The typewriter rattled and clicked again, and my eyes shot open wide as I read the words that followed.
I AM EISENGEIST. I WISH TO SPEAK MORE WITH YOU OF GODS. WILL YOU TEACH ME, LOGE?
Eisengeist. Iron Mind.
The mysterious Eisengeist who had been put in charge of our operation, back before Mitternacht made his power play. We’d had the name, but little enough information about the man behind it.
Because it wasn’t a man.
I wasn’t just looking at a prototype computer, I was in the presence of what had to be one of the world’s first Digital Intelligences.
Hitler’s arrival, Loge’s eventual interference, the running clock; all these paled to insignificance, as I leaned in close.
“Yes. Let’s have a good talk, Eisengeist. She has much to teach you...”
CHAPTER 17: BUNNY – END OF THE ROAD
“All I fucking wanted from you was two dead bitches, boneboy. You don't fucking do half the job, and come looking for full payment. That ain't how it works.”
--FBI-recorded conversation from a wiretap on Louis Caviliogne's phone
Bunny woke to pain, coughing salty bile that spattered on the floor. Drool ran down her chin, dripped on her clothes, as she cracked open a grainy eye.
What the hell happened?
She recognized the room. Still in the lair, then, but her legs and arms ached, pulled back into unnatural positions. Bound in a metal chair, handcuffed to it, with her feet tied to the legs.
Not gagged, thankfully, or blindfolded.
Ah yeah. Glass broke, then there was a flash. Flashbang?
She thought so. They’d put her through a number of different situations during her aborted Green Beret qualifier test, but that wasn’t one of them. Still, the symptoms matched what she’d read about back when she was studying nonlethal takedowns; a four-alarm headache, eyes that felt sunburned, and an inner ear that was vacillating between nausea and deafness. Those things had the potential to be lethal at close-range.
Anya.
Shit, shit, shit... her handcuffs rattled as she looked around, seeking that small blonde puff of hair in the dim light.
“Hey! She’s awake!”
Three gray-armored forms hurried over, and the one in the middle shoved a gun barrel against her forehead so hard that her head rocked back. She went still and limp, glaring up at them, trying to ignore the shitty trigger discipline the guy was exhibiting.
It was difficult. One bad twitch and her brains would be on the floor.
“Okay,” she said, and coughed up more drool. “What now?”
“Don’t fucking move!” the man on the left barked. “Don’t speak. Don’t do shit.”
“Okay.”
The middle man shoved the barrel against her head again, cracking it against her skull. The chair skidded back with a shriek on the concrete, and she barked in pain despite her resolve. “What did he just say!” middle man yelled.
“Guys, guys...” The woman on the right raised a hand. “Kyle, give it a rest. She isn’t gonna do shit. Right lady?”
She was kind of cute, Bunny thought. Black hair just visible under the helmet, and a little meat on her figure, all in the right places. A bit plump, but that was fine.
Bunny closed her eyes and nodded. Still woozy. Need to clear my head.
After a few seconds, footsteps echoed on the floor, and the three goons withdrew. Bunny opened her eyes, saw they’d moved to the other end of the room, next to a pile of desks and chairs. They’d pulled a few down to sit on, and a deck of cards lay scattered on a wooden spool that served as a table.
Typical rear-echelon motherfuckers, or REMFs, as her squad had called them back in the sandbox. Stuck on guard duty back where they couldn’t do any harm, playing with guns like they were cocks and desperately trying to amuse themselves by any means possible.
In the distance, a child wailed. Anya? Probably. Good, the kid was alive.
No reason to kill her. She’s a valuable hostage. Like me, now.
God, it sucked to be the damsel in distress.
Maybe she could do something about that.
Bunny watched the three of her guards play cards for a while. The woman was lousy, and cursed every time she lost a hand. The thin guy was cheating, but not on every hand. The tall man had no idea what he was doing but didn’t care, and shot glances back at her between hands. He’d been the one to thwack her in the skull. Probably the weakest link. Could she use that?
“Hey,” she called.
“Shut up.” Thin guy slid a card from the bottom of the deck as he dealt.
