Cosmosis

Split

“Are you sure you’re okay on your feet?” Tasser asked.

“Are you sure we have to take this guy with us?” I retorted.

“You’re the one who says he’s not our bioterrorist.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to drag him all the way to the upper levels.”

Tasser was insistent that he be the one to check around corners as we came to intersections. He was still unarmed, but even if I hadn’t been coming off a sedative he wouldn’t let me go first.

The flipside of that meant I was the one who needed to push the gurney carrying Dr. Maburic’s unconscious body.

I didn’t like Tasser’s idea, especially considering Dr. Maburic had inadvertently been the one to inspire it. The Chief of Research said he’d been the one to approach the Prowlers, which I didn’t entirely believe. But even if he was truthful, Vather had clearly agreed, at least enough to benefit from it. There was no doubt in my mind he would have backstabbed the Casti as soon as he could.

But since the Prowlers were moving hostilely, we had even less time to solve our puzzles.

Gunshots were becoming audible.

We were forced to listen to it while we slunk along. I thumbed my radio, trying to reach Nai, or anyone. But no one responded.

“I’d stay off that,” Tasser recommended. “Prowlers grabbed Nemuleki, remember? They have her radio.”

“Nai made sure we changed channels and they can only monitor one of the Coalition bands with her radio,” I said.

“We should have tuned into the Green Complex’s bands,” Tasser said. “Security was shadowing us from day one, so we never thought we needed to…”

Either Dr. Maburic had sent away the security that had accompanied me to this morning’s procedure, or Vather had done something to them as he left.

I seriously contemplated leaving the doctor there in the middle of the hall.

But as mad as I was at Dr. Maburic, I wanted to ruin the Prowlers' day more. And the doctor would be part of that.

“They’re fighting at the elevator,” Tasser said. “On this level.”

“This place is huge. Security has to outnumber the Prowlers ten to one,” I said. “Vather only had eight Rak, including him. What are the odds they happen to be fighting on this level?”

“You were on this level,” Tasser said. “If things went according to plan, the doctor here would probably be wheeling you to the elevator to take you out the freight entrance.”

It was a bloodbath.

A security team was strewn about the hall leading up to the elevator. Five Casti were dead, or critically wounded, bleeding on the floor. Metallic orange blood was splattered over the walls and pooling on the floor.

There were still shots being exchanged at the doors though.

At least part of the Casti team was still alive. Just two Vorak were visible though. Had they done all this alone?

Tasser wasted no time grabbing the pistol of one of the fallen guards.

“Can you materialize something?” he whispered.

I nodded. Every second the sedative’s effect was weakening more.

“Helmet and vest, if you can. Doesn’t need to be perfect, just basic armor.”

I frowned. To cover his whole head and torso would be right at my mass limit.

“Do my best,” I told him. I couldn’t be sure what I created was properly bulletproof, but it would at least deflect ricochets or glancing shots. Hopefully.

Time was of the essence and once I’d materialized him some protection he moved swiftly and deliberately.

He carefully peered his way around the corner to see what my psionics could already sense. Two Vorak were taking turns shooting into the open elevator. The Casti must have been inside.

Why weren’t they using the elevator to escape?

Tasser carefully lined up his first target, squeezing the trigger twice.

The first Vorak collapsed instantly. Tasser had fired from a very low position, putting the bullets into the back of the Rak’s neck traveling up toward their skull.

Vorak number two reacted unbelievably fast. They weren’t Adept, but Prowler training must have been that good, because the Vorak didn’t even look back to see his now fallen ally to react.

They broke off their attack the instant Tasser’s gunshots rang out, reacting to new danger from a new direction.

Tasser had been ready to shoot the second immediately after the first, but Vorak number two reacted quickly enough to return fire.

The remaining Vorak ducked behind the edge of a doorway on the opposite side of the elevators, but held their position.

“He’s staying there?” Tasser asked.

“Not after this,” I said.

It took an agonizing few seconds, but I managed to focus at the very edge of my range. Creating anything this far away was a bit like molding with sand instead of clay, but I wasn’t making the fanciest thing here.

