by Russ Linton
"What part of lockdown don't you get, Spence?"
"...building across from me," I hear Dad shout. "Find her!" More than a little rage tinges the command.
A bone jarring strike hits—nothing like an earthquake. It's the equivalent of an extinction event going down right outside the room. I tumble into Danger and steady on his chair. Our magma blemish has burst and spewed out the contents.
"Welcome to Whispering Pines, bitches!" Eric's shout fills the facility's speakers.
A reverberating crash chases the staccato tap of gunfire. Danger tosses me to the ground and covers. As delayed a reaction to this impending doom as I can imagine he's ever had. Eric curses, oblivious to the dust raining from the ceiling, the sweat-inducing heat, and the hairline cracks fanning around the door frame.
More countermeasures deploy in the lobby accompanied by a fevered blast of air down the barracks hallway which pops open the crash doors. Eric streams more curses from the bridge worthy of any sailor. The defenses can't contain whatever is coming. Vulkan, who knows what else—Eric didn't give a run down on this Time Slip. His efforts have delayed the assault, which on any other day with a roster full of badasses in the wings, should've been enough.
But whoever planned this, they're one step ahead.
Pressed against the shuddering concrete, feeling the burst of heat, I'm suddenly taken back to the one place I'd thought I'd left for good. A day where I'd finally taken my life into my own hands. A ride in a pod which never reached escape velocity, only succeeded in burying me deeper.
I squirm to see the screens. Dad floats, at the mercy of an unseen foe. Ember's given up disrupting line of sight with her fire screen, and she's melting dudes, guns and all. Dad shouts, his camera jostling, and all I can see of Aurora is the flicker of light on his sleeve.
Once I thought I was ready to die to prove something. Then I had a taste of freedom, a bite-sized sample. Wasn't enough goddammit. I'm not about to give it up.
Chapter 10
STRONG HANDS DISENTANGLE Danger and me. Hound grits his teeth as he drags me to my feet while Polybius scoops up Danger. He sets me against a wall, gives me a quick once over, and rushes to Eric.
"How long we got 'til they breach the lobby?" Hound asks.
"Minutes?" Eric responds, fingers blazing.
"How'd you get here?" I shout.
Hound points at his temple. "Alpha Kilo—area knowledge." He hunches over the console, an arm slung across Eric's backrest. "Goddamn, if I were there I could sniff out that commie bastard."
"I'm going to suggest this one more time," I say. "We need to let the old folks home burn and get the fuck out."
Hound stares and nods in agreement. "Yep, you gotta bug out. Eric, unseal the eastern exit."
"Done."
Command presence exudes from the aging Augment's muscled frame, softened only by weathered skin that's seen plenty of furballs, as Hurricane would say. The white of his eyebrows and his regulation hair cut only add to the gravity. He's pointing at a screen, outlining a route through the blueprints of the facility.
I should be taking in every last word but can't focus on a thing he's saying. Hound's referring to my escape route. He, Eric, Polybius, they're all intent on meeting Vulkan head on.
And how can I let them do that alone? One more spine jarring rattle. Door, substructure, whatever keeps the intruders at bay can't last much longer.
Taking the other side of the captain's chair, I study the flood of data.
"Hang on," I say. "Cosmonaut, she was here after Killcreek, right?" Eric nods and the dossier pops open. Hound drops his hand and arches a snowy eyebrow but doesn't interrupt. "I know you guys disabled the nanomechs, but did Cyrus remove the tech completely on everybody?"
Medical files spring open at Eric's command and a more recent picture fills the dossier window. Implants are evident along Cosmonaut's scalp. "After the nanos were removed and the tech deactivated, she refused surgery. Several did."
"Okay, okay." My mind races, wishing there was some way to remotely reactivate her Killcreek keepsake. Messing with hardware is my power, if I want to call it that, though Eric and Cyrus likely stuck to their word and turned her implants into nothing but an inert metal plate. "You have thermal imaging on these cameras?"
"Sure." Eric switches Dad's view. "Kind of worthless on Ember."
"How fine is her flame control?"
