by Cate Dermody
“Unless you want to be driving a van riddled with bullet holes and smelling like urine, yeah. I could handle some breakfast, too. I haven’t eaten today. Scones and tea would be okay. Even cheap scones and tea.”
Anton chuckled. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Alisha pulled her mouth into a smile. “You buy. Hostage etiquette. Kidnappers pay for incidentals.” Ivan stared at her and she sighed. “I can probably get to the restrooms at a convenience stop without spending too much time looking into the CCTV cameras, but there’s always one pointed right at the checkout counter. If you want to keep MI-5 off your back…” She trailed off and shrugged, feeling more cheerful as Ivan’s expression blackened.
“If you try anything,” he warned.
Alisha nodded, turning her gaze out the window again. “It won’t be the van you’re shooting at. I know.”
The convenience stop had windows in its restrooms. Alisha noted them as she slunk by, escorted by Anton, with Ivan a step or two ahead. Inside the store she nodded toward the toilets and broke in that direction, but Anton followed hard on her heels. “I saw them, too,” he rumbled, and despite herself, Alisha quirked a grin.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she claimed. Anton huffed disbelievingly and followed her all the way into the bathroom. “You want to unzip my pants for me, too?” Alisha asked, both irritated and resigned.
Anton gave her a wide smile and lifted his hands, shaking his head. “I have more respect for my own health than that, Ms. Moon.”
You made it too easy, Alisha thought, and without regret lashed out with a flexed foot to catch Anton in the groin. He gasped and went gray, doubling over, the same training that taught him to keep quiet when injured betraying any chance of him shouting out to Ivan for help. Alisha swung around with a roundhouse kick that connected to his temple with a deep, alarming thwock, then surged forward to catch the big Russian’s weight so he wouldn’t crash noisily to the floor. The, “Sorry,” she whispered above his bruised temple was genuine as she hauled him to lie in front of the door, blocking it as best she could.
The window cranked outward six inches or so, its hinge stretched to its limit. There was less than a foot of space on either side of the crank, simply insufficient room to slither through. Alisha bared her teeth, then yanked the window closed again and slung Anton’s jacket off, wrapping it around her fist. There was no way to silence the shattering of glass. Alisha knocked shards free from the pane, leaving it as smooth as she could before doubling the jacket and laying it over the broken edges.
“Don’t think.” Thought would lead to hesitation she couldn’t afford. Ignoring the too-real possibility of injury, she put the flats of her hands into the window frame and levered herself up, feeling glass crunching and breaking beneath the barrier Anton’s coat made.
Slivers of glass grazed her shoulders and ribs as she pulled herself through. The only place she dared rest her weight was on her hips, as far back on the edge of the frame as she could. A man shouted in astonishment, and for a moment Alisha could see herself from the outside, protruding from the restroom window like a ship’s prow. Then she tipped forward, rotating her weight, and put her palms against the store’s outside wall.
Sliding down the rough surface made her bite her lip with pain, the cut on one hand re-opened by her antics. She managed enough push to do an awkward somersault, lifting her thighs away from the ragged glass just long enough to avoid deep lacerations. Then, gravity pulled her down with heartless vengeance and she tucked into a painful roll that barely protected her neck as she hit the ground.
A few vital, precious seconds were lost as she jumped to her feet and snatched Anton’s jacket from the window, shaking glass out of it as she broke into a run. No gunshots yet: Ivan was slow, or she was lucky. Lucky struck her as more likely; Anton really had made the escape attempt too easy.
Maybe he did, Leesh. The startling thought intruded as Alisha pounded across the pavement. Anton shouldn’t have been so easy to take down. He had to have expected her attempt. Maybe, just maybe, he’d let her go.
Why?
The need to know slipped away as she reached a chain-link fence, easily six feet tall, and shoved her booted toes into a diamond of metal. Anton’s jacket, still in her hands, protected her torn palms as she flung it over the triangles that poked over the fence’s top bar and vaulted it.
“There!” Ivan’s voice behind her, lifted in outrage.
