James snapped out of it and realized he was still straddling the window on his way over the edge of a skyscraper. He nodded. "I'll see you downstairs."

"Or dead."

James grinned. "Downstairs then, either way."

He took a handful of the stiff vine and wrapped it around his hands. Slowly, he rappelled down the side of the building, trying to make as little noise as possible. When he was a meter down, a guardian joined him. A few meters after she climbed down, another guardian followed.

They continued down until he reached the end of the rope, which was just above the bridge's opening. It was still a four-meter drop to the bridge and the scattered debris from the barricade littering the floor below made the fall tricky. A bad slip or landing could easily alert the Co-op or cause a broken ankle. He looked to his right and left and waited until all his people were in place. The beats ticked by as they all waited, dangling from the vine.

His thoughts wandered to Elise, and he wondered if he had made the right decision leaving her to fend for herself. Sending her upstairs was the safest choice, even though it meant he couldn't watch over her. He hated that this was what he had had to do with both her and Sasha.

He closed his eyes and listened. Below, he could hear the sounds of movement, shouting, and general chatter. Nothing that would signal an attack. Three Valta troopers appeared, patrolling out of the All Galaxy and marching down the length of the bridge. They would have to be taken out silently and quickly.

He let go of the vine and dropped right behind the group. He swept the feet of the nearest trooper with a low kick and then lunged for the second, throwing his arm around the man's neck and dragging him down. A quick snap of his head and the body went limp.

As he turned to engage the third trooper, a sharp crack across the side of his face blurred his vision, and he fell to the ground. He rolled to the side just as blaster fire kicked up fragments of the concrete next to him. He rolled to his feet and took another blow to his midsection, doubling him over in pain. He glanced up at the black muzzle of a blaster rifle. Before the trooper could pull the trigger, a dark shadow fell over him, knocking the trooper to the ground. Several more shadows followed as his guardians came to his rescue.

Hory plunged a knife into the man's neck and then looked at the others. "This blaster is mine." Others called out their spoils.

Chawr appeared beside him and offered a hand. "Are you all right, Elder?"

"I'm fine," he said gruffly, accepting the flyguard's extended hand. His pride hurt more than anything. These jokers shouldn't have posed as much of a problem as they had. He was losing his edge.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked.

"I think I sprained my ankle, Elder." Dox winced, limping up to him.

"Well, suck it up," James replied.

The sound of shouting inside the building suddenly swelled, followed by the whine of blaster fire. James motioned for the guardians to follow as he crept up to the remains of the northern barricade. He huddled behind the broken pieces of metal double doors and peered inside. Most of the Co-op nearby were surrounding the stairwell entrance off to the side. The Elfreth's attack must have been less effective than they had hoped. It looked like the Co-op were pushing upward.

"All right, bridge crew," he ordered. "Ignore the big armored ones. They'll take too much work to bring down. Aim for just the smaller troopers." He signaled for the guardians to spread out along the entranceway, grabbing cover when they could or staying farther back so they could hide within the fog. He held up a hand and waited until everyone was in place.

In unison, they all opened fire at the same time, taking out several rows of troopers with the initial volley. His guardians were able to sow chaos among the Valta ranks, but the well-trained enemy recovered and reorganized. A shocker pod appeared a few seconds later and laid suppression fire long enough for the Valta troopers to mount a firing line.

Blaster fire barraged their position, taking out many of his people who hadn't taken cover. The rest of his crew returned fire as they could. It was chaotic, and most of their fire went wide. The heavy shocker's concentrated blaster fire, however, was shredding their cover, and pretty soon, several more of his guardians fell.

James had hoped that his team could cause enough confusion to make some inroads into the barricade floor, but as the fight continued, they lost ground. He had far underestimated the enemy's strength. If his group was having this much trouble, then the ones at the other bridges must be faring equally poorly, if not worse. After a few minutes, he had no choice but to order his guardians to retreat farther back into the fog.