"Better than you know." Ember's voice crackles into the comcen. She must've picked me up on Eric's open connection. She's hovering in the air, blasting her way through the occupants of an open balcony. Masked guys with guns turn into ash, melted puddles. She's taken the scorched earth track, trying to locate the guy who's got Dad locked down.
I press closer and Eric sighs. "Can you not..." He reaches under the console and produces another headset. "Here."
"You boys handle the forward observer duties for Crimson," Hound says and he and Polybius step away to rouse Danger. Once a soldier, always a soldier. A few barked orders and the three of them are covering the hallway entrance. The lobby monitors show a swirl of molten rock oozing up the security barrier, and two shadowy figures right beyond the pulsing heat.
"Eric, I've got an idea. You keep focusing on the guys redecorating the lobby. Ember, I need you to flood the building with heat, can you do that?"
Another guy burns. "I'll get him my way," she replies.
"My way's faster," I insist.
"Do it, Ember," says Dad. Either there's more static from her end or a sigh and the blinding glow of her screen drops a few thousand candles.
"Dad, keep sweeping the area with your camera. That's it, slower, I gotta see everyone...wait! Got her!" Armed men stand out amid the heat as cooler blobs. Only one figure has a distinct pattern on her scalp absorbing heat faster than her skin. "One floor down, third window from the right. Ember?"
"On it."
She rockets past Dad's view. Glowing outlines of soldiers, revolutionaries, whatever they are, scramble within the building and she keeps a wall of flame pointed in their direction, throwing heat in a steady wave. "One more floor," I say. She's closing fast. "Almost there."
"I see her," Dad says. "Ember, your one o'clock."
Hands aglow, Ember blots out his thermal imaging. At the same moment, the blob jerks downward, screen streaking, and suddenly she's plunging toward the harbor.
"Ember!" Dad shouts a warning, but too late.
"Eric, kill the thermal," I shout. Normal video restored, we watch her disappear into the water with a hiss of steam. "What the fuck?"
Bubbles rush over a blue-green wash as the orange glow on Ember's screen transforms. Her camera pivots down and there's a full-on harpoon skewering her leg with a line trailing into unlit depths. Her thrashing distorts the already compromised view.
"Hound, get ready!" Eric shouts. He hops out of the chair and reaches under the console. With shaking hands, he thrusts a gun my direction.
I stare at the cold lump of steel and check Eric's level of insanity. He's holding a gun too. One that resembles a prop off the set of a 50's B movie.
"What?" he says, hands trembling.
I shake my head and turn toward the screen. "Dad, we're about to have company here."
I could almost swear I hear the grind of his jaw over the connection. "Copy."
His feed fills with the crimson of his glove. Next, the open harbor behind him gradually comes into view. Careful, methodical, he's positioned it to show...what exactly? The view hangs there, upside down, until I hear him grunt. Sea and sky streak, the white of the building filling more and more of the screen. For the span of a heartbeat, I see a woman's face. Cosmonaut, the same woman from the photo. No time for shock and surprise. Darkness. A crimson spray. Static.
"Dad?"
Ember's screen is nearly blacked out and the sun above, a hazy remnant. She's stopped struggling, and her feet are pointed as the line drags her further down. Water gurgles on the open channel and covers up the faraway echoes of chaos. In
the base, the noise has died to a persistent buzz and the tremors, stopped.
"Ember?"
Sudak emerges from the depths at the points of her toes. Shirtless, he looks ghostly, tattooed with scraps of daylight that survived the journey. He's wearing the lower half of a wetsuit with a knife at his waist. The harpoon gun he skewered her with is in his hand, emptied.
"Ember, wake up!" I shout into the headset.
The water-breathing Augment drifts closer and spares a slow-motion scan of the surface. His free hand wanders toward her throat. He must be going for her neck to squeeze out the last bit of oxygen.
A flurry of movement, and they're locked together, her hands pulling him in. There's a massive burst of bubbles like the camera has been dropped in a pot of boiling water. Sudak drifts away. His gills blackened, every open space on his face a charred crater. Empty eye sockets, lips crispy and curled away from his gums. I can't unsee that.
