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  Picking out a bandolier of knives to strap across the opposite side of my chest, and two guns in matching holsters, I got myself geared up for a fight, while the others did the same. Navan picked up a large, curved saber, sliding it into a scabbard that was fitted to his back, before strapping two handguns to his thighs. Bashrik, meanwhile, went for three pistols—two on his thighs, one hanging at his waist—and a larger gun, dangling from his back, while Stone selected two handguns. He picked up a retractable staff, too, extending it and whirling it around in the air, the way I’d seen Lauren do it. I realized, in that moment, that he must have been the one who’d taught her to fight like that.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked, feeling a clench of nerves.

  “Aye, ready to blow this base to smithereens!” Stone grinned.

  “Ready on your command,” Bashrik added.

  Navan nodded. “Good to go.”

  “Good. I’ll go for the outer edge of the alchemy lab. Navan, you go for one of the lab chimneys if you can. Bashrik, you take the far side of the lab. Stone, you can help me—I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  We headed out of the ship, the biting Siberian weather nipping at my bare skin. I was wearing a full Fed military suit, as everyone else was—with the exception of Stone, who’d drawn the camo markings onto his own clothes, claiming he “already wore enough black to get away with it”—and it kept out most of the chill, which I was grateful for. It was only my face that felt the cold wind as we hurried across the clearing, skirting around the edge of the dome. I kept one hand on the shimmering surface, feeling it out as we raced along. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally hurtle inside the barrier, coming face-to-face with a blue-suited rebel.

  After ten minutes of running, I signaled for the others to stop. Taking a deep breath, I poked my head inside the barrier, taking a good look around to catch my bearings. There, just a short distance ahead, were the outer walls of the alchemy lab. I could see the chimneys belching out their disgusting smoke. All around, blue-suited shifters and coldbloods wandered about the place, going about their daily duties, with no idea of what was about to happen.

  I ducked back out. “The lab is just in front of us. Bashrik, you press on to the far side with Navan. Try and get as close to the bunker as you can. Stone, stick with me.”

  Navan dipped down to kiss me on the lips before hurrying away with his brother in tow, disappearing around the edge of the dome. I stepped forward, before glancing over my shoulder at Stone. Right now, he was too valuable to take inside the barrier walls.

  “You wait in the trees for my signal,” I said. “As soon as those bombs go off and we get Orion into the open, I’ll call for you.”

  He grimaced. “Nah, I ain’t no coward. I’ll come and blow up some stuff with ye. Ren’d want me to."

  “We need you alive, Stone. That means you need to sit out the pyrotechnics, okay?” I insisted. “Lauren would agree with me. We need you to be a surprise to them. If they spot you, we might be in trouble.”

  “Nah, they’d not know what I am!”

  “I’m not risking it, Stone.”

  The transmission of our comm devices crackled. “Stand down, Stone. Await Captain Idrax’s instructions,” Commander Mahlo confirmed.

  “Stone, do as she says,” Lauren interjected, her tone decidedly nervous.

  He flashed me a reluctant look. “Fine, but ye better believe I’ll run in, if ye don’t call me soon enough.”

  “Noted.” I smiled anxiously, watching him run into the tree-line before I crouched through the invisibility barrier. There were blue-suited guards on duty, casually strolling around the perimeter, but they didn’t see me as I crouched low behind a control post, waiting for them to pass by.

  As soon as they did, I raced for the alchemy lab, pressing my back flat against the nearside wall, hugging the shadows. Close to where I stood, I noticed several piles of shoes and clothes stacked neatly in a line, alongside heaps of valuables. The sight of the bizarre mounds made my stomach lurch. Evidently, these were all waiting to be thrown in the furnace, once the shifters and coldbloods had searched through for anything they might want.

  Feeling the anger rise through me, I plucked one of the bombs from my crossbody belt and started to turn the timer, setting it for five minutes. Lifting the comm device to my lips, I relayed the information to the rest of my bomb squad in a whisper.

  “Set bombs to detonate in five minutes.”

