Chapter 53 My Mistake
Rayne's POV
The teleportation array made every cell, every nerve, every thread of energy that made up whatever I was pulled loose from its position and held suspended.
The whole process lasted under a second and felt considerably longer.
I materialized on a rooftop in the rain and let the reassembly finish before I moved.
The squad landed around me in sequence, six of them, the best I had, each one taking the same half second to confirm they were solid before shifting into position.
The facility spread out below us. It was built to look like a water treatment plant from satellite view all grey concrete and piping and the kind of infrastructure that cities don't look at twice.
Guards at the corners moving in patterns that hadn't changed since my intelligence team first clocked them three weeks ago.
I looked at the facility and felt the energy in my chest doing something it didn't normally do.
The gold was still there. But the edges of it were darker now. Jagged. The kind of change that happens when something controlled gets pushed past the point it was designed to contain.
I let it run. For now. "Check seals," I said quietly.
The squad ran hands along their armor in sequence. The Silver-Stitch.. woven into the underlayer of every piece, of our clothes.
Brea had identified the Jammer's architecture from memory in under three minutes. My armorer had the countermeasure integrated within the hour.
"Seals confirmed," the squad leader said.
"Shadow-Step on my mark," I said. "Perimeter wall. East corner. We go in through the maintenance level."
I looked at the facility one more time. "Mark," I said The Shadow-Step deposited us on the wall in silence.
For two seconds, nothing happened.
Then the Jammers kicked in fifty percent, the initial sweep, the kind designed to disorient before the kill shot.
I felt it the moment it activated. My blood knew something was wrong before my mind did. The Energy in my chest began to fray at the edges pulling apart in the same places the array had pulled me apart, but slower, more deliberate, like something methodically unpicking stitching.
"Armor is holding," the squad leader said through gritted teeth beside me. "Fifty percent attenuation."
"Find the Jammer," I said. My voice came out level. I made it come out level. "If we don't drop the frequency we don't leave this city alive. Prioritize them above everything else."
The snipers opened up from the eastern tower.
I moved before the first shot.
Together — I compressed them. Forced them dense. A black curtain that dropped across the eastern tower's line of sight and gave their thermal goggles nothing to read.
The snipers stopped firing.
"Move," I said. The Anti-Vampire Units came through the maintenance level door thirty seconds after we breached it.
I watched the first one move and understood immediately.
"They're dosed," I said.
"Sir?"
"The Orphan Serum." I watched the nearest unit rotate toward me with a speed no human in mechanical armor should have managed.
"They've been injected with it."
"They're running on diluted vampire blood."
The rage that moved through me at that was different from the cold fury I had carried since the sanctum. This was something older. More personal. They had taken what my race was and reduced it to a combat enhancement for disposable soldiers.
I hit the first unit hard enough that the exoskeleton's hydraulic spine failed on impact.
The blast doors at the facility’s core were three inches of reinforced steel.
I didn’t have authorization. I gathered my Energy gold laced with jagged darkness and compressed it into a single point at the center of the door..
The steel folded inward with a low groan, crumpling like paper. Smoke and the sharp scent of hot metal filled the corridor. A hole large enough to walk through opened before me.
I stepped through. The Jammers inside were worse.
Full power slammed into me the moment I crossed the threshold.
The Silver-Stitch armor absorbed what it could, but the rest burned straight through. My Energy frayed harder at the edges. Still, I kept moving.
I saw the monitors. Dozens of them lined the wall. One feed in particular made me stop cold.
The Palace. Live feed.
Adrian was inside the room I had sealed for Brea. She was on the floor amid sparking debris and smoke, the black dagger I’d given her still clutched in her hand. Adrian advanced toward her slowly, calm and deliberate in that rippling suit.
My chest tightened painfully.
“Damn it…” I whispered, the words slipping out before I could stop them. “I left her there.”
The ten minutes hadn’t been a threat. They had been a trap just long enough to lure me away and leave her defenseless.
I had left her alone.. The squad leader appeared at my shoulder and glanced at the feed.
“Sir,” he said carefully. “The holding cells are two levels down. Her family—”
“I know,” I cut him off, my voice rough.
I stared at the screen, jaw clenched. Brea looked so small, so exhausted, cornered by that bastard while I was here chasing ghosts.
“I never should have left her,” I muttered.
“Take the holding cells,” I ordered. “Extract them. Use the secondary array coordinates. Get them out alive.”
The squad leader hesitated.
“And you, sir?”
The Nova light was already building behind my eyes,
“I’m going back,” I said quietly. “Right n—” A deafening crack split the air behind me.
Something massive slammed into my back with brutal force, driving me forward into the monitors. Glass shattered. Pain exploded across my spine as the world tilted violently.
I barely caught myself on the console, silver blood dripping from my mouth.