Jace and Lessa sprinted through the storage room, moving in a straight line until the needle of forged hyperspace Aes pointed directly to the left, then turned. They didn’t have all the time in the world to look, and already, they’d be running short. He needed to find the Vault Core before then.

  They travelled down an aisle, moving lengthwise across the room. It wasn’t very bright inside, and incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling caught the swirling dust, but his technique also created a sphere of blue light around them, and Lessa’s burning tail couldn’t be underestimated as a light source.

  Finally, the needle shifted to the left once more, moving abruptly, and pointing almost precisely at a sealed wooden crate on a shelf about three levels up.

  “There it is,” Jace said, pointing at the same shelf.

  “You’re sure?” Lessa asked. “It’s not something behind it?”

  “I think that’d be the roof.”

  “Unless we’re on the wrong level,” she warned.

  “I don’t want to think about that…” Jace groaned. “I already used my reset card.”

  “But I thought if I was being positive, I would jinx it.”

  “Okay, point taken, but…” Jace shook his head. “It’s not exactly like that, either. Let’s just the box down before—”

  Before he could finish, a klaxon blared out through the store room, and red lights began flashing along the walls. It was loud enough that Jace wanted to plug his ears still, and that was with his Vital enhancements. He couldn’t imagine how it’d be for a regular mortal.

  Lessa scrunched her face, obviously in discomfort, and shouted, “And there it is! They’re on alert!”

  “Let’s hope it was us who caused that, and not Kinfild and Ash! Otherwise, our getaway car is going to be…seriously nonexistent!”

  “Getaway car?”

  “The Luna Wrath! We need a way out of here once we get the core!”

  “And that’s not jinxing it?”

  “No, no, that’s not—” Jace shook his head, then reached up for the crate his tracking needle was pointing to. As soon as he did, the needle faded, disintegrating into a faint blue dust. Either it’d run out of time, or he’d found the target.

  The crate toppled off the shelf. He drew his Whistling Blade and slashed it open, revealing a padded interior with a single object at the very center. It was about the same size as the previous vault core, but instead of haphazard wires and gears along its exterior, it had a plain, white-marble outer coating.

  It was also significantly heavier. Even with his enhanced Strength, it was a chore to lift. More than a cube of pure marble that size should’ve been. It barely fit in the palm of his hand, and a single opening was inset into its top, where he could fuel it with Aes.

  A tag appeared above it, marking it as: [Vault Core – Nascent Heart Tuned].

  “This is it!” he called, holding it up.

  “Woah…” Lessa said. “I thought it’d look…different.”

  “Me too. It doesn’t look mechanical at all.” Jace slung his backpack off his shoulder and dropped the cube in. It hit the bottom with a thunk, and for a moment, he feared it’d tear straight through the bottom. It held, but just barely.

  He cast Lessa a grin then said, “Let’s—”

  The doors on the opposite side of the room hissed open—all four of them at once, one for each elevator that they hadn’t borrowed.

  “Ah, was waiting for that,” he muttered, though she wouldn’t have heard him over the alarms.

  Four soldier poured out of each elevator, pointing their rifles in Jace and Lessa’s general direction. The moment an officer in a fez hat spotted them, he pointed and shouted, and the soldiers all pointed their rifles.

  “Get down!” Jace shouted.

  He and Lessa ducked behind the crate, and a volley of plasmafire surged over. Some sparked against the edge of the crate, and some bursts melted through the shelves. Singed steel and charred wood filled his nostrils, and sawdust tumbled in the air. In a matter of seconds, the barrage had chewed through their cover, and they ducked behind a shelf. It collapsed, but the tumbling crates only added to their cover.

  “We need a way out!” Lessa yelled. “I can fire a few bolts and cover you!”

  “I’ll aim for the right side!” Jace replied. “I’ll use a dash. I don’t think there are any Wielders, but if there are, I’ll need you to take them out.”

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  “I’ll get ‘em,” she said.

  Jace’s hyperdash had come off cooldown, and, targeting the right flank of the soldiers as they fanned out and slowly crossed the room, he activated the card. With a flash, he snapped through the air and emerged from hyperspace at the very edge of the clump. They were all on one side of him—easy targets.

  He cut through a pair of soldiers before they could turn to face him, and Lessa shot a third. But in the middle, the officer…now that Jace was closer, a tag appeared above his head: [Level 34 Wielder – Soul-Circle Opening – Third Stage].

  That’d make it slightly more difficult, but it was time to see what Lessa’s rifle could do. If it didn’t work, Jace could still take the Wielder down. “Lessa!” he shouted, ducking to the side. The man activated a technique card, then, flicking his arm forward, launched a burst of water from a flask at his hip. Jace sliced through it.

