“That family deserves a chance,” Slag said.
Stone Face nodded.
Gillian made it unanimous. He had only three words for Nick before terminating the signal.
“We’re going in.”
Thirty-Four
They approached the assassin’s lair from the southeast, guided by video from a swarm of buzzbees. The tiny drones zipped back and forth through the trees, their movements programmed to be as random as the flights of natural bees to avoid standing out. Nick had dispatched the swarm upon locating the cabin.
The buzzbees’ imagery was being fed to Gillian’s tac helmet. He would have preferred the feed to be less jerky but it was best to err on the side of caution rather than risk detection. Besides, providing visuals to the team wasn’t the buzzbees’ main purpose. They were here to locate and, at the last moment, disable any warning sensors protecting the cabin. They’d performed the first function well, discovering two dozen sensors planted underground in a ten meter perimeter.
If any sensors had been overlooked, the team’s chance of catching Alvis Qwee by surprise would be lost. That would make for a messier and far more dangerous mission. Still, a buzzbee swarm operating in secure territory wasn’t likely to miss much. The odds were with them.
Gillian was on point. He halted the instant he spotted the cabin through the foliage, about twenty meters away. He signaled the others with a raised hand. They froze and assumed flanking positions on his right.
Alvis Qwee’s home was a midsized geodesic dome made of rebar-infused concrete block. It was painted in tans and green to blend with the surroundings. Several Douglas firs towered over it, partially hiding the cabin from overhead view. A smattering of windows dotted the single-story structure. Daylight illumination was augmented by a ring of skylights.
Parked near the only entrance was the Paratwa’s ride, a Buick Kuai van. The Chinese import had reached the cabin on a winding gravel access road.
Nick had located the building plans from the original owner, who had sold the hemispheric cabin to Alvis Qwee eighteen months ago. That was just around the time that the Du Pal began his kidnap/torture rampage up and down the west coast. Although the assassin always transported and dumped the dead family and the sole survivor far from this location, Nick was convinced that all of Qwee’s sadistic rituals were performed here, most likely in the basement.
“Ready?” Gillian whispered.
Three heads nodded. Three right hands drew thruster pistols that were juiced up with special batteries to enable automatic fire for short periods.
He tabbed a switch on his belt, activating the buzzbees’ interference function. A light on his display went green, indicating that the drones had ignited their jamscram, suffocating the area in a blanket of electromagnetic interference. Alvis Qwee’s sensors were now disabled. Any hidden cameras would be displaying only multicolored blurs.
“Go!”
The four of them sprinted toward the door. Presumably, the assassin had been alerted that his sensor net was compromised and would be racing to the nearest window. Best case scenario was that he was in the basement having his way with the family and that the team breached the cabin before he could identify the threat.
Gillian lashed out with his Cohe. Four quick slashes formed a large rectangle of smoldering metal around the door’s perimeter. He leaped to the side to allow Stone Face to serve as a battering ram.
The big man crashed through the portal with ease. The door flattened. Stone Face curled into a tight ball and rolled across it and deeper into the cabin. His crescent webs contorted with him, forming a near-perfect sphere that shrank his exposed side portals to minimal size. The first man to breach a target was always in the greatest danger of being fired upon. The compressed energy shield gave him the best chance of surviving an initial counterstrike.
It didn’t come. Alvis Qwee was nowhere in sight.
Gillian, Slag and Basher rushed in. Stone Face roared to his feet.
The Du Pal hadn’t altered the circular layout of the main floor. It remained a single large space, seven meters across and roughly divided into thirds: lounge area, bedroom, kitchen.
A bathroom and a pair of closets offered the only possible hiding places. Gillian X-slashed their doors with his wand before Slag and Basher whipped them open.
The bathroom had been redesigned for a binary: twin sinks and a dual-seat toilet. The closets contained attire for two men, one of them with a slightly heavier build. A number of the shirts, pants and jackets were smoldering, ruined by their encounter with Gillian’s Cohe. There was no sign of their target or his victims.
