Chapter 75: The Trap
Nuri took a slow step back, his boots grinding against the cobblestones.
The signs were too obvious now. The entire market lane had been compromised.
"The apples look nice, but none of us really eat fruit," Nuri said, his voice straining to sound casual behind his mask.
A cold bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, soaking into his collar. He was lying through his teeth, and he knew it sounded thin.
"Is that so...?"
The middle-aged vendor leaned over his crate, his sharp eyes narrowing as he tracked Nuri's breathing.
Alina didn't say a word. She tapped Nuri's elbow twice and gave a frantic, barely visible jerk of her chin toward the alley entrance.
Everyone got the message. Staying in the dead center of a hidden enemy camp was suicide, especially when they were outnumbered twenty to one.
Naturally, turning around to leave wasn't going to be that easy.
The moment they pivoted on their heels, the street went eerily quiet. The surrounding vendors quietly began packing up their stalls.
The butcher across the way picked up his heavy cleaver, wiped the blade on his apron, and slid the iron bar into place across his counter, a counter still slick and red with raw meat juices.
Others moved even faster.
The merchant selling tailored coats grabbed his display racks, hauled them inside, and slammed the wooden shutters closed with a heavy, echoing bang.
In less than thirty seconds, the bustling market lane went completely deserted.
Nuri's stomach dropped like a stone.
They knew.
Somehow, these people knew they were Order operatives the second they stepped into the block.
How? Nuri bit down hard on his lower lip until he tasted copper. They weren't wearing Order tabards. They didn't have uniform cloaks on. There was no way a bunch of street vendors should have sniffed them out that fast.
Alina kept her hand pressed against her spear shaft, her eyes darting back and forth across the closed storefronts. She knew something was horribly wrong, even if she couldn't figure out where the leak was.
Turman and Wan just stood between them, looking around at the shuttered windows with wide, confused eyes.
"Hey. Look up ahead," Alina muttered under her breath, raising a hand to point toward the far end of the avenue.
Nuri squinted through the gray drizzle.
A dozen figures were standing at the mouth of the street, blocking the main exit.
Civilians. Townsfolk from the outer district.
They weren't moving. They just stood there in the rain, their heads tilted at odd angles, staring straight at the group with hollow, glassy, unfocused eyes.
Shit.
The mass-hypnosis spell again.
Nuri's heart started hammering against his ribs. They couldn't draw steel against local farmers and blacksmiths. They couldn't just cut their way through a wall of mind-controlled citizens.
They were boxed in.
"Let's see you kids wiggle out of this one..."
The fruit vendor's rough voice echoed from behind them.
"You really shouldn't have stuck your noses into our business," the man sneered, that sickly purple glint flashing deep inside his eyes.
Snap.
He cracked his fingers together.
The crowd of civilians surged forward all at once. They didn't shout or scream, they just sprinted over the wet cobblestones in dead silence, their limbs moving with unnatural, jerky speed.
"Enjoy," the vendor chuckled, stepping back into the shadows behind his stall and vanishing into the back alley.
"Did we just walk straight into a trap?!" Alina yelled, her boots slipping on the wet stone as the crowd closed in.
"Yeah... we definitely did!" Nuri shouted back.
"Then stop talking and run!"
Turman didn't wait for a second order. He spun around and sprinted toward the open alleyway opposite the crowd, his boots slapping loudly against the wet ground.
Alina, Nuri, and Wan took off right behind him.
As they ran, Nuri tried to focus his mana. He reached into his core, copying the exact wave-form Captain Caelan had used on the steps earlier, trying to force a clearing pulse outward to snap the civilians out of the hex.
Nothing happened.
The magic flared uselessly at his fingertips and died out. His raw mana capacity wasn't even a fraction of Caelan's.
Damn it! Nuri cursed under his breath, his throat burning. I'm too weak!
Behind them, Turman was already wheezing hard. He had spent years cooped up in a room; extended cardio on wet cobblestones was killing him. His legs wobbled, his lungs burning like fire as he fell behind.
"Turman!"
Alina doubled back, grabbing Turman by his coat sleeve and dragging him forward to keep him from falling into the street.
