by M. R. Forbes
"You'll find a change of clothes in the office over there. Extra small, as requested."
She seemed nervous to go off on her own, but I reached over and took the laptop bag from her, and she headed to the door the fixer was pointing at.
"You Templeton?" I asked.
"Yes. This is Sasha."
"Baron, and Amos."
He made a small grunt like he didn't care. "It was short notice, so we didn't have time to unload the truck. Your car should be here in the next few minutes."
"What about the Caddy?" Amos asked.
"We'll sink it."
He turned towards the back of the truck. "Sasha?"
She went over and unhitched it, swinging the container doors open.
The inside was filled with all kinds of fancy kit. Guns hung from hooks on the walls, and flat tables with drawers beneath begged to be explored. There was combat armor, helmets, cuffs, knives, even a samurai sword. A laptop rested on a counter at the front, its screen providing the illumination for that part of the container.
"You needed hardware to crack a laptop and a phone. That box has it. You can even do a remote Machine insertion if you want to - we'd just need to stamp your neck." Templeton hopped into the container and surveyed the wall. He lifted a gun from one of the racks. It was small, with the largest cylinder I had ever seen.
"Oh shit," Amos said, moving past me to join the fixer. "I didn't think that thing actually existed." He reached out for it, and Templeton handed it over.
"You said something about skinwalkers. I've never seen one, but if they do exist, the Mark Six can take them out."
"Fuck yeah." Amos hefted it in his grip and looked back at me. "Beats the shit out of those peashooters."
"I only have the one, and no extra rounds. Even for a House, it's a hard item to come by."
"What else you got?"
Templeton led Amos deeper into the truck. I waited outside for Prithi, unconcerned about the weaponry. Amos would get what we needed.
She looked embarrassed when she came out of the office and walked over to us. The shirt and pants had been replaced with a tight, black, long-sleeved lycra turtleneck and tights that squeezed right up against her small frame, leaving little to the imagination. It was something I'd seen plenty of times before on Dannie, so it didn't register as revealing to me. It was clear she felt differently.
"You don't have anything looser?" she asked Sasha.
The ghost glanced over at me and shook her head.
"There's a rig for you at the front. Take the bag and see what you can do with it."
She took it from me and held it in front of her chest, which earned a snort from Sasha. Her face flushed and she started walking stiffly towards the setup inside the container, trying not to move her ass too much when she walked.
"Where did you find her?"
"It's a short story that I'm not going to tell you." I half-smiled and followed behind her.
There was no chair for Prithi to sit in. She leaned down over the laptop and started smacking the keys. A few seconds later she looked back. "I need a lightning cable for the phone, and a CAT5." The computer had put her in her element, and all of the discomfort that had taken her to it had vanished. There was a pair of glasses laying on the counter, and she picked them up. "Too cool."
I heard some drawers moving, and Sasha handed the cables forward. Prithi pulled everything from the bag and connected them.
"Well?" I asked.
"This isn't like the movies. A good password can take days to crack brute force."
"We don't have days."
"Then its good for you that they have a Machine interface on board."
"Won't they know you've jacked in?"
"Only if I went in with my company avatar, but I'm not going into the full Machine anyway." She pushed her hair aside to clear the stamp, and then tapped a spot an inch above it. "I have an implant connected to the interface. I have some utilities stored in there, some routines for getting intel in the Machine. I can make some alterations to the algorithms. No problem with this setup. An hour, max. I'm not completely useless."
I smiled and put my hand on her shoulder. "I guess not."
She put the glasses on, and found a thin wire with a patch at the end, which she brought up and stuck against her own stamp. She blinked crazy fast for thirty seconds or so, and then her hands started flying across the keys, throwing up windows, taking them down, and causing the screens of the phone and the other computer to flicker.
"Car's here," Sasha said. She started leading me from the container.
"Hey, Baldie, catch." Amos tossed something at me as I passed.
I caught it and held it up. A long coat, feather light, grey and smooth. It looked like carbon fiber.
"Ballistic," Templeton said. "Can stop small arms fire, and some higher calibers."
"What about claws and teeth?"
"A safe assumption."
I carried it out to the car, a black Ford with tinted windows. A third ghost was leaning against the door. "That your Cadillac?"
"It was."
"I'll make it disappear."
"Hang on." I jumped down from the loading dock. "Can you go help my partner pick up the weaponry. I need to pull some stuff from the Caddy."
He shrugged. He knew I just didn't want him to see what I was doing. "Yeah, whatever. Give a holler when you're done." He went over to the bay, and Sasha helped pull him up.
I popped the trunk of both cars, transferring the ice first, and then Danelle and Mr. Timms. All the while I kept glancing back to see if anyone was watching me. Not because I cared if they saw me with a corpse, I was a necromancer after all. What I didn't want was Prithi catching wind that her apparent virtual girlfriend was hanging out in the trunk. She was skittish enough already.
Once I was done, I took off the heavy trench she had given me, and transferred everything to the new one.
"Just for this mission," I said to Dannie, as though she cared which coat I wore. Even if she were alive she wouldn't have given a shit.
