He was about to shift his attention back to the task at hand when reality tilted once more. Something unnatural was unfolding at the end of the server passageway. For a second the air rippled and thin tendrils of condensation snaked around the monolithic computers. A fog was forming, and spreading rapidly.
The old Talon would have stared with incomprehension at the surreal spectacle. The new Talon had been waiting for Zagan to make his move.
Talon’s fingers closed around the pentacle and draped it over his neck.
“This had better work.”
Ahead of him, the ghostly fog swirled and parted, revealing a new arrival on the scene.
Zagan.
Chapter Twenty-One
Serrone entered the police morgue, her head pounding. She’d snacked on Ibuprofen for breakfast and washed the pills down with about a gallon of coffee, but still she was running on fumes.
Her stomach lurched as she eyed the bodies laid out on a series of slabs. A morgue attendant and three pathologists worked the tables, engaged in the thankless task of separating the cultists from the massacre victims. The killers were civilians too. All races, ages and religions were represented and connected by one identifying mark — the binary tattoo etched on their forearms.
A clear pattern was emerging among the attackers. The majority of cultists worked at Omicron. This couldn’t be a coincidence. There had to be a link to the tech company.
Making things worse, the whole case had gone nuclear. It was world news now and only a matter of time before the FBI and Homeland Security joined the party. Serrone was almost hoping they’d pull her off the investigation and assign some hotshot Fed to head the case. What she’d seen at the Apple Store wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced or wanted to experience again. At least her partner, Grell, was now in stable condition.
While the brass figured out what the next official move should be, Serrone was going to check out their sole true lead. Omicron. She was going to visit the company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley and begin asking the hard questions.
With any luck, those questions would make the right people uncomfortable and someone would start talking. No way all these employees belonged to a cult without someone else at the company being aware of the situation.
She nodded at Detective Dawson to join her. The man was in his early forties, a good cop but a bit too by-the-book for Serrone’s taste. A close friend of Grell’s, he was itching to get to the bottom of these murders. That made him a perfect ally.
As they drove to Omicron, Serrone called her house and managed to get her daughter on the phone. Seven-year-old Casey was getting ready for school. Serrone’s mother had been nice enough to watch Casey last night when it became clear she would be pulling overtime.
“Hi Mom, is everything okay?”
It was great to hear her daughter’s voice. The kid seemed to have the wisdom of someone five times her age. “Honey, mommy is fine. I just need to wrap up something at work. By the time you’re home from school I’ll be back, I promise. We’ll grab dinner tonight, your pick.”
Casey paused on the other end, almost as if she doubted the veracity of her mother’s words. It broke Serrone’s heart. Sometimes she hated being a cop.
As she hung up the phone, Serrone fought back a wave of anxiety. How could she do this to her daughter? The poor kid had already lost her dad. Why did she have to be cursed with a mother who carried a gun to work?
She bit her lip and took another sip of coffee, welcoming the bitter taste on her tongue. She eyed the officers in the car and realized that she missed Grell’s entertaining banter. He could be an opinionated ass, but he made her laugh. They were a good team.
Unfortunately, despite his good intentions Dawson was blessed with the personality of a valium.
About forty minutes later, they pulled up to Omicron and got out of the vehicle. Sunlight sparkled on the company’s logo, above the main entrance. Plenty of people in Serrone’s circle swore by Omicron’s technology. Omicron is even better than Apple! Whatever. In her mind Omicron was just another Silicon Valley tech conglomerate making stuff that encouraged people to stare at their devices instead of paying attention to each other.
After some back and forth with Omicron’s overeager security staff, they were finally escorted to the offices of Travis Hockney, Senior Vice President of Public Relations. Serrone planned to ask him if the leadership at Omicron was aware of a cult recruiting their workers? Had Hockney seen any employees sporting the binary tattoo?
As they crossed the vast atrium of the high-tech palace, Serrone marveled at the building’s breathtaking architectural design. The bright and airy environment struck her as the ideal workplace, a far cry from her cramped gray quarters at the police department.
