Page 84 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Gravity lurches.

The bridge to the archive node tears sideways.

Anita is ripped out of my grasp.

For a fractional instant, I see her body lifted by the failing geometry, one hand reaching instinctively toward the air where my hand had been. The platform beneath her folds at an impossible angle. Stone plates shear apart without breaking, sliding through one another as if reality has forgotten which surfaces may occupy the same space. Her shoulder strikes a rising support rib, and the force spins her toward the collapsing outer walkway.

My voice leaves me as a roar.

I launch after her, but the chamber moves faster than flesh. A wall that was open space a heartbeat earlier twists between us, translucent and black, filled with silver veins. I slam into it hard enough to crack the surface. Pain explodes through my shoulder. Anita disappears behind shifting geometry as half the access ring folds inward with a sound like a mountain being crushed in a giant’s fist.

“Ghar!” Anita screams from somewhere beyond the folding wall.

The sound destroys the last of my restraint.

The Choir reaches our level at the same time.

Three attackers drop from cables onto the fractured ring behind me. One lands near Brakk and drives him back under suppressive fire. Another angles toward Sira. The third turns his rifle toward the shifting barrier between me and Anita, calculating the same thing I am calculating: she is separated, trapped, and carrying the best chance of accessing the nexus.

He raises his weapon.

I hit him before he finishes aiming.

There is no elegance in what follows.

My sidearm discharges twice at close range, punching through armor joints and driving the first attacker backward into a collapsing support. I tear the rifle from his hands, crush the trigger assembly, and use the broken weapon to smash the visor of the second man who reaches for Sira. The third attacker swings a shock blade toward my ribs. I catch his wrist, drive my knee into his chest plate, and slam him down against the black stone hard enough to dent both armor and floor.

Someone shouts through a helmet modulator. “Secure the woman. Purge the rest.”

The words become blood in my mouth.

I move through them.

More Choir soldiers descend through smoke and silver dust, and I meet them in the broken corridor between the ring and the folding wall. The ruins continue shifting around us, turning the chamber into a maze of moving plates and sudden drops, but rage makes every path clear. A soldier emerges from my left, and I drive my claws through the soft seal under his arm before hurling him into another attacker. A fourth fires at me from a raised plate. The blast burns across my side, hot enough to score scales, but I do not slow. I leap, catch the edge of the plate, and pull myself up with one arm before dragging him down by the throat.

Brakk’s voice severs the chaos from somewhere behind me. “Ghar, damn it, you’re overextending!”

He is right.

I ignore him.

Another shift opens a narrow view through the folding wall. I see Anita on the far side, pinned between a tilted support rib and a slab of black stone trembling above her. Blood runs from her temple. She is trying to crawl toward a control lattice with one arm wrapped around the archive case. A Choir soldier has found another route and is moving toward her through a side gap.

The world narrows until only that soldier exists.

I tear through the next two attackers in my way with brutality I cannot soften, cannot regret, and cannot make civilized. I use the first as a shield against incoming fire. I break the second against a support column and take his blade. The soldier near Anita hears me coming and turns.

He fires.

The shot burns across my chest and fills my nose with the stink of scorched scale.

I keep coming.

His second shot misses because the wall shifts beneath him. I reach him before the third. The blade in my hand enters the seam below his helmet and exits with a wet sound that vanishes beneath the chamber’s roar. He drops at Anita’s feet.

She stares up at me through the gap in the fractured architecture.

Her eyes are huge.