Nicolai lurked in a quiet, shadowed hallway, peering up at the bulk of the Library with his Soul Sense tendril. Jo and Beth crouched behind him.

  They had just got here, and immediately found a problem.

  The Library was occupied.

  His gaze moved up the stairs, to the flat area on top before the gap. Where once it had been a clear expanse of stone, now it was surrounded by sandbags. There were people up there, labouring away. They moved in a steady stream up and down the stairs, collecting more sandbags from a big pile at the bottom.

  They’d managed to drag some long pieces of wood up there, and had made a bridge over the gap. On the other side there was another emplacement they were in the process of building, bigger, more bags, and one of them was setting up a light machine gun.

  Based on the Earth clothing, plentiful guns and equipment, these people could only be Chosen.

  Higher up, where the balconies of the upper levels of the Library were visible, a few more of them were posted behind the barriers. Keeping watch on what was going on below.

  At the top level a bank of mist filled the balcony, and from it emanated light and sound. Yellow glows. Gunshots. Explosions. Cries and shouts.

  They were fighting the Library Guardian up there, and down here they were fortifying the entrance. Clearly the Chosen had not only learned about the Library, they had decided to make it their own. Smart move. It would be easier to post people here to go through the vast number of books within in search of useful information, rather than try and cart all those books back to the Chosen’s base, and the entrance was very defensible. If Nicolai had been in control of the Chosen he’d have had them do the same. Only, he’d have done it sooner. They’d come a day late and thus lost out on the Memory Tomes and Maric.

  It looked like they would be taking the Library Guardian’s Imbued. Unless, of course, he did something.

  Nicolai had no intention of losing those Imbued. However, there were a lot of Chosen and it wouldn’t be easy to fight them all at once.

  A stealth assault, then. Nicolai was no novice to such operations, far from it. The Chosen had a well fortified little setup here, and plenty of eyes and cameras, but there was one fatal flaw.

  They hadn’t taken into account the risk of advanced Cyberwarfare. Since he’d got the upgrade, the Module was capable of quite a lot more. Actually, there were two flaws. They also hadn’t taken into account the risk of Nicolai.

  For now he simply kept watch. Time drifted by as the fight up there continued. Seemed like there was some kind of stalemate.

  ‘How long are we going to sit here?’ whispered Jo in his ear.

  ‘As long as necessary,’ he replied, watching the progress of the defenders building their defences, watching the guards posted up on the higher floors.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Beth. ‘Because—and, with all due respect—there’s no way we’re going to win against these guys. There’s almost thirty of them, just down here, building that emplacement. And I can see more higher up. And I imagine even more of them are up there trying to take down the guardian.’

  ‘How many bullets do we have?’ murmured Nicolai.

  He could feel her narrowed-eyed gaze digging into his side.

  ‘Hundreds,’ supplied Jo.

  ‘Then I don’t see a problem.’

  Beth scoffed, and was about to say more but he shushed her with a raised hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘We don’t have to fight so many. Just watch.’ He nodded to where they were building the emplacement. The men were just carrying up the last few bags from the bottom; they were out of bags, but the fortification was not yet complete. After placing the bags, the group milled around for a while then began to head off.

  ‘They’re going?’ asked Beth, frowning over his shoulder.

  ‘Getting more bags, I guess,’ said Jo.

  ‘Exactly,’ murmured Nicolai. He hadn’t been entirely sure how this part would go, the question being: did the Chosen have two separate groups delivering and stacking bags, or just one? If there were two, cycling, then that group should soon be arriving, and they would have to fight the same number regardless.

  But if it was just one group, then as soon as these ones departed the number of Chosen here would go down significantly, and they would have a window.

  Two groups would be ideal; faster and also safer by always maintaining the garrison of around thirty people down here, but that would require more manpower. The Chosen had not been having the easiest of times. They were operating in many places, engaging in continuous skirmishes with other groups.

  It would be understandable for Vikrum—or whichever of them was organising this—to not spare so many bodies for a task which, most likely, would be quite safe.