Too much of my Adept mass was tied up in Tasser’s armor, but it wasn’t an energy costly investment. It left me just enough to make a pea sized blinding explosive only a foot from the Vorak’s head.

There had been just enough delay in the chemical reaction for the Vorak to glance toward the firecracker I’d made. Their eyes had been caught head on by the flash.

Tasser didn’t hesitate to exploit the opening either. He dove past our corner, wide into the hall. The doorway the Vorak had ducked behind wasn’t wide enough to protect him from Tasser’s new angle and a single shot went through the soldier’s face.

“Rei one bullet left,” Tasser said. “Really should have checked that magazine first. That could have gone very poorly. Who’s alive in the elevator?”

“Us,” a familiar voice called out.

It was, in fact, not two Casti from security alive in the elevator but Corphica and Letrin.

“Grab weapons and radios from the security group,” Tasser instructed them before testing channels on the one he’d grabbed. He was in top form, his training running on all cylinders.

“We were with Nai when security got calls that our captives broke out,” Letrin said, before noticing Dr. Maburic on the gurney. “Who’s this?”

“Suspect,” Tasser said. “We’re getting all nineteen suspects in the gymnasium. We need to identify the culprit before the Prowlers can just kill them all.”

“We were with Nai when security reported that the Vorak Adept we took was breaking out,” Letrin said. “As soon as she heard she went on the attack to free Nemuleki and the Director.”

“She’s tied up with Vather right now,” I said. “I guarantee it. Something about his Adept power prevents our psionic communication from working if he’s too close to one of us.”

“And you can’t reach her?”

“Not on the radio either,” I said. “It might have been destroyed already.”

At the same time, I detected someone Adept on the edge of my radar.

“Then we need to rendezvous with all our allies,” Tasser said. “As long as we’re stuck down here, we’re exposed. Caleb, where’s Chief Niza?”

“Out of range,” I said. “I think I screwed up the shape of my radar: I’ve been biasing it horizontally recently. I’ll need time to readjust it to reach more vertically again. But there is one Rak over there.”

“Oh yes,” Corphica said, getting her breathing under control. “The Prowlers that attacked us mentioned Tashi Umtane too. He’s on this floor.”

Umtane heard the conversation and exposed himself further down the hall, trudging toward us. As he drew closer, he wore two bullet wounds on his left arm.

“I need to survive this,” he whispered gravely once he was close enough. “They killed two of my clerks without even saying anything.”

“This is wrong,” Tasser frowned. “This is too much, even for the Prowlers. As it stands, even if they kill all of us, rumors are still going to escape and that could be enough to crumble their whole fleet. We’re missing something in this.”

“Unless it’s an immediate concern,” Umtane growled, “I do not think we have the luxury to care. You are the ranking soldier?”

Tasser glanced at Letrin.

“Do you have any objections to taking orders from me?”

“…No sir,” He said firmly, though not without a slight pause.

“Good,” Tasser said. “Then report on the elevator. It wasn’t moving when you were in it.”

“I heard the Rak talking to someone,” Letrin said, “about remotely controlling the elevators, but I didn’t see them carrying radios.”

“Vorak comm packs are small,” Umtane said, inspecting the Rak’s ear. “The speaker apparatus can be slid inside the ear itself while the microphone can be attached to a wire wrapped around the neck and hidden under the fur.”

He fished both components off the first Vorak’s body, showing them to Tasser.

“So small…” Corphica muttered.

“Admire the electronics later,” I said, feeling disturbingly older than the genuine soldier.

“Caleb’s right,” Tasser said. “We can talk once the elevator is moving.”

Corphica was helping Tasser push Dr. Maburic’s gurney into the elevator when I clocked another Adept drift into range.

“We couldn’t get it moving when we were under fire,” Letrin said. “I don’t think they knew we didn’t have guns.”

“Tasser, I’m picking up an Adept from where we came,” I said, pointing at the hall still littered with Casti.

He was situating the gurney in the elevator to make room for all five of us when two sets of doors sealed automatically: the elevator’s and the adjacent hallway’s.

“Tasser!” I pounded on the elevator, but I could already hear it moving with him and Corphica inside.