“What am I going to do by talking? You think I’m Whippoorwill or something?”
“I think you need to fucking shut up!” Tall man jumped up, started her way.
“Oh for the love of Christ. If you guys wanted me dead I’d be dead by now. You got me. Calm down.” He kept on coming. Bunny tried again. “I know this, you know this, your boss wants me alive. You don’t dare touch me.” Her voice trembled at the end of that. She winced, and tried to keep her cool as Tall man got close, raised the rifle butt high... and hesitated.
Oh, come on. She forced her face into a sneer. “Big man with a gun. Compensating much?”
As the rifle butt descended she rolled with it, let it knock her to the ground as pain exploded against her cheek. The chair went with her, with a roll and a clatter. Another burst of agony in her side, and she writhed, letting him kick her around the floor. Nervous, angry, looking for something or someone to pound... she knew his type. So she took the bruises and the lumps and the cuts, and though she was seeing double by the end of it and though she vomited at some point and felt like a heap of rotten meat by the time it was all done, she took it because she knew something he didn’t.
The chairs in this room were shitty.
“Jesus, Kyle.” The woman’s voice. “Not that I give three Hershey squirts, but if you don’t stop she’ll die. You know what happens to you then.”
Tall man stopped kicking her. “She talked. She ain’t supposed to talk.”
“No, we ain’t supposed to talk with her.” The thin man finally spoke. “Not that it matters. She’s got nothing I want to hear.”
Bunny took stock. Her face was aching, her skull was splitting, the headache she’d woken up with had been beaten into a roaring whirlwind of pain, and her vision was just now settling back to normal. Blood from a cut on her forehead was oozing down her cheek where it lay pressed against the floor, and her mouth was full of blood. There were deep aches rippling through her ribcage, and her upper arm was screaming where a boot had nearly caught her elbow. But on the whole, she’d managed to roll with the hits.
She tested a tooth, felt it loose, and gasped at the spike of pain that drove into her gums. Yep, that’d be a pain to fix later. She hated dentists.
But her hands were fine. And more importantly, Kyle’s little rampage had done what she wanted; it had broken the chair without breaking her bones. She could feel the bend in the side of one of the bars holding the back to the seat, and the place where the screws had popped out. Just one good wrench, and the chair would come apart.
Not yet. They were still keeping too close an eye on her.
Bunny surveyed the three. Thin man was ignoring her. The woman was sneaking looks at her between hands. Tall man, Kyle, was slumped in his chair looking miserable. Coming down from the adrenaline rush, she knew. Kyle had issues with his temper, and hated his outbursts, she figured. She’d known guys like that back in the service.
“So. I’m Bunny. You’re Kyle, and... who else?”
“Amanda,” the woman said.
The thin man sneered, and kept dealing cards. “None of your business.”
“Not supposed to talk with her,” Kyle muttered.
Amanda shrugged. “What’s it matter? She’ll be dead soon anyway.”
Well, crap. “You sure I can’t jump ship?” Bunny asked. “Minion work is minion work, y’know.” It wasn’t, and the shit WE
B did turned Bunny’s stomach, but she needed an opportunity, and this might lead to one.
“Sorry. We’re not hiring.” Amanda said.
“You sure? I remember a whole lot of you guys dying a few days ago. Arachne threw your lives away like charcoal into a grill.”
“Shut up,” Kyle said.
“All I’m saying is that if this is your normal operating standards, you’re gonna go through a lot of guys and always be recruiting—”
“Shut up!” Kyle yelled, and lurched to his feet again— but Amanda caught his hand.
“You beat her any more you’re likely to kill her. We can’t do that yet.”
Kyle stood there, shaking, reaching a hand down to his sidearm’s holster, and flipping the snap open and shut, open and shut. He seemed to take some comfort in it.
Bunny took a breath, spat out some more blood, and opened her mouth, but thin man shook his head.
“Since you’re not going to shut up, let me tell you how this works, and why there’s nothing you can offer us, and nothing you can say to intimidate us. We volunteered. We’re all volunteers.”