  They were, afterall, setting up a defensive position. The number they left should be able to hold it, even half-finished, not to mention that as soon as the big fight up above ended the rest would be able to come down.

  The battle up there, from his watching, had not been going too well. As time had passed some of those posted higher up on the balcony floors had moved away, no longer watching below. Gone to aid the fight. It seemed to be some kind of battle of attrition which the Chosen were taking slow.

  He waited a time after the group of sandbag movers filed out through a side entrance. Assuming the Chosen were transporting these bags from their base to here, then based on the distance between the library and that base, the next group should have either already arrived, or be arriving very soon.

  Ten minutes later, no group had arrived to replace them.

  On top of that, only one man remained watching from up behind the barrier on a higher floor.

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  During the time Nicolai had been lurking and watching, Cyberwarfare had been busy. The other day he had moved to assault the group in the library too quickly for Cyberwarfare to do any significant work, but this time he allowed it plenty of time.

  The Chosen here were a little hive of activity on the Local, constantly exchanging communications, alongside the data transference between them and their drones and placed cameras. Cyberwarfare had now identified every security camera placed around the Library, new additions since the other day. There were also quite a few drones, going on loops around the area and inside the Library.

  One of these drones buzzed into the corridor Nicolai lurked in. It skimmed over him and the other two.

  Its camera spotted them, but the feed it sent to the Chosen was adroitly edited by Cyberwarfare and showed no more than an empty stretch of stone. Likewise, the drone’s tiny AI was convinced that there was nothing there.

  This same drone had been past them quite a few times now, Cyberwarfare had wormed its way into the outer picket of drones quite early on.

  This was possible because none of the Chosen had Level 2 augments. This told Nicolai that neither of the Chosen’s Level 2 Cyborg’s were present, nor was Vikrum, though Cyberwarfare could have told him that, too, because it had feeds on all of them.

  Even if a Level 2 had been present, Cyberwarfare could have accomplished quite a lot, but it was unlikely it could’ve managed a total infiltration. With no major obstacles on the cyberwarfare front, that was precisely what it had accomplished.

  The drones and cameras had become its eyes, and it even saw the video feeds and communications shared between the Chosen themselves, heard the words and instructions they issued in a busy cyber chatter to drones and equipment and each another.

  Those on the upper floor were indeed engaged in a battle of attrition.

  ‘Keep it pinned while the Cultivators cycle,’ the Chosen field leader commanded. Through the man’s eyes, Nicolai and Cyberwarfare saw the battle, as he was sharing his feed with the other Chosen.

  The Library Guardian was concealed in the mist which blanketed the shelves in the topmost room. The Chosen had set up just outside the stairwell, over two dozen of them, with cover formed from shelves and chairs and tables.

  From the mist there was a yellow glow darting around, and sharp pieces of paper would at times speed out and at the Chosen, hitting none of them as they hunkered behind cover.

  Following the leaders orders, the Chosen rose and started firing. Meanwhile, two of the Chosen held Oma crystals, recuperating their energy. These two, Nicolai gathered from the communication between the Chosen, were the Cultivators.

  As he watched, the two rose from cover. One of them gestured, and the mist rippled. Within it, a figure appeared, immediately ducking for cover. The other Cultivator made his own gesture and… nothing appeared to happen. The camera feeds didn’t possess the same capability as his own Infused Cultivator’s eyes, and he was thus unable to see details in terms of Symbiotes and Soul Sense.

  ‘It’s vulnerable, shoot on my count,’ spoke the leader, and now he was sending out targeting data. In the eyes of all the Chosen appeared boxes and red targeting marks, hologrammatic highlights of the believed location of the undead lurking in the mist, telling them all where to shoot. This was a common method amongst attack teams on Earth, the use of sophisticated software that linked eyes and ears and chips, sharing data to allow for almost perfect coordination.

  ‘Three, two, one, fire.’

  They all rose from cover and fired an accurate volley of shots, the bullets chewing through the cover the undead was using. A drone circling the area spotted it staggering, taking damage, then it ran for another hiding place. For whatever reason—something related to the Symbiotes the two Cultivators were using, Nicolai supposed—it was unable to regain its mist form.