“The security rooms can control facility access remotely,” Umtane guessed, moving the check the hallway doors.

Letrin kept his gun pointed down the opposite hall, where I could feel the Adept approaching. I’d felt them before, but I couldn’t pick who with any degree of certainty, which meant they weren’t Nai. And since the only other allied Adepts in this building were ones I hadn’t met, that made this Itun or Vather.

My bet was on the former.

Nai was still out of psionic contact, implying she was still within whatever disruptive effect Vather made.

So the Adept must have broken out of the security cell.

“Hold it,” Letrin said, stepping out from the recess of the elevator doors.

“Holding,” Itun’s voice said.

“That supposed to be funny?” he asked.

“Not at all, boot,” he said. “Just hold still a moment.”

“You’re the one in front of a barrel,” Letrin said. “I think—”

A gunshot rang out from another spot and Letrin dropped.

“Someone’s not counting,” Itun said.

He hadn’t been alone. There had been another Rak detained with him. And the Casti security team we’d found dead here had been five strong. Five guns, of which, Tasser, Umtane, Corphica, and Letrin had only taken four of.

The last one was in the other Vorak prisoner’s hands.

Letrin’s throat was blown away and he clutched at the bleeding with one hand, trying to aim his pistol with the other.

He mouthed ‘go’ without looking directly at me or Umtane.

Umtane created a knife and drove it between the elevator doors, prying them open enough for me to get a hand in. We pushed the elevator shaft open with a loud scrape of metal and Itun heard.

“More?” he asked, not quite able to see us completely.

The elevator was visible more than five floors above us and still moving up. We had no chance of climbing quickly enough.

Which left…

I grabbed Umtane by the collar and dragged us both into the elevator shaft. He let out a bloodcurdling scream as he felt himself start to fall, but I caught us both on the cable running through a groove in the far wall.

He was so heavy, especially to hold with one hand, I couldn’t lift him at all, but I could at least hold his weight for ten seconds.

Time to see just how augmented my hands and feet really were. I pulled my weight up a tiny bit, enough for my shoes to start sliding down the concrete wall of the elevator shaft.

The metal cable I was holding onto with the other hand started running through my hand. If it had been ordinary flesh, my hand would have been hamburger.

Having to support my weight and Umtane’s as we slid down the shaft made my arms scream, but we reached the bottom of the shaft in seconds.

Umtane’s screaming stopped when I dropped him on solid ground between the massive coiled springs.

My hand was hot from the friction of the steel cable, but, still to my surprise, was otherwise fine. The fun of that small triumph was completely smothered though.

“Warn me next time,” he pleaded.

Letrin was dead.

I couldn’t stop here. Couldn’t shut down. Move.

“Come on,” I told him. “Help me get these doors open. Itun is going to be right behind us.”

“Right, right,” he panted. “We’re just going to run?”

“Unless the Deep Coils agent has a better plan?” I said. “Yes, I’m going to keep running until Nai or this Esk guy kills Vather and someone is free to help us.”

“I’m…just an actuary,” he said, still short of breath.

Wasn’t that a pointless lie right now. Letrin was dead.

“…Wait, really?” I asked.

“Really,” he said. “Not a spy, barely even a soldier.”

Oh great.

“Well show some teeth right now,” I said bitterly. “They only have one of the security rooms, does that mean they can control all the elevators? Or can our friendlies make sure we can take another elevator?”

“I can’t say for sure, but they can’t stop us from taking the stairs.” Umtane said, prying the bottom floor doors open with a materialized knife.

“Come on,” I said. “You’ve been investigating for weeks—every stairwell in this place is covered by a camera.”

Cameras the security rooms all had access to. And there weren’t that many stairwells either. If we went up via the stairs, Vather’s soldiers would know it.

The cameras that had been so useless in catching our culprit were keeping us penned in now.

“This is a disaster,” Umtane said. “I knew the Prowlers were reckless, but this is unbelievable.”

I climbed out of the elevator shaft, spilling into the hallway of the very bottom level of the Green Complex. Umtane took my hand and hauled himself up after me.

