Free The Protectors by Trey Dowell

unwilling to take the bait on my topic shift. I thought I saw her eyes start to rotate, so I looked away. A flash of panic hit my brain as I considered possible responses if she decided to push, because nobody could push like Lyla. Then, as if my mental locomotive weren’t steaming fast enough, she dropped another bombshell, which threatened to derail the train entirely.
    “Do you remember the Time article? The one in the same issue as our cover story?”
    I didn’t understand at first, but then I remembered. The article about how much money the world’s governments spent on defense. The conversations it sparked. The nights spent debating the future. What the world could be like, if only someone had the guts—
    My mouth dropped, and my voice, too.
    “ That’s what you’re planning to do? You can’t be serious. Lyla, they’ll kill you,” I whispered.
    She stared through me.
    “They can try. I am quite resourceful.”
    Behind me, I heard groaning—the telltale sign of Lyla’s army coming back to life. Rather than do a blanket drop on all of them again, I wanted some true alone time with Lyla. I had questions to ask, things to consider.
    “Do you have somewhere we can go? Just to talk.”
    For an instant, her face flashed a familiar expression: wrinkled nose, dimples, and a grin that touched her eyes. A look from years ago, when she’d led me by the hand to her room, just to “talk.”
    But memories like that had a short half-life—and once decay sets in, the shine never comes back.
    Lyla must have agreed, because her features melted back into exhaustion. “Come with me, I have access to rooms not far from here,” she said without smiling.

CHAPTER 9
    S he led me back through the kitchen, where dazed cooks and dishwashers were only now beginning to pick themselves off the floor. We reached the back door and she pushed it open with one arm, allowing me to go first into the alley beyond. She looked so sad and tired that I couldn’t help but turn to her once the door shut.
    “Everything will be fine—we just need to figure some things . . .” And I stopped when I saw her. She was looking over my shoulder in surprise. I wheeled to look at the alley and immediately felt a light thump in my chest. I looked down to see the red tail of a tranquilizer dart, sticking out from my chest plate. The Kevlar and titanium sheet beneath kept my skin untouched, and before I even lifted my head to see where the projectile had come from, a second dart hit two inches to the left of the first, over my heart.
    I looked up and saw two gunmen, one on each rooftop bordering the alley, pointing their weapons down on us. Just then, my head erupted, as if microphone feedback was being pumped directly into my brain. The sound forced us to our knees, and only as I ventured a second glance upward did I notice the cylinders slung under the gunmen’s rifle barrels: sonic suppression devices. They were the perfect nonlethal weapon in an urban environment, projecting a tight cone of piercing rhythmic wails. Even more perfect for thwarting Lyla’s mind-control ability, drowning out her seductive voice and making it impossible to focus.
    I channeled the last of my concentration to latch on to the gunmen,and I managed to drop them both at once. Their weapons clattered from the rooftops and the sonic assault halted. Before I could help Lyla to her feet, I sensed movement in the shadows behind a nearby dumpster. I had barely enough time to curse before I took a rifle butt to the jaw and went down hard. My face dragged over slimy cold cobblestones as I tried to lift my upper body off the ground, but to no avail. Muffled shouts of “Get her!” and “Don’t look in her eyes!” came from two people streaming past my body to Lyla. From the far end of the alley, I heard brakes squeal and a truck door roll open.
    “What is your name, my love?”
    Her deep, rich velvet voice filled the air.
    I heard a British accent mumble, “Colin,” and