I went back to the truck, ducking inside and handing Anonymous the keys to the Cadillac. He vanished without another word. Amos turned and showed me his haul: half a dozen handguns holstered around his surface area, a few knives, a couple of grenades, and the Mark Six.
"Feel like a fucking Army Ranger."
"After way too many hits at the all you can eat buffet."
"Shut up."
I went back to Prithi, whose hands were furious on the keyboard, her eyes darting back and forth, seemingly not even aware of what the appendages were doing.
"I have it," she said. She also knew I was there. Somehow.
"Have what?"
"Campbell's e-mails. There's nothing from anyone named Tarakona, but there are a whole bunch of encrypted missives from Matwau Ravenfeather, talking about 'the takeover'."
That sounded juicy, but who the hell was Matwau Ravenfeather? "Can you read them?"
"It would take too long, I'm indexing on common words. Does 'Sakura' mean anything to you?"
Shit. "Yes. What about it."
"Comes up a lot, along with mention of the treasure. Whoever this guy is, he must have some connection to Tarakona to have been talking about it. Just looking at the word frequencies, my guess is that Ravenfeather and Tarakona are working together to bring down Sakura and..." She paused.
"What?"
She didn't answer.
"What?"
"Father," she said at last.
"Father what?"
"Matwau Ravenfeather wants to take out his father."
"He told Campbell that?"
"Not directly. I followed his e-mail headers back to the originating server and hacked into his account."
"From here?"
"From the Machine. Bet you didn't know that was possible? There's lots of back-doors in the Machine, if you know where to look. Don't worry, I'm using a new ID. Did you know Ravenfeather's father owns the company right next to where you
picked me up?"
"Raven Microsystems? I could have guessed."
Her fingers lifted off the keyboard. She reached up and pulled off the glasses, and snapped the patch from her neck. She turned around and looked up at me.
"Did you know Ravenfeather's father is Mr. Black?"
CHAPTER FIFTY
I liked this better before...
"What?" I felt like I had been sucker punched.
"Matwau Ravenfeather is Mr. Black's oldest son. There's more, but we need to get going."
I must have looked at her like she was crazy. "What happened to Miss Terrified?"
She gave me a sheepish smile. "I'm still terrified. I hit a... tripwire. I think they know where I am, and since they probably know I'm with you..."
They would be dispatching a team to deal with us.
"Do we know where they are?"
"There's a Feral Control yard outside Poughkeepsie. I hacked the cell tower next to the office and back traced the calls to there."
"Definitely not useless," I said. She smiled and blushed at the compliment.
Templeton's phone rang.
Prithi's eyes met mine. I reached under the coat and drew my gun at the same time I turned on the fixer.
"Don't touch it."
He looked at me. Not afraid. Curious. He started reaching for the cell. Sasha noticed what was happening, and made a move for one of the guns on the wall. Amos reached out and grabbed her arm.
"Hold up she-hulk."
"Don't," I repeated.
"You know who I work for."
"I thought I did."
The phone kept ringing. I moved towards him. "I'm going to pick it up."
"You can't do that. They'll kill me if I don't answer and I'm not dead." His hands slithered towards his pocket.
"I'll kill you if you touch the phone. Black put me on this personally, I think he'll take my side."
I could tell Templeton was trapped, screwed whichever way he turned. I watched his adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed heavily. His hand kept moving.
"I have to get this," he said.
I kept the gun on him while he pulled the phone from his pant pocket.
He started raising it to his face.
"Shoot him," I heard Prithi say behind me.
I didn't hesitate. One round, right between the eyes. It pinged off the wall behind him and almost hit Amos on the ricochet, burying itself in one of the metal drawers.
The phone fell to the ground and burst into pieces.
Sasha shifted her weight against Amos, turning in his grasp and sending an elbow towards his face. He angled his head, taking the strike off the top and using his own weight as leverage to throw her into the wall. She hit hard and bounced back, pulling a knife from her belt and lashing out. It hit his chest, skidding off the kevlar vest he had hidden beneath his layers, surprising the ghost and giving Amos a massive opening to throw her to the floor.
I turned back to Prithi, who had regained the patch and glasses sometime during the standoff. "We have to go," she said again. "I'm picking up a series of calls from the yard to the tower a few blocks from here. They must have other ghosts in the area."
Shit. I grabbed her arm and tugged her away from the setup, ripping the wire from her neck. Amos was standing on Sasha, holding her down with a huge boot. I put a bullet in her head, too. It felt dirty, but I knew she would have done the same to us.
"Can't trust nobody no more," Amos said. He started for the back of the truck, unclasping one of the submachine guns from his bulk.
The entire container erupted in the deafening echo of bullets pinging off the inside of the enclosure, bullets bouncing around and sinking into whatever they could find. At least one got Amos in the chest, and I felt something smack hard into the coat, pushing it against my leg with solid force. I shoved Prithi to the ground and landed on top of her while Amos tried to turn sideways and press himself behind one of the chests of drawers. Anonymous ducked back behind the inside of the warehouse to reload.
"Son of a-" Amos started saying.
I reached forward and got my hand on Sasha's ankle. I breathed in the power of the fields and exhaled, pushing it into her. "Get up, Sasha."
