The fire blazed all around them, but Thief marveled at the ease in which Devil Boy operated. He knew Trey’s skin was naturally fire resistant, but even he had to feel the heat around them. Temperatures had shot up well past the hundred degree mark. Thief could already feel dehydration setting in.

Devil Boy didn’t even slow in these conditions. He charged from one room to the next. He threw open each door in turn and searched for students inside. So far, they had found no sign of the missing members of the student body, but that only drove Devil Boy harder. Thief straggled behind him, just trying to breathe as they continued deeper in to the burning academy.

Devil Boy threw open another door. He ran in to the room as Thief staggered up to the door.

“Thief, come here!”

Thief ran in to the room. One of the youngest students, a nine-year-old purple skinned biomorph named Tatiana, huddled beneath the sprinkler system in the center of the room. In the shape of a young camel, she shivered as she looked up at the new arrivals with imploring eyes.

Thief ran across the room and took her in his arms. In the calmest voice he could muster for her he said, “Tatiana, I’m going to need you to turn in to something lighter if we’re going to get out of here. Can you do that for me?”

Tatiana’s body shifted in his grasp. A few moments later, he held a purple ferret. She scurried up to the collar of his soggy t-shirt and slipped beneath it.

“All right, we found one. Now let’s get out of here.”

Devil Boy nodded his agreement. He took a second to survey the bedroom. They were in an inside room, completely windowless. He tracked out in the hallway. He didn’t bother to check the handle on the door across the hall. He threw out one hoofed foot in to the center of the door. It shattered in to splinters.

Devil Boy gestured to Thief and Tatiana. “Hurry up! You can go out the window and get to safety!”

As he strode across the heat damaged room, Thief pulled an escrima from the holster on his leg. He slammed the staff hard in to the window. Glass rained down to the floor as well as the ground below. Tatiana leaped from his arm and shifted in to the form of a pigeon. She fluttered out the window and to the ground below. Thief climbed in to the window and looked at the ground far below. He thanked his lucky stars for all the training for just such a situation Bagheera had put them through. He remembered how useless he thought it was at the time. But now…

He turned back to Devil Boy. “Come on!”

Devil Boy shook his head. “Not until I’ve made sure no one else is inside.”

“This is a deathtrap! You can’t stay in here any longer!”

“You know I’m fire resistant. I’ll be fine. I can’t let any student die in this! You get to safety!”

“No, I’m not leaving you, Trey. Not again!”

“I didn’t ask.” Devil Boy lunged forward. His shoulder caught Thief in the back. Thief found himself suddenly plummeting to the ground.

He landed feet first and rolled forward. One full barrel roll later he stood up with only a few bruises. Alter, his skin composed of some kind of dark mineral, ran up to meet him with a blanket. Alter wrapped it around Thief’s shoulders and pulled him away from the burning school.

As they reached the rest of the students, an explosion once again rocked the grounds. Thief turned and watched his worst fears realized.

Fire burst from every window of the school’s top floor as glass, brick, and mortar rained down in the wake of the last explosion. The school was now fully engulfed by the flames.

Nothing and no one could survive inside that inferno. Not even Devil Boy.

Thief dropped to his knees. His eyes never left the fire. He could say nothing, think nothing, as he watched his heart burn away in the blaze.

*****

The blast of energy engulfed Blaine Dresden and sent him flying across the room. Rubicon raised his weary head to see the source of the blast. Dressed in green, yellow, and black armor, the new arrival dropped from the hole in the ceiling. In his hand he held a massive staff with a head pattered like that of a cobra.

The armored man unleashed a pair of bursts at the Order’s other attackers. Their remaining foes scattered at the attack.

“I can hold them off momentarily,” the armored man said. “But I can’t defeat all of them at once. Do you have a way out of here?”

“Who are you?”

“Do you really think we have time for that now? My name is Set and I’m here to help you.”

Rubicon sneered at the man’s tone. “They’ve cut off my primary and secondary exits. And my manufactured means of egress above us has been cut off by that monster.”

Set looked up at the chomping maw of the tyrannosaurus rex above. “He’s our best bet. Can you stay with me in flight?”

“I am Rubicon. I can do anything I wish.”

The armored man gave a slight nod. “Follow me.”

Set blasted up and in to the air, straight up through the damaged roof. He raised his staff above him and blasted the dinosaur in the snout.

