Borya gave a slight nod, and Eugene perked up.
“Does this mean you can hear me, you psychotic b—” Eugene’s voice cut out, though his lips kept moving for several seconds.
“He can hear us,” Borya assured her.
Emily nodded. “Eugene, this is a very delicate procedure. It won’t hurt as long as you hold perfectly still. You might feel a slight pressure at the base of your neck, but that’s all. Try to stay awake, okay?”
Eugene mouthed a few more words, then flipped her off with both hands.
Emily just smiled as she reached for a button at the base of the globe. “Don’t worry. Soon, your feelings for me will change.” She paused to look back at him. “Well, they won’t be your feelings, I suppose.”
Eugene’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced at the black globe. He said two words, then craned his head to the side.
“No!” Borya shouted, leaning forward. But there was nothing he could do. Eugene’s head impacted the plexiglass with a loud “thunk!” He fell motionless, and blood dripped down the side of his face.
“Imbecile,” Emily moaned. She unclasped the latches that held the plexiglass prison to the wall and pulled the glass cube aside. “Stubborn, idiotic, pig-headed…”
“What is wrong?” Dmitri asked, crossing the room to join Emily.
“He needs to be conscious,” Emily grunted. She pulled Eugene’s eyelids opened and studied his pupils. “The nanobots follow electric currents in the brain for navigation. If he’s asleep or unconscious, they won’t be able to calibrate themselves before rewriting his synapses.
Dmitri stifled a grin. Eugene reminded him of some of the best soldiers in his old Spetsnaz unit. As he watched Emily try to revive her rebellious prisoner, his wrist-computer crackled to life.
“Sir?”
“What is it?” Dmitri asked, holding his forearm closer to his face.
“One of our inner targeting pods has gone out.”
Dmitri frowned. “What? How?”
Borya inhaled deeply, then said, “It’s the intruders.”
Dmitri’s face turned pink and he bristled with anger. “I am sorry for failing you.” He strode toward the exit, his hands clenched into fists. “I promise I will not fail you again.” Speaking to the device on his wrist, he said, “Prepare the railgun, and get the other cyborg to the surface.”
“Stop,” Borya called after him. “Do not trouble yourself.”
Dmitri stopped short at the door and glanced back at Borya, his face drooping with shame.
Borya waved his friend back and said, “I will handle it. And you can relax; the helicopters are here.”
The rifle bucked against Janson’s shoulder, and she watched the last targeting pod erupt into sparks. Cautiously optimistic, she shifted her scope from building to building, waiting for return fire. When no machine guns blazed in response, she said, “I think we might have gotten them all.”
“Maybe,” Eli said. “Or maybe they haven’t found us yet.”
Janson swiveled the rifle back and forth. “We’ll give it two minutes. If they still haven’t mowed us down, we regroup with the others. Then we can—” She cut herself off and tilted her head a few centimeters to the left. A distant thrum reached her ears, sending a chill down her spine.
She had been trained to recognize the sound of Russian attack helicopters.
38
The lead helicopter slowed to a creep and drifted northward, its nose facing the still-smoldering forest.
Dale Drach’s headset crackled with Pops’s voice. “Dmitri wasn’t kidding. He really did burn them out.”
“I can’t believe anyone survived that,” the pilot of the second helicopter said. “It’s still so hot, my cameras are nothing but a giant blob. Can you see anything, Drach?”
Dale swallowed, then said, “No, nothing here. We might need to get closer.”
“Let’s get some altitude first,” Pops said. “I don’t feel like getting shot at.”
The trio of helicopters beat the air, gradually rising as they moved forward. Slowly, the Palace’s disguised buildings came into view.
“South,” the creature in the front seat said. “Tell them we’re moving south.”
Drach wiped his mouth with his hand, then keyed up the radio. His voice cracked as he said, “Stoic and I will swing around to the south and watch from that end.”
“No problem,” Pops replied. “We’ll watch our sectors and let you know if we find a target.”
