The door to the server room was unlocked when Ash arrived. The only person inside was the Director, who was sat at one of the computers, intently typing away.
"Ash," the Director said without glancing up. "You shouldn't be in here." He clicked the mouse a couple of times. The computer made an unpleasant error noise, and he responded with a sigh.
"We were supposed to defend this room," Ash said. "Someone said they saw the Fortuna Guard come in here."
"Yes. You're too late. Do you know where Claudia is?"
"Roof, I think. She said going to leave soon when I last saw her." Ash's eyes moved over a strange diagram on the wall behind the Director. "Why?"
"Never mind," the Director said. "I thought I might be able to disable their flash drive's program, but I don't have time."
"How much longer do we have?" Ash had heard the announcement about the Fortuna Guard planting a bomb, but he'd been in the middle of a fight and hadn't caught all of the details.
"Just over twenty minutes."
Ash glanced at the door. Many altered had gone up to the roof already, but he'd heard a few discuss chasing the Fortuna Guard down to the lower levels on his way here. "We need to get out of here, anyway," he said. "There's something running around downstairs."
The Director frowned as the computer gave him another error. "What do you mean?"
"I have no idea what it is. It's this giant creature, it looks like a genetic experiment gone wrong. Like a spider crossed with a...well, I don't even know. It was the size of a horse." Ash bit his tongue and composed himself. The creature had scared him more than he cared to admit.
The Director's hands froze. The first hint of fear Ash had ever seen crept onto the man's face. "Not the Apex," he muttered. "What did that boy do?"
"What?"
"Nothing. Never mind. You're right, we need to get everyone out now."
"Are you coming?" Ash asked.
"I'll be up in a minute. I'm going to try one more time to recover the data they deleted," the Director replied. "I was able to send some of it out before they took down the servers, but I'm afraid the rest may be gone for good. Unless we could steal the drive they took."
Ash had no idea what the Director was going on about. He probably should have cared, but he didn't. "Okay, well, Claudia wanted me to grab some blood samples from the lab." He didn't want to go back downstairs, even if it was only a couple of floors, but Claudia was the last person he wanted to say no to right now.
The Director responded by muttering something under his breath. Ash gave up on the conversation and left the room.
He stopped by his room to grab a backpack with a couple of his things before moving on to the lab. Power had been disabled on all floors but the twelfth, forcing him to rely on his phone's flashlight to illuminate the way. The world around him was silent until he found the container Claudia had described. As he picked it up, he heard the clicking. Faint, but definitely there. Ash shoved the samples in his bag and hurried to the nearest stairwell.
When he reached the eleventh-floor landing, a thud sounded nearby. Fear jolted through his body. The hand holding his phone shook as he pointed it down the hall to his left. Footsteps approached.
It wasn't the creature, but a girl that appeared at the end of the hallway.
Ash's lips parted. "No," he murmured. Was he hallucinating again? But this girl was far too old to be...
She walked toward him. "Ash." she said.
It was Raveena.
Raveena Montgomery.
Ash took a step backward. He reached out, desperate for something to steady him, and found the wall.
"Ash, you have to leave Scorpion," Ravenna pleaded. "Leave Claudia. Please, you have to see by now that she doesn't care about us!"
Ash's mouth moved before his mind could catch up. "She's the only person who cares about us!"
"Then why did she try to kill me?"
"What are you talking about? One of those rogue soldiers shot you." Was Ash talking to an illusion? A ghost?
"Claudia shot me!"
"What? No, she—"
There she was, standing behind Raveena. A younger Claudia. She raised her gun.
"Raveena, look out!" Ash shouted.
Raveena glanced behind her. There was no one there, now. When she turned back to Ash, confusion overtook her features. "Ash? Are you okay?"
"Ash!" Seth came around the corner behind Raveena. "There you are! What the hell is taking you so long? Claudia's pissed—" He stopped. "Who's this? One of the enemy altered?"
"She's..." Ash trailed off, no longer certain of anything that was happening. Seth could see her? How was she here, alive?
"I'm his sister," Raveena said, her voice cold. Her expression shifted to something unreadable. Angry? Sad?
Seth grinned. "No way," he said. "I remember you now! Raveena, right? I thought you were dead."
Ash did the only thing he could think to do. Follow orders. "We need to finish evacuating," he said. "There's some kind of monster on the loose."
"Please, Ash, it's not too late." Raveena took a step toward him. "Come back to the Fortuna with me. We can undo whatever Claudia did to your memories."
