Scorpion

by Deven Kane

  Don appeared at Aubrey’s elbow. He gestured at Jane’s gun, his voice muted. “Throwing your weapon at the enemy? They didn’t teach me that in basic training. Lucky for me, you have good aim.”

  He glanced at her when she didn’t respond. “Darcy was about to shoot me, you know.”

  Aubrey pocketed the gun, not looking at him. “It wasn’t loaded. I couldn’t . . . Forget it, I’ll explain later.”

  A concussive roar reverberated through the room, and the floor trembled underfoot. Aubrey caught at Don’s arm to steady herself. Was that an earthquake?

  Megan whirled to face the computer array, scanning the shifting icons. She nodded as if she’d been expecting this.

  “It’s begun,” she said cryptically. “We’re out of time.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she strode briskly to the door leading into the conference room. Don took one look at the changes on the computer display—the icons accelerating in a dizzying swirl of color—and seized Aubrey by the arm.

  “What’s happening?” Aubrey made no attempt to hide her ignorance.

  “How would I know?” Don hustled her to the door. “I’m just following Megan.”

  Megan entered her code into the keypad, but nothing changed. Aubrey’s pulse raced at look of alarm on her face. She doesn’t have the right codes.

  Don pressed one ear to the door. He clenched his fist and pounded on the stubborn portal in impotent rage. “I hear weapons-fire. Garr . . .”

  Megan spun to face the operating table, every muscle taut. “Connor—the codes do not work.”

  Connor kicked the shattered remains of the controller aside, and hurried to join them. Megan shot him a sharp look as his fingers flew over the keypad.

  He shrugged, looking sheepish. “I didn’t think anyone would need Darcy’s personal override.” His fingers danced over the keys a second time. “This should do it.”

  The lockpad blinked three times in quick succession, and the locking mechanism disengaged.

  Don seized the handle, taking a deep breath as he gave his companions a quick glance. “Ready or not . . .”

  “Connor.” Darcy’s desperate howl interrupted them. He thrashed about on the operating table, trying—and failing—to free himself from the invisible restraints.

  He shrieked at Connor, his pale eyes wild and pleading. “You can’t just leave me here!”

  “Oh yes, I can.” Connor’s voice sent shivers down Aubrey’s spine. “For the good of the Enclave.”

  Seventy-Nine

  THE GIVERS WERE A NIGHTMARE unlike anything Amos could have imagined. The crude drawing Megan provided—so many months earlier—only told part of the story. Amos fought the onslaught of vertigo as he tried to focus on the aliens.

  That’s just the problem. A pounding headache erupted just behind his eyes. It’s impossible to get a good look at them.

  The Givers—are there three, or just two? —entered the room in perfect formation, their every movement mirrored in precise, flowing fluidity with their counterparts.

  The creatures appeared solid at times, and then partially translucent, flowing back and forth into each other. Or was that an optical illusion? The flickering green light from their inner sanctum only made things worse.

  The Council members, rising to greet the aliens, seemed to be experiencing the same queasiness. Several collapsed into their chairs, hands clamped over their mouths.

  “I can’t even look at them,” Jane whispered, lowering her arms. Logan didn’t seem to notice, and Amos dropped his as well, rubbing his hands to restore circulation.

  Garr was righter than he knew. Everything about the Givers is totally . . . alien.

  The Councilor, flanked by his assistant and Mateo, stood before the Givers without flinching. There was no sound Amos could make out, but Sterne smiled and nodded his head as if the aliens were communicating with him.

  Sterne placed a hand on Mateo’s shoulder, giving every appearance of introducing him.

  Mateo ducked his head in a slight bow, and glanced over his shoulder in the Runners’ direction. The greenish light gave his face an inhuman tinge, offset by the unexpected activation of his scanning eye.

  He cocked his head, his expression indecipherable, and then nodded to Logan. “Proceed.”

  Amos whipped his head around to stare at the other Tracker. Logan pulled a small device from inside his jacket, his thumb depressing a short plunger on one end.

