Drova spared the beautiful, antique-looking armoire a quick glance before shifting her gaze back to the hole above.
She'd expected the Brotherhood to operate more efficiently than this. Someone should have already shown up.
Six Guardians walked over to the three crates lined up on the floor where they'd been set down before the collapse, and the two with the tarp approached Brody, who was getting treated by Julian.
Given that the Guardian was passed out, the doctor must have given him a shot of painkillers so he wouldn't suffer while his friends carried him to the cove.
Drova adjusted her position closer to the center of the floor, where she had a clear line of sight to both the ramp and the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Behind her, two Guardians with one of the chests were trying to fit it through the door to the stairwell, and it seemed like it was stuck. She wanted to see what was going on, but she had to keep her eyes on the hole.
She heard the scrape of metal on wood, a grunt, and a couple of curses.
"Lift the back," someone hissed. "No, the back, you're going to wedge it. Pivot."
"There's no room to pivot!"
"Then take it off the harness and carry it without it."
"It'll slip."
Drova's hands flexed at her sides.
She wanted to go help them. Her whole body wanted to go, because she was stronger than the immortal Guardians, and she and Pavel could get it through the stairwell in a third of the time.
But that wasn't her job, and Peter, her former commander in the Avengers unit, had drilled it into her head that following orders was the most important thing she needed to learn before she could become a fully-fledged Guardian.
She was the compeller, and it was up to her to deal with the Brotherhood's guards in a stealthy manner.
"Pavel." She nudged him with her elbow. "Go help them. They're not going to make it in time."
"My job is to cover you."
"They need muscle, and I can't leave my spot. You can help. Go."
"My spot is wherever you are." He didn't look at the stairwell. He was watching the hole, and the ramp, and the dark edges of the basement, the way she should have been doing instead of fretting about the chests. "They will manage."
She wanted to argue, but there was no point because he was probably right. When the scrape of metal on wood came again from the stairwell, followed by another curse, Drova gritted her teeth and was about to kick Pavel in the shin to make him go help them, but then she saw the two Odus heading toward the stairwell.
Finally, someone was using their heads.
The Odus could maneuver the chests with even greater ease than the Kra-ell.
The grinding stopped, someone commented something about angles, and then they were through.
When the third chest got through, and the door to the stairwell was closed, Drova let out a relieved breath. Whatever they had to face next, at least Brody and the chests were on their way to the submarine.
The 'whatever' came sooner than she'd expected. Voices sounded from above along with the scuff of boots on broken ground at the edge of the fractured earth.
Someone killed the last surviving light in the basement, and everyone moved away from the shaft of moonlight coming through the hole above.
"The hole got much bigger," one of the arriving guards said in the Doomers' language, which she'd learned during her Guardian training and had really immersed herself in as preparation for this mission.
After all, her compulsion would be quite useless if they couldn't understand what she was saying. It wasn't as if she wasproficient, but she understood most of it, and the key phrases she'd memorized should do the job.
"Something must have triggered another collapse," another voice said.
"No one is supposed to be working down there," a third one commented. "Who has a flashlight? It's pitch dark in there."
