his and Zaim’s emitter. Those long lean arms must be stronger than they look.
After a while, I reach a state of numbness. Sounds are muffled and my breathing steadies. Actions slow down. I think of Niall. He’s going to be mad if I don’t survive this. I wonder if he needs more rice paper to draw on. Strange and unconnected thoughts pop up in my mind.
And then Bendix is there. He grabs Zaim’s emitter from Ho and aims. Sizzle-zap.
“You disobeyed orders, Officer Bendix,” Morgan says. But it’s half-hearted.
“You can yell at me about it later. You guys needed my help.” He shoots a few more. “Ugly suckers.”
“That’s what I said!” Elese grins at him. “Welcome to the party!”
Bendix’s arrival turns the tide and, after another hour, what’s left of the shadow-blobs retreat. We glance at each other in surprise. Is this a trick?
“Check on Zaim and Rance,” Morgan orders.
Elese examines Rance, while Beau inspects Zaim’s injuries. Both men are bleeding from multiple cuts. Beau and Elese apply pressure bandages to the worst ones.
“They’re stable for now,” Elese says. “But we shouldn’t linger.”
“Fan out,” Morgan orders. “Clear Pit 4.”
We find a few shadow-blobs hiding in the corners and behind mounds of debris. The temperature warms.
“Do you feel that?” Beau asks.
“What?” Elese swings her weapon around, shooting a fleeing HoLF.
“The air is…lighter.”
“You sure the strain hasn’t gotten to you, Dorey?” Morgan asks.
“Ha, ha.”
“Four is clear,” Morgan says. “Check Pit 3.”
Not many shadow-blobs remain in Pit 3. In Pit 2 we find a black slit in the air above the place that is the middle of the octagon of Warriors had they still been standing there. Instead pieces of broken Warriors lie in scattered heaps courtesy of Jarren and his looters.
Slit is the best word to describe the slash of black—it’s thicker/wider in the middle at about fifteen centimeters and tapers at both ends. The bottom point is about thirty centimeters above the ground and the slit is about two meters long.
“This is nuts,” Bendix says.
“Heads up,” Morgan says.
A handful of HoLFs rush past us. We shoot half of them and the others disappear into the slit.
“That’s it, run home crying to your mamas,” Elese shouts after them.
“Now we know how they’re getting here,” Beau says.
“Aim your emitter at that…tear,” Morgan orders.
We do.
“Fire!”
Nothing happens. Too bad.
“Stop. Shine your flashlights on it.”
We do. The blackness thickens and darkens—yes, I know it’s strange—but it’s as if the slit is feeding on the light. It doesn’t grow or shrink or do anything else.
“That’s enough. Let’s clear Pit 1.” Morgan takes point.
Within the next hour, the pits and lab are cleared of shadow-blobs.
Dr. Edwards brings in a crew of nurses and they rush to attend to Rance and Zaim. Bendix and Ho accompany them just in case we missed a HoLF. We’re all bloody and exhausted. But it’s a good kind—a triumphant exhaustion. The team’s mood is jubilant. Operation Warrior Hearts was a success. Radcliff and my parents meet us in the archeology lab with their techs. Jim arrives with a bunch of maintenance people and they work on restoring power to the pits. Quite a number of people who are all probably annoyed at being awake at oh-five-hundred hours. The rest of us are ordered to allow the nurses to inspect and clean our injuries. We all look like we lost a fight with a thorny bush. But it appears none of us has anything too concerning.
“I feel like a pincushion,” Beau complains without much energy.
Soon the power is reconnected to the pits. Lights shine in all four of them and the astrophysicists plan to install emitters on the walls to constantly flood the pits with null waves. Despite the brightness, the slit remains.
“We’ll keep the pits off limits and post guards here with emitters until we figure out how to close it,” Radcliff says. “We’ll have six more of the weapons by tomorrow afternoon.”
“We might need to bring in intact Warriors from the other pits,” I say. And when Radcliff and my parents glance at me, I add, “There were no HoLFs in Pit 21.”
“Yes, but they might need all fourteen hundred and forty-eight of them to keep the HoLFs out. If we skim a few off, it might not,” Mom says.
Good point. The mood sobers as Dr. Edwards and his team carry out Rance and Zaim.
“How are they?” Radcliff asks Edwards.
“They’ll live. Officer Rance has a concussion. I’ll know more about Officer Zaim when I get back to the infirmary.”
In other words, stop bothering