“Oh,” Hallie said, not quite sure what else to say as she absorbed that information. “That seems a big coincidence.”
“Agreed. We need to bag all this up and take it with us. There’s an evidence kit in the van. Could one of your team get that for us?” Girard asked, speaking to Frollo.
“Yes,” he answered, and moved away, passing a low-voiced instruction to the nearest armed man.
Hallie turned another page and paused again, seeing a handwritten scribble in the margin of the printed text.Freedom through fire. It sent a chill down her spine, but the phrase wasn’t familiar. She lifted the page to show Girard. “Does this mean anything to you?”
His expression grew even more grim. “It’s a slogan that’s been found around the sites of some of the recent disturbances at Conclave meetings. The director will want to know about this right away.” He pulled his phone out and hesitated, looking at the screen.
“What’s wrong?” Hallie asked.
“We’re about five hours ahead of Daydawn. It will be the middle of the night there. I hate to wake him up.”
“If this connects back to his investigation, he’ll definitely want to know,” Hallie said, echoing Girard’s own comment. She understood the hesitation. Over the past couple of weeks, she’d noted the strain growing on the director’s face through their video calls. “He may not be sleeping anyway.”
“That’s true,” Girard said, with an unhappy sigh, and dialled the number.
Leaving him to the call, Hallie put the papers back down on the table and, trying to think of something useful she could actually do, used her own phone to start taking photographs of the papers.
She was about halfway through the pile, and Girard was still speaking to the director in a low voice that Hallie was doing her best not to eavesdrop on, when a flicker at the corner of her eye caught her attention. She looked up to see a small cylinder flying through one of the windows.
She made a sound of surprise that had everyone nearby twitching, and then the cylinder dissolved with a soft thump, releasing a cloud of smoke that spilled out, filling the room between one breath and the next.
“Smoke bomb. Masks on now!” That was Frollo, sounding deathly serious and absolutely in control.
Hallie was blind, eyes watering as the pale grey smoke stung her eyes, irritating her nose and throat. She coughed and then couldn’t stop coughing, stumbling as she tried to get to where she thought the door was. She needed to get outside. Get away.
There. There was a paler patch in the smoke that she thought was a door. She ducked down and found that the smoke was less dense closer to the floor so she dropped to her hands and knees, eyes streaming, throat and lungs burning, crawling towards the door.
She was aware of some movement nearby, another body, heading in the same direction. All she could make out were dark-clad legs and a hazy torso above that. One of the tactical team. Or so she hoped. She couldn’t do anything about it. She kept going. She needed fresh air.
As she reached the opening, gunfire started. It sounded like it was coming from all around, both inside and outside the house, and underneath it she could hear shouting in harsh, rasping voices.
She was at the door. She crawled her way outside, crying in relief as she pulled fresh, untainted air into her lungs, dragging herself away from the open doorway and pausing, sitting back against the wall of the house. She raised a hand to rub her eyesand managed to stop the movement, seeing the gloves she was wearing were covered in fine dust. Stripping off the gloves, she dug into her pocket for a cloth. She tried to always have a clean cloth at hand - it had been useful more than once in the past. Rubbing the cloth over her face made her skin sting, but her eyes watered a bit less when she was done, enough so that she could make out more shapes and movement when she opened them. She blinked, letting the tears clear more of her sight, and then went completely still, breath catching and her heart rate picking up.
The van was where they’d left it. The side door was open, and what looked like one of the tactical team was slumped in the doorway. Dead or injured, Hallie couldn’t tell. There was another person there, though, on the other side of the van, ducked down so that only their head and shoulders was visible, a rifle resting on the hood of the vehicle, pointed towards the open door to the house. With her sight still blurry, Hallie couldn’t make out details, just that the person was wearing black that covered their head, and not the helmets that the tactical team wore. She thought it was a man, but it was hard to tell.
She tried to speak, to cry out a warning, and coughed instead, only then realising that she was a perfect target for the rifle holder. Fright had her moving again, trying to crawl away, only to be bent double by more coughing. She might be able to see better, but her lungs were still choked with smoke.
Panic seized her. She had no defences against a bullet. Not one. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t stand up. Couldn’t run.
Thezauberat her hip stirred. Rather than its usual lazy stretch, Hallie sensed the artefact at full awareness, bristling with temper, its focus directed out, at their surroundings. Between one dragging breath and the next, the artefact homed in on the rifle and the masked attacker. Hallie wasn’t sure what thezauberdid, but no sooner had it identified its target than theattacker - definitely a man - yelled in shocked pain and anger, dropping the rifle with a loud clatter, and staggering away from the van into the open.
Several shots rang out from somewhere behind and above Hallie, thudding into the masked man. She flinched, a high-pitched squeal of surprise escaping her, and then three members of the tactical team streamed out of the house, heading for the downed attacker. As they moved past her, Hallie saw that they all now had an extra bit on their helmets, a faceplate that covered them from their eyes to chin. None of them seemed to have any difficulty moving, and none of them were coughing.
Even thinking about coughing triggered another round for her, ribs aching as she fought to breathe.
She lost a moment or two of time, coming back to herself to find a black-clad figure kneeling in front of her, holding out what looked like an oxygen mask that would be more at home in a hospital.
“Put this over your mouth and nose and breathe for a few minutes. It’ll help.”
Dechtire. Although the woman’s voice was rasping, and her whole face was covered, Hallie recognised her.
Trusting that Dechtire meant her no harm, Hallie pressed the mask over her face and breathed, feeling more tears starting as the air came into her lungs without more pain. She had to turn away to cough again, then back to the mask, managing a full two breaths before needing another cough.
As she stayed where she was, just breathing, she saw another two members of the tactical team carrying Girard out of the house and made a low sound, trying to get up.
“Stay where you are,” Dechtire said, putting her gloved hand on Hallie’s shoulder. “The smoke burns, but it isn’t going to kill him. He’s going to be fine. He got a larger dose than you did as he was closer to the smoke bomb.”