  I’d just rolled the first bomb toward an empty patch of ground a short distance away, when I spotted a familiar face. Wearing a patch over his missing eye, Lazar was hobbling between Orion’s bunker and the alchemy lab. I ducked down, feeling suddenly exposed.

  “Your uncle is here,” I whispered bitterly to Navan. “I have eyes on Lazar.”

  “As soon as Stone freezes everyone, I’ll make him pay for everything he’s done,” he whispered back.

  “And I’ll help!” Bashrik added sourly.

  However satisfying it would be to see Lazar suffer, he wasn’t the one we were here for. Time was running out, with the shield due to go up in twenty minutes’ time, and Orion and Ezra were nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t expected them to just come sauntering out into the open, but I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of them somewhere, especially if what Commander Mahlo had said was true. They were in stockpiling mode, which could only mean one of two things: they were panicking about something, or they’d figured something out and were preparing to make a final move. Either way, that kind of event required a leader to get everyone organized—so where was he?

  A strange hum bristled through the air. Fearing I might’ve been spotted, I crept back into the shadows.

  “Could you stop flitting about for a moment!” Lazar snapped, speaking to the person who had been humming. The two of them were just beyond the edge of the wall where I stood, my view obscured. If I peered around now, they were sure to see me.

  “To hum, I have fun,” a voice replied, high and eerily sweet. I knew that voice.

  “Yes, well, this isn’t the time for fun,” Lazar muttered.

  “Perhaps it is. You try?”

  I dropped down to the ground and dragged myself to the edge of the wall, daring a look around the side. Lazar was standing at the entrance to the alchemy lab, his one eye staring furiously down at the colorful figure of Mauve—the crazy fae who’d almost killed me outside the Fed outpost. She was the one who’d stolen my blood sample and tried to make an elixir out of it, resulting in the whole thing backfiring and killing everyone inside the outpost. How had she even gotten here?

  “Mauve, get back here,” Lazar insisted as the fae wandered around, laughing to herself in that creepy, high-pitched giggle. “If you want to help, you have to actually do something useful!” It seemed as though he was trying, and failing, to control the fae, and she didn’t care one bit.

  “The sun. It is nice here.” She sighed, lifting her face to it.

  Lazar growled and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “What in Rask’s name was Orion thinking, bringing a nutcase back here from who knows where?” he muttered, half to himself.

  The fae shot him a cruel look, a bitter smile twisting up her mouth as her hands moved slowly. She rose up into the air, glaring down at him. A moment later, Lazar flew several feet through the air, Mauve’s telekinesis throwing him off to the side, while she floated away without a care in the world. He landed in a heap, almost directly in front of where I lay. I stayed perfectly still, praying he wouldn’t look to his right and see me.

  Grumbling a string of expletives, Lazar scrambled to his feet, brushing the red dust and dirt from his blue pants. To my relief, he didn’t look at the spot where I was, but turned around and headed back toward the alchemy lab. I stayed where I was a few seconds longer, wanting to be sure he hadn’t seen me.

  “What was that about?” Bashrik whispered through the comms.

  “You remember that crazy fae who nearly killed me?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Bas
hrik and Navan chorused.

  I sighed heavily. “Well, she’s here.”

  Her presence sent a shiver of terror up my spine. After our last encounter, I would’ve been happy never to cross paths with her again. Yet here she was, as insane as ever, and just as volatile by the looks of it. Orion must have picked her up on his way back to Earth, since that decimated outpost had been close to where he’d found me and the others.

  “Maybe we should throw these things and get back outside the perimeter,” I suggested, feeling suddenly uneasy.

  A crackle came through the comm device. “The queens’ fleets arrived without warning. They arrived too early. The Fed ambush has failed. We are sending reserves to hold them off. The shield must go up now. Repeat, the shield must go up now.” I couldn’t tell whose voice it was, but I could hear the broken urgency in what they said. Our time was up. It was now or never.

  “Turn the dials to ten seconds and throw at the lab!” I yelled into the device. “Go, go, go!”

