XAVIER

I shot my gun, my hands covered in blood, the gunshot reverberating down the hall and piercing through my ears. The last Raven in the hall dropped to the ground. I turned to find Damien standing in the middle of a disarray of limbs and bodies as he pulled a knife out of a Raven's neck. He had a fresh gash down the length of his arm and bruise just below his collarbone, but it neither was critical. I took a deep breath. This was the second to last floor to the top. We were almost there. This was the final mile.

And much like the games in Evandor, it would be the deadliest.

Though I had been standing near the stairs, I didn't hear them until I saw them. Arielle and Phoenix appeared beside me, covered from head to toe in blood, the exhilaration of a fight in their eyes, the smiles of victory adorning their lips. Fortier's through and through.

"Kind of you to finally join us," Damien said from down the hall.

Phoenix opened her mouth, no doubt ready to give a snarky retort, but Arielle cut her off, instead saying, "I'm glad you two are okay."

Damien shrugged and smiled. "When am I not?"

She looked at me. I wanted to tell her I was fine, but I knew the words wouldn't make it out. I was too tired and my throat far too dry and painful. The hours spent in the Willis Tower and the extensive conversation I had with Ace certainly took their toll. I merely gave her a nod. She nodded back.

Phoenix gave an exaggerated yawn. "So now that we finished all the cheesy reunion shit, can we go finish this thing. I feel like we've been in here for days."

"You're welcome, by the way," Damien scoffed. "If I didn't turn off the Raven's voices we all probably would've still been stuck halfway down the tower."

She narrowed her eyes.

Damien smirked. "Relax, I didn't look at your file. Although the thought did occur to me. Of course, I could still go check now. You know, figure out what world ending secrets the almighty, most notorious thief of Concorde is hiding."

"You even think about it and I will burn every bit of your precious information," she hissed.

"Excuse you, we don't live in the CE era. It's a lot harder than just burning shit down. In fact, I doubt you could even get rid of the least encrypted data that I have."

Arielle rolled her eyes. "As much as I love this conversation, we need to find the Raven Ruler, or anyone important, and get out of here."

"I agree," Damien said and looked at his cuff. "All the bombs have been set up and Alistair should be flying over Chicago. We just need to get to extraction."

"How many people are above us?"

Damien looked at his cuff again. "I'm estimating around 20. There's just a hall connecting the two staircases and one large room which may or may not have a private staircase to the helicopter pad at the top."

"So, you two take the other staircase, Phoenix and I will take this one," she said, pointing at the one they just emerged from. "We attack from both sides and then you get us into the room."

"And then what?"

She shrugged. "If the Raven Ruler is still here, they'll be up there and probably be the most heavily guarded person. Figure out who the Raven Ruler is and kill the rest. Capture the Ruler. I don't think we can plan more beyond that, do you?"

Damien sighed and shook his head. Phoenix offered no response. Neither did I. She was right. There was no way to plan much better for what lay ahead because, despite the time we spent in here, the information Damien gathered, and the people we had run into, we still knew next to nothing about what lay ahead. The Ravens certainly knew how to keep their secrets. I wasn't sure how the Raven Ruler managed to keep everything so tight and secretive but still move all the necessary pieces of a meticulous and grand scheme.

I looked forward to torturing it out of them one day.

Arielle nodded and turned towards the stairs, Phoenix in tow. I followed suit, heading down the hall towards the other staircase. As he followed, Damien mumbled a "Don't die," to which Phoenix responded with a scoff.

I climbed up the stairs, by steps silent. I brandished my guns, my hands loose but firm. As we neared the landing, Damien slipped past me, a grenade in his hand, as he pressed his back against the wall. I did the same, allowing the gap between the door and the wall to cover me. I could hear the breathing and shuffles of the guards above. I counted ten. Nothing we couldn't handle.

Damien nodded to me and raised his hand, about to throw the grenade, but I held his arm and shook my head. He frowned and I rolled my eyes at him. Why won't he just listen first and question later?

Annoying brat.

I merely pulled two silencers out of my jacket and started attaching them to my gun. If there really was another room connecting to the hallway with ten guards present, then we should probably be quiet, give ourselves the advantage of surprise, especially if the room's door is closed. Damien finally used the little bit of common sense he had and understood what I meant. He begrudgingly placed the grenade in his pocket and whipped out a knife and a gun. I checked and double checked my silencers before giving a terse nod.

Damien whirled around the door and flung his knife at the nearest guard so quickly, I wondered if the guard even had time to blink. By the time I joined Damien's side, guns raised, the man was writhing on the floor, the knife embedded in his trachea. The other guards were just about to turn around.