Seth laughed. "Are you for real?"
Raveena whirled around and lifted her fists. "Yeah, I am."
Seth laughed even harder. "I'd love to take you down in a quick fight, but I came to drag this guy back upstairs before we all get blown up. You know, since your friends planted a bomb?"
"I'm not letting you take him anywhere. He's coming with me."
"Maybe we should ask him what he wants to do." Seth leaned sideways to peer past Raveena at Ash. "Ash, whatcha thinking?"
Before Ash could get anywhere close to deciding on a response, more voices came from the end of the hall. Sam, Adam, and...Eric.
Adam was the first to speak. "Whoa, what's happening here?"
"Raveena, where the hell have you been?" Eric exclaimed.
Something in Ash snapped. "Hey, who gave you the right to talk to her like that?"
"What?" Surprise flashed across Eric's face.
Raveena held out a hand toward Eric and the others. "Everyone, shut up. Ash, come on, you know being with Scorpion is wrong. You don't have to depend on Claudia for a home anymore. We have a place for you."
"Sorry, Raveena," Seth said. "But I don't think your brother's interested in joining the losing side. Right, Ash?"
In the same moment, Ash and Raveena said, "Shut up, Seth!"
"Brother?" Eric asked. "Wait, Raveena, you're Ash's—?"
"Hey guys? I hate to interrupt." Sam threw a glance back over his shoulder. "But that thing is almost here."
Ash's mind was coming back around, though thinking about Raveena standing in front of him still made his head hurt. He wanted to feel relief that she was alive, but he was too confused to process it.
The fear was an almost welcome distraction.
"Thing?" Ash asked. "You mean that monster that attacked me on the first floor?"
"You fought it?" Eric asked.
"Yeah. I got away while soldiers distracted it." Ash turned toward the stairwell. "Seth, let's go."
Seth snorted. "You don't think we can handle a, uh, whatever it is?"
"No. At least, now's not the time to find out. Come on!" Ash only took one step before hesitating. Glancing back. "Do you guys know what that monster is? Did you bring it here?"
"We have no idea what it is," Eric replied. "But it attacked me—us when we were up north last week."
The Director. The Director had seemed to know what it was. "When I mentioned it to the Director, he called it the Apex."
"Oh, cool, it has a scary name."
A clicking sound spurred them into action.
"Run!" Sam shouted.
The six of them scrambled onto the stairs.
They were halfway to the next floor when Eric yelled, "It's here!"
Ash looked back as the Apex came flying around the corner into the stairwell, mouth open wide. The tentacle shot out and wrapped around Eric's ankle. Eric cried out as he was dragged back down the stairs.
"Ash, come on, let's get out of here while it's distracted." Seth let out a sudden yelp of pain and dropped to one knee.
"Help us kill that thing, and I'll heal that ankle of yours that I just sprained," Raveena told him.
Ash was already moving back down the stairs, searching the walls with his senses for water he could use. But he was too tired to free it himself. "Seth, get me some pipes."
"But—"
"That's an order!"
A metal pipe burst through the wall at his right. Ash latched onto the spray of water before it could hit the floor and redirected it toward the monster.
Adam unleashed a fireball in the same moment. The Apex ducked to avoid the flames. Ash switched the water's direction and put the last of his strength into it. The whip smacked into the tentacle. The Apex hissed in pain and stopped pulling, but it kept its hold on Eric.
"Aim for the tentacle, it's weaker than the skin!" Ash shouted.
Adam tried for another blast of fire, moving closer to get a better aim. Too close. Ash tried to get out a warning, but the creature was too fast. It swung a leg at Adam.
"Ow!" Eric blindly grabbed at the tentacle. Smoke rose off his hands, but he couldn't seem to keep a fire going. Even the sparks of electricity jumping off his skin were weak.
Ash pulled the water back into a sphere and pushed it into the Apex's open mouth. It made a choking noise. Some of the water sprayed back into the air. The tentacle released Eric. Ash darted forward, grabbed Eric's arm, and yanked him back.
Hissing and coughing up water, the Apex staggered backwards. To Ash's surprise, it turned and ran in the other direction.
"Stop it!" Adam exclaimed. "We have to kill it. We can't let it get away—"
Eric shook his head. "That thing's stronger than us. We need more people to fight it." He glanced at Ash, and Ash realized he was still holding Eric's arm.
Ash let go of Eric and turned around. "Seth, let's get to the choppers and get out of here."