“Um… how am I supposed to eat a steak then?” I said, ducking under his massive fist and driving my elbow into his side. Yeow, it was like hitting steel. His elbow came down, smashing into the top of my head and sending me sprawling face first to the dirt. His boot came forward, catching me in the face, and the visor on my helmet splintered into a million spiderwebbing cracks. I staggered backward, my world swimming as I tried to regain my balance.
“We can get ice cream if you like,” he said, grabbing me by my helmet and jerking it off my head, his huge hand palming it like a basketball. He tossed it to the ground with an empty sounding thunk and leaned down so his face was inches from mine. His breath stunk like sweaty gym socks and cigars as he grinned. “I’ll even buy it, assuming you survive what the Agency has in store for you.”
His fist came up, smacking into my chin, and for the second time in as many hours, darkness encroached on my vision. Shadows swam across my eyes, but I lashed out anyway, driving my heel into the front of his knee. He yowled and backhanded me. I hit the dirt hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. I ignored it, pushing everything away as I scurried backward on my hands.
The big man wobbled as a grin spread across his face. “So you have some fight in you after all.” He moved toward me, arms casually at his sides. “Let’s see how much.”
I scrambled to my feet and dropped into a fighting stance. “Okay, let’s do this big man.”
I threw a punch at his throat, but he grabbed my fist. He squeezed, his muscles straining. Pain exploded through my hand as my bones began to scream. I leapt, driving my heels into his stomach. He grunted and released me, which had the unfortunate side effect of making me fall to the ground. I hit hard on my back as I rolled to my feet in time to catch his meaty shoulder with my stomach.
We crashed to the pavement, and I used our momentum to roll on top of him, pinning him to the ground beneath my tiny body. He reached up, seizing me by the hair and jerking me hard to the side. Pain shot through my scalp as I hit the ground beside the road, swallowing a mouthful of dirt in the process. The next thing I knew, something unreasonably heavy was pressing my face into the sandy earth.
“Nice try, but I like it better on top,” he said, and I could almost hear the smirk in his voice. “Now how about you play nice, and I don’t break your legs.”
The sound of the gun cocking was so loud it drowned out every other noise. “How about you let my daughter go before I put another hole in your head, Chuck?” Roberto’s voice was like music to my ears. He was alive, thank god he was alive. And even better, he had saved me from super soldier Chuck.
“Rob, I can’t do that.” Chuck’s foot pressed harder on my back, making it so I could barely breathe. “I don’t really have a choice. They have Max.”
“No, they don’t,” Roberto replied. “The Agency evacuated Folsom last night. They were using the town as a decoy to flush Abby out.”
“I fail to see how that means they don’t have my dog,” he said, but the pressure of his boot lessoned just a touch. Go Roberto. Way to not shoot the guy killing your daughter. Oh who was I kidding? I was willing to make an exception to my ‘don’t kill without good reason’ rule for Chuck if it meant getting him off my back.
“One of my teams hit their transport a few hours ago. We’ve recovered your dog. I guarantee it. Even if you don’t believe me, you’re letting her up, or I’m going to blow your goddamn head off. Are we clear?” Roberto’s voice changed midsentence from one of amusement to one of steadfast brutality. It happened so fast that it made my head spin.
The next thing I knew, Chuck had removed his boot from my back and was standing next to us, hands at his sides. Roberto’s huge pistol was still pointed at his chest, but it didn’t seem to bother Chuck even slightly.
“You have Max?” he asked voice full of emotion. “I never thought I’d see him again…”
“Yeah, and I’ll let you have him as soon as I finish up a couple things,” Roberto replied, lowering his gun and helping me to my feet.
“What things?” Chuck asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. What, had he gotten dust in them or something?
“Tom and his daughter have taken over the flit and are going to use its knowledge to systematically destroy the Agency. I got a report a few minutes ago that they’ve already taken over the base in Charleston.” Roberto held up a hand as Chuck started to say something. The super soldier fell silent. “And before you ask why that’s a bad thing, think about this. Do you really want Tom in control of the Agency’s resources?”
Chuck said nothing for so long, I was about to ask him if he’d actually heard Roberto speak, but before I could, he nodded once. “Okay… I’ll help you stop Tom. I was supposed to stop Tom anyway. After that, I’m taking Abby in, director’s orders.” He shrugged as if to say that was the way it was.
Roberto stiffened and his face went slack. That wasn’t good. What had scared my father so suddenly? Who was the director, and what power did he have over Chuck? I was about to ask when Chuck shot a sidelong glance at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t betray you unless you’ve done something to my dog.”
“You mean you were helping the Agency because they took your dog?” I stared at him, disbelieving.
“Well that, and they pay really, really well. Besides, you don’t know what love is until you have a dog.” Chuck glanced at me and smirked. “Take whoever it is you think loves you, be it your spouse or child, or whatever, and lock him in your trunk. Do the same with your dog. Guess which one will be happy to see you when you open said trunk.” His grin grew wider. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s not the human.”
20
That was how we got General Charles Uile to join our party. Which was pretty cool since he was bad ass enough to kick my butt all over the road after leaping from an exploding helicopter. It was a little disconcerting though since I’d waded through an entire battalion of men, and he’d dropped me like a bad habit without even breaking a sweat. That was the second time I’d been taken down in the last couple hours… Maybe I’d been relying on what had been downloaded into my brain a little too much…
“So, um, don’t take this the wrong way, but how come you’re… um…” I said, biting my lip as I stared at Chuck. Geez, would it kill him to put a shirt on? He was a little too buff for me to look at without wanting to reach out and touch his muscles, just to make sure they were real, you know. He was sitting with me in the back of a Chevy pickup that was made before I was born. Roberto was in the front seat gabbing away with the driver. Originally, the guy hadn’t wanted to take us anywhere, especially since we made a pretty motley crew, but when Roberto shoved a fistful of hundreds into the man’s palm, his reluctance had vanished like magic.