I started to fire.

From the other side of the hall, Arielle and Phoenix leapt out from where they waited for our signal, understanding our intentions as they cut through men with only their knives and blades. They whirled down the hall, weaving chaos as two silent hurricanes of death.

In under a minute the hallway was a sea of blood and dead Ravens. The four of us stood at the center of the hallway, looking at the ornate french doors that were shut tight. The Raven symbol was etched into the grey metal though the Raven's eyes and the jewels of the Combined Crown seemed to be adorned with stark red rubies and glistening sapphires. This had to be the Raven Ruler's office. Their seat of power. Their throne.

So Damien chucked a grenade at it.

We ducked behind the walls and covered our ears as the door shattered, flying off its hinges, spewing the doorway with dust and rubble. Shouts of confusion and ineffective orders filled the hall. Arielle slipped inside, using the debris as cover. Judging from the absence of gunfire, she hadn't attacked yet. She was using the opportunity to quietly get behind their line.

Good.

And then the sound of gunfire echoed through the hall. Arielle had attacked. Our turn.

The three of us followed inside, taking advantage of Arielle's distraction as we launched ourselves at the last of the Ravens. Phoenix cut through the Ravens with a pair of knives while Damien shot them down, one by one, with deadly accuracy. I merely looked around the room, taking in the fine details despite the chaos which had ensued.

Save for the doorway and the back wall, the room was surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. No doubt, the windows were heavily shaded—shaded enough to look abandoned and completely unused despite the numerous bright lights lining the room. Stairs peeked out from the back wall, leading up to the helicopter pad that Damien mentioned.

I narrowed my eyes. That didn't make sense. The fact that there were stairs up and they seemed to be clean and well maintained implied that the Raven Ruler regularly used the helicopter pad to get in and out of the base. But, if there was such obvious activity on the roof of the tower, how did we never sense it? How did it fly under the Assassin's radar?

The gears in my mind shifted, the pieces of the puzzle starting to click into place. I had my suspicions, but I would need more information to back it up.

I looked around the rest of the room. A desk sat in the corner with two monitors—both with bullet holes in them—and burnt remnants of files. No doubt the Raven Ruler had destroyed any personal information left behind and the desk must've been scrubbed of fingerprints and DNA. We would find no useful information there.

I scanned the Ravens themselves. The few remaining ones huddled towards the back of the room, blocking the staircase. As if guarding a person who had climbed up.

Interesting.

Arielle, Phoenix, and Damien were attacking them rigorously, picking them off one by one. So I merely leaned against the wall and watched as they dropped like flies.

At last, Arielle slit the neck of the final Raven and took a deep breath as blood spilled from his neck. The room was mostly silent now as if it was taking a sigh of relief now that the fighting was over. But I didn't wait for the body to drop before I started for the stairs, calmly climbing up. Behind me Damien groaned, no doubt about to complain about there being more stairs and, possibly, people. I paid him no mind as I reached the door. I held my gun up before slowly pushing the door open.

A chill breeze whipped my face as the evening sky finally came into view. I stepped out onto the roof, climbing onto the helipad. The city sprawled around us, a river crawling through the myriad of buildings to my left, the glittering expansive lake in the distance to the right. Still my eyes were only focused on the roof before me, scanning the helipad.

And there he was, standing just a little ways away beyond the center. His dark eyes met mine. He was waiting for us.

He wasn't the Raven Ruler.

No, that would be too easy. He was the man that William Johnson spoke of. The mysterious man who was rumored to be the Raven Ruler's right hand. The most powerful member of the Ravens, second to only the Raven Ruler themselves.

He was the Lieutenant. And he knew who the Raven Ruler was.

I smiled.

The Lieutenant lifted his chin. "Xavier Kingston, Crown Heir of the Intellects," he greeted in a silky voice as the rest gathered next to me. The door slammed shut behind us.

"Lieutenant," I rasped as loud as I could without flinching. My voice still hadn't healed.

He didn't seem to notice the effort it took to speak the single word. He tilted his head. "I thought you would be smarter."

I scoffed as I felt the bile rising in my throat. I pushed it down. He was trying to distract me. I wouldn't let him.

Arielle raised her hands, motioning to the roof around us in a grand gesture. "I'd suggest you keep your insults to yourself. After all, there's nowhere for you to run. This is the end for you. How you act decides whether it would be short and painless or long and excruciating."

He laughed. "You're so sure it's my end. How do you know it's not yours?"

And then the wind around us picked up and I knew that my suspicions were right.

