by Jon F. Merz
We let him pass and then continued forward. My legs were aching in ways I’d never imagined before. The stress of sneaking around was beginning to take a real toll on me. I was going to need some juice before too long.
As we banked around the ring, the noise level increased. Technicians rushed around everywhere. Soldiers loitered here and there, obviously immune to whatever pressures the techs felt. It was weird. I watched as Jack scanned the scene. I knew he would need access to a computer, but how was he going to find one that was unoccupied? I’d have to be right there with them while he did it. And if anyone happened to look up and see a computer doing things by itself, it was going to get crazy.
We needed privacy.
Jack nudged me just then. He pointed at a tech and signaled we should follow him. He was youngish, maybe 30 years old, wearing a white lab coat and Chuck Taylors. He also had a Macbook Air in his hand as he left.
He walked to our left and down one of the many corridors that branched off the main ring. Jack and I fell into step behind him. When he pushed his way into the bathroom, we were right behind him. The rest of the lavatory was empty, so we quietly locked the door. Jack moved behind the tech, dropped him with a single chop to the side of his neck, and caught him as he fell to the floor unconscious.
“Subtle,” I said.
Jack frowned. He wasn’t under the cover of the Cloak anymore. “Well, I couldn’t very well ask to borrow his laptop, could I?”
“Yeah, but he’s going to have an awful headache when he wakes up. What if he raises the alarm?”
Jack shrugged. “What’s he going to say? Someone clocked him? I doubt he’ll do much of anything.”
I frowned. Risks were always something you had to get comfortable with. I hated the idea that we might have just compromised our situation, but Jack needed access to the servers. “You sure that you can tap into the network from there?”
Jack had the computer opened and was already tapping away on the keyboard. “We’ll find out in a sec.”
“Make sure you cover your tracks. If they check to see what you’re accessing and see that you scanned the layout of the facility, they might know something’s up and send more guards to Talya’s cell.”
Jack looked at me like I was an idiot. “Would you just let me work, old man? I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.”
“What’d you do, minor in hacking?”
“You’d be amazed at how much the spirit world and tech intermingle. I’d try to explain it to you but I don’t know if you’d understand it.”
“Thanks.”
Jack turned back to the computer and kept typing. His fingers flew over the keyboard in a blur and I marveled at how fast his eyes scanned everything that popped up on the screen. I could barely peck out a sentence on the keyboard without looking at it. Jack suffered none of my shortcomings apparently.
Finally, he slapped the laptop shut and looked up at me. “Help me get our unwilling accomplice set up properly, would you?”
“What’d you have in mind?”
Jack pushed open one of the stall doors and lifted the toilet lid. Then he unbuckled the man’s pants and pulled them down around his ankles before we set him on the bowl. Finally, Jack slid the laptop under the guy’s hands and surveyed the scene.
“That’ll do.”
I nodded. “Looks about right. He’s still going to have a blistering headache when he comes to.”
“That’s what aspirin is for,” said Jack. “Now c’mon. We’ve gotta go.”
We headed for the door, but I stopped Jack before we got there. “Did you find what we need to know?”
Jack smiled. “Didn’t I tell you to trust me? Relax. She’s here and she’s not too far away. Now, be quiet and let’s get the hell out of here before sunshine back there wakes up.”
19
Outside of the restroom, Jack took the lead and led us down the hallway away from the ring. At the far end, he turned right and ventured into another corridor. Overhead, LED lights lit the hallway and we saw few people. I thought it strange, considering that we were presumably headed to where Talya was being kept and rather than an increased military presence, it was diminishing. But Jack seemed to know where he was going so I stayed silent.
At the far end of the corridor, I saw a plain steel door. The Chinese characters emblazoned across it said something about trash. I figured it must have been a maintenance closet full of supplies or something. Jack checked around but there was no one else in the hall with us, so he reached out, turned the door knob and we entered the room.
It measured maybe eight feet by eight feet and shelves of cleaning materials and mops and brooms were housed inside.
“Why did you bring us here?”
Jack put a finger to his lips and moved toward the rear wall of the room. A container of bleach or what I thought was bleach rested against the wall. Jack moved it to the side and I saw a simple numeric keypad on the wall.
“What the hell-?”
Jack closed his eyes and stayed silent for a few minutes. The air around us grew hot and then the warmth vanished. Jack reached out and type four numbers on the keypad. Instantly, the wall to our left slid open, exposing another corridor.
Jack winked at me. “You ready?”
“Let’s get through there before someone wonders why the hell it opened in the first place.”
We moved out of the maintenance closet and into the new corridor. This one was dimly lit. I saw several heavy doors as we walked, but Jack kept us moving until we reached the end. One lone door sat apart from the others. And rather than a keyhole, this one had a biothermic lock on the outside of it. It would take someone’s fingerprint to open the door. But whose?
I glanced at Jack. I wanted to ask him if we were safe. As far as I could tell, there were no cameras anywhere, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t. Nowadays, you could hide a camera anywhere and you’d never even notice it unless you had detection equipment. If we tried to open this particular cell, someone would undoubtedly know about it. They simply wouldn’t stash a prisoner here and then not keep tabs on them.
