Mari:

  She felt awful. And she deserved to feel that way, too.

  She had scared Kris. In retrospect, that might’ve been inevitable. The sort of bioweapon in play was the thing to terrify anyone out there. Except for her. Thinking about it, she was pretty conflicted. On one hand, Kris could’ve remained in the safety of the school lockdown. Mari wasn’t sure she’d feel very reassured by that, though.

  In the end, it was best to keep Kris nearby, and she’d pretty badly needed to know what the range of her nanite field was. She just hadn’t shared her thoughts on the subject. Communication being the most common flaw in relationships, she felt particularly dumb about her actions. She’d have to fix that later.

  She set her reflections aside, staring down at the staircase that led to sublevel one. There were four such stairs, and in the event of a lockdown, Anvien were supposed to seal off two of those, thereby bunkering themselves into that corner of the building, and sealing off access from above or below as well. That meant that the stairs she stood at were open, and the same would be true of the stairs in the opposite corner.

  “We have a problem. Even if we descend from this side, there’s a solid chance other creatures, or even enemy hostiles, might use the other stairs to ascend. We need a way to force them to stay contained.” Mari glanced at the nearby corpse and studied the bloody trail from the stairs.

  [Affliction: 89%]

  That gave her options.

  She had learned earlier that the nanites wouldn’t break down the bioweapon for fuel within a living creature. She had to kill them, and for reasons she wasn’t too aware of, they wouldn’t allow her to save the fuel for later use.

  “There is another problem.” Karin held up a rugged-looking prototype device—something compact, but it didn’t have the kind of polish a proper tool usually had, mostly with wires sticking out in a few places. Regardless, a map was displayed across the wall next to them, and Karin pointed to a spot near the dining hall she’d eaten in with Kris just the evening before. “There is a stairwell to the fourth sublevel here. It does not stop anywhere else, just the fourth. If something or someone were to descend there, they could ascend that way, too. Or worse, the hidden path between the hospital and here, also on sublevel four.”

  Mari nodded along. “Right. In that case, I think I have an idea, but we’ll need to hurry, and I might not have the means.” Without further explanation, she backtracked slightly, then had her HUD lenses scan the nearest security barrier. It was a much faster method of developing the blueprints she needed so she could instruct the nanites to make things.

  The moment she was back to the stairwell, she had the little bots burn the afflicted canine for fuel, and then sealed off the stairwell with the security barrier design she had scanned. Sadly, it came up slightly short, just as she had with the inertial dampener she had copied when making one for Karin.

  [Vitals: Normal]

  [Affliction: 6%]

  [Location: Citadel, Main Hallway, Floor 1]

  [Mental Condition: No abnormalities detected]

  [Sidearm: 8 rounds, one full spare loader, thigh holster]

  She frowned slightly at the affliction rate. A large part of her wanted to be rid of the bioweapon entirely. Unfortunately, it was already proving too useful to do without. More thoughts she had to set aside.

  “With this path barricaded, let’s go see if we can seal off the other one, then descend to the fourth floor and work our way up from there. That way, there won’t be any escape routes.” Mari laid a hand on Kris’ shoulder, noting how quiet she had been.

  “I’m fine, Mari. Don’t worry. I was just shaken.” Kris didn’t inspire much confidence with her tone, but they didn’t have time for a therapy session. Hell, Mari knew she’d need her own when her emotions caught up with her over killing the Sylpharien earlier. She owed Marielle a big favor for having stifled the initial reaction.

  “Okay then, let’s hurry things along.” Together, with Karin using her acute hearing to map out movements ahead of them, the trio pushed deeper into the building, finding fewer bodies, and the signs that not every encounter had been a senseless slaughter.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  By the time they reached the dining hall, the signs of conflict had ended, but the entire room had become much more plain. Every counter had been sealed with readjusted stonework, hopefully meaning the people who’d been settling in for dinner were all safely sheltered within.

  “Any word from Alynne? Status?” Mari kept her voice low.

  “Her location is… sublevel four. The lab.”

  “Excellent. With any luck, she’s armed with my old gear.” She led the group in a renewed hustle, finding their way through narrow corridors between lockdown shelters to the other open staircase. The scene was gruesome, to say the least.

