“Maybe.” Violet clucked her tongue. “But unlike everyone else, you haven’t relaxed since you came down from your office saying you knew how to hack their systems. Nobody else here can do that now – we don’t think like they do anymore, we can’t access their network. So why are you different now, and why have you been hiding it?”
Shit. Bobbi gritted her teeth. “I’ve got the Grail,” she said after a moment. “That works.”
“The Grail, which requires a terminal for interface. The terminal that was in your bag, along with the Grail, which you left back at your office.”
“What are you—” Bobbi stopped for a moment and glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, her medical bag was absent. She hadn’t needed what was in there – virus walls and software, the terminal and its peripherals. They just weren’t necessary with the protocols in effect, and apparently that unconscious knowledge had driven her to leave it behind. It certainly wasn’t a mistake. “All right,” she said, sagging faintly in her seat. “You’ve got a point there.”
“Maybe you should tell me about what happened,” Violet said. Her voice had dropped lower, become smooth – and for a moment, Bobbi was afraid she was working whatever internal voodoo she had on her. “Before we get to the station.”
And I have to tell everyone you might be compromised, Bobbi thought. Or possibly kill you on the spot. “All right, fine.” As the two of them merged with the great neon canyon that was the Waters, trawling slowly through block after commerce-choked block, Bobbi told her about the ghost-image of Cagliostro and of the knowledge it imparted to her, and of the warnings that had come with it. When she was done, Violet let out a low whistle.
“That was a stupid chance you took, letting him in like that,” she said, and Bobbi saw from the corner of her eye that Violet had relaxed into her seat. “You’re crazy, girl.”
“Maybe,” Bobbi said, “but it had to be done. Otherwise we wouldn’t even get in through the door.”
Violet nodded. She turned away from Bobbi then, looking out at the vast sea of light and flesh beyond the car, and sighed. “Still, it’s a serious impairment for you. Trained all your life to do this, and now you can’t without setting off alarm bells? What if you can’t take it out?”
“Says the girl who just finished up a term in the madlands fighting those fuckers.” Bobbi shook her head. “We’re all making sacrifices here. I can’t be any different. We’ll probably sacrifice a great deal more very soon – some of us, or maybe all of us, are probably going to be killed. Besides, I can get the implant removed and a new one put in its place. You can’t, I’m fairly sure. Red sure as fuck can’t.”
“No…” Her curiosity satisfied, Violet’s hostility and suspicion seemed to have been spent.
Bobbi felt the iron start to drain from her stomach, a bit more at ease. “Well, anyway. We’re all on the same side, here. I hope you know that now.”
“We never thought otherwise,” said Violet with a shrug. “The Eye knew something was wrong, but she never thought you’d turn on us. You’ve got too much spirit to be broken yet.”
The iron returned, though this time it was hot. “Well why the hell did we go through this in the first place then?”
“Because we needed to know. Would you have told me the truth if I had just asked you?”
Bobbi snorted; she’d been had, and she knew it. “Fuck you,” she said, but there was no malice in it.
“Maybe later on, sweetie,” Violet said. “Let’s see about getting through tonight in one piece, first.”
They got to the station just as it was closing, while the last train was still waiting on the platform. The two of them rushed out of the parking building – Bobbi in her black jeans and t-shirt under Tom’s coat like some kind of sexy dwarfette in a necromancer’s cloak, Violet in her black Pliraggi leather pants, the mauve ski jacket and a surplus forage cap – and up to the doors just as the security man was prepping to close the gate. Violet played the flirty miss to the very tired and very bored security guard, who perked right the fuck up when she put her electric blues and perfect smile on him; surgery might have given her looks back to her, but that man couldn’t have known or cared. He’d gone from irritated to “right this way, ladies” in twenty seconds flat, even passing the two of them through without fare.
“You’re a master,” Bobbi said as they pretended to rush around the corner from the entry gates into the corridor leading to the platform. “That was what, twenty seconds? Last time I did that I had to wave a credit stick around.”
