Portal Collapse In: 58:13

Carter stared at the timer as it ticked down. He'd been hoping that the boss would kill Kade and his team. That'd have been the simplest solution—a clean, honorable death for Kade, and his own hands free from blood.

Lacking that, he'd hoped to ambush the other team while they were fighting. That'd be less honorable, and more complicated, but almost as clean.

Neither of those things had happened. A small part of him was grateful for that; if Kade was dead, he might be able to talk him down, get him to see reason. Deborah Callahan wanted him dead, yes—but she wanted him on her side just as much. And Carter didn't want to do this, but he didn't see a good way out. Not with the team he had. And not with the way they were behaving.

Carter jogged up the stairs behind one of the team's two remaining strikers. The composition sucked for clearing; he'd needed to do most of the work clearing the magical symbol-soldiers, since between the three strikers and the mage, there wasn't anyone else who could sustain any sort of damage. Even their tank had worked herself to the bone to get here, and they hadn't gone fast enough.

"When we get there, you four let me talk to them, alright?" Carter said. "I think I can get them to come around to our way of thinking—especially since they'll be bottled up."

One of the strikers nodded. So did the mage.

But the other one seemed skeptical. He touched the handles of a half-dozen knives strung across his chest like an ammo bandolier, then raised an eyebrow. "Sure, boss."

Carter ignored the eye roll. He hated this team so much, he hadn't even bothered to learn names—except for Leanne. She was the tank, and she didn't seem on board with what the team was obviously built to do. It wasn't a delving team. It was a hit squad.

As they arrived at a ladder, Carter continued to be pissed. And terrified. He needed this to be over, one way or another. He took a single step on the ladder. Then another. "Kade, you up there? We need to talk."

Something fell out from under his hand, and he fell.

It took our attackers all of three minutes to rush up the stairs and hit the ladder.

And in that time, I'd devised a plan, Jeff had signed off on it, and Yasmin had gotten to work.

It was a simple plan. The first phase relied on something I'd noticed about the oncoming team's attitudes and movement. Not a single one of them was stopping to look for traps. We'd removed most of them as we went, so it was likely that anyone moving across the portal world wouldn't have found any since they hit our trail.

Which meant the trapped rung on the thin ladder was a perfect set-up, as the rapidly falling scream indicated.

The other thing I'd noticed was that there were only five delvers in the attacking group. There'd been six thuds, so they'd taken casualties. That meant they didn't have a healer, either, so they couldn't out-sustain us. In a long enough fight, we'd win—especially because once the portal timed out, we'd be thrown into the real world. The longer we could stall, the better.

Which was why Jeff and I were standing on the trapdoor while Ellen and Yasmin watched the walls, as far from the way up as they could get.

It was a siege. And they'd break through eventually; the door was a few inches of wood, but against a dedicated assault, it'd give. But the longer we kept it a siege, the longer Yasmin's Scripts could work their magic, and the more Stamina and Mana we'd regenerate. I was pretty confident that if they had a support, it wasn't as focused on regeneration as Yasmin could be.

The trapdoor rattled below us.

Stamina: 93/250, Mana: 42/250

I closed my eyes as a weapon slammed into the trapdoor and tore another chunk of wood free below us. Their team comp was…no healer, an archer…at least one heavy melee hitter if they were ripping through the door. A tank or fighter. Beyond that, I had no idea what we'd be up against—and they probably knew what we had already. But there'd only be four of them.

"Get ready!" Jeff shouted. "It's gonna go!"

He and I threw ourselves to the left and right, and the trapdoor slammed open. A tank pushed through, armored to the gills and carrying an axe and round shield. Jeff and I both engaged her; if we could stop her from getting through, the rest of her team would stay stuck down there.

She used a skill. I expected a taunt, or a defensive skill of some kind, but instead, she bull-rushed up the rest of the ladder and slammed, shield first, into Jeff. He rolled to the right, spinning to redirect the hit's energy and let the woman pass—right into a brick with a Binding on it. Spikes rocketed up from the ground, then faded as quickly as they'd started, leaving a half-dozen puncture wounds and buckled steel in their wake.

We hadn't cleaned up the whole rooftop.

Instead, Yasmin and I had spent five minutes marking as many Bindings as we could, clearing two spaces for Jeff and me near the entrance, and carving out a ring on the roof's edge that'd be safe for Yasmin and Ellen.

A rogue with two knives was the next person through the trapdoor; he sprinted up, burning Stamina to Dash away from my lunge. "We're breached! Ellen!" I yelled. I spun to face off against the attacking striker as he sprinted around to try to flank me. My feet didn't move—the pocket of safety I was in was barely wide enough for a single step in either direction.

