"MOVE."
The word filled the corridor. Eric's hand came up as if the web might follow it for emphasis.
I came off the wall with Azure's hand still in my right, my ear tracking the wind coming up the corridor toward us. The pressure change was a physical thing against the skin of my face. Four seconds. Maybe less.
Code came through and gave nobody time for an introduction.
The first two Guardians were down before the rest had turned — blades through both necks and out again in the same motion, a wet precision that left the bodies still upright for a fraction of a second before the floor took them.
The ones nearest us were quicker. Guns came up. Rounds went off — the cracks filling the corridor, rubber and live mixed, the smell of propellant sharp in the closed air — and he was already inside the distance where any of that mattered, close enough to slip a barrel and cut the hand holding it.