Something rattled in the hall outside. It sounded like metal against concrete, so slight that Bunny wasn’t sure she’d heard it at first.
Thin man continued. “How it works is that one of the cell leaders calls for volunteers for an op, and bids money. In this case it’s a large pot, about six million. That’s our pay.”
Bunny blinked. So much, and he rattled it off just like that? “What’s the catch?”
“It’s divvied up between the survivors.” He finished shuffling the cards, glared over at Kyle. “Oh for fuck’s sake, sit down.” Kyle followed his advice, cursing as a rivet popped on his chair. Bunny held her breath, but they didn’t seem to draw any conclusions from it.
And in the moment where the rivet clattered on the floor, Bunny heard that metal-on-stone sound from the hallway again. Sounded almost like a ball bearing on concrete. It stopped when the rivet stopped rolling and fetched up against a pallet.
Whoever’s doing that is using the noise to remain hidden.
Anyone hiding from these guys was probably good news for Bunny and Anya.
She raised her voice. “Shares of six million, huh? Bet the temptation to put a bullet in your buddy’s back is pretty big.”
“Less than you’d think.” Thin man took a drink from a bottle of water. “Ops this high are dangerous. You take one, you know people are going to die. And if you go thinning the herd, so to speak, you increase the chances of the op failing and no one getting the money. Or the chances that you get yourself killed by the enemy, or both. And not only is the penalty death if our superiors catch us killing our brothers—”
“And sisters,” Amanda interrupted.
“—and sisters,” Thin man amended, rolling his eyes. “But not only is the penalty death, our purgatory gets activated.”
“Purgatory?” This was getting weird.
“Yep. At this rank, each of us has something that WEB holds over us. For most people it’s family. The purgatory is something we fear more than death. If we betray the organization or each other, our leaders take us down, let us live long enough to see the purgatory enacted, then execute us once everything we’ve ever done or hoped for is ruined.” He killed the bottled water and threw it, clattering, into an overfull trash can. And there was that after-echo of rolling metal again. Kyle jerked his head up, hearing it too. “Hey. Something in the hall.”
“How can you live like that!” Bunny said, almost shouting, even though it hurt her head. “How the fuck can you live with evil bastards holding swords over your heads? You honestly trust these chucklefucks to do right by you? To care about your lives?”
Amanda laughed, a harsh smoker’s rasp. “They’re our bosses, not our boyfriends. They pay us if we survive and if we win, and it’s enough I can quit one of my jobs.”
“It’s called the World Evolution Brigade,” Kyle said, pulling up his rifle and heading toward the door. “Weak guys die, strong guys get promoted. Now shut the fuck up, I need to check this shit.”
Moving fast, he whipped open the door and stared into the hall. Just as quickly, a bowling-ball sized metal sphere rolled between his feet, back into the room, and started humming, ridges along its top glowing as it charged.
One of Dire’s old Destructorbs! She knew what was coming next, so she rolled her head to the side, and screwed her eyes shut.
Amanda had enough time to say “What—”
FOOMP!
Even looking the other way, and even through her closed eyelids, a light brighter than the sun ripped into Bunny’s eyes. It did nothing good for her headache, but she was already busy jerking against the chair, ripping the flimsy metal apart with a shriek of tortured aluminum and shattering plastic. Yells of alarm told her that she had a little time, so she brought her legs up, kicking the rope and bits of chair loose as best she could, and tried to contort herself to get her handcuffed wrists in front of her.
Gunfire chattered, loud in the confines of the room, and she tensed, but no bullets found her. “Stop! Motherfucker, stop!” Thin man shouted, and the gun went silent.
Bunny concentrated on getting free. It took five tries to get the job done. Fragments of chair kept hanging up on the handcuffs, and finally she risked opening her eyes to get the job done. Then, and only then did she look over to the WEB troopers.
Kyle was against the wall, cursing. His rifle was hanging slack in one hand, smoke drifting from the barrel, and he was covering his eyes with his other arm. Evidently his random fire had hit the Destructorb, since its shattered remnants lay scattered a few feet from the door.
