I pulled my blaster and pointed it at the creature, hesitating when one of the doors on the opposite side of it opened. Quasar stepped out behind the thing, her right bicep wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet. She held her machine gun one-handed, smiling at me through the demon.

  “Ben,” she said over the creatures’ screams. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I replied.

  My attention shifted as the stone at the creature’s feet chipped away, the demon slashing at it with its claws and breaking free before I could react.

  The roar of Quasar’s gun filled the hallway. I could see her muzzle flashes directly ahead of me, as if she were shooting me in the chest. Only none of the bullets connected with me, hitting the invisible demon instead. The sudden flow of blood out of each of the dozen holes she put in it revealed its position. It stumbled toward me, making it four steps before collapsing to the floor and remaining still.

  “I really hope there’s only one of those things,” Quasar said as a fresh grin split her weary face.

  “Me, too,” I agreed, beaming back at her.

  Our peaceful, happy reunion was short lived. Somehow, the gorathi knew the invisible monster was dead. The renewed cacophony of hissing and scratching filled the corridor, the real fight about to begin.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Here they come!” I shouted, spinning to face the doorway leading into the factory as the first of the gorathi burst through it. It was fair to say that I was getting tired of fighting. Demons, humans, demons, humans, then demons again. Too much violence. Too much killing. Before I’d come to the Manticore Spiral, I would have never dreamed of harming a hair on anyone’s head. Now killing was becoming so regular it barely registered.

  I didn’t consider that a good thing.

  “Make sure you count your kills, new girl,” Emerald said. “We’ve got a wager going.”

  “Copy that,” Quasar replied with a tight smile.

  The humans of Team Hondo all opened fire with our assortment of weapons, blasting the first dozen or so creatures before they could get more than a step from the door. It didn’t take long for Quasar's machine gun to run out of rounds, but she barely missed a beat, tossing it aside to claim Veneel’s plasma rifle. We kept up the pressure as they poured through the opening, which served as a perfect chokepoint to keep them from coming at us far too quickly.

  We picked off the demons one after another as they scratched and clawed to get through the door, apparently eager to die. A stack of gorathi covered the floor ahead of us soon enough, the stone slick with their blood. It ran toward the outer wall, hugging the crease in a quickly widening river.

  They kept coming, a seemingly endless supply of the relatively fragile creatures forced to climb over their fallen. Later, they paused to pull them back inside to get them out of the way, giving us more time to cut the newcomers down before they could advance. Smart enough to open doors, they weren’t smart enough to take cover and bide their time instead of trying to force their way through them, an irresistible animalistic urge propelling them forward like lemmings, straight into our line of fire.

  “I’m dry,” Emerald announced all too soon, dropping her blaster to the floor and pulling her knife.

  “Me too,” Druck added less than a minute later, his rifle empty of its cell charge.

  “I’m getting low,” Quasar chimed in, at the same time she blasted yet another gorathi in the face, adding it to the pile.

  I had no idea how any of them were keeping any kind of accurate kill score in the middle of this madness. I had lost track of how many of the demons I had killed after the first two minutes. The only good news was that we were able to keep them at bay purely with conventional arms, allowing me to conserve my chaos energy. But as my blaster fired its last shot, I knew that benefit had reached its zenith.

  The gorathi seemed to sense we were in trouble, and with only Quasar still shooting them down, they were able to begin gaining ground, surging forward with renewed and vicious focus. I activated reflect, the force like an invisible chain link fence knocking them back while still allowing Quasar to shoot over the top. That bought us a little more time until they figured out the shield was there. When they started trying to leap over it, Ixitat lunged forward. Agilely remaining outside the reach of their claws, she picked off two at a time with swipes of her powerful forelimbs. Emerald and Druck backed us up with their knives, stabbing over the barrier and helping to regain the stability of our defenses.