“We’re near Facilities,” I whispered. “Isn’t the complex reactor down here?”

“Water treatment and a lot of other stuff too,” Umtane said. “It might be worth hiding out instead of trying to go up immediately. Neither of us contribute much in a fight and it takes resources to protect us.”

“We need to move,” I corrected him. “You’re crazy if you think Itun isn’t coming down here after us.”

“Alright,” Umtane agreed. “Let’s try to avoid a fight if we can help it. Even the non-Adepts are still going to be highly trained military operatives.”

“The two Prowlers Tasser and I found killed a whole team of security by themselves,” I said. “Tasser told me that interplanetary soldiers take a lot of training.”

“Void soldiers,” Umtane confirmed. “It takes investment to put a soldier in space. Only the elites ever go to fight on other planets.”

“Why did they come here?” I asked bitterly. “Why bother? Both Coalition and you were already here, handling things.”

“The culprit asked the Coalition for help,” Umtane said. “That alone could be enough to order a military strike.”

“The Prowlers can’t possibly know that,” I said. “We didn’t share any of our documentation of the contact we received, Not with you, or even the Organic Authority. The only thing of ours you saw was the note. But even that, we didn’t give you a copy, only told you its contents.”

“…And my Deep Coils only found the phone calls several months preceding…” Umtane mumbled, his mind turning.

“I’d forgotten they reached out twice…” I admitted. “I was sitting in the same briefing Nai got. The report was they had someone take the first steps to contact the Coalition—the phone calls on consecutive days. But they didn’t pan out until months later when the note came.”

I dredged through my psionic notes that I’d taken. Dozens of documents related to this soiree. The note had read,

‘only for resistance eyes, i have seen firsthand that a coalition adept was in hiding stuck within the cordani green complex they perished but the object of their mission was hidden inside the complex for safekeeping i am in need of assistance please come.’

It was certainly written by our culprit. No one else would ask our assistance only to not reach out upon our arrival. But that didn’t necessarily mean…

“Whoever wrote the note that reached the Coalition—” I cut myself off, so I didn’t betray my train of thought.

It had only read ‘the object of his mission was hidden inside the complex’…It had only said that it was hidden, not where. Whoever wrote that note didn’t know where the Korbanok data was! They probably didn’t even know what Pen had hidden! That was why they hadn’t tried to sabotage our team with knowledge of the data drive—they hadn’t been the one to help hide it. They didn’t know what it was!

Curse him, but Umtane was sharp. Because even abridging my thought, it still clicked for the Vorak.

“There could be a second person,” he realized. “In fact…there must be. Dira , that was our mistake. We’ve been assuming that the Adept in the wall entered the facility with the help of our culprit: that whoever helped him was also behind the bioweapon. But that’s a false assumption—the two contact attempts were made by different people. That’s why the second one drew scrutiny—the real culprit didn’t have the full instructions!”

“Pen’s ally, the one who helped him inside, isn’t who we’re looking for,” I agreed. “Whoever made the bioweapon discovered Pen’s body somehow afterward and covered it up.”

“Because if the Adept’s body was found, it would bring down more attention than they were prepared to deal with. So they reached out to the Coalition, hoping to get some help smuggling their bioweapon out…”

“Only for us to turn up on their doorstep with absolutely no intention of letting a bioweapon free.”

“They’re even more desperate once a few days pass and we start actually cooperating. And if the Coalition and Deep Coils weren’t going to fight…” Umtane said.

“Then maybe the Prowlers would,” I finished. “The culprit is the one who lured them here! This whole thing is a smokescreen. The culprit wanted this exact situation! They’re going to try to smuggle the bioweapon out in the chaos.”

“I take it back,” Umtane said darkly. “We can’t hide here. This needs to be heard by everyone, even the Prowlers.”

“I don’t think Itun will listen,” I said. “I can sense him, he’s on this floor.”

Umtane nodded, not questioning my claim, and we ran a little faster.

Sorry Tasser, I thought. Sure hope this doesn’t kill you.

I couldn’t sense the position or direction of what I’d made, but I could still feel the shape of it—enough to dissolve it and free up my mass limit.

The armor needed to be on me right now.