Before Drach could make a move, the helicopter banked hard to the left. The creature had taken over flight controls.
“You can…fly one of these?” Dale asked.
The creature didn’t answer. It glanced out the window, scanning the ground.
Dale’s hands, idle for the first time in hours, shook violently in his lap. He glanced over his shoulder at the other helicopters, and the men inside that he had known for years. Gradually, his confidence began to build, and he considered reaching over the seat and strangling the dark creature. Then, to his horror, the beast shifted to look at him, as if reading his thoughts.
“Don’t,” the creature in Stoic’s uniform growled. “Unless you’ve reconsidered our bargain.”
Drach leaned back in his seat, his face turning pale. “No—no, of course not.” A fresh pang of shame entered the hollow of his stomach. The “bargain,” if it could be called that, was the beast’s promise that it would not kill every Katharos agent in Krasnoyarsk, and it would not do to Dale what it had done to Stoic if Dale played along.
Drach had considered himself a brave man until today. But staring at his mutilated gunner while the creature threatened to kill over one hundred agents had broken him. In the end, he rationalized that trading a few lives for many was the right thing to do. He would trade two pilots and two gunners for the greater good.
Still, Dale felt uncomfortable with the way the beast manipulated the controls and flew the helicopter like a seasoned pilot. The creature had said that Drach would be the one to fire upon the other helicopters, and Drach assumed it was because the creature didn’t know how. But if the beast knew how to fly…
A chorus of chimes sounded in Drach’s headset. He glanced down at a computer embedded in the console, and his blood ran cold. When the chiming stopped, a message flashed across the display. Seventeen targets selected.
“Wh—what the hell are you doing?” Dale stammered.
The beast shifted in its seat. It reached its hand toward Dale’s neck, and five black claws pierced the fingers of its gloves. “You are no longer needed,” it said.
Dale tried to resist, but he felt the claws puncture his throat. As the blood covered his chest and the world grew dim, he wondered if there were such things as good and evil. Because deep down, he believed the creature’s deception was evil.
Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of Janson’s neck, leaving behind an itch that she dared not scratch. She and Eli were prone on either side of a burning log, hoping its heat would mask their infrared signatures. To soldiers on the ground, there were few things as fearsome as an enemy attack helicopter. And Janson and her team were being hunted by three of them. The helicopters had come in low and fast, then gained altitude before continuing the hunt. She could still hear them, faintly, as they circled thousands of feet above the forest. They soared like hawks, scanning the ground for prey, waiting for something to move so they could claim their kill.
On the other side of the log, Eli sighed in exasperation. “We can’t stay like this forever.”
“Neither can they. If we can avoid detection for a little while longer, they’ll have to land to refuel.”
“What if they take turns?” Eli asked. “Leave one bird in the air while the others gas up?”
“Then we’ll have better chances against one than three.”
“I don’t like it. I feel like a chicken waiting to be butchered. There has to be something we can do to fight back.”
“Our drones are gone and our rifle
s are useless. By the time we manage to get a clear shot, they will have found us and lit us up with rockets, guided missiles, or cannons.”
Eli fell silent as he puzzled over what they could do. Janson listened to the soft beats on the wind, then cranked up the sensitivity on her earpieces. Sophisticated microphones picked up faint noises and enhanced them. One of the helicopters had begun to descend, while the other two observed from the north and south. Her heart raced, and she wondered if one of them had been sent to investigate a potential target. Gently lifting herself off the ground with her elbows, she risked a look around.
The Palace’s above-ground shacks stood across a field of short grass. Machine guns, partially hidden within slotted firing positions, glared back at her. Then a door on one of the smaller shacks opened, and a massive figure stepped out.
Janson’s blood ran cold. A cyborg had joined the hunt. She watched as it took two steps forward, then held fast.
Why isn’t it attacking? she wondered.
Glancing in the opposite direction, she found her answer. One of the helicopters was heading straight toward the clearing where she had left Ford, Kacen, and Yuri.