  “I’m empty,” Quasar announced, the onslaught leaving us totally bereft of guns. She moved forward to join the others at the line. Lacking a blade, she used her fists to slam the gorathi in the head or smash them into the wall, her Royal Marine training making her a hard kill even unarmed and wounded.

  “It’s not enough,” I said, watching them furiously trying to keep the demons back. Druck grunted as a claw caught his forearm, his blade falling into their midst as he stumbled away. Shaq sprang from my shoulder as the gorathi landed on our side of the barrier, just in front of Druck. Landing on the creature, Shaq delivered a fatal bite.

  Or at least, it should have been fatal.

  The creature barely noticed as it lunged at Druck, who brought up his arm to catch the demon’s teeth before they reached his face. Shaq jumped off its back as Druck cried out, swinging the gorathi into the wall where Emerald decapitated it.

  “That’s my kill,” Druck growled, his forearm bleeding.

  “How do you figure that?” she replied, returning her attention to the horde. “It would have killed you if I hadn’t stabbed it.”

  “I was about to bash its head on the wall. You interrupted that. My kill.”

  I couldn’t believe they were arguing about it while we were struggling to keep the gorathi at bay.

  “Bullshit. What are you up to, anyway?”

  “Ninety-six,” he said proudly.

  “You can have it, I’m at one-thirty-seven.”

  “There’s no way.”

  She stabbed another one in the eye. “One-thirty-eight.”

  “Shit!” Druck roared, glancing at me. “Can I borrow your knife?”

  “Just take it,” I said, looking over the mass of gorathi to the doorway. I had expected the flow to dwindle by now, but it seemed as strong as ever. This was ridiculous. They were easy to kill, but there were just so damn many of them.

  Ignoring the blood dripping off his arm, Druck pulled my knife from the scabbard on my thigh and returned to the fight. The battle continued, slowly pushing us back as we all began to tire. If we were going to get through them, I had to do something drastic. It would probably suck away a lot of chaos energy, but all of the power in the universe didn’t mean anything if Matt died because I couldn’t get to him.

  “I’m going to drop the barrier,” I announced. “Get ready.” I closed my eyes, visualizing what I wanted to happen, and the sigils I needed to do it. “Now!”

  The others didn’t stop fighting, they were just ready for the gorathi to be able to rush forward. Not that I gave them much of a chance to strike. Activating dampen and adding enhance to make it more powerful, I hit the entire line of demons at once, freezing their blood and stopping their hearts, causing them to drop to the floor nearly all at once. Presumably, even the gorathi I couldn’t see were affected, as I had seen the mass of them pressed into the doorway in my mind, translating to the sigiltech action. Chaos energy thrummed in the construct, heating the catalyst enough for it to burn the surrounding skin. I only held the combo for ten seconds, maybe less, but I collapsed to my knees when I released it, my power drained by half and my body feeling it.

  I remained in that position and waited, head down as I listened for more of the hissing and scratching. For evidence that any of the gorathi had survived. My stomach churned, the nausea nearly causing me to panic. I couldn’t afford to be paralyzed. Not now. Not yet. A second passed. Another. By the time I counted to thirty and the factory remained quiet, I was willing to exhale.

  Emerald moved first, running from her position to the doorway and poking her head inside. She pulled it out and looked back at me with a mix of admiration and frustration. “I don’t think ten-to-one was enough of a handicap.”

  “Shaq,” I said, voice still a little weak, though my strength was already beginning to return thanks to restore. “Can you go look for Matt?”

  “Mmmhmm,” he replied, dashing off to the cleared factory floor.

  “Ben, are you okay?” Quasar asked, retreating to me and putting a supportive hand under my arm.

  “I will be,” I replied, looking at her arm. Fresh blood had soaked into the tourniquet. “You?”

  “One of those bastards got me during the fighting last night. It’s pretty deep, but I managed to staunch it. I need it stitched though."