As his people retreated, the shockers strafed several stragglers. James and four others ran forward to drag them back. He picked up a young woman while the others grabbed two men. He had underestimated how close the shockers were. The next time he looked back, half a dozen of them were boring down on him.

A blaster shot near his feet knocked him off balance and he tumbled to the ground. He scrambled for his rifle, but it was too late. The shocker could cut him down at close range or just step on him. He rolled on his side as a large metal foot came crashing down on where he had been moments earlier. He cursed, realizing he had just rolled away from his dropped rifle.

The shocker leveled its massive forearm cannon squarely at his chest. James waited for the end to come, still hoping to dodge the blast at the very last second and scramble to safety. A roar suddenly erupted from somewhere inside the building, and then the white glow of an exo-wielder appeared at the end of the bridge.

"Shocker Pod Six. Recall. Command delta imminent! Now!"

As if on cue, all the shockers stopped in their tracks and retreated into the building. James couldn't believe his luck. About time something went his way in all of this. Still, it had been too close. He was alive right now only by sheer luck. The chronman he used to be would have scoffed at the many mistakes he had just made.

"Elder, look!" Chawr pointed at a plume of flames rising at the far end of the floor.

More sounds of fighting erupted from inside the All Galaxy, and the ranks of the Co-op seemed to have fallen into chaos. What in the abyss was going on?

The remaining guardians scrambled to his side. "Orders, Elder?" Hory asked.

"I don't..." James reminded himself that he was never to say that in front of the troops. However, in this case, it was the absolute truth. "Well," he shrugged, "I guess we do the only thing left to do. Let's go. Charge!"

His guardians followed him into the building, where all hell had broken loose.

FIFTY-FOUR.

THE UPPER FLOORS.

Elise and her team entered the south stairwell and made their way up the stairs, joining the flow of civilians fleeing to hide in the fields near the top of the building. It seemed the enemy was hitting them everywhere. Guilt nagged at her as they passed sporadic fighting on several of the floors, even more so as a steady stream of guardians-many with injuries-made their way down as she went up. Elise knew she had to trust the rest of the tribe to do their jobs. Still, the higher she climbed, the more difficult it was to ignore her people. Finally, she caved and began to ask the injured if they needed help.

"Is everything all right? Do you need assistance?" she asked a guardian leaning on a wall next to the stairwell door at the sixty-fifth floor.

The young woman, face bloodied and holding her left arm, shook her head. "They came in through the east window. My team and Gill's have it under control, Oldest. We took 'em. Gill's arming his guardians with Co-op guns right now. We're heading down to the barricades next."

Elise wasn't sure if she believed the woman, but nodded and continued up the stairs. Five other times she stopped to ask small groups of guardians about their status. Four of the guardians claimed to have maintained control of their floor, which was surprising. The Manhattan forces must be doing better than she thought. Maybe they had a chance to win this after all.

Her optimism was short-lived, however. She reached the landing balcony on the seventy-third floor. There were a dozen guardians lying in the stairwell leading up to the door and easily another half dozen farther up. The doorway had been blown out. Bodies, scorch marks, and debris littered the area just inside. She found the nearest conscious guardian and asked if someone was in charge. He directed her to a small group huddled in a circle around a table. She signaled for her team to guard the perimeter as she moved in to see what was going on.

There were nine full teams waging a pitched battle with a group of the Co-op. The enemy had taken over the landing pad and one of the stairwells. The guardians so far had sandwiched the Co-op from moving up or down the stairwell at the seventy-second floor, but they were slowly losing ground here in the interior. The Elfreth outnumbered the enemy five to one, but they were getting slaughtered by Co-Op shockers.

"Can you hold?" she asked a man named Safa who was directing teams near the rear.

He bit his lip and bowed his head. "Apologies, Oldest. We will die holding it as long as we can."

