The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Nathan growled and pulled a ten-inch blade from his hip. Her combat boosts slowed his motion to a near crawl. She caught his arm, twisted it over, and flipped him onto his back while ripping the knife away from his grip.

  “A knife! Why thank you! It’s perfect!” She made a show of studying it like a gift.

  “What…” Nathan moaned.

  “Oh, I guess they didn’t tell you.” Tris grabbed a fistful of his tunic and hauled him off the ground one-handed. “Apparently, my father’s ghost has been rattling around the network. He gave me the full combat package.”

  She threw him over the chair into the wall. He bounced off, leaving a bloody mark where his mouth made contact, and collapsed in a heap.

  “The way you had them strap me down before you had the balls to show up, I figured you knew that… I guess you really are just a sad, sad little man. If you were afraid of a girl my size without boosts, you’re about to have a really bad day.”

  Nathan struggled to his feet, clawing at the wall to pull himself up. He pushed away, flying at her with a wobbly roundhouse kick.

  Tris caught his ankle in her left hand, smirked, and threw his leg aside. His eyes flared wide. Growling, he waved his arms about in some manner of martial arts threat display. She tilted her head.

  “Is that supposed to be kung fu, tai chi, or did a wasp fly past your face?”

  “Stupid bitch.” Nathan circled to her left. “You think a little VR is going to matter? I’ve been training for years. In the real world.”

  “Right.” She rubbed her temple over her right eye. “Here, and I thought you were a useless pampered administrator.”

  Nathan lunged. Her enhancements dragged the world into slow motion again, making his left hand feint obvious. Tris spun under his incoming punch, grabbing his wrist as her back pressed into his chest. A quick thrust of her hips sent him up and over, and she yanked down on his arm to swing him into the floor. Before he could start shouting from the dislocated shoulder, she whirled around and braced her knee against the back of his arm, pulling on his wrist until the arm broke backward at the elbow. She hopped away and eased off the boost.

  Time resumed.

  Nathan shrieked.

  “Guess they ran the wrong software.”

  As soon as he started to push himself upright, she took a step and kicked him in the stomach, flipping him over on his back. He gurgled, cradling his gut, staring at her with googly eyes bulging from a red face. Whatever he tried to call her came out in a series of harsh barking noises and groans.

  Tris glared at him, hands clenched to fists. She never imagined it possible to hate someone as much as she hated Nathan. Every time Abby cried, she wanted to twist his head off. Every time the girl woke up screaming in the middle of the night, haunted by her dreams of what happened in Amarillo, Tris wanted to kill him. The thought of how terrified the girl had to be worrying about them out here boiled over. Snarling, she went in for a field-goal kick to his head. He rolled to the side and scrambled to his feet, catching her foot.

  Before he could do anything with her trapped leg, Tris flung herself into a midair corkscrew and cracked him across the chin with her left foot. Nathan torqued around and sailed into the wall face first while she landed on all fours. Tris shoved herself upright and got her arms up to block a series of punches that dragged down to a crawl as soon as her boosters kicked on again. One after the next, she swatted his strikes aside. After six, she caught his wrist.

  “Didn’t I already break this once?” Narrowing her eyes, she twisted his arm to the side and hammered the handle of the knife down on his forearm, earning a satisfying crunch.

  Nathan gasped, fell to his knees, and made a noise like a lovesick basset hound. Bloody mucous ran from his lower lip. He fumbled with his rubbery limb, trying to pull it into place for his nanites to mend.

  “I really don’t like what you bring out in me, Nathan.” She eyed the knife. “You killed all those people in Amarillo.”

  He grunted and hauled himself upright. “They’re damaged on a genetic level. Hu”―he wheezed for breath―“Humanity can’t afford them.”

  Tris faked a slash to his face and stomp-kicked him in the sternum when he moved to defend. The hit launched him against the wall, a coconut like knock came from his head. Dazed, he started to wobble toward her. She grabbed him, flung him around, and plowed an elbow into his upper back, crushing him against the clean white surface. He struggled, whimpering, but couldn’t budge her. Tris tossed the knife up and caught it by the handle.

