Dante broke off from them there, while Caleb and Washington dropped to the twenty-ninth floor. “Sheriff, we’re in position,” Caleb said.

  “Roger that, Sergeant,” Dante replied. “I’m calling the lift.”

  “Roger.” Caleb said, checking his HUD. Eighteen minutes had passed since Sergeant Zane radioed Dante and told her she was supposed to return to the Law Office. They had two minutes to make their move before Zane would guess something was amiss, and while there was a chance he might call Dante again to find out where she was, there was an equal chance he would tell Stone she had gone rogue.

  It was a good thing two minutes would be more than enough time.

  “The lift has arrived,” Dante reported.

  Caleb nodded to Washington, and the two Guardians slipped out of the stairwell. While they had been careful emerging on empty floors before, they didn’t have much of a choice right now.

  A pair of orderlies in faded blue scrubs turned around at the sound of the door slamming open, mouths dropping open in surprise as Caleb and Washington broke around the corner toward the lift. They stared in shock while Caleb grabbed the lift door with his replacement hand, tearing it open like it was the lid of a trash can.

  Washington went through first, leaping from the edge of the stairs and grabbing at the bundle of cables that hung from the bottom of the lift cab. “The Vultures have landed!” he shouted out, holding on tight.

  “Roger,” Dante replied, stepping into the cab and pushing a button on the control panel . “Going down,” she announced.

  Caleb joined Washington an instant later, clasping a crossbeam in his augmented hand and holding on tight as the lift started to descend.

  Getting into the lowest level required security clearance, which Dante happened to have. The problem was there was only one secured floor for the cab to stop at, and there was no way to halt it earlier without throwing the emergency brake and tripping an alarm. Instead, it would be up to Caleb and Washington to get themselves out of the shaft before the cab crushed them.

  Caleb kept his head down, eyes scanning for the floor twenty-nine stories below. He wasn’t nervous or afraid. He had completed more difficult maneuvers than this. But he was angry at the turn of events and the decisions Governor Stone had made to put him in this situation.

  The seconds ticked by. The lift continued its descent. The ATCS picked up the ground below, offering a display of the distance. Thirty meters. Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten.

  “Ready, Wash? Time to fly,” Caleb said.

  Washington nodded, using both hands to dangle from the cables. They let go of their tethers at the same time, dropping the remaining eight meters to the floor. Caleb flexed his knees, hoping the synthetic musculature of his SOS would absorb the impact. It didn’t, not all of it. He hit hard and stumbled forward, pain shooting through his knees, but at least he caught himself before he did a face plant. So did Washington, mimicking Caleb’s landing before looking up at him.

  They only had four seconds to get out of the shaft.

  Caleb grabbed the seam of the doors, pulling the left panel to the side and holding it out of the way. Washington burst out through the new opening, causing Caleb’s tactical to light up as both Wash and the targets beyond the shaft came into view.

  With the lift almost on him, Caleb crouched low, rolling forward and through the exit he had made, escaping the cab as it slid to a stop behind him.

  He popped to his feet. There were nearly two-dozen people in the corridor. One squad was right outside the lift doors, but Washington had already knocked two of the militiamen down and was grappling with a third. Two more units were further back, their bows and arrows marked as missiles by Caleb’s ATCS.

  A guard on his left stabbed at him with what looked like a sword, the point slipping off the plate of his SOS and sinking into the bodysuit beneath. It wasn’t sharp enough to break through the spider-steel weave, but it pricked hard enough to be annoying. Caleb turned on the man, grabbing his wrist and punching him in the throat, sending him sprawling to the floor.

  The inner doors of the cab slid open, Sheriff Dante emerging behind them. She didn’t have any room to fight past Caleb and Washington, so she hung back in wait for her opportunity to strike.

  She didn’t wait long. Caleb dispatched another guard with a knee to the groin, leaving him on the floor. Washington smashed the remaining guard against the wall, dropping him too.