  Tearing the bombs from my belt, I did just that, turning the dials and throwing them with all my might toward the alchemy lab. Sprinting away, I felt the rumble of an explosion beneath my feet as the first of the bombs detonated, starting an incendiary chain reaction with the other bombs we’d set. A deafening roar bellowed in my ears as bomb after bomb went off. Thick plumes of black smoke were filling the air, and the sound of people shouting peppered the chaos.

  It was time to see if we could smoke these bastards out.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Coldbloods and shifters poured out of the alchemy lab in a tide of saggy flesh and gray skin, staggering as the tremors of every explosion rippled through the earth. Black smoke rose from the lab, and fires flickered in the entrance and inside the farthest chimney. Clearly, Navan had managed to get a bomb inside the chimney stack, and the rust-red plumes were turning a thick gray. I could see the beginnings of more flames licking up the sides of the lab walls, while the rebels raced for water, desperate to put out the fires before they could spread.

  “Gather to the side of the bunker—there’s a metal container there. Let’s rendezvous behind it,” I hissed into the comm device, hoping the others could hear me. Across the open expanse of ground, where the panicked rebels swarmed, I’d picked out the shape of a shipping container, standing close to the entrance of the bunker.

  Tucking myself behind every post and stack, I sprinted for the container. I glanced over my shoulder to see Lazar running toward the source of the explosions, his eyes scanning the spot on the ground where I’d lain. I hoped he wouldn’t figure anything out from the flattened grass or the splintered bomb casings, not with the thick smoke and ash falling everywhere.

  I reached the back end of the container at the same time as Navan and Bashrik, with Stone skidding to a halt behind it a moment later. I stared at him in disbelief.

  “I told you to wait in the trees!”

  “Couldn’t hear nothin’ over these useless trinkets,” he muttered, shaking his comm device at me. “Yer bombs went bang, and I came runnin’.”

  I shot him an unimpressed look. “How did you know to meet us here, then, if your device wasn’t working?”

  “Ah… ye’ve got me on that one, lass.”

  “It’s probably a good thing he’s here now,” Navan cut in. “We’re going to need him pretty soon with all of this going on.”

  Bashrik peered around the side of the container, before ducking back. “Yeah, we’ve got most of the rebels out in the open. We can’t leave the freezing much longer, or we’ll end up getting caught.” His tone was anxious, his gaze flitting across the chaotic scene.

  “Especially if Mauve and Lazar are here,” Navan agreed coldly.

  I glanced up at the sky, as though the fae could appear at any moment. “She’s buzzing around this place somewhere, so keep your eyes peeled for her. If she uses her telekinesis on you, you’re toast.”

  “What d’ye reckon went awry with the ambush?” Stone mused.

  My heart clenched at the prospect of the queens’ fleets breaking through the Fed line. “I think they arrived way too early, that’s what happened. Gianne must have known she was being tracked or something and tricked the Fed into believing she was arriving later. What’s left of Brisha’s army will have followed whatever Gianne was doing, to try and keep up with her.”

  “This is a mess—a complete mess,” Bashrik muttered. “Angie is out there, and now we’re going to have to deal with the queens’ ships too. There aren’t enough of us for that.”

  “We knew there was a chance the ambush might not work,” Navan replied, though he didn’t sound convinced.

  “Did we? The Fed sounded pretty freaking confident. If they hadn’t been sure, I’d never have agreed to let Angie go off like that, all by herself. This is ridiculous.”

  “It’s only ridiculous if we give up before we’ve even begun,” I shot back. “Angie is stronger than you give her credit for. If she wasn’t busy raising a shield to protect us all, she’d tell you the same thing. So, come on, get your chin up, and let’s get on with our part in all of this.”

  Our devices crackled as we pressed ourselves flat to the side of the shipping container. “This is the Universal Alliance calling Stone. We require the Deep Freeze.”

  It was the signal we’d been waiting for, but the timing was all off. We needed to wait until Orion and Ezra showed up, but they were nowhere to be seen. Either they were deliberately staying below ground, keeping out of harm’s way, or they weren’t even here in the first place. To be honest, I wasn’t sure which scenario was worse.