  After admiring the way the light reflected from the edge for a second, she rammed it into his back hard enough to stick it in the wall.

  “That’s for Emilio.”

  Nathan let off a long, agonized wail.

  Tris leaned up on tiptoe, putting her mouth at his ear. “This is for Abby.”

  She twisted the knife back and forth, grinding it deeper.

  Nathan howled, and shit his pants.

  “Don’t worry. You’ve got nanites, right? It’ll take them a while to exhaust themselves to the point they start reconfiguring tissues.” She tapped the knife handle, making him squeak each time her finger made contact. “You should last fourteen hours before they eat you from the inside out.”

  She pounded her palm on the knife handle, seating it into the wall. Nathan gasped.

  “You are not permitted entry,” said the Persephone.

  “The bitch is loose,” yelled one of the men who broke her finger. He tried to barge past the android, but she palmed his chest and flung him into the wall outside.

  The delicate sound of concrete chips falling to the floor followed a loud crash.

  “I see you paged your helpers.” Tris looked at the door. “Are there five of them out there?”

  “That is correct,” said the Persephone.

  “Those five don’t need to remain among the living.” Tris let go of the knife, leaving Nathan hanging like a frog tacked to a dissection board. She walked to a terminal a short distance away behind the chair.

  “Ngh,” wheezed Nathan. He tried to reach around and grab the knife, but screamed at the pain of moving and hung limp. “What… what are you doing?” Fingers splayed against the featureless white wall, he attempted to push himself off the knife, but also gave up with a gasp.

  Tris dove through the Enclave file system using the root access Not-Dad gave her, and raided Nathan’s personal files. She found a certain list of files he’d put in her head, selected one, and smiled at him.

  “What are you doing?” wheezed Nathan, sounding desperate. “You don’t honestly expect to simply walk out of here do you?”

  A disgusting crunch came from the doorway. Two men and a woman screamed, then rapid footsteps grew quiet and distant. Tris snapped her gaze over to the door at the sound of gunfire. The Persephone leaned out into the hall, her breasts bouncing with the recoil of the assault rifle she fired. Seconds later, she lowered the weapon and took two steps back into the room, standing guard.

  Tris glanced at Nathan’s twitching figure. Trails of crimson traced pin-straight lines down the wall to the floor, joining a growing pool of blood seeping out under Nathan’s shoes. “Goodbye, Nathan.”

  Her fingernail clicked on the enter key.

  The Cure’s Burn blared out of the speakers.

  Head held high, she walked past him slow―without even looking at his feeble struggling. As the drums kicked in, he recognized the song, and shrieked in rage. Satisfaction spread a broad smile across her face.

  “Don’t you dare leave me here, you fucking bitch!” He screamed, slapping his left hand at the wall; his right arm appeared to have gone numb. “Tris! God dammit, you worthless genetic disaster!” Nathan trailed off into incoherent random obscenities. “You think you’ve won, but you haven’t. You’re wrong. You’re dead fucking wrong! This isn’t over! I’m not done with you!”

  She closed her eyes, savoring the music accented by his cries of pain and impotent rage.

 
At the door, she paused. The knife was for Abby. This is for me.

  Tris whirled, raised the gun, and put twenty-seven rounds into his back.

  Nathan gurgled, sagging over backward. She adjusted her aim, and fired a single shot into his temple, bursting the opposite side of his head open.

  The ammo display on the end of the pistol showed 00.

  After six seconds of dead weight hanging on the knife, it popped out of the wall and he fell, landing atop an expanding patch of blood. A ruin of plaster and cinderblocks disintegrated from where the bullets had pierced him and gone into the wall beyond.

  She stood motionless, staring at him until the song ended.

  “Command?” asked the Persephone.

  Tris lowered her arm and gazed at the pistol, wanting to kill Nathan another four or five times, but that would have to wait until she could dream again. She turned, finding herself eye-to-chin with her somewhat older, more athletic doppelganger.

