“Can everyone hear me?” Archer grabs a holster from his box and secures it around his waist. Instead of his police weapons, there are vials of potions strapped to the belt.
Loud and clear, boss. Cal’s disembodied voice is crystal clear in my ear, even from his position a mile away.I’m compiling footage for loops now. Most of the building looks empty. Almost everyone is gathered for Alice’s show.
“Wonderful,” Alice mutters, adjusting her earpiece. She’s already dressed in her signature three-piece suit, and she pulls the hat from one of her trunks, placing it at a precise angle on her head. She straightened her hair today, the vibrant pink running in sleek lines down her back. She moves quickly, pulling the supplies she needs from the trunks and setting them up by the door that’ll take her to the awaiting crowd.
I grab the holster from my trunk and secure it around my hips, the potion Elder Keating gave me settling at the edge of my thigh. I double- and triple-check that it’s secure. “How much longer until we can go?”
Almost there, Cal says, computer keys clacking in the background.All right. Footage is ready to go. Hallways are clear.
“Ellen. Hannah. With me.” Archer waves for us to follow, but I hesitate. It feels wrong to leave Alice. She’s both the safest of us and the one most in danger, and I don’t know how to pull those realities apart. “Hannah,” he prompts.
“Be careful,” I tell Alice, stepping toward the door.
She rolls her eyes, but it doesn’t have her usual level of enthusiasm. “Get out of here, pyro. Go save the world.”
“Hannah, now,” Archer says, opening the back door.
I hold Alice’s gaze a second longer, then turn, following Archer deeper into Hall Pharmaceuticals. Ellen hands me a gas mask, and I slip it over my face. It makes my breath too loud in my ears, but it must not be that noticeable, since I don’t hear Archer’s or Ellen’s breathing in the comms. Only Cal’s instructions.
Follow the hallway. You’ll find a stairwell behind the third door on your left. Take it to the basement.
Even though we studied the building’s blueprints for hours, we have to follow Cal’s instructions through the mazelike basement. With each corner we turn, I expect to see a battalion of Hunters waiting for us. But there never is. The halls are empty, just like Cal promises again and again. Yet the lack of guards makes me nervous. The Hunters wouldn’t leave their secret lab completely unguarded, even with an event happening on the main level, would they?
Wait. Cal’s voice comes out rushed.There are two guards around the next corner.
“Can you route us around them?” Archer holds up a hand. Ellen and I stop behind him.
They’re guarding the lab. It’s the only entrance.
Archer reaches for the vials hooked to his belt, pulling out one with a gray, swirling potion inside. He unstoppers the top. Gray smoke slithers up the sides of the bottle and pools on the floor.
Archer glances at me. “Hannah, can you—” But he falters, and heat burns my face. “Ellen, can you push the potion around the corner?”
My covenmate nods, and her magic permeates the air. A gentle breeze picks up the gray smoke and whisks it down the hall. After a beat, there are two softthumps.
“What was that?” My question earns me a look from Archer, who presses a finger to his mask. He waves us forward, and we find a pair of guards slumped on either side of a thick metal door with a wide glass window.
“I guess we don’t need these.” Archer rests one hand against the potions at his hips—potions that, once combined, would have eaten through the metal door.
“Why not?”
It’s a bio scan, Cal says through the comms.You just need to press their thumbs to the scanners.
Ellen and I dart forward and grab hold of the unconscious Hunters. The dead weight of my guard is almost impossible to lift. I have to tug his arm over my shoulders and use the strength in my legs to drag him to the door.
“Three,” Ellen says, looking to me.
“Two.”
“One,” we say together, pressing the unconscious men’s thumbs to the panel.
At first, nothing happens. I panic, convinced with each beat of my heart that an alarm is about to sound. But then the system beeps and the door slides open. “Finally,” Ellen whispers, dropping her guard to the floor with little ceremony.
“Drag them inside. We need to bind them.” Archer leads us into the lab, which must double as an armory if the wall of drug-filled darts is any indication. At first, I think Archer wants to give them a binding potion like the one he gave Benton when he was arrested, something that will prevent them from speaking about the Clans. Instead, he pulls lengths of rope from the bag on his back and ties the guards together.
While he works, I take in the room that created so many of my nightmares. It’s all stainless steel and glittering white tile floors. There’s a computer station on one wall and rows and rows of filing cabinets on the other. The center of the room boasts a series of lab tables covered in beakers and vials of liquid.
It’s finally time to destroy the drug.
