“Someone clear me for the goddamn skies over Los Angeles!”Annabelle snarled.
The fire rolled back away from the building in an unnatural way, taking with it the scorching heat blistering the exposed skin of his hands and face.Kyle lifted his head away from the dizzying distance between his dangling feet and the ground far below.He could heal from a lot of injuries, but he doubted he could heal from a fall of more than sixty levels high.Squinting through the smoke, Kyle struggled to make out where Alexei and Madison stood two levels above him.
“Got eyes on Reaper,” Madison said, sounding tense.“We need Icarus.”
“Negative,” Kyle coughed out, wincing at the rawness of his throat.The pain was rapidly fading but not quick enough to make talking easy.“I’ll climb out.We don’t have time to wait for Icarus to get here, and she’ll only draw attention.”
The rebar holding him up felt sturdy enough in the section of the blown-out building he’d fallen down to, but who knew how long it would hold.Ignoring the open air beneath him, Kyle eyed the closest bit of flooring.It didn’t look that solid, but even if it broke apart on impact, his momentum might be enough to get him clear before it fell.Flexing his fingers, Kyle started to swing his body.
“Wait for me,” Alexei snarled at him before disappearing from sight.
Madison stayed put, worriedly watching as Kyle kept swinging.When he judged he had enough momentum going, he gritted his teeth and let go, launching himself through the air in a bid for survival.His feet caught the edge of the blasted-apart flooring, and he staggered forward.A deep groaning sound filled the air, and Kyle didn’t stick around to see if this spot would hold.He kept moving, stretching his legs into a flat-out run as the floor buckled beneath his weight.
He was almost in the clear when the floor crumbled beneath him.Kyle staggered from the collapse, throwing himself toward possible safety.He looked down as he started to fall, hoping this time it would just be one floor, not into open air, when a hard grip snagged his right wrist and he was yanked forward.Kyle’s gaze snapped to where Alexei stood in front of him, keeping Kyle from falling.
“>” Alexei spit out in Russian, gray eyes narrowed to angry slits as he hauled them both away from the shattered edge.
“>” Kyle panted.“>”
“>”
“>”
“>”
“Guys, we need to move!”Madison yelled from deeper within the building.
Alexei jerked his head in her general direction, and the two got moving.In the distance, on floors undamaged by the blast, Kyle could hear the smart building’s AI coolly announcing an emergency situation over the sound system and to please refrain from using the elevators.They rounded a corner deeper inside the building and ran down a hallway saturated by the water pouring down from broken sprinklers.Madison waited up ahead, a glimmer of bright energy sparking against her palm out of precaution.
Most of their weapons and gear were casualties of the bomb.While Alexei had his pyrokinesis and Madison could throw energy blasts with her hands, Kyle’s metahuman ability was strictly a physical one and classified as a defensive power versus offensive.He could heal, but that didn’t mean much if they were going to be fighting their way out of the building, and he only had one gun left on him.
Kyle shoved his hand into one of the cargo pockets of his charred work pants.He grabbed his tactical 9mm handgun through the slit in the inside of the pocket he’d made hours ago and yanked the weapon free of his thigh holster.The familiar weight went a long way toward making him feel better.
“I’ve initiated an override of the building’s emergency protocols.Take the maintenance elevator, don’t take the stairs,” Katie ordered as they met up in the elevator bank, ignoring the emergency strobe lights going off.“What happened?”
The doors to the specified elevator slid open, and they hurried inside.
“I had the target in sight when he looked right at me and mimed cutting his throat,” Kyle reported.“Bastardsawme.He knew I was there.”
A new voice came across the comms, deep and familiar, making all three of them share a surprised look as the elevator descended at a fast rate.
“The target was aware of your position?”Jamie Callahan, captain of the Metahuman Defense Force’s Alpha Team, asked.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on liberty?”Kyle said.
“I was, now I’m not.Clarify your answer, Reaper.”
“He saw me.I don’t know how, but he did.He knew exactly what direction to look in, and I don’t think that was an accident.I wasn’t sure if they had snipers positioned anywhere about to take us out, which is why I got everyone moving.Didn’t know they had a bomb, which was already in the goddamn office, and we only chose the final spotwhen we got here.”
They’d cased five floors before Kyle decided on the one they ended up using because it had the best angle for the distance of the shot and the best view of the target’s buy location.That was a field-based decision, not one made during the briefing early that morning, and it was Kyle’s final call to make.Yet Miguel Estrada had known exactly where to look to see him, and the bomb meant they’d known the MDF would be sending a team into the field.It didn’t make any sense.
“Get clear of the area and make your way back to Icarus,” Jamie ordered.
“Copy that, Apollo,” Madison said for all of them.
The elevator doors slid open on the subterranean-floor loading dock area, where they’d parked the work van they’d driven to the building.All three of them stepped outside the elevator and stared at the van.
“They leave bomb in office.Leave bomb in van when we not here to watch?”Alexei asked.
