“Diversion?” Donny asked.
“The stabbing in mess four.”
“It did draw the response force away from the infirmary,” Ellison said. “The aggressor was Victor’s cellmate.”
“The same guy who put him in the infirmary in the first place,” I said.
“Victor let himself get beat up?” Donny asked.
“If it gave him a window to escape,” I said.
“It all fits,” Ellison said.
“Wouldn’t normal procedure after a fight that sends an inmate to the infirmary be to isolate the aggressor?” I asked.
“Yes,” Ellison said slowly. “And someone didn’t.” He paused. “I’m going to check personnel records. Stay here unless there’s a Victor sighting.”
My phone rang. I almost laughed when I saw who was calling me. “Good evening,” I said.
“You guys make it home yet?” Nora asked.
“What’s up Blue?” I asked. Blue Streak was Nora’s codename. The use of code names or real names was a filial shorthand to let the person on the other end know if we’re in costume or not.
“That bad, huh?”
“Well, the SUV’s totaled, but I’m a few hundred miles east of where that happened playing a waiting game with a partially-escaped prisoner in Rockstead. You?”
“I took a walking tour of the city,” Nora said. “Why didn’t you guys call me in?”
“We needed magic, and we’ve been dealing with heavy hitters all day.”
“Should I head out your way?”
“Ask the regional coordinator, he’s running this operation.”
“So much for barbecue then,” Nora said.
The screech of klaxons drew my attention back to the monitors. “I’ve got stuff I have to do,” I said. “Talk to you later.”
“Airborne targets inbound,” one of the guards said. He switched a convenient monitor to one of the cameras on the wall. It zoomed in on a familiar, but unwelcome figure. Bluebottle’s chitinous form was darker in the poor light of evening, but I could still make out quill-like spines on the back of its head that hadn’t been there before. It’s lower face had reconfigured to resemble a two-filter respirator that had rotted out. The orange hue of the growths reinforced the image.
Donny let out a groan. “I thought they’d have him by now.”
“I’m going to delay it,” I said.
“Two spirits at the prison is not coincidence,” Donny called as I hurried from the room.
“We’ll settle the bet after we’ve settled the spirits!”
Finding the darkest spot I could manage, I wrapped myself in shadows and rose above the prison. In the flat, lightless, shadowless view of the world, Bluebottle’s chitin was a dull blue-green. The pack of heroes pacing it at a distance should have been more than enough to take it down. “Why is Bluebottle still loose?” I asked, keying my earpiece.
“Bait,” Rookhound said. “I want to draw out the creature in charge.”
“That thing is pestilence made manifest,” I said.
“You have the treatment,” he said.
“That is dangerously irresponsible!” I said, startling even myself. I winced as I realized I’d just yelled at Grandpa Walker.
“Look here, young man-” He stopped mid-sentence. Confused, I peered towards The Dart. Jester of Anubis had leaned forward and was speaking. His words were not picked up by Rookhound’s throat mic. Whatever he said, Grandpa Walker’s head slumped slightly before he looked up again. “We will have words about your tone when this is over. Miss Pain, don’t let that thing in the prison.”
“It’s about time,” Miss Pain said, her tone distinctly irritable. She stood up on the golden block of light she’d been riding and extended a hand towards Bluebottle. A brick wall of golden light formed in front of it. Bluebottle looked around in confusion as more blocks formed a box around it. The walls thickened as it started to claw at them, replacing the lost volume faster than the spirit could destroy it. She pulled the box down to ground level and landed next to it. “Easy peasy,” she said. Looking around in annoyance, Bluebottle glared at her with its clusters of mismatched eyes. “Don’t get mad, ugly, you’re just outclassed.”
Miss Pain flinched back as Bluebottle sank its claws into its own thorax and ripped out gobbets of pus-white viscera. As that body collapsed in on itself and rotted away, one outside the golden box rapidly grew to replace it. I shoulder-checked the new Bluebottle into the ground, careful to fly back before it could retaliate. Miss Pain pinned all of its limbs with gold brackets, even the wings. It scratched at the dirt, but couldn’t move.
The Dart circled low and slow, Jester of Anubis leaping from the aircraft and landing nearby with an iron jar tucked under his arm. I was starting to feel pretty good about how things were going when the chanting started. It was the same choir that I’d heard at Fort Garriot, only the words were closer to those that Pran Kulkarni had sung in Pigeonpot. A scarlet cloak wrapped around an empty span of air before a blue glow coalesced into a skeleton within. With an upward swing of its scythe, it lopped off The Dart’s tail. Rookhound yelped over the radio as despair drenched us. Panic swept through the guards on the wall, and many simply abandoned their posts. Those who remained behind were frozen in fear, or cowered behind the stone.
“I’m not going to crash this thing!” Rookhound yelled with a steely resolve. Watching his control surfaces strike the ground while he was still flying out over the field, I wasn’t sure how he planned on doing that. Much to my shock, he simply cut his engines and let it glide. I couldn’t watch what happened next, because I grew painfully aware of a burning gaze turning upon me. I looked up at the spectral reaper from which the litany was emanating. I shrank under its gaze and sank to the ground.
