The Sapphire Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Four: Free

This was it then.

Nothing left to do but run. Nadia was back inside, following waypoints in her HUD as Tess opened doors for her.

"Through there," Tess said. "Left after, then down a shaft."

"Hang on," Nadia said, still limping a bit. She put an experimental hand to her side. Numb, warm and tingling and numb. Still felt a strange, displaced tear in her flesh with every step.

"I can't see if the shaft is closed," Tess said. "If it is closed, double back and—"

Static tore into her ears. The 3-D outline of a map in her HUD flickered and wavered, splitting into pieces of an image.

"Fuck!" was the only clear word that made it through. "Know...active scanning...move..."

Nadia came to a T-junction, a plain intersection of two bare corridors. No fancy wall displays up here in the back paths—the hidden walkways where the help, robotic and human, moved through the upper levels.

Nadia remembered this, knew every unfeeling twist and turn. At this very corner, she had crouched once as a small girl, curled up in a ball crying.

Left was not the right way.

"I said left!" rang through clearly in her ears.

"Let me drive," Nadia said. Voices picking up behind her. Getting closer. They couldn't have her, not now, not after all this. Not before she saw Tess one last time.

She ran through an open doorway into another drone charging room. Perhaps ran wasn't quite the word—more like a hurried shuffle, hopping along every other step. A shaft in the floor waited for her, surrounded by black and yellow stripes with "Caution" spelled out in severe red letters.

Not that caution was necessary at the moment. The shaft was closed, a thick metal hatch slid into place.

Only one door in, the one she had come through. Time, how much time did she have? How many precious seconds? Her eyes traced the floor, growing wide at the sight of a thin trail of red spots. Leading right to where she stood.

Voices, distorted through heavy trooper masks. Louder still.

Simple. Another ambush, anything to buy time, nothing she hadn't done before. Nadia crouched and leapt for the ceiling...and stumbled instead, gasping. It didn't hurt, quite. It just didn't work, her muscles refusing to move. Odd.

A soldier in white rounded a corner out in the hallway, catching a glimpse of her before Nadia dove to the side. Trapped in this dead end in these empty hallways, dark pathways where once she ran and hid as a little girl.

No more of that. Nadia had made up her mind, nothing like the sad convictions she'd held to end it all, nothing like that desperate surrender. She would not be dying, not up here in this place.

She crouched by the doorway, ready and waiting, exactly as she'd watched Jackson do in the Omniplant. The trooper rushed through, rifle up and checking the corners, towering over her in faceless menace.

She was still fast enough to clap her palms on his chest and face before he could shoot, her mask flickering on the gleaming white of his armor. He jumped, but that was all—no shrieking collapse, no limp body crashing to the floor.

"Confirmed!" he said, shoving her against the wall with his rifle, "Backup now!" The barrel of the rifle swung over, drawing the sight right over her chest.

No time to think—Nadia flung a stun grenade at him, snatching it off her belt without even pulling the pin. It bonked off the center of his mask, smudging the red handprint where she'd tried to grab him. Only a fraction of a second bought. She kept going, throwing the last of her homemade lightning grenades, then a spare battery pack, then the empty bag off her back, something, anything.