2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent)

by Robert Storey

  ‘Control, we have multiple detonations,’ the co-pilot said as another police car was blown clean in two, ‘looks like the suspect is distributing land mines onto the freeway.’

  Another flash lit up the scene, making Steiner flinch, the loss of life mounting as the colonel’s rampage escalated. He had to do something, but what? What could he do?

  The helicopter flew higher as it encountered a cluster of skyscrapers. ‘All units,’ the co-pilot said, ‘suspect entering New Downtown financial district, taking Route 110 off-ramp onto West 6th Street.’

  The footage now showed the red pick-up travelling at high speed through a built-up area, pedestrians and cars trying to get out of its way. Jumping a set of lights, the rear of Samson’s truck was T-boned by a police car, sending it spiralling out of control to come to rest in the centre of the junction.

  ‘Suspect stopped at corner of 6th and South Hill Street,’ the co-pilot said. ‘We have movement inside the vehicle, suspect exiting—’

  Steiner, transfixed, saw the indistinct figure of Samson getting out of the driver’s side and then opening fire with two black rifles, one held in either hand. The officers from the ten police cars in immediate attendance were either gunned down or could be seen ducking behind their vehicles for protection, returning fire as best they could.

  ‘Officers down, require immediate assistance!’ the co-pilot said. ‘Suspect heavily armed and appears to be wearing some kind of armour, or shield. I can’t make him out; he’s blending into his surroundings. What is that?’ the man added, perhaps to the pilot next to him.

  Steiner saw the FBI helicopter reappear, hovering low behind Samson. A black-clad agent manning a small canon mounted on the aircraft’s side fired shell after shell at Samson’s shimmering outline. Throwing one of his guns aside, Samson rolled away from the bombardment, which chewed up the tarmac around him. He returned fire on the run, launching a small rocket from his weapon which took the FBI chopper broadside, a crippling blast sending it into a spin and crashing into the street. Its blades bit into the ground before snapping off, and the machine and its occupants were consumed by a huge fireball.

  ‘Engage, engage!’ the co-pilot said as they bore down on Samson from the other side, their own mini-gun tearing into the street, its tracer rounds providing the pilot with a guide as he tried to rip Samson to pieces.

  ‘RPG!’ the co-pilot screamed as Samson fired another rocket.

  The picture from the police helicopter veered to the right, but the missile homed in on them with deadly accuracy. The camera image fizzed and went black and the final screams of the crew cut off to silence.

  Steiner, blind and deaf once more, strove to find another source from which to watch. The other images on screen were of little use since they still depicted the crippled FBI field office. Rather than keep trolling through the police transmissions, which were now clogged to bursting, Steiner had a better idea. Taking another quick glance at the tracer timer, which read twenty-four minutes and forty-two seconds, he brought the local news channels up on his wallscreen. He wasn’t to be disappointed, every one had the story as breaking news and followed the incident blow by blow. Steiner couldn’t believe what he was seeing as he brought up three more channels on screen. CNN and Fox News were already covering the incident and the BBC’s worldwide service was just switching to it. It was official; Samson’s actions had just gone global.

  Patching into the audio from CNN, Steiner listened as the male news anchor described to their viewers what was happening.

  ‘—horrific scenes unfolding on the streets of Los Angeles tonight, as police pursue a suspect they’re describing as, “the most violent and dangerous individual they have ever encountered”. Events started to unfold around a quarter past four this afternoon when an armoured man entered the FBI field office on Wilshire Boulevard and proceeded to wage a one man war inside. Accounts are varied, but many agents within the building are said to have already lost their lives, current estimates standing at around fifty fatalities, while many more incidents carried out by the same individual across town are expected to make this appalling death toll rise even higher over the coming hours. Reports are arriving all the time, indicating that many police officers and civilians alike, have also lost their lives as the deadly game of cat and mouse continues to play out across a city under siege.

  ‘The police are advising all Angelenos to remain indoors or to seek shelter until the individual has been subdued. For their own safety, and under no circumstances, should any citizen attempt to confront, or make contact with, the suspect, who is known to be heavily armed and exceptionally dangerous.