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The mind-controlled crowd was closing the distance fast. One man in a leather tunic reached out, his fingers nearly snagging the back of Turman's collar.
Wan saw it.
The grey twin turned mid-stride, cocked his heavy fist back, and drove it straight toward the man's face.
At the last millisecond, Wan pulled the punch. He couldn't smash a civilian's jaw off. He caught the man by his shoulders instead, shoved him hard back into the mob, grabbed both Alina and Turman under his massive arms, and kept running.
Now they were moving as a unit again.
Nuri was leading the way in front.
Alina and Turman were getting hauled along by Wan like cargo behind him.
Nuri realized with a sudden, ridiculous wave of embarrassment that he had somehow ended up as the fastest runner in the group, and he was the least athletic guy in the entire Order.
"There! Look at that gap between the buildings!" Turman gasped out, pointing a trembling finger toward a narrow gap in the brickwork.
It was barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, but it cut straight between two high stone warehouses.
"Head for the gap!" Nuri screamed, throwing his full weight forward into a sprint.
Nuri turned his shoulder and threw his entire body sideways into the brick gap.
The brickwork was raw and crumbling, scraping against his coat as he scrambled forward. The passage was barely three feet wide, dark, slippery with rainwater, and reeking of damp rot.
Behind him, Wan squeezed through, his massive grey frame taking up almost every inch of the narrow space. Alina and Turman stumbled in right after, their boots splashing into stagnant puddles.
A handful of brainwashed civilians tried to force their way in behind them, but the narrow gap ruined their momentum. Instead of a massive wave, they could only squeeze through one or two at a time, their arms flailing wildly against the wet brick walls.
Wan didn't even draw a blade. He simply placed his heavy palms against the shoulders of the first two men who squeezed into the gap and shoved backward, sending them tumbling back into the street.
"Keep moving!" Alina gasped, her hand pressed flat against Turman's back to keep him from tripping over loose stones. "Don't let them pin us in here!"
They kept shuffling down the dark passage, the high stone walls towering over them on both sides. The screaming crowd behind them began to sound muffled, trapped on the other side of the stone.
Nuri kept his eyes glued ahead, his boots splashing through the dark water.
Then his mind caught up with his legs.
Hold on.
Nuri slowed his pace, his fingers coming up to touch his charcoal mask.
Something was wrong.
When the fruit vendor snapped his fingers, the civilians hadn't grabbed for weapons. They hadn't pulled knives or swung iron bars. They had just... surged forward. They didn't surround the street or cut off the back alleys, they had left this exact narrow gap completely unguarded.
"Wait," Nuri said, stopping dead in his tracks.
"What?!" Alina almost crashed into his back, her spear shaft clattering against the brick wall. "Nuri, why are you stopping? Keep going!"
"They aren't chasing us," Nuri said softly.
He turned around in the narrow space, looking back down the alley over Wan's broad shoulder.
Turman and Alina squinted through the gloom, looking past Wan toward the entrance of the gap.
Nuri was right.
The civilians weren't trying to squeeze into the passage anymore. They were just standing at the mouth of the alley, lined up in a silent row against the gray rain.
Their hollow, glassy eyes were tracking them. But none of them took a step forward.
They were just... watching. Like sheepdogs standing at the gate of a pen after driving the flock inside.
Nuri's stomach dropped into a cold, bottomless pit.
The vendor hadn't tried to overwhelm them. The civilians hadn't been sent to tear them apart.
They had been herded.
The Liberators hadn't panicked when Order operatives stepped into the market. They had set a trap, blocked the main road, and deliberately left this single, narrow brick gap open as the only visible exit.
Nuri slowly turned back around, staring down the dark, dripping passage ahead.
The narrow lane didn't lead back to the main Order patrol routes. It ran straight into the back entrance of the abandoned low-district warehouses, the exact location Scarvy had flagged earlier.
A cold sweat broke out across Nuri's neck, soaking straight through his collar.
They hadn't escaped a trap. They had just walked right down the barrel of one.
"Nuri..." Alina whispered, her voice dropping all its anger, replaced by a sudden, sharp edge of panic as she realized it too. "Where... where did they just make us go?"