He followed her gaze. “What?”
“That line.” She pointed. “Running up the wall.”
“What line?” He peered at the wall, then back at her. “I don’t see anything.”
“Right there. Next to where the bookcase was pulled forward. Hairline crack, perfectly straight. What is it?”
He looked at the wall again, then reached out a hand to feel its surface. He ran his hand over the exact spot where she had seen the line, back and forth, testing it. “Nothing.” There was irritation in his voice. “Maybe it was a trick of the light. Look, there’s nothing here. Can we rejoin the others now?”
“It’s there,” she muttered. Ivar saw the orange indicator, but told me it was green. Now he says there’s nothing on the wall, when clearly there is. Why would he lie to me? What’s he hiding? She shook her head, frustrated by her own inability to decipher the situation. Was this what happened to the people here? Everything just stopped making sense? If so, it’s no wonder people went crazy.
Suddenly there was a noise from outside the room: heavy impact, as if a large item had fallen. Ru froze, then moved to one side of the open doorway; Ivar silently took up station at the other. There they stood, backs to the wall, weapons at the ready, waiting for trouble to reveal itself.
Seconds passed.
More seconds.
Silence.
Finally Ivar eased his head around the edge of the doorway to take a look outside. After a moment he signaled that all was clear, and the two of them moved back out into the corridor. There was nothing there to explain the mysterious noise, and no telling what direction it had come from. “We need to catch up to the others,” Ivar said. She nodded, and they both set off at a swift lope down the hallway. Their layered armor rattled with every step, but there was no helping that. Ru pulled her shock rod from her belt, extended it to full length, and activated its head. She couldn’t swing it freely with Ivar right next to her, but she wanted it in hand, ready to go, in case the gun-bow failed to do its job.
There were double doors at the end of the corridor, with a solar disk emblazoned on them and APOLLO INDUSTRIES inscribed overhead. As they parted, the lights beyond them came on, revealing a large reception chamber with bronze and gold seating areas on both sides. At the far end of the room, behind a long curved counter, a floor-to-ceiling mural depicted the god Apollo in a fiery chariot. There was a decorative archway flanked by golden columns off to one side, like the entrance to an ancient temple. According to her station map, that would give them access to Apollo’s inner sanctum, where the legendary supply cache was located. That was probably where the others had gone. She nodded in that direction, and the two of them started forward.
And they were halfway to the arch when the attack came. People rushed out from the archway ahead, as well as from the doorway they’d just left behind: silent and swift, and armed like Zevi’s people. Ru looked around for cover—anything!—but the counter was too far away, and both exits were blocked. “Fuck!” Ivar swore, as he fired at the one of the attackers. Ru turned to confront the ones coming up from behind. (Where the hell had they been hiding? How had Vestus failed to detect them?) Something struck her in the side, hard enough to nearly knock her off her feet, and though her safeskin coat kept it from piercing through, it should have dissipated the force better than that. As she had feared, the damn thing was failing. God alone knew if it would even last through this fight.
There were three coming up from behind her, two men and a woman, all Terran. The one in front was carrying what looked like a charge weapon, and as he brought it up to take aim Ru fired a bolt at his face. It missed its target and struck him on the shoulder instead, but the attack was enough to skew his aim, buying her a precious second. Ru cast her makeshift weapon aside and rushed at him before he had time to react, shoving his gun barrel upward with one hand while she swung her shock rod low with the other. Down, and then up again between his legs, hard. She could see surprise in his eyes as its charged head hit him right behind his groin guard—and then blazing pain. His shot went wild as blue-white sparks exploded from his groin, and as she took a step back he howled in pain, doubling over his agony. One down.
But the other two were closing in on her, and they were positioned effectively enough that there was no way to block them both. Adrenaline flowed through her veins, scarlet wellseeker warnings running down the left side of her visual field like blood. A plasteel sword edged in shards of metal came swinging at her face; she moved inside the blow, too close for the blade to strike, and body-slammed the wielder. She’d hoped to knock the attacker off her feet, but the blow only sent the woman staggering back a short distance. Then something sharp stabbed Ru in the back, almost breaking through her safeskin. She whipped around to face the last attacker, but he was too close, and she couldn’t use the shock rod effectively. She swung it down toward his head anyway, hoping to draw a response. Sure enough, he raised up one arm to block it, and in the instant when his attention was focused upward she clenched her other hand into a fist and drove it into his face. She triggered her taze rings just before contact, and as they impacted his flesh a crackling network of blue-white lightning exploded across his cheek. With a cry he dropped his weapon and fell back, hands over his face. The smell of charred flesh filled the air.
Now, for one precious moment, no one was attacking her. She dared a quick look at Ivar and saw that he was on his knees, clutching his bleeding stomach with one hand as he raised his gun with the other. There were far more people attacking him than had gone after her, and she saw a blade-studded mace smashed brutally into his arm, ripping through clothing and flesh and splattering blood across the floor. His gun went flying, landing well out of reach as he doubled over in pain.
He was going to die, she realized. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Though she owed him no particular loyalty, her inability to help him was maddening. But the moment he went down this tsunami of violence would all be focused on her, and she had to get away before that happened.
Her original attackers were between her and the sun-doors, so there was no fleeing back the way she’d come. At the far end of the room the columned archway gaped, the only entrance to Apollo’s inner complex. Once she passed through it there would be no way out, save through this choke point. All they would have to do was leave a guard in this chamber and she would be trapped—
Stop thinking, she told herself. Just run!
She bolted to one side, which seemed to take her attackers by surprise; maybe they had expected her to try to force her way through their blockade. The one with the sword swung at her, but too late; its owner cursed as it passed through the space her head had just occupied. As she twisted out of reach of her attackers, two of the ones fighting Ivar saw her in motion and started after her. But they were seconds too late to cut her off. She dodged the closest one by inches and ducked under the swing of another, racing toward the archway. If she could just get through that, into the narrow corridor beyond, these bastards would be forced to face her one-on-one, and at least they’d lose the advantage of numbers. That might give her a fighting chance.