The sounds of the fighting grew closer. Most of these guardians were exhausted. Some seemed more dead than alive. With most of their forces heading to the lower floors, these teams weren't getting any reinforcements either. Elise did the only thing she thought made sense.

"Give them the floor, then. Order everyone back to the stairwells. Just bottleneck the hell out of it for as long as you can," she ordered.

"We cannot do that," Safa said. "Mata has five teams trapped in the main supply room. If we leave them, they will be butchered."

"Do we know if they're alive?" she asked.

"Yes, Oldest," Safa said. He pointed at one of the bodies lying nearby. "Moor was their courier. They are well entrenched in a defensive position but unable to move. He was able to deliver the message before death. If we retreat, I fear all fifty will be lost."

Elise considered her options. That was a lot of guardians to sacrifice. There were few options available to her, and even fewer good ones. The supply room was a warehouse in the center of this floor. It was a veritable maze, with dozens of shelves and crates. Moving in there would be very dangerous. However, leaving five teams to die wasn't an acceptable alternative. Part of Elise wished she hadn't asked for a status. Now that she had, the burden of making a decision was on her. If she decided to leave those guardians there, their blood would be on her hands. She wouldn't be able to live with herself then.

"Hell to Gaia," she said. "Let's get them out, then. I'm not leaving anyone behind. Can you signal our people at the other stairwells? We hit them all at once."

"Yes, Oldest." He motioned for two of the younger guardians to approach.

Elise checked the internal clock in Aranea. She counted a measured pace to five. "That's the beat. Two persons," she instructed. "Now go."

Elise was still pretty new to fighting, and the anticipation was killing her. She was so nervous and sweating so badly in Aranea that she lost count somewhere between ten and fifteen. However, there was no need for her to keep track. All the guardians around her were stomping their feet in unison. As if on cue, they charged forward. To the side, a surge of guardians from the west joined them.

They encountered a group of twenty Co-op as they poured into the supply room. Half the enemy wore standard Valta white uniforms while the other half looked like walking tanks. They stood three meters tall and had armor that looked like metal plating. Luckily, the guardians' sudden onslaught took them by surprise.

Unluckily, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. The two sides exchanged fire and many more of her people were cut down by the enemy than vice versa. In fact, it seemed nothing fazed those big armored Valta brutes at all. All the guns and beam weapons her guardians used seemed to bounce off of those things. No wonder they were having trouble.

It seemed, however, that the big gun on Aranea was another story. The armored tank guys had ignored her until she fired a shot from her shoulder cannon and hit one square in the chest. The big robot thing's armor literally exploded. This got their attention. The rest of the heavy tank guys began focusing on her. The only thing Elise could do was run and dodge their constant fire. Unfortunately, Aranea was half again as tall as the nearest guardian and stuck out like a sore thumb with her smooth metallic blue skin and eight long spider legs. One of the guardians standing in front of her got caught in the crossfire and fell. She had to get away from the group.

Fortunately, running away with Aranea was one thing she had gotten quite good at. She bounded up to the ceiling to draw fire away from her people and scurried across the room, zigzagging in all directions as the tank guys continued to shoot at her. It was almost a miracle that none of the blasts hit the mechanoid's critical components. It wasn't for lack of trying. The blasts from the tank guys kept blowing out fragments of the ceiling around her, raining debris onto the ground. The mechanoid was fast, though, and Elise had gotten quite skilled at maneuvering her, so most of the enemy fire missed, and what did hit was absorbed by her armor plating.

Elise couldn't be sure her plan to draw fire away from the guardians had worked. She was too busy running for her life to see what was going on, but she preferred to think that she'd bought enough of a distraction for her people to close in on the Co-op. It took her a while before she realized that the heavy enemy fire following her had stopped. She pivoted Aranea to see what was going on, and her mouth fell open.