The four of them approached the curving staircase to the basement, Gillian in the lead. The steps were on the wall of the bedroom area, behind two single beds aligned binary style, headboard to headboard.
The curving staircase was narrow, forcing them to descend single file. Gillian didn’t like it. Their vulnerability was heightened. But there was little choice.
An unpleasant screeching noise grew louder as they approached the wooden door at the bottom. The eerie sound resembled the cries of an infant yet also bore a mechanical quality, as if produced by some sort of machine. It randomly ebbed and flowed, although never dropping to a level that could be considered tranquil. At its loudest, it was clamorous enough to suggest that it must be earsplitting on the other side of the door.
A quizzical look at the team was met with puzzled shrugs. They also had no idea what the source of the sound might be.
Could they have lucked out? Gillian wondered. Amid such a racket, could Alvis Qwee be unaware of their entry, maybe too busy to have bothered monitoring his sensors?
It didn’t matter. Either way, they were going in.
Slag pressed a scanner against the door. Measurements appeared on the tiny screen. The door was mounted on simple hinges and wasn’t reinforced, although it was locked from the inside. The most important dimension was its thickness, less than three centimeters. Gillian wouldn’t have to use his Cohe. It was thin enough to be kicked in, ideally giving them the greatest element of surprise.
He lifted his left foot and rammed his boot heel into the area just above the knob.
The door flew open. He lunged through, followed by the others.
The circular basement had the same dimensions as the main floor. It consisted of a single open space covered in a thick carpet. There the comparisons ended. The upstairs was meant for living. The basement was outfitted for pain and death.
Alvis Qwee stood in the center of his torture chamber. His four arms were folded across his chests and his faces were twisted into expressions of amusement. Gillian knew in an instant that their entry somehow had been tracked, possibly even before they’d breached the upstairs door. The Du Pal was waiting for them.
Gillian formed an assessment of the room in an instant. Three of the kidnapped family members – the two moms and the eleven year-old daughter – were strapped upright against the wall behind the assassin. In front of them was a bed draped with a selection of pain inflictors. The standard sadist options were present, including whips, paddles, cuffs and a bevy of surgical instruments, as well as more exotic torture devices such as finger melters and orifice sealers. A small table held a slaughterhouse deboning module. It was used to inject acids that would dissolve an animal’s skeletal structure.
The three family members didn’t appear to have been harmed yet, at least not physically. Their mouths were stuffed with ball gags, their eyes wide with terror.
Next to Alvis Qwee, the family’s fifteen year-old boy lay naked on his back, bound to a narrow table. His face was contorted with agony and his body was convulsing. His mouth was closed, the lips having been glued together. VR lenses cloaked his eyes. EEG pads were attached to his forehead, their wires running to a small red box attached to the ceiling. The screeching sound emanated from the box’s speakers.
Gillian realized what the box was, although he’d never heard one in use before. It was a sufrimiento,
a device invented by the Paraguayan military and now employed by intelligence agencies worldwide to torture prisoners for intel.
The harsh sounds triggered synapses in the victim’s limbic system, the heart of the emotions, specifically those having to do with any sort of repressed childhood or infantile pain. Everyone had such pains, even if they were minor. Even something as simple as sadness over losing a favorite toy was enough to leave a subliminal mnemonic trace that the sufrimiento could access and amplify. Augmented by VR imagery depicting violence and destruction, the multisensory device was said to create internal agonies worse than many forms of pure physical abuse.
Alvis Qwee hit a switch at the side of the table. The screeching noise ended; the boy’s quivering body slumped into unconsciousness. The only sounds were the muffled cries and moans of the gagged family members.
“Welcome,” Alvis Qwee offered in stereo.
Gillian said nothing. Better to allow an enemy to revel in its overconfidence.
The assassin continued, alternating between the tways.
“Visitors”
“so rarely”
“come here.”
