“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?”