Page 69 of Night in a Waste Land

“There’ll be guards on the roof,” he said. “Make sure your suppressors are on. Let’s move.”

They picked their way carefully over the rooftops, leaping narrow gaps, and slipping on rare steep slopes. When they were behind the townhouse block, amid the rear units, they crouched down behind an air conditioning unit that didn’t look like it had worked even before the First Rift. Shubert had enough money to burn electricity, apparently: in the house, beaming up through a skylight, and down on the street, a yellow glow off the building facades opposite. It backlit the men prowling the roof, hulking silhouettes with slender rifle barrels sprouting over their shoulders.

“I count four,” Tris said.

“Five,” Gavin corrected. “The one over on the corner.”

Lance took a steadying breath and tried to form a strategy. Once the first one was hit, the others would know something was up. If they had radios…or if one of them shouted, and alerted the troops on the street, who most certainly had radios…Lance didn’t want to open things up with a firefight; it would give Shubert a chance to flee, and if he was like Castor at all, he had secret doors, stairwells, and tunnels that would get him off property while they were busy mowing through hired goons.

Morgan said, “If I may?”

Lance turned his head to regard her, met only by a small, serious face, flyaway white-blond hair glued to her cheeks with rainwater.

Over her head, he met Rose and then Tris’s gazes. Tris shrugged. Rose nodded.

He said, “Go for it.”

“Alright.” The girl took a deep breath, pressed her hands flat to the AC box, and shut her eyes. After a moment, she shuddered.

Lance glanced up and over, just in time to see the five guards freeze, and then fall, boneless, to the rooftop. Above the patter of rain, he could hear the clack of their rifles hitting gravel. None of them had bothered to catch themselves or slow their falls.

Gavin let out a low whistle.

“Shh.” Lance said, “Morgan?”

She swayed a moment; Rose caught her shoulder and steadied her. Then she sighed and opened her eyes. “That should keep them out for about twenty minutes, I think.”

“That’s a helluva trick,” Lance said. “Can you keep doing it?”

“She’s getting tired,” Rose cautioned.

But Rose squared up her shoulders and looked steadier on her next inhale. “No, I’m fine. I can do it. That’s why you brought me, after all.”

Rose’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she didn’t argue.

“Let’s go over, then,” Lance ordered, and they moved.

When they’d leaped over to the correct roof, he paused to nudge at one of the guards. The man’s head lolled, and his eyes stayed shut, his hands lax where they’d landed at his sides.

However she’d done it, it was a very useful skillset to have on hand.

“Bastard,” Gavin muttered, over the by skylight.

Lance joined him. Through the pollution-clouded glass, he caught a glimpse of a wide, high-ceilinged room cleaner and more decadent than any they’d set foot inside in recent memory. Gleaming hardwood floors, pale couches and chairs with dainty legs; gilt mirrors on the walls, and he spotted the intricate arms of a crystal chandelier. The room blazed with expensive electric light, and a woman in a white dress reclined across a chaise lounge, reading a magazine while a TV played to itself on the wall, unwatched.

“Nice to see he’s sparing no expense,” Lance muttered.

“That his girlfriend?” Gavin asked.

“One of them, at least. Morgan?”

She was already drawing up beside him, hands pressing to the glass. A moment later, the magazine hit the floor, and the woman slumped down on the chaise, eyes fluttering shut. A black-clad security thug hit the hardwood like a felled tree.

The door was locked, but easily jimmied; Shubert had been confident in his staff, and in his own power. A common mistake among this crowd, in Lance’s estimation. A stairwell led down into the beautiful room where the girlfriend and her guard lay unconscious. It smelled of chemical lavender, and spilled wine. The furniture all over, Lance thought, was mismatched. A rich man buying up things he thought looked lavish, without an eye for cohesion or style.

Morgan froze in the center of the room, stark still, head cocked at an angle. “There’s a conduit here,” she said, tonelessly. “Heaven-born. Like me.” A beat. “Not like me at all.”

“Okay,” Lance said, tension winding in his gut. “We can handle that. Stay behind us, help where you can, and keep clear if we have to deploy a Wraith Grenade, okay?”

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