Free Web NovelChapter 71: Chapter 71: Craig
The building had been abandoned long enough that the red moss had taken the walls completely, muffling sound from outside. Craig stood before the entrance and nodded once to his left.
The Shade went still. His outline bled away into nothing, presence dissolving. Several seconds passed.
"No other presence," he said quietly. "Either empty or they have a Shade."
Craig glanced at the Wraith. "First through. Intangibility only if something touches you. Not before."
The Wraith nodded, already hazy at the edges, and pushed the door open slowly. The hinges creaked the full length of the corridor. He went in.
Craig followed. Behind them the Shade found the darkest corner of the entrance and was simply gone.
---
They cleared the ground floor without incident. Craig moved through each room with his revolver drawn, feeding a thin thread of life force into it steadily , the Anchor responding to the input with a faint pulse against his palm. The Wraith stayed close, eyes tracking doorways.
The upper floor creaked once above them.
They stopped. Nothing followed.
Craig gestured toward the staircase.
---
The second floor corridor was narrow. Three closed doors. One hanging open at the far end.
They were halfway down when the Wraith dropped into a roll without warning, coming up in a crouch immediately, hands forward.
"Vitality drain," he said tightly. "Someone behind me."
Craig turned. The corridor behind them was empty but the air had reminance of spirit residue.
"Wraith," Craig said. "And something masking his presence, Probably a Shade ."
The far door opened.
A figure stepped through and immediately blurred, outline dissolving, gone before Craig could acquire it.
He didn’t fire. "Six rooms. Potentially four enemies."
He shifted his gaze towards his team.
"Spread," he said quietly.
---
The attack came through the left wall.
A Wraith pushed through the plaster, hand reaching, fingers catching the Syndicate Wraith’s shoulder. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The cold hit immediately , vitality draining at contact, the Syndicate Wraith’s face going tight. He twisted hard and broke contact, going fully intangible for one second, the next grab passing through him entirely.
The life force cost showed immediately. He came back solid breathing harder.
Craig fired through the wall at chest height.
The figure stumbled back into the next room. Not dead. But the concentration for intangibility broke and they hit the floor solid.
Two seconds of silence. Then both remaining doors opened at once.
---
The first enemy came fast, closing distance before Craig could turn fully, one hand reaching for his arm. Craig let it land.
The drain started immediately. Craig felt it pulling , cold spreading up from the contact point and did not pull away. Instead he stepped into the Wraith, closing the distance to nothing, and drove his elbow into the man’s throat with the full weight of his forward momentum behind it.
The Wraith’s concentration shattered. He staggered back solid, grip gone, gasping.
Craig shot him, but missed to the shoulder. The Wraith dropped to one knee, intangibility flickering desperately, too drained to hold it.
Craig left him and turned.
---
The Syndicate Shade had not been idle.
From the darkest section of the corridor ceiling he had been tracking the enemy Shade through perception alone, feeling the vacated spaces the enemy left behind as it moved. When the enemy Shade repositioned toward the Syndicate Wraith he was already ahead of it.
He dropped from the ceiling and landed between them, going immediately back into shadow against the wall, forcing the enemy Shade to redirect. It did, faster than expected, dissolving back toward the staircase end of the corridor.
The Syndicate Shade followed through the darkness, staying in it, trading position signals back and forth in a silent chase that neither of them could win cleanly.
He caught the enemy Shade at the corridor’s end when it had to pass through a lit section to reach the staircase. A fraction of a second of visibility. He fired once.
The enemy Shade took it in the side and went down hard, rolling, trying to dissolve back into shadow and only half managing it. Visible at the edges. Breathing audibly.
The Syndicate Shade pressed his back to the wall and felt the life force cost of the sustained invisibility catching up with him all at once. His legs buckled. He slid down to sitting, one hand pressed to his own side where a drain strike from earlier had landed without him registering when.
He was not getting up quickly.
---
Craig heard the shot from the corridor’s far end and read what it meant without looking.
The second enemy Wraith was in front of him, trying to circle, keeping just outside arm’s reach and looking for a drain angle. Craig tracked him without moving his feet, revolver up, feeding life force through it in controlled pulls. Not firing yet. Making the Wraith spend energy circling.
The Wraith feinted left and went for his arm again.
Craig sidestepped and let the momentum carry the Wraith past him, then pressed the revolver against the back of the man’s shoulder and fired.
The Wraith went down.
Craig turned immediately. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The kneeling Wraith from earlier had recovered enough to stand, still flickering, one arm useless. He looked at his two fallen allies and the Syndicate Shade collapsed against the wall. He made his calculation quickly.
He went intangible fully and moved for the staircase, burning through whatever life force he had left to stay that way long enough to reach it.
Craig tracked the shimmer of him and fired twice at the staircase opening.
One shot connected at the edge of solidity. The Wraith stumbled but kept moving and was down the stairs before Craig reached the top.
Craig stood at the staircase and listened. Footsteps below, then the entrance door, then nothing.
He looked back down the corridor.
The Syndicate Wraith was against the wall, one hand on his forearm, face pale. The Syndicate Shade was sitting, conscious, not moving. The two downed Wraiths were not getting up.
Craig looked at the staircase again.
He lowered the revolver.
"Let him go," he said.
He walked back down the corridor and crouched beside the Shade.
"How bad."
"Manageable," the Shade said, which Craig took to mean bad but not fatal.
He stood and looked at the Syndicate Wraith. "Get him downstairs. We hold until backup."
The Wraith nodded and moved to help the Shade up.
Craig walked to the lit section of the corridor where the enemy Shade had gone down and looked at the floor. The blood trail led toward the staircase. Gone with the last Wraith or crawled out on its own.
He checked his pulse and felt none.
He walked to the wall and put his back against it, facing the staircase, "This was a bad match up for me " He sighed