  Four people—former people—were hammering on a wall. The blood all over them was telling enough, but…

  [Affliction: 23%]

  [Affliction: 20%]

  [Affliction: 12%]

  [Affliction: 41%]

  There was no sign of whatever had infected them, either. Based on appearances, there was a Kilthien, a Ravien, and two Anvien. All of them were occasionally making that same horrid shrieking sound from Marielle’s memories of the colony attack.

  Silently, Mari leveled her Remera at the Ravien, knowing their natural body strength and durability would be the most trouble. At her side, Karin was slowly sliding a metal sphere into the magnetic field of her glove.

  The sound of the metal rapidly speeding up had the four creatures turning to face them.

  The telltale sound of their abused voices filled the halls a moment before the Remera drowned them out with the roar of gunfire.

  A mercy, at least. She had to tell herself that, having decimated the Ravien’s neck with the first shot. Karin, on the other hand, was already winding up her second sphere when the first one shattered the kneecap of the Kilthien.

  Mari had to remind herself that almost every Kilthien in their part of the city had come from Karin’s clan. They had likely been family.

  Mari’s HUD reticle quivered slightly as she backpedaled, aiming for the first of the Anvien. The corpse was already down to six meters away from reaching them.

  Karin’s sphere launched, aimed for the one Mari hadn’t aimed at. Again, a crippling blow, this time to a lower shin, breaking the bones and sending the creature faceplanting on the ground.

  Mari pulled the trigger, mentally cursing her quivering aim as the bullet maimed one shoulder, but did little to stop the mad rush of the creature. She tried to pull the trigger again, but Marielle’s residual training stopped her from making repeated mistakes.

  She slowed down, squared her footing, and steadied the butt of the grip with her left hand.

  In that time, Mari nearly panicked as the distance shrank to just two meters.

  BANG!!

  Her ears rang as the roar came from over her left shoulder, barely a meter to the side. Mari was stunned as the bullet caused a spray of blood from the skull of the creature, and the impact stopped its momentum completely.

  Mari turned to see Kris lowering her gun and wincing as she flexed her fingers. Clearly, the shot was enough to numb even Kris’ hands.

  With a sigh of relief, she turned back towards the stairs.

  Just in time to see Karin launching a final sphere into the skulls of the two she had downed.

  [WARNING! Get down!]

  Mari barely registered the red letters across her vision before instinctively lunging to tackle Karin to the ground.

  Then, she rolled to the side and looked up at the source of the disturbance she had felt in the air.

  [Affliction: 91%]

  Mari paled as she saw a former bird trying to pivot to divebomb them again.

  Her gun snapped up, and with mind-numbing ease, squeezed the trigger the moment the reticle lined up with the creature.

  It vanished in a puff of feathers and gore as the bullet did its dirty work. Her heart was sufficiently in her throat, but the moment she took stock of the pair, she sighed in relief. Neither of them had been hurt, and her assessment revealed no sign of any infection.

  “That. Whatever that was, let’s never do it again.” Mari breathed out another sigh, then very quickly went to work burning the fuel needed to make another barrier in front of the stairs. An interesting quirk of her nanites was that they did thorough work, leaving no blood stains behind along the way. Just the exsanguinated husks of what they once were.

  “I second that.” Karin was fiddling with her glove as she replied, but she straightened up soon after. “Thank you, Mari. How did you know it was coming? It definitely seemed to strike from a blind spot.”

  “It might take too long to really describe right now. Let’s focus on the task at hand.” Mari turned back towards them after finishing the barrier construction to find Kris wrapping her arms around her.

  “Thank you. For saving her.” The words were muffled, but Mari relaxed as she stroked Kris’ head comfortingly.

  “Don’t mention it. Not a chance I was going to let something bad happen. Still, this is a bad sign. We’re taking too long. Let’s hurry and get to that secret stairway.” Mari took a brief moment to release the cylinder of her Remera and conjure replacement ammunition.

  “Infected birds. That complicates things. Imagine if they were released into the city en masse.” Karin’s grave expression matched her words.

  “Let’s talk solutions later. First, we need to get to Alynne and see if she’s still doing fine.”

  At nods from her companions, they made their way back towards the dining hall.

  “This used to be the throne room. Which means the stairs should be down the west hallway, inside a maintenance access.” Karin displayed her map again, then pointed to the intersections they’d need to take.

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