The creature growled and fell back. Rubicon took to the air and followed Set skyward. The dinosaur raised its head and roared as they passed.

“Come back here, you bastards!” The voice was a deep throated growl. It took Rubicon a moment to realize it was in fact emanating from the massive t-rex. The creature wasn’t a dinosaur at all, but another degen.

Rubicon paused to ponder this only for a moment before he heard Set’s voice from above. “Come on! Before they can give pursuit! If we have any chance of stopping the Order it begins now!”

Set shot off across the horizon. Rubicon pushed the flow of air around himself to follow as best he could. He doubted he would appreciate where this newcomer lead him. He also doubted he would have much choice in the face of the order. Like it or not, they were partners now.

*****

“That’s it,” Feud said.

They looked through the heavy brush in to a large clearing. A large steel bunker filled most of the clearing. The structure was windowless except for two gunnery stations at its top. Both machine guns faced downward, unmanned. The building had only one massive door, large enough to allow vehicles inside. It too was made of solid steel.

The grass around the clearing was trampled down by heavy foot traffic. Bagheera had no doubt this was the home of the Little Weapons. He would see Project Eshu destroyed today.

“Can you get us in,” Blake said to Sagai.

Sagai studied the large metal door. “A concentrated blast should get us in, but it will leave my spear drained for several hours. I do not see any other choice in this matter however. Eshu must be stopped before they can sell any more of these abominations.”

“Agreed,” Blake said. He turned to the others. “Feud, Bagheera, we need you to provide cover for Sagai while he gets us inside.”

Bagheera shook his head. He sniffed the air again. “Not gonna matter. They already know we’re here.”

Feud looked around. “He’s right. I can feel them all around us.”

Blake yanked his HK416 upwards just as the first of the Little Weapons showed themselves in the trees above. The rabid child-beasts dropped down on them.

Blake furiously fired round after round from the rifle, but it was Feud who scored first blood. All four arms shifted in to blade form as she cut a swath through a pair of the bio-engineered attackers.

Sagai unleashed a burst of energy that bowled through three of the weapons as more and more of the creatures appeared. But the numbers were too high, and Sagai’s will to murder children, no matter in what form they took, was too weak. The Little Weapons swept over him. He disappeared under a mass of the Eshu killers.

Bagheera bounded up and around the trees, selectively striking at a Weapon here and there before returning to a perch. Already he could see that their enemies were far greater in number than they ever expected.

Feud continued to slice and rend her way through any attackers that came too close, but even she was now feeling the pressure of their assault.

Blake emptied the last cartridge of the HK416 and threw the rifle aside. He moved to his Desert Eagle, but already the Little Weapons were too close.

Bagheera roared a war cry and leapt down to help his friend. He slashed a claw through one Weapons chest, and then whirled around to take the face off another with his other claw. He pounced forward and struck two more Weapons, slicing them from sternum to groin with his claws. He kicked a foot out at another of the little beasts as it charged Blake. His hind claws extended and sliced across the monster’s throat.

But four more Weapons attacked him from behind. Otherwise weaponless, they scratched at him with sharpened nails and fanged teeth. He could feel each slash burn through his blood. He realized that the creatures carried poison on their teeth and nails. Which means they are not meant to survive this fight either.

With a furious cry, Bagheera threw the Little Weapons off of him. He cut threw three more creatures as they sought to take their brethren’s place. He would not give up this fight today.

The shadows of the jungle seemed to flicker around them. A burst of air rushed across them as a sudden boom rippled through the jungle. A wormhole suddenly twisted and turned in front of the Project Eshu base. Through it stepped two women. The first was a girl of maybe twelve, Hispanic in origin. The crackling energy of the wormhole poured from her skin.

The other woman held herself like a queen. Her skin was pristine and perfect, a deep mocha in color, ordained by a breast plate and belt of gold. Cloth woven from the finest silk fell over her hips and thighs. The silk shroud over her face glistened with gold and jewels. Bagheera could feel the malignant energy as it oozed from her skin. Whoever she was, he knew she was true evil.

She turned to face the battle. She raised one hand towards them. Beams of force hurled from her palm. Blake and Feud were pounded down instantly. Bagheera threw up his arm just in time to block the blast. He felt the bone turn to powder beneath his skin. He let the arm drop limply to his side as he bounded towards his attacker.

A dozen Little Weapons dragged him to the ground yards before he could reach her. They ripped and clawed at his skin as he struggled to break free.