I materialized myself a vest and helmet that were, hopefully, bulletproof.

“I don’t suppose you can make two,” Umtane said.

“Nope,” I said. “What’s your mass limit?”

“Four or five kilograms,” Umtane said. “I’m not a practiced Adept at all.”

“Then let’s head toward one of the internal lab sections. At the center of the facility, directly under the atrium, we can break into a lab that we can climb up through. Then we can climb up the atrium as far as we need to go,” I said.

“What? How do you even know—” Umtane started.

“You already saw me create documents in my head,” I snapped. “I have the floorplans memorized too.”

“Handy…” he muttered.

·····

Itun had followed us down the elevator shaft alone.

He’d been slow to do so too. Judging from Umtane’s reaction going down, and how nervous he seemed at the prospect of climbing back up, ‘climbing’ was not a Vorak specialty.

Which felt so odd, because Stalker, one of the first Vorak I’d really tangled with, had been adroit on that mountain.

Unfortunately, he definitely had radio contact with his group in the security room.

Umtane and I accidentally showed ourselves to one camera only for a second, and I felt Itun change course just a moment later.

“I bet Itun was wearing that radio when we detained him,” I panted. Casti weren’t familiar with small technology. It might not have even occurred to them to search the Vorak’s ears.

“How close is he?” Umtane panted. Between the two of us, he was the limiting factor for travel. I was barely breaking a sweat, but unless he dropped to all fours he just had to struggle on with his comparatively short legs.

“Probably about in earshot,” I replied. “He might start shooting at us.”

“Very good!” a voice behind us called out. The Vorak I’d seen yesterday, Itun, rounded the corner. “That was a neat trick, slipping down the elevator shaft, but I’m afraid you’re coming with us…ah…what are you called again?”

“[Bite me,]” I said, and pointed right at his face and detonated a flashbang.

I didn’t bother waiting to see if I blinded him, instead just running for the nearest corner. He had a gun, and he was using it.

Umtane’s eyes were good. I could tell my flashbang had caught him unprepared, but he wasn’t blinded—probably some built-in advantage of his augmented eyes—and was ready to run with me.

Itun was too.

“Stun bombs…” I heard the Prowler say loudly behind me. “That’s a very Rak trick for you to pick up. I wonder if you know any of the Adepts on Korbanok…”

He must not have been blinded either, because the otter dropped to all fours and bounded after us.

As Umtane and I rounded a corner, I took the opportunity to throw my arm back and carefully aim another flashbang as close to his face as I could place it.

I saw him avoid the worst of it this time. The same millisecond the mote materialized and began burning, Itun ducked to the side, putting his arm between him and the flare.

Light should have bounced off the surrounding surfaces and blinded him anyway, but he was navigating regardless.

Think…focus… there had to be a reason.

I dumped my cascade through my feet into the floor while I ran. There it was, sure enough. It was faint, but Itun was cascading the floor and walls too, letting him know the layout he was travelling through, even if blind.

But even with that measure aiding him, it was clear he wasn’t truly blinded. My flashes had hampered his vision, but it was probably merely blurred.

“He’s going to catch us,” I panted. “We need to stand and fight.”

“I only have a few bullets,” he said, attempting to check a gun he’d taken. “Plus you’ve already seen my best Adept trick.”

He flashed the knife at me.

“Yeah, but Itun doesn’t know that,” I said below my breath.

The Prowler rounded the corner just in time for me to point at the glass partition to one of the lab modules in this hallway. My flashbang shattered the glass and Umtane and I stole inside.

Bonus: this one had a second level. It was tall enough to accommodate the growth of a small tree. He and I were up the ladder and looking for a new route in seconds.

Itun was fast behind us, and he saw me point and blast another window to make a path.

We were noisy and leaving a trail. We needed to either outpace him, or turn, muster, and fight him.

“Talk fast,” I told Umtane. “Do you know what kind of abilities Itun might have?”

“Do you know what Vorak standards are?”

“Armor, spikes from the ground, close quarters weapons,” I said.

“Then that’s my best guess,” he said lamely.