That wouldn’t make any sort of sense. It might be like that in a Hollywood movie, but in real life, there was simply no way they wouldn’t keep some sort of eye on their prize.
The question then became how do we get the door open without anyone knowing?
If they were keeping anyone alive here, then they’d have to feed and water them. That meant meal time. I checked my watch. We were getting on close to noon. I suspected there might be a lunch delivery in the near future. I mimed the act of eating to Jack and he nodded. He was obviously thinking the same thing. All we had to do was wait for a guard to bring the food, get the door opened, clock them, and free Talya and make our break.
That sounded a helluva lot easier than it would be. But when you broke the goals down, they were actually simple. It was just the execution of those goals that would be problematic. The best plans, after all, have the simplest objectives. Getting them accomplished, on the other hand, that’s where the trouble comes in. Still, all we had to do was wait. And if things went the way we assumed they would, we’d be able to do what needed doing.
The question of the extent of the Cloak’s powers resurfaced in my mind. Would it conceal three of us? A big part of me doubted it. We were talking about a cloak here, not a beach blanket. I already felt like Jack and I were stressing the limits with the two of us. Once we put Talya under it, would it even function as it had so far? And if it didn’t, what was our backup plan?
I felt reasonably certain the guard would be armed. He wouldn’t take a chance with someone like Talya. Most likely, he’d have a pistol. I didn’t see a slit in the door to slide a tray through, so that meant they had to open the door.
There was an awful lot of assumption going on here and I hated it. Ordinarily in my missions, I try to have everything planned out well beforehand. But this had been a seat-of-the-pants op from the get-go. There hadn’t been time to
do anything except get up and go. We’d done what Xuan Xiang would least expect: come at him instead of agreeing to meet him on his field of choice. We’d taken the long, backwards route to get here. And hopefully by the time he realized he’d been had, we’d already be gone.
I wished I’d had an entire team backing me up. STA-F would have been great to have along on this jaunt. Hell, even having Wirek and Niles would have been a significant improvement over my current situation. Still, it could have been a lot worse. I could have been there all by myself. And I never would have even gotten the Cloak if it hadn’t been for Jack’s help. The spirits that watched over it would have killed me and I’d be in some godforsaken cavern for the rest of eternity.
No thanks.
A wave of exhaustion swept over me and it occurred to me how long it had been since I’d slept. I could keep going, of course, but what was the point? We had to wait for the guard to show up and deliver a meal before we could proceed. So what was the point of trying to stay awake? Yeah, it was close to lunch, but what if the guards only gave them one or two meals a day instead of three? I’d exert more energy trying to stay awake than I would if I caught some sleep and in the meantime.
I nudged Jack toward the wall and mimed sleeping to him. I’d go first and he could keep watch. I wouldn’t go deeply asleep; it was a combat nap. In the event things started to happen, I’d come awake and alert pretty damned fast. That was how I’d been trained, after all.
We sat down on the floor of the corridor and put our backs to one another. I closed my eyes and felt the world slide away from me. Even though the hallway was dimmer than the other ones we’d been in, the light didn’t even affect me.
Blackness swallowed me up.
When Jack nudged me, I had no idea how much time had elapsed. My eyes popped open and I felt adrenaline seep into my bloodstream. The rest had done me good. I felt much more alert.
I looked up and the fake wall opened. A Chinese guard came through carrying a tray of food. My mouth watered when I caught the scent of it. I had no idea what they were serving but I wanted to devour every last morsel.
Bad news followed the guard in the form of another guard. This guy was armed with a Type 81 assault rifle.
Two guards. I wanted to sigh, but couldn’t risk the noise. This was going to be tough.
Jack and I stood up and waited. The lead guard approached the cell door and slid his thumb into the biothermic reader. We heard a series of beeps and then a green light scanned his entire finger, not just the thumb print. Another light appeared by the guard’s head from a portal I hadn’t noticed previously. It occurred to me then that it was a good thing we didn’t try to hack the biotherm reader. We would have missed the retina scanner and probably put the entire facility on lockdown.
The retina scan finished and the door slowly swung open. Jack looked at me and I held up my hand. We needed to hit them from behind when they least expected it. Let them both get into the cell and then we would follow. That way, if there were, in fact, cameras in the corridor that we hadn’t seen, we would hopefully be able to avoid detection.
Unless they had cameras in the actual cell itself, which was a distinct possibility.
Sometimes, I wished I had an easier job. One that offered comfort and security without me needing to come up with solutions to really complex problems on the fly.
I smirked. Yeah, right. That kind of job would make me die from boredom.
I took the lead going in behind the guards. But I made sure to leave about six feet of space between me and the guard in case he sensed my presence. I doubted he would. By and large, he was in a secure facility; he hadn’t seen us; and anything he sensed, he might write off as being silly. He wouldn’t know until it was too late.
I would hit the guard with the assault rifle first and then move to take out the guard bearing food. Jack would catch the body of the first guard and we’d simply take them that way.
