The high voltage surge that had shattered the primary diagnostic terminals left the interrogation vault running on absolute emergency logic. The pitch darkness lasted for exactly three seconds before the automated sub level backup arrays activated, bathing the concrete walls in a rhythmic, flashing crimson glare.
Kaelen stood over the fallen frame of Sergeant Sass, his bare hands wet with dark blood and the grease of the star beasts. His breathing was a shallow, controlled rasp. Every time the overhead emergency sirens blared, the vibration traveled straight into his shattered shoulder blade, but the royal stabilization compound he had swallowed was maintaining a hard chemical block against the necrosis spreading through his ribs.
He turned his gray eyes toward the central concrete column.
Moran was slumped against the reinforced stone foundation.
The damage Kaelen had inflicted during his sudden break from the magnetic shackles had been precise. His initial strike had penetrated the primary integration channels around her neck, fracturing the neural conduits that governed her three meter iridescent black wings.
Her left wing hung at an impossible angle against the floorboards, its primary power feed completely severed and leaking a faint trail of dark coolant into the concrete dust. Several of the integration channels beneath her neck markings had also been damaged, causing intermittent spasms through the wing joints.
Her vertical pupils were rolled back.
Her breathing came in a low, automatic rattle.
She had lost consciousness when the terminal exploded, but the vital monitors flashing along her uniform cuff indicated that her biological readings remained stable.
She had sustained severe but nonfatal injuries.
Kaelen had no intention of wasting the remaining strength in his S rank body to finish her when the extraction corridor was still unmapped.
He turned his back on the unconscious commander and moved toward the shattered glass partition, his boots crunching over fragments of broken calibration probes.
"The external frequency is looping," Kaelen muttered, his fingers closing around a heavy iron reinforcement strut he had wrenched from the base of the damaged stasis capsule. "SC, drop the western barrier."
Before the bone conduction transponder behind his earlobe could pulse with an answer, a sudden flash of pure Imperial light illuminated the threshold of the observation corridor.
The smoke from the concrete blast parted.
Lin Leng stood in the center of the doorway.
Her gray Area A uniform was covered in dark metallic silt from the forest skirmish, and her right hand was locked around the grip of a high frequency short blade that hummed with a sick yellow light.
Her expression was completely devoid of the hybrid markings that defined the Southern Alliance vanguard. Her jaw was frozen in a line of absolute, clinical intent.
"The General doesn't clear the sub level," Lin Leng said, her voice flat and mechanical. "Marshal Valerius wants the frame intact, Kaelen. But he didn't specify the number of limbs required for the transit log."
Kaelen didn't waste air on a diplomatic response.
He threw his entire center of gravity forward, his heavy boots slamming into the broken glass floor as he launched his tall frame straight through the red glare of the emergency lights.
Lin Leng moved with the precision of an S class operative from the capital.
She brought the short blade up in a tight defensive arc, the humming edge shearing through the air inches from Kaelen's exposed ribs as he sidestepped her initial thrust.
The kinetic wind from the blade cut a clean line across his torn shirt.
Kaelen had already calculated her deceleration phase.
He closed the distance in an instant.
His left arm snapped inside her defensive guard.
Using the raw, volatile momentum provided by the royal stabilization compound, he drove the jagged tip of the heavy iron reinforcement strut forward.
Crunch.
The iron strut pierced through the front composite plating, penetrating the upper chest joint of her gray armor system. The impact shattered the internal ceramic seals, the kinetic force traveling deep into her shoulder matrix.
Lin Leng stiffened instantly.
Her balance buckled as a sharp, ragged gasp escaped her throat.
A heavy stream of dark blood immediately bloomed across the gray fabric of her chest, soaking the fractured seals of her uniform. Her short blade clattered onto the floor as she stumbled backward against the concrete door frame.
Her fingers clawed weakly at the iron strut embedded in her upper chest.
She had lost a considerable amount of blood within seconds. The tracking monitors attached to her uniform flashed a critical red warning as her body began sliding down the structural column.
Kaelen did not stop to verify the extent of the damage.
He could hear the heavy, rhythmic thrum of boots moving down the western transit stairwell.
The secondary Southern Alliance vanguard cells were already responding to the primary vault breach.
If he stayed to clear the incoming squad, the heavy security bulkheads would drop and lock him inside the detention ring permanently.
He released the reinforcement strut.
Lin Leng collapsed against the base of the doorway, still breathing.
Kaelen turned away.
"The line is open," he rasped into the transponder behind his ear. "SC, the western egress. Now."
"Moving."
SC's voice cut through his skull, the bone conduction signal perfectly stable despite the facility's emergency interference.
"Shuang is on the utility pad. Drop your orientation thirty degrees to the left and run."
Kaelen turned toward the broken threshold.
The curse inside his ribs pulsed.
Violet static crawled beneath his skin.
The stabilization compound was suppressing the worst of the necrosis, but the pressure was already beginning to return.
He forced his legs forward.
Behind him, Moran remained unconscious against the central column, her damaged wing twitching weakly as the emergency systems attempted to stabilize her biological readings.
Lin Leng lay wounded at the doorway, her breathing shallow but steady.
Neither womans were dead.
Kaelen knew that both could become enemies again.
But survival came first.
He stepped through the shattered threshold.
The facility alarms reached a continuous, deafening shriek.
Red lights flashed across the corridor like a mechanical heartbeat.
Kaelen tightened his grip around the iron reinforcement strut and disappeared into the western transit hall.
The extraction had begun.