Shimmering light bathes the screen as Ember ascends, gasping, that final mouthful of oxygen Sudak reached for, spent in a deadly kiss. No sooner then she breaches the surface, she's airborne in dad's arms.
Everyone left in the comcen has taken up their positions. No deployable barricades for this room, just the swinging crash doors. Eric's on the far side, peering around the corner from the opposite hallway. He waves to get my attention and shakes his gun, pointing.
I snatch the gun he tried to hand me from the console. One similar to the type Hound carries. No separate safety mechanism, you just point and shoot. Feels awkward, heavy. Leaving it behind, I sprint over to Eric. He wrinkles his nose at my empty hands but doesn't say anything.
"The brilliant plan is to shoot at this guy?" I ask. "Didn't you unload on him in your kill box?"
"Correction, they're going to shoot him," he says, indicating the others. "I'm going to repulsor beam his ass."
Maybe he doesn't flinch, but there's a tremble, and it isn't from the seismography. That has all but stopped. An eerie quiet descends, the kind that reminds me I should've paid attention to Hound's exit route tutorial.
The crash doors to the residence hall flop open on a current of superheated air. A mound of tile and cement charges down the center of the hallway, expands, and bursts. Molten rock sprays the narrow passage and where it doesn't stick like cooking grease, it burns craters through solid brick. Only Eric and I have a clear view. The blast has forced the others nearest the onslaught to sink behind their cover.
Our intruders step out of a shimmering fog. Vulkan's geared for battle. Camo head to toe, helmet, tactical goggles, knee and elbow pads—the works. A lot of Russian Augments wore uniforms sans rank and insignia after their homeland disavowed any official use. And the girl with him, I don't recognize at all. She's got on a Soviet uniform as well, I suppose—if they ever made a Halloween costume of such a thing. Slutty Stalin.
Sheer dominance follows Vulkan's every step. The girl has a sway to her hips as if she's prowling a catwalk and not infiltrating an enemy base. It's a give-a-shit level I used to only ascribe to Dad, but which I saw plenty of in these halls those days following Killcreek. The upper tier guys, they're gods among men. Worst part, they know it.
I feel naked. Utterly unprepared. Facing down a robot, or even a dude in a robot suit, is a joke compared to this.
Yet, I'm not about to turn and run. Why? My time to be shell-shocked, catatonic, lost in the buzz between my ears.
Hound opens fire. Eric screams, lets a repulsor blast fly, and the shot goes wide. Danger's recovered and he's got a snub nose machine gun tucked tightly into his shoulder. He rattles off a barrage and several of the rounds appear to strike Vulcan as Time Slip ducks behind him. The volcanic Augment raises a wall of magma that cools instantly into flame-cracked stone and plumes of black smoke trickle from the impacts. Polybius surges forward, his bionic limbs firing, prepared to crash through their improvised barricade.
Bionic limbs firing...
Bionic limbs firing...
Then they're gone. Vulkan, slutty Stalin, and it takes a moment—I mean he was just there, but Polybius. He's gone, too.
Chapter 11
SPENCER. IT IS VERY good to see you. I trust you are well?" Xamse's face spans across the screens of the comcen.
"I'm here," I say.
He isn't the same young kid who tased me until my testicles re-ascended. It had been good to have someone younger mixed up in this crazy world where bench pressing cars was a rite of passage and melting dude's faces, an afterthought. A rare chance to use the moniker everyone always thrust on me.
Youthful, but he's built an air about himself. Could be the thousand-dollar three-piece suit or the new haircut which looks better than a bathroom sink job. His luminous eyes in those dark cheeks appear less haunted, more observant. From lackey to C.E.O. in a year must have its perks.
"I understand you had an eventful day, Crimson Mask." Those owlish eyes switch front and center where Dad stands.
"I'd call it a shit show," I say.
Dad cracks his neck. "What Spencer meant to say is things got out of hand."
Lobotomizing a girl with your body camera might have been a step too far, but I withhold the criticism. Ember's leg is a ball of gauze propped in a chair. She doesn't look happy though she wasn't forced to show up for this meeting. She hobbled from the infirmary all on her own. Hound's beside Dad at parade rest in his standard painted-on white tee and camo pants. Danger hunches in a corner, eyeing the talking head warily. Eric is dwarfed in the midst of it all. Could be the weapons of mass destruction looming behind him or the over-sized head taking up the screens, I'm not sure which. Even the captain's chair, nothing shy of a holy relic, appears chintzy and temporary.
