Chiyo drew her sub-machine gun. “Then let us be on our way.”
The trio crept down the hall, alert for any movement and their ears tuned for a rustle or thump to alert them to any unseen dangers. Thus far, they had encountered nothing to delay them.
They reached the elevator lobby and Chiyo used one hand to fiddle with what appeared to be a keypad. “There should be a latch here to crack open the doors… Ah, here.” The doors parted slightly and she inserted her fingers into the slit to gain purchase and shove the doors to either side and open them completely. She peered cautiously into the shaft. “There’s a small platform on the right that leads to the edge. We’ll have to walk around the gap to reach the ladder on the other side.”
“Understood. Ladies first,” Flynn said and turned to watch the hallway behind them.
The infiltrator stepped carefully onto the platform and inched her way along the small walkway toward the ladder. “MJensene, I am reading an anomaly,” Kaitō informed her.
“Of what?” she asked as she finally grasped the ladder and held on.
“An energy reading—small, like it is only activating. A weapon, I would think, coming from behind you in the hall.”
Chiyo swung to look beyond Otto and Flynn who kept watch at the entryway. She saw nothing, but her EI wouldn’t alert her if it was something inconsequential. Did he confuse the energy signature for… No, the vents. “Kaitō. Scan!” Her visor displayed the scanning field and, sure enough, a small red light appeared approximately twenty-five yards down the hall. “Flynn! They are above you,” she said and pointed at their target.
The two teammates fired immediately and the ceiling shattered as two armored figures fell and dropped several small orbs as they did so. “Chiyo, go!” Flynn shouted.
The orbs erupted—flashbangs, she realized as she ascended the ladder hastily. Her teammates looked away from the bright lights. Their opponents released follow-up fire and Flynn rolled out of the way of the shots, but not before his leg and boot were clipped. He registered the distinctive airborne whoosh as Raul’s little guided rockets launched from his gauntlet. He went to warn Otto to avoid them, but the other technician actually moved into the center of the hall and raised a hand.
Flynn muttered a curse as the missiles hurtled toward his teammate and waited for the certain impact. He frowned in disbelief when they slowed rapidly before their propulsion shut down completely. Otto snagged one as the other bounced off the ground and flipped down the elevator shaft. The marksman held his breath as he waited for an explosion. After a few silent moments, his head accepted that it wouldn’t happen.
Otto took shelter behind a wall as Izzy fired again. He flipped the rocket and closed his hand to activate it once more before he launched it at their adversaries. This time, the explosion met the expectation.
“Nice one,” Flynn shouted as he spun around the corner and fired a short volley. The assault caught Raul while he recovered from the rocket blast. The tracker clutched his clavicle instinctively in reaction to the pain, which left his chest unprotected. The marksman took the opportunity and sank a single well-placed shot into this perfect target. He smiled as the body sagged. He’d gloat about this for a while during their get-togethers, he thought smugly, but his satisfaction faded when he noticed the body had not disappeared. That and Izzy was nowhere to be seen.
Another noise—definitely something airborne—caught his attention and Flynn spun toward it. He expected another rocket but there was no evidence of one. The sound drew closer, but it seemed to echo almost like it was in a tunnel. His eyes widened and he looked up at the vent, but it was too late. Raul’s hunter drone swooped from the opening and fired to hurl Flynn onto his back. He pushed himself up quickly and froze when he saw Raul on his feet.
“What the hell?” he gasped. “I shot you right in your chest. You don’t have any shields to—”
“Yeah, I do,” the tracker said, his breath ragged. “Shields are generated between the plates of my armor instead of outside it. They aren’t as strong but are less likely to be detected. Still, they are good enough to survive a couple of shots from your stunted barrel—agh!” He winced and rubbed his chest. “It hurts like hell, though.”
“I can give you some quick anesthetic,” Flynn challenged and raised his rifle. The drone delivered another successful shot from behind that almost forced him to his knees. Raul snatched up his own rifle and aimed it his opponent. “You're more of a pain at the moment, to be honest.”
