Martin waved his finger about in a circle and then squeezing his hand into a fist, shouting. "DIA have engaged the target! Prepare for drop!"

  "Drop? Shit! What do I do?" Luke asked, looking at the people sitting across from him in the helicopter. "I've never gone skydiving!"

  "Hold on to your butts," Rolf said, a spellweave forming in front of him.

  "We are hovering over a school," the pilot said.

  Martin's eye looked dazed for a moment, like he was consulting his interface. "Contact with military lost." He shook his head. "Shit. We have to, Rolf!"

  Rolf counted. "3... 2.... 1..."

  "I love this part!" Cass shouted.

  Johanson: "Luke! Are you there? Abort! Abort!"

  Luke's stomach lurched again. This time, it felt like it was trying to force its way up his throat. From one second to the next, the helicopter was just gone. No, that wasn't it, he realized. It was above them as he fell, still fastened to the chair he'd been sitting in.

  "Whoooo!" Cass shouted. This time it wasn't through the headset. The sound was coming from behind him, wind whipping around them as all eight hurtled down toward a building.

  "Aaaah!" Luke shouted.

  A moment later, they slammed into the roof of the building, crashing through it to land on the floor inside, still sitting in those damn chairs.

  Martin unfastened himself, standing. "Everyone OK? Stay alert. Things are bad here."

  "What was that?" Luke asked, getting out of the chair. The impact didn't hurt them at all, and the debris was scattered everywhere, none of it having touched them. He turned to Rolf. "This is your doing?"

  Rolf nodded, his head swiveling, trying to take everything in at once. "It was my barrier, yes."

  "On your toes, Luke," Curtis said as a sound reached them from behind a row of lockers put between the group and a corridor on the other side.

  Taking the place in, it was clear something had gone wrong, so very wrong. Luke counted four dead in military uniforms, and one in a suit, pools of blood around them. More blood was smeared on a different set of lockers to their left.

  Luke: "Johanson! Too late. What's going on? We're at the school."

  Relian was somewhere in here with them, he could feel as much, could even tell the direction.

  The scream from the corridor repeated. Running footsteps followed, and after those, the ponderous thuds of something large following. A head appeared as a soldier ran past, screaming at the top of his lungs. Following him was a pale, faceless thing that Luke knew very well.

  "Hollow!" he shouted, pointing.

  An arrow shot through the air at incredible speed, slamming into the side of the Hollow's head, pinning it to the wall. It died without making a sound.

  Greg lowered his bow with a satisfied nod.

  Rather than come toward them, the soldier just kept running past, disappearing down the corridor.

  "I hate Hollows," Curtis grumbled. A cloak of darkness spread down his shoulders all the way to the floor and two short swords materialized in his hands, turning from darkness into metal.

  Layer upon layer of buffs settled on the group, with Linda, Cass, and even Laura applying anything and everything in their arsenal. Cass looked too old, considering her youthful voice. She wasn't ancient or anything, but in her fifties, at least, and looked hard, like she'd seen a thing or two in her years, and knew just how to deal with whatever life threw at her. Laura was the opposite. She was rail thin, pale, and couldn't be more than twenty. With buzzed hair, dark bags under her eyes, and a bunch of bruises all over her bare arms, she looked like she'd just been part of some prison exchange with a foreign dictatorship. For a tank, she didn't wear much, just a crop top and a pair of short workout tights.

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  "Don't you have a shield?" Luke asked.

  She looked up at him, her face expressionless. "No."

  "Let's stop messing about," Martin said just as more screams sounded from over to the left, past the cafeteria.

  "Where is Relian?" Curtis asked.

  Luke closed his eyes a moment to concentrate, then pointed in the opposide direction. "Over there."

  "DIA?" Rolf asked.

  Johanson: "Listen to me carefully Luke. Get out of there. Now. We've lost contact with almost everyone. Don't waste more lives."

  Luke: "We're here and we're doing this."

  Milla: "Johanson told me what's going on."

  Luke: "Milla! Don't tell me you want me to run too?"

  Milla: "I want you to kill that bastard. Kill him good."

  Milla: "Just don't die doing it."

  Luke: "I will and I won't."