Alisha didn’t spare a glance backward, hearing Anton’s coat tear as she ripped it from the fence. Other footsteps ran to the barrier the fence created, metal shaking and rattling as people grabbed hold of it. Still no gunfire, probably thanks to the curious viewers blocking the path between herself and Ivan. She ducked around a corner and found herself in a subdivision, backyards marked off with high stone and wood fences. A narrow path ran between the houses and Alisha bolted down it, hurdling a low picket fence that cropped up. She landed in a flower bed, one foot solidly crushing a purple azalea, and broke for the glass door of the house whose yard she’d invaded.
It slid open under her desperate yank, a house alarm shrieking as she slammed it closed again behind her. The front door was locked against her frantic tug. Alisha ran for the living room, shoving a window open and diving through it into another unfortunate flower bed. She closed the window behind her, a useless gesture: the house alarm would tell the Russians which path she’d taken, but the attempt to cover her tracks had to be made. She hit the sidewalk at a full-on run again, alarm screaming in her ears.
Ten seconds later the alarm turned off, leaving blessed and astonishing silence in its place. Alisha risked one look back at the house and saw nothing untoward. A giggle rose up from behind her breastbone, the sound of panicked relief. She’d seen car alarms set off by low-flying jets, and impatient owners who keyed them off without ever worrying they might be being robbed. Perhaps the homeowner had had similar experiences.
Sobbing breath into her lungs, Alisha slung Anton’s coat back on and ran.
Chapter 14
Unarmed. Undressed. Untriumphant. Those were not the adjectives Alisha’d had in mind to describe her return to the computing facilities when she went to retrieve Brandon.
Undead, she reminded herself, and found a laugh at the connotation, even taking a shuffling zombie-like step or two. The shambling gait brought her through the supercomputer facility’s front doors, and from the startled look the receptionist gave her, Alisha thought undead might be a more apt descriptor of her physical condition than she’d realized. For all that she’d been submerged in a tub not that many hours earlier, her hair was streaked with mud and her jeans were brown with it. The too-large coat she wore was buttoned closed, but that she wore only a bra beneath it was clear. She’d found a hose to rinse her hands with, but they were still badly bruised and scraped. The result, which she caught a glimpse of in the facility’s polished floors, indeed looked like she might be one of the walking dead.
Somehow buoyed by the sheer ridiculousness of it, Alisha strode across the foyer with confidence, her chin lifted and her smile bright. “I’m here to see Brandon Parker.”
“The American,” the man behind the desk said. “I’m afraid you’re too late.”
Confidence drained away, leaving a place of coolness in Alisha’s belly. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Too late?” A churn in the coolness warned that it could easily turn to alarm and sickness. Alisha took a deep breath, quelling it, and smiled uncertainly down at the receptionist.
“Too late,” he repeated. “His package arrived late yesterday afternoon and he departed about forty-five minutes later.” His voice, tinged with a hint of Africa—Nigeria, Alisha thought distantly—was apologetic but uninterested. She put her fingertips on the desk, leaning forward into it more for her own support than to intimidate.
“Package?” The word seemed to have enormous portent. Alisha shook her head, not yet understanding. Brandon couldn’t have left; he wouldn’t have
abandoned Lilith to a research facility’s tender mercies. “What package? I thought no one—” No one knew he was here, was how the sentence finished, but saying it aloud shared too much information that didn’t need to be made public. “Who was it from? Do you have a record?”
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “That’s confidential information. You are…?”
“His girlfriend,” Alisha lied numbly. “I had to go away for a couple of days. I was supposed to meet him here this afternoon. We were…” She couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence, but the receptionist filled in the blanks himself, deeper sympathy flashing across his features.
“I truly am sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t really know who the package was from. An American computer company, I think, but I didn’t really look at it.”
“BranCo Technologies,” Alisha breathed. The receptionist brightened, leaning toward her.
“That’s it, yes. I’m sure of it. Does that help?”