  ‘An emergency helpline has been set up for those finding themselves caught up, directly or indirectly, in this terrorist attack. You’ll find the number at the bottom of the screen. We’re now going back live to our reporter in the sky, Marianne Gobrinsky. Marianne, over to you.’

  The image switched to a picture coming from an aircraft hovering over the city centre; there was a still photograph of the reporter in the top left hand corner of the screen, her name written underneath and a small black graphic representation of a helicopter beside it.

  ‘Thanks, Bill,’ Marianne said. ‘We’ve just arrived at the latest scene of carnage and, as you can see below, the streets of the financial district are like a war zone. The burning shells of two helicopters, which were moments ago blown from the skies, are testament to the scale of this attack. Wait … we’ve just received information that the fugitive may have an FBI agent as a hostage and has just driven into the newly developed Spring Street Super Mall. Not far from where we are now—’

  Steiner watched the image from the helicopter roll sideways as it repositioned to the new location.

  In an unconscious effort to rid himself of his stress and angst, Steiner rubbed his hands over his bearded face and worked his fingers beneath his glasses to massage his eyes. A shopping mall, he thought in despair, there’ll be children there, mothers. Groaning, Steiner slammed the desk in frustration.

  Malls have cameras and digital wall displays! The thought sprang unbidden to his mind. He snapped upright, his fingers attacking the keyboard with a renewed vigour. This was his chance to intervene and he must seize it. Locating the security network of the mall, Steiner easily bypassed its firewalls and transferred the video streams to his own wallscreen while preventing anyone else from accessing them, including those in the Mall itself. Expanding the window so he could get a good view of the one hundred available images, Steiner turned his attention to the Mall’s internal information system, blocking out the human interfaces of those who usually operated it. He entered his message and transferred it to every screen in the building, hoping that he’d get lucky. He wasn’t to be disappointed. A minute later, as the trace from the FBI reached eighteen minutes, the speakers in the room crackled before a recognisably abrasive voice spoke. ‘You surprise me, old man; I’d have thought you’d have washed your hands of me by now.’

  ‘What you’ve done is beyond sickening,’ Steiner said to Samson, ‘but I still need you and if I can’t control you, I might as well try and prevent you killing any more people. Now, do you want my help or not?’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Southern car park, level four. Orange sector B.’

  Steiner looked to his screen, scanning the images. Finding one that looked promising, he enlarged it. ‘That area’s crawling with police cars,’ Steiner told him, watching a patrol car roll slowly past, its light bar pulsing and a searchlight combing the rows of parked vehicles.

  ‘I’d noticed.’ Samson’s voice dripped with scorn.

  ‘You need to help me a little here. Where exactly are you?’

  Samson didn’t respond.

  ‘Hurry up, damn it.’ Steiner flicked his eyes at the countdown clock. ‘The FBI trace is down to seventeen minutes.’

  ‘I hid the pick-up in the back of a semi-truck on the basement level,’ Samso
n said, realising Steiner wasn’t about to rat him out to the cops – although the thought had crossed Steiner’s mind more than once in the previous half hour. ‘I’m going to draw them away, double back, offload my gear to another vehicle and then head back to you.’

  ‘Gear! She’s an FBI agent, who you’ve abducted!’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Samson told him. ‘Get out before the trace ends. I’ll meet you on the corner of Slauson Avenue and Port Road; according to my visor that’s three blocks from you.’

  The line crackled again. ‘Colonel? Colonel, are you still there?!’

  Silence.

  Steiner uttered more than a few choice words.

  ‘My protocols dictate such language is not permitted under current parameters,’ the voice of the artificial intelligence said.

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ Steiner pressed the mute button on the A.I.’s window. Turning the volume back up on the CNN broadcast Steiner, once again a bystander in proceedings, felt a deep dread at what he might see next.