  "We've lost contact with the DIA team," Martin said. "I've consulted with Mr. Schmidt and he says it's up to my discretion now." He looked right at Luke. "I say we go."

  "Go," Curtis agreed.

  "Yes. We go," Luke said.

  Everyone else echoed them. "Go!"

  With that, they were off, charging in the direction Luke indicated. The school building was empty of kids and teachers. A good thing, that, since monsters prowled the corridors. A few more were Hollows, but many other types of monsters were represented. The group tore through them all without too much trouble.

  Passing through a stairway up to the second floor, bodyparts began appearing. These one weren't covered in blood, which made Luke pause. "These are people. They're alive."

  "Relian put them here to mess with your mind. Ignore them," Curtis said.

  Luke nodded and kept going, but shouted. "We'll be back for you!"

  Continuing down a corridor running through almost the entire school, Luke realized the end of the building was coming up. "Relian isn't inside here anymore! He's out there somewhere!"

  "Stop!" someone shouted behind them.

  The whole group stopped and turned, seeing a man coming out of the stairwell. He wore red robes and a wizard hat, and looked so out of place in that getup that Luke couldn't hold back a chuckle.

  Curtis glanced to Luke with a question on his face.

  Luke shook his head, having checked for a monster core. "Not a Hollow."

  "Of course I'm not a Hollow! I am the Red Wizard!"

  Martin raised an eyebrow. "You with the DIA?"

  "No," The Red Wizard scoffed. "I divined there were people in need here, so I have come to provide it. What are you running from? Lay your trust in me and see your fears put to rest."

  "You should leave, it isn't safe here," Martin said, gesturing for the rest of the group to keep running. They left The Red Wizard behind, sputtering, red even in the face.

  Something reached Luke through Ripples in The System, his Seeker skill.

  "There's fighting outside," he said.

  Martin squinted, looking toward a window by the far wall. "Where?"

  The entire wall crashed inward, a monster three times as tall as a human and half again as wide, tumbling through it, bleeding from a hole in its shoulder.

  Curtis reached it first and slammed his blades into its face as it was struggling to get back up, killing it in an instant.

  "Thanks," someone said, standing outside near the broken down wall with the sun shining in from behind her, illuminating long red hair and making it glow like gold. Luke squinted and held up a hand to block some of the light. It was a woman with blue scales for skin, covering her entire body below the neck. No, it was an armor, maybe.

  "DIA?" Martin asked, rushing up to her.

  "Yes. Laila. You those guys from Super-Duper Evil Corp?"

  "Integrated Solutions Group," Martin said.

  "Right," she said, giving a wink. "That's the one."

  Her wings spread out behind her, large and leathery. Perhaps it wasn't armor after all. "Good," she said, "we need help. This is all real fucked up. The guy you're looking for is over at the football field, but it isn't going to be easy reaching him, and it isn't getting easier either. We've been ordered back but with you here now, I'm hoping things will turn. Don't make me regret saying fuck off to my boss."

  With that, she spread her wings and shot upward into the sky like an arrow, disappearing with incredible speed.

  "I think I'm in love," Curtis mumbled.

  Luke chuckled. "You have a thing for scales?"

  "Don't be a bigot, Luke," he said, running toward the hole to follow Martin and the others outside.

  "What?" Luke asked, running after. "I'm not a bigot! What are you even talking about?"

  Outside the school was pandemonium. With monsters everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, the few Integrated on the ground struggled, while Laila and another one with flight fought up above, holding off large winged creatures that looked an awful lot like huge bats.

  With the screeching, the roars, and the clash of metal, it was a wonder they hadn't heard any of this going on while inside. Come to think of it, shouldn't they have seen it as they were dropping through the sky? If all this had broken out after they arrived, things were moving fast.

  "Oh fuck," Curtis breathed as Luke walked up to him.

  "Yeah," Luke said, his heart thrumming in his chest. "This isn't good."

  Curtis pointed toward a football field way past the rest of the pandemonium going on. "No, I'm talking about that."

  Over the football field, the air itself was coming apart, pulled to the side after a straight line of light shot up from the ground. Reality itself was opening up. Behind that veil, a familiar presence made itself known from within the void.

  Luke swallowed hard. "...This isn't good."