As the lead guard walked into the cell, I had to restrain myself from trying to peer over the shoulder of the guard in front of me and getting a glimpse of Talya.
Instead, I chopped the guard in front of me in the neck and he dropped almost immediately. Jack stepped forward and caught his body even as I was driving forward toward the second guard. I felt the Cloak start to pull away from me. But there was nothing I could about it; I had to move on the second guard before he realized that they were under attack, dropped the tray of food, and unholstered his weapon or pushed an alarm.
I stepped out from the Cloak and became visible. The second guard started to turn, his eyes already widening in disbelief at my sudden appearance. In my peripheral vision, I saw the outline of a figure asleep on the bunk at the far end of the cell. But I had an immediate threat to deal with, so I focused on that.
The second guard took a half-hearted swing at my head, but I simply ducked the strike, and came up with a solid uppercut to his diaphragm, followed by a hook to the side of his jaw. It landed square on the button and he dropped like a sack of rice. I glanced back at Jack who had guided the first guard’s body to the floor and relieved him of his weapon, which Jack now held. He tossed it to me and then grabbed the pistol from the second guard.
“All right?” I asked.
He nodded. “Felt kind of good being able to go hot like that after so much sneaking around.”
I nodded. He was right. Too much inactivity can kill you.
We turned back to the figure on the bunk. They were buried under the covers. I glanced at Jack and he shrugged.
“Maybe she’s asleep.”
I eased forward. I tucked the assault rifle down by my side and then nudged Talya’s shoulder. “Hey.”
The figure on the bunk groaned. And then turned toward us.
What I saw horrified me. The bruises. The swelling. Even the blank expression.
“My god.”
What surprised me the most weren’t the injuries and obvious souvenirs from torture sessions.
It was who I was staring at.
Not Talya.
But Xuan Xiang himself.
20
I jerked the assault rifle up and leveled it on Xuan Xiang’s head. Already, I could tell I was squeezing the trigger.
Xuan Xiang chuckled. “You could blast my head into a million pieces and it wouldn’t kill me. You know that, Lawson.”
He was right. His body would repair itself unless I managed to put a wooden round into his chest or stake his heart in some other way. I frowned. “What sort of bullshit is this? Where’s Talya?”
Xuan Xiang shrugged. “I don’t know. They took her and moved her when I…fell out of favor.”
It was obvious he had. His face looked like someone had worked him over with a Buick. But why had Jack led us here? I thought he was convinced Talya was in this cell. I glanced at him and the frown on his face told me he was already trying to work that problem out. When he saw my expression, he shrugged.
“I could have sworn she was here, dude. Sorry.”
I held up my hand. “Forget about it. You were the one who told me it might not work.”
Xuan Xiang held out a piece of cloth. “This was part of her shirt.”
Jack sighed. “Residual energy. No wonder I thought this was the place.” He stared at Xuan Xiang. “How long ago was she here?”
“Twelve hours.” Xuan Xiang eyed Jack and then looked at me. “Subcontracting out now, Lawson?”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
Xuan Xiang looked back at Jack and I saw realization dawning. “Ah, the Invoker. Well, this is a charming surprise.”
“Charming for you,” said Jack. “I’m not impressed.”
Xuan Xiang sniffed. “Mind your manners, boy. I may not look like much in my present condition, but I can assure you my reputation is very well justified.”
Jack turned to me. “Can’t we just kill him?”
I smiled. “Not at the moment. I’m short on Fixer rounds and I don’t see anything I could stake his heart with.�
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“Plus,” said Xuan Xiang. “You’ll never find Talya without me.”
“You’re really going to try that tactic with me?” I asked.
“Well, you can’t leave me here. I’ll raise holy hell and you’ll never escape this facility.”
“We got in here,” said Jack. “We can get out again.”
“Mmmm,” said Xuan Xiang. “Obviously true, but you won’t have your precious Talya with you. And she’ll rot away in some godforsaken locale. Trust me, the Chinese have plenty of black sites that no one knows about. She’ll vanish down the rabbit hole and you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting the decision not to bring me with you.”
I frowned. On the one hand, we needed him. On the other hand, if we brought him with us, we would have to reveal the existence of the Cloak. And I wasn’t crazy about doing that. I hadn’t been sure it would work with three of us before and now we’d have to cozy up with Xuan Xiang. The situation sucked. But then again, what else was new?
“Can you walk?”
Xuan Xiang took a breath and exhaled. “My ribs are a mess. At least two broken. Breathing is painful, but I’ll manage.”
Jack looked at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“We need him.”
“We need his information,” said Jack. “Why can’t we just beat it out of him?”
I pointed at Xuan Xiang’s face. “He’s already been beaten into a bloody pulp. Doing more damage to him isn’t going to get us what we need. Besides, he’s been trained to resist under interrogation. Torture only makes people say what they think you want to hear. It’s unreliable and I try not to use it if at all possible.”
“I just want to go on record as saying this is a huge mistake.” Jack shook his head. “He’s going to compromise us.”
