“Go away,” I said.
“Screw that,” said the voice. “Get your sorry butt up, or I’m telling Mom.”
No, no, no, my mind growled.
Aloud, I said, “You can’t be here, Sean. You can’t.”
There was the scuff of a foot and then the creak of mattress coils as someone sat down on the bed. It took so much of everything I had left to open my eyes. To turn. To see my brother sitting there.
He looked the way he had when we were kids. He was wiry and had the look of combined exasperation and humor he wore whenever I did something dangerous or stupid. Or both. Like when I tried to base jump from a tree using a parachute made from black plastic trash bags. Or when I tried for a somersault into the pool at school. He had skeptical eyes and a scuffle of sandy hair, and a scar on his jaw from when he’d run halfway through a privet hedge while we were playing Frisbee in the front yard.
Sean.
My only brother.
Blown to red rags on Christmas Eve. Bones in a box and laid to rest between our father and Sean’s wife and kids.
“No,” I said. “You’re not here.”
He shrugged. “You say that, dingus, but you’re actually talking to me.”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“Whatever, dude. You’re just being weird.”
“And you’re a ghost.”
Sean cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know … am I?”
“Or am I crazy?” I asked.
He spread his hands in an if the shoe fits gesture. Then he tilted his face up as sunlight fell on him. There was no sunlight anywhere, there couldn’t be. Just on him. I watched his shoulders rise and fall as he took a long breath and sighed it out. Without looking at me, he said, “He’s coming for you.”
“Who?” I asked. “Santoro? Let that motherfucker come. I want him to.”
Sean turned to look at me, and in the fragment of a second it took his head to turn, he changed. Now he was the Sean I’d only glimpsed on that awful day. Older. Thirty, with the eyes of a cop whose heart had not yet been thoroughly broken by the job. Wearing an ugly Christmas sweater, with a smudge of green cookie icing on his cheek from where a child might have kissed him.
“No,” said Sean. “He is coming.”
His eyes, which were always as blue as mine, suddenly changed. It was as if ink were leaking into the iris and sclera, tainting them, staining them with ugly shades of green and brown. As if reptile skin had been run through a blender and turned to paint. Even the Darkness inside me recoiled.
“He’s coming for you, Joe,” said Sean in a voice that was low, raspy, rumbly, and entirely obscene. “If you keep hunting Santoro and Kuga, you’ll find him. And he really wants you to find him, Cowboy. Oh yes, he does. He wants that so much.”
As he spoke, his breath plumed out. Not cold breath, but hot. It was like being next to the open mouth of a great furnace. I could feel the heat on my cheeks and lips and eyes. I recoiled in horror and fumbled for my gun. I think I screamed, but I’m really not sure. God knows I needed to.
But then I blinked and the bed was empty and I was alone with the corpse of Casanova and my combat dog. The heat, so intense a moment ago, faded now, and I could smell the stink of piss and blood from Casanova, his bowels having emptied as his muscles slackened in death.
I turned to Ghost and saw that he’d backed all the way into the corner, tail tucked between his legs, the white hair on his back standing as stiff as needles. He was panting hard. Not from effort or pain but fear. Drool flecked his muzzle.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said, but those words and the tone of my voice lacked all conviction. It was not okay. Not even a little bit. Either I was losing what was left of my mind or the world was broken. Maybe both.
He is coming.
I thought I knew who he was, but I didn’t dare say the name. I refused to let myself think that name.
“It’s okay,” I said and reached a hand toward Ghost. He still trembled, but not as violently, and he summoned the courage to reach out and lick my gloved fingers. “He’s not here, boy. We’re okay. We’re safe.”
It was only then I realized that the room had been utterly quiet while Sean was there. Now real sound flooded back. I could hear alarms and yelling, and saw that the door had been knocked ajar. Not much, but enough to break the soundproofing seal. Thin fingers from something burning were clawing at the edges of the door, mingling with the paler dust from the jagged cracks in the ceiling and walls.