  ‘—we can only hope.’ Marianne Gobrinsky, the helicopter reporter, was still speaking, the image showing the massed ranks of the LA police department descending on the area. ‘Some new information fresh in,’ she said, ‘as the police try to evacuate the building, which will take some time considering its size, a message was seen on the information boards within the mall itself, It read: red pick-up contact one five two. The authorities have been tight-lipped about what this message might mean, but it seems clear that the fugitive is receiving outside help.’

  Steiner sneered in distaste at his own success, aiding and abetting added to his growing list of crimes.

  ‘This theory,’ the reporter continued, ‘is reinforced by other reports indicating the security cameras inside the shopping precinct have also been overridden by a source, as yet, unknown.’

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Now inside the shopping mall, Samson slid the magazine out from his remaining MX4 assault rifle as he strode along. Half full, only twenty more rounds, he thought before shoving it back in with a click. He placed the rifle onto his back-plate, withdrew his pistol and ejected the exhausted clip, replacing it with his final one, containing thirty sub-sonic hollow points. Not the best ammunition for fighting your way out of a sticky situation, he mused as terrified shoppers moved out of his way, a woman with a pushchair screaming at the sight of his shimmering form and the array of weaponry on display.

  Breaking into a run as panic erupted around him, Samson headed north, aiming to draw his pursuers away from the Dodge Ram.

  With his metal-clad boots clanking along the rapidly emptying hallways, he spotted a couple of police officers. They hadn’t seen him, the deserted food court he now observed quiet except for the sporadic shouts and screams of the departing shoppers. Pistol in hand, Samson slid the silencer mechanism along the barrel, its composite frame snapping securely into place. A bullet already in the chamber, he selected his first target with his visor and fired, and the female officer dropped without a sound as he switched to her partner; firing again, he rendered the man dead with a similar headshot.

  As he advanced, a strange sound made him whirl round, the barrel of his gun pointing straight at the source of the noise. Two big wide eyes peered at him and the baby made a gurgling sound and reached out to grab the gun. Movement in the distance made Samson look up and magnify his visor’s image; it seemed an FBI swat team had hunted him down. One of their number, a sniper, was aiming straight at him. Samson saw the man rock back as he fired and instinctively stuck out an arm, deflecting the bullet away from the infant. Another bullet pinged off his helmet, momentarily disrupting his visor display and snapping his head back. Diving to his left, the camouflage system failing, he rolled to his feet. Beginning to enjoy himself, his breathing increased and heart pumping harder, Samson ran for his life.

  ♦

  Professor Steiner looked nervously over at the trace timer in the wallscreen’s top left hand corner. Several minutes had passed since he’d last spoken with Samson and the clock showed he had fewer than twelve minutes left. During this time, he’d glimpsed what he thought was the colonel disappearing up a flight of stairs in the northernmost quadrant of the building, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Breaking scenes,’ said Bill Brightman, the larger than life CNN news anchor, recapturing Steiner’s attention, ‘we’re returning live to Marianne Gobrinsky, our eye in the sky. Marianne what do you have for us?’

  Footage from the helicopter appeared next to the image from the news studio. ‘Bill, it seems we have activity on one of the rooftops.’

  The camera zoomed in on a team of black-clad men shooting at what could only be Samson, his green and brown body armour appearing and disappearing in the dark as a number of LAPD and FBI drones followed his flight with their searchlights.

  ‘The suit he’s wearing looks military,’ Bill said. ‘Can you zoom in any further?’

  ‘I’ll patch you into our mini-cam drone.’ Marianne altered the aspect to a view directly above the roof itself.

  Steiner could clearly see Samson as he returned fire to the swat team behind.

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely military of some kind,’ Marianne said, Steiner thinking she sounded too excited at the prospect. The media are lapping this up, he realised, the idea repulsing him; don’t they know people are dying down there?

  ‘Are those markings on his shoulder?’ Bill Brightman said.

  ‘I’ll drop the drone in for a better look.’ Marianne changed the angle on screen once more.

  Samson looked up when the UAV got too close, the green glow from his helmet visible as he evaded the lights attempting to pin him down, his breath visible as it gusted from his helmet into the cold air around him. As Steiner watched, Samson raised his rifle and fired, sending the screen fuzzing into a mass of black and white pixels.