They walked through an entertainment room where workers depressurized. There were foosball and Ping-Pong tables alongside arcade games from the 1980s. Another doorway led to a large office space lined with cubicles.
A young, attractive woman stepped up to them. “Hello Detective, my name is Stacy and I’m Hockney’s assistant. He’s taking a call but will be right with you. Would you care for a water or juice while you wait?”
Serrone asked for an energy drink instead. Today wasn’t the day to quit bad habits. As they waited, she studied the workspace more closely. Hockney’s office was a separate room at the far end of a much larger work area. Men and women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, faced their computer stations. The desks were decorated with toys and other examples of geek culture. Serrone saw a Star Wars screensaver and action figures from some comic-book flick.
These Nerf-ball warriors didn’t strike her as vicious killers, but she’d felt the same way about the attackers back in the Apple Store.
As Serrone sorted through these impressions, all activity in the office suddenly ceased. No typing, no phone calls, no conversation. Everyone sat ramrod straight in their Aeron chairs, eyes fixed on their screens.
Curious, Serrone took a step closer. To her surprise, all the monitors showed the same strange stream of data. She leaned forward, hoping to get a reaction from one of the workers — perhaps a hello or some form of acknowledgement — but the Omicron tech-heads remained in their drone-like trance state.
Serrone was getting a bad feeling about this place, once again reminded of the blank fanaticism she’d encountered during the attack on the Apple Store. She chewed her lip and balled the keychain in her pocket until her hand hurt.
“This is ridiculous,” she said to Dawson, who projected a calm rivaling the monk-like Omicron workers. “How long are they going to keep us waiting?”
Dawson shrugged in response. Serrone shook her head and scoped the office floor for Hockney’s assistant. The young woman seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Fed up, Serrone pivoted and strode briskly toward Hockney’s office. She knocked on the closed door. No one answered. She repeated her knocking. Still no response.
Impatience boiling over, she pushed into Hockney’s office to find him slumped back in his chair, shirt soaked with blood, a wide gash in his throat.
Jesus…
Serrone went for her pistol. Weapon out, she circled the desk and glimpsed Hockney’s assistant hemorrhaging red on the hardwood floor. Her legs twitched, heels bobbing up and down. Hockney must’ve assaulted her first before killing himself.
Next to his lifeless features, the same strange computer code slashed over his monitor. Serrone’s blood turned to ice. The horror she’d first experienced in the Apple Store had followed her to Omicron.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Talon and Zagan faced each other in the server maze, about a hundred feet between them. Two classic adversaries gearing up for the bitter, final confrontation. Zagan’s physical condition was worsening at an exponential rate. The skin of his face was stretched taut and pockmarked by a shimmering patchwork of circuitry. Steel fingers pierced through a fraying layer of broken skin and made his hands look like bloody glov
es worn by a robot.
Advancing down the corridor of servers, the flickering lights on the explosive charges extinguished one by one as soon as Zagan passed them. His mere presence was manipulating the material world.
Talon’s heart sank.
“I don’t know how you broke free of my program, Sergeant, but you’re too late.”
We’ll see about that, Talon thought.
The fog thickened and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Casca had said the pendant would protect him from Zagan’s reality hacks, but so far it was doing jack shit.
Talon’s hand came up with the Glock in it and he started firing into the demonic cyborg-creature closing in on him. Bullets might be useless against his enemy, but Talon didn’t want Zagan to catch on that he might have an ace up his sleeve. Lead slammed into Zagan in hot spurts, each round connecting with its target in a fiery eruption of flesh and steel. The bullets stitched bloody patterns on his chest. It barely slowed down the monster’s inexorable approach.
Talon replaced the magazine in his weapon with a metallic snap. For Talon to use the Demon Slayer, Zagan needed to move in closer. As long as Zagan felt secure in his superiority, it would be easier to lure him into a close-combat situation. Talon prayed that Casca’s fearsome knife would prove more effective than his talisman had.
