Ffodor had never mentioned anything like this in their talks about security systems and, more importantly, how to defeat them.
Babel doubled over, coughing, snot running from her nose. Billy Ray clenched his eyes, groaning. He started kicking at the door. It dented the frame but the door didn’t budge. Michelle flung bubbles at the vent, but the stinging gas had temporarily blinded her, too.
Mollie’s eyes were on fire. Closing them didn’t help—it was as though her very tears had become battery acid.
Clean air, she thought. Need clean air.
Just before she passed out, she remembered encountering Vaporlock at the casino.
A large rift opened in the air above the security station. Its flipside faced an observation deck on Mount Rainier, about 12,000 feet above sea level. The lower air pressure on the mountainside sucked the gas through the portal.
“So much for the element of surprise,” Ray said. His fighting suit was ripped and spattered with blood, most of which didn’t appear to be his. “Which damn cell is Bruckner’s?”
Barbara had to concentrate to answer, to keep the space around them clear of Babel’s power while she tried to match the floor plans that Ink had pulled to the reality around them. The retreats and flights they’d already made only made things more confusing. I always followed Klaus. I was never the battle leader … Babel forced herself to concentrate, to place herself in the map that Ink had given them. “That one,” she said, pointing to a door two down to the left. “At least, I hope so. Does the guard have keys on him?” She looked at the body slumped against the wall, blood drooling from one nostril.
“This is easier.” Bubbles had already moved, two ponderous steps. They saw an iridescent sphere rise from her hand. “Barbara, can you make Bruckner understand me?” she asked.
Barbara nodded and shifted the power so that Bruckner’s cell was clear of her power. In the distance, they could hear garbled, indecipherable shouts.
“John,” Michelle called out. “Move to the back of the cell. Now!” The sphere floated away from Bubble’s hand, gathering speed as it moved. When it touched the steel door, there was a percussive clap that had Barbara involuntarily flinching, even though she’d been expecting the explosion. Dust and pebbles of splintered steel showered down, then Ray dashed forward, sticking his head inside the hole in the prison door.
“Hello, Bruckner,” he said, “your parole board’s here. Come on out and talk.”
“Why do you always step on my lines?” Michelle asked Billy Ray, poking her head through the shattered door. “Hello, Mr. Bruckner, please get your ass out here as fast as possible. Billy Ray is twitchy, and honestly, what I just did to your door should definitely get your attention.”
Bruckner coughed and waved his hand to clear the debris smoke in front of him. “Jesus,” he said in a thick cockney accent as he stepped forward. “Billy Ray, you’re still a faggot in a jumpsuit, I see. Oh, and look, you’ve brought along an enormous cow. You a dyke, honey? Most of you fat cunts are. I’d’ve rather been rescued by a nig…”
Michelle stepped into Bruckner’s cell and let a baseball-sized bubble fly at him, hitting him in the chest as hard as she thought he could take without killing him. He sat down like a toddler surprised to discover it was walking.
“Asshole, please,” she said as he tried to get to his feet. “Bad day. Getting worse. Billy Ray loves that jumpsuit, and you’ve just insulted it. Now me, I’d just as soon leave you where you are, but we need you, you sorry excuse for a human being. Now get up and move, or I will encourage the director to kick your ass in all the creative ways I know he has in him.”
She grabbed Bruckner’s arm and yanked him up from the floor.
“I said, MOVE!”
Bruckner looked as if he were about ready to run, and Ray grabbed the man’s arm, shaking his head. “Uh-uh,” he told him. “You’re coming with us.” He glanced around at the array of cells. The prisoners were nearly all well back from the bars, huddled in corners away from the uproar. A bullet pinged from the wall near them. “Any ideas?” he asked Barbara.
The block door had closed them off from where Molly’s portal had been: a solid steel door. She pointed to it, hoping she was right. “We need to go that way,” she said. “Michelle, we need a door.”