The marksman rolled out of the way of the decidedly unsteady shot, drew his pistol, and fired at the tracker’s leg to cripple him. Flynn looked back to where Otto lay on the floor, literally assaulted by Izzy, who hammered relentlessly at his helmet. Her weapons lay on the floor nearby, and the red light on them indicated a malfunction of some kind. The hacker must have sabotaged them somehow, although he probably regretted it given the fury of the woman’s attack.
The drone banked for another pass, and Flynn activated his stealth generator to instantly vanish.
“That won’t help. I already tagged you,” Raul declared smugly. He pressed a switch on his gauntlet and the mechanical fired a guided rocket that searched for its target’s signature.
It sailed across the hall and the marksman reappeared as it neared his position. “I’d hoped for that,” he shouted and, as the rocket was about to strike, rolled under it. The missile narrowly missed his head and sank into the ground behind Izzy before it erupted. The force knocked her off Otto.
Flynn now had enough distance. He hefted his rifle and extended the barrel, increased its power, and took aim. A single shot penetrated Raul’s helmet and he fell instantly to lie unmoving in a huddle. The marksman smiled.
“You didn’t have enough shielding to survive this time,” he gloated before an odd beeping distracted him. He looked to the side and froze. The drone hovered near his head and an orange light on the hull turned red and blinked rapidly. “Oh, for fuc—” The mechanical exploded, and Raul’s last little trick took Flynn with him.
Otto lowered his hand and muttered his frustration. Damn, he hadn’t been fast enough. Granted, he wasn’t exactly stable and suspected that the scout’s beating had rattled his head somewhat. He needed to catch up to Chiyo before—
A blade pierced his back and he twisted to see Izzy behind him. “You’re tenacious, aren’t you?” He winced and avoided the urge to breathe too deeply.
“Yeah, and you’re way harder to put down than I thought you would be,” she admitted with a grunt. She slung an arm around his throat and pulled him back, deeper into the blade. “I always thought techies were the squishy sort.”
“We like to let you think that,” he said as he struggled against her grip and clenched his teeth when the blade buried even deeper. “It allows you to underestimate us.” He initiated a quick-command from his HUD that activated Izzy’s armor locks. Her gauntlets and chest armor released and fell to leave her in only her underlay.
“What the hell are you—oof!” She gasped when he elbowed her in the stomach. He immediately drew his own blade and turned to strike, but she caught his hand in mid-air and twisted it to force him to the ground. She fell to her knees with his blade in her hand and drove it into his throat. He disappeared almost instantly.
She rubbed the sore spot on her stomach. “I’ll make a note to change my thinking about you techies,” she mused as she retrieved her armor and strapped it on while she studied the elevator shaft. “Especially since I have one more to go.”
Chapter Eight
Izzy checked her weapons, which seemed to be fully functional since Otto had disappeared. She slung her machine gun onto her back and holstered her pistol. Cautiously, she approached the elevator shaft and retrieved a small orb that she activated. The scouting drone lit up and floated in readiness. She directed it up the shaft, wanting to see if Chiyo had left her any surprises. It read that the shaft was empty but saw that the tenth-floor elevator doors stood open. At least she had a destinat
ion. She had the drone continue to look for her opponents as she scrambled onto the narrow walkway and shuffled carefully to the ladder. She should feel more confident since Chiyo didn’t have her toys to defend her, but something told her she was walking blindly into a trap.
“They aren’t here anymore.” Amber sighed with real frustration.
“I suppose they’re probably already headed back up. This is getting boring and annoying really quickly.” Kaiden huffed his irritation as they exited the power room.
“Did you guys feel those shakes?” Indre asked. “Do you think there was a fight upstairs?”
“Possibly. We may be dark but they can still send a notification.” He scrolled quickly through his messages. “So far, I have nothing, so they are either all dead, in which case— Oh, hell.”