“Eli,” she said in a hoarse voice, “I think they found—”
The air shook with a tremendous explosion, then rattled with automatic gunfire. Janson jumped to her feet and searched the forest in horror, expecting to find the dust cloud that had once been her teammates. Another explosion thundered to the west, this one much closer. It was followed by three more explosions in quick succession. Janson whirled, confused. The clearing where they had left their teammates appeared calm, but the Palace outbuildings had erupted into brilliant flashes.
Janson joined Eli behind the log, using it as shelter against soaring shrapnel.
“What’s going on?” Eli asked.
Janson shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Two jellyfish-shaped clouds had appeared in the sky, with gray tendrils of flaming wreckage falling to earth. Two of the helicopters had been destroyed, and the third was unleashing hell on the Palace defenses. Rockets streaked down and pummeled the false exteriors of the Palace outbuildings, revealing the concrete bunkers beneath. A steady stream of tracer-illuminated bullets lashed the ground like a glowing whip. Soon, the cyborg and the entire cluster of bunkers disappeared beneath a blanket of dust.
“Janson!” someone shouted over the cacophony. “Janson!”
“Over here!” she shouted back, waving her arms.
Moving at a crouch, the rest of the team made their way to the log and nestled in beside Janson and Eli.
“What the hell is happening?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know. For a second I thought they had found you.”
“I thought that too,” Yuri said, speaking loud enough to be heard above the roar.
All at once, the explosions and gunfire stopped, leaving behind an uneasy silence. Then, the sound of spinning rotors broke the stillness. The team watched, their mouths gaping, as the helicopter settled into the clouded space between them and the Palace, the spinning blades churning up whirlwinds of dust.
“Who in the hell…” said Ford.
Gradually, the rotors came to a stop, and the cockpit door opened, revealing a dead man in a bloodied flight suit. As the team watched, another man pushed the corpse aside and jumped out. He wore a black flight helmet and a flight suit that was several sizes too small. As he rounded the nose of the aircraft, he looked straight at them and waved.
“Do you, uh, know that guy?” Yuri asked.
The skin on Janson’s arms puckered with goosebumps. Instead of answering, she waited to see what the man would do. Her suspicions were confirmed when he approached the nearest bunker and peeled apart the titanium doors with his bare hands. The man ducked inside, and moments later, screams began to issue from within.
“Yes,” Janson said finally. “We’ve met.”
Emily mashed a button on the lectern to stop the klaxons from blaring. When the attack helicopter went rogue, she and Dmitri had rushed to the Operations Center to assess the situation. One by one, the outbuildings and the automaton had been pummeled with rockets. Dust and smoke obscured the above-ground cameras, so they had no idea what was happening outside of the fortified pillboxes. She had ordered the security team into the main pillbox, where they would wait for the air to clear before heading out to investigate. In the meantime, Dmitri activated the “electric fence,” a moat of tiny electric barbs meant to keep out ground troops. They usually lay hidden beneath a few centimeters of soil, but with the push of a button, Dmitri raised the needle-like wires into place.
Then the unthinkable had happened. The door to the main pillbox was breached, setting off the grating alarm. Emily retrieved the video from the surveillance cameras inside the pillbox and frowned. Smoke and pink haze obscured the lenses. She tapped a button to pull up the audio and the Operation Center echoed with terrified shrieks. Reflexively, she tapped the button to mute the feed. A pit formed in her chest, and she cast a worried glance at Dmitri. The big man shook his head, indicating that he was as confused as she was. Then Borya’s voice boomed through the loudspeakers, confirming their worst fears.
“It’s him. He is here.”
39
For a long moment, Emily stood frozen in front of the lectern. Somehow, against all odds, the monster she helped design in the bowels of Hillcrest had followed her to the only place she had ever felt truly safe.
And a single operational cyborg was her last line of defense.
The jumbled words Borya had spoken when he was first plugged into the Servers rang in her ears. Noi suntem Kảlạng ca vergaan. Hu sawf maak ons dood todos.