  ‘Oh my.’ Marianne sounded disturbed by what she’d just seen. ‘Did you get that? Those glowing eyes?’

  Bill Brightman nodded. ‘We did – whoa! He just jumped to the next building!’

  The camera had switched back to the helicopter’s video stream and replayed in slow motion footage of Samson jumping clean across a wide gap, bullets bouncing from his back as he flew through the air. Now returning to real-time, Samson looked to be nearing the end of the road, the rooftop he was on running out ahead. Out of nowhere a helicopter rose above the building, mini-guns firing on either side, spraying Samson with a barrage of deadly hail. Samson faltered and fell before a huge explosion lit up the dark skies, the flames giving way to a pall of thick black smoke.

  Steiner didn’t really take in what the CNN team said next, he felt stunned and disorientated, not because he mourned the colonel’s abrupt demise, but because with his death Steiner’s chances of helping those in Steadfast to get to safety had just taken a significant backward step, perhaps irreversibly so. He was on his own now. His eyes darted to the trace timer; eight minutes remained until the FBI acquired his exact location – he had to move.

  A few more minutes passed while Steiner finished hiding his digital signature. Hurriedly, aware of his ever-dwindling window of opportunity, he began shutting down the computer hardware. He flicked the switches off one by one, leaving one quantum processor running to ensure the trace continued to be fended off for the longest possible period. Closing the programmes still open on the wallscreen, Steiner’s finger paused over the CNN footage. He watched, gobsmacked, as their cameras caught the image of a bright red Dodge pick-up bursting out of the shopping mall’s first floor façade. With huge shards of glass flying in all directions, the wheels of the truck slammed down onto the ground, its suspension buckling to breaking point.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ Bill Brightman said, grandstanding for all he was worth, ‘guess who’s back.’

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Steiner couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Samson was alive, although by the looks of what faced him, he wouldn’t be for much longer. The CNN helicopter footage
showed that the car park Samson now found himself in was completely surrounded, not only by the LAPD and FBI, but also by the National Guard, called in to lend a hand to their law enforcement colleagues. Drones and helicopters filled the dark skies above, including those from the world’s media tasked with covering the story, their combined lights shedding a bright blanket over the single red vehicle.

  ‘There doesn’t appear to be anyone inside the car,’ Marianne Gobrinsky reported.

  She wasn’t wrong. The TV footage showed the interior of the battered pick-up pretty well and Steiner couldn’t make out anyone sitting in either of the front seats. Was it really Samson at work? Unconsciously he’d started twisting his wedding band around his finger, the countdown timer for the FBI trace temporarily forgotten, its digits dropping below the two minute mark unseen.

  ♦

  Bent double in the driver’s seat of the Dodge Ram, Samson didn’t need to use his visor’s spectral scanners to know what confronted him outside. Even as he sat there, rifles were being trained on every inch of the vehicle. If he so much as popped his head up, he’d have it taken off in an instant by multiple, high-velocity, armour-piercing rounds.

  The only reason he wasn’t already dead was because of the person he had crammed into the adjacent foot-well; his hostage. The FBI agent, now conscious, gagged and secured with her own set of handcuffs, stared at him with baleful eyes.

  Samson knew he’d been fortunate back on the roof. The helicopter had provided him with the perfect foil against which to stage his own death. Utilising his last two grenades, he’d blown a hole in the roof while at the same time reactivating his camouflage, which he’d managed to repair on the move. After the shockwave passed, Samson had thrown himself down into the thick smoke, landing heavily on the floor below. Still having to act quickly, he’d then hotfooted it back through the mall, avoiding the police, to finally reach the truck. Unfortunately his plan of switching vehicles hadn’t accounted for the cops that had decided to set up shop in the same car park where he’d stashed the pick-up. Deciding action was preferable to waiting to be discovered, Samson had driven the vehicle into the shopping area to avoid the squad cars below, before launching it out through the first floor window of the complex’s main entrance.