The tways smiled.
“At least not”
“volun-”
“tarily.”
The tways were short and wiry, one with slightly wider shoulders. Similar angular chins hinted that they could be natural brothers. Their hair was trimmed short and provided the main distinguishing feature. The tway on the left had red hair, his counterpart black.
“Directionalize,” Gillian whispered into his mic while taking a step to the left. Slag, Basher and Stone Face, their legs moving in tandem, eased to the right.
Alvis Qwee seemed unconcerned. His heads angled toward one another.
“What should we do?” Redhair asked, beginning a mock conversation with himself.
“It’s up to you,” Blackhair responded.
“Should we kill these pests?”
“I suppose that’s best.”
“It seems unfair, four against one.”
“Screw the odds, let’s have some fun.”
“Now!” Gillian hissed.
Slag, Basher and Stone Face opened fire on Blackhair with their thrusters. Gillian whipped a straight Cohe beam at Redhair at the same instant.
As he’d expected, Alvis Qwee was too fast to be fooled by such a simple attack. The tways’ crescent webs came alive. The tways jerked away from one another, easily dodging the thruster blasts and Cohe strike. But the purpose of the initial assault was merely to force them apart.
Gillian lashed at the space between the tways, not trying to hit either one, trying only to keep them separated. All the while, he glanced at the team, calmly reviewing what he’d taught them during the intense training sessions.
Keep shooting, but don’t aim for where your opponent is. He won’t be there by the time you pull the trigger. Aim for where you think he’ll be microseconds from now.
Blackhair sidestepped most of their blasts. And he was too experienced to allow the strikes that did splatter against his front crescent to drive him backward or knock him off balance. He leaned into each of the hits at just the right moment.
Stay in triangular formation, two in front, one in back. Alternate your fire – one, two, three – one, two, three. Keep up a machine gun barrage.
Blackhair thrashed at them with his Cohe but they maintained their steady assault. Guns fired in one-two-three cadence, filling the basement with a cacophony of thruster shrieks.
Keep your webs tight. Stay in constant motion, spinning as a group and easing forward. If you stop moving, you’ll give him a clear shot through your side portals.
Red sparks sizzled among the soldiers’ close-quarter webs. Slag, Basher and Stone Face followed Gillian’s dictates, attacking only Blackhair while maintaining their primary defensive posture against Redhair. And whenever Redhair attempted to slash or stab his beam through their weak side portals, Gillian attacked that tway with renewed fury.
To the terrified family, the firefight must appear like a blur of crazed movements. All six bodies boasted enhanced neuromuscular systems. Alvis Qwee was marginally faster than the soldiers but that fact had been foreseen and accounted for.
Gillian’s speed provided the advantage. He was faster than all of them although he didn’t know why. Yet even now, in the cauldron of combat, he had the strangest feeling that he’d been trained by the very best, that he’d apprenticed with someone who was a remarkable fighter as well as a brilliant tactician and strategist. Words from that unknown instructor echoed in his head.
In combat, you must simultaneously balance two states of mind. Exist in the moment yet exist five steps ahead of the moment, or ten steps, or a hundred if you’re able.
The words triggered muscle memories that Gillian didn’t even know existed. He perceived the tways as arcs of movement, vibrant chess pieces on a board whose boundaries were defined by the basement’s perimeter.
Absorb the subtle clues that reveal your opponent’s multiple futures. Perceive every spatiotemporal possibility that he might conceivably occupy.
Gillian adhered to the words of that mysterious mentor. He studied the battle even as he fought it, seeing all of Alvis Qwee’s futures, selecting the one that offered the best resolution.
He waited for that future to develop and, at the perfect moment, abruptly shifted his tactics to pure offense. Striding calmly toward Redhair, he flogged his beam with such frenzy that the air became streaked with overlapping bands of twisting black light.
