City of Loons by T.D. Fox

Author:T.D. Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction, Teen & Young Adult Dystopian, Teen &Young Adult Superhero Fiction, Young Adult Slow Burn Romance, Young Adult Urban Fantasy, Young Adult Suspense, Young Adult Sci-Fi, Teen
Publisher: T.D. Fox
Published: 2021-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

11. PRICE

“YOU’RE LOSING YOUR touch.”

Cassandra let the body hit the floor with a crimson smirk in W’s direction, wiping the blood from the cuff of her sleeve. She slipped the knife back into her belt, the heels of her boots clicking down the now-empty hallway.

“Am I?” W replied, stepping over the fallen man.

“That’s two I’ve had to save you from,” she sang over her shoulder.

“That’s a reach. You were closer. He’d have hit you first.”

“The fact that I kept his bullet from finding your neck still stands.”

W chuckled, longer strides catching up with ease. “My body count’s higher than yours.”

“You knocked that last one over the head.” Cassandra’s melodic laugh echoed down the hall. “He’s probably still breathing, down there, ready to get up in a minute or so.”

“We’ll be long gone by then.”

The two of them kept pace in silence for a moment, eyes alert, guns ready. The small facility tucked behind AITO’s string of nondescript warehouses on Westside Orion wasn’t heavily guarded—likely, the Director thought weapons and medical equipment invited more risk than a tiny research repository. But it still had a solid layer of security to get through. In the two months since their attack on the main AITO compound, W had kept his raids strategically unpredictable. Jeanine’s resources were spreading thinner and thinner across the city to try and keep up.

Adjusting his grip on the gun, W let his gaze slip over the woman at his side. His oldest field partner had no Change-enhanced senses or abilities—no Change at all, in fact—but W knew Cassandra would sense a threat as fast as he did. Reflexes rivaling his own, her skill on the field was matched by none. For this two-person job, there was no operative in the Dugout better equipped to be at his side. Yet, W would have almost rather gone alone. Beneath the airy banter, he felt the strain between them like a chill wind. His old partner, once able to read his every move with telepathic accuracy, now watched him through the distant, curious eyes of a stranger.

Perhaps he was the stranger.

“The file room should be just up ahead,” he said, more to fill the silence than anything. They needed only one file—one that would augment his own research in fine-tuning the drug he’d painstakingly created to trigger a dormant Change—but the rest of the research stored here might prove vital down the road. “Take what you can, and then set the charges. We’ll have two minutes.”

“I’ll have us out in one. To keep to your long gone aspirations.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “You always were the ambitious one.”

“I seem to remember that description fitting you better.” Dark eyes flickered up to him beneath long lashes. “The dethroned don’t soon forget upstarts who swept half a city out from under them.”

“You sound almost as if you’re still salty about it.”

“Tsk. All’s fair in love and war, darling, but to see those same ambitions sinking...” Her heels clicked into harder, quicker strides. “It’s quite a disappointment.

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