Another sound punched into my awareness, coming from outside but close.
Gunfire.
CHAPTER 98
THE TOC
PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
Doc Holliday arranged for her presentation to be held at the TOC instead of her lab because it had bigger screens. Church and Wilson together, with Bug, Nikki, Yoda, and a dozen other department heads clustered around. Isaac Breslau and Ronald Coleman sat at the front near Doc, who stood and addressed the group.
“Okay,” she began, “we’ve been going over this for weeks, and as puzzles go, it’s got that ol’ Gordian knot beat six ways from Sunday. The challenge here is that we have a lot of pieces to that puzzle, but we are only just now getting a sense of what exactly this is.”
No one commented. Church nodded for her to continue.
“I’m going to give this to you point by point. Most of you know some of it because you’ve been working on your piece of it. I know most of it because … well, hell, guys, I’m the one giving the presentation, now, aren’t I?”
She picked up a small clicker and put up the first image.
“This is a 3D model of one of the exosuits based on the schematics we found. This is the K-110 fighting machine, which is the most recent one of its class described in the recovered data. Looks like a robot version of Quasimodo, all hunched over, but see there? The back is articulated, and there are servos so the driver of this nifty gizmo can stand straight.”
As they watched, the computer inserted a person into the suit, and it stood up.
“Now it looks more like the love child of Iron Man and one of those Transformer thingies,” said Doc. “Or, as Bug insists, something—god help me—called BattleTech.”
“Gundam!” yelled Nikki.
“Mazinger Z,” countered Yoda, “or Super Dimension Fortress Macross.”
Scott Wilson turned and gave them a withering look until they fell silent.
“And now we have this,” said Doc, and she fed a short video clip—poor resolution and from a distance—of a single fighting machine going through its paces. “This is footage we got from the button cam worn by Top Sims. As you can see, this isn’t something they’re just thinking about building. Top reports that they had several of these, and drivers—as you can see—are actively training.”
She ran the footage three times.
“According to the specs,” continued Doc, “these suits are coated with an off-market hardened shell built with layers of heat-resistant and shock-absorbing blends of natural and synthetic fibers. Similar in concept to Kevlar, Nomex, and Technora, but at least two or possibly three orders of magnitude more durable. This is a whole new class of aramids, blending polymers, graphene, spider silk, and other composite materials. Frankly, fellas, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I suspect no one else has. It’s new, and it’s almost certainly proprietary tech that is, or will soon be, the cornerstone of Kuga’s line of equipment for the PMC trade.”
“What are its limitations?” asked Church.
“There were test results in with the material Ledger gave to Toys. Unless this is science fiction, it’ll stop armor-piercing bullets up to and including hardened steel, tungsten, and even tungsten carbide in a copper or cupronickel jacket.”
Wilson said, “Good lord.”
“Not sure the good Lord himself could penetrate this stuff,” said Doc. “There’s a whole set of test results insisting that this thing can take an RPG in the chest a
nd keep going.”
The room was silent.
“And,” said Doc brightly, “it gets worse.”
“How much worse?” asked Church.
“Well, the unit itself has a max load capacity of fourteen hundred pounds, not including the driver. The carapace has fittings to attach a modified M134 minigun and two five-thousand-round belts. Other nifty options include a launcher for 40 × 46 mm grenades, with an auto feeder capable of twenty shots. That launcher can carry a variety of party favors, too, including high-explosive M441 and XM1060 thermobarics.”
Wilson’s face was pale, and Doc wasn’t sure he’d blinked once since she started.
“There’s some reference to a flame unit,” continued Doc, “but because of tank size, my guess is that it would be attached to a second unit.”
Bug cleared his throat. “So … if I’m hearing this right, we’re talking about a bulletproof, flameproof personal tank?”
