by P. T. Hylton
CB risked a glance back and saw Jessica was only a few steps behind him. Miraculously, Brian was keeping up as well, though his face was beet red and it didn’t look like he’d be able to keep it up much longer. Even though he hated to do it, CB slowed his pace half a step to make sure Brian stayed with the group.
A shot rang out, echoing through the tunnel. CB looked back again, making sure his friends hadn’t been hit. They were both uninjured, but Jessica wore an expression of absolute fury. For a moment, CB thought that look must be because someone was shooting at them, but he quickly realized he was wrong. He knew her well enough to realize she was pissed they were discharging a firearm in these tunnels, where a stray round could easily damage a vital system.
Even a rookie badge knew not to fire a weapon anywhere near a vital system. They were on an airship, after all. A very unlucky shot could potentially bring the whole city down. But these badges didn’t seem to care. It looked like all bets were off when it came to killing the three fugitives.
CB rounded a corner and slowed to a walk. He grabbed Brian as he passed and pulled the echolocation device out of his pack, shoving it into his hands. “We need a way out of here.”
They walked fast as Brian frantically tapped at the screen. “No clear exits, and more badges are closing in fast.” He tilted the screen so CB could see the groups of people heading down every hallway.
He turned to Jessica. “Where’s the nearest hatch to get us back up top?”
Jessica thought for a moment. “If we go left at the next turn, there should be a ladder that leads up into the sanitation building in Sparrow’s Ridge.”
“Good enough.”
Brian pointed to the screen, which showed a team moving toward them fast from that direction. “That’s going to be a problem.”
CB looked at the locator. He thought that if he timed this just right he may be able to power through. “Hang tight until I say otherwise,” he said in a low voice.
He watched the soldiers on the screen rushing towards them. Just as they were about to round the corner, he sprinted at them.
The first badge appeared, and CB hit him full force, his shoulder lowered as he plowed into him. The badge careened back into the man behind him and both tumbled to the floor.
CB kept charging forward. He hit the biggest man in the group square in the chest, smashing him against the wall. His head ricocheted off the concrete behind him and he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
One down. But the two he’d plowed over were already trying to get up.
The fourth and final badge raised his weapon, but CB was already entangled with the other two, making it impossible for the man to get a clear shot without hitting his fellow badges. He tried to track CB with his gun, but the fight was too chaotic.
He was so focused on CB that he didn’t see Jessica creeping up to him, a baton taken from one of the fallen badges clutched in her hand. She swung it hard, connecting with the back of his head and taking him out of the fight.
Brian was trying his best to help, too. After CB scored a monster blow on one of the badges’ knee, Brian kicked him as he fell. His foot only delivered a glancing blow to the man’s side, but CB appreciated the effort.
The badge managed to struggle to a standing position, and he threw a hard punch, hitting Brian in the stomach. Brian doubled over and fell to his knees, gasping for air. The guard snatched the baton off his belt and raised it, ready to bring it down on the back of Brian’s head.
CB made a move toward the badge, but Jessica struck before he could get there, bringing her baton down on the badge’s wrist. There was a loud crack, and his arm bent at an odd angle. His baton clattered to the ground.
Jessica struck again, hitting him in the side of the head, and he went down.
Brian stared up at her in wide-eyed surprise, still struggling to regain the wind that had been knocked out of him.
“Come on, we have to go.” She grabbed Brian’s hand and assisted him as he got to his feet.
CB quickly followed them as they raced down the passageway toward the access hatch.
Brian checked the echolocation device as he ran. “They’re not… far… behind us,” he choked out between gasps.
A moment later, his point was proven as the badges who’d first spotted them through the access panel rounded the corner behind them.
One of them had a radio to his mouth. “Looks like they took out Phil’s team. They’re right under Sparrow’s Ridge.”
CB, Brian, and Jessica kept running, focusing on the ladder that would take them up to street level and trying to ignore the men chasing them. They didn’t have much farther to go. They just had to push a little longer.
