I absorbed the shock well, spreading it out over my back, my buttocks, my legs where possible, and one arm. The other I tried to keep focused on him, my gun hand still extended, but the impact sent my aim wide, and I’d pulled my finger off the trigger just before I landed in order to keep from accidentally firing. It took me a moment to readjust myself, to bring my gun up after the landing, and I knew as I brought it into alignment that I was too slow, that my gamble with the last blitz hadn’t paid off. I kept on, trying to get my gun up in time, but when the shots rang out, I was aiming at his leg at best, and I knew I was done.
It came as a surprise when he was the one who slumped, a cloud of red mist around his head as if someone had blown a puff of blood into the air. He hit his knees, then pitched forward on his face, dead. I still had my gun up, aiming at him now, in case somehow I had missed something.
“Sienna, is that you?” I heard Scott’s voice from somewhere ahead, beyond the barricades of furniture and tables that were blocking the hallway.
I took a breath then another, as the adrenaline started to fade. “Yeah. It’s me. Who else would it be?”
There was no response for a moment. “Did you get them all?” Scott asked finally.
I looked back into the foyer of the dormitories, into the mass of dead, dying and wounded. “I think so. Just a minute.” I got to my feet, which were a little unsteady, and worked my way back into the foyer. There were a few men moaning, still bleeding, and I kicked their guns away as I made my way through, disarming them and punching a few in the jaw to put their lights out as needed. When I reached the security desk, I swiped my card and hit the button that started to retract the shutters. There was an incredible clatter as the building began to exit lockdown, and I saw men in tactical vests—familiar faces from our security detail—come pouring in through the main doors. I waved them in, and said, “Secure the area, sweep the building floor by floor to make sure it’s clear.”
I heard someone acknowledge me but I paid little attention. I was already on my way back down the corridor where I’d heard Scott’s voice only a minute earlier. I pushed aside the first barricade, a desk turned on its side, and started picking my way around the obstacles in the way. “You okay in there?” I asked as I vaulted over an upturned table, its four legs jutting into the air. Bodies of mercenaries were littered through the debris, as if they’d gotten turned back on at least one advance down the hall. I took a breath. That defeat had made my job easier.
Then I came to the first body that wasn’t a mercenary. Men from our security detail had died back in the foyer, I’d seen their corpses, but here, lying against an overturned chair, was one of the clerks from Omega whom I’d brought over from England. I remembered his face but not his name, recalled that he’d stood with me in the last fight against Weissman and Raymond over in London. His eyes stared straight ahead now, whatever had been behind them long gone. I knelt down and closed them for him, and saw another familiar body just past him.
This one was another from the battle in London. She was older, in her late fifties by human years, and I thought her name was Rochelle. I remembered it because it was so distinctive. Her neck was covered in blood and her body was still, head pitched to the side at an awkward angle. I reached out to touch her; she was still lukewarm but far colder than a living human being would have been.
“Scott?” I called out again as I stood, my legs feeling like they were going to buckle under me.
“Yeah,” came the weary voice from ahead. Why wasn’t he coming to me? Why wasn’t he leading them out, whoever was left? I started toward him, climbing over a couch that had been ripped apart by bullets, and on the other side I found three more bodies of our own—a security man who’d died with a gun in his hand, a meta from England whose name I couldn’t recall, and another, a girl, whose name was Athena.
I sagged next to Athena and let my fingers touch my face as I dropped my weapon. The smell of gunpowder and spent rounds was heavy in the hallway, and as my face sunk into my hands I smelled it on me, like the scent of death, strong in my nose. I reached over and touched Athena’s face, the black powder smudges on my fingers rubbing off on her skin. I’d recruited her to join Omega, and now her lifeless brown eyes stared back at me from the floor. She’d been shot in the back while trying to run away, here in this place where I couldn’t protect her. Even though I’d told her and all the others to come here, told them to leave London and come here to die, so far from home—