Charlie moved so his huge pectorals were boring holes in my brain. It wasn’t like I wanted to stare at them, but they were just there in front of me. Then again, I was half-sure he was doing it just to bother me. Still, this would be a lot easier if he just put a shirt on, and besides, it would make me feel a lot less guilty… even if Stephen was dead and gone, staring at Chuck made shame rise up inside my belly and sit there like a lead weight.
I tore my eyes away and looked past him into the Chevy’s dirty back window. Roberto was laughing his head off and slapping the dashboard. “I was wondering why you were able to beat me so easily. I don’t mean to brag, but usually I am the one doing the beating…”
“Look, Angel, you’re a tiny girl.” He touched his chest with the butt of his cigar. Where had he gotten it from? “I’m a big, huge man. How could you possibly win?”
I ground my teeth together. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Sort of.” He took a long drag on his cigar, inhaling even though I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do that. Besides… cancer.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke around me,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest. “You may not care about cancer, but I do.”
He laughed and t
ook another drag on his cigar. The end glowed red hot. He blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth before putting the cigar down on the bed of the truck and sighing. “I’m not really worried about things like cancer,” he replied with a shrug. “I can do pretty much whatever I want, and I won’t die.” He leaned toward me, grinning. “It’s why I love buffets full of fried food and loose women.”
“Why can’t you die?” I asked, leaning closer to him as he pointed to a spot on his arm that had been burned by the explosion. Only it didn’t look as bad as I remembered it. Was he healing faster than normal? That was impossible, right?
“You’ve heard of Captain America, right?” he asked, leaning back on his hands and thrusting his chest toward me. “He’s based on me.”
I shook my head at him. “Are you going to tell me you’re some kind of super soldier?”
“Bingo,” he replied. “They injected me with ‘evil’ super serum and turned me from a scrawny twerp into this fine specimen of a man.” He grinned at me and sort of shuffled his enormous body toward me. “After I punched Hitler in the face, I ran out of good guy stuff to do.”
“I think you’re lying,” I said, moving away as much as I could in the cramped bed of the truck.
“Think whatever you want, Angel,” he said, stretching out and leaning his head against the back window. “I have no reason to lie to you.”
“Why do you keep calling me Angel? It’s not my name,” I asked as the truck came to a stop outside the most ordinary office building I’d ever seen. It was sort of squat with dull white paint and a few trees lining the small walkway that led to some glass doors.
“He calls all the girls ‘angel.’ It’s his thing,” Roberto said, getting out of the cab and helping me out of the truck bed. “You know, Charlie’s Angels. He thinks it’s clever.”
“I have no idea what that is,” I said, stepping out onto the pavement and shrugging. “Is it a band or something?”
“Oh come on,” Charlie said as he leapt from the vehicle. His boots crunched on the ground as he landed with enough force to send tremors rippling out through the pavement. “It’s a famous television show about female spies. There’s even a remake.”
“That remake is practically older than my daughter,” Roberto said with a sly smile on his lips. “Face it, Chuck. You’re old.”
Chuck shook his head as he reached back into the bed and grabbed his cigar. He stuck it between his thick lips and sighed. “Whatever,” he said, lighting it back up. “You’ll wish you look this good when you’re my age.”
“How old are you?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at him because there was no way he was older than twenty-five. “Thirty?” I grinned. “Forty?”
“I was eighteen when I joined the army to kill Nazis in World War Two.” He sucked on the end of his cigar and walked past me. “You do the math.” He cocked his head toward me and blew a smoke ring at me. I scowled just as the front of the building exploded in a fireball that sprayed glass and debris at us. I dropped, hitting the ground hard with Roberto on top of me, shielding my body with his own.
Chuck landed hard on his back next to me, bits of glass embedded in his flesh. He lay there for a moment as flame rippled out of the building, catching the trees around us on fire so it felt like we were in the midst of a funeral pyre on Halloween.
He got to his feet and brushed himself off. Apparently being blown up didn’t faze him much, which was good because he pulled Roberto’s bulky body off me. I got to my feet as Roberto steadied himself, leaning hard on Chuck as blood streamed from wounds all over his body.
“I think they know we’re here,” Chuck said, sweeping his hand toward the burning bushes. “Which is unfortunate because they destroyed my cigar.” He sighed. “That cigar was cigar of the year two years ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I replied, surveying the building. If they already knew we were coming, what sort of defenses would they have in place? Besides, wouldn’t an explosion summon local authorities? Granted we were in a small town in the middle of nowhere but surely there had to be some kind of local law enforcement or at least a fire truck, right?
“Maybe that was a defensive mechanism set up by the Agency to stop Tom and Lisa?” I asked, but even as I said the words I knew they sounded foolish. I mean, there should have been fighting and stuff, right? But there wasn’t. Before we had approached the base, it had been quiet. So either they had seized control already, or they weren’t here, and judging by the explosion we’d just set off, I was pretty sure we were going with option one.
“Get down!” Chuck screamed, grabbing me and Roberto and leaping behind the truck as two huge Gatling guns burst upward from the lawn and swung toward us, bullets already spraying. We hit the asphalt hard as hot lead tore into the tiny Chevy, blowing giant holes in the metal above my head. The driver screamed, and the back tires spun, before slowing to a dull roll that carried the truck into the curb. What had happened? Was he okay?
The