Zaira pushed him away when he went to wrap his arm around her waist to steady her as she walked. “No. We’ll only succeed if you have both arms free. I’ll be behind you.”
He knew that wasn’t what she planned, but he allowed her to believe he did. “Let’s go.” Reaching the door, he scanned for surveillance feeds, found nothing. Low-tech—but low-tech could be a defense against discovery: if nothing was hooked into a network, then no one could hack in.
He didn’t like exiting into the corridor not knowing what awaited around the corner, but there was no other option. He and Zaira were all but silent, each movement careful, but a guard saw him as he looked around the corner. Aden fired to silence the guard’s shout of alarm. The guard fell without making a sound, but he had his hand on the trigger as he died; the gun spit fire, the bullets hitting a small steel grille that covered an air vent.
The hard, pinging noise echoed against the plascrete.
Aden heard a door bang open the next second, more footsteps heading toward them. Checking to make sure Zaira remained with him, he covered the distance to the dead guard and, hauling up the body, used it as a shield against the bullets and laser shots that peppered the area. Ice-cold wind swept down the corridor as more guards came in from what had to be the outside of this building.
The door was slammed shut seconds later.
Zaira didn’t try to come around him; she knew as well as he did that he needed her alive. Not wasting his ammunition, Aden took one shot at a time, eliminating two of the guards before they got smart and started trying to target him in turn—except Zaira was laying down fire that meant the men couldn’t poke their heads out from the side corridor where they’d taken shelter.
The psychic attack that accompanied the weapons fire was haphazard and not as powerful as it should’ve been for the number of men he’d seen. Despite the inexplicability of such an alliance, it again indicated that some of these guards had to be human. “The door,” he said to Zaira, pointing out their escape route.
It lay in almost a straight line from their current position.
Continuing to move toward that door under a covering hail of gunfire, the dead guard’s body absorbing the hits, Aden waited until he was almost at the corridor junction, then shoved the corpse onto the dead man’s former comrades. They weren’t expecting that, had underestimated Aden’s strength, as people often did, and were momentarily stunned.
That was all he needed.
He ran.
As he’d expected, Zaira stayed behind, continuing to lay down fire so he could get out. When he slammed through the door, it was into a sullen darkness, the sky above starless and heavy with clouds that threatened to crash open at any moment. Lightning flashed in the distance but that was the only—fleeting—source of light.
No sound of vehicles.
No high-rises.
No sign of a road.
Nothing but trees in every direction . . . and gunfire behind him.
• • •
ZAIRA saw Aden make the door, felt a sense of satisfaction that wasn’t strictly Silent. He was important, Aden; he was the future of every Arrow in the squad and those to come. She was a senior commander, experienced and useful, but she was also disposable in this circumstance. Compared to Aden’s, her life had little value—its value lay only in protecting his.
She’d done that. She’d served her purpose.
Side burning and head thumping, she continued to fire even as she slid to the floor, but her bullets eventually ran out. She dropped the weapons to show her captors she had nothing, was no threat. If they came close enough, she could get at least one with a knife.
Regrettably, the guards appeared to have learned their lesson. Though they emerged from their corner, they kept their guns trained on her and maintained their distance. “Go after the male,” a bearded man commanded two others. “He won’t get far in this terrain. We need him alive.”
Two of the camo-gear-clad men ran out, leaving two in the room.
“If you need me alive,” Zaira pointed out, “you should get a medic.” Death didn’t worry her, had never worried her. But she would’ve liked to have seen the future into which Aden would lead the squad. She was a murderer who’d never felt an ounce of remorse for her crime. She could never shrug off the coat of Silence without becoming that pitiless killer again, but she’d thought maybe she could take part on the shadowed periphery.
Vasic and Ivy Jane’s wedding had made her see that there was hope for many of her squadmates, hope for a life beyond the regimented existence of an Arrow. Those like Zaira could stand sentinel against the darkness so others could be free to grab at life. It was no sacrifice, not when the end result was that some of that life spilled over onto Zaira and her brethren.
She’d been invited to Vasic and Ivy’s home more than once since the wedding, had thrown a stick for their inquisitive dog, had even helped Ivy repair a trellis the other woman used for climbing berries of some kind. Normal things that had, for a short window of time, made Zaira feel normal, too.
And Aden . . . she would’ve liked to see him make it.
“Get the medkit,” the bearded guard said without taking his eyes off her. “And call in an update, tell the team in the chopper that we have the situ—”
A bloody flower bloomed on his forehead, his body thumping to the ground a split second before the other guard’s.
Zaira looked up to see Aden in the doorway. “You came back.” No one had ever come back for her for no logical reason. No one but Aden. Because this wasn’t the first time he’d done it. “Foolish.”