  The floor shook violently in response, as the muffled roar of a devastating explosion—or explosions—rumbled beneath their feet. Red-tinged smoke roiled up the outside walls of the Citadel, obscuring the windows.

  Pandemonium broke loose before the shock waves had a chance to die down.

  The overhead lights flickered, and Logan began firing his weapon. The Council members dove to the floor, screaming in mindless terror. Mateo whirled around, his weapon held ready as he shielded the Givers with his body. He gestured for the Councilor and his aide to take cover behind him.

  The Givers shrieked, the piercing sound echoing painfully in the confined space. In perfect synchronicity, they whirled about and fled inside their inner sanctum in a nausea-inducing swirl of color and liquefied motion.

  The guttural hissing was constant. Mateo fired his weapon around the conference room, covering the aliens’ retreat. The cathedral windows fractured and collapsed in the crossfire, and the howling storm drove clouds of noxious smoke inside. The air reeked of scorched metal and something unidentifiable.

  In the explosion’s aftermath, the Citadel was burning.

  The remaining Council members rushed to the nearest exit—leading into the medical facility—only to find Darcy had locked the door from the other side.

  Panic drove them over the edge. They pivoted en masse and charged in a frantic stampede for the opposite end of the room, almost trampling the Runners in their crazed exit.

  Amos heard Jane cough convulsively beside him as acrid smoke filled the room. He pawed at his watering eyes as a howling wind gusted through the shattered windows, driving the rain before it.

  The swirling smoke cleared for an instant, and he saw Councilor Sterne stagger into the Givers’ inner sanctum, his assistant clinging to his arm in desperation.

  Weapon held ready, Mateo stood in a defensive posture, his back to the green-lit portal. His face was made grotesque by the blood-red glow surrounding his left eye.

  The black walls began to close, and the conference room grew darker as the green light from the inner sanctum was cut off. Mateo held his position, his weapon trained outward, although he had ceased firing.

  Logan stepped forward, his weapon pointed at the floor. He halted a few paces from Mateo. The Trackers eyed each other in silence, as if sharing some form of unspoken connection.

  Mateo came out of his defensive crouch. He cradled his weapon in both hands for a moment before tossing it on the floor at his feet. His red-rimmed gaze shifted from Logan to include the Runners.

  “This is where it began.” His voice was barely audible over the storm. “This is where it ends.”

  He pivoted and, without warning, flung himself into the maw of the inner sanctum. He cleared the opening just before the walls snapped shut. The green light was extinguished, plunging the conference room into a murky twilight.

  The door to the medical facility burst open, and the rest of the Runners scrambled into the smoky dusk. Don kicked aside one of the heavy chairs, his wary eyes alert as he tried to make sense of what he saw.

  The rest of his team crowded in behind him, fanning out on either side. They looked relieved and perplexed to find no trace of the Givers.

  Amos scrambled over the up-ended chairs to seize Mateo’s discarded weapon. He trained the rifle on the featureless wall, searching in vain for any sign of the vertical seam.

  He screamed at the utter futility of it all, aiming a frustrated kick at the unyielding barrier. The dull black surface mocked him in silent defiance, solid and unmoving.

/>   Amos raised his weapon again, ready to fire, but knew it was pointless. He lowered the rifle, pivoting to face Garr.

  “Our mission was to stop the Givers.” His voice cracked with emotion. He pointed helplessly at the impenetrable wall, the bitterness of their defeat gnawing at him. “But they’re out of reach and under Mateo’s protection.”

  Some sixth sense warned him of Logan’s approach. Amos whirled to face him, weapon poised to fire. Logan froze for a moment and then, comprehension dawning, laid his weapon on the table with exaggerated care.

  He turned to confront Amos, empty hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

  “Didn’t you hear what Mateo said?” Logan raised his voice over the storm, keeping a respectful distance. “He’s not protecting the Givers, he’s preventing their escape. There’s no time to argue. We need to abandon the Citadel. Now.”

  Garr laid a hand on the barrel of Amos’s weapon, forcing it down. “What are you saying, Logan?”