CB reached the ladder that led up to the hatch first. “Get up there, I’ll be right behind you.”
The other two didn’t bother arguing. It would have been a waste of the precious time they couldn’t afford. Brian went up the ladder, and Jessica quickly followed.
The badges approached at a dead run, and one of them fired. The shot was wild, as CB would have expected a shot fired by a running man to be. CB raised his own weapon, leveling it at them. He aimed at the oldest man in the group, thinking he’d likely be the team leader.
He fired, and his aim was true. The shot hit the badge in the knee, and the man dropped to the ground, screaming.
The other badges ducked back behind the corner, trying to avoid taking a bullet in the leg or worse.
CB knew he wouldn’t have long until they recovered their courage. He quickly climbed the ladder and came up through the hatch. Brian and Jessica were waiting for him.
“We heard the shots,” Jessica said. “You all right?”
CB nodded. “I was one of the people doing the shooting this time.” He paused a moment, then quickly added, “Don’t worry, I was careful.”
“You’d better have been,” Jessica muttered.
CB looked around, taking in their surroundings. They were on the first level of the sanitation building in a large, open room. They were near the wall, and thankfully the room appeared to be empty.
His eyes settled on a locker full of gear, and he ran to it. Then he dragged it back and placed it over the hatch. “There. That’ll make it difficult for the badges to follow us.”
“We should keep moving,” Brian said. “They’ve probably already radioed in our location.”
CB couldn’t argue with that.
They ran to the nearest door.
“This way,” Jessica said, pointing to a door to their right. “If I remember correctly, we can get to an exit through here.”
CB was the first to reach the door. “Hopefully we can blend in on the streets of the Ridge without attracting too much attention. If we’re lucky, we might be able to make it all the way to the hangar without the wrong people spotting us.”
He pulled open the door and froze.
Standing on the other side of it, a raised gun in his hand, was Colonel Kurtz.
21
CB and Kurtz froze in surprise as they stared at each other.
Jessica didn’t. She wrapped her arms around CB’s midsection and pushed her shoulder into him, shoving him out of the path of Kurtz’s weapon. Kurtz gritted his teeth and fired.
The round echoed like thunder off the walls around them, and CB waited, expecting to feel the impact of the bullet. But the pain never came. Instead, Jessica cried out, and a different kind of pain filled CB.
The bullet hole in Jessica’s forearm seeped dark blood. She stumbled backwards, clutching her arm.
The rage erupted from CB in a wordless shout. He grabbed Kurtz’s wrist, twisting it up and away. The gun went off, but the shot was wide and it ricocheted off the wall behind them.
Kurtz tried to pull his arm out of CB’s grip, but CB was simply too powerful. He twisted the wrist again, much harder this time, until there was a pop.
Kurtz yelped in pain and his hand went slack, letting the gun fall to the ground. CB drew his left arm back and slammed his elbow i
nto Kurtz’s face, breaking his jaw.
Kurtz staggered backward, blinking hard in a futile attempt to clear the tears from his eyes. To Kurtz’s credit, he didn’t go down easily, which made CB happy. He wasn’t done with Kurtz yet.
As CB stalked toward him, Kurtz pulled his baton from his belt with his uninjured hand and shifted to a defensive stance. CB glanced at the baton. It was the same type the faceless GMT used.
Kurtz swung the baton, but CB surged forward, catching the other colonel’s wrist and bringing the arm down hard even as he swung his knee upward. He slammed the wrist into his knee and heard it snap.
With two broken wrists, Kurtz collapsed to his knees, clutching both wrists to his chest. CB threw a hard right hook that connected with his temple, knocking him unconscious.
With the colonel down, CB frantically turned back to Jessica. He was relieved to see Brian was already tending to her.
“The bullet went straight through,” Brian said. “If we can stop the bleeding, she’ll be okay. Hand me some of those shop towels.” He gestured to a folded stack of towels on a counter just inside the door.