“It’s coming,” Michelle told her. Another bubble was already rising from her open hand, a larger one this time. It sped away as if pushed by a wind none of them could feel; when it impacted the wall, the thump of the explosion was a hard punch to Barbara’s chest, and for a moment, her concentration wavered. They could hear shouts in French as a hole appeared in the wall, with sunlight glimmering through the curtain of dust as concrete and rebar continued to tumble down. Barbara quickly put the barrier back up.
“Let’s move,” she said with the roar of the explosion still deafening her, with the effort of altering the barrage of words in her head causing her temples to pound. “Hurry!”
The quartet went through the hole, Barbara marveling at the thickness of the steel, which only emphasized Bubbles’s power. “Up there!” Barbara pointed: a small window of silver shimmered on the wall a floor above them.
A guard came running up the stairs toward them, shouting nonsense orders. Evidently someone had taken the initiative to open a weapons closet, as this one brandished an automatic rifle. Ray gave him no chance to do more than shout and gesture with the weapon. He leapt at the man: a kick tore the weapon from the man’s hands, a following punch sent the man tumbling backward down the steps ahead of them. As they reached the ground floor, Ray ripped away the rifle, dangling from its strap, from the unconscious guard. He pointed the muzzle at the guard.
“We’re not here to kill anyone,” Barbara reminded Ray. “Just to get the Highwayman.” The confusion of the situation threatened to overwhelm them. She felt lost here, but tried to show none of it. She doubted that she was successful.
“Yeah,” Ray was saying, “but they don’t exactly seem to mind trying to kill us, and I’m not intending to let them.” Hefting the rifle and setting it against his shoulder, he sent a spray of gunfire chattering down the length of the prison hall. “Just saying hello,” he told Barbara and Michelle. “Maybe the rest of them will keep their heads down now.”
“Seriously, Director, what’s up with the ultraviolence?” Michelle asked tartly. After they got Bruckner out of his cell, they encountered more guards on the way to Mollie’s portal. Billy Ray didn’t hold back meting out punishment to the guards. Michelle winced as flesh met metal grating.
“You know I can take care of that without anyone getting hurt,” she continued. Chunks of plaster flew off the wall as bullets hit. Bruckner and Babel both ducked, but Barbara caught a piece of flying plaster on her neck. It sprayed blood onto her white shirt collar.
Billy Ray looked over his shoulder at Michelle. There was a gleeful expression on his face.
He’s really loving this, she thought.
“I need you to protect Bruckner and Babel,” he replied. “How I get my job done isn’t up for debate.”
“I know, but I can do two things at the same…”
“Are we going to have a discussion or are we getting the hell out of here?” he asked. He’d already turned his attention back to the guards. His muscles flexed under his jumpsuit as he threw another guard over the railing into the courtyard below.
“Get behind that corner,” she commanded Barbara and Bruckner. To Billy Ray she said, “Then let’s give them a target.”
She stepped out into the line of fire. Instantly, a barrage of bullets blasted her. It was glorious. All of the power and none of the pain.
Explosions, gunfire, and shouting were not conducive to Mollie’s concentration. Every time she got a handle on the Cosmodrome another concussion would echo around the corner to slap her silly and shatter her concentration.
“We can leave anytime,” said Ray.
Mollie had always thought Belgians were supposed to be levelheaded internatio
nal diplomacy wonks. But they pretty much lost their shit when they realized Bruckner was the target of the jailbreak. It seemed as though every prison guard in northern Europe wanted to keep Bruckner in his cell. Mollie could only guess, but she imagined “time off for being a shitbag” wasn’t part of his sentence.
Michelle leaned around the corner and sprayed the guards with exploding bubbles large enough to blow chips from the masonry. That seemed a little extreme until Mollie glimpsed a foolhardy guard who charged around the corner; in the moment before Ray sent them sprawling, she saw they’d anted up with riot gear. Good. Nobody wanted to kill them. They were just doing their jobs, after all.
“Wotcher!” Bruckner flinched from the explosion. He crouched, fingers in his ears. “Are you lot going to faff about all night?”
