“And behind the door?” Ramona asked.
“A hallway about ten meters across.” It went without saying that they had no idea how many Vandals waited there.
“Fun.” Ramona eyed the rifle. “Do you want to shoot or cut?”
“Cut.” It was his turn to take point.
“Then I’ll make some noise.”
He sprinted down the path. She followed a step behind. He veered right, dashing through the greenery out of sight of the security cameras; she kept going straight.
Matias ran for a few more seconds, then cut left. Ten meters, fifteen, twenty . . . The perimeter path that ran along the wall of the atrium winked at him through the leaves. He crouched in the bushes at its edge. The exit door lay to his left, about twenty-five meters down. No guards in sight. They waited on the other side of the door.
Once he stepped onto the path, the cameras would find him.
A pellet rifle thudded, sinking a full cartridge load into the door. The pellets discharged. Wood and chunks of plastic sprayed into the air.
Ramona fired again, and again, pumping cartridges into the expanding hole.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
She was going to run out of ammo at this rate. He had never bothered to get the specs on the Vandal rifles, and he had no idea about their magazine capacity, but judging by the size of the cartridges, they would carry fifteen to twenty, at most.
Thud.
The rifle fell silent.
Now.
He burst onto the path and sprinted to the door. Double thuds of the pellet rifles tore through the silence—the Vandals returning fire through the ruined doorway, focused on finding Ramona in the jungle.
He cleared the last meter and a half. The door was a memory, gone except for a ragged piece hanging from the top. He snapped his seco into two square shields and thrust them against the gap where the door had been.
Three cartridges punched the red force fields and ricocheted. Matias leaped to the side, putting the wall of the atrium between himself and the hallway.
A howl of pure pain rang out. The ricocheted pellets had hit home and detonated.
He dived into the hole, his seco twisting into short, curved blades. Two bodies down, motionless, one soldier trying to stand up on the left, two to the right, two more in front leaping to their feet after hugging the floor. He floated through them, weightless, free of gravity and time, slicing, cutting, severing. Blood sprayed the white marble walls. The last soldier let out half a scream and gurgled on his own blood, his terrified plea for help aborted midnote.
The Vandal in front of him fell. In Matias’s mind, ships exploded all around him, blinding flares against the darkness of space.
A faint gasp made him turn.
Ramona stood by the ruined door, the long spike of her right seco buried in one of the bodies. She was looking at him, and he saw admiration in her eyes.
“Did I miss one?”
“No. He was dying. I ended it quickly for him.”
“It was more than he deserved.”
“My apologies. I’ll restrain myself next time.”
He remembered her striking on the atrium path. “Please don’t ever restrain yourself on my account.”
Her eyes widened.
He dismissed his seco and held his hand out. “The blood is slippery.”
She glanced at the walls and the floor he’d painted red, put her hand in his, and let him lead her through the bloodstains.
CHAPTER 5
Matias Baena was living death.
She had gotten to the doorway a second behind him. He’d turned that hallway into a slaughterhouse. No, not slaughter, surgery. He’d struck with impossible precision, so fast she could barely follow, and when he’d turned to look at her, she almost didn’t recognize him. Everything that was Matias was gone. His sharp mind, his alert gaze, that rare smile that shocked her—all of it belonged to someone else. His face was blank, his eyes cold and empty, as if she were looking at death itself. Not many things scared her, but in that moment, she felt the icy grip of true instinctual fear.
Now, as they briskly moved through the opulent belly of Drewery’s mansion, she kept stealing an occasional glance at his face to reassure herself that he was still present.
A duel with Matias would be the hardest fight of her life. She was sure of it.
The hallway ended in a T section. Matias turned left, and she followed a step behind. Twenty-five meters ahead, three Vandals blocked the way. Two held pellet rifles. The third, between them, manned a squad-level weapon on a tripod.
A blast wall dropped out of the ceiling to their left, cutting off the hallway from which they came. Ramona sprinted forward, whipping her shields in front of her as her mind scrambled to evaluate her surroundings. They were caught in a corridor, twenty-five meters in front, fifteen behind, no doors.
The cannon flashed with blue. A sonic boom pealed. The air smashed into her like an aerial at full speed. Ramona flew back and crashed into the wall. The impact knocked the air out of her lungs. Her eyes watered, her vision swam, pain bloomed across her back. The pressure vanished, and she dropped next to Matias, half-blind, trying to suck the air into her mouth.