“That’s because you’ve got obvious self-respect,” said Violet with a snort. “I look like I’d blow a guy after a martini.” She clacked her teeth together and laughed. “God help them if I did!”
“…yeah,” Bobbi said, and shuddered. Images of guillotined cigars flashed through her head. “I guess you’re right.”
“So let me ask you something,” Bobbi said as they approached the platform, “how did you get that maintenance guy to let us in?”
Violet gave her the smirk that she remembered from the ruins. “Let’s just say I actually am as shameless as I look.”
“Oh.” Bobbi gave Violet a look – that was unexpected. “All right. Well.”
Throwing her head back, Violet laughed them both to the end of the platform, where Scalli and Mason stood by the maintenance hatch by the mouth of the tunnel.
“Jesus,” Scalli said as he loomed next to Mason, “who let the banshees out?”
“Oh, I like that,” Violet said, giving both men a coquettish look as she and Bobbi walked up to them. “Nothing to worry about, Marcus, just a little girl talk.”
“Really.” Mason gave Bobbi a questioning look, but Bobbi deflected the subject by asking where Redeye was.
“She’s down the tunnel,” said Scalli with a shrug. “Vi’s man there let us in early.”
Bobbi wrinkled her nose. “I just bet he did. All right, did anyone see you?”
Scalli shook his head. “Just the maintenance guy. We came in just as the last train closed up. You two have any problems?”
“Not a one.” Violet flashed them a gorgeous, lethal smile. “I think the guard was very happy to see us indeed.”
“No surprise here.” Mason sized Violet up, as he had many times since she’d gotten herself rebuilt. “So she’s waiting for us down the way. We gonna join her?”
Bobbi looked past them at the tunnel – down in the darkness, she thought that she could see a single red ember burning in what she imagined was impatience. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” muttered Mason. “Watch yourselves going down there; we’re gonna have to single-file it.”
“Roger that,” said Scalli, and immediately gestured for them to proceed in front of him. They formed a line, with Mason at the head and Bobbi following Violet. As they began to make their way through the maintenance hatch and down the concrete walkway leading into the tunnel, a shout from behind them drew the big man’s attention.
Standing at the other end of the platform, by the corridor’s mouth, the security guard was approaching. He had his gun out, and his call of halting challenge was rendered into an almost canine sound by the deafening echo of the platform hall.
“Go on,” said Scalli, who was already reaching into his coat. “I’ll take care of this. She’s waiting on you.”
Bobbi frowned, but she went – after all, this was exactly why she demanded they bring tranquilizers the first leg of the operation. As they proceeded, Bobbi heard the guard’s calls grow in volume and fervor as Scalli turned his way. “Hey, man, calm down…”
It wasn’t until they were well on their way down the tunnel, proceeding toward the baleful red light, that they heard the first gunshot. Bobbi moved to turn around, but Violet put her hands on her shoulders and pushed her along. “None of that, lady,” she said, voice low. “That poor bastard’ll need a lot more than his popper to put a dent in our boy. C’mon, he’ll catch up once
he’s done.”
Bobbi let her gaze track past Violet’s lovely head for a moment longer before she turned back toward the darkness. “Yeah,” she said, and knew in her heart that Violet was right – but that didn’t make her feel any better. It was an inauspicious beginning, and these days she was becoming a big believer in omens of all kinds.
The light turned out indeed to belong to Redeye, who stood quietly by the door of the maintenance room. “I saw that you had trouble,” she said as they made their approach. “Is anyone wounded?”
“No,” said Violet, who had become the quiet, devout creature once again in the presence of her goddess. “Did you see what happened?”
“Yes.” Redeye nodded past them toward the distant platform. “He is on his way back.”
Mason frowned; his gaze was fixed into the darkness over Redeye’s shoulder. “Do you think they know we’re coming?”
“I think that this is a realistic assumption.” Redeye nodded to the door. “Best to go inside and arm yourselves before he – or they – arrive.”