CB quickly grabbed a few and dashed back to Brian.
“I’m fine,” Jessica said. She looked pale and her voice sounded weak. “We need to keep moving.”
“Not until we get this arm wrapped,” Brian said firmly.
CB stood silently watching, feeling helpless as a sick sense of worry crept up inside him. He’d seen plenty of injuries in his time with the GMT and more death than he cared to remember, but this felt different somehow. Jessica wasn’t a soldier who’d volunteered for a mission to the surface to fight vampires. She was an engineer who was just trying to do the right thing by her city. The fact that Fleming had brought so much pain and destruction to New Haven made CB furious. And the mere thought of Jessica paying the ultimate price in the fight to stop him made him sick with dread.
He’d carried a torch for Jessica a long time, but over recent weeks it had grown into something deeper. He truly cared about her, and the thought of her dying scared him in a way that he’d never quite felt before.
Brian finished bandaging the arm as best as he could with the towel. “All right, I think that will do for now.”
“Good,” Jessica said. “If you two are done fussing over me, let’s get moving.”
CB helped her to her feet. As they moved through the door into the work area, she put her good arm around his shoulders, leaning on him as they walked.
As they stepped into the work area, six workers dressed in identical orange jumpsuits and hard hats turned toward them.
“Guess we forgot to use the echolocator to make sure the path was clear,” CB grumbled.
“Uh, yeah, my fault,” Brian said softly. “Sorry about that.”
The workers stared at them, no one speaking.
Screw it, CB thought. They’d been spotted. Nothing to do now but put his faith in the people of Sparrow’s Ridge.
“My name’s Arnold Brickman,” he said. “You can call me CB. As you may have heard, I’ve had some trouble with the authorities recently. My friends and I are trying to bring Fleming down, but we find ourselves in a bit of a tight spot. The badges are turning the city upside down looking for us, and we need a little help.”
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then one of the workers, a woman who looked to be in her late fifties, turned to the others. “What are you waiting for? CB needs our help.”
Five minutes later, CB, Jessica, and Brian walked out of the sanitation building, dressed in orange jumpsuits and wearing hardhats, and stepped onto the crowded streets of Sparrow’s Ridge.
Five beams of light cut through the darkness in the storm tunnel under Denver. They shifted and bobbed as the GMT members moved, the light from their headlamps the only illumination.
Igor led the way, Firefly dangling from one hand. So far, Jaden’s plan had worked beautifully. Firefly’s physical discomfort at his perceived betrayal grew as they got closer and closer to his masters. They knew which turns to take by his squirms.
The group mostly walked in silence, the vampires still in shock at the loss of Robert, and the humans conflicted at the current state of their former teammate.
The silence was suddenly broken as a voice crackled in Alex’s ear. In the quiet of the tunnel, even the other humans could hear Owl’s staticky voice coming through the earpiece.
“Alex, we got it.”
“You fixed the ship?” Alex asked.
“Yep. It was a bit trickier than I’d expected. The person who sabotaged this thing wasn’t messing around. We had to jury-rig a couple components, but we’re up and running.”
“That’s fantastic.” She spoke softly, not wanting to give away their location to any enemies who might be lurking nearby. “Get everything ready for takeoff. We might not have the luxury of being able to give you much notice before we head your way. We have a job to finish and then we will be right up.”
“Copy that. Stay safe out there.”
After she signed off, Jaden slowed his pace a bit, falling in beside her. There was just enough room for two to walk side by side on the walkway. It didn’t take a keen understanding of vampire physiology to know he’d heard every word of her conversation with Owl.
“Alex, we don’t have a lot of time before dark,” he said. “I think you and your team should head up and get back to your ship.”
She raised an eyebrow in surprise. “What, and miss out on the fun? I thought you needed our help.”
“We did. And you helped plenty. You got Natalie and Igor back to us.”
