Page 11 of Synnr's Ride

"What is it?"

She shot a burst of her spark down the ladder. "There's a robot trying to climb up. We're stuck here."

"Fine," Jori spat, like the word was a curse. "You want to do it like apuntingspy, give it a shot."

His attitude on clandestine work was going to be an issue, but Hanna pushed it to the back of her mind. She breathed out her worries and found her center. She couldn't deal with the robot, it wasn't a problem yet. She needed to get to the other tower and grab those keys, and then they could go home.

She crept forward, crouched low, and eyed the structure beside the tower. There. It looked like a rivet, but it was out of alignment, just a smidge. She was betting it was the sensor that triggered the drone.

Hanna summoned her spark and aimed, lashing out in a controlled blast that seared the sensor and made the drone shrilly beep for three seconds before it fell out of the sky.

One obstacle down.

Hanna flared out her wings. Zulir couldn't fly, but they could glide a little. The second tower was a bit lower than the one she was standing on. She was pretty sure she could make the jump. But once she leapt, there was no coming back for Jori.

She came back to herself just enough to hear the sounds of a struggle behind her. He was fighting the robot, which had managed to get up the ladder and was trying to get onto the roof. Jori had the upper hand, but if the robot got all the way up, he wouldn't stand a chance.

Too bad.

Hanna timed her jump, waiting until the pendulum was in the middle of its swing. She spread her wings and fell.

Hanna glided past the pendulum and landed on the lower platform with too much speed. She had to take a couple of steps to slow herself down, and even then, she still crashed into the wall at the back of the landing.

"Jori, get your ass over here!" They were almost home free, they just needed to finish this.

She examined the pedestal that contained the controls. Nothing special about that. Hanna tried to open the box on top, but there was a small lock. She forced it open with her spark.

Yellow lights flashed, sirens blared, and the lights came back on as a voice over the speaker announced: "Mission failed. Exit the training field and prepare to reset."

Hanna glared down at the locked box. Was it her spark? How had she messed up?

Then she looked back toward the platform where Jori was supposed to be and saw him pinned under the robot. It had a blaster pointed at his head but removed it after a moment, backed away from him, and made its way to the corner of the platform.

"I thought you had that!" Hanna yelled across the distance. She looked for a ladder or stairs, but didn't see any. She flared her wings and jumped off, gliding down to the floor, feet sinking into the padding around the structure.

Jori took two bounding steps and leapt, flaring his wings at the last second. Hanna's breath caught at the display. Mostly blue, with highlights of white and darker blue, his wings were a thing of beauty. And the second he landed, he pulled them back in. His face was a wash of anger as he stalked past her.

"What happened?" Hanna asked. "I was seconds away from breaking into the box."

He let out a growl of frustration but didn't look at her. He stopped at the edge of the training field where there was a screen mounted to the wall, and started scrolling through menus.

"Talk to me." She didn't like to fail, and she liked the silent treatment even less.

Jori whipped around, spark dancing in his eyes and anger making his voice harsh. "It's a teamwork mission, Apsyn. What did you think would happen when you abandoned me to face a bot that takes two people to defeat?"

"And I was supposed to know that how?" She stepped close, got up in his space, and matched his glare with her own. "You spent the entire time we were up there shouting orders as if I was your lackey. We're supposed to be partners. Equals. You're supposed to listen to me too."

"You're a spy." There was vitriol there, but his eyes flicked down to her lips, just for a moment.

Oh. Oh no. It was one thing for her to have an inconvenient... awareness... of the Synnr. It couldn't be reciprocated. That way led to disaster.

And if her heart was beating a little faster, she'd blame it on the exercise. It had nothing to do with Jori.

"Ex-spy. Ex. And why do you have anything against spies? They're just as important as soldiers."

Now he scoffed. "Because a knife in the dark kills all the same?"

"I've never assassinated anyone." She wasn't proud of everything she'd done in her short-lived espionage career, but that wasn't a mark she had to clean away.

---