I held out a hand, motioning for everyone to take a step back. Arielle looked confused, but she obliged silently, Damien and Phoenix following suit.

The painting in my mind shifted as another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

We couldn't see the cameras in the tower, but they had to have been in the bare halls, tracking our every move. The Assassins and numerous investigators couldn't seem to track down the Ravens or the Willis Tower despite the large amounts of obvious activity. When the Ravens broke Eveleen Fluor out, there was a sedative gas that seemed to stay within her open cell, like an invisible wall was blocking it. And the Raven Ruler seemed to have flown under our radar no matter how much we tried to track them down.

But that was because they weren't trackable at all. Just like Nefaria's capital, Isolone, the Marble City, was untrackable and entirely invisible from outside its walls.

Which meant the Ravens had set up a base in Nefaria, the Nation of Thieves, extending their shadowed force beyond even the continent. It meant that the Ravens discovered Nefaria's biggest secret—a way to replicate their Invisibility Technology.

And, it meant that the rooftop was not nearly as empty as it seemed.

I grasped Arielle's arm this time, pulling her back further as the winds picked up even more, her hair whipping about, and the sound of helicopter blades filled our ears.

"No," she whispered, realization dawning on her.

Sure enough, a split second later, the air before us seemed to rustle, waves spreading like a single drop of water falling into a vast sea. And then, where there was nothing before, two slick black helicopters appeared, one descending upon the roof. Two large guns were poised along the front end of the chopper. And they were aimed right at us.

"Shit," Damien cursed as he backed into the door and twisted the knob. It didn't open. He twisted again. It was locked. He cursed violently, fumbling for something in his pocket. Phoenix shoved Damien aside and knelt before the door, pulling out lock picks as she added to the collection of creative curses.

Arielle raised her blade, but the helicopter landed, blocking our view of the Lieutenant. After a moment, the door facing us slid open and he peeked through, giving a wide smile. He shouted a few final words that sent my mind whirling.

"The Raven Ruler sends her regards."

Her.

He shut the door again and the helicopter lifted up, swaying a little in the process. Damien started shouting as Arielle and I ran down the helipad, rushing to the door.

"Phoenix, hurry!" Arielle shouted.

"I am!" she hissed back.

Behind us, the first helicopter rose far away before the exterior started to rustle again and waves of air seemed to cave back in until it disappeared into thin air. The other one lowered, leveling itself as it hovered a few feet above the helipad. Tiles of the exterior of the helicopter started to slide away, revealing four guns which slipped out, like a turtle extending out of its shell. They were whirring and clicking into place as they loaded up.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" Damien shouted as he held an electric grenade in hands, ready for use. It wasn't wise to use it against a massive helicopter in such close range considering the fact that helicopters tended to fall when bombed, but it was starting to look like we wouldn't have much choice.

The guns gave one final click before they fell silent. They were ready. I bit back a curse. They started to move, trying to find their target.

Come on, Phoenix.

At last they stopped, each gun aiming for one of us. I clenched my jaw as I looked down the end of the barrel. Damien brought his arm back, ready to throw, finger on the pin.

"Phoenix!" Arielle shouted one last time.

And then there was the sound of a click.

"Got it!" Phoenix shouted and the door swung open.

Finally.

We all turned towards the door. The helicopter opened fire.

Damien threw the grenade.

A loud bang pierced my ears as the electricity hit the metal hull, sending shockwaves up and down the helicopter. Muffled screams drifted from inside. And then the helicopter started to sway.

"Shit," Damien whispered.

Shit indeed.

I pushed Damien through the door, following just as the helicopter blades hit the roof. Metal screeched through metal, the blades tearing through the helipad and scraping against the roof. The glass windows shattered, sending splinters flying. I pressed myself against the wall of the staircase, trying to find cover from the deadly pieces. Up ahead, Phoenix halted before the first landing, also finding cover against the wall as the helicopter blades tore into the first floor, sending splinters every which way across the room. Sparks flew against the metal.

And then it was quiet.

The blades whirred to a stop, the screeching halting, the guns silent. The only sound was the torn roof groaning under the unbalanced weight of the destroyed helicopter. It was only a matter of time before the roof collapsed completely and crushed us in the process.

"We have to get out of here!" Damien shouted.

"How?" Arielle asked. "The doorway and the roof are blocked."

"Window," I shouted as loud as possible, my throat scraping against itself like bricks colliding.

"They're bullet proof," Phoenix argued. "I checked earlier when I was trying to chuck someone out."

"Lucky for you," Damien said as he pulled a bomb out of his pocket. "I have more things than just bullets."