  Sheila and Jane clustered around them. Don’s team moved to join them, and the Runners presented a united front to the young Tracker.

  Garr jerked a thumb at the black wall behind him. “Mateo surrendered his weapon. He’s no threat to anyone in there.”

  Logan shook his head. “He’s also a Dissident.” Lightning flared outside, accented by a thunderous boom a split-second later, as if to underscore his words. “The Givers can’t control him. He—we—are in full command of our enhancements.”

  He stepped closer, clearly frustrated by their inability to connect the dots. Amos raised his weapon a fraction higher, but Logan ignored him.

  “All of our enhancements,” he said, his eyes fixed on Garr. “Including the self-destruct.”

  The Colonel’s eyes widened. “He’s going to self-detonate.”

  Logan nodded, a look of pain flitting across his face. “We need to get out of the Citadel while we still can.”

  Amos lowered his weapon, stunned. Jane shoved past Logan, scooping up his discarded rifle from the table.

  “There’s still at least twenty Trackers between us and the exits.” She hefted the weapon, defying anyone to take it away.

  Logan dug into his pocket, extracting the small device he’d activated earlier. He held it up in one hand, about to explain, but never got the chance. The building shook again, more violently than before.

  The black wall bulged outward, as if something heavy had struck it from the inside with great force. Cracks appeared in its surface, and pinpoints of the sickly greenish light pierced the smoky gloom.

  A hideous wail erupted—shrill and outraged—assaulting their ears.

  Logan dashed to the open door and the stairwell beyond. His frantic departure goaded the Runners into action, and they pelted down the stairs in his wake. The acrid smoke stung their eyes and lungs, but urgency drove them to increase their descent.

  The unearthly wail echoed down the stairwell, lashing out as if infuriated by their escape.

  Eighty

  THE CITADEL SHOOK AGAIN, the concussive explosion sending shock waves up and down the stairwell. Aubrey covered her head with her arms as she scrambled after Logan.

  A war zone awaited them on the ground floor. The exterior walls hung in tattered shards from the exposed pillars, giving the wind-driven rain easy access. The lobby had been obliterated, leaving behind nothing but a ragged, gaping hole where the front doors had been.

  The darkness mercifully obscured the full extent of the devastation, but flashes of lightning exposed the charred evidence of multiple explosions. The Tracker sentries—or what little was left of them—were no longer a threat to anyone.

  The hideous shrieking from the Givers’ inner sanctum snaked down the stairwell, louder than before. Aubrey glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to spot one of the aliens slithering after them.

  Logan dodged through a jagged opening—once the lobby—running through the torrential rain across the manicured lawn until he was well into the parking lot. The Runners followed, picking their way with feverish haste through the grisly debris. Aubrey wished she could filter out a charred smell she didn’t want to think about.

  She caught her breath as she tripped on something which rolled under her foot. A searing burst of lightning confirmed her worse imaginings—a human leg, complete with booted foot. There was no sign of the rest of the body.

  Megan caught her out-flung arm, pulling her along.

  Don’t look down, Aubs. She fought her heaving insides. Don’t look down.

  They gathered in a compact huddle near the middle of the parking lot, gasping for breath. Aubrey sank to her knees on the wet pavement, hardly daring to believe they’d escaped.

  The storm lashed them, cold and remorseless.

  The keening wail amplified to an ear-shattering howl. Aubrey wheeled around to see a greenish haze wrap itself around the Citadel’s uppermost floor—an angry shroud of crackling, vindictive energy.

  As she watched, the Citadel began to collapse in upon itself, imploding degree by tortuous degree. The metal pillars and girders groaned in protest, accompanied by a cascading series of internal explosions.

  The unearthly howl intensified, and the haze swirled like a malevolent entity. The disintegration of the Citadel accelerated until all that remained was a twisted mound of scorched and smoking debris.

  The screeching howl faded into merciful silence.

  The green mist seeped and swirled around the rubble, like a dispossessed spirit seeking a new host to inhabit. Failing that, it dissipated, the last tendrils scattered by the storm-driven wind.

