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“Got it. B Team’s been informed.”

Nick broke into a full run.

* * *

The explosion shookthe walls and floors of the corridor so violently, Nick accidentally knocked into the wall on his injured side. He didn’t fall––he was a vampire, after all––but it was enough that he grimaced and stopped, and enough that he worried that maybe those two nurses wouldn’t be as protected by the heavy front desk as he’d hoped.

It was too late to do anything about that now.

It was too late to dwell on it, either.

Like it or not, Brick was right about what he’d said.

Something had changed.

This might not be war yet, but Archangel and the H.R.A. and whoever pulled the organization’s strings, certainly seemed to be steering things that way. There would be collateral damage now. There would be innocent people who got hurt.

It was fucking horrible but it was also inevitable.

Nick didn’t jog back in the direction of the clouds of black smoke, not even to look for Malek. He knew the young seer would be safe. Brick and the vampires would look out for him, and they wouldn’t come inside in a way that put any of them at risk.

For the same reason, he made his way straight to the staircase door, instead.

He pinged Mal and Brick’s lines to let them know exactly where he was.

Kit assured them she’d encrypted the headsets so intensely that there was no way any sensors inside the building would be able to crack the signal in time. They weren’t networked to anyone or anything but one another, which made it a closed, iron-clad, impenetrable system, she told him.

Nick had no reason not to take her at her word.

He heard gunfire behind him, the discharge of both hand-helds and plasma rifles, and realized the security team must have already been on their way.

“Your timer was off,” he informed Kit. “We’ve got company.”

“Noted,” Kit said, seemingly unperturbed. “Tai’s on her way. She says she already handled the guards who came from their end.”

“She got through the door?” Nick asked.

“As soon as they heard the signal,” Kit affirmed.

“Send them all images of the plans,” Nick said. “Tell them we’re meeting at the stairs.”

It had been Nick’s idea that they go at it head-on, and have one of the vampires thrall someone into giving them the information before the broader security alarm could get triggered. He figured it would be faster than Kit having to figure out the whole system on the fly.

Kit had enthusiastically agreed.

The job of walking through the front door to do the actual thralling had fallen to Nick, who Brick proudly claimed, “was always the best mind-fucker I ever had.”

Nick didn’t particularly like the title, but he didn’t argue.

He hung a right as he followed the map he’d gotten from the nurses, then a left after he’d passed another four doors. He found himself in a wide corridor with a dozen doors lining each side. He used the map to zero in on the hidden wall panel at the very end.

He immediately showed the corridor and the blank wall to Kit.

“That’s it, right?” he prompted.

“Why are you asking me?” the young woman retorted. “You saw the map, same as I did. I need to work on the security protocols so you don’t get decapitated in there.”

Nick couldn’t really find fault with her logic.