“Yes,” Alisha said, then in the same curiously flat tone, added, “No,” before shaking herself and smiling at the receptionist. “It does, yes,” she said in a more normal voice. “Thanks. Thanks very much.” She dipped a nod and turned away, focus going long and unseeing out the lobby’s front windows.
A package from BranCo. Brandon would never have abandoned his AI to someone else’s systems, but an express package from his own company only had one obvious answer. Alisha slid a hand into her pocket, wrapping her fingers around the quantum storage drive nestled against her hip. She’d taken Lilith’s only means of transport in order to ensure Brandon’s good behavior. Held the AI hostage, as Brandon had accused. She hadn’t thought he might risk ordering another drive.
It was possible—of course it was possible—that anyone monitoring Brandon’s company might think nothing of a London supercomputing facility ordering one or more of Brandon’s phenomenally capable storage drives.
It was possible, Alisha thought with nasty clarity, that a dog might not return to its own vomit, too. She stopped at the lobby doors, one hand on the glass, and turned her head back to the receptionist. “Excuse me.”
“Yes, love?” He looked up, a smile of concern visible from the corner of his eye.
“You might want to take the day off,” Alisha said. “You might want to take a few days off.” She heard herself speak as if she stood far away, her voice echoing in her own ears.
“I’m sorry?” Concern fled in the face of surprise. Alisha lifted her chin, enunciating her words carefully.
“You might want to take a few days off. I wouldn’t want to be here when—”
A bright shadow drifted through her line of vision, sunlight reflecting off a white vehicle. Alisha’s gaze followed it, focus still somewhere beyond things that could be seen by the human eye. Her heartbeat rang in her ears, one pulse far separated from another, time turned to taffy. Breath ran through her body as if she could see it, filling lung and muscle with oxygen that would allow her to burst into activity. Soon, the promise whispered silently. Soon. A second white car pulled into the parking lot, so brilliant in the sunlight it made her eyes water. There was no sound beyond that of her heartbeat, as if the lobby’s glass doors had become an impenetrable barrier.
“—when the Sicarii arrive,” Alisha whispered.
Too late.
She recognized none of them, men and women pouring out of the vehicles like clowns in a circus, so many it seemed impossible they’d all fit. So many, she thought again. The Infitialis were so few, and their enemy so many.
“Get down!” Her own shout broke the hold battle-time had over her. Then she was running, vaulting the receptionist’s desk to bear him to the ground with her weight. His chair tipped and crashed beneath them and he howled, more insult than injury. Alisha muttered, “Sorry,” and shoved his head down. “Stay down.” Her gun seemed a paltry weapon against their numbers, but Alisha pulled it from her waistband. It would do. It would have to do. It held fifteen rounds and she hadn’t yet fired it. Surely there weren’t more than fifteen of them.
Alisha came to her feet with a grin so wide it bordered on painful. Surely there weren’t more than fifteen of them. That, she thought with honest glee, was one hundred percent Leesh, the combat veteran who believed the hype of her own skill and training. It was all a matter of not missing, and Leesh rarely missed when it counted.
“Are you out of your fecking mind?” The receptionist was on his feet again, hauling Alisha’s arms down so her gun pointed harmlessly at his desk. “Sweet bleeding God, woman, what’s wrong with you?”
Alisha braced herself, legs wide as she took strength through the floor and pushed it upward, using it to lever her arms up against the receptionist’s weight. She snarled, “Trust me,” and he barked disbelieving laughter. “They’re not the good guys.”
“You’re mad. Security! Security!” The last words were a shout as the lobby doors swung open, ushering in the first of the contingent from the white cars.
The man in the lead hesitated just inside the door, alarm and dismay writ large across his face. He backed up again, one hand held high to warn off those behind him, and Alisha caught a glimpse of suitcases and business suits. Her resolve faltered and the receptionist shoved her arms down again, then wrapped his arm around hers, embracing her against his chest and pinning her arms to her sides. A part of Alisha admired the tactic: disabling without being drastic. Of course, she still had the gun, and could shoot him in the foot if she needed to escape.
“Those,” the receptionist panted above her ear, “are the representatives of Crown Enterprises, who are a major funder for these facilities. At least, they were until ten seconds ago. If you’ve cost us our funding—!”
