“Bitch!” Tattletale shouted, I could almost see her out of the corner of my eye, cringing at the pain shouting caused her. She still had the crossbow bolt sticking out of her shoulder, “Not the time!”
Bitch made a feral noise as she broke away from me, releasing me from my position against the wall. I turned around to see her grabbing the flailing soldier and throwing him on top of the foam canister that was still spraying in fizzing spurts. She walked on him to head toward the elevator. Reluctantly, I followed.
Tattletale got Imp’s help in dragging Vista to the elevator door. Regent took over and helped Imp hold Vista there, their fingers prying her eyes open until the retinal scan finished, then dragged her inside.
“Come on!” Tattletale urged us.
I looked back at Grue.
“Bitch, the dogs and Shadow Stalker will be here to protect him!” she called out.
I considered a moment, then nodded. I joined the rest of the group in the elevator, and we headed down to the lowest floors.
“Cameras,” Tattletale spoke. I nodded, and sent bugs into the room, found the surveillance cameras that were spaced at regular intervals around the room, and covered the lenses with bugs.
We exited the elevator, stepping into the Ward’s headquarters. The room was vast, with a high domed ceiling that probably made this floor three stories deep. A computer console with a dozen monitors sat to our right, and the far end seemed to be walled off into several smaller rooms. The signs at the doors to the left implied they led off to the bathrooms.
To think that, if things had gone a little differently, I might have wound up here.
Tattletale was at the computer in an instant, reaching into her belt pockets to retrieve a series of USB thumb drives, which she slid into the available ports of the computer. The monitors went to a blue screen. As she typed, the word ‘JPIGGOT’ appeared on each monitor. When that word disappeared from the screen, she typed a password, a row of asterisks appearing on the screens, twelve or thirteen characters long.
Then gibberish filled the screen. Some looked like code, much looked like random numbers, letters and symbols, even hearts, spades and smiley faces. Some of the snippets of code appeared to be file names.
“This should be every document the PRT has on file for their teams, barring the most secure documents, which wouldn’t be kept accessible, even in this isolated network.” She handed me a pad of gauze from her belt.
“How long?” I asked. I snapped the feathered end off the crossbow bolt, then pushed it out the other side. The arrowhead wouldn’t take to being pulled out backward.
“Two minutes.”
“But we may have to wait up to ten, depending on when Clockblocker’s power wears off.” While I talked, I held the gauze to her shoulder with one hand and took the offered tape with the other. There was a rip in her costume, and I opted to tear it a little wider and put the gauze beneath before taping it on, to let the skintight fabric hold it firm.
“Bad luck he got one of us, yeah.” Tattletale made a face, “Regent, let us know if there’s movement from Grue up there, through Shadow Stalker.”
“We’re going to have to fight our way through their reinforcements if we wait too long,” Regent said.
“Probably. But not the Protectorate. The only one who could get here fast enough to matter would be Velocity, and he’s dead.”
“They could have new members like the Wards did,” I said.
Tattletale frowned, “True. They recruited those guys fast. Especially since they’ve been here a few days.”
“Either way, we should make a quick exit,” I advised. “Fast as we can manage, anyways, with Grue being stuck like he is.”
As the screen filled with more gibberish, reaching the point where there was more white text than blue background, we prepared to make our exit.
“Elevator’s down.”
“Of course it is,” Tattletale sighed, “There are stairs, through the door by the little window, where the tourists look in,” Tattletale said. She waited with one hand poised over the USB drive.
A half second before the last blue dot on the screen disappeared, the entire room plunged into darkness. The computer screens went black.
Silence reigned for a few heartbeats. It wasn’t Grue’s power, though. I could hear my own breathing.
“Someone cut the power?” Imp asked.
“No,” I heard Tattletale, “Separate power source, buried deeper beneath the building. Same with the computers, there’s nothing upstairs or even in the city that could turn them off. They’re hooked up to that power source, they’ve got internal batteries, and the only external connection is by satellite linkup. They might terminate our connection to the computer database via the satellite feed, but not the lights.”
