Page 13 of Synnr's Ride

Something felt... off about that. It should have hurt, should have left him staggering. Instead he almost felt like he'd absorbed the energy.

An Apsyn trick. Surely.

"What—" Hanna's question was cut off when a drone caught their movement and swooped in.

Jori sprinted away, leaving her to fight just as she'd abandoned him in the previous mission. He needed to head southeast, but landmarks were difficult to come by. With Hanna distracted, he used the opportunity to climb one of the platforms and get a look at his surroundings.

There. He couldn't see his target, but there was a temple spire that marked the correct direction. He jumped from one platform to the next, covering even more ground and only needing to backtrack once to avoid a drone hovering off the edge of one of the platforms.

Victory was in his grasp. Hanna was probably still stuck fighting that drone.

He wouldn't celebrate victory before it was his.

Jori had to carefully climb down from the platform he was perched on. The lockbox had moved from its previous position. Now, instead of a platform, it was sunken into a recess in the floor, nearly two meters deep. Easy to get to, but he'd be a defenseless target for whatever guarded the keys.

He needed a distraction.

He needed Hanna. If he threw her in, the security measures would target her and let him go on his merry way.

She had the same idea. His only warning was a footstep behind him before a kick landed straight in his back, sending him sprawling, but not quite over the ledge into the pit.

"Are you made of cement?" Hanna demanded as she dodged away. Her wings were out again and Jori had to ignore them, even as part of him wanted to admire their beauty. The variance in their color, the depth of them—it wasn't something you saw every day.

He shot his spark her way before he could get too lost in admiration. Hanna grunted but didn't go down.

"How are you doing that?" she demanded.

"If you haven't learned how to use your spark, we're both dead." She was trying to distract him. Playing dirty. And he was falling for it. No more responses, he promised himself. They didn't need to talk to fight.

He shot out his spark again, missing her, but it gave him cover to rush in close and sweep her legs, sending her backwards into the pit.

Hanna screamed as she fell and somehow managed to right herself and latch onto the edge of the pit. Her scream of surprise turned to terror and pain, and Jori paused.

Nothing in the obstacle course could kill them.

But accidents in training happened all the time.

"It's got me, Jori!" Her words were sheer terror. "It hurts. Ohbrazit hurts. Help!"

He was at war with himself, but he'd never heard someone fake such desperation before. Jori rushed in and reached for her hand. "Come on, I've got you."

They could always reset.

Hanna made a sound of gratitude, but her breathing didn't even. Instead of taking his hand, she clamped onto his wrist.

And that was when Jori knew he'd been had.

She put her entire bodyweight into it and tugged him down into the pit with her, twisting in the air until he was the one that landed flat on his back as the air was knocked out of him.

Dirty Apsyn spy.

Hanna straddled his waist and grinned down at him, her hand clamped over the wrist she'd grabbed. "Aren't you the gentleman, Jori Harek?" Her words were a caress and a knife.

He arched against her, trying to buck her off, but she had leverage. And his body liked the feel of her far too much. His blood was pumping, adrenaline flowing through his veins, and he was helpless to stop the reaction.

If she felt the thick press of his cock, she didn't show it, and that was its own small mercy.

With her free hand, Hanna reached into a pocket on her uniform and pulled out a strange black device. It took Jori a second to realize that it was the laser housing from the drone she'd fought.

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