Adrenaline roiled beneath Nalea’s skin. She gripped her gun while she waited. Ahead, two human soldiers scanned what lay around the next corner in the hallway. The one on the left motioned the team forward, and again they moved. With every step and with every turn, the hum grew louder. It now vibrated through her bones. Their team had done the same routine down seven hallways so far and had yet to come across any resistance. It seemed that any Draeken not on the other side of the barrier had fled into the surrounding wilderness.

She turned a corner and stopped cold. Half of her team stood stock still, all watching the glowing wall before them. Her heart raced as she found herself outside the door she recognized: the main entrance to the comm-center, just outside the force field.

Roden stood next to her, punching codes and snapping commands into his wrist-comm. She checked her wrist-comm. Red lights—each representing another team in the base—turned green one by one as they reached their assigned placement at a position outside the circular comm-center.

“Leghat,” Roden announced into his wrist-comm. Show time.

At first, nothing happened. Then, the glow faltered and the humming became jagged. The floor trembled with vibrations until everything stilled. The silence became near unbearable.

“Wync,” Roden commanded, and the Draeken soldier ran forward with a large torch. A thick purple laser shot forth, and the metal bars blocking the door began to melt. Seconds later—though it felt like minutes later—the last of the metal bars fell to the floor with a clang. Wync backed up, still holding the torch.

“Alpha, ready,” Apolo announced on his wrist-comm.

“Charlie, ready.”

“Echo, ready.”

Roden waited until all teams had checked in before he announced, “Engage.”

Everyone cleared the area in direct view of the door.

Wync started the torch again, this time at a centralized spot on the door. Slowly, light shone through from the other side.

Once a small hole had been burned through, Wync took a rushed step back while Apolo pulled out two chaos charges. A light lit up on each one, and he tossed them through the hole in the heavily damaged door. An ear-ringing cacophony of noise and blinding white light bled into the hallway. Vertigo hit Nalea, but it was nothing compared to what those inside the room had felt, especially since chaos charges were being tossed in simultaneously by the other teams at each door to the comm-center.

As the sounds and lights muted, Roden nodded to two humans, who brought forward a door-punch. It only took one solid hit for the already weakened metal door to collapse inward. They tossed the punch to the side and jumped out of the way so the rest of their team to enter. Nalea followed Roden in, with Apolo right behind.

Tens of Draeken were on their knees, haphazardly holding up their bare hands while trying to regain their balance. Stun blasts came from all directions. Each of the four doors to the room had been knocked in by teams at precisely the same time.

If the soldiers hadn’t been so well trained, they would’ve run the risk of knocking out each other in the crossfire, but Roden and Nalea had provided a clear blueprint of the stadium-style room. Everyone knew exactly where to fire: low and center.

Nalea glanced around and frowned. “I don’t see Otas!” she yelled out to Roden, who rushed toward a corner of the room. He didn’t seem overly surprised and didn’t slow to double check that the comm-techs and guardsmen were down. Roden yanked an unconscious Draeken off a chair stationed at a computer screen, dropping the guardsman to the floor. He typed furiously at the keyboard. Nalea came to a stop at his side, her breath coming in pants.

“Can you get to him?” Apolo asked, coming up to Roden’s other side.

“Of course.”

A click and a whir, and Nalea glanced up to see a stairwell open leading underground. Suvaste. She’d been in this room a dozen times and had never seen this before.

“Alpha, with me!” Roden yelled over his shoulder then lifted his wrist-comm. “Echo, heads up. You’ve got company coming your way.” He lunged forward to the stairwell. Nalea rushed to keep up as they entered the belly of the base.

The hallway was narrow and long, a straight shot under the base. “Could he have escaped with the barrier still up?” she called out.

Roden shook his head. “The barrier would have gone below the surface a good fifty feet. He can’t be more than several seconds ahead of us.”

Her hand flew to her chest to make sure the chain was fully covered by the vest. Her heart pounded. Otas could set off her disjunctor at any time, and she feared his plan all along was to detonate her neck-charge when she was standing close to Roden.

She kept pace a few steps behind Roden as he led their team in a sprint past evenly-spaced stark lighting, keeping her distance so that if the disjunctor blew, it would only take her. The tunnel had no turns or doors, only curves, until it came to a lone stairwell. Hillas’ doppelgänger stood on it.

She pressed herself against the wall, separating herself from the rest of her team as much as possible.

One of Otas’ guards had his back turned to them and was peeking through a slit in the floor above them, likely watching Sommers’s teams and timing their chance for escape. The other two guardsmen either heard or saw the incoming team. They raised their weapons at the same time Roden, Nalea, and the rest of Alpha team did.

“Tucking tail and running? How noble of you,” Roden sneered.

Otas jerked around, face red, and shook a bandaged fist. “I must survive. Our people are lost without me.”

Roden belted out a laugh. “You seriously overestimate your value, Otas.” He inhaled. “There was a time I would’ve followed Hillas to death, but that time is long past. And you’re less than a shadow of him. You’d be the demise of our people. And that I can’t allow.”

“Surrender, Otas,” Ace exclaimed from her left. “You are surrounded. There’s no way out.”

Otas’ gaze jerkily scanned the team. He’d lost and knew it. Then his eyes homed in on Roden. No, not true. He was looking beyond Roden, at her. His mouth opened, and then closed.

When Nalea realized his intent, she backed up a step. “Take him down now!” she screamed.

Roden yelled something indistinguishable.

Everything and nothing happened at once. Roden rushed her with a blaster in his hand. She tucked her head and dove to the floor but found herself yanked back by her hair. She felt a sharp sting alongside her neck, followed by the brightest, loudest explosion.

Blinded and deaf, she fell to the ground. Excruciating heat tore at her neck. She gasped for air, but the pain smothered her. She fell back, her head bouncing off the floor. Inky blackness poured across her; then, nothing…