  The archers fired their arrows, a dozen missiles streaking toward the trio and striking their combat armor. They scraped harmlessly across the heavy plates and slipped against the bodysuits without puncturing them.

  Did Governor Stone have any idea what he had started? Had he underestimated the Guardians this badly?

  Caleb moved ahead toward the guards.

  His ATCS beeped a warning tone, picking up a new threat at the back of the corridor. At first, Caleb assumed someone had come out of hiding toting Flores’ rifle. He was wrong.

  Instead of charging into an MK-12, he was heading right for a Butcher.

  Chapter 17

  Caleb came to a stop, ignoring the arrows that bounced off his combat armor. The Butcher continued to advance, its massive frame shaking the floor as it approached.

  Where had Governor Stone gotten a Butcher?

  He had seen a few of them in the armory below the city. Had Stone visited the area? Was he the one who had closed the garage and covered up the controls to the platform? Caleb had pieced together some of what had happened thanks to Harry’s recording, but the whole story was still far out of his reach.

  “Dante, did you know about this?” he through his comm.

  “Negative,” Dante replied. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s called a Butcher,” Caleb replied. “It’s a trife killer. At least until the batteries run out.” That was the problem with any of the robots they had produced to fight the trife. A single machine could kill a thousand of the demons, but it would always run out of power before they were all dead. “There has to be a control unit for it somewhere, but it could be that Stone set it to defend and took it with him.”

  “Great. How do we stop it?”

  Caleb considered both his MK-12 and the P-50 he had picked up before ascending back into Metro. The plasma rifle could get through the Butcher’s tough metal shell, but not without killing the rest of the people in the corridor, something he was extremely reluctant to do.

  “I’m not sure if we can,” he replied. “I’ll do my best to slow it down so you and Wash can get past it. Take care of the guards and find Flores.”

  “Roger.”

  Caleb glanced at his HUD. Washington was finishing off the last of the squad near the lift, almost ready for the second round of the fight. It was a little more of a brawl than Caleb ever would have preferred, but Marines did what Marines had to do to complete the mission.

  He started forward again, raising his fists as he prepared to collide with the Butcher. The robot was half a meter taller than he was, much broader and much heavier. Its arms were powerful, built to crush trife bones and toss them aside. Caleb felt lucky the thing wasn’t carrying the heavy axe it was sometimes equipped with.

  “All right,” he said, getting into a fighting stance. He had seen the Butchers fight plenty of times. He knew their strength and speed. Agility would be his one advantage over it. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  The robot sped up to cover the last few steps, charging hard and reaching for Caleb. If it got him in its iron grip, there was no way he would get out of it. He ducked away from its right hand, almost falling directly into its left. He had seen the move before, and he backed up just enough to avoid its grasp. He slipped in beside it and grabbed the right arm with his augmentation. He yanked as hard as he could, setting his feet and pulling the Butcher to the side, his replacement arm straining against its weight.

  It was enough to bring the Butcher to the wall, smacking it lightly against the bulkhead and clearing space for Washington and Dante. The Butcher reached for Dante as they skirted past, its fingers getting a grip on the back of her SOS and tossing her to the ground. Washington froze and turned, reaching out for her while the Butcher tried to pull her back in.

  Caleb stepped into the Butcher, grabbing its wrist with his replacement hand while Washington tried to tug Dante free.

  “Wash, behind you!” Caleb warned, a quick glance at his HUD showing the other guards had gotten bold behind the robot.

  Washington let go of Dante, turning back toward the guards. His hand came up just in time to catch a sword on the armored plate of his SOS, and then the other swept past, knocking the weapon out of the soldier’s hand. The big Marine threw himself into the assault, his augmented strength and combat training giving him a massive advantage over the Governor’s guards.