  The rain continued to pour, relentless and uncaring.

  Eighty-One

  “IT’S THREE O’CLOCK in the morning. How much longer will this take?”

  Enrico stood in the doorway to the examination room, cradling a medium-sized box in his hands, waiting for an answer.

  Logan sat just inside the door, keeping an eye on the unconscious figure sprawled on the room’s single cot. Garr slept soundly, motionless, as the anesthetic gradually worked its way out of his system.

  Logan leaned back in his chair, stretching his aching arms. “Not as long as you’d think. There were five Implants requiring extraction, and the procedure can only be done one at a time. Garr wanted everyone else to be Implant-free first, so he insisted on going last.”

  Enrico nodded, watching the slow rise and fall of Garr’s ribcage. “That sounds like the Colonel. That’s why people will follow him.”

  The clandestine clinic, its anonymous location a healthy distance from the Citadel’s smoking ruins, had been the site of an exuberant reunion a few hours earlier. The Runners, rain-soaked and exhausted, arrived just before midnight to discover Doc Simon waiting for them.

  Doc made good use of the high-tech medical equipment in the clinic. “This won’t even leave a scar,” she’d promised each candidate for surgery.

  Logan smiled at the memory, and then noticed the box in the mechanic’s hands. “Is that the last of it?”

  Enrico hefted the open container, shaking its contents. “The last Implant was the Colonel’s, so that’s all of it. Everything dismantled, broken down, sliced in two, and whatever other damage I could inflict on it. Then, just in case, I melted it all down with a blowtorch. Good riddance to Implant technology.”

  His grin faded and he gave Logan a reproving look. “You knew what Mateo was planning all along. You could’ve said something. Or dropped a juicy hint or two.”

  Logan shrugged, favoring him with a weary smile. “Sorry, Enrico—I was sworn to secrecy. Call it the ‘Dissident’s Code,’ if you like. Mateo had his reasons.”

  Eighty-Two

  TARA LINDHOLM OPENED her office door at the Surveillance Monitoring Division, ready to begin her daily shift. She slid into her leather chair, taking cautious sips of her steaming latte. More than a week had passed, and yet the majority of her viewscreens remained blank.

  Repairs would have to wait. First priority was reserved for the a
s-yet-unresolved damage on the lower maintenance level and the desolate husk that was once the Citadel.

  The Anodyne Initiative had been placed on hold, pending the outcome of a fierce and protracted debate in the recently appointed Council of the Enclave. The new Councilors, it appeared, were eager to flex their muscles and test the limits of their political clout.

  Truth be told, her job had become much less complicated, with so few functioning surveillance cameras relaying data to her station. She hadn’t seen or heard a word from Darcy—or any of his associates—since the night the Citadel was destroyed.

  No more of Darcy’s high-handed demands—Tara had no complaints. The peace and quiet was a welcome change.

  She kept one screen tuned to the Infomedia to alleviate the boredom. It caught her attention now, displaying a dramatic aerial view of the Citadel’s still-smoldering ruins.

  The scene shifted to a somber-faced reporter, microphone in hand, as he intoned his report for the masses.

  “Oh, this ought to be good.” Tara stretched, reaching over to increase the volume. She settled into her chair with a cynical smile, cradling her drink. “What new conspiracy theories are the authorities peddling today?”

  It would be entertaining, of that much she was sure.

  And people will believe just about anything, if they see it on the Infomedia.

  Eighty-Three

  “SO, YOU THINK IT WAS never Mateo’s intention to leave the Citadel.” Sheila sipped her cup of hot chicory, grateful for the taste of proper coffee. “He had the whole thing planned, right from the beginning.”

  Garr nodded, sitting in his usual chair in the mess hall. “That’s what our friend Logan tells us. I’ve been going over it in my head these past few days, trying to look at it from every possible angle. You know what I’ve realized?”

  Don pulled out a chair, settling his bulk opposite Garr. “That the only thing more remarkable than my rugged good looks is my legendary cooking ability?”