The rogue wasn't ready for what he ran into. By the time he came to a stop, he'd hit at least three Bindings—including a lightning trap I'd put down. He tried to push through, his rank difference offering slight resistance. I didn't want to wade through the traps Mardou had left behind, so I summoned a single Zephyr, Overcharged it, and flung it at my opponent.

It hit his chest. A second later, he hit the ground screaming.

Jeff slammed into the next attacker—a mage—and knocked her right back down the ladder. She hit the brick floor below and screamed; I didn't know what had happened to her, and with a tank trying to get to Ellen and take her down while shadow squares ripped into her armor, I didn't have time to find out. I rushed the tank, sword ready to defend.

She ignored me. Then she ignored my slicing blow across the back of her neck. Chainmail danced with arcs of electricity, but she stayed locked on her target. I hit her again, this time a stabbing blow to her armor. She ignored that, too.

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"I can't stop her!" I shouted. Without Rain-Slicked Blade, I couldn't hurt her unless I found the gaps in her plate—and those were covered with chain mail. She looked less like a person than a walking block of steel, with the exception of her face.

"On it," Jeff yelled. "Switch! I'll keep the girls safe!"

"I can take care of myself," Ellen said. But she said it quietly.

Jeff got close. Then he used his taunt skill, followed by his Unique. The other tank finally used a defensive skill, and both of them hammered at each other fruitlessly. All they were doing was dulling their weapons on shields and armor they couldn't break.

That left me turning just in time to face a second striker. This one carried a saber. I smiled widely.

This would be a perfect test for me. The battle trance rose inside of me. A duel! He wanted a duel! I dropped into a fencing stance while my opponent opted for a more aggressive position. I waited. He lunged, and I side-stepped to the left. I spun. He whirled. Our swords met, lightning arcing onto his blade's edge.

And I shot him in the face with my last Ariette's Zephyr.

We traded a few more blows, but my shot had dazed him, pulping his nose and closing one eye. He just wasn't fast enough, and by the time my sword punched through his leather breastplate, I had both a Lightning and a Rainfall Charge.

I ran across the battlefield, dodging Bindings as I went, and used Rain-Slicked Blade.

My lunge caught the tank in the spine, mid-back, and she collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. She might survive, but her career as a delver was over unless there was a powerful healer nearby when the portal collapsed.

Jeff looked sick. He looked around, sheathed his sword, and tried not to vomit. Then he failed.

"Take your time," I said. It wasn't the first time I'd had to kill someone who wanted me dead, but it was hard to get used to. I pushed it aside for now; there were still two enemies unaccounted for—plus an unconscious striker in the field of Bindings.

I walked to the trapdoor. I looked down. The mage was nowhere to be seen, but a single, black-cloaked figure was pulling himself up toward the floor below the roof. I watched him climb for a minute, letting my Mana regenerate. Then I summoned a single Ariette's Zephyr and let it dance across my fingers.

"Hello there! When you get up, throw your bow back down and surrender. The fight's over up here."

Portal Collapse in: 47:51

Truthfully, I could have easily killed the archer. That Ariette's Zephyr wouldn't have been Overcharged, but it would have been enough to drop him back into the pit. I needed him alive, though. No one up here was in any shape to talk; the tank was down and out, I'd killed the saber striker, and the rogue-looking one was unconscious and—unless I felt brave—inaccessible.

That left the archer to question. Hopefully, he'd have some answers.

We worked our way down the ladder one at a time, Jeff first and Ellen covering everyone with what was left of her magic. Not that the archer was in any shape to fight back; he was clearly out of Stamina, and one of his legs was broken.

"I'll stay here and check for gear and loot," Yasmin said as I waited my turn to climb down.

I shrugged. "Up to you. When you finish, check some of the tower rooms, but be careful. We left a lot of enemies alive all over the place. Keeping alive is more important than equipment."

"Kade, get down here!" Jeff called.

"I know that," Yasmin said. "I'll be careful, and I'll be as scripted up as I can get. Anything goes wrong, and I'm coming right back upstairs."

"Kade!"

"On my way." I stepped down the beat-up ladder, working past the nonexistent third rung from the top, and dropped to the brick floor below. "What?"

"It's Carter."

"Who?"

Jeff rolled his eyes. "He was in the volcanic rock portal with us. We saved him from the Trilith."

Carter coughed from the floor. He'd thrown his bow away; it was about ten feet from him, near the edge of the pit. "We fought it together."