“Why is Death staring at us?” Miss Pain sounded on the verge of tears as she voiced the question.
“That’s not Death,” Jester said, “It’s just another spirit.” He drew his kopeshes and strode towards where the specter floated. He voiced a counterpoint, his soothing chant disrupting the resonance of the Litany of Despair. The specter’s skeletal jaw began to move as it added a dissonant counter to Jester’s chant, shifting the equilibrium back towards the Litany of it’s unseen choir.
Bluebottle threw me into Miss Pain, sending both of us sprawling. I hadn’t noticed when her concentration had failed, my attention being affixed to the psychopomp above us. In the distance, I saw Jack curled into a fetal position on the ground. My despair turned to rage, and I rounded on Bluebottle, my claws ripping through chitin and viscera in a spray of pus-white gore. A moment too late, I realized that act ended up coating me with plagued filth. A new Bluebottle emerged from its swarm, laughing a hacking cough that spat forth phlegm and maggots.
Red lightning coruscated out from somewhere in the field, striking Jester’s right-hand Kopesh, arcing through his torso before dancing off the left kopesh and into me. The sizzle of burning fly guts filled my senses. The foul taste and reek of the fumes choked me. The sound sickened, and the roiling vapors dug at my eyes. One of them blinked ‘Rebooting’ as the lightning grounded. Jester and I both sank to our knees, our arms falling slack by our sides.
A woman in red strode out of the field. Aside from some mud on her ankle-high boots, her attire was immaculate. She wore a corseted dress stacked with several layers of petticoats. A closed parasol rested against her shoulder, and her face was covered by a glazed red mask in the shape of a skull with two black horns. She all but skipped forward as she scooped up Bluebottle’s jar. The spectral reaper sank low, raising its scythe, preparing to slice Jester in half.
An incoherent cry on my lips, I shot skyward, flying clear through the specter’s insubstantial ribcage and getting a face full of scarlet cloak. I snagged two big fistfuls of the velveteen fabric and pulled, desperate to do some
thing to the creature. Somehow, the cloak was connected to the specter, as it was jerked back and missed the killing stroke.
The woman in red skipped away, Bluebottle’s jar under her arm. The pestilential bug flew after her, but the specter did not. Its choir changed Litany, growing more guttural and angry. Rounding on me, it released a pulse of blue energy that stripped the shadows from me and knocked me to the ground. I coughed and sputtered from the impact.
Jester rose to his feet and began barking a new incantation at the specter. The reaper recoiled from the sound, growling and snarling. It spat a pulse of blue energy that knocked Jester flat. As Jester tried to stand, it blasted another pulse into him, knocking him back along the ground. The third pulse deflected off a wedge of golden light.
“No one makes me scared!” Miss Pain shouted. A slab of golden light the size of a building flattened the specter into the ground. The impact felt like it shook the foundations of the world as the slab shattered into glittering shards. The choir died and a scarlet cloak fluttered away on a nonexistent wind.
Part 11
The reek of the decontamination fluid shocked me back to full lucidity. I knew they had to get the pestilential ichor off me, but I just wish it wasn’t such a foul-smelling concoction needed to do so. When I finally got out of decontamination and into my gear, I found that Rookhound had been dragged into the prison infirmary. Dr. Song and a group of nurses worked around him frenetically. It didn’t look like they were treating impact trauma, it looked like they were treating cardiac arrest. I stood next to Donny in tense terror, watching the medical staff scrambling. None of the clipped phrases they passed back and forth meant anything to me, and only served to underpin the urgency of their actions.
By the time they finally stood back and the waveform on the heart monitor stabilized, I was half-convinced that I was going to have a heart attack myself. He was coherent enough to motion me forward. I approached his bedside.
“Don’t ever take that tone with me again, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good, now,” he let out a long breath, “Where was this wreck of a mission?”
“An unknown actor, probably a magic user, and quite possibly the person behind the initial attack, stole Bluebottle’s jar before we could conduct a capture,” I said. “We were unable to conduct a pursuit due to the ongoing attack by the unnamed spirit resembling the grim reaper who incapacitated most of the personnel on sight. By the time we drove it off, we could not find the trace and were occupied with resolution of other urgent issues.”
Donny leaned towards me. “You don’t need to sound like him to give that report,” Donny whispered.
“Where’s our Regional Coordinator?” Rookhound asked.
“Just arrived at the prison,” Jack said. He still sounded shook up. Given his reaction to the specter’s Litanies, I couldn’t say I was surprised.
“What took him so long?”
“I was still looking for Adamantaphrax until I got the report that we were holding a regular spirit convention at Rockstead,” Dad said as he entered. “I also understand that one of the prisoners is loose?”
“Subject Sixteen,” I said. “Victor Kazuk is somewhere on the grounds. There is no evidence that he has managed to get outside the prison, or that he tried.”
“Then he’s planning something, and he has lovely timing.”
“The warden was looking into who might have aided his escape,” Ixa said.