"I've had enough of your bombs for one day," she said, pointing at the helicopter and the gaping hole in the ceiling.

"My bad. Next time I'll let you all just get shot and die. Now move," he swatted her aside, making Phoenix's eyes flare, but she kept her mouth shut. Arielle raised an eyebrow at me as if I was the one who taught him terrible manners. I raised an eyebrow back to convey that it was a ridiculous accusation. She shook her head in dismay and looked at Phoenix who watched with a blank stare. Arielle quickly averted her gaze.

I brushed past both of them, checking the helicopter for any signs of movement as Damien walked down the side of the room, looking at each window. He was trying to determine which one he could safely blow up without causing the already fragile roof to crumble prematurely. Finally, he deemed a window worthy enough and stuck the bomb onto the glass pane. I looked at the positioning of the bomb and nodded my head in approval, though he didn't appear to notice or care.

Asshat.

"Back up," he ordered and we all took a few steps back. He flipped open his cuff and simply clicked a button. We plugged our ears.

There was merely a bang and then, before I could even blink, the window was gone, the bomb along with it. It was hard to tell just how much damage the bomb caused as the shards and dust and smoke combined with the rest of the carnage.

The roof groaned again, the helicopter tilting a bit further into the room, sending chunks of the ceiling and clouds of dust falling down. Arielle and Phoenix froze, their wide eyes glued to the helicopter. Damien didn't bother, instead peering out the window. We knew the bomb most likely sped up the roof's destruction, but it wouldn't fall. Not yet anyways.

As expected, the helicopter stilled and the roof steadied out.

"Lucky bastards," Phoenix hissed under her breath.

"That's not luck," Damien shot back as he pulled a red flare out of his jacket. "That's intelligence."

Phoenix rolled her eyes. Damien held a hand out to her. "Lighter please."

"Don't any of you have one?"

"We don't smoke. Bad for lungs and cardio."

"And teeth," Arielle added.

"I don't smoke either."

"But you did always carry a lighter around when we were younger," Damien said. "Don't really remember why. Wasn't it something about being able to burn a building down on a moment's notice? Ironic considering the only building you ever deemed worthy to walk through was the Palace."

I felt the ends of my lips quirk up.

She glared. "You remember why perfectly fine."

Everyone in the room probably did. During a game of truth or dare, Phoenix got cocky, saying that she was the only one bold enough to actually complete all of the dares, no matter what they were. So, Damien dared her to burn down a wing of the Golden Palace and when Phoenix argued that she didn't have the means to do so, he merely borrowed a lighter from a servant that we knew secretly had a drug addiction and handed it to her.

She kept the lighter in her pocket, saying that she would do it later when she wouldn't get caught. She hadn't done it for a whole month, saying that she would get around to it really soon whenever Damien asked. She always kept it in her pocket as "proof" that she was intentional about completing the dare, and when her parents asked why she was carrying a lighter around, she merely said it was just in case. Of course, we all knew that she wasn't doing it out of fear of her father and losing her place in the line of succession over a simple dare. But, by the time we could call her out on it, she ran away, disappearing for eight years.

"And it wasn't exactly one of my proudest moments," she mumbled. And then she reached into her back pocket and pulled out the same exact lighter. It was silver with a faded red engraving on its side. The edges were lined in black.

"But yet you still carry it," Damien smiled in pride for having guessed that she would. Phoenix scowled. Arielle looked mildly surprised, though her gaze was pinned on the helicopter.

Damien lit the end of the flare, making it glow red with a hiss. Within moments, a golden fighter jet was lining up beside the window. The doors slid open to reveal Alistair and Dominic.

"Ready for pickup?" Alistair shouted. We nodded. Dominic stepped aside, pressing a few buttons on the side panel of the plane. A narrow platform started to extend itself from the plane's floor, creating a pathway. It was slow. Too slow.

I looked behind me, watching the precariously tilted helicopter, before turning back to Damien and shaking my head. He immediately got the cue, having identified the same worrying signs in the helicopter's state as I had.

He shouted to Dominic and Alistair, "We don't have time! We have to jump!"

Alistair furrowed his eyebrows, but merely nodded. He knew better than to doubt Damien's decisions on these kinds of things.

Damien turned to the sisters. "Ladies first."

Without a word, Phoenix ran across the floor and jumped, springing over the looming gap and slamming straight into Dominic and Alistair's waiting arms. Arielle nodded at Damien. "Go."

He jumped next, his feet landing only halfway onto the plane, making him tip over towards the open air. He would've fallen if not for Dominic and Alistair pulling him inside.