  Lessa fired a shot. It struck the man in the chest, burning completely through his shirt and field jacket and making him stumble backward. When the smoke cleared, the skin below was only charred and blistering. He’d survived one hit…

  A second one flew almost immediately after, and at that, the man’s ribs shattered and his skin ripped apart. The blast tore a hole straight through his chest, and he collapsed instantly.

  Well, at least we know it’s good against the average Wielder.

  But Jace didn’t have time to question it. He snatched up a fallen soldier’s rifle, clutched it tight, then triggered his Wanderer’s Banishment card. The rifle flashed through the air, blasting horizontally through the line of soldiers, before cleaving a hole in the wall. Sunlight and fresh air poured in, wires sparked, a tube hissed steam, and it might have been Jace’s imagination, but the alarms seemed to blare louder.

  “That’s all of them?” Lessa asked at a shout, running over.

  “That’s all!” Jace called back, raising his voice over the alarm. “How’s your Aes cell holding up?”

  “I’ve still got half a charge! It was completely full when we set off!”

  “Alright, then let’s just hope Kinfild got the Luna Wrath in place!” Jace turned to the elevators. Three of them had departed, likely to get reinforcements, but the one they had originally used was still open, waiting for them.

  They jumped inside, and Jace pressed the very top button. He didn’t know how high it went, but judging by the view out the hole in the wall, they were about two thirds of the way up the tower. Hopefully, Kinfild was close to the top, waiting for them, otherwise they’d be trapped, with a bunch of angry soldiers closing in behind them.

  Or better yet, hopefully Kinfild hadn’t been the one to set off the alarm.

  Jace tapped the very top button on the control panel. The elevator’s door slammed shut, and they flew upward. It only took a few more seconds to reach the top, maybe ten, but it felt like an eternity. At any moment, the elevator could stop, and guards could pour in.

  But it didn’t stop until they reached the top. The elevator halted halfway between the very top floor and the floor below it. The elevator swayed precariously, and the doors hissed open halfway.

  “Somebody got wise and stopped us?” Jace asked.

  “I think they cut the cords,” Lessa said. “I heard a twang.”

  “What?”

  “Jump!” she shouted, with much more urgency this time. “Or we’ll fall!”

  Side-by-side, they sprinted out the half-open doors and hauled themselves up onto the half-raised lip. Not a moment after Jace pulled his leg through, the elevator car plummeted behind him, screeching down the shaft.

  “That was close,” Lessa said. Up here, the alarms weren’t as loud, and they could talk normally.

  “Just keep moving!” Jace called, then pointed ahead. They stood in a short, bare hallway with a grate for a floor and dim lights. Only a few wires ran along the walls.

  They ran to a manual, swinging door at the end. Jace grabbed a fire axe from a holder on the wall, and then, when they pushed the door open and stepped through, he slotted it into the handle, blocking anyone from getting through easily. Or at least, they’d have to take the time to blast it off with a plasma rifle.

  Now on the other side of the door, they stood on a metal walkway that ran around the outside of an upper spire of the tower, with a communications array—a wireless telesignal—on top.

  Below, about ten storeys down, was the true top of the tower, the flat peak of the main structure. All around its edge were landing platforms. “We overshot it!” Jace said, raising his voice slightly to compete with the whistling wind.

  “Do you see the Wrath?” Lessa asked.

  “It’s…” Jace ran to the end of the walkway, then leaned over the railing. “Down there!” He pointed to a landing platform at the very corner of the tower’s spire, where the Wrath had settled down on its landing struts. A set of alliance dropships—much like the vessel he and Kinfild had stolen from Maehn a while ago—perched on the platform around it, along with a few other cargo transports.

  At least the Wrath didn’t look out of place.

  “We’re going to have to jump!” Jace called. “Can you make it?”

  “Better question: can you keep up?” Lessa vaulted over the railing and dug her exo-suit’s metal heels into the wall, slowing her descent.

  “That’s a yes, then.” Jace flipped his blade over and held it in a reverse grip, then jumped and drove it into the wall. It melted a line through the concrete and metal casing, slowing his fall until he reached the landing pad—right beside Lessa.

  They sprinted across the platform until they reached the Wrath. The boarding ramp was down, and Kinfild stood at its end, arguing with a Khirsan soldier.

  “No, I told you,” Kinfild said, “we have permission from the Demi-Sultan himself. If my crewmates would just get me that letter…”

  The soldier shook his head. “Sir, I am going to have to ask you to—”

  Before he could finish, Kinfild said, “Oh, look! There’s our cargo right there!”

  The soldier tilted his head. “Pardon me?”

  Jace pushed the soldier aside, then ripped the rifle out of his hands and tossed it across the landing platform—well out of reach. He and Lessa bounded up the boarding ramp, and Kinfild sealed it behind them. “Just on time! I was running out of distractions. Did you get the core?”

  “Right here.” Jace patted the side of his backpack.

  “Then let’s get out of here.”