Page 80 of Deathless
"Junction," I said.
Rhadamanthys stopped beside me.
"Good hunting," Diego said quietly.
Rhadamanthys turned right. His boot heels scraped against the concrete, steady and even, and the sound faded until the tunnel swallowed it.
Diego's palm landed on my shoulder in the dark, and I turned away.
The tunnel opened into a maintenance corridor. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing. I drew the katana and my shoulder burned under the sutures. Diego pulled his pistol. We moved along the wall.
"Checkpoint ahead," Vihaan said. "Two guards."
I held up two fingers. Diego nodded. I signaled: suppressing fire, I close. He raised his pistol. I counted down on my fingers.
Diego's suppressed shot took the first guard in the neck. I closed the distance on the second before he could shoulder his rifle. The katana opened him from hip to collarbone, and he folded without a sound.
We dragged the bodies into a side room and kept moving. The stairwell was concrete and Soviet-era ugly. I went up first with the katana ready, clearing each landing before Diego followed.
Someone had renovated the second floor with polished floors, modern lighting, and paintings on the walls. Everything stank of Zeus.
Vihaan warned us about a patrol. I pulled Diego into a doorway. We pressed against the wall and waited. Footsteps approached, casual conversation in Greek. Four Myrmidons walked past, close enough to touch.
Diego pressed against my back, his breath on my neck. I tracked the Myrmidons' footfalls, the cadence of their Greek. When they cleared, I exhaled. Diego squeezed my hip once and stepped back.
"Main stairwell just sealed," Vihaan said. "You'll have to go through the central atrium. Three stories, catwalks on every level. You're exposed."
I looked at the doors ahead of us. Everything behind those doors wanted us dead, and Eight was on the other side.
"Then we move fast," I said.
The doors opened onto a massive space that rose three stories above us. Catwalks crisscrossed overhead, metal grating casting geometric shadows on the polished floor.
The space was empty. The silence sat wrong on my skin.
"This is wrong," I said.
Diego scanned the upper levels. "Yeah."
The doors on the third-floor catwalk burst open.
Myrmidons poured out with rifles already shouldered and opened fire.
I dove behind a concrete planter as rounds chewed into the floor where I'd been standing. Diego rolled behind a support column and returned fire. His pistol barked twice, and a Myrmidon pitched over the railing, hitting the polished floor below with a sound like a bag of wet sand.
More came from the second floor. Rounds sparked off the planter, and concrete dust stung my eyes.
A myrmidon tried to flank Diego's column. I moved before the thought finished and came up inside his guard. The katana took him across the belly. He grabbed at the wound and I shouldered him into the wall. Another came down the stairs, swinging his rifle like a club. The stock caught me across the ribs and something cracked. The floor tilted beneath me. I stumbled back. Diego put two rounds into the gap below the Myrmidon's helmet.
"We need to move," Diego shouted.
We made it halfway across the atrium when Diego's whole body torqued sideways.
He staggered. His gun hand hit the pillar first, then his shoulder, and red punched through the fabric of his jacket in a wet starburst that spread faster than I could move. His knees buckled. He caught himself, barely, and braced against the stone.
"Fuck," he said.
I grabbed him and hauled him behind cover, pressing my hand to his shoulder. Blood poured between my fingers, hot and wrong. I reached for the kit. The gauze soaked through before I could pack it.