“What?” Amber asked.
“Take a look at the squad. Flynn and Otto are down.”
“Dammit,” she cursed. “Where’s Chiyo?”
“She’s still alive, but I can’t pinpoint her position unless I— Okay, there’s a notification. She’s trying to contact us…one sec.” He opened the comm link and her signal appeared to reveal her position on the tenth floor. “Chiyo, we’ve just left the power room. They weren’t there.”
“I know. They are on the fourth floor and heading this way. I’m in the lab with the serum. I found a computer and rerouted what power I could to activate it. I can see them but can’t do anything about it,” she explained. “Flynn and Otto are down. I can see Izzy but not Raul. I guess they took him out before they were eliminated.”
“Hold on. We’re on our way,” Kaiden promised and glanced at Indre. “If we take the stairs, I could use what’s left of my shield to block another explosive, but I’d rather keep it ready for the inevitable fight. Do you have something we can use to deactivate Cameron’s traps if we run into any?”
She ran a hand across her belt. “Those traps are mechanical devices, not electronic hardware or software, but I do have something that will help. It won’t deactivate them, but it should pause them long enough for us to get out of the blast zone.”
He nodded and sprinted toward the stairs with his teammates on his heels.
Chiyo focused on the screen and watched as events unfolded. Kaiden and his team made it into the stairwell and fortunately, it wasn’t the same one Jaxon and Cameron were in. She grimaced. Maybe unfortunately was more appropriate. They could deal with them while she faced Izzy, who had almost reached the lab. The defenses Marlo and Genos had set up wouldn’t hold for long. All they’d had were a couple of small static turrets and a reinforcement shield around the door. While they might work to slow a head-on assault, once Izzy noticed them, she would find a way around them.
Should she wait for the scout to come to her? She could find somewhere to ambush her from, but for all her talent in tech, she was barely an above-par soldier. Izzy was a trained combatant, not some grunt she could mow down. While her adversary wouldn’t expect a direct assault, that would be because it was simply a fool’s plan to even try to face her in combat. She would have to end it quickly for any surprise advantage she might have to bring success.
She narrowed her eyes when she noticed a small orb that flew around Izzy as she crept up to the corner of the hall before the entrance. Chiyo looked more closely at what she soon identified as a scouting drone. They were a common tool in a scout’s arsenal to help with surveillance and her opponent seemed to have no reservations using it now. Izzy peered around the corner and immediately saw the defenses. She leaned back and issued orders to the mechanical and it ventured off to the other side of the hall. It seemed obvious that the scout believed Chiyo couldn’t see it and so felt it was safe to use to help her find an entrance or even Chiyo herself.
The infiltrator smiled. She might have found her advantage.
Izzy looked up in search of an access point. She had been certain from the beginning of this match that the vents wouldn’t be a safe route, but they had at least provided a place where they were able to hide while they set everything up. Jaxon and Cameron would be there soon, and she and Raul were supposed to have located the lab and have the serum ready to go by then. Well, it was one out of two at this point.
She looked at the screen in her HUD that displayed the drone’s vision and ordered it to look for other ways to enter the lab or to alert her if it saw anything, Chiyo had to be around there somewhere, although it was more likely that the infiltrator was already in the lab. She peeked around the corner again at two turrets placed on the ground—the little zappy ones, by the looks of it—along with a shield that obstructed the entrance door. They must have been left by the defenders as they ran off their own power source. Shutting down the building's power did nothing to disable them.
If worse came to worst, she could destroy the turrets. But demolishing the shield to access the door would be a pain, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to be stealthy about it. She received an alert from her drone to report a door, slightly ajar, with a compromised console. It must have been what Chiyo used to access the lab.
She readied her machine gun and approached cautiously, took a deep breath, and stepped around the corner with her senses on high alert. Her drone hovered at the far end of the hall with a crossway between it and her. She recalled it having to look in either direction as it moved ahead to check for hostiles. Izzy pushed forward and grabbed the mechanical along the way, shut it off, and put it away.
