The Pyramid Chronicles: Fortuna Guard (#2)

Chapter Thirty-Four: Higher Power

"Andrew, this is serious. We're under attack." Claudia rubbed her forehead, trying to form something coherent from her scattered thoughts. She couldn't believe the Fortuna Guard had actually had the audacity to attack Scorpion's building. Her building.

"Claudia," Andrew's response was slightly muffled by the telephone static. "Relax. Everything's going to be fine."

"What do you think I should do?"

"Keep defending the building. They have surprise on their side, but you're the one with an army." Andrew paused. "If all else fails, though, you should evacuate your building and come here."

"Your headquarters?"

"Yes. We can go from there."

Claudia pursed her lips. "Okay then. Goodbye."

She ended the call and exited her office. The hallway was packed with altered and soldiers ready to defend the building. Her altered. Her soldiers. The army she'd spent years building. Thundering footsteps and overlapping shouts carried up from the floors below, warning that she was close to losing it all.

What was the Fortuna Guard trying to accomplish? Was this attack purely to put a dent in Scorpion's army?

No, the Fortuna kids wouldn't take this risk for something minor. And their insistence on taking the moral high ground meant they would undoubtedly go out of their way to avoid seriously hurting Scorpion's altered, even if it put them at a disadvantage. Maybe the goal today was to simply destroy soldiers.

Obviously, their end goal was to end Scorpion once and for all. Ha. If only they knew. But if that was what the Fortuna Guard was here for now, how were they going to accomplish it?

They would have to destroy the building. And all of Scorpion's information.

The enemy altered were moving up the floors. The server room, the room that held access to all of their data, was here on the twelfth floor. James was making backups of their data, but Claudia wasn't going to let matters get that desperate. She'd worked too hard to get where she was. Her legacy was not going to crumble in front of her.

Maybe the rest of the organization could go on, recover from this wound, but there was still a very real chance that Claudia's power would slip from her hands.

Claudia rested a hand on the doorway next to her and steadied herself. She would not fail. And she had James on her side. James, who'd started on the data backups the moment the attack began. James, who had ideas about what the enemy might be planning and ordered all computers brought to him.

"Altered! Soldiers!" Claudia's voice commanded the attention of everyone in earshot. "Defend the server room at all costs. Do not let anyone in there. The Director needs to be protected."

The altered, of course, were banned from entering the server room. It was usually locked, anyway. If any of the enemy kids were able to get in there, it would be all too easy for them to piece together the truth about Scorpion.