I stared at him. My fist balled involuntarily, and I pulled up my Stamina and Mana before I realized what I was doing.

Stamina: 63/250, Mana: 12/250

The Stormsteel rapier was in my hand. It took too much effort to unsummon it; fury built up inside of me, and it was all I could do not to lash out at the man lying on the ground, leg twisted under him.

"We need to get him stabilized," Jeff said.

"Yeah." I didn't want to. I wanted to leave him there. He was obviously out of Stamina, and the broken leg was the least of his problems, judging by his pale face. "You have your kit?"

Jeff pulled his medkit free and got to work while I watched, trying to get my anger under control. I breathed deep, slow breaths and thought about a conversation my stepfather and I had shared. I'd been in the passenger seat, buckled in and aching from a dozen bruises across my chest, ribs, and face. "The other boy got it worse," I'd said. "I made sure of it."

"Kade," Dad had said, "You kicked him once he was down. I can get you out of this. The school knows it started as self-defense, and they'd listen if I made the argument that it ended that way. But I don't know if I should. You'd already won long before you broke his rib."

I'd shaken my head. "He didn't know that, though."

"Didn't he? He was down. You and I are going to have a conversation about knowing what it takes to end a given fight, because sometimes, a fight's over before one side's dead, and sometimes, it takes the same decisive action you showed today to end it. You have no idea what situation calls for which, though, Kade."

As I stared at Carter's beaten, broken body, I wished I knew the answer. What did this situation call for?

Jeff worked quickly.

But Carter's injuries were pretty serious, and with low Stamina, he couldn't help.

It took a while before he said that, at the very least, Carter wasn't going to die. He coughed again, wincing at a rib. I felt no sympathy; he'd taken a shot at me, and his team had committed to a very stupid assault to try to kill us.

I wanted to know why.

So did Jeff, it turned out. "That should hold you until you're out of here," he said. Then his gaze hardened. "So, what the hell was that?"

Carter coughed a third time. Then he looked at me. "People don't like being told 'no.'"

I almost laughed. It was ridiculous. "This isn't Roadrunner business. That's why you're in those get-ups instead of running around with your armband. The Light of Dawn has no idea you're here, does he? Because I told him 'no,' and he was okay with it. So it's not him."

"Angelo Lawrence doesn't keep track of C and D-Rank teams," Carter said. "He's too busy for that."

"But I'm right, though. This isn't Roadrunner business. This is about Ms. Callahan."

It wasn't a question, and Carter didn't treat it like one. "She's not very happy. She'll be even less happy after this." Then his eyes closed tightly in pain. He didn't open them, and he stopped talking.

I stepped forward, ready to shake him awake, but Jeff's hand pressed on my chest. "Kade, he's passed out. He's done, and we've got eight minutes before this portal opens. You need to get yourself under control and think instead of reacting. What's going to happen next?"

Jeff was right. We had eight minutes; that wasn't a ton of time. I spent one of them re-centering myself and pushing my anger away. I'd forge it into something constructive soon, but not until I had it under control. Right now wasn't the time.

When I came back, Yasmin and Ellen had joined Jeff. All three stared at me. "I'm good."

They kept staring.

"Really, I am. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to appear where the portal was in just under seven minutes, along with a handful of dead or dying delvers. There's a GC rep outside; we're going to explain that something went wrong, and we were able to save a few of their lives. We're not going to report this as an attack on us. And we're going to let him live."

"Why not?" Ellen asked.

"Why?" Jeff blurted at the same time. "He's messed with us twice. I don't want him dead, but he's going to take another shot down the line."

"No, I'm not," Carter said.

"Shut up," Ellen muttered. "You don't get to talk."

I grimaced. "I don't like it any more than you do, I promise. But these guys were sent here by an A-Ranker. Until we have usable proof of that, or we're strong enough to stand up to her directly, we need to lay low and pretend we don't know what's going on. If Carter or one of the survivors up there spills to a doctor, that's one thing, but we need to play this close to our chests. The best way to do that would be to kill him, but I think he's more useful alive. He's a weak point in Deborah Callahan's plans now, but she can't get rid of him either. He's poison, and he'll rot her from the inside."

Jeff looked like he wanted to argue. I cut him off before he could. "We can't fight the Roadrunners, Jeff. Not directly. If we want to survive whatever Deborah has planned for us, we can't let her get involved directly. If we make a serious move, she will. That means we wait."

The timer kept ticking down as, one by one, the rest of the team made their decisions and slowly nodded in agreement.

"Good. Now, let's get out of here, get checked out with the Governing Council rep, and lay low for a few days."

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