In the few moments Borya had spent as the “Oracle,” he theoretically had enough analytical power to predict the future. And he had spoken those words, which the computer later identified as a conglomeration of several languages. Though the phrases could have multiple meanings, the computer’s best interpretation was: We are all going to die. He will kill us all. In the days following the initial attempt to link Borya to the network, Emily had dismissed the words as paranoid delusions. But she couldn’t forget them, despite her best efforts. They kept her awake at night and haunted her dreams. She couldn’t rid herself of what she feared to be a prophecy.
“I—I have to go,” Emily stammered. “Borya needs my protection. Get the rest of the automaton pilots down here and plug them in.”
“But, the other machine-men are not finished,” Dmitri protested.
Emily practically leapt from the platform, then started up the stairs. “If we don’t stop Jarrod, there will be no one left to finish them. Activate the automatons, and kill him before it’s too late.”
As soon as Emily disappeared through the Operations Center doors, Dmitri began barking orders. “You heard her, get the pilots down here, now! And lock down the elevator shaft and start handing out weapons.” He paused for a moment, then shouted, “Move!”
“We need to get in there,” Janson mumbled as she stared across the field at the open bunker door.
“What? Why?” Ford asked. “Our explosives are a mile away, we’re almost completely out of ammunition, and everyone on the team is either shot to pieces or burnt to a crisp. There’s nothing we can do that he won’t do better. I say we let him do what he wants, then pull Eugene out afterward.”
Janson shook her head. “We can’t trust him. He might find a way to bring the entire building down. And I doubt he would spare a second thought for Eugene’s safety.”
Ford grunted. “We don’t even know if Carver is still alive. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
Janson glared at her longtime battle-partner. “This has always been a rescue mission. Cutting off the head of Katharos is secondary.” She rose to her feet. “I’m going. With or without you.”
Gritting his teeth and wincing in pain, Ford got to one knee, then stood. He glanced at the other men and said, “Any of you dumb enough to come along?”
&nbs
p; Without hesitation, Eli and Kacen jumped up. Yuri hesitated for a moment, but only because he couldn’t use his arms to push himself off the ground. He cast a beseeching look at Eli, who gripped him by the shoulder straps and helped him up.
Janson had already set out, and Ford trotted to catch up. The rest of the team followed, carrying the sparse equipment and weapons they had left. Janson left the charred remains of the forest and stepped into the wide swath of grass. She didn’t notice the hair-like barbs of tungsten that punctured her boots and bent beneath the metamaterial armor covering her feet. Ford, following a few paces behind with a submachine gun in his hands, noted a “crunchy” texture to the ground and stopped. He crouched and stretched out a gloved hand. A spark flashed at his fingertips, and he withdrew his hand. His eyes widened, and he whirled just as Eli stepped over a fallen log, his foot inches above the grass.
“Wait!” Ford shouted.
Rather than freeze in mid-air, Eli stomped his front foot down, trying to regain his balance. Two tungsten wires pierced his rubber boot and entered the sole of his foot. Every muscle in his body contracted, and blood spilled from his mouth and eyes.
“Eli!” Yuri shouted, rushing forward.
“Don’t touch him!” Ford bellowed. “Let me!” He rushed back and lifted Eli off the ground, then carried him into the forest and laid him down.
“Get his gear off!” Yuri snapped. “And his shirt!”
Janson slid onto the ground and gripped the quick release on Eli’s vest. She pulled it free, then threw the vest aside. “What happened to him?”
“The grass,” Ford said. “It’s electrified.”
“Shit,” Janson said. She tore Eli’s shirt away and rested her hand on his chest.
“Move!” Yuri shouted. He dropped to his knees and placed two fingers on Eli’s neck. “Somebody, open the pouch on my belt and pull out the AED.”
Ford scooted closer, unzipped the pouch, and removed the Automated External Defibrillator.
The Nightmare Unleashed Page 21