"Your location was compromised by other Augments. Those who had exceptional ability and, it seems, information," Xamse says coolly.
"Any leads?" Dad asks.
Xamse reclines and steeples his fingers. Gold rings and cuff links glint in the perfect lighting of his conference room. My guess is, he had Beetle's old techno dungeon demolished. "Such investigations are not my concern. But I would ask you initiate the agreed-on protocols."
That doesn't sound ominous. Eric doesn't react when I tap the console, trying to get his attention. He's in hacker mode.
"We good, Eric?" asks Dad.
"Everything checks. Signals out are hitting the cloak. Even though the radius has diminished, they would have had to get within five miles to even remember they were close. Even our compromised," he pauses for the air quotes, "wireless thumper can't make it through." He flashes through more traffic monitors and sensor readings I can't decipher. "Like I've always said, it's weird when we get to those pathways Charlotte used to tread." His eyes wander above the monitor bank and to the ceiling. "She was this quiet little angel, keeping an eye on us. You know?" He's addressed his question to the empty perch on the roof with a perplexed, almost sentimental expression which disappears with the ensuing awkward silence. Clearing his throat, he hunkers over the controls.
"If your external security measures are good, I have learned from my experience that this must mean you have been compromised from within," says Xamse.
This has Ember's attention. She cracks her knuckles, and I catch her regarding Danger. Hound gruffly shakes his head and Dad gives everyone in the room a once over.
"Don't pin this bullshit on me." Danger stalks toward the center where the cheap fluorescent lighting overlaps.
"Nobody was," Ember whispers.
"We'll talk about it later." Dad's word is final though Danger isn't backing down. I'm curious if he could see the punch coming and what the hell he'd even do about it.
"Let's not," he insists. "We clear the air now."
Hound prepares to intervene but Dad calmly cuts him off. "Fine. Why didn't you warn anyone?"
"Could be I was never in any danger? Could be they came and got everything they wanted and left."
Sounds plausible, though outside he'd said he got a buzz off a cigarette without ev
en lighting it. A single cigarette surely wouldn't kill the guy. There are plenty of layers to whatever it is he does. An indoor volcano should have moved the mental Geiger counter a few degrees.
"Hound, you've spent plenty of time with Danger in the field," says Dad. "Can you confirm that's how it works?"
Danger fidgets and waits on Hound's reply. It doesn't come quickly. "I can't say how exactly, Sean. He's a soldier, a damn good one. 'Nam changed a lot of us, but not him, not that way. I'll still vouch for him."
Dad flexes his jaw and the veins in his neck swell. "Vietnam was a long time ago, Hound." He crosses the room to tower over Danger. "Whatever happened, I need to know."
The comparably wiry guy has gotten his wits back about him and he puts on that same alpha male stare he used on me. Those senses must be telling him he isn't going to be pulped but I've been in that same spot hundreds of times and never felt sure myself. Even if you know the train will stop in time, don't you flinch as it barrels down on you?
Ember has changed her position. Subtle, but her bad leg is off the chair and she's ready to spring into action. Hound clears his nostrils and takes in the atmosphere with a cautious sweep.
"We've got a POW in the brig, remember? Let's all focus on that," Hound says.
"Naw, I'm good." Danger runs his tongue under his lip, and he disengages with the mountain of muscle. "It's like this. I didn't see it coming. At all." The desperation I saw before the fight returns. "Never felt that before. Felt the absence of danger here inside that cloak where nobody could see. Followed it and found this place sure enough. But it'd been a long time since I got surprised by anything. Since before...before the procedure. I felt..."
"Powerless?" The word slips out before my newly installed brain to mouth filter can engage. That gets everyone's attention. Even Xamse sits forward to hear me out. "He's telling the truth. No offense, Danger, but the guy was a wreck. I had to lead him inside."
Danger stares at his feet. "Truth."