Okay, what else had Nai said about standardized Vorak Adepts? Outnumbering them was good, they usually fought the other way around. Past that…

“In here,” I said, seeing a lab with lots of countertops and benches. We forced our way inside and I took inventory of my cards.

“You’re too calm under pressure…” Umtane complained.

All things considered; I would have to fight in the front. Umtane had the gun, and I was more physical than him.

The lab we found ourselves in was almost indistinguishable from my high school’s chemistry classroom except the layout. Faux wooden cabinets, glassware organized on the black rubber tabletops.

“He can leap around a space like this more easily,” Umtane said. “And we don’t have as much room to dodge his ground spikes.”

Our enemy heard him and walked slowly through the door we’d kicked open. He materialized a plastic crystal substance over the door handle, sealing it shut behind him.

I felt his tactile cascade spread out through the floor, just like Nai had done.

“He has a point, Human,” Itun added. “Coming in here was a bad move.”

To punctuate his statement, he threw out his arms and a torrent of black smoke exploded out from him. In less than a second, the cloud had filled the whole room, drowning it in darkness.

It didn’t affect my breathing one bit, but it was pitch black. I couldn’t even see my hand an inch from my face. It was a bit like my flashbang, but completely in reverse.

There was an audible slap where Itun slammed his hands into the ground.

But my cascade was unobstructed and still underfoot though, so when I felt spikes about to erupt up from the ground, I could still dodge.

Trouble was I couldn’t see where I was going anymore.

In the process of sidestepping the spikes, I slammed my face right into a cabinet. Or a wall. I couldn’t tell.

I sensed the Vorak leap for me through the darkness. He was tracking my position in the smoke via his cascade, but I could do the same thing via radar.

He was a second too slow to catch me moving again, but he must have heard the direction I went. His hand slapped against the floor again and I sensed more spikes about to stab up at me.

Itun was focused entirely on me. Umtane was being ignored. Maybe I should have been flattered that he found me a bigger threat.

The spikes were poorly aimed, and it was easier to twist out of the way of them.

He was aiming purely with his cascade. The smokescreen must have blinded him too.

The moment I thought so, the entire cloud vanished in a heartbeat, and I could see again. I noted that the ground spikes Itun made were the same kind of black plastic crystal that he’d used to seal the door. It seemed like he had a default material he liked to create with.

I’d put some space between us and Itun was looking at me quizzically.

“You’re an odd one,” he said. “The Tashi is right, you’re too calm under pressure.”

“You aren’t the first Rak that’s tried to hunt me down,” I told him. “I’ve had practice. What the [hell’s] the point of a smokescreen that blinds you too?”

“I’ve had practice too,” Itun said and shrugged before flooding the room with smoke again.

First he sent a set of ground spikes where I’d been standing, but I was ready to dodge again—having paid attention to the room’s layout when I could see it. Then he leapt at me in the direction I tried to dodge.

I materialized my quarterstaff and stabbed at him in the dark, trying to catch him mid-air. I felt some part of his body bounce and tumble off the tip.

He dissolved the smoke once more to survey what was going on.

I took note of a cabinet on the far side of the room with a transparent window.

“Well you weren’t kidding,” Itun said, seemingly no worse for wear. “You’ve got an exceptional sense of spacing.”

“[Bite me]” I snarled again, but he’d already thrown up the smoke once more.

He was taking little peeks, confirming with his eyes what his cascade told him. So when he didn’t immediately attack with ground spikes again, I worried.

“Umtane!” I said. “Throw as much [crap] on the ground as you can!”

My ally didn’t say anything back, but I heard a table’s worth of lab equipment suddenly crash onto the ground somewhere near where I’d started. At the same time, I materialized a flashbang in the cabinet I’d looked at.

It exploded its contents across the room. Hopefully that would be enough to distract Itun long enough to mislead his cascade.

I recollected my mass and pictured pairs of footprints on the ground and materialized them. Like ten pairs of shoe inserts, my footprint shaped creations appeared on the ground, and almost immediately, Itun lifted the smoke without having attacked.

He couldn’t see me where I ducked behind one of the lab counters, but I could still sense him on radar.

