Page 88 of Tyton: The Spider and the Dragonfly
Sparx climbed up the ladder with the rest of the rope.Talia removed the last of the bolts from the access hatch and set it aside.
“Sync into my Opti.”Talia poked her head in the hatch and peered into the room below.
“I see everything just fine.”Sparx grinned.
“Gah.Stop looking at Tornit’s arse.”Talia yanked her head out of the hatch.
“Oh fuck, I didn’t know two-way video comms were on.”Sparx raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“I swear to god, if the last thing I see is a man-arse or a penis, I will haunt the everloving fuck out of you.”
Tornit smiled garishly while Sparx tried to hide his smirk.Neither of them appeared to regret anything.
“Are you serious?I’m on a rescue mission and you two can’t stop acting like jackasses?”Talia pointed a knife in their direction.“How did we not have a revolution sooner?”she muttered.
Tornit shrugged.
Sparx exchanged glances with him.“That says more about you than it does about us.”
Talia glowered.“Anyway, Opti works, but they must be jamming hers.”
Sparx held his breath and turned pink.
“Grow the fuck up.”She put the knife between her teeth.
Sparx pursed his lips to keep from laughing.The seriousness of the situation made it worse.“I’m sorry.I deal with anxiety through humour,” he squeaked.
“That requires you to be funny.”Talia held out a device.“When this goes off, anyone with a functioning strength amplifier patch in a 50-metre radius will go down.”The knife made it difficult to talk, but Sparx understood.
“Including Callie?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Talia removed the knife and rolled her eyes.“Because I modified it.”
“What?When?”
Talia thought.“About a week ago.We were in bed.”
Sparx’s face contorted.“God, lesbians are so weird.”
“Pay attention!”Talia shoved him.“As soon as I’m at the bottom, run and wait for Sesi.If this goes off and you’re too close, you’ll go down too.”
Sparx nodded sharply.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to torch anything that reads wide beam code and keep using it for a little while longer.”Talia nodded to Tornit and put the knife back in her mouth.
Tornit flexed his metal fingers and tore the housing of the transformer box.Sparks flew from the panel, but the current didn’t appear to bother him in the least.He located and tore several cables.Hexaline lights powered down and Talia heard shouts of alarm.
She rappelled down, activating the repeater.Bodies dropped in the dark all around.Talia swivelled toward a corner for cover, just in case the lights returned or an emergency backup switch tripped.
She rechecked her equipment – five knives and two IntelArms pistols she’d picked up at the base.Those were last resort and if she had to use them, she probably wouldn’t survive.Neither would Callie.“Fuck it,” she muttered.“If she goes, I go.”She dropped the pistols and palmed the knife in her teeth.
Talia scanned the place with her Opti.All Hexaline.No biosig sensors functioning, no cameras that she could see.Tornit had done his job well.
Two hallways with multiple heavy metal doors branched off of the larger room she was in.It would take at least ten minutes to check them all, assuming they had no curtain on the inside blocking the wall from viewing.She could take the repeater with her, but as soon as she was out of range, the disabled cultists would revive.Talia considered killing them all, but she hadn’t paid attention to how many drops there were.One left would fuck the entire mission and this one was too important.