His thoughts were interrupted when the roiling carpet of frosty mist engulfed him, erasing Zagan from view. The freezing fog swallowed the blinking servers, too. He tried to focus on his other senses. Were those incoming footfalls?
Talon squinted, desperately hoping to pierce the thick fog. He sensed more than saw vague movement, but it was too late. A fist popped out of the mist and found him. With the force of a brick slamming into the side of his face, Zagan’s inhuman punch hurtled him through the air.
Talon crashed into one of the servers. The sharp impact rattled his bones. Fuck… He never saw the attack coming. Zagan had struck seemingly out of nowhere. At this rate, the fight would be over before it started.
Zagan was closing in fast. Another attack was surely just a second away. Talon whirled as Zagan’s metallic foot shot out at him from the icy fog. It hit the space where his head had been an instant earlier and pulverized the server in a shower of sparking electronics.
How did one fight an invisible, superhuman enemy? Talon’s surroundings swarmed with shadows. His senses struggled to penetrate the layered gloom. The mist rippled and Zagan’s skull-face thrust toward him with ferocious speed. The head-butt sent Talon reeling backwards several feet.
Crimson sheeted down his face and the taste of iron coated his mouth. He spit blood and realized one more attack like the last one and he’d be done for.
He needed to fight back. Somehow. But merely grazing Zagan with the Demon Slayer would alert his adversary of the magical weapon in his arsenal. He’d have to play his cards right and strike only when he spotted a real opportunity to do some damage.
He had to buy himself some time… Get Zagan to reveal his position in the living fog. Talon thought he’d gotten to Zagan the other day. The right words might trigger a similar intense psychological response.
“You’re being played like a chump.”
No answer.
“You think you’re controlling this power, Zagan, but you’re not. The darkness is destroying you.”
“The darkness serves me,“ Zagan hissed, rage pulsing. At least a reaction. Good. “It’s making me stronger.” Each word sounded like it was being torn from Zagan’s throat, the transformation distorting his voice.
“You’re fooling yourself. This entity is killing you. You’re dying.”
Air whistled and Talon jumped aside. The disrupted fog swirled and Zagan smashed into another server.
Okay, finally we’re getting somewhere…
As this hopeful thought cut through his mind, the amulet around his neck suddenly lit up. The wave of occult energy warmed his flesh, but there was no pain. Electricity burst from the pendant and rippled through his body. An instant later, the fog parted and there stood Zagan, mere inches from Talon’s face, gearing up for his next attack.
Damn, it does work!
Zagan’s iron fist blasted at him and Talon sidestepped the deadly blow with trained grace, drawing the Demon Slayer in mid-movement. The knife came up and scythed across Zagan’s throat from left to right. For a stunned beat, the Omicron CEO stood there. Then he took two weak steps back and his second mouth spouted blood. It splattered the steel servers and pearled on the pristine white floor. Disbelief flickered across Zagan’s features. How could the blade harm him when bullets had failed?
Talon assumed a close-quarters fighting stance, but it was too late. Zagan had regained his bearings. His arm lanced out with pneumatic force. Fingers powered by superhuman strength snapped around Talon’s wrist, squeezing until the viselike grip forced him to drop the Demon Slayer. Zagan kicked the knife aside and with devastating force rammed Talon into one of the servers.
What happened next turned even Talon’s battle-hardened stomach. Zagan’s fingers dug under the flaps of skin lining his gushing throat and pulled off his face in one violent motion. It felt like a mask coming off, the shocking act exposing glistening bone and shiny musculature interspersed with dull steel and glittering cybernetics. A steel skull sheathed in slick gore and patches of oozing tissue glared back at Talon. The wet eyes boring into him were still organic. A demonic fusion of man and machine had taken place.
Zagan was wounded but a long way from being defeated. Talon had to get his hands on the Demon Slayer, which now rested about ten feet from where he stood.
