<blockquote><div><cite>Saiai wrote:</cite>Raice flopped his head. They'd get the bitch. They would. But why? He wouldn't promise SHIT if Merelli died, and he voiced it.</div></blockquote><br/>"Don't tempt me," the man sputtered.<br/><br/><blockquote class="uncited"><div>Jenten said, "Never heard of the Midnight Guard. Who are they?"</div></blockquote><br/>"I'm one of them.  Shifters."  He coughed violently.  "Werewolves."  He said the word with some derision, as if talking down to Jenten.  "Sleeper agents.  The House's elite spies.  More questions.  Quickly."  Merelli's eyes strayed to Jenten, wide in utter shock and fear.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>At the same instant that Arget's bullet tore through the guard on her right, Alhanda brought her feet up underneath the screaming, peeled wolf atop her.  Then, with a powerful thrust outward, she sent him hurling at Arget while also arcing her legs outward into a lunge that brought her back into an upright stance.<br/><br/>The other guard, meanwhile, took a blow to the head from Arget's wrench, his helm denting from the impact and his whole body going slack with the shock.  The machine gun in his hands began to fall as the Lady's feet touched the ground and she regained sight of their attacker.  Just as the airborne, skinless wolf was reaching Arget's position, the Lady was reaching a hand down to one of her calf-plates...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The group was making its way rapidly through the catacombs, led anxiously by Halvorson to find their point of entry and get the hell away from the Palace.  But when Sara's grenades went off, sounding her death knell, Halvorson stopped mid-stride and looked back down the way he'd come, his flashlight arcing across the walls.  He caught sight of Baz and Mad Adam on rear guard and quickly averted his gaze from them.<br/><br/>The medic, satisfied with Feign's reassurance, stood aside and tried to catch his breath.  The boy Karogen was standing there, looking frustrated as he carried the old man.  Halvorson turned his eyes and his light forward again, and started moving, but he decided he might as well speak his mind as he did.<br/><br/>"We volunteered for this.  I know my reason."<br/><br/>He couldn't put any more of what he thought into words; the walls about them, lined with the dead, soaked his words up like sponges.<br/><br/>The telltale glow of Seth's shell was nowhere.  Even Feign's keen eyes could see no hint of it from any of the paths that branched off of their current one, nor could Baz's sharp ears pick up any hint of a clacking limb on the stone.  Mad's extrasensory perception could only pick up whispers on the air, little self-absorbed mutterings of hunger... and rats.<br/><br/>O'Toole began to stir on Halvorson's shoulder, her eyes fluttering in the dark, but he didn't notice.  The old man's breath was weak as he hung over Karogen's arms.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Maeve hurriedly shuffled Feldana into cover beneath the sleeping bag to allow Dreamer to do his grisly job without her seeing.  "All highways lead to the Desert Vein," she said, and pointed at a road parting through her fields off to the left.  "We can follow that road to avoid downtown Sombquist, but eventually we'll have to rejoin the main highway that runs through town.  Then take that northeast until we reach the Vein.  Then it's just a straight shot east until the river."  She glanced and Sherra and Kitten a moment, then said, "Clent Station is the gate to House Shenzai, Dreamer.  It's so small the rebels may not have taken it."  She began to wonder just how she was going to remain comfortably concealed for such a trip when a new idea struck her.  "Excuse me... Kitten?  Turn on the radio.  Maybe we can pick up a bulletin from Kazmer and see where we'll be safe for sure."<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Vultana's killing of the guard atop the Palace sent the firefighters and other personnel assembled there into a frenzy.  While most ducked for cover, some guards worked their way up to the inside edge of the spire-studded walls, trying to see out across the way.  Word about the sniper had already been relayed, and these guards were carrying scopes - some were simply looking through spyglasses, while others were panning their vision across the skyline through high-power sniper scopes.<br/><br/>Her efforts at shooting out the antenna weren't amounting to much.  The roof was hardened against siege and most forms of aerial attack - it would take far more than a rifle slug to pierce the armor covering the antenna's vulnerable wiring and circuitry.  However, the sparks and ricochets off the armor aided the guards in determining the direction their attacker was firing from.  A handful of glinting lenses turned in Vultana's direction, searching...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The wolf in Jania's ass fell limp from suffocation as she ploughed her way through a thin wall in the building closest to her position.  It was an office building, long since evacuated by the authorities to lessen any direct threats to the Palace as their defenses were being set up.  The wide, gray lobby was empty, save for a security desk and a few doors.  Elevators were set into the rear wall... and between them was a line of vending machines: two soda dispensers, a cigarette machine, and a snack machine.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Chiro's way up was still clear, and above the alarms, the unmistakable sound of Arget's voice permeated a doorway a few flights up, screaming "BANZAAAII!!"  A gunshot rang out, as well as an agonized scream and a series of thuds.<br/><br/>Mag could see Chiro hesitating in the stairwell.  She could be on him in one quick lunge, if he didn't move immediately.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Fenson was helping the remaining members of Merelli's brigade clean up the battlefield, moving bodies to and fro and trying to bring strength into his muscles after his rest within Iln's belly.<br/><br/>Janus hesitantly approached Iln, stepping lightly in the blood-soaked grass.  She still looked troubled, as if she were watching something terrible happen right before her eyes, but there was nothing there for her to look at.  Gingerly, he reached a hand out low, a gesture that was partly a wave and partly a move to lay a reassuring grasp on her arm.<br/><br/>"What's the matter?" he asked softly.