“Go!” She stood, firing at anything that moved. Men scattered, and her lips pulled back in an angry grimace when Bill dove for cover. If I get shot again, Harmony will laugh her ass off for me not taking a vest.
Allen fired six shots even as he levered himself up onto the counter. Grunting, he pulled himself into the ceiling. His legs dangled, jerking when a dart lodged, and then he was gone.
Anger pushed out why she was here. It didn’t matter. There was only firing as many times as she could before someone got a good shot in.
“Hand!” Allen shouted, and she stood, continuing to shoot even as her palm smacked into Allen’s and he lifted. She swung wildly, her bullets hitting nothing but keeping their heads down. Heart pounding, she felt the dusty, cold darkness take her.
“Damn, that hurts,” Allen groaned, and she got a knee on the ceiling support and levered herself up and in. “I can see why you bitch about them.”
“Can you move?” she asked, dragging him across the ceiling until they were over the walk-in fridge. As promised, it was one dark, open space. Bill would force the battle up here soon enough. “Allen! Can you move!” They wouldn’t have hit him with an antidrafting drug, but Bill liked his sedation darts.
“Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Peri grimaced. He was slurring, but he had enough fortitude to slap her hand when she tried to see whether his eyes were dilated, impossible in the dark. Frustrated, she fired a few shots at the growing sound of men at the hole in the ceiling. “Can you move?”
His shadowed, pained eyes met hers. “Not fast enough.”
Damn it! Peri’s brow furrowed, and she wiped the cooling sweat from her forehead, chilled from the sudden cold in the ceiling. Adrenaline made her legs shake. It was her job to keep her anchor alive, and they were out of options. Grim, she reached to help him rise. “You’d better start moving because I’m not leaving you here.”
Allen took her hand off his arm, eyes pained, but from below came Bill’s harsh demand, “Get up there before she’s gone!”
Heart pounding, Peri gripped the Glock tighter, focus narrowed on the small patch of light from the kitchen, but not a single head showed. Apparently no one wanted to be first, and Peri’s breath slipped out as the call for a high-Q drone rose. She scanned the dusky open area as her eyes adjusted. If they were calling for an eye in the sky, she had a precious few moments.
“Sedation darts only. You hear me?” Bill demanded. “I want her down, not dead or drafting. The accelerator has to be given intravenously within twenty-four hours, or this entire exercise means nothing!”
“Go,” Allen slurred, head hanging. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Bullshit. Tucking the Glock away, Peri grabbed his arm. “Get up.” But something Bill had said niggled at her. Why was he talking about accelerator? He knew she didn’t have any Evocane in her system to buffer her sanity. Twenty-four hours?
She felt her expresson go slack as she remembered the discarded dart. That hadn’t been a sedation dart, and it was looking less likely that it had been Amneoset, either. It had been Evocane.
Shit. Peri jerked at the hum of a drone, dropping Allen’s arm in order to take a bead on it. She fired a single shot, and the drone fell back through the hole amid cries. “Well, at least we know one of them is still up there,” Bill said sourly. “Peri?”
Wire-tight, she backed away from the hole in the ceiling as the calls to position the ladder filtered in. Bill had always had more than one option to get his way. He’d gotten her hooked, and Silas had only a week’s supply. Less, maybe, because of what he’d been using to reconstruct it.
“Peri, you’re fine!” Allen said, his complexion sallow as he swung his head up. Clearly the dosage had been set for her. He wasn’t going down, but he couldn’t move.
“Bill darted me, didn’t he.” She couldn’t get enough air, and her finger shook as she pointed down. “Didn’t he!”
“You’re okay,” he said breathily. “You can still . . . draft safely. Nothing’s changed.”
She jumped at the metallic clunks of a ladder being set up. Nothing changed? Bill said it was addictive!
“Go,” he said, pushing weakly at her. “Get to Silas. Stay on the Evocane. He’ll make more.”
“I can’t leave you.” It wasn’t just that he was her anchor, her partner, her friend. It was that leaving him behind went against everything she believed.
Allen’s hand slipped from her cheek, his fingers fumbling to take his watch off and press it into her hand. “I thought you’d say that. Don’t trust Bill. Silas will figure it out in time.”
“Allen, what— No!” she exclaimed as he rolled across the ceiling and down the same hole he’d pulled her into. “Allen!” She jerked back as men called out and the ladder fell. “Allen, you crazy bastard! What are you doing?”
“Go!” he shouted from below, and then he cried out when someone dragged him clear.
“This is unnecessary, Peri, even for you,” Bill said, and then, louder, “Get up there.”
Eyes wide, Peri grabbed the handgun and watch Allen had left behind, backing up until she found the oven’s vent. Breath held, she checked her hoppers, then pointed. She’d take whomever she could for as long as she could.
“Reed!” came behind her, and she spun, almost shooting Harmony. She was dirty and disheveled, hunched from pain or the cold—hardly recognizable in the dark. “Let’s go!”