Talon scrambled past the servers, heading for the knife. He never made it.
Zagan bolted forward and closed the gap between them before Talon could reach the supernatural weapon. Lightning fast, Zagan’s arm flashed and he seized Talon’s throat. Feet dangling above the floor, the Delta operator desperately choked for air. The bones of his neck cracked. A few ounces of pressure and it would all be over.
He only dimly discerned Zagan’s next chilling words. “I pledge your soul to my master.”
Serrone burst out of Hockney’s office, one hand clutching her gun and the other nervously palming her phone. She was calling for backup but so far failing to get through. How was she not getting a signal in one of the most wired places on the fucking planet?
Dawson stared at her wide-eyed. “What’s going on?”
“Phone’s dead and something is messing up the Wi-Fi, if you can believe that. We better get the hell out of here and call for backup. Hockney and his assistant are dead.”
“Oh shit.” Dawson craned his neck to catch a view of Hockney’s office and shuddered at the sight.
Nice to see that the man has a pulse, Serrone thought crazily.
“Let’s go.” She grabbed Dawson’s arm and pulled him into motion. Dawson fell in step with her, both glad to be leaving the eerie cubicle area behind.
All the engineers remained frozen in tableau as they surged past them, hypnotized by their machines and oblivious to the officers’ presence. How long before they snapped out of their unnatural trance and turned into a murderous mob? Serrone couldn’t explain it logically but she sensed that the program must be the source of this madness. Somehow it was exerting a terrible pull on these people.
Guard up, Serrone and Dawson crossed the vast atrium. The previously idyllic setting was now filled with hidden horrors and dark potential. What other dangers lurked behind the cheerful facade?
They had almost reached the front security desk when a strange whistling sound cut through the air, followed by a thump. Serrone whirled. A body lay sprawled on the lobby floor in a broken, bloody mass, face planted in the floor and features caved in. At first Serrone didn’t quite grasp what she was staring at. How had this person died? She trailed Dawson’s sightline as he tilted his head up at the upper floors.
Omicron workers loomed on the second and third-floor catwalks. They were in the process of climbing over the
glass railings. A frightful realization hit Serrone. The pulped worker beside her was a jumper and these other tech professionals were about to join the first suicide.
No… Don’t do it…
Serrone mouthed the word “no” but her trembling lips produced no sound. She averted her gaze as two more cultists hit the hard lobby floor with a wet splat and the sickening crunch of bones breaking.
Oh my God…
She spun toward the security guys. They’d all drawn their guns. One man fired, hitting Dawson before pointing the pistol at his own temple and pulling the trigger. He went down in a spray of red, his brain savagely splattering the terminals of the security desk. Two more pops followed in quick succession as the other two guards blew their brains out and collapsed.
Terror flared in Serrone. She wished with all her heart that she’d never come to Omicron today. Wished she was at home, feeling the warmth of her daughter’s cheek against her own and tousling Casey’s soft hair instead of clutching the cold grip of her pistol.
She struggled to suppress her mounting panic. One look at poor Dawson told her that any help would come too late. She was still rooted in place when approaching footfalls rattled the blood-clotted lobby. Three engineers were zeroing in on her with determined strides. They all wielded blades in their outstretched hands and were closing in fast. Even more disturbing, the incoming horde was cutting off the entrance, her one way out of this madhouse.
Serrone fired away and the three cultists spun around in an explosion of brains and blood. Their bodies were still twitching as six new cultists took their place.Serrone knew she was doomed. She wouldn’t be able to hit every one of her pursuers before they reached her. The unstoppable throng surged forward and she started running.
They were herding her toward the assembly hall located at the other end of the lobby. No choice but to play along. She kicked open the wooden door and powered into the auditorium, determined to blow away anyone lurking in the shadows. To her relief, the narrow aisle leading into the assembly hall was deserted.
Occult Assassin: The Complete Series (Books 1-6) Page 13