“So this is bad?” Imp asked.
A computer generated face appeared on the computer screens, illuminating us and our immediate surroundings with the pale glow the image cast. I didn’t recognize the face, but I could guess.
Dragon. She was onto us. Yeah, that was pretty bad, as these things went.
10.04
I could detect a definite note of irritation in Dragon’s voice, despite how she’d synthesized it to mask her tone, inflection and speech patterns. “You were tampering with my system,” she accused us.
In the dim light the monitors shed, I could see Imp trying the door by the stairs. It didn’t open. I gave it a try and verified it had sealed shut. I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d expected a different result. Maybe I’d been hoping Imp had been making a horribly timed joke? It wouldn’t be beyond her.
“We were, but we’re done now, so we’ll be on our way,” Tattletale called out, her voice raised to be picked up by whatever microphones Dragon was using to listen in on us. I could see her pulling the USB drives from the computer.
Dragon informed us, “I’m reading the files and notes we have on you as we speak. Tattletale, it seems you have a penchant for needling your opponents. Rest assured, if you intend to try it, I won’t rise to the bait.”
Imp hefted her fire axe and struck just beside the handle of the door. The door itself was hollow, but it was made of something like fiberglass, and the axe only made a small hole, a half inch across and less than two inches long. She struck again, slightly higher.
“So few think they will,” Tattletale said with a grin. “So. I guess you’ve locked us in here, huh?”
“Yes. You’ll get out, perhaps, but not before reinforcements arrive.”
“We’ll see,” Tattletale answered. She began moving toward the Wards’ quarters. She looked from one security camera to the next, as if trying to figure out if she was being watched. I did have my bugs covering the lenses of the cameras I’d been able to find, but that wasn’t to say that they could have something more concealed.
It was kind of creepy, that the kids here were observed constantly like that.
“You tried to steal official data, and you put a virus on my system. Epeios’ work, I believe. I’m more insulted by the fact that you went to that hack than I am about the virus.”
“Had to slow you guys down somehow,” Tattletale called out. She motioned to me, and I hurried toward her. Imp let go of the axe to rub and shake her hand. Regent grabbed the weapon to take over the job of hacking at the door.
I followed Tattletale into one of the rooms at the other end of the Ward’s headquarters. Pieces of technology littered the area. There was a small bed in one corner so littered with pieces of junk, screws, scraps of metal and unfinished projects that I doubted the occupant had used it to sleep in a long time.
Kid Win’s room, had to be.
“Gear up,” Tattletale said.
“What?”
“Taking a tinker’s stuff to keep is a bad idea, what with GPS signals and tracking and all that, but at the very least, we can use this to get out.” She swept her arm over the room, where stuff lay on every surface.
Dragon’s voice echoed through the chamber,
“I can hear you, Tattletale. Do not use a tinker’s devices. Power supplies can overload, weapons and equipment can misfire. Only the tinker who made it can verify the devices as safe and operate them properly.”
“Right, sure,” Tattletale called out with a note of sarcasm in her voice. “Because it’s not like there’s any high profile mercenaries out there who’ve made a career off of using a tinker’s stuff.”
Dragon didn’t reply. Had Tattletale found a sore spot? I knew the Dragonslayers were mercenaries who had taken the parts of one of Dragon’s armored suits to outfit themselves as high tech mercenaries.
Tattletale looked up and glanced around the room, then whispered to me, “Don’t worry about misfires. I think my power will help us spot those.”
I wanted to believe her, but she’d been wrong before. It would be Murphy’s law for her power to go awry here, with us blowing our faces off or something.
Still, I didn’t stop her from picking up a gun without a handle. She pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger that sort of dangled beneath the gun. A yellow dot appeared on the wall, then started smoking. She glanced over her shoulder, and when I turned to see what she was looking at, I saw a matching dot on the wall. She moved the gun, and the dots both moved.