She must have bought enough time for all the guardians-joined by Mata's team and numbering over 150-to close the distance, and now they were mobbing the twenty Co-op troopers like an army of ants over wasps. The outnumbered Valta troopers stood no chance as her people tackled and wrestled them to the ground. The larger, armored tank guys, however, required more effort. Half a dozen guardians piled on top of each, yanking at their armored pieces and shooting point-blank into their exposed joints. The armored troopers fought back. Their suits must give them superhuman strength, and they were smashing guardians and tossing them left and right.

There was too much chaos for Elise to get a clean shot, so she watched and worried. More guardians poured in from the stairwells until finally, all that remained standing were the Elfreth. "Winning" probably wasn't the right word. Her casualties were high, easily more than a hundred compared to the twenty Valta. Had she made the wrong choice? Still, a victory was a victory. All of the Co-op had been killed or captured, and the remaining guardians were dividing the enemy's weapons among themselves.

"Oldest," Safa said, limping toward her. His entire left side was bleeding, and his face was pale. "Victory is yours."

"We lost twice the number we were trying to save," she said. "I failed us."

"Not so, Oldest," he replied. "To die fighting for the tribe is worthy. We lost many good guardians, but we also defeated the enemy and held the floor. This will save many more lives, and it is all because of you."

Elise wasn't convinced, but she had more important things to worry about. The fight on the landing pad floor had taken longer than she had expected. She let Safa take over the cleanup, found the survivors of her team-all except for Sutt-and hurried up to the lab. She hoped Grace, Titus, and Sasha were all right. They should be, if they were hiding in the secret crawl space. Still, Elise wouldn't be able to live with herself if something happened to James's sister, especially after she had promised him she would make sure Sasha was safe.

They reached the seventy-ninth floor and spread out around the lab. It was quiet here, a far cry from the chaos below. The lab took up the entire floor and was divided into several sections for her to run tests and samples.

"Grace, Titus?" Elise called, moving Aranea carefully around tables holding sensitive and fragile instruments.

She passed the main work area and proceeded to the first incubator room. As the mechanoid skirted the rows of her samples, one of the shelves filled with stacks of glass aquariums tipped over on top of her. A giant robotic metal hand swatted at Aranea, clipping her on the shoulder. The mechanoid spun around and came face-to-face with one of the giant armored tank guys. The big shocker drew his arm back and swung at her.

Elise managed to skip Aranea backward, and then opened fire, hitting the tank guy point-blank in the chest. Where had he come from? She looked around and suddenly saw several more Valta troopers swarm into the room.

One of the regular troopers blindsided her. The trooper jumped on top of Aranea's base next to her body. Before Elise could swat him away, he aimed down and fired at one of the mechanoid's legs. Elise used both arms to bat at him, sending him flying across the room. The screen in front her face blinked red as the damage reports scrolled across her line of sight. One of poor Aranea's legs had been completely severed.

Why did he shoot Aranea's leg instead of Elise's head? At that range, he could have killed her easily. She didn't have time to ponder that as two more troopers attacked from both sides. She was able to shoot one as he came in, but the other was able to get several shots off. This time, one of the legs on her other side was crippled.

They must be doing this on purpose. Then she realized why. They knew she was inside. They were trying to capture her alive. That was probably why those troopers and tank guys on the landing pad floor kept missing her. They probably knew as well and were trying to disable Aranea without injuring her.

"Damn it, Elise," she growled. "Get out of here."

In the other room, she saw her entire team get cut down as more of the Co-op moved in. Her thoughts immediately turned to Sasha, Grace, and Titus. Were they all right? Captured? Already dead? And then she realized she had to worry about herself first.

Elise tried to fall back to the nearest window, but Aranea was badly crippled and could only limp toward the exit. Two troopers and a tank guy came at her. She was able to fight them off, if barely, having to skirt to the side and shoot a trooper and the tank guy while wrestling with the second trooper.

Elise reached the window opening and tried to launch Aranea to the nearest adjacent building, but the mechanoid was too damaged to make the jump. The last two surviving guardians of her team tried to fight their way to her, but were also shot down. She changed plans and tried to make her way to the nearest stairwell, not ten meters away, when suddenly she stopped crawling forward and started moving backward.

