The facility sat in the far north of human lands, where the gray sky sagged with snow clouds, and the wind felt like tiny ice shards. There were scraggly trees and the suggestion of distant roads.
Our feet crunched softly as we spread out across the white expanse.
The magic specialists should’ve thought about making the suits camouflaged.
My breath fogged in front of me, curling up. The cold bit at the exposed skin of my face and fingertips, but my blood hummed hot with anticipation.
Ahead, the Whettlocks’ facility hunched into a low ridge like a metal parasite. It was half the size of the lab I’d escaped from but no less ugly. It was a rectangular sprawl of steel panels and glass slits, hunched behind layers of barbed fencing and security cameras.
Spies, enforcers, healers, and magical specialists were permitted to touch ground at the facility. The rest of the squadswere dispatched to Fate Hollow to lend aid with the human attack.
Jesper walked at the front of our formation, white hair pulled back as his brown eyes stayed hard and focused.
Eight squads waited for his signal.
“Outer perimeter is blind on sector F,” Slater’s voice murmured in my ear over the comms. “Corin and I got their security grid in a bind. Cameras are looping, and their sensors are fucked.”
Corin’s voice followed. “External patrol has probably ninety seconds before they notice the gaps in their logs. After that, we can stall maybe two minutes tops before someone goes to physically check.”
Jesper nodded once, speaking for all of us. “Copy that. Squad A moving out.”
Snow crunched beneath our feet as we broke from cover and sprinted for the fence.
Kane and Sylver were already working with the other magical specialists to create a ward around the fence as they used invisibility charms to avoid detection. Paler blue and sea-green light bled from their fingertips, sliding along the facility’s outer ward line through the air.
“We’re weaving the containment ward now,” Kane murmured over the comms, his magic crackling over each word. “No one in; no one out. You have only thirty seconds to breach.”
We made it to the fence, and Jesper vaulted it first, landing silently on the other side. We all followed him, the newly laid ward line slicking over us as we entered. The human facility loomed ahead, but no alarms went off.
Slater and Corin had successfully fucked with their security.
“Inner patrol coming up on the north corner,” Lysa informed us calmly. “Four guards with rifles, and one with a tourmalykeinjector bundle on his hip. They don’t know you’re here yet. Two squads are ready to enter for backup, but you won’t need it.”
Jesper lifted his hand in a silent signal, then cut it forward.
We moved.
The first human never saw us coming.
Tibby transformed into his phoenix form to fly above and shifted back to his normal form right above them. Phoenix flames wreathed his fists as he slammed into the guard with the injector pack, sending him sprawling.
April blurred past him, vampiric speed turning her into a streak of motion as she disarmed another and snapped his neck in one clean twist.
I slid across the ice-slick ground and hit the third one from the side. The ice burned my fingertips, but I ignored it.
He swung his rifle toward me too late, and my fingers brushed the exposed skin at his wrist. I pushed my venom into him, and he dropped, eyes rolling back as my fatal poison cascaded through his nervous system.
The fourth guard’s eyes widened, and he turned to run.
“Kill him,” Jesper ordered. “If they’re in this facility, they know what they’re doing. They’re all complicit.”
Dimitri was there, expression flat, snapping his neck with a flick of his wrists. The crunch of bone sounded obscenely loud in the cold air.
“Patrol neutralized,” Jesper reported back to HQ. “Proceeding to breach the facility itself.”
The door Slater had flagged on our wristband map was a side maintenance access, half-buried in a drift of snow. A heavy, reinforced slab, with a keypad and a rune-etched locking mechanism stolen from supernaturals.
“I’m on it,” Slater told us. “Snakey…”