I went next, sprinting across the floor and jumping right at the last second, soaring through the air, cold wind snapping around me as I landed in the plane, perfectly balanced. I raised an eyebrow at Damien who grumbled some excuse I couldn't quite hear. By the time I turned around, Arielle was already standing right behind me, her landing not making a sound.

"Pull away!" Damien ordered as Dominic shut the doors. The jet tilted to the side as it flew past the tower and turned in a wide circle until it was facing the Willis Tower again, but from much further away. My head spun from the turn, but I kept my focus on the tower before us. It looked so small and insignificant from this distance, but yet it held the power to destroy us all.

Was that why the Assassins had become so careless, so weak? Because we peered at everything from a city that was so high in the sky that we were blind to the parasites that ate away at the very foundation which kept us up? We had been the strongest force on Earth for years, but now we're collapsing, brick by brick, tumbling towards the ground far below that we had ignored all this time.

I shivered. None of us would survive if that happened. I wouldn't let it happen.

The roof finally caved in, making the helicopter disappear entirely in a cloud of dust and smoke. The windows of the top three floors shattered as fire consumed them whole. We would've been dead if we had stayed even a while longer.

Arielle looked to Damien, blue eyes stern. "Did you set the bombs?"

He nodded.

"Then detonate it."

He flipped open his cuff, but hesitated. "What about the people in the city?"

"We evacuated them as soon as Tressa Richards left the tower," Alistair said. "They've been taken to the other side of downtown."

After a long pause, Damien finally asked the question he really wanted to ask. "What about the others in the tower? Indigo Fluor? She and her friends are valuable assets."

Her friends.

Nydia.

Arielle said nothing. Phoenix furrowed her eyebrows, confused as to why Damien seemed to care. But, before she could speak, I said, "Doesn't matter. Do it."

I winced at the pain in my throat, but stared straight at Damien. He seemed to understand what I was saying.

They had passed by us a long time ago and the Ravens' main focus was on us, not them. They most likely would've gotten out by now, and even if they hadn't, Indigo was an Alpha Unassailable and Fortier, Ace a Kingston, and Nydia an Alpha Intellect. They would find their way out, one way or another, for better or worse.

Damien, at last, nodded. He pressed a few buttons on his cuff before taking a deep breath and clicking it one last time. There was a moment of silence.

And then the Raven base exploded.

A series of bombs denoted, shattering glass up and down the sides of the tower, scattering dust every which way. The tower teetered for a moment, miraculously balancing for one final moment before it started to collapse in on itself.

It fell straight down, each level collapsing onto the next, the mere force of the above floors propelling it further and further down like a crater. In seconds, it tumbled away, fading into the cloud of dust which now swarmed the air. Plumes of smoke rose into the sky as flashes of fire seemed to flit through the fog, reflecting off the dust cloud like flashing lightning. It almost looked beautiful. Fire and destruction often did.

There were a few distant booms and the ground far below seemed to shake. The underground tunnel network connecting the tower to the rest of the city seemed to be collapsing by the shock, completely destroying any remnant there was of the Ravens' work.

The Ravens' presence in Chicago was over.

Damien released a sigh as Arielle slumped in a chair, letting her eyes fall shut and the exhaustion take its toll. Phoenix merely leaned back against the wall, staring at the fallen tower, though her eyes were glazed, her mind far away.

I wanted to collapse into a chair, let sleep have its way, perhaps drink a soft tea to soothe my throat. But I couldn't relax—not now, not just yet. We might have destroyed the Raven base, but we were nowhere near the end. There were still Ravens spread across the country in small groups, and possibly more Ravens in other nations, ready to strike on a moment's notice. They possessed the notorious cloaking technology of Nefaria which would be nearly impossible for the Assassins to track. The Raven Ruler was still at large, free to stir up more trouble and revive her forces, and we were only incrementally closer to figuring out who she is. And, of course, Ace Kingston was leading a Rebel group that knew far too much information and had somehow managed to recruit some of the most powerful players left on the board. If Ace could get them riled up and make them all fight on the same page, they could become a genuine threat.

I cleared my throat and clenched my jaw as the jet swerved away, heading towards the Golden City, turning its back on the smoke filled sunset. I wanted to rest, wanted to find some semblance of peace again with Arielle, Damien and my father, wanted to be able to mourn my mother, perhaps write her a song as a final goodbye. Maybe I would even try to learn how to sing it despite my throat's fragile state. I would do that much for her. But I couldn't, because I knew one thing.

This was just the beginning. And the worst of it was yet to come.