Page 47 of Hunted By the Wraiths
I touched Maris’s shoulder. Light contact.
Not yet.
She got it. Her finger eased off the trigger. Fractionally.
“Time’s up.”
Maris lowered her blaster. I didn’t.
“Smart choice,” Vashil said. Then, louder, to the soldiers: “We’re coming out. They’re cooperating.”
“Thoryn.” Maris’s voice was steady. Too steady. The calm before the storm. “When I move, you go left.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“I know.”
“We’re doing it anyway?”
“Obviously.”
The first soldier entered our room, pulse rifle trained on my chest. The second went for Maris. Bad mistake. Never go for Maris first when I’m in the room. Even injured, even exhausted, even held together with veterinary sutures, I’m always the bigger threat.
Or so they should have assumed.
I grabbed the first soldier’s rifle barrel and yanked. He came forward, off balance, not expecting a half-dead Tamzari to have that kind of speed left. My elbow connected with his throat, right in the gap between helmet and chest plate. He dropped, gasping. I kept the rifle.
Maris had already shot the second soldier. Two rounds, center mass. He collapsed, and she kicked his rifle away without a second glance. Clean work.
Even with Vashil’s betrayal burning in her chest, her movements were ruthlessly efficient.
The doorway erupted in pulse fire.
We dove behind the bed.
This was just another pit. Different walls. Same rules.
The thin mattress started smoking immediately as energy bolts punched through it. The metal frame might deflect a few shots, but not many.
“This was your terrible plan?” I asked, checking the rifle’s charge. Three quarters. Better than nothing.
“No, this is improvisation.” Maris popped up, fired twice, and dropped back down as return fire turned the air above her head into superheated plasma. “The terrible plan comes next.”
Someone threw a flash-bang into the room.
Amateur hour. I grabbed it and pitched it back out the door. It detonated in the corridor with a satisfying bang and chorus of curses. Who throws a grenade without cooking it first? These weren’t elites. They were standard infantry pretending.
But they had numbers. And we had a smoking mattress and whatever ammunition we’d grabbed from the fallen.
More soldiers pushed into the room. I fired the stolen rifle until it clicked empty, then reversed it and used it as a club. Effective enough at close range. A soldier went down with a cracked helmet. Another caught the stock in the ribs, folded over wheezing.
Eight years of captivity had included a lot of combat training. Not voluntary. The Consortium scientists had wanted to test “combat efficiency under extreme stress.” They’d put me in fighting pits, had me face multiple opponents, tested how long I could fight while being electrocuted.
All of which meant I knew exactly how to fight Consortium soldiers.
The next one through the door tried to shock-baton me. I let him get close, then grabbed his wrist and redirected the baton into his partner’s neck. Both went down twitching. I kept the baton. Always good to have options.
Maris had somehow gotten behind them. I didn’t see how—one moment she was beside me, the next she was in the corridor. She moved through them like water, never where they expected, always where they weren’t looking. Her blaster cracked repeatedly. Center mass, headshots. She was fighting to end this, not to wound.