  The process then repeated, as the Chosen kept on firing, but the undead regained its mist form. The Cultivators, attacks charged, rose and did the same again. As the battle continued, he saw a piece of paper launched from the mist shear through the side of a man’s neck, after the Chosen was too slow to duck back into cover. He bled out in seconds, while the leader snarled at his people to get back into cover the moment he told them. A couple more corpses were visible on the ground.

  Nicolai left them to it, happy to let them soften up the Guardian for him. In the meantime, those lower down, separated from the group above which was distracted and busy with the Guardian, were easy targets.

  The first obstacle was the lone sentry standing on one of the higher floors, who was posted to watch down below from behind the safety of the Library’s invisible barrier. Nicolai couldn’t shoot him through that barrier, and Cyberwarfare couldn’t stop the man from seeing through his eyes.

  But neither were necessary. This sentry had been left alone, the only one on the floor, and the Chosen on the top floors were staying there while those on the lowest floor maintained their position, too. No one would be passing by and checking on him; and they wouldn’t notice any need to. Afterall, they had drones doing continuous sweeps of the entire library.

  One of those drones suddenly veered away from its programmed course, as it swung around the room the sentry was in.

  However, it continued to send a feed to the Chosen of its expected route, a recording Cyberwarfare seamlessly switched in.

  The drone swung into the space between shelves, and through its camera Nicolai and Cybeerwarfare saw the sentry on the far side, looking down over the balcony. The drones turbines whirred as it built up speed, launching itself towards the Chosen.

  The man had just began to turn, confused as to why there was a loud whining coming from behind him, when the drone slammed into his head.

  The drone weighed two pounds and when travelling at maximum speed it did quite significant damage. From his position down below, peeking around the corner with his Soul Sense, Nicolai saw a spray of blood mixed with chunks of metal and plastic as the distant sentry toppled. Due to the noise of the fight up above, and the positioning of those below, none saw or heard.

  A second drone detached from its own patrol, once again led by Cyberwarfare to come and do a quick check. This showed Nicolai that the sentry wouldn’t be getting back up, because his head was caved in. The drone returned to its patrol.

  The moment the man had died, and the drone had destroyed itself, Cyberwarfare had performed another quick act.

  The man had been sending a continuous feed up to those above and below of what he saw. This was simply so that in the event something happened to him, they would know by the cessation of that feed.

  But Cyberwarfare created a phantom, a ghost. And from this ghost, an almost identical feed was sent. Only someone looking very carefully would be able to see that this feed was a looped recording. Likewise, the drone which had destroyed itself continued to operate in the Local. Anyone checking on it would have seen its feed, and it communicated with the other drones as it always had. Only if someone came to physically check the drone would they learn that it was no longer operational, and there was no reason for anyone to perform such a check.

  Of course, given time, eventually they would realise. Either someone would come for some purpose and happen to see the body, or they’d tell the dead man to come up top which obviously he couldn’t do.

  But Nicolai intended to see every one of the Chosen dead long before any of that happened.

  ‘Pistols out. You all have the subsonic ammunition, right?’ Nicolai asked, turning to look at the girls.

  They nodded to him, glanced at one another, then pulled out their pistols. Jo a little hesitantly, Beth with excitement, even eagerness.

  ‘Silencers,’ he added, doing the same with his own pistol, then withdrawing the magazine and slotting in a different one, which was loaded with subsonic rounds. These rounds travelled at just below the speed of sound, and thus avoided breaking the sound barrier. As a result the bullets did not create the loud sonic crack that people were accustomed to hearing from bullets. With that plus the silencers, the noise that each shot made was much quieter than many believed a gunshot could be. A muffled click that could easily be mistaken for something much less threatening.

  ‘I’ll go first and clear the way. I’ll inform you when to move over Local. Get ready.’ With that, Nicolai pulled his poncho around himself, flipped the hood and tugged the face cover across, then switched it on and faded out of view as he emerged from the tunnel, into the open area with the stairs and the statues.