“Wiped?” Molleken said. “How is that possible?”
Evan braced his legs, readied his ARES.
“Looks like … looks like a zero-day vuln bashed the system.”
“A zero-day attack? For Andre Duran? Who the fuck is this guy?”
Evan rose and spun around the corner into sight. All six men in view before the bleachers. Visual acquisition, safety off, finger taking the slack out of the trigger—on target, on trigger.
His voice came loud and clear. “He’s my brother.”
All six heads swiveled to take him in.
Time slowed to a virtual stop as it always did when he was locked in.
Evan sensed Molleken diving behind the server racks, the other men reaching for their sidearms, everything happening with painful slowness.
He swung the sights in a smooth ninety-degree arc right to left to encompass all five heads, not even slowing as he delivered shots at sporadic intervals. Jack’s voice spoke in his ear, countless hours of coaching branded on his prefrontal cortex: Front sight, clean press, reset trigger, front sight, clean press, reset trigger …
For a moment everything remained as it was, the five mercs standing there, guns in hand, not yet aware that they had holes in their faces.
They collapsed in unison.
An instant of near-perfect silence. And then Evan heard the snick of a pistol being plucked from the floor. Molleken sliced into view around the server racks, a Browning Hi-Power gripped in both hands, and Evan jerked back.
The round hammered the slide of his ARES, ripping it from his hands with enough force that he felt both wrists wrench, the staples straining in his right forearm.
The ARES skipped across a lab bench and disappeared.
Evan ducked back into the ring of desks, rolling across his shoulders and lunging for cover behind a set of cabinets.
He could hear Molleken’s shoes tapping the tile floor. “You’re the one everyone’s so scared of,” he called out. “But you don’t seem like much to me.”
Evan squeezed between two desks and wormed beneath a soldering bench, putting distance between himself and where he was last sighted. He combat-crawled up an aisle between crated supplies, peering around the corner.
Twenty meters off, Molleken was stalking him, facing a half turn away. He led with the pistol, heel-toeing with extreme caution. Perspiration darkened his hair, his eyes shiny and alert, arms and hands shockingly steady. Behind him the dragonflies glowed green-yellow on the slats, a hive biding its time.
Molleken passed from view, and Evan popped soundlessly to his feet, moving swiftly up the aisle. As he eased out behind him, Molleken turned. Evan caught his arm an instant before he fired, the round lasering past Evan’s knee and embedding in the floor.
As Evan knocked the pistol free, Molleken got off a cross that connected fully with his cheek. The blow staggered him, his knees buckling, and he fell against the bleachers, knocking a few dragonflies from their perch.
Fighting away nausea, blinking back to clarity.
Behind him Molleken dove for his handgun.
Evan’s palm closed around a dragonfly.
He wheeled as Molleken turned, hand clutching the Browning.
Evan kicked the pistol free from his hand, lifted the dragonfly to aim its glowing eyes at Molleken’s face, and compressed the wings as he’d seen Molleken do with the robotic bee.
The dragonfly drone made that same camera click, recording Molleken’s facial features.
Evan dropped the drone.
Halfway to the floor, its wings batted to life.
The sound amplified, echoed hundreds of times over.
At Evan’s back the hive rose from the bleachers.
Molleken’s jaw trembled, the flesh beneath his right eye quivering.
The swarm kept unpacking itself from the slats, rising overhead, crowding out the view of the night sky. The rapid oscillation of the wings beat at the air, a nightmare symphony.
Molleken backed away, head cocked to take in the vast array hovering above him. His eyes flared, those double pupils drinking in what was to come.
The swarm tracked him, all those tiny components following each movement. Then it darted at him of a piece, a massive cloud of a mallet, the dagger tips tearing him to shreds. He screamed, a high-pitched note of unadulterated terror that became ragged and wet. For a moment they held his form suspended in the air like a pincushion, and then they retracted and he fell leaking to the white tile of the floor.
They rolled in waves back to the bleachers, reparking themselves on the slats. Their wings stilled, but their yellow-green eyes remained alive, waiting for the next kill order. Some gently fluttered their wings, clearing off the blood.
Evan backed away, keeping his focus on them, though if they elected to attack him, there was nothing he could do to stop them.
He kept easing away until he’d moved out of sight, and then he turned and ran. The emergency stop had held the elevator doors open. Inside, Tanner sat in the corner in precisely the same position Evan had left him in, his hand dangling from the flex cuff by his cheek. The big MP stirred on the floor, eyes trembling open.
Evan stepped in and clicked the button to rise. As the elevator doors slid shut, he realized that his legs were trembling.
He pawed sweat from his forehead, looked at the men. “Thanks for waiting.”
He used the short ride to steady his breathing and jogged out, leaving the MPs behind. As he cleared the building, he jumped over the steps and then sprinted for his Honda Civic. He’d just come around the SUVs when the rolling door of the box truck rattled up.
The sixth contractor stared out at him, eyes huge, clear coil of an earpiece hanging from his left ear. Evan stared back.
The last man, left to guard the convoy. If he hadn’t known who Evan was when he’d run into the building, he certainly knew now. He lifted a gun from his side, and Evan snapped his ARES up.