  Caleb wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about Dante. The Butcher lifted her by the powerpack that bulged out of the rear of her SOS. Caleb tried to crush it, to break the connections that allowed it to maintain its grip on her. Its other hand pulled back, preparing to strike. It was ignoring Caleb now, its basic AI mind telling it to focus on the target it already had under control.

  Caleb could feel the metal shell crushing beneath his powerful grip, but he could also tell it wasn’t enough. He let go of the wrist, pivoting his body and catching the other hand before it could push forward into Dante’s helmet. He strained against the momentum, feet sliding a few centimeters along the floor.

  The Butcher’s right arm slowed to a stop. It flexed its left arm and tossed Dante away, throwing her hard into the opposite wall. She fell to her hands and knees, shaken by the impact.

  Caleb released the Butcher’s right arm, pivoting again and ducking low as the left barely scraped over his head. He used his replacement like a sledgehammer, swinging it as hard as he could and driving it into the robot’s right leg. The force was enough to displace the appendage, throwing the machine off-balance. It tried to recover, adjusting its other limbs to compensate. Caleb used the few seconds to adjust his attack, grabbing his P-50 from his back and pushing between the Butcher and the wall to the other side.

  The Butcher straightened up, torso rotating to turn around without shifting its feet. Caleb switched the rifle to stream, pressing the muzzle against the Butcher’s neck and pulling the trigger.

  He could feel the heat of the plasma as it sank into the robot’s neck, a gout of flame cutting through it like a hot knife. The machine’s brain was in its better-protected chest, but its sensors were up top where they were supposed to be beyond the trife’s reach. The plasma burst severed the head, sending it sliding off to thunk on the ground behind it.

  The Butcher kept moving for a few seconds after that, its systems trying to adjust. When the neural net realized it didn’t have enough data to act on, it came to a sudden stop.

  Caleb released a heavy sigh of relief, checking his HUD while he spun back toward Washington and the guards. Twelve soldiers had remained in the corridor. Only five were still standing, the others on the ground nursing broken arms, legs, and other non-critical incapacitating injuries.

  Caleb moved to the big man’s side. The remainder of the guards saw the Butcher behind them and fell back, raising their hands in sudden surrender.

  “Please,” one of them said. “We give up.”

  “Where’s Flores?” Caleb asked.

  “There,” the man said, pointing to a door near the end of the corridor. “With Doctor Rathbone.”

  “Where’s Brom?”

  “Dead,” the guard replied. “You Guardians killed him.”

  Caleb shook his head. Damn Valentine. “Wash, keep an eye on them. Sho, you’re with me.”

  Washington grabbed his MK-12 from his back, leveling it at the guards, who kept their hands up. Caleb moved past them, assuming Dante would understand he was trying to protect her identity when he’d called her Sho.

  She did, following him to the door. He grabbed the handle, testing it. Locked.

  “I’ve got it,” Dante said, sweeping her wrist over the control panel. It clicked open, and they entered.

  The room looked similar to the examination room in which Doctor Brom had treated him. There was a table near the center, medical equipment against one wall and a counter against another. Doctor Rathbone was an older woman, heavyset with salt and pepper hair cut into a bob. She was standing over Flores.

  Her confused expression turned to a fearful one. She raised her hands without prompting, stepping away from the table.

  “I didn’t do it,” she said.

  Caleb didn’t know what she meant. He glanced at Flores. Her SOS was off, her undershirt removed. Her breasts draped over the sides of her chest, gravity pulling them closer to flat. A web of darkness was spreading between them.

  “What the?” Caleb said, rushing to her side. The darkness reminded him of spider veins, but they were in the wrong place and on the wrong person. He remembered how David had applied the topical solution to her skin in that area, and how it had healed her.

  It seemed those effects were temporary.

  “Sheriff Dante,” a muffled voice said, escaping from the pocket of Dante’s SOS. She reached into it, withdrawing the badge. The LED was green.

  Caleb checked his HUD. Their twenty minutes had expired three minutes ago.