The relentless assault drove the tway backward. Gillian took a fraction of a moment, perhaps mere nanoseconds, to perceive the other half of the battle. The soldiers and Blackhair appeared to be at a stalemate, neither able to take down their opponent. And whenever Redhair attempted to shift his attention to the soldiers and try a fresh attack them with his Cohe, Gillian escalated his attack.
Perfect. The moment was here. His attention didn’t waver from Redhair’s face. He was attuned to the tway’s every minute expression.
In the space of seconds, Redhair betrayed a sequence of attitudinal changes. Overconfidence gave way to surprise, which in turn gave way to nascent fear. Alvis Qwee had never encountered such an opponent, had never conceived of the possibility that he could be defeated by four mere humans.
Redhair began twisting frantically, trying to avoid Gillian’s wily beam. Desperation overtook him. He leaped sideways, put himself directly in front of the three family members bound to the walls.
To Gillian, the move was blatantly obvious. The assassin hoped that his opponent would hesitate for fear of harming the prisoners.
But Gillian didn’t experience the reactions that Alvis Qwee hoped for. He was neither hesitant nor fearful. Besides, there was little risk to the family, at least not from his end. His control of the Cohe was too precise. Only the Du Pal could hurt the prisoners now. And he couldn’t afford to do that, couldn’t afford to distract himself from Gillian’s assault for even a microsecond.
Gillian feinted left then lunged right. His movement, coupled with the simultaneous twist of his wrist and the perfect amount of squeeze pressure on the egg-shaped weapon sent his beam darting away from the tway. It boomeranged into a one eighty degree turn and shot straight through Redhair’s weak side portal.
The black energy penetrated his left ear. From a practical standpoint, Redhair died at the instant Gillian’s beam burned through his brain. But the curious state of binarydom maintained certain bodily functions active. Both halves of Alvis Qwee screamed even as Redhair’s eyes closed and he crumpled to the floor.
Alvis Qwee, torn in half, found his remaining tway reduced to a quaking squall of agony. Out of control, Blackhair spun and jerked madly across the room. His mouth opened and closed, altering the volume of those harsh noises erupting from his throat. His teeth chattered crazily. In the process, he somehow deactivated his crescent web.
He crashed against the table holding the unconscious
boy, ricocheted toward the soldiers. His arms thrashed and quivered as if they were no longer his own. Fingers spasmed open. The Cohe dropped from his hand.
Stone Face lowered his thruster and took a step toward the tway. He threw a single mighty punch, shattering Blackhair’s nose. The tway flew halfway across the room and landed on his back, unconscious before he hit the carpet.
The dual screaming ended. A peaceful silence descended on the room. Basher frowned and shook his head, as if surprised the team had triumphed. Then he broke into a grin and pummeled Slag’s back in celebration.
“Son of a bitch! We actually did it! We killed one of these fuckers!”
Gillian gestured to the family. The soldiers freed the moms and daughter who were pinned to the wall and removed their gags. Gillian undid the bindings of the unconscious boy and checked his vital signs.
“Your son’s hurt. But I believe he’ll survive.”
Hearing Gillian’s words, the moms cried and hugged one another and their daughter, then rushed over to their son.
“You’ll need to get him med care immediately,” Gillian said, nodding to Stone Face. The soldier picked up the boy and carried him toward the stairs. Slag urged the family to follow.
“Take the assassin’s van,” Gillian instructed. “Drive to the main road at the end of the lane and make a right. There’s a town with a clinic about twenty kilometers from here. Tell the doctors he was attached to a sufrimiento. They’ll know what to do.”
“Thank you,” one of the moms whispered, the tears streaming down her face as she panned her gaze across the four faces hidden behind the visors. “Thank you for saving us.”
Gillian nodded and turned his back on them. He didn’t need compliments. Stone Face headed up the steps with the unconscious boy. The family followed.
“What about the one that’s still breathing?” Basher asked, motioning to Blackhair.
“Let’s make him comfortable,” Gillian suggested.
Binary Storm Page 26