The woman walked towards him and looked down with an imperious glare. “Bagheera, is it?” Bagheera struggled harder at her words. It served only to bring a smile to her face.

“No need to fight, animal. You are only the first of your kind to fall before the power of Nephthys. She raised her hand. Bagheera saw the burst of energy shoot from her hands, before everything disappeared in a torrent of unending pain.

Nephthys turned to the Little Weapons. “Bring him and the others. Our foes will surely appreciate the sight of their friends trapped in our embrace.”

The Weapons said nothing. They silent formed into groups of four and lifted Bagheera, Feud, Sagai, and Blake. Nephthys guided all of them through Pathway’s portal. She smiled. Soon her plan would come to fruition and after thousands of years, the world would be hers.

*****

Fire trucks encircled the school. Firefighters from as far away as Spokane were now at the school as they worked their hardest to keep the fire from spreading in to surrounding forest. EMTs and paramedics helped those with minor burns or injuries, but the teaching staff and most of the older students that comprised Epsilon 3.0 were gathered together in the school’s secondary staging area beneath the garage. The jump-jet was directly to Athena and Flint’s rear as they addressed the rest of the assemblage. Thief, Balloon Boy, Alter, Cyberpath, Cheetangus, Mindset, and Psalm listened intently. Solid and Wave were still topside, assisting the fire and rescue crews.

Athena looked to Flint. Flint slowly nodded to her before she spoke.

“I have no doubt in my mind now about Psalm and Mindset’s story, nor Set’s. Today we suffered a planned and coordinated attack by the Order of Nephthys. This was a declaration of war against the Eastman Academy as well as Epsilon. We can ill afford to treat it as anything less.”

Flint continued where Athena left off. “The fires started when Desdemona Faust was brought on to campus severely injured. Somehow her powers were amplified beyond her control. This caused her to literally explode. Her death set off a chain reaction of other incendiaries seeded around the school.

“We’re not sure how the incendiary explosives were planted in the school,” he continued. “As all of you know we have sensors buried three deep in our walls, all meant to prevent anything like this from happening. Our working theory is that they were planted when we were attacked by the government cybersoldiers. But that does nothing to explain the failure of our own tech to sniff them out.”

Athena stepped closer to the other epsilons. She looked over each one in turn as she spoke. “Only one explanation exists for the system breakdown inside the school. Sabotage.” She paused to briefly look back at Flint.

“Which means one of us is a traitor.”

Alter snapped to his feet. “Are you accusing all of us of betraying the school? All of us have spent our entire life here!”

“I know,” Athena said. “It hurts me to even think it. To even contemplate that one of our own may not be on our side. I can only hope that their actions were not their own, perhaps performed under coercion.” Her gaze fell on Thief.

Thief’s vision slowly rose from the floor as the room fell silent. He had heard every word Athena said, but still his mind was on Devil Boy. The anger boiled up in him as he met Athena’s eyes.

“Me? You think it’s me? Goddamn you all!” He rose to his feet and lunged towards Athena. He grabbed her by the shirt collar. His free hand yanked the escrima free of its holster.

Flint moved towards them, but Athena threw up her hand to signal him to stay back.

“The love of my life died in that fire! These bastards took my family, my lover, my entire life, away from me today. And you have the audacity to blame the fire on me?”

Athena shook her head. “No, but I needed to be sure.” She reached down and pulled his hand free.

“You see, even with your stealth ability you don’t have the technical savvy to bypass all our security protocols. The upgrades we made after you entered the Mainframe would have guaranteed that.

“But Smith’s security protocols were so deep that not even the best hacker in the world could have accessed the systems of this school. They were designed to be truly unbreakable. Unless you could make the computer systems do exactly what you want.”

The sound of a lone set of hands clapping filled the room. Everyone’s eyes turned to the clapper.

Cyberpath stood on top of his chair with a grin on his face. “You finally figured it out, you stupid bitch. It took you quite long enough. I’ve been fucking you over for months now, selling info to the highest damn bidder. And all you idiots just looked at me like some kind of lovable damn leprechaun. Well, fuck you all.”

Cyberpath yanked a futuristic handgun from his pocket. He immediately raised it and fired it at Flint. Flint’s body shook as electricity flowed through his body. He dropped face first on to the floor and lay unmoving.

He waved the gun around him. “Now which of you bastards is next?”