“Okay, but the job’s not over yet.” She was acutely aware that everyone on both the Agartha team and the GMT were listening closely to this conversation.
“Indeed. But honestly, this job is better suited for vampires. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s true. With all the Ferals down here, we stand a better chance without you. Not to mention Mark and Aaron. They’ll be able to smell your human scent when we get close.” He stopped and turned toward her. “You and your team have held your own so far, but we both know things will be different after sundown. Facing a vampire, Feral or intelligent, at night is an impossible task for any human. Go to your ship. We’ll meet you in Agartha when we’ve finished here.”
Alex opened her mouth to respond, but Jaden spoke before she could.
“I respect your desire to see the mission through, but I am going to take the choice out of your hands. If you and your team don’t climb up the nearest ladder and get in the safety of the daylight, I am going to wake every Feral in these tunnels. I would rather not do that, but I need your team gone.”
“Jaden, don’t be an idiot. We can help.”
He turned to Natalie. “Do you have Firefly’s gun?”
“Right here, boss.” She held up the weapon, aiming the barrel at the ceiling of the tunnel. “Want me to fire a couple rounds?”
“That’s up to Alex.”
Alex stared at him for a long moment before answering. “God damnit, Jaden. Fine. You want us gone? We’re out of here. GMT, let’s head topside.”
In the beam of her headlamp, she saw a ladder not far ahead. From what Alex could see of her teammates’ faces, they didn't look too pleased about this turn of events.
Chuck was the first one up the ladder. When he reached the top, he called down, “You undead types might want to watch yourselves. Sunlight incoming.”
The vampires jumped back as he lifted the manhole cover and light streamed into the tunnel.
Wesley scurried up after Chuck, then Patrick moved to the foot of the ladder. He paused and said, “Man, I was really looking forward to fighting a nest of intelligent vampires under the city. That’s the kind of mission every little boy dreams about.”
His brother patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’ll get your chance.”
Alex rolled her eyes and nodded toward the manhole. “Get moving, you two.”
As
she climbed out onto the street, Alex checked her watch. They still had over an hour before sunset.
She saw the transport truck less than a block away. She gave a wave, and it began rolling forward. When it reached them, Owl leaned out from the driver’s seat, a grin on her face. “Need a ride?”
Alex climbed into the passenger seat while everyone else piled into the back. As she slid into her seat, she asked, “Is the tracker working?”
“Obviously,” Owl replied. “You think I happened to be right above you?”
She tapped on the tablet on the seat between them, and an image of a map appeared with a red dot in the center. As they watched, the red dot began to move.
“Think Firefly suspects anything?” Owl asked.
“I don’t think so. I’m sure he doesn’t know about the tracker."
Jaden had shoved the tracker into Firefly's leg while adjusting the metal bars just after Alex had told him the plan. Firefly had been in too much pain to notice the tiny device. Or so Alex hoped. She'd clued in the rest of the team through whispered messages, and she'd even managed a quick radio chat with Owl before they started down the tunnel with Firefly.
“Jaden did a good job making it sound like he wanted us to leave,” Chuck called from the back.
“Yeah, and how about that acting performance by me?” Patrick added. “I wonder if New Haven’s theater company is holding auditions anytime soon. I’ll bet I’d kill it on stage.”
Ed looked offended. “If anyone's killing it on stage, it's me. I have the voice of an angel. Mom always told me so.”
“Can we focus, please?” Alex asked. “We need to stay on top of that signal and pray the next part of the plan works.”
Owl drove slowly, tracking along with the red dot on the screen. Alex watched in silence, wondering what was happening twenty-five feet below the truck’s wheels.
Jaden crept through the tunnel at the rear of his team. He liked to be in a position where he could see the whole team and any threats that might pose a danger to them.
This was a test of his mental discipline, he knew. Between the daysickness and Robert’s death, his mind was already on the verge of giving over control to his animalistic rage. To keep his mind right, he needed to keep his focus one hundred percent on the task at hand.
