Free Guardians of the Portals by Nya Rawlyns

across the road from Greyfalcon headquarters. He killed the vehicle lights as he idled into the parking lot.
    “What the hell?” Trey gasped as gunfire erupted across the road from his position. He gunned the Porsche and barrelled around the corner of the building out of range of any stray bullets. He parked it toward the rear of the lot, in a relatively dark area. The flat black of the finish would help camouflage the car from any casual passers-by. He jumped out and ran back to the road, taking care to keep to the shadows.
    A helicopter rose at a sharp angle and skittered across his field of view, the pilot having trouble controlling the craft. Trey could sense something amiss with the craft as it canted right and slipped below the trees to the north of GFI’s building. Since there’d been no explosion, he had to assume it had landed more or less intact, but he doubted it would be operational any time soon.
    The spat of gunfire had a familiar sound, the AK-47 quite distinctive compared with his own custom weapon. He watched as men scattered to the left of the building toward the dense underbrush at the perimeter of the parking lot. To the right, the way lay open to the road into the industrial park, but it lacked cover. Trey noted how the shooter laid a sweep in a north-south line at ninety degrees to the main body now making haste toward the woods, almost as if he were herding them for a particular reason. None were kill shots, though here and there one of the men on the ground would cry out as bullets ricocheted off any number of surfaces.
    Trey rubbed his chin, not exactly sure what to do. He had no cause to join the fray and would be best served to stay out of sight until he could determine who was on which side. His gut told him the shooter on the roof might be an ally, but he wasn’t convinced it was wise to intervene at that point. The image of the young woman buzzed in his head. It had him in its grip and refused to let go. It couldn’t hurt to maneuvre around to the rear of the building and see if there was anything of interest out of everyone’s line of sight.
    Using his low center of gravity, he sped behind the next building and then cut across the road to come up somewhat south and east of GFI’s headquarters. The shooting continued but the dense woods and the building itself blocked most of the sound. He listened carefully for the chopper but only heard the sound of his own heartbeat and a soft rustling in the brush off to his left. He ducked into a crouch in a dense stand of rhododendron, slowed his breathing and set his shields at minimum. He wanted to hear what was going on but not be locked in a soundproof box and miss all the action. The warm air wavered and danced, then settled as he concentrated on holding the energy steady. For some reason he’d always found it easier to deal with the enormous energy requirements of a Portal rather than the narrow focus of his personal body shield.
    Booted feet rushed past his position. He recognized the buckles running up the calves of the boots. It was the woman from the van. Or was it? Though on a low setting, the wavelengths refracted enough that it made getting a clear picture a challenge. He could have sworn that the woman had red hair, violently red, no mistake about it. And she’d been ... curvaceous. The vision floating past him looked like a scarecrow, tall, but reed thin and in no way warrior-like. She wore the same outfit, though it hung loose and not quite functional, like she’d been playing dress-up with her warrior mother’s clothes. He couldn’t tell for sure if she were armed, though he doubted it. There was nowhere to hide a weapon in that get-up.
    The woman scooted across the road using the same line he’d chosen. He looked up to GFI’s roof. Where it had been dark before, it now glowed like an illuminated football field. The firing had ceased and the indistinct shouting of men giving and taking orders indicated that the shooter was