“Eight Beta is on Kazuk,” Dad said. “You guys know him best, and you’ve taken him down before. You can expect help from the prison staff, since an escape will reflect poorly on them. The rest of us are still on the spirit problem.” It wasn’t until Dad used our placeholder name that it really dawned on me how much of my team was here. It was fully half of our total number, and three of those who weren’t here were trainees. I brushed aside their codenames from my mind as Jennifer walked over and joined Stephanie and Donny by where I stood.
“All right fearless leader,” Jennifer said. “Where do we start looking for the dragon guy?”
“Let’s get up to the situation room and get an update from Warden Ellison. Even if he doesn’t have any news, there is a floor plan of Rockstead there we can use to work out a plan.”
“Suits me,” Stephanie said. She made sure her face was hidden before moving her white jade mask far enough to rub her eyes. “I hope they have caffeine available. It’s getting late.”
We headed through the prison with an escort of guards. There were more at each post than I’d previously seen, probably because Rockstead was still on alert for Victor. The situation room was much as we’d left it, only there was a table stocked with snacks and a couple of variety of drinks. Most of which appeared to be caffeinated. “What’s with the spread?” I asked.
“Lockdown protocols mean we can’t allow staff to leave,” Warden Ellison said. “We can let new staff enter, but we have to hold everyone here until we’ve accounted for any missing prisoners. The food is a way of apology.” He looked at Jennifer. “Who’s the new girl?”
“This is Miss Pain,” I said. “Miss Pain, this is Warden Ellison.” Jennifer shook his hand with a nod. “Warden, we’ve been tasked with helping you run down Victor. Do you have any additional information on that matter?”
“His inside contact has a great deal of access around the prison, as they disconnected the feeds to the recording system from a series of internal cameras. They were, however, sloppy about how they did so, and the void itself paints a path to the subbasement.”
“What’s down there?”
“Food stocks, general supplies, fuel oil for the backup generators, wastewater treatment-”
“Oh great,” Donny said, “Another sewer.”
“Speaking of, how big is your sewer line?”
“Don’t have one, we treat the waste water on site, then use it to water the lawn. I’d be amazed if he could make himself fit through a sprinkler nozzle.”
“I’ve seen stranger things, but something tells me that’s not his plan.”
Seeing Stephanie’s gaze, Warden Ellison changed topics. “Yes, you guys can have some.”
“Thank you,” Stephanie said, wasting no time in fixing herself a cup of coffee.
“I didn’t know you drank coffee,” I said, sliding over next to her.
“I don’t, but it does have the highest caffeine concentration on offer. If only it didn’t taste so bad.” She drank it anyway.
“I guess our next step would be to head down to the subbasement and have a look around.”
“We just finished an asbestos abatement, so it should be relatively clean.”
“How just?” I asked.
Realizing what I was getting at, Ellison pinched the bridge of his nose. “Within the past two months.”
“Odds that someone with the abatement company left something down there?”
“Pretty damn high.”
“I don’t get it,” Donny said.
“We snag Victor in the plaza, he gets to talk to a lawyer. Dollars to donuts he seeks out one with ties to the Final Star Network. Either he feeds them the plan or they tell him that they’re working on a scheme to spring their demi-dragons and have put people in place. Victor says something like ‘if you can’t get me off, get me in to Rockstead so we can spring this plan’. He ends up here and sets it in motion.”
“Nice theory,” Jennifer said.
“Sounds a lot like your theory about there being a Morlock in the MPD,” Donny said.
“We still haven’t ruled that out.”
“We know there’s a turncoat on staff at Rockstead,” Ellison said. “No one else could have gotten in to disconnect the recording feeds. Just don’t go repeating that where everyone can hear you. It makes it harder to find out who it is.”
Donny raised his hands. “Sorry, we get carried away some times.”
“All right, lets head downstairs and scare up a dragon,” I said. “Oh, by the way, is there any way I might get a copy of that floorplan?”
True to its name, the subbasement was below the basement and sunk into the foundations of the prison. The stone and concrete had been stripped bare with new fireproofing applied and painted a bright white. The layout followed the same spoked hexagon shape that marked the upper levels. Probably because there was no point in excavating the space between the buildings just to pave over it. There were not as many cameras down here as there had been higher up. That left plenty of blind areas for Victor to hide in. It also meant we were pretty much on our own for the search. With spirits about, there simply wasn’t enough staff to keep the interior locked down, keep an eye out for the spirits, and sweep the subbasement with us. Well, most of them. One guy came with us because he had the keys. His name tag read ‘Smeets’.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time we’d gone stalking bad guys alone. I took point, because I had the printout from the new employee handbook detailing the layout of the area. The dark tones of my outfit contrasted with the well-lit corridors, but the four of us made enough noise it was unlikely we would escape someone with the acute senses of a dragon. Actually, I was only guessing Victor had good hearing. He hadn’t actually demonstrated that in the past. It was probably safer to stick with the assumption that he had keen ears. If I was in error, it would be an error in my favor.
To expand the camera net, I planted my own at key bottlenecks. Since there wasn’t enough room on my eye for all of them, I folded open the screen on my wrist computer and had them showing there. I only had six left, so I ran out of cameras before the images got too small.
“Soo,” Donny said. “Ixa, do you know any good tracking spells?”
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 119