“Yes, and a right spritely one, too. There’s a mode for normal pace, but if they want to push the batteries, it can run, climb stairs, and turn on a dime. So it’s a tank that can chase you up a flight of stairs, outrun you, and send you to Jesus faster than you can spit.”
Doc, who was always at her most cheerful when things were at their worst, positively beamed.
“Now,” she said brightly, “want to hear the really bad part?”
CHAPTER 99
DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM
CELL 13
Ghost found his voice and gave a sharp bark of warning, turning, his tail whipping up, muzzle wrinkling. There were voices outside, closer than the gunfire, coming toward this cell. Two men speaking. Not in German or English. Or in Catalan, for that matter. They spoke Romanian.
I heaved myself to my feet and drew my Snellig dart gun, waving Ghost to a position where he’d be out of sight once I opened the door. My ears were still muzzy from the blast, but I was pretty sure these guys were no more than a dozen paces up the hall.
I eased the door open half an inch wider and peered out. The hallway was thick with smoke, and the Klaxons were much louder. I saw two figures moving toward me through the smoke. They were big and misshapen, like a couple of mountain gorillas, and it took my dazed brain a moment to realize that the figures were wearing body armor of a kind that was bulkier than the sleek stuff I wore.
Their words were distorted, but I caught some of it.
“Este chiar aici,” said one of them in Romanian, gesturing toward cell 13. It’s right here.
He was the shorter of the two. Subtracting the helmet and the thick soles of combat boots, he was probably five foot ten. The other guy was four or five inches taller. Both were broad-shouldered and fit. What was strange, though, is that they moved casually like they were taking a stroll through the park on a spring afternoon. Not the physical dynamic one typically sees in a prison break—which is what I assumed this was.
The bigger guy said, “Spaniolul a spus că primim cu toții un bonus frumos pentru asta.”
That made my pulse quicken. The Spaniard said we’re all getting a nice bonus for this.
The Spaniard!
Rafael Santoro.
Son of a bitch.
“Sigur,” said the other, “dacă vrăjitoarea nu ia totul.”
Sure, if the witch doesn’t take it all.
The witch? I had no idea who that was and no time to think about it.
They had guns in their hands, but they held them sloppily, barrels pointing nearly down at the floor like they didn’t give much of a fuck about anything. I shifted the Snellig to my left and drew the Sig Sauer with my right, whipped the door open, and leaned halfway into the hall, pointing one barrel at each man.
“Sper că voi doi sunteți angajatori,” I said.
I hope you two are undertakers.
They stopped and stared at me. I couldn’t see their eyes through the lenses of their goggles, but I could feel their surprise and knew they were trying to make sense of what was happening. I watched the same process with them I’d seen with Casanova—recognition and awareness.
“Ledger,” said the shorter of the two, almost spitting my name. “Este diavolul.”
It is the devil.
The taller one said, “Futu-ți Cristoșii și Dumnezeii mă-tii.”
That doesn’t translate well into English, but it’s not a nice thing to say to anyone pointing a gun at you.
“Unsling your weapons and drop them to the ground,” I told them, still speaking in Romanian. “Do it right now, or I will kill you.”
Then they laughed.
And charged at me like a pair of demented bulls. Like men who thought they were invincible, invulnerable. Insane.
I fired both guns.
And it did no damned good at all.
CHAPTER 100
THE TOC
PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
Doc Holliday clicked a new image onto the screen. It showed a man dressed in more normal body armor—helmet, chest shell, limb pads, and a stomach-groin shield. This was an actual photograph of a man—presumably a Fixer—in a field-testable prototype. He had a sidearm on one hip, a large fighting knife on the other, and carried a standard Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle.
“Well,” said Wilson weakly, “at least that’s a bit less frightening.”
“No,” said Doc cheerfully, “it’s really not.”
CHAPTER 101
DAS VERARBEITUNGSZENTRUM
The taller of the two stepped between my guns and his partner while simultaneously rushing at me. It happened in the blink of an eye.