  “Sheriff, this is Stone,” Governor Stone said. “I know where you are, Sam. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Governor,” Dante said, voice calm. “I’m doing the right thing. What about you?”

  “It isn’t for you to say what the right thing is, Sam,” Stone said. “Your job is to follow my orders.”

  “You ordered me to work with Sergeant Card. To help him with whatever he needed. You’re trying to use him as a scapegoat to your family’s lies. Do you even realize where we are? The colony needs Caleb a hell of a lot more than it needs you.”

  “Be careful, Sam. Those words are bordering on treason.”

  “What are you even thinking? Metro could come under attack at any second, and you’ve decided the best way forward is to ostracize the only trained military we have on board? You’re out of your damn mind.”

  Caleb looked at Dante. “Sheriff, you need to back down a little,” he whispered through his comm. “Remember what I told you.”

  She glared back at him, her eyes bathed in fury. She nodded.

  “You’re looking at it the wrong way,” Governor Stone said. “Three soldiers aren’t nearly enough to handle whatever might be coming, and it would take them weeks to train our people. In the meantime, we’d be dealing with a city filled with frightened, unpredictable citizens. An angry mob is a real threat, Sheriff. An imminent attack from beyond the seals is an assumption.”

  “You mean you’d be dealing with a city of angry citizens,” Caleb said, getting involved. “You perpetuated the lie. You could have tried coming clean, but you’re too afraid of losing your grip on the city. You’d rather throw my Marine to the wolves to satisfy their need for retribution.”

  “Don’t even try to think you know me, Sergeant. Don’t even try to think you can judge me. The problems started with what was happening beyond Metro. The problems started because of you and Doctor Valentine. You brought us here to die.” Stone’s voice grew louder, his anger spilling out. “You killed Orla, you son of a bitch.” He paused, his voice calmer when he spoke again. “Besides, your Marine is going to die before I can make an example of her. She collapsed after I brought her up in front of the crowd. Doctor Rathbone tells me something or someone poisoned her.”

  Caleb looked back at Flores. She was still breathing at least.

  “Wash, get her dressed.”

  “You shouldn’t move her,” Doctor Rathbone said.

  “Have you tried to treat her?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes. I tried everything I could think of. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “Then moving her can’t be any worse.” Caleb looked at Washington, who pushed past Doctor Rathbone to start collecting Flores’ clothes.

  “You aren’t going anywhere, Sergeant,” Governor Stone said.

  “I don’t know where you found a Butcher.” Caleb replied. “it couldn’t stop me, but you’re welcome to keep trying.”

  “I’ve got a whole city that wants you dead, Caleb. You and your team. They know who’s really to blame for this situation.”

  “This isn’t about blame, Governor,” Dante said. “This is about survival. For all of us. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Yes, Sam. I do. This is how we survive. We’ve taken care of our problems for the last two hundred years. We don’t need help taking care of them now.”

  “Idiot,” Dante hissed into the comm, too quietly for the badge to pick it up.

  “You have to make a choice, Sheriff,” Stone said. “You can side with Metro, with your home, or you can side with the outsiders who brought death and ruin to our city, and to my family. The rest of Law is loyal to me. What about you?”

  Dante didn’t respond right away. She looked at Caleb, their eyes meeting. Caleb stared back. Her response was critical to all of their futures.

  She reached back, grabbing the MK-12 and pointing it at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Me too,” Caleb replied.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 18

  Caleb walked over to Dante, grabbing the MK-12 from her hands and throwing it aside. The ATCS had safeguards against friendly fire, and the rifle was networked in.

  Of course, Dante had known that was going to happen. The ineffective clicking of the rifle was audible through the badge, signaling Governor Stone that she had made her choice and decided to stay on his good side.

  This was where they parted ways.

  Caleb reached out with his replacement arm, grabbing her by the chest plate of the SOS, turning her and shoving her into the wall. He took the badge from her hand, holding it up between them.