I crossed my arms self-consciously, and pulled Hunter’s sweatshirt tighter about me. Warren ignored the curious undercurrent and knowing glances that met our joint arrival, returning the group’s focus to the point at hand.
“Safe zones,” he said, positioning himself in the cavernous room’s center, “have now become the least safe places for us in this city. Therefore, we need to rethink our place in this valley-indeed, in our entire world.”
“You mean now that there’s no place for us to hide outside of the sanctuary.”
I automatically cringed. Gregor hadn’t meant it as criticism, but I still felt it as such.
Warren, though, uncharacteristically shrugged it off. “It doesn’t matter.”
I tilted my head, unsure that I’d heard him right. “What?”
Warren fisted one hand on his hip, the other raking through his short, choppy hair. “Obviously I’d prefer if the Shadows were the ones hamstrung by a lack of safe zones, but we feel it as a loss only because we’ve known the alternative. This is what I mean by reconceptualizing our world. We must now reimagine our territory.”
“I’m sorry. Are you telling us to…think cheery thoughts?” Felix clearly hadn’t forgiven him for keeping them in the dark about Midheaven’s existence. “What? And it will all go away?”
“I’m saying check the attitude, son. Change your mind, and you can-”
“Change the world. Yeah, yeah. Got that memo.” Felix crossed his arms. “And we still have no safe zones.” He shot me an apologetic look when I ducked my head again, because his anger wasn’t for me. But Warren was too obtuse and stubborn and focused to note it, or care. “So what’s your suggestion, hide out in our sanctuary?”
“I suggest,” Warren said coldly, “that we don’t hide at all.”
An appropriately dead silence met that proclamation.
Warren’s mouth lifted at one side. “Inside the safe zones, we are vulnerable to our enemies’ weapons-”
“While they remain impervious to our own,” Tekla added, opening her eyes. I realized she already knew what Warren was going to say. However, the rest of us were still in the dark.
“But outside of those zones…”
Warren trailed off, waiting. And, slowly, one by one, understanding crept over each face. Outside of those zones, our weapons still worked. We could still fight. Hunter was the first to voice the new thought. “We just don’t enter the safe zones. We meet them, only and always, in our city.”
“That’s where we take our stand,” Riddick added, punching a fist into his opposite palm. “On the streets.”
“That’s our even ground,” Jewell added, with a lift of her chin.
“But we don’t do it alone. We do it back to back. In teams.” Warren jerked his head at our surgeon…and scientist. “Micah.”
Micah had moved to a table containing what looked like a fire extinguisher, and we all watched as he pointed the hose and nozzle toward himself. “This is a fortifying preservative. Chandra and I have been working on it for some time now. It defends against attack.”
He demonstrated by spraying his thigh with a mist that fell like a spider’s web over his frame before disappearing. Then he whipped his conduit, a pristine scalpel that caught light as if drawing it in…and plunged it into his leg.
Jewell screamed.
The scalpel bounced off of him…and the webbing rippled with the after-effects, then fell away, dissolving on the floor.
“And now I can be injured again.”
“So it’s a shield?” Gregor asked, touching the nozzle. A shimmering strand adhered to its tip like a piece of chewing gum as he pulled his finger away.
“More like a fire retardant over clothing. You’re safeguarded for exactly one strike.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean, I can see its use if we’re ambushed, but why do we need a protective layer in training?”
“For the same reason Tekla just walled in the entire warehouse,” Warren cut in, joining Micah, and crossing his arms. “We’re in an all-out war, but right now the stakes are higher for us than for them. Right now we’re off-balance.”
“And in order to regain our footing,” Micah said, motioning with his reclaimed scalpel, “we need to train harder than they do.”
I was happy to don all the protective layering I could-I’d wear a hazmat suit everywhere but the shower if it meant unconditional safety-still, I was missing something. “But we’ve never worn protection while training before.”
“Because we’ve never done a live-fire exercise before.” He gestured to Micah and smiled. “Suit up.”
The others lined up to be sprayed like bugs, but I just stood there. Live fire. That meant full force. And that meant training with the intent to kill.
Friendly fire, live fire, playing with fire…I couldn’t afford any of it. So while everyone else crowded Micah like they were being crop-dusted, I slipped behind the plastic partitions and joined Warren. “I don’t have a conduit.”
He shrugged as he busied himself with what looked like a brand new iPhone. He hadn’t missed a beat in dropping his hobo cover. For some reason, it made me want to iSmack him. “Then work on your defense.”
Sure, no big deal to him. Throwing walls up into the air, like Tekla had when covering my retreat in Chinatown, was as important as remembering to hold your breath underwater. But if I missed? If I threw something up even a nanosecond late? Bye-bye defense, and bye-bye Jo.
“Jo! C’mon, it’s your turn!”
Warren turned his back to make a call, effectively shutting me out. So I trudged over to Micah, still searching for a way out of this without letting on that I wasn’t much more than a fast, bitchy mortal. “How protective is this coating?” I asked, as he sprayed my skin, clothing and hair. It felt like roll-on antiperspirant gliding over my entire body. I sniffed, expecting to smell powdery.
“It’ll deflect any conduit once, no matter how hard the impact. Don’t worry.”
“Can I have two layers?”
He gazed down at me from his seven-foot height, and gave a fatherly sigh. “Now that’d be cheating, wouldn’t it?”
“But I’m the only one without a conduit,” I argued. “Two layers will even the playing field…and it’ll be better for my partner, too.”
“Nice try. But your partner can take care of him- or herself.”
He looked less sure of this when Warren named him as my partner, but it was too late. The preservative was back on the other side of the partitions. Meanwhile, Gregor and Jewell had paired up-a senior agent with a junior-as had Tekla and Riddick. Hunter was paired with Felix…two senior agents, and the strongest team here.
Warren, as usual, took the center spot in our huddle. “I want full force contact here, kids. Don’t hold back. These are Shadow agents. They’re trying to kill you, weaken your troop, and overtake your city.” He made eye contact with each of us before turning away. “Tekla will run the drill.”
“Wait,” I said, stepping forward. “Where will you be?”
“Back in the panic room.”
“Why?” Hunter asked, sounding wary.
Warren’s answer was a flat look. Without another word, he turned and walked away.
Riddick twirled his conduit, a pencil-thin steel rod with hooks on the end, and everybody cringed. Dental tools. Fuck, they were scary. “So, um…once the protective layer’s breached, stop attacking?”
Tekla smirked, as she pulled out a weapon similar to my crossbow, though with a retracting chain and anchor. I’d seen her remove hearts with that, leaving behind a warm body, still standing. “We’re battling Shadow agents for the welfare of our city. A little reminder of what a conduit can do under controlled conditions won’t hurt anyone. Just be sure to pull that punch.”
A pulled punch, I thought with a sigh. Just a little something that could maim me. I dropped my head to my hands as I thought about battling my allies…for my life.