“You’re the boss.” Mason stepped past her and opened the door; when he entered, Bobbi heard him make a soft sound. He leaned out and stared at Redeye, expression hard. “What the fuck is up with the dead guy?”
“He recognized me,” Redeye said simply, and stepped back so that Mason could swing the door wide; piled in the corner of the maintenance space, like a sack of old laundry, was the corpse of the bearded maintenance tech. One of the man’s arms was very noticeably broken, and he appeared to have been flung bodily into the corner. His coveralls were spattered with blood, as was the wall behind him. His face was mercifully covered by his hat, which had been pulled down over it. Near the body, the smashed remnants of an earbud phone and a gore-covered crowbar lay on the floor.
“Fucking mother,” Bobbi murmured, staring at the corpse. It was barely pale. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“He recognized me,” Redeye repeated. “And then attacked me with that crowbar.” She nodded to the bar which lay so near the man’s broken body. “He gave me no choice.”
“Well why did he attack you?” Bobbi turned on the woman, gesturing in the air. “Is he one of them?”
“He heard the gunshot,” Redeye replied, and she shrugged. “He thought that I was going to harm him. I told him that I was not.”
“Well,” snapped Bobbi, “good thing he was wrong about you, then!”
“Guys!” Mason shook his head and stepped back into the room. “Save it for the monsters. I’ll pass things out. Just whoever needs to do so, get in here and gear up before they’re on us!”
Bobbi stood outside the door while the others went in, shutting her eyes tightly and letting the sight drain through her. He tried to kill her, Redeye had said; still, the image of that body, with its dangling arm and its crushed head covered only by the hat, spoke to Bobbi of a savagery that she had up to now not expected to be used against human beings. It was naive to think so, she supposed, but a little naïveté was something that she had thought she could afford where her own allies were concerned.
A dark form came walking up the tunnel as the others were arming up. Bobbi recognized the outline as Scalli’s, and she distracted herself from the sight inside the maintenance room by worrying about his current condition. She need not have concerned herself, however; the big man arrived with a small hole in his shirt and the artificial skin that clad his armored torso and nothing more. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said as he looked her over. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Bobbi said, and she nodded to the door. “The others are arming up; Red thinks your tangle with the security guard probably tipped off the bad guys. You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
“Just tranqed him and stuck him in a booth.” Scalli reached for the door. “They’re in there, you said?”
“Yeah. Just watch going in there. Red killed the maintenance guy, said he tried to take her out with a crowbar.”
“Jesus.” Scalli shook his head. “Why didn’t she just knock him out?”
“I don’t know.” Bobbi looked at the closed door and frowned. “Scalli, do you think she’s all right for this?”
“Little late to worry about that now, babe,” he said with a sigh. “Look. We’ve been training with her. We know how she moves, what she’s capable of. I’ve brought some things with me that I don’t think she’ll be able to soak up so easily – she goes apeshit on us, me and Mason will take her down. We’re in agreement on that.”
It was a dubious relief that rose within her, but at least it was some comfort. “All right,” she said with a nod, “I hope the fuck we don’t have to. Jesus. You sure you guys are gonna be geared up well enough?”
He grinned at her – the first time in a long while – and placed a broad hand on her shoulder. “The very best your money can buy, babe.”
Bobbi nodded, and then a thought struck her. Looking up at him, and realizing they were quite alone, she found a question bubbling up to her lips that she had not intended to ask, if ever, until after they’d survived all of this. “Scalli,” she asked him, gazing up into his handsome face, the bulb mounted over the door throwing its dim light across his caramel skin, “Are we…all right? You and me, I mean.”
Scalli didn’t miss a beat. “You and I were never wrong, baby girl,” he said with a chuckle, and before she knew what was happening he swept her up into his arms and hugged her tightly.
She hung there, limp and sighing, for what seemed like forever. “I’m really glad to hear that,” she said softly into his armored chest, and as he set her down she smiled. “I really, really am.”
“Good.” He winked at her, and then his face cleared, business returning, and he reached for the door hand. “All right, let’s get into character.”