Panicked, Elise punched all the commands on the mechanoid but nothing was responding. In fact, all systems said she was still moving forward. It was as if she were ... floating. Then she noticed the faint white glimmer surrounding the mechanoid. Something rotated her until she saw a woman in a white uniform bathed in a white glowing light.

"You must be the Nutris scientist," the woman said. "I am Securitate Ewa. We've been looking everywhere for you."

Elise did the only thing she could think of. She pulled the trigger on Aranea's cannon and tried to blast whoever this was to bits. The cannon discharged, and for a second, both of them were blinded as the woman's shield lit up. And then Elise heard the sound of metal tearing as Aranea's gun was ripped from the mechanoid's shoulder and flung to the side.

"Now," Ewa smirked, "let's get you out of this contraption, shall we?"

The center of Aranea split in two as an unseen force pried it apart. Elise felt a static heat and shock, and she heard screaming. It wasn't until later that she realized that the screaming was coming from her.

FIFTY-FIVE.

FAMILY AFFAIR.

The darkness around them lit up as the first barrage of enemy fire and exo coils blanketed the rebels. Levin and many of the auditors had expanded their own shields at the last moment to protect those without exos, but they weren't able to envelop everyone. Buchanan, the medical quartermaster, an avowed pacifist and one of the kindest men Levin knew, was thrown against a wall like a rag doll by a chronman's coil. Several others, senior and head administrators, doctors, handlers, and engineers, suffered similar fates as more coils and wrist beams cut them apart.

"Phalanx cover. Pull back to secondary position," Rowe barked. "Julia, get the noncombatants to safety. The rest provide cover."

The auditors moved closer together and meshed their shields, forming a spherical barrier around the entire group. Moving in unison, they retreated to the back of the room into a space between the wall and the large wreckage of a Hephaestus transport. Any of the monitors and chronmen who charged their position were cut down. They were safe for now, but they were trapped.

"The closest exit point out of Central is the sewage ducts to the south," Julia said. "We should escape while we have the chance. Build a resistance."

"No," Hameel said. "Nothing's changed. We should take the Hops now, especially with the bulk of our monitors occupied. If we escape now, we'll never make it back in here."

Levin kept his eyes glued to the rear of the wreck shielding them. Two monitors tried to charge around the corner, only to be stopped and flung backward by one of his coils. He looked around the corner of the transport. Young's forces were spreading out around the room, preparing to attack their position. They were almost all chronmen and monitors with a few auditors among them. Several of the monitors were carrying exo-chains as well. He glanced back at the group around him. He had some of the best within the agency here. They were at a disadvantage, but it wasn't overwhelming.

He turned to the group. "We have a chance if we fight."

"And none if we flee," Moyer added.

Rowe looked at Julia, who reluctantly nodded, and then at Marn. An unspoken understanding passed between them. "That settles it," he said. "We fight our way to the Hops."

"The corridors are too narrow and the entire building is probably on high alert," Julia said. "They'll box us in. It's better if the main party keeps these jokers occupied, and a small group slips out."

"I'll go with Hameel and Levin," Moyer said. "Hameel has the respect of those in the Hops, and I have access to the entire building."

Julia gave Levin a hug and held her hands out. Her bands unsnapped and she offered them to him. "You're going to need these, Auditor Levin."

He nodded and gave her his chronman bands. "I'll see you later, or on the other side."

Rowe pointed at the door farther down the room. "There's your exit, Levin. We'll cover you. Get moving."

Levin, Hameel, and Moyer waited as Rowe led the charge out, surprising the agency's forces on the other side. His heart ached when he saw a few of his friends fall, including Marn, someone he had known since his Academy days, and Pendlol, a chronman he had mentored. The room became a battlefield as the small group of auditors, chronmen, and administrators fought the agency force three times their size.