Chapter 805: Burn it

The operator stared at the dark display after Andrew ended the call.

Behind him, someone asked what the Prince had said.

"Burn the site."

The older technician beside the records cabinets stopped packing.

"With us inside?"

The operator looked toward the indicator for the lower workroom. Three members of the night staff were still there, trying to recover equipment they had been told could not be abandoned.

He reached for the internal channel, but before anyone answered, the disposal formation lit beneath the cabinets.

Someone at the upper control station had obeyed.

Heat struck his face when the first cabinet opened. Pale light ran across the stored records, stripping the marks from the plates before the material itself began to glow.

The technician dropped the case he was filling.

"Get the others out."

The operator tried the lower door control. A warning appeared over the indicator. The room had been locked while the disposal sequence isolated the site’s equipment.

He had seen that procedure tested on an empty section.

It had not seemed important then that the door stayed shut until the heating cycle ended.

Now someone was striking it from inside.

"Open it!"

The operator looked at the upper station. A supervisor stood behind its barrier with one hand still on the disposal controls.

"We have orders," the man said.

"They’re still below."

"Take the clean records and get out."

The trapped workers were still shouting below. The operator no longer cared which records the supervisor wanted saved.

He pulled the local door panel from the wall.

The supervisor shouted at him, but the technician crossed the room and stood between them. The older man shoved the dropped case aside with his foot.

The operator kept working at the panel.

The lower latch had a manual release for maintenance. He knew where it was because he had complained about having to reset it after the test.

His fingers slipped on the hot cover. He wrapped his sleeve around his hand and tore the cover free.

The door below shifted, releasing smoke into the stairwell. The first worker appeared through it.

One of the others was dragging a woman who could not put weight on her foot. The technician went down to help, bracing himself against the hot rail with both hands when the stairs shook. The operator turned toward the nearest external channel.

Beside the broken channel controls, the small receipt plate was still in its slot. The operator pulled it free before the heat reached the casing.

His own acknowledgment was on it. So were the times he had accepted the observation orders and passed information upward.

He could break the plate and say he had only worked on the doors.

Another cry came from the stairs.

The people outside needed to know why the site was burning. If he destroyed the last instruction with his own name, he would be helping the man who had just ordered them all left inside.

He kept it.

The ordinary line had already been cut.

Through the narrow window, he saw armed people moving on the far side of the service road. They were watching the site, not running from it.

He smashed the window with the removed panel.

"There’s a workroom below!" he shouted. "People are still coming up!"

One of the figures looked toward him.

The operator held up his empty hand so the man would stop reaching for a weapon and hear him.

The soldiers would find his acknowledgments on the plate. He kept his hand raised and shouted again for help.

***

Andrew saw the broken window through his All-Seeing Eyes.

He watched the operator wave to the people on the road, then turned his attention to the upper station. The supervisor was trying to keep the disposal sequence running while the others opened the lower section.

They were wasting time arguing over people Andrew had already written off.

Andrew let that view go.

The departure formation in front of him had finished opening. Beyond it waited the next prepared space, quiet and clear. He had checked the route before returning his attention to Proxima.

The Asura crystal remained in his storage ring.

He touched the ring once, feeling the sealed crystal inside. Its power had severed Adam’s contact. That was enough to make stealing it worthwhile; it was not a reason to stand still and invite the Emperor to try again in person. Andrew still had no mastery of the power sealed inside it. He would learn more somewhere his escape did not depend on frightened clerks obeying quickly.

A fresh image reached him as he looked toward the vampires’ receiving route.

The woman with the swords was leaving. The male successor had returned through their opening and remained behind.

Andrew watched her turn toward the relay district.

She could cross the distance quickly. If she went straight to the remaining controls, his people would have little time to destroy what they had kept.

Then the lower floor of the observation site broke.

The woman changed direction in the air, aiming for the side where the trapped staff were trying to climb.

Andrew smiled without amusement.

He knew which loss she had chosen to prevent first.

She might still save a control plate or a fragment of the post’s records. His own passage was already open, beyond the staging connection his operators could access. He would not wait to see what she recovered.

He crossed the prepared opening with the crystal still in his ring. The passage accepted the route he had set, and he closed his side of it before turning back toward Proxima once more.

The woman had reached the burning building.

Andrew moved on.

***

Mingyue caught the falling wall before it reached the stairwell.

Frozen space spread beneath the broken section and held it above the people trying to come up. The nearest soldier stopped at the road when she signaled for him to keep the others back.

Heat poured out through the window.

The fire was being fed from within the building. Freezing its outer walls would trap that heat around the people still breathing inside.

Mingyue cut an opening through the upper side instead, letting the smoke and hot air rise away from the stairs.

"Keep coming," she told the workers below.

A man carrying someone else’s case looked up at her. He dropped it and took hold of the injured woman’s other arm.

They climbed toward the opening she had made.