Her body twitched, and started to move. "What the fuck just happened?" she asked.
"Oh my god," Prithi said, able to see what was happening from her place below me. I hoped she wouldn't wet herself again.
Sasha was on her feet when Anonymous leaned over from the corner and opened up for a second time. I could hear the bullets sinking into her, and the force sent blood and bits of flesh everywhere. My power fed into her, and she was on her feet, but she wasn't going for the asshole like I wanted. She was looking around, trying to figure out that she had been shot, was still being shot. She didn't get that she was dead yet.
I rolled off Prithi and got up behind her. She turned my way.
"What's happening?" she asked, her hands feeling at the new holes in her chest.
"Turn around." I pushed harder, and her body shook. Her confused mind was fighting the commands, and I was overpowering it. I stood behind her, letting her corpse take the hits and firing around it. Anonymous ducked back around the corner, and I emptied the gun to keep him there.
Amos handed me another as I passed.
We moved forward like that, out of the truck and into the warehouse. Anonymous gave up at that point, disappearing back into the building. I could hear his boots echo while he ran.
I dropped Sasha's thread and dashed around her, turning the corner in time to see the ghost pulling open the door to get back outside.
I shot him in the back.
"Let's go," I shouted. I took the short route, jumping down from the loading dock and running to the car. Amos and Prithi appeared a few seconds later, and he took her under the arms and lowered her off the platform.
I heard the rumble of a heavy engine, and a large pickup came tearing around the corner, heading our way. The earth started shaking, breaking up the blacktop in front of us and launching shards of rock forward. I dove behind the car, hearing the stone crack against the metal. The windows must have been bulletproof, because they didn't shatter from the impact.
There was a soft, hollow sound from behind me, and then a loud scream that arched from the warehouse towards the pickup. It was followed by an explosion that sent a wave of heat and pieces of torn steel flying overhead. Amos appeared from back behind the semi once it had all landed. He was holding the Mark Six in his hand.
"Yeeeeeee Haaaaawwwwwwwww," he shouted.
I looked around for Prithi, not seeing her and fearing the worst. She crawled out from behind the wheels of the truck; wheels that had been flattened by the user's assault.
I opened the driver's side door of the car and got in, finding the keys resting in the center console. I pushed the ignition at the same time Prithi and Amos reached the car.
"Are you okay?" I asked her, looking back over my shoulder. Her face was dirty, and she had a tear in the sleeve of her shirt. A small stain of blood surrounded it.
"It hurts, but I'll survive. Can we go?"
I hit the gas, making a tight turn and getting us going in the other direction. I angled around the burned out husk of the pickup and cut out into the street at the same time a second car turned into the warehouse lot. It hit the brakes halfway and started backing up to give chase.
Traffic was light, the usual assortment of soccer moms, blue collars, and the unemployed. I slammed my foot down on the gas and took off, weaving through two lanes of cars. I watched our tail in the rear-view, a Mazda or something with a sharp nose. I could see two women inside. The one sitting shotgun was lowering her window, a rifle in her arms.
I cut left in front of a minivan, sped around a Honda, and slipped back to the right. We were approaching an intersection, a green light leading the way. The Mazda got up in front of the van, and the passenger opened up, cracking bullets off the glass and dinging the metal.
"Christ, can't yo
u go any faster?" Amos asked. He had the Mark Six cradled in his lap, the muzzles of the other weaponry poking out from below his duster.
"I can if you roll yourself out. It's your fat-ass that's slowing us down."
He laughed and looked back at Prithi. "Still dry back there, sweetheart?"
"Go to hell."
Her backbone was growing in a hurry.
The intersection was looming, the light still green. I checked the cross-traffic. "Hang on."
The tires complained while I whipped the car to the left, cutting off the guy in the Mazda's lane and forcing him to slam on the brakes. The ghost in the Mazda was good, and she broke left into oncoming traffic, somehow avoiding getting hit. Prithi smacked her shoulder into the door and cried out in pain.
"Put your belt on," Amos said. He looked out the back. Our tail was still attached. The passenger leaned out, opening fire on the rear of the car. I didn't hear many hits. She was aiming low, trying to wreck the tires.
I cut the car right, passed a Fiat, and came back left. Where the hell were the cops when you needed them? It wasn't typical for a ghost to be so blatant about an attack. We kept to the shadows and underground, to avoid hurting innocents.
"Do you even know where you're going?" Amos asked.
I rounded another car. The light ahead of us turned yellow, and the cars on our side started slowing to stop, leaving us with no clean way through. I moved into the wrong lane and sped up, running nose to nose with an oncoming SUV. The driver cut the wheel and got out of the way just in time, his face pale and eyes wide with terror as we passed within precious inches of one another.
The light was red now, and I hit the accelerator, hoping to get out in front of the vertical traffic and squeeze through the vanishing empty space. I heard horns and screaming tires as I tore past, somehow finding a few feet of space to not get slammed from the side. We reached the far side of the road in one piece, and I made it back over to the right lane.
Glancing up in the mirror, I could see the Mazda had also made it across.
"Amos, you need to take them out. This is the cleanest shot you're going to get."