  “Join the club,” Druck said, coming over with his arm raised. A pair of deep gashes had taken out a lot of flesh, but thankfully missing the muscle but looking as if the claws had nicked the artery. He hadn’t tried to put pressure on it yet, leaving it bleeding profusely.

  “Get out of your armor,” I said. “Before you bleed to death.”

  “He can have my shirt to wrap it,” Emerald said, starting to pull it off.

  “Do you just like being in your undies?” Druck asked, glancing at her. “Not that I’m necessarily complaining, but it is a little weird.”

  “I’m trying to help you,” she growled back. “You may be an asshole, but you’re on my team.”

  “Aww, is this a bonding moment?”

  “Druck, just get your armor off,” I repeated.

  “I’ll help you,” Quasar said when he struggled with it. Once we cleared the armor, I could see the wound was bigger than I thought.

  “I’m not sure this is going to work, but hold still. It might hurt a bit,” I said, pushing against the damage to keep him from losing any more blood.

  “What are you going to do?” Druck asked.

  “Quasar, pinch the skin together to cover the lacerations.”

  “On it.” She used her hand to hold the gash closed. Activating combine, I tried to merge the wound back together.

  “Whoa. This feels so weird,” Druck said. “Not painful, but freaky.” We all watched as the skin seemed to melt together, returning to normal, without even the hint of a scar. When I let go of the actions, he turned it over and stared at where the cuts had been. “Nice. My hero.”

  “Zar, you're next,” I said.

  She nodded, uncovering her wound. It wasn’t as bad as Druck’s, but it had to be painful. I repeated the process, impressing myself with my ability to seal the cuts. “Good as new,” she said, looking at it before looking at me. “How did you get here? How are you even still alive? I thought—”

  “It’s a long story,” I replied. “One I don’t have time to tell right now. I take it you saw the gorathi capture Matt?”

  “Gorathi? Is that what they are?”

  “That’s what Veneel called them.” I looked over my shoulder at the dead Niflin, twenty feet behind us.

  “You actually teamed up with a Niflin.”

  “One of Sedaya’s, no less,” I said. “Well, formerly one of Sedaya’s. Duke Asscrab treated him the same way he treats anything he has no further use for.”

  “I get it,” she said. “Yeah, I was headed for the city when I spotted them coming out with him on their shoulders like they're hauling a coffin. I followed them back here, took a couple of lumps on the way. I had mostly stopped the bleeding by then, but I opened the cut up again so I could leave a trail. I knew Emil and Shaq were here and thought they might come across it and follow me. I would have kept up with the demons, but there were just too many to get any further. And then before I could get back out, that invisible one showed up. I ducked into one of the rooms and watched through the crack. He managed to kill half a dozen before they went completely silent and fell off his radar. He devoured the one’s he killed like he hadn’t eaten in a year. That’s when I wished I hadn’t left the breadcrumbs. I never in a million years expected you.” She threw herself at me, wrapping me in a big bear hug. “I’m so happy to see you alive.”

  “Get your own boyfriend, chickie,” Emerald groused. “This one’s taken.”

  Quasar pulled back, eyes flicking between her and me. “Seriously? When did you have time to get a girlfriend?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I replied. “Though she likes to think she is.”

  “That’s really hurtful, you know,” Emerald complained before bursting into laughter.

  “I don’t get it,” Quasar said, brow furrowed.

  “Quasar, meet Emerald Jones. Emerald, this is—”

  “Quasar,” Emerald said. “Yeah, I figured that out already. Nice to meet you, I guess.”

  “The Emerald Jones?” Quasar asked, hand stretching toward her knife. “The mass murderer?”

  “Fraaaaamed,” Emerald sing-songed.

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

  “No, we think she really was,” I said. “Sedaya used Blorb to set her up.”

  “What’s a Blorb?”

  “It’s an Aleal, like Alter was.”

  “What do you mean, was?”

  “Blorb killed both her and Gia.”

