“Front desk,” I muttered. “Three on the right—”
“Got ’em,” Scott said, and there was a rumbling from the waterfall above.
I had an inkling what was coming before it happened, but that made it no less spectacular when the stone fixture three stories up burst with a sudden explosion of excess liquid. It came like a flood had just blown over the edge and when it landed, it took on a life of its own. It formed a circular ball of solid water, like an aquarium filling before our eyes, and the cascade of water joining it from above continued to fill it as it held there, without glass to hem it in, only the will of Scott Byerly to keep it in control.
I could see the three mercs trapped inside as the invisible aquarium continued to fill. It seemed to stop and then I saw the men caught within kick and thrash in a frenzy as the water kept pouring in but the space it occupied grew no larger.
It took me until the first man began to bleed into the liquid to realize that Scott was compressing the mercenaries inside the aquatic prison. He wasn’t just drowning them—he was crushing them under the weight of all that water in a confined space. It took only another moment before the water just went red, too red to even see anything in, and I started to wonder why he was keeping it in that shape.
Then Century’s first metas burst out of the hallway to the right of the registration desk, and he let it all go in that direction.
It blew out in focused pulses no bigger in diameter than my wrist, shooting in streams a foot or two feet in length. It hit the first meta and he lost his head from the force of it. The second guy caught it in the midsection and when the flush cleared, I could see the shirt of the girl behind him through the hole it had made in him as he toppled.
The water drained quickly, Scott directing it into blast after blast at our enemies, sending them scrambling for cover in the hallway. A lot of people were too slow to dodge, and the hall cleared within seconds, leaving a half dozen corpses and a few moaning survivors behind when the water finally finished rushing out.
“Let’s go,” I called and advanced behind the registration desk. “Harper, status report.”
“You’ve got a damned mess,” she said, “that’s the status.”
“Not quite what I was looking for,” I muttered as I sunk behind the desk. There was a bloody mess behind it, whatever Scott had left of the mercs he’d trapped glistening in a puddle on the floor. But there was also a woman, shuddering and breathing heavily, all curled up in a ball. “Miss?” I said, and shook her. “Get up, get out of here.”
“What?” She looked at me sideways, still in the fetal position. “What?”
“Get up, get out of here,” I repeated. “Out the front door, now!”
I must have put enough command in my voice to make her hear it, because she did move, quickly uncurling and standing, her bare legs covered with spots of blood where the skirt she wore hadn’t protected her from the mess made by Scott’s maneuver. She moved, though, moved like her life depended on it.
“Kat,” I said and nodded at her. “Get her out. Harper? The other civilians?”
“Kitchen crew is out,” Harper said. “HRT has got all but one of the maids and they’re moving now. Probably ten seconds to intercept with the last maid. The package is moving up the driveway—”
“Understood,” I said and looked back over the top of the desk at Scott and Reed, who were waiting behind the last of the planters. “Boys, be ready to move.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Reed said with a tight almost-smile.
“Oh, and Reed?” I said, catching his attention. “Let ’em reap the whirlwind.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again, this time with a grin. He stepped from behind the planter and aimed down the hallway with his hands, thrusting them out from his chest like he was throwing a snake from his upper body. It made a roar as the air around us was sucked into a vortex that rushed down the hallway to the right of the desk. It was loud and looked like a tornado, a wall of grey winds rushing through the confined space. I saw bodies and limbs poke out of the wall of air at various points, and even heard a scream or two over the sound.
“Harper?” I asked.
“Last maid is on the move,” she said. “Kitchen staff is clear, HRT is disengaged, moving back to the treeline for rendezvous and extraction. Black Hawks will be landing in zero-three minutes on the south lawn.”
“Roger that,” I said. “Move out!”
I flung a hand at Reed and Scott and saw them motor, running through the lobby. Just outside I could see a van rolling across the parking lot. I stayed in cover by the registration desk, watching the right-hand hallway as I waited. Scott and Reed dodged out through the broken glass at the front of the lobby as I heard the engine of the van roar just outside.