  “Lead me to the Council of Four.”

  33

  The Council of Four

  Kevin skidded to a halt on his heels and stared for a half-second at five men in ISF armor. They twisted to face him, looking as startled as he felt.

  “Oh, shit.”

  He flailed his arms and darted back into the corridor, heading for the nearest door to put something more solid than air between him and bullets. Of all things to think about at that moment, the way the Enclave shoes squeaked on the polished floor made him long for his boots… sitting in a locker he might never see again.

  The ISF rushed into the hallway behind him.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Stop,” said a man.

  Kevin barged through a door into a conference room with no other exit. Three walls of dry-erase board contained indecipherable mathy stuff, as well as stick figure doggy-style porn with the ‘receiver’ labeled Whitford and the ‘giver’ labeled Gerhardt.

  A long table and twenty-two comfortable-looking black chairs wouldn’t do much for him. He whirled to face the door, raising the Enclave pistol as he backed up.

  Head shots. I need head shots.

  Shadow spread over the gleaming white floor from the ISF men collecting outside.

  Come on. First one in wins a prize.

  He fought the urge to tense up on the trigger. This is like one of those goddamn mouse thing buttons.

  “You’re that Wildlander, right?” asked the same man. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  No shit. He stared over the gunsights, waiting. The chaos outside had grown so loud it felt like the wall behind him would collapse under the weight of the unrest. Metallic slams suggested cars smashing into things, the occasional pop of a gunshot went off, but most of the cacophony consisted of shouting.

  “Doctor Jameson has asked us to get you out of here in one piece.”

  Kevin blinked. “What?”

  “We’re on your side. I’m gonna look in, don’t blow my head off.” A man in his early twenties with short white hair and green eyes peeked around. Only his head and one shoulder came past the doorjamb, no sign of a weapon. “I’m Alex. We saw the whole thing… the stasis pods, the Virus…” He looked down. “We had no idea there were so many people out there. They’ve always told us they were… diseased. Mutated and rotting…”

  “That’s Infected.” Kevin shifted his jaw side to side.

  “We know that now,” said Alex.

  Another man walked into view out in the hallway; he had a rifle, but kept it lowered. Longer black hair wavered at the sides of his head, down to his earlobes. “Yeah. That’s completely fucked up and wrong to drop bio weapons on civilians.”

  Kevin went from staring over the gunsights to staring at the gun. “Umm.”

  Alex raised an empty hand. “I understand you’re hesitant, but if we were trying to kill you we would’ve fiber-opped the door and shot you without exposing ourselves.”

  Either way I’m fucked. He lowered his arm. “Where’s Tris?”

  “What do you mean?” Alex stepped in. He had a hand on a rifle hanging from a strap, but his body language didn’t appear aggressive.

  “Some of your pals dragged her outta here in cuffs.”

  The black-haired man shook his head. “That didn’t go over official channels. Most of the ISF agrees with her. There’s a penis-waving contest going on between us and the military right now, and the civilians are caught in the middle.”

  A third man, also white-haired but a little older, entered. “Doctor Jameson advised us to exfil you asap. There’s apparently a network of tunnels beneath the city that we can use.”

  “Whoa.” Kevin raised his hands in a ‘hold on a moment’ gesture. “One, I’m not leaving without Tris. Two, ‘exfil’ sounds kind of private and painful.”

  The ISF men chuckled.

  Alex recovered first. “It’s short for exfiltrate… as in leave.”

  “There’s still the first problem.” Kevin relaxed enough to approach them. “Where’s Tris?”

  “Jameson said she’s got things under control.” The thirtyish white-haired man waved him to follow. “He said to tell you she’s found the cure… whatever that means.”

  Kevin’s expression blanked. “I have no damn idea.” He blinked. “Music? Did she escape and go after Nathan?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you,” said Alex. “Come on.”

  He followed the five men into the hallway. “Look. If this goes shitty, I need you guys to help me find her.”