Michelle ducked back into cover. She touched Mollie’s shoulder. “Anytime you’re ready, sweetie.”
“Uh-huh. Working on it.”
Mollie tried again to picture the Cosmodrome. The brutalist Soviet architecture, the echoes in the cavernous hangar, the bloodstains on the concrete where she’d dropped a Winnebago on some poor fuck—
Four guards rushed their hiding spot. Ray put his fist through one guard’s Lexan face shield, twisted, and planted his heel just above the other guard’s navel. The body armor absorbed the worst of it but it still knocked the man down. Michelle threw down another line of bubbles, deftly knocking back the other two guards.
Ray said, “Seriously. Now would be a really good time to leave!”
Oh God oh God oh God they’re depending on me oh God and I couldn’t even get a shortcut to Brussels right and don’t think about Half Moon Bay don’t don’t don’t think about the sound of teeth hitting the ceiling fan and now I’m supposed to get us out of here and I can’t concentrate DON’T THINK ABOUT THE BABY—
A hole opened in space. It was dark on the other side. Clearly audible through the gunshots and explosions came the lowing of frightened cows and the overpowering odor of manure and cow piss. Mollie suddenly wondered who had been taking care of the livestock while half the family was hospitalized. Son of a bitch, she hadn’t even thought about helping—
Ray said, “That’s not the Cosmodrome!”
“It’s fine, sweetie, it’s totally fine,” said Michelle. “That’s plenty good for now.” She ducked around the corner to toss a few more bubbles, shouting, “Everybody in! Go!”
“You’re not bleedin’ serious, doll,” said Bruckner, pinching his nose. “Stinks worse than a spearchucker’s bunghole in there.”
Ray grabbed him by the collar and physically tossed him through the portal to Idaho.
“Babel, your turn,” Ray said.
There was a chatter of gunfire from near the gate, and pouts of dust erupted near the truck. She heard the whine of a bullet passing overhead and the t-chink of several hitting the metal of the railings. “I’d hurry if I were you,” Ray added. Aiming high, he let out a one-handed burst from the rifle he’d taken from the guard while still holding on to Bruckner’s arm.
Barbara shook her head. “I’m not going with you,” she told him. “I have to stay here.”
“What?” Ray sputtered. “Are you insane? After this?”
“I knew it would have to be this way from the start. Jayewardene will need a scapegoat. And if nothing else, all of this proved that I’m better dealing with your bureaucrats than in a firefight.” As Klaus knew. Thinking of him made the fear knot her stomach again.
Ray shook his head. “You’re insane. You could be stuck here in St. Gilles for years taking the blame for the rest of us.”
Barbara managed to smile wanly at that. “Not altogether a bad outcome, assuming that the rest of you manage to save the world.” She waved her hand at him, not moving. Ray, still shaking his head, pushed Bruckner ahead of him through the portal and went through himself. The portal shimmered, pulled once, then vanished. There was nothing but a concrete wall behind her.
She was alone in the prison. With a sigh, Barbara let the barriers drop in her mind and closed off the wild card power, feeling the usual exhaustion that followed. Forcing herself to stand erect, she lifted her hands in the air.
“I surrender,” she called out to the nearest guards in French as they began to cautiously approach her, weapons at ready. “You must call Secretary-General Jayewardene of the UN for me. Bring me to the Secretary-General.”
The Angel’s heart was beating heavily in her chest as she flew through the streets of a devastated Talas, twenty feet or so above the ground. The surrounding destruction no longer made an impression on her. It was just the way things were. Perhaps, once this danger was past, she would organize her people to clean things up a little, make them nice again. She had no desire to rule from a ruin. She wanted a palace, bright and shining and clean. She deserved a palace …
Certainly, it worried her but at the same time she felt her anger rising as she considered the fact that the outside world was interfering in her domain. They’d fled, abrogating all rights to this realm, and now they were trying to destroy it? They dare attempt to attack my domain? the Angel thought. Fuck them. She would teach them the meaning of destruction.