Alisha went limp in his grasp, surprise greater than her impulse to fight back. Footsteps pounded across the polished lobby floor, security responding to the receptionist’s summonings. “Crown Enterprises?”
“Yes, you raving lunatic! Guards! Security! Thank God,” he added in a different voice as two uniformed guards rounded a corner and pelted toward them. “She’s got a gun.”
The guards slowed immediately, glancing at each other before one took charge. “Put your weapon down, ma’am. There’s no need for that.”
“I have the gun,” Alisha whispered. “You don’t. Want to bet on who gets out of here?” She felt the receptionist shift behind her, precursor to going for her gun hand, and knotted the muscles in her arm. She’d been playing nice so far. Under no circumstances would she allow herself to be taken in by British authorities. To be taken in by the enemy. Outside, worried men and women in suits huddled together, far enough from the building to feel safe, though a bullet could certainly find one of them easily enough.
“Don’t be foolish, miss,” the other guard said. “Drop your weapon.” They came forward slowly, hands open as if to promise their sincerity. Hands open, Alisha thought, because there was no middle ground in English carrying of arms. It was either billy sticks or automatic weapons, rarely anything in between.
“Stop,” she said, mostly to herself, “or I’ll say ‘Stop!’ again.” She lifted her gaze to the guards, then found it returning to the milling businessmen outside. Sunlight gleamed off brown and black leather briefcases, a crown emblem embossed in the leather. Alisha rubbed the thumb and forefinger of her free hand together, the graphic bringing back a tactile memory she couldn’t quite—
A huff of laughter escaped her, as though someone had hit her in the stomach. Couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But she could, and the memory answered as many questions as it posed.
But now was the wrong time to pursue that, as Alisha caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye. Time went slowly for the second time in as many minutes, letting thought dominate in the precious few seconds before battle reflexes took over.
The decision was already made: she would not let herself be arrested. The chances for subtlety were already long past; her description and very likely security camera im
ages of her would be all over the country in a matter of hours. Her location was pinpointed. The question was merely whether she would disable or terminate her foes during her escape.
She released the gun mechanically, fingers stiff as she opened them. The weapon clattered to the floor, relaxing the guards and sending Alisha into motion.
The man holding her was too much taller than she to headbutt. Alisha drove her elbow backward, knocking his breath away, and as he bent with wheezing, she crashed her skull back to bash it into his. He yowled and fell, already forgotten as she put her hands on the desk, about to jump it and face down the guards.
“That will be quite enough.” A smooth voice, one she knew, but now with a hint of a British accent, came from the elevator area beyond the receptionist’s desk. Alisha went absolutely still, as if the words triggered an inability to command her own muscles. The receptionist groaned, staggering to his feet and clutching his head. Alisha refused to look at him, keeping her expression tight and her gaze belligerent on the guards, wanting them to believe she was stayed only by the newcomer’s voice. Anything else would betray her shock—at least to those with the eyes to see it—and she had no intention of allowing anyone to know she’d been desperately outplayed.
But the emotional reaction couldn’t be quelled. Her heart rate jumped, anger and excitement, as if a missing puzzle piece had been laid into place. She wanted to turn and shout accusations, but held her ground, listening to the cultured, false accent make easy promises.
“I’m afraid you’ve been party to a training exercise, Philippe. Guards, well done.” Well-heeled shoes clicked across the polished floor, bringing the speaker into sight. He was short, shorter than Alisha herself, with curly graying hair and an expensive, well-fitted suit. “You may release her now. This is Ginger Sanovar, an associate of mine. I’m Desmond Rockwell, security head for Crown Enterprises. We’ve been running tests at all the facilities we fund, to make certain of security. I’m pleased to say you’ve passed with flying colors. Especially you, Philippe.” He nodded toward the receptionist, who straightened up with pride that nearly masked bewilderment at Rockwell’s appearance. Alisha felt tremendous sympathy, more taken aback by Rockwell than Philippe was.