  A bald man with a face ugly enough to stop a clock gave him a severe look. He exuded the scent of recent shaving, but still appeared to have a deep beard shadow. Large trapezius muscles flowed into equally thick arms, calling into question whether or not he possessed a neck. The dude would’ve been scary even without the augmentation he no doubt had. “We got your back.”

  The men walked mostly at his right side with one out front and one trailing behind, ushering him farther down the corridor than the Virus lab, which still rumbled from the distant incinerator. Kevin argued with himself about following Jameson’s idea of this ‘exfiltration’ thing. No way. As soon as we reach the outside, I’m going after her.

  “Almost there,” said the bald man, who had the lead. He jogged around a left corner, barged through a metal door and fast-stepped it down a small stairwell to a landing. “This way.” A second set of switchback steps led to a door. He headed for a keypad on the left and punched in a code. “Guess we find out if the old man was right.”

  A beep emanated from the panel and the door opened.

  “Looks that way,” said Alex.

  Small LED lights at even intervals along the upper left corner of a plain concrete hallway came on in sequence. A trail of light raced off into the distance. About sixty yards away, the corridor angled to the right.

  The youngest ISF man, who looked eighteen, whistled. “Wow. Did you guys know this was down here?”

  “Nah. Jameson said only First Tier and the Council had access.” The bald man strode in, looking around at the walls and ceiling. “Some kind of emergency evacuation route.”

  “Maybe they used it for all that shady crap,” said the young one. “Stuff they didn’t want anyone knowing about.”

  Kevin couldn’t think about anything but Tris; the angry screams coming out of her as the other men dragged her away played on continuous loop between his ears. “Yeah. Probably. Look… I know you guys mean well and all, but… I’m not leaving without her.”

  “We’re not even sure what team took her.” Alex spoke in a low tone that didn’t echo too much in the bare tunnel. “It had to be military dressed up like ISF. Probably on direct orders from the Council.”

  Kevin narrowed his eyes. “Or Nathan.”

  They hurried past the bend in the passageway, about a forty-five degree angle. From there, the corridor stretched off to a tiny point. Agonizing minutes passed as they jogged forward. A few offshoots led from both sides along the way. Other than the scuff of shoes, the occasional dr
ip also broke the heavy silence.

  The bald one ignored the first branch to the left, hesitated at the second hallway, which led to the right, and kept going.

  Is this guy lost?

  “None of you know where she is?” asked Kevin.

  Alex shook his head. “Jameson said she’s not in danger. He didn’t give us any more detail than that.”

  The bald one slowed and hovered at the fourth corridor leading left.

  “Hey Tarl, you lost?” said Alex.

  “Nah… I’m not seeing those numbers the old ghost said to look for.” His already harsh countenance hardened further. Kevin half expected to see the wall crack wherever the man looked.

  “Maybe we haven’t gone far enough yet?” asked the youngest.

  Great. These guys are lost. Kevin bit back the urge to make a wisecrack.

  The big man jogged ahead, picking up speed while examining the walls in search of whatever markings he’d been told to find. The tunnel ahead seemed to go on for miles. Traces of tire marks on the floor near another ignored offshoot increased Kevin’s worry. If the tunnels went long enough to require a vehicle… anything could happen to Tris before he found a way out.

  “This way.” Tarl pointed and cut right.

  The group jogged another few minutes before the man skidded to a halt and backtracked six feet to a left turn he almost skipped. Alex gave Kevin a ‘sorry, we’re guessing’ kind of face as the group flowed after their point man.

  Kevin glanced over, where a tiny black ‘42’ occupied a one-inch square tile by the corner.

  “Which one are we looking for?” asked Kevin.

  “Four-four.” Tarl turned right at the next hallway. “Here.”

  Twenty yards or so farther, the floor angled downward into a shallow ramp. Urgency to find Tris got Kevin up to a faster jog, which the ISF men inherited. Minutes later, the tunnel leveled off and ended at a room with a single elevator and three, small, four-wheeled carts. Tarl typed a code in a panel by the elevator and it lit up.