The sights were already lined on the guy’s heart when Evan saw that he was holding not a gun but a dragonfly microdrone aimed out at Evan.
The merc’s hand pulsed, and Evan fired.
The shot struck the drone, driving it back through the man’s chest and knocking him flat in the cargo area. The pop of the firing gun filled Evan’s ears, and when it receded, his brain finally registered the small noise he’d heard before the shot.
A tiny click.
Like a camera taking a picture.
Evan stepped back toward the Honda, his panicked stare lifting to the giant hockey puck of a building looming before him.
He heard it before he saw it.
The hum of hundreds of wings.
And then the swarm erupted from the top of the building, a volcano blowing its top.
67
Mud Monster
The Laser Warning Receiver alerted at the hem of Evan’s shirt, the tiny three-note Taps bugle woefully insufficient for the threat rocketing at him.
Evan flung open the door to the Civic, snatched the Dronewrecker gun from the passenger seat, and aimed at the incoming swarm.
He fired, heat and laser dazzle erupting from the fat barrel of the weapon. A ribbon of drones fell from the right flank, their sensors blown, raining down uselessly to the earth. It felt odd to shoot a gun without recoil, whose only sound was like the flick of a pinball paddle. Stumbling backward, aiming at the sky, he shot rapidly, stripping away sheets of microdrones.
But there were so many more, kamikaze-plummeting at him, a hundred meters out, now eighty.
He pulled the trigger again and again, initiating another burst of high-powered microwaves, disabling swaths of the dragonflies. But for every dozen he struck down, a fresh dozen filled their space.
Sixty yards out, now fifty.
All at once they parted, peeling to the sides and swooping up to regroup, protecting the swarm. He choked out a breath of relief. Their maneuver would buy him a little more time, but not much.
He realized he’d backpedaled out
of the parking lot and onto the testing field. As the microdrones retreated, he kept firing, rendering as many useless as he could.
His heel caught on a mud puddle, and he went down.
Too late he saw the single dot sailing down at him, incoming.
The swarm had diverted its numbers away not just for self-protection but to draw his attention elsewhere.
And they’d send one suicide bomber directly at his head.
It zipped down.
No time to raise the Dronewrecker.
He clicked the button on the hefty gun, releasing a burst of cover smoke, flung the weapon aside, threw himself onto his feet, and dove.
A ripple of air brushed his back, and then the night burst into light around him. The force of the explosion had him airborne, twisting over himself, a weightless cartwheel.
Somewhere beneath consciousness he registered what had happened. The solitary microdrone had chosen to take out the Dronewrecker gun first to leave him defenseless before the gathering swarm.
He landed flat on his back, the air torn from his torso at impact. For a moment he was knocked clear out of himself, floating above his sprawled, damaged body.
The siren song of surrender called to him. It was so peaceful up here, a God’s-eye view of the world, impersonal and all-knowing, the omniscience of a drone.
For a moment he drifted against the constellations. And then Jack’s growl came into his head. The hell you doing here? it said. You got work to do.
Evan felt himself spinning back down through the forever darkness, through the wispy claws of a few stray cirrus clouds, and he slammed back into himself with greater impact than his physical landing.
He blinked himself to alertness. He was stuck in the mud, in the earth itself, clothes and flesh weighted with mud and muck and grime. Earpiece gone, no weapon, cut off and defenseless. Forearm torn open anew. His bladder had released, his pants soggy. Smoke hovered in the air, war-zone thick, a no-man’s-land miasma.
Way up above, hundreds of specks collected in the eye of the moon, the swarm gathering itself, confused. Many of them were likely still blinded from the laser dazzle, and the smoke protected him from those with intact electro-optical sensors. The haze drifted above him, shielding him from sight. The heat wave from the Dronewrecker would dissipate quickly, revealing his thermal signature.
He rolled himself through the mud in one full rotation, covering himself further, winding up again on his back. He was now encrusted in a makeshift shell scrape that camouflaged him and layered over his heat signature, protecting him from the infrared sensors.
They couldn’t detect him.
As long as he didn’t move.
Or blink.
Or breathe.
He lay still, cold mud plastered on his face.
The swarm churned, agitated and frenzied.
Searching.
The able communicated with the disabled, the swarm reconstituting itself with ever greater grace and menace. It flurried out across the testing fields, darted across the parking lot, swooped over the lab building.
Evan lay still. Tried not to breathe. There was no backup plan, no next step. The drones would not tire. They would search until they found him.
The smoke shifted slowly, gauzy strips floating off like clouds. Embedded in the earth, lying stock-still, he felt as if he could sense the planet’s rotation moving him away, out of cover. He wondered if he’d already died; if this was what death felt like.
The mud on his arms, his neck, warmed and crusted. He felt it cracking, curling off his skin. With all the training he possessed, all the control he’d been taught over his anatomy and his mind, the one thing he could not suppress was his body temperature.
Soon enough the warmth of his flesh would become apparent.
There was almost a comfort in the inevitability. The whine of the drone heightened. They were across in the neighboring field, a flock of seagulls searching for prey. Now they dappled the edge of his peripheral vision.
