Chapter 262
AwakeningCarmen entered the room and closed the door behind her. “How is she?”
Augustus stood with his arms crossed, his attention on the viewing window. Beside him, Annie leaned against the glass, forehead resting against the surface, hands stuffed in her pockets. She hadn’t moved since he’d arrived.
Augustus glanced at Carmen. “Stable. She’s going to be alright.”
Carmen came to stand between them. She looked through the window and shook her head.
Talia lay on the surgical table. One healer had a hand on her forehead, pulsing steadily, a constant output that kept the dozens of lacerations across her exposed skin from bleeding. Her left arm rested on a pad beside her, clearly broken, but neither healer was touching it. It wasn’t the priority.
The priority was the gaping wound across her stomach. The second healer worked there with both hands, focused on bringing flesh back together, both inside and out.
“What in the void happened?”
Annie muttered the answer. “It’s my fault.”
Augustus turned his head toward her. “Don’t be stupid, Annie.”
Annie winced.
His attention went back to the glass. “There’s no way we could have anticipated they’d be willing to die for each other like that.”
“Talia did. She tried to warn me.”
“No. Talia saw the black robe retreating a second before your strike. You couldn’t from your angle.” He sighed. “She didn’t know. She reacted. There’s a difference.”
Annie said nothing.
Augustus recalled it clearly enough. Annie had driven her hand into the white-robed wizard’s chest. A clean and decisive killing blow.
The wizard had bloated. His body swelled, larger and larger, skin stretching, robes tearing at the seams. Then he’d detonated. Razor wind in every direction, cutting through everything in the blast radius.
Annie had taken the brunt. MetaMetal absorbed most of it, but even she had been almost carved through.
Talia had been caught near the edge of the blast radius, and still the wind had torn into her. Several members of the Haze guild had gone down instantly.
Nothing could have saved them.
Augustus uncrossed his arms. “Did you get anything from the surviving Haze members?”
Carmen shook her head. “Their last orders from AEGIS were to provide Flashpoint a place to stay while he cleaned up the city and reinforced their position. None of them expected anything to come through the gateway, and they didn’t know about any deals.”
He nodded.
On the other side of the glass, the two healers continued their work. One hadn’t been enough, because the wind had carried a curse with it. The wounds had refused to close when the first healer began, the magic resisting his power.
Out of the corner of his eye, Augustus caught Carmen going still. Her features, faint in the reflection of the glass, took on the familiar look of someone dealing with a System message.
“What is it?”
Carmen turned to him, frowning. “I’m not sure. Ryan says the ship is going crazy.”
Augustus snapped out a hand. The wand materialized in his grip. He turned and began spinning up the portal, targeting the bridge of the Sleipnir on the other side of Astra Omnia from where they were.
Annie pushed off the wall, mouth opening.
“Stay with Talia,” Augustus said. “Felix and Gabe will be here shortly.”
Annie’s mouth closed. She nodded.
The portal completed. Augustus gestured Carmen through first, then followed.
The floor was alive. Arcs of electricity grew out of the metal, raced across the surface, licked up the walls, then across the ceiling. The bridge hummed with it. Every surface crackling with current that had no source.
Ryan sat very still in the captain’s chair. His hands rested on the armrests. His eyes tracked the lightning but his body didn’t move.
Yuki had her arms wrapped around her knees at her station, feet pulled off the floor.
Carmen stepped forward.
A bolt raced toward her across the deck.
Augustus reached for her shoulder. Too slow.
The lightning split in half as it reached her feet, shrank, and faded back into the floor.
He dropped his hand.
Carmen turned to Ryan. “What happened?”
Ryan shook his head. “No idea. The ship powered up by itself. I tried to abort the sequence, but it’s ignoring all our commands.”
Yuki nodded emphatically. “It’s trying to calculate a jump. Look.” She tapped her console.
A hologram lit up in the center of the bridge. Thousands upon thousands of lines of calculation and code, streaming past faster than Augustus could read. The display filled the air around them, equations branching and splitting and reforming.
“Compute capacity is at one hundred percent,” Yuki said. “It’s burning through everything the ship has. And the coordinates it’s trying to calculate...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “They don’t make sense. There are too many variables.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelBin for the genuine story.
“Contact the Chief,” Carmen said. “Tell him I want—”
Every console went dark.
The bridge fell silent. The lightning vanished. The hum that had been building through the deck plating cut out. For a moment, the only light came from the holographic display still hanging in the air, equations frozen mid-calculation.
Then that died too.