When she reached the place where it had found the door, she stopped and frowned. There was nothing there. Confused, she rewound the footage in her HUD and it displayed a blank wall as well.
The drone reactivated and flew out before she even had time to register the startling reality. It knocked her gun out of her hand and she was pelted with laser fire from behind. Her armor cracked and shattered to leave the shielded lining the only thing that kept her from collapsing. When she turned, Chiyo vented her sub-machine gun calmly.
“You saw me coming, huh?” she asked and inched her hand slowly toward her holstered pistol.
“I did, yes.” The infiltrator nodded, closed the vent, and aimed the weapon at her. “Nice try, though.”
Izzy drew her pistol, but she wasn’t fast enough. Chiyo released another hail of fire that successfully eliminated her opponent. The scout vanished and the drone faded along with her. Chiyo spun as Jaxon and Cameron turned the corner, their guns trained on her.
“A pretty risky move for you, Chi, to run around in the open like this,” Cameron commented and adjusted his rifle to aim at her head.
“Indeed it is, but the benefits outweigh the risks.”
“And how’s that?” he asked.
“There’s more room for my teammates to move out here than in the lab,” she explained before an explosion on the far side of the hallway provided a much-needed distraction.
Her adversaries twisted to look back and Cameron chuckled. “Yeah, about that… I don’t think they will be—” A slamming sound drew their attention back to where she’d stood a moment before “Uh…joining us.”
“They are coming. We need to get back to the lab entrance,” Jaxon stated and whirled to race back the way they’d come.
“What about her? Shouldn’t we follow?” Cameron asked from a few paces behind him.
“My guess is she has her own way in. We can deal with her if she actually attacks us, but we are outnumbered two to one now. Our priority must be to take the objective and go.” They reached the entrance, where the turrets charged in readiness to fire. Cameron obliterated them before they could, while Jaxon placed a charged explosive against the shielded doorway and turned the knob. The duo jogged quickly around the corner and flattened themselves against the wall. The charge detonated to splinter the shield and the door behind it for good measure. The bounty hunter entered first and grinned when he saw the serum. He smiled and hurried forward.
“Be quick. Kaiden and his group will be upon us soon,” Jaxon warned.
“Didn’t y
ou hear that boom?” Cameron asked as he shattered the glass protecting the vial within and grabbed it. “Do you think they lived through that?”
“They lived through the other one, correct?” Jaxon asked.
He grunted as he handed it to the Tsuna, who stowed the prize in a container on his leg. “All right, point to you, but I still think—” The ace held a hand up and pointed to the corner of the lab. Cameron followed the gesture and glanced back at Jaxon, who held his gun up. He nodded and gave his team leader a thumbs-up.
Kaiden, Amber, and Indre turned the corner and stared at the entrance to the lab. The walls around the entrance as well as the door lay shattered and ruined. Chiyo had told them Jaxon and Cameron were already in the lab and had probably taken the serum by now, but he hadn’t seen them. The infiltrator was guarding the only other entrance, so they had to still be there.
A message on his HUD confirmed that the serum had been taken. He approached the lab cautiously and scrutinized the entrance for traps but found nothing. It was very likely that Cameron had finally run out, at this point.
He froze when he took a few steps into the lab and heard the distinctive sound of a machine gun about to fire. A hasty glance revealed Jaxon in the top corner of the lab, balanced on a stack of crates and about to mow him down. Indre hurtled into him and shoved him out of the way. The shots plowed into her and she immediately disappeared as Amber called out to her.
The ace twisted to see Cameron in the opposite corner, preparing to fire. He dodged the first shot successfully, grabbed Amber, and hauled her against him as he activated his shield. Jaxon released a fusillade at it, but the barrier held through the assault. The bounty hunter snatched a thermal from his belt.
Animus Boxed Set 2 (Books 5-8): Revenant, Glitch, Master, Infiltration Page 49