  Quasar looked stricken. “Oh. Ben, I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. So am I. They were your friends too. Now I’m trying to get to Matt and get us the hell out of here. I want to survive long enough to shove my fist so far down Blorb’s throat he shits fingernails.”

  “Ouch, good one, Boss,” Druck said.

  “And that’s Ixitat. Ixy,” I said, pointing to her. She remained near the front of the now-dead line of gorathi, keeping watch in case any got back up or reinforcements arrived.

  “A xixitl,” Quasar said. “Cool. Any idea what happened to Avelus?”

  “He’s back on Head Case with the rest of my new recruits. They’re waiting a few days for us to transit back. If we don’t, they’ll make their way here. I don’t really know how far here is from Kirillia.”

  “Five days, give or take,” Emerald said.

  “How do you know?” Druck asked. “We didn’t have any way to tell time locked in our crates.”

  “Do the words circadian rhythm mean anything to you?”

  “Not really.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Transit back?” Quasar said. “You came in the Mustang, then?”

  “Yeah, but the gorathi totalled it. We aren’t getting out that way.”

  “So we’re improvising, then?”

  “We will be once we have Matt. We came with another person, a rebel named Kat,” I continued. “He didn’t make it. We also picked up a few strays since we got here, but they didn’t make it either.”

  I looked past Zar at Shaq as he returned from the factory floor. His face wasn’t naturally expressive, making it impossible to predetermine the outcome of his search. When he rushed over to us, I noticed the hairs on his back were standing up. “No Matt,” he announced. “Come see.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Forced to climb over dozens of dead gorathi, we followed Shaq back through the open door to the main factory floor. A huge, open room, it had all kinds of large machines lined up on one side. A half dozen huge vats with pipes ran under the floor sat on the other side, each one obviously meant to provide a different building material. Pedestal control kiosks sat in front of each machine, while a number of variously designed robots littered the limited open space, their batteries long drained. A large crack in the ceiling had allowed moisture into the room, which in turn had rusted all of the machines and allowed moss, algae, and mold to grow on everything.

  “This is where they mixed the raw materials for the printers,” Emerald said, “The different vats provide different building materials. I bet one of the buildings near this one is a warehouse for the printers themselves.”

  The dead gorathi were mostly pressed into the side of the room where we had entered, but it didn’t take long to spot dead stragglers that had been coming from behind one of the machines near the rear corner. That’s where Shaq guided us, rushing ahead before pausing and turning to face us. He stood upright on his hind legs like a meerkat, pointing to the machine in the corner. He had already told me that Matt wasn’t here, but I was eager to find out what he had found.

  I came to an abrupt stop when my eyes landed on the stone floor beside the machine. It had been torn to rubble, with fresher dirt mixed in. It seemed the creatures had come into the factory from underground. I approached the hole and peered over the edge, staring down into the near-darkness. The tunnel dropped about eight feet before reaching a sloping bottom.

  “Druck, go back and get the rifles,” I said as he and the others came up behind me.

  “They’re out of ammo,” he replied.

  “I know, but they still have lights on them.” I regretted melting down the light ring. My initial impression of the sigil was that it had limited usefulness, but it would have come in handy multiple times already.

  “On it,” Druck said, turning away.

  “I’ll go with you,” Quasar added. They both sprinted back the way we had come to retrieve the discarded weapons.

  “Ixy, can you go down there and confirm that this really is a tunnel?” I asked.

  “Yesss,” she replied, moving to the edge and climbing down. She remained down there a few seconds, looking ahead with eyes much more capable of seeing in the dark. “Tunnel continuesss.”

  “How far?”

  “Farsss. Too farsss.”

  “They must have taken your friend down that way,” Emerald said, her tone almost normal for once.

  “Yeah. I wish I knew why.”

  “It doesn’t matter why. We just need to get him back.”

  Druck and Quasar returned quickly, carrying the weapons and arguing.

  “I just can’t believe you dropped this one,” Quasar said, toting Kat’s plasma rifle.