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Loki felt the helicopter as much as saw it?right before he saw the RPG launcher rise up from one of the small, black-clad dots hunched against the west wall.

Releasing Jax, Loki pinged Rex to take him.

He raised his sidearm, aiming at the human with the RPG.

He immediately felt the pain of a seer trying to get into his light.

He aimed the gun with his left hand and arm anyway. He gasped as he tasted blood in the back of his throat from the Barrier hits.

He squeezed the trigger.

The sound felt distant, far away.

The man holding the RPG crumpled.

“Go!” Loki shouted through the link. “Now! Everyone go!”

The team broke cover the instant Loki spoke.

They darted over the driveway and to the grass surrounding the fountain, only to split around the broken cement ornament. They ran in a jagged group, legs flashing. They all aimed for the single gap in the wrought iron fence?a fence that still marked the boundary between the White House grounds and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Rex and Loki continued to drag Jax.

Kalgi ran on the other side, covering them with her rifle.

Mika limped beside her from a hit in the leg.

Loki felt Balidor’s team now, too, fighting in the Barrier against seers working alongside the Navy SEALs. He felt the Adhipan overpowering those seers as he ran. Then Balidor’s people were helping them actively, shielding them from attacks, pushing the aim of human soldiers off track enough to give them a window.

Even so, Loki felt the humans scrambling around the fallen SEAL with the RPG.

He felt them fighting to untangle the weapon from where he lay.

Loki felt fliers coming, too, mechanical security bots.

He knew most would be equipped with armor piercing bullets and even grenades.

But the window might just be big enough.

They were barely twenty yards from the Chinook, and Loki thought with some amazement that his team might actually get out of this alive.

Then, something hit him really hard in the head.

Everything around Loki went dark.

Chapter19

Restless Nights, Restless Mornings

Ifought my way back to consciousness, beating back fleeing flickers of dream.

Reluctance lived there.

A big part of me wasn’t ready to come back.

I highly doubt I was reluctant to leave behind those apocalyptic glimpses of light and dark, the pain of memory and loss around things that hadn’t even happened yet. Living in that space was its own kind of torture. It was more like I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Maybe I was just more afraid ofnotknowing what lay ahead.

I wanted to be forewarned. I wanted to pretend I felt prepared.