able to fix. The first stairwell had been a thrilling experience.

Now, however, as Fiearius sprinted up the second stairwell, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Maybe for a reason.

The COMM in his ear fizzled a little. “–ar–we–por–bzzzzt.”

Fiearius tapped it, hard. “Sorry, say again?”

“Looks like your host isn’t looking to take on guests.” It was Quin. “Just saw a transport try and land on the top of your lil spire there. Seemed like they was there to pick somebody up.”

Fiearius’ fist clenched and he looked back at Dez. “Shit.”

“Oh not to worry, sweetheart,” Quin cooed. “I sent that piece o’ shit to hell ‘fore it could even touch down. Got a couple of my boys on watch to make sure no one else outta there is lookin’ to leave anytime soon.”

Just as quickly as it had arrived, his panic dispersed and turned into relief. “You’re a saint, Q.”

“Tell that to my priest, she’ll have a laugh,” Quin chuckled and the line fizzled out.

“Still, we should hurry,” Fiearius said to Dez off-handedly, picking up pace just as Dez slowed down.

“Fiearius,” he said suddenly and Fiearius looked back to realize he was no longer behind him. Instead, he stood in the center of the hallway, looking out of its ceiling-heigh windows onto the smoky haze of Ellegy below. From here they could see all of it. The city, the ground battles, the ships engaged in distant firefights far above the planet. From the ground, everything had been a blur, but from this window, everything was laid out clearly.

But now wasn’t the time for sight-seeing. “We need to get–” Fiearius began, but Dez interrupted.

“Do you trust Carthis?”

Fiearius gaped at him. “What?”