Shards of Memory [English - Under Revision]

Chapter 14: Rescued the Queen

Blaise's Point of View

We took the stairs two at a time, boards shuddering under our weight. Below us, the boys held the front and the first floor—steel on steel, boots, shouting, the crack of wood splitting. If they broke, this ended now. If they didn't, we still had minutes at best.

Ryder covered my back, close enough that I could feel his breath. At the landing the corridor ran blind, every door sealed, the air thick with dust. I swept my palm along the wall until my fingers hit cold plastic. Ryder's hand pressed over mine and flicked the switch. A jaundiced light coughed on.

One door at the end. Heavy. Reinforced. I glanced at Ryder; he nodded once.

Locked.

"Step," I said.

He did. I planted, sprinted, and drove my heel just inside the latch. The jamb tore, hinges screamed, and the slab folded inward, skidding across the floor and throwing up a curtain of dust.

The room stank of old water, smoke, and blood. Two faces peeled out of the haze like a bad memory: Leo, idly spinning a chain threaded with clipped razor blades; Niel, cracked mouth wet with spit, grinning as if this were a show.

"Well, well," Leo drawled. "Long time no see, Blaise."

Ryder's voice stayed even. "You know them?"

"Hard to forget those faces," I said, knuckles flexing. "Rot sticks."

Niel dipped his head and I saw who he'd been looking at: Skylane, on the floor where the beam's shadow fell, breath shallow, wrists chewed raw by cuffs. My vision tunneled.

"Your knight finally shows," Niel cooed. "Fairytale ending, yeah?"

"Touch her again and I end you," I said.

Leo's smile barely twitched. "If you live long enough."

A handgun barked behind me—one clean shot. A man I hadn't clocked yet toppled at my feet, blood spraying the planks. Ryder slid his pistol back into his waistband like he'd just set down a pen.

"Watch your six," he said, already moving.

Shapes poured out of the far corners—eight, then ten in the span of a heartbeat. The room detonated.

I hit Leo first, a straight right that snapped his head and sent him staggering, then let him go. Priorities. The swarm crashed in. Ryder ghosted left and met the first with a forearm to the throat, stepping inside the swing and ripping the guy's arm across his body so the elbow popped. The man screamed; Ryder shut him up with a palm strike under the chin and pushed him aside like trash. He flowed straight into the next—gun still holstered—using the dead man's body as a shield as a knife flashed. Metal sank into flesh not his; Ryder buried a short hook to the kidney, then a downward hammerfist into the bridge of the nose. The knife clattered. Third man came high with a pipe—Ryder ducked, forearm checked the wrist, other hand trapped the bicep, hip turned: the pipe cracked the first guy on the rebound. Efficient. No wasted motion.

Someone hooked my jacket from behind. I snapped a back kick into his sternum and felt the breath leave him. Before he hit his hands, I hauled his hair and introduced his face to the floorboards twice, hard. He stopped moving.

Another rushed me with a knife. Fast. Too fast. Steel kissed my shoulder and tore skin open. Heat punched down my arm. He smiled.

I didn't.

He lunged. I sidestepped. The blade lodged in a timber beam with a dull thunk. I dug a fist into his gut—deep enough to fold him—then finished with a shin across the temple. He fell limp.