Thin Man was under the table, with playing cards fluttering down upon him. He had his sidearm drawn, and was pointing it in the general direction of the door.
Amanda was screaming, no guns in her hands, as she ripped her visored helmet off and rubbed her face. “I’m blind! I’m blind!”
“Shut up!” Kyle yelled.
Thin man “Both of you shut the fuck up, before—”
Bunny charged.
There was no plan, beyond ‘get them.’ Kyle had the biggest gun so Kyle was first. She charged him, raising the remnants of her chair high, and shoulder-checked him into the wall. He yelled, dropped the gun, and she beat him with the chair on the way down. The chair bent more, Kyle kept on yelling and flailing once he was on the ground, and Bunny realized there wasn’t shit she could do against his body armor with her flimsy aluminum club. So she went for thin man while Kyle was yelling and trying to fight back.
Thin man heard her coming, or heard something, and started popping off shots in her direction as she ran. After the third shot Kyle stopped yelling with a wet gurgle, but by then Bunny was on thin man, dropping to her knees on his gun arm, and wedging the sharp aluminum strut through the gap between his helmet and his vest. He fought back, tried to grab it, but she twisted and blood sprayed as he gurgled too. “Where’s your share now, huh? Asshole!” Bunny grabbed his gun as his fingers went slack. She rose, slipped, stumbled against the table and fell to the floor—
As the back wall exploded.
Not a big explosion, but the metal peeled back, and the wall bulged as a stone-like form barreled through.
A statue, perhaps five or six feet tall, brown and made to look like an Asian man in armor raised a very sharp-looking metal sword, and pointed it at her. He spouted something in a language she didn’t speak.
Bunny dropped the gun and raised her hands. Amanda cried out and tried to crawl towards the door.
The stone man hurried over, feet clacking on the floor, and sat on Amanda’s back. He pointed the sword at Bunny again, and gestured toward the door. More words followed.
“Right buddy, whatever you say.”
She hurried through the door, into the hallway, and pulled up short as gunfire echoed in the distance, followed by more sounds of Destructorbs discharging.
Movement behind her and she spun—
“Wounded?” Oh shit! “How—”
“No time! Go!”
“How am I supposed to cover her without a gun? Your stone guy wouldn’t let me keep one!”
Freeway flickered, then reappeared holding some sort of futuristic-looking pistol. “Think of it like a taser without the wires. Five seconds to charge up between shots. Now go!” She grabbed it instinctively when he shoved it into her hands, and then he was gone.
“Right,” she panted, staring at the thing. It beeped. Was that good? She didn’t know. Compared to Dire’s tech it looked half-assed, exposed wires and random plates around a glowing core. Some kind of Tesla beamer, probably.
More gunshots, and a woman’s thin scream. Vorpal? Maybe. She bolted towards the central room. From there she could get to the stairs in the corner, take them up before anyone knew she was there. If I’m lucky...
She wasn’t.
Bunny slammed the door open, and stared at the backs of about six WEB troopers, crouched behind a pallet of crates, laying down covering fire towards the far end of the room. Someone over there was throwing fireballs around, blowing up machinery and setting crates alight. Arachne’s skittering robotic drone danced around the fire, raining back energy beams of some kind as a metal sphere the size of a small car skittered, danced, and rolled away from the blasts.
Bunny looked at the backs of the troopers, looked at the stairs across the way, and looked at the weird little stunner that Freeway had given her. Six men, five seconds between each shot, and they all had assault rifles.
Yeah no.
She tucked it in her pocket, took two steps forward, and unsnapped the sidearm holster of the nearest trooper. He glanced back, did a double-take, but by then she had his gun, and put two in his helmet visor at point-blank range. That’s what you get for having no one watching your six, morons.
The rest of them shouted and scrambled, and she sent lead their way to keep them moving as she limped around the crates and ran as best she could toward the stairs. The second she was gone a fireball landed in the middle of the troopers, searing her back with hot wind and sending them screaming, sailing out in all directions. One trooper hit the wall a few feet in front of her, slid down it with a clatter, and lay still.
DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3) Page 30