“And now you’re improvising tricks like this…” he said. “Much like a Farnata Adept would…so curious.”

I heard him take a step towards Umtane, only to stop and pause. “Footprint decoys is, I think, the best thing I’ve seen in months. But you didn’t consider the weight.”

He threw out another smokescreen and I heard his hand slam into the ground again.

Another set of ground spikes sprouted, but I was ready for them.

The decoys had been cheap, and I knew he wouldn’t be fooled.

I dodged the spikes, leaping straight up toward the ceiling, focusing on colors and materials that didn’t exist.

My hand touched the ceiling, and I didn’t feel his cascade there. Good, he couldn’t spread it far enough to reach all the way up the walls.

I hadn’t known if I would succeed when I jumped. In practice, I had only adhered something to my hand briefly. The amount of force needed to completely support my weight felt risky, like if I misapplied the charges, the chemical bonds in my hand would unravel.

But life and death looming over me was all the motivation I needed to take that risk.

The skin and bones in my hand hugged the ceiling, magnetized, not just to the surface, but a weave of material that extended into the structural beam, anchoring me in place.

There was an awkward sound as Itun leapt toward where he thought I’d dodged, but since I hadn’t landed on his cascade, he missed where I actually was.

He dissolved the smoke and looked around the room, confused.

“Where…?” he breathed, utterly bewildered.

I dropped down from above. He glanced toward Umtane, maybe to shoot him when I stomped my whole body weight onto his head.

He crumpled under me, chin and face slamming into the tile floor with a crack.

It should have hurt him. A human would have been out cold. Even tough Vorak wouldn’t take that unscathed.

But he was Adept too. And Umtane had told me Vorak specialized in augmentations.

Itun didn’t miss a beat.

In the same motion, as his face broke the tile beneath it, he whipped a leg up. His kick caught me in the shoulder and knocked me off balance.

“[Are you going to chip in Umtane?!]”

I barely got the words out as I fell, but Itun wasn’t the only one with augmentations. Instead of sprawling upside down, hanging off the countertop, my body moved without thinking and twisted into a somersault to get my feet underneath me.

Itun had four limbs to propel himself in this kind of close quarters, but Nai had practiced some close fighting with me. A contingency in case a Vorak ever got close.

It was all I could do to duck and deflect Itun’s clawed hands. Luckily my palms were ultra-tough, so I didn’t have to block him so much as I could simply catch his hand wherever he tried to claw me.

He must have gotten Umtane with a burst of spikes somewhere, because the Vorak didn’t come to my aid. But even with that problem, I didn’t feel totally overwhelmed yet.

The Prowler had a tell.

Nai had told me Adept creation was always more intuitive to perform when paired with a bodily motion. Something about moving your body helped mentally facilitate a creations.

In Itun’s case, he didn’t just create ground spikes anywhere anytime. He used his hands. He sent the power from his hand, into the ground, where it would materialize underneath whatever he was targeting with his spikes.

So when he aborted a few swipes at my face to slap the cabinets or floor, I didn’t miss the motion, ducking out of the way each time a spike lanced out a heartbeat later.

They were a dedicated offensive move with quite a bit of mass behind them. He couldn’t do that forever. The Rak was wearing himself out, and I had a chance at a reversal.

But I made a mistake.

I pointed at him again and made a flashbang, trying to shift to offense.

But he swiped his hand through the creation as soon as it appeared, dashing it to dust as it ignited.

Only a shower of sparks wasn’t enough to stun him, he seemed to commit an error, winding up for a big strike, swiping at me with both arms. With how fluidly I could move, there had been no chance it would hit. But he knew that.

He’d been maneuvering me into an ideal position. But I didn’t realize it until a set of spikes erupted out of the wall behind me, the very same moment I dodged backwards.

I couldn’t be sure if it was his creation or my reflexes, but I managed to twist my body between the spikes as they grew out. But still, I wedged myself between them and Itun immediately grasped the ends that stuck past me and bent them, trapping me in place.

He’d made these spikes without his hands touching anything. Nai had warned me about this. Just because it was ideal to create with a motion didn’t mean it was mandatory.

He’d gotten me.