The Sandman dart exploded uselessly on his shoulder, but the 9 mm round hit him center mass. Even with Kevlar, the brute force of the lead slug should have staggered him. All he did was grunt. It wasn’t even a cough or cry of controlled pain. A grunt. Like a bullet fired from five feet away was—at most—an irritant.
Oh … shit.
I stepped forward and raised the pistol to fire into his face. See how he’d like that, but then he swatted me aside.
That’s the best word I can think of. It wasn’t a punch. It wasn’t an attempt to deflect my aim before I could correct for a face shot. His hand moved so fast it was a blur, and his open palm hit the ballistic padding over my deltoid. I barely saw it coming, and the blow picked me up as surely as the explosion had and smashed me into the doorframe. I am over six feet and weigh north of two hundred, and that openhanded smack knocked me through the air as if I were a scarecrow stuffed with straw. I hit hard and dropped down to my knees, head ringing and the world doing some kind of drunken jig around me. My hands were empty, and I couldn’t even see where my guns went.
If I’d been alone, they’d have had me. No doubt about it.
But then a white missile blew past me and crunched into the tall man’s stomach, doubling him more from surprise than anything. The tall guy staggered and went down, and Ghost went for his throat.
The smaller man was caught in a moment of indecision—help his friend or finish me off. That split second gave me a doorway back into the fight. I pushed off the frame and tried a swat of my own to knock aside the rifle barrel he was trying to raise, but hitting his arm was like striking a seasoned oak tree. I hit hard, but all I accomplished was to move the barrel two inches to one side as he pulled the trigger. The bullets caught me on the side as I tried to turn to avoid them. My armor is really good, but the angle of impact was bad, and the impact spun me.
I took that force and let it turn me all the way around, and as I completed the pirouette, I chopped him across the point of the jaw with the bottom of my fist. Armor or no, that is a lot of torque and leverage, and the blow whipped his head to one side. It should have given him whiplash at the very least. It didn’t. He cursed and pivoted back, tried for another shot, but I was moving now, my balance on the balls of my feet. Not sure what kind of body armor he had or how it could possibly have sloughed off the damage from my hit to his chin, and I didn’t care.
I had a tiny window of opportunity, and the Killer in me was fully in the game now.
The Killer. Not the Darkness. Small mercies.
I grabbed the handles of the two Randall Attack knives and snap-released them with downward jerks. The matched knives had seven-and-a-half-inch Bowie-style blades and brass double guards. Fourteen ounces each. I usually prefer the much smaller and lighter Wilson Rapid Release folding knife, but I was far from home and working with the equipment I could scrounge. These blades are excellent, and they don’t give a damn about body armor. I proved that by slashing down at his forearm with one and across his face with the other. Did it the same way a samurai cuts with a sword—chopping down while drawing the blade fast and smooth, letting the length of cut give me depth of injury. Both knives bit deeply, and a reddish-gray gel of some kind oozed from the slashes.
The killer did not shrug it off. No, sir. This time, he screamed in pain, staggered back, and in doing so lost his grip on the rifle, which dropped to hang on its sling. Blood poured from both wounds.
They were bad wounds. Very deep. The kind that awaken thousands of outraged nerve bundles and flood the brain with white-hot agony.
But he didn’t stop.
Through the lenses of his goggles, I saw the pain register … and then I saw his eyes change. The white of his eyes suddenly seemed to darken, turning to a vicious bloodred. Then he rushed me, pawing at the knives like an enraged bear. Not sophisticated movements, but so fast and strong that I lost one blade and had to do some fancy footwork to avoid him taking the other.
His whole body seemed to move at a different rate of speed. Faster, with much quicker reflexes.
I counterattacked with slashes that tore his combat gloves to ribbons. The manufacturers advertise those kind of gloves as being knife-proof. I beg to differ. Depends on the knife and the man using it. Did not stop him, though. If anything, he leveled up. Again.
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