“Laser with invisible beam. Ricochets,” she murmured. “Doesn’t burn that hot, wouldn’t do any damage to anything or anyone. Wouldn’t incapacitate our opposition or get us out of here.” She put it aside. “Look for something better.”
Dangers aside, borrowing Kid Win’s stuff wasn’t a bad idea. At the speed Regent and Imp were cutting through the door handle, I figured it would be minutes before they were through. We had to get out of here before the Protectorate arrived. Even with their numbers cut by recent casualties and injuries, that would be very, very bad for us.
I uncovered three guns that looked like they might work. Tattletale looked them over. “Nonlethal flamethrower that probably didn’t pass review, some kind of forcefield barrier cannon and some kind of gun for fighting bigger foes. Nothing too dangerous, but don’t point them at any of the rest of us until you’ve tested ‘em out.”
Nodding, I lifted the one that was five feet long, needle-thin and spearlike. I worked to get it out of Kid Win’s quarters and aimed it at the largest chair, by the computers. I depressed the trigger, and a blue flame the length of my forearm spat out the end, consuming the chair. The seat bent under the heat, melted plastic pooling on the floor, an acrid smell assaulting my nostrils. The flames that licked the remaining material cast some extra light on our surroundings. It was pretty thorough destruction for less than two seconds of sustained fire.
How the hell is that nonlethal?
I hurried over to the door, and both Imp and Regent backed away to let me fire. I pulled the trigger… nothing.
“He took the power and fuel supply from that to use for something else, put crap components in there instead! Let it recharge!” Tattletale shouted across the room, “Almost one minute before you can shoot again!”
Fuck.
Dragon would have overheard that, but she didn’t comment. Instead, a sprinkler system kicked into gear, misting down from the ceiling. Though the quantity of water was low, the effect on the burning chair was immediate, and the flames disappeared with surprising quickness. What little of the moisture soaked into my mask tasted faintly bitter.
Then Dragon shut off the monitors, plunging us into absolute darkness.
I left the weapon with Imp and hurried over to the other guns, using the few bugs I had with me to ‘feel’ my way, sensing their locations and identifying anything I might trip over. The second gun, though it had looked more complete than any of the others, had two triggers on the front and two by the handle. I tried various combinations and got nowhere.
The last gun was heavy. I hefted it with both hands, then told Regent and Imp to move aside as I aimed it at the door. Didn’t want to waste any first shots if this was going to take forever to recharge as well. The gun vibrated, rattled, and shuddered for a full five seconds before it fired. The shot didn’t cast any light, but it struck the door with enough force that the entire door buckled outward. I hit the door with my shoulder, and the upper hinge came free. There was a light in the stairwell, shedding some meager light on us.
“Tattletale!” I called out. “We got through!”
By the time Tattletale reached us, Regent and I had brought the door down. The lock was still extending from the handle to the frame, but we’d taken the door off its hinges, and we were free to pull the door open from the other side. We hurried into the stairwell and began heading back upstairs.
“Fight upstairs is going south, we need to step in, fast,” Regent spoke. I felt out with my bugs to get a sense of where each of the combatants were, then nodded a hasty agreement. I began taking the stairs two at a time, though the gun I carried had to weigh a good thirty or forty pounds.
We were halfway up when we came across a pair of unconscious PRT officers. I looked at Tattletale.
“Imp did this,” she told Regent and me. “She went ahead, remember?”
It took me a few seconds to realize who she meant. Damn it, having to keep track of Imp and having her power throwing me off my stride was getting to be annoying. The team prior to now had a kind of synergy, with the way my bugs and Tattletale’s power let us deal with Grue’s darkness, and how the dogs could smell opponents through it.
We found Imp at the top of the stairs, aiming the spearlike gun. The blue flame poured out, melting a large hole in the fiberglass. We crouched in the stairwell as Imp opened the door. I was so distracted by the sight of the PRT uniforms waiting for us in the hallway that I didn’t see where Imp went.