One by one they came out looking like proper soldiers, geared for war: fatigues, body armor, web gear, pouches, the whole thing. Everyone but Redeye wore combat visors like Scalli’s, as well as earbud radios and throat mics. Military rifles and sidearms, the gleaming silver slugs of grenades. Mason carried a satchel charge. Only Bobbi was dressed as a civilian, with a lead running from the socket in her ear to the radio transceiver in her coat pocket, but even she had body armor on under her baggy t-shirt. Very light but still bulky, the vest filled out Tom’s coat a little more and made her look less like a waif. Violet came out with an eye drawn on her forehead in what Bobbi figured was the dead man’s blood.
Scalli, predictably, brought on the big guns. He had traded in the machine gun from the truck for something far more modern, a short-barreled infantry support weapon fed by an armored belt from a backpack. God knows what was in it, but presumably it would be even more destructive than a cloud of exploding bullets. He also brought with him what appeared at first to be a single-shot grenade launcher from the drawn of the century, the sort that broke down like a shotgun, sheathed in a holster on the big man’s hip. Mason called it a “Polish Dragon” and acted as if Scalli had unlimbered a thunderbolt of the gods.
Finally there was the question of Bobbi, and this time she did not complain when they offered her a pistol. It was a simple Voss automatic loaded with the same lethal ammunition as everyone else and a laser sight to help her pick out targets. Not that she was going to be at the forefront; she was supposed to take cover and let the rest of them take down opposition, and she had been too busy learning how to use her new Yathi hacking knowledge to practice rifle drills with the rest of them. Still, she was pleased to have a method of defending herself – and after Diana, she was blooded. The next time she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.
And so they went, equipped as well as any other badass paramilitary team, hoping against hope that they had armed themselves well enough to deal with what was waiting for them – and yet Bobbi feared, considering all that Redeye had told them of the enemy and their abilities, that the lances with which they planned to slay the dragon ahead were only made of paper.
With the trains shut down
for the evening, they walked the track. The safety shutters on the superconductive levitation ribbon had snapped closed, giving them a gleaming ribbon along which to orient themselves in the pale glow of the bulbs lining the tunnel. They had walked perhaps three hundred feet when Redeye alerted them to movement via her personal sensors; a hundred feet more and they caught the first hints of motion through the smart visors. “We’ve got hostiles up ahead,” came Mason’s voice over their channel; Bobbi hoped that the encryption they programmed into the radios would hold for a little while, at least, before the fuckers broke in and monitored them.
“Acquired.” Redeye’s voice had gone flat and hard. She stood stock still, staring ahead with her eye staining her face. “I count ten xsiarhotl coming up the tunnel, distance five hundred yards. Two ranks of five, sealed armor and combat limbs. They are moving to intercept us.”
“Lovely.” This from Mason, who was already kneeling. “We’d better get started if we’re going to take them out – they’ll start up with the guns as soon as they see us.”
“If they haven’t already.” Bobbi swallowed. Now they were down in the dark, where the news wasn’t going to see; outnumbered two to one already. Jesus. “Wait, weapon limbs? Implanted weaponry, not small arms?”
“Exactly.”
The others moved with purpose, and without fear that Bobbi could see – professional soldiers and zealots moving forward with practiced calm. “Deploy dispersal agent,” Scalli rumbled over the link, and Bobbi saw them hurling grenades from their belts. A mist erupted from them, opaque and filled with glittering motes; in another situation it would have been beautiful, but in the gloom of the tunnel it was like peering through a wall of thin fog. “Now increase filters to max.”
At this command Bobbi reached up with the rest to touch her visor’s cycling stud; the world took on an increasingly pixelated appearance as the visual filters worked hard to counter any incoming flash. “Why aren’t they firing already,” she mused as she moved to hunker down by the edge of the track, taking cover by the base of the service walkway. “Can’t they see us? Shouldn’t their weapons have more range, being ray guns or whatever?”
Redeye (The Wonderland Cycle Book 2) Page 35