  “What d’ye want me to do, Captain Ri?” Stone asked, his eyes wide. “We waitin’ or what?”

  “That is a negative on delaying the Deep Freeze. Stone, go now!” Commander Mahlo’s voice replied through the comm device. Even so, he held his ground, waiting for me to give him an order. I could feel the weight of responsibility that Commander Mahlo had spoken about.

  I shook my head reluctantly. “We can’t wait for Orion and Ezra to show up. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” I said. It was a tough call, especially considering my theory about the whole pyramid crumbling if we took the ringleaders away. I just prayed I’d done the right thing.

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Stone dipped into a funny little bow, before clambering up onto the top of the shipping container. Bashrik and Navan helped him up, hoisting him by his feet. As soon as he was up there, he bent over the edge to look at us and tore off his bandana, leaving us free of his freezing powers. It was our own signal to start bringing a rain of fire down on the rebel forces.

  “The Deep Freeze is in place,” I shouted through the comm device. A split second later, everyone around us came to a sudden, eerie standstill, each one of them frozen like a statue, their limbs bent at unnatural angles, their faces contorted.

  Over by the alchemy lab, the fire raged on, spreading outward now that there was nobody to contain it. Soon enough, it would start consuming the nearby buildings, engulfing the rebel camp one structure at a time. I glanced at Bashrik and Navan, but the peculiar silence drew my attention once more. It was weird to see a would-be battlefield so still and unmoving, everyone frozen in place.

  My eyes flicked up to Stone, who stood in the middle of the shipping container. I remembered what he’d said about the nudus draining his strength and compromising his third eye—as soon as he started building his part of the shield, we’d have to wipe out every single rebel.

  As if synced to my thoughts, Stone pulled back the sleeve of his camo-marked black jacket. Now, I understood why he hadn’t wanted to wear one of the Fed suits. There, all the way along his arm, right up to the shoulder, were glowing nudus, their power adding more force to a beam of blue light that had begun to surge skyward. He had way more clinging to him than the others had had in their boxes; I just prayed he’d waited until we were on the ship before he’d put his on, otherwise he’d be starting to struggle soon. Once the light had reached the atm
osphere, it began to spread out like poured liquid, seeking out the edges of the other shields that were creeping across the globe, forging one complete barrier.

  Through the transparent upper half of the dome, the sky darkened a little, like in an eclipse, casting everything in a bluish haze. It wasn’t blocking out the sun completely, but it was getting between the light and the ground, creating a strange filter that made everything look as though it were in perpetual dusk.

  “Lycan fleet, merevin fleet, Rexombran fleet, it’s time to strike!” I announced. “We need soldiers on the ground and air support before the shield closes—you won’t be able to get in otherwise. The Deep Freeze is a success, but it won’t last long. Stone’s energy is being sapped by the nudus.”

  “Copy that, Captain Idrax,” Agent Phocida responded.

  “Copy that,” Commander Mahlo agreed.

  “Firestorm is on its way, Warrior Idrax,” Anai chimed in.

  “Let’s take these bastards down!” I shouted, flashing a look at Navan and Bashrik. We set off across the frozen landscape, wielding our weapons and striking anyone in our path.

  Two minutes later, the comforting sight of our ally ships thrummed into view, having surged through the remaining gaps in the nudus shield so they could join us. They could leave, if they needed to, but as soon as they were out of the shield wall, they couldn’t enter again.

  Their guns opened fire, hammering down on the rebel base. A swarm of soldiers burst through the fuzzy lower half of the perimeter a few seconds later—merevin, lycan, and Rexombran alike—all of them cutting down our foes with guns, blades, and bare hands.

  It was a brutal killing spree, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about the decimation of life. I would have to worry about it later, when my species was no longer under threat. All around me, blood sprayed in sickening fountains, before the remains of ashen bodies began to float upward. Wherever I turned, there was death and destruction, and I was standing at the center of it all.