She flew on, ignoring the pain and weariness that the last few days had brought. She tried to keep her mind focused on her task. She couldn’t be distracted by thoughts of her recent actions or by the vague notions that troubled her mind about earlier days she’d spent in a world that was now more dream than reality. She was the Madonna of the Blade, the Angel of the Alleyways, She Who Must Be Obeyed and this was her world. No one or no thing would take it from her.
She flew on toward the heart of the city where something was, vaguely but persistently, calling to her. It was pleased with her, it wanted to reward her, and she wanted to give it the worship it so deserved.
Reality was crumbling all around her, but she was so eager to get to the heart of the darkness that called to her that she didn’t notice the nature of the buildings or the streets or the things that inhabited them.
The call got stronger and more insistent in her mind and she knew when she’d arrived at her goal.
A single building stood higher than the rest, but it seemed no longer to be made of stone and steel, but rather flesh and blood like a giant, static creature. Things crawled in and out of its windows and doorways, things like the worms of the earth and even more alien places. The beings that loitered around it were cone-headed creatures with bloodred tentacles in place of faces, and sentient slugs with transparent flesh, and armor-plated insects that crawled, hopped, and slithered on mysterious errands like no earthly creature.
Most impressive, though, were its two guardians. One stood in bloodred armor that shone so bright you could barely look upon him, fifteen feet tall. His name, the Angel dredged from some far recess of her memory, was Lohengrin. The other was even bigger, twice the knight’s size, and was an impossible conglomeration of garbage and worms and corpses, all of which flowed incessantly, never still but not alive, either.
They were marvels to behold and the Angel wanted to be one with them and the love that she felt wafting off them in palpable waves for their god who dwelt in the building behind them. Their dark, wonderful god who had promised her her heart’s delight.
“What is my reward, my lord?” she begged aloud and she felt a sudden twisting in her body, a sudden racking pain in the middle of herself. She fell to her knees, her arms clenched around her stomach. A hand sought the knife, forgotten until now but still belted about her waist. She pulled it out and slashed, not deeply, at her abdomen, though her skin sliced and blood came. She pulled away the leather jumpsuit from about her stomach, panting.
Her eyes closed and she fell and rolled to her back. Her stomach burned as a weight pushed down on it. She screamed as a woman giving birth and a head pushed through the unbroken, smooth flesh of her stomach, followed by a chest, shoulder, arm, and hand. Another hand popped out with lesser pain lower and nearer her side, but no more than a t
iny hand and a forearm appeared above her own flesh.
She stared down at the little face, screwed up and wailing, at the fair hair, and plump-lipped mouth. It was a baby, a boy, she somehow knew. It cried angrily, but then a red tongue slipped out from between its Cupid-like lips and licked at the Angel’s blood that flowed from the shallow cut she’d given herself as she’d cut away the restraining jumpsuit. The lips worked eagerly. The tongue sought more blood.
A great love dawned over the Angel. Yes. This was something she’d always wanted. Something to love.
She rocked happily and cooed to her baby. She took her knife and cut her forearm and held it to her child’s mouth. As it eagerly sucked at her blood she fervently thanked her lord for his gift while all around her beings howled and clashed, fought and coupled frenziedly through the black night under the green, grinning moon.
They were back in the command room in Baikonur. If Michelle never saw another propaganda poster, walls with grey-green peeling paint, or crummy fluorescent lights again, it would be too soon.
“We need to keep this simple,” Billy Ray said. Michelle thought she could have led the mission, but she knew Billy Ray was the better choice. Also, he’d keep trying to take charge anyway, and it was easier to just give it to him.
“I agree,” Michelle said with a nod. “No one extra along. No one to slow us down. Light and fast. Surgical.”
Billy Ray smiled at her. She cocked her head at him and frowned. He never smiled at her. “So let’s break it down,” he said. He extended his index finger. “One, obviously, we need Bruckner. But we need a truck for him—or any kind of transport like that—but none with computers or anything that relies on electronics. We should be able to find something in this Soviet-era shithole.”
High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel Page 56