The reaction wasn’t as strong or immediate as I would have expected, given the burst of flame and the door opening. A side effect of Imp being the one to carry it out? One person shouted and alerted the others. Regent used his power on the one closest to him, causing him to stumble sideways into his comrades. Their ranks descended into chaos.
I readied the few bugs I had on my person, then hefted my borrowed gun. I backed down a stair as I asked Tattletale, “This thing is nonlethal, right?”
She didn’t have an answer for me. Instead, she yelped out, “Back!”
She practically pushed me down the stairs, and I caught a glimpse of her covering her ears, shutting her eyes. Despite the fact that I was on the verge of landing face first on the landing of the stairwell, I didn’t use my hands to stop myself. I turned to take the impact with my shoulder, tucked my chin to my chest and covered my ears. Regent jumped out of my way as I landed, his arms pressed against the sides of his head.
It had to have been a grenade. The blast ripped through the upstairs hallway, and left me gasping even from inside the stairwell. Tattletale was up before I was, hauling me to my feet and up the stairs, Regent followed just behind us.
The grenade had been of the nonlethal variety, but not quite a flashbang. The gathered soldiers were reeling, stunned, and Imp was crouched by the only one who was still conscious. She drew a taser from her sleeve, tagged him, then stood. She had one of the PRT’s grenade launchers slung over one shoulder, the flamethrower-thing in one hand, and the taser in the other. She handed off the grenade launcher to Regent, then put the taser away, holding the flamethrower.
To reach the hallway where Grue and the elevator were, we had to head out past the gift shop and around the front desk. Everyone we’d left behind was still there, friend and foe, but things hadn’t gone well in our absence.
We found Bitch and Shadow Stalker backed against the elevator at the far end of the hallway. The three dogs were spread out between them and Weld, limp and unmoving. They’d shrunk down almost to their normal size. I had to watch for a few seconds before I could see the rise and fall of Sirius’ chest and verify he was alive.
Weld stood beside Grue, binding a length of cord around our leader. The way he was positioned, Bitch wasn’t able to get by, and I coul
d only assume that Regent had Shadow Stalker there because Bitch lacked the means to defend herself solo. The elevator, naturally, wasn’t running.
I lifted the heavy gun, then aimed it at Weld and Grue.
“Where did you get those guns?” Weld asked, squaring his shoulders as he turned to face us.
“Borrowed ‘em,” Tattletale smirked. Then she fired the gun she was carrying. An arc of electricity crackled between the nozzle of her gun and Weld. Seemingly unconcerned, he started running towards us, metal feet pounding on the tile.
Tattletale backed up one step, and I took that as my cue to back up three. This guy could hit hard, and none of us was capable of going toe-to-toe with him.
There was no need to worry, as the lightning gun’s effects added up and Weld collapsed to the ground before he got halfway to us. Tattletale stopped firing, and I could see that the metal of Weld’s body was glowing with the heat he’d absorbed. She stepped closer and swung her gun at him, smacking him across the face with the barrel. It stuck, and she swiftly backed up. I wouldn’t have thought he was that hot, that the metal would bond.
Weld staggered to his feet and tore the gun away with both hands, leaving a melted mess that extended from his cheekbone to his forehead on one side of his face. Gun removed, he started reforming his hands into sticks, four feet long, with the ends curved into blunted hooks.
I raised the gun that had nearly knocked the door off its hinges and pulled the trigger, aiming it at both Weld and Grue. Nothing. Whether it was due to a lack of charge, a malfunction, or whatever, it just didn’t work.
Weld began to charge us, and he was nearly to us when Imp stepped in his way and tried to fire.
“Don’t-” Tattletale started.
As with my gun, the flamethrower didn’t work. Weld clobbered her just as she was beginning to utter a swear word, catching her with both hands to fling her aside. She tumbled into a sign. That put him only a few paces from me.
Worm Page 106