The mask of mud across his face was thin enough that he felt sweat bead through it.
The swarm hesitated directly over him, trembling. He watched it re-form with a horrified awe. It pulled to a tip. Like a snout aiming down.
He’d been spotted.
Nothing left to do.
The swarm gathered itself around the point, readying for a plunge. This was it, then. It was time.
He vowed to face it on his feet.
He pulled himself up, a mud monster, the filth clinging to him, a ghillie suit made of earth. His OCD had shut down, drowned beneath the roar of incoming death, and all the disgust and judgment he carried with him like a shield to keep others at bay were inside him now. They were a part of him and not the world, and he accepted them as his own.
Up above, the dragonflies drew back like an enormous fist.
They tornadoed down at him.
He readied himself.
But all at once there was a ripple in the nosediving swarm, the front half torn away and then the back, sheeting down limply to the earth.
Behind him he heard the growl of a motor, and he swung his concrete-heavy head to see Candy commanding a joint light tactical vehicle.
She was atop the desert-tan JLTV, standing tall behind the gun turret. Bizarrely, her purse wagged from one shoulder, and she was holding something—silver, cylindrical—aloft to the sky like a wizard’s staff.
It took a moment for him to put it together: She’d recharged the portable EMP weapon and used it again to fry the electronics inside the microdrones.
The vehicle was barreling at him.
There was nobody at the wheel.
Candy reared up behind the turret, readying to drop back through the roof into the driver’s seat.
She was shouting at him.
His ears were blown out, and he heard the words as if through earplugs: “Move!”
He threw himself to the side, the massive tires ripping through the puddle where he’d stood an instant before. Peeling himself up, he stared after the JLTV as it blazed across the parking lot toward the circular building.
Just before it struck the box truck, Candy gained control, the vehicle swerving abruptly and swinging back around. Through the open window, she shouted at him from the parking lot. “Get your car and clear out!”
He gave a thumbs-up and strode back wincingly to the Civic as she powered off to her own getaway vehicle.
He fell behind the wheel, praying that the car’s electronic ignition had been sufficiently out of range of Candy’s EMP device. His fingers, slimy with mud, had trouble gripping the key, turning it.
Nothing.
He heard his teeth grind, felt a vein pop in the side of his neck. Tried again.
Still nothing.
He exhaled through clenched teeth and gave it one more try.
Miraculously, the engine coughed to life.
He accelerated out of the lot and up the long road to the perimeter, whipping through endless testing fields. He tried to take control of his breathing first. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow, steady, keeping the heart rate low.
His earpiece was missing, and he thought to call Joey to tell her he was alive, but when he glanced at his RoamZone, the screen was slivered with countless cracks from the explosion.
Dirt and sweat stung his eyes. Steering with one hand, he wiped at them with his knuckles, but they were so dirty that he wound up just smearing the grime around. He assessed himself for further damage. A deep throb in his right forearm. The reopened wound had bled through his shirt, and he tore the long sleeve away and peeled back the bandage.
Groping in the backseat, he found his trauma kit, ripped out hemostatic gauze, and slapped it on. It was treated to promote rapid coagulation, which was the best he could do in the middle of a getaway.
At last he made out the rear access gate, still retracted in the distance. His exhale came as a hiss. For a moment the path was clear.
Then the gate rumbled back to
life.
And started to close.
He stood on the accelerator, aiming for the gap.
His shot at freedom slowly wiping from view.
His head throbbed, his teeth ached.
Almost there. Almost closed.
The Honda hurtled forward and scraped through, the edge of the gate screeching along the side and clipping the mirror off. The car popped free, fishtailed slightly, and straightened again on the open road.
Evan choked out a breath of relief.
An instant later a red Corvette T-boned him.
68
Stop
The Civic spun a full 360 through the scrub, tilting up on its two side wheels, taking a moment to decide whether or not to roll.
It crashed back down on its chassis, rocking on the tires.
Evan tugged at the door and spilled out onto the dirt, his elbows jarring the ground. Blood-laced drool spilled from his mouth.
The Corvette stared at him. Impossibly, one headlight remained on, a cyclops eye gauging his weakness.
He coughed a few times. Rolled to his side. Pried himself off the earth.
Now a man stood before the headlight, his silhouette perfectly framed.
He shifted, the glow catching the side of him.
Declan Gentner.
He wore a gray pinstripe number, his shiny black loafers fogged slightly with dust from the impact. He held a Smith & Wesson pistol at his side, a .45 with a fancy silver-ported barrel.
“You’re going to come with me,” he said.
Evan coughed some more. “Just shoot me and get it over with.” He sensed that he was talking too loud, his hearing still muted.
“Oh, no,” Declan said, his voice deepened out with anger. “We have two hundred and six bones to get through. We’re going to do this over the course of a few days.”
It hurt for Evan just to hold his eyes open. He lifted his gaze. Saw a slight bulge in the ground a few steps in front of Declan.
“Well,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Declan’s hand tightened around the Smith & Wesson. But he didn’t move.
“When I cut your sister’s throat,” Evan said, “I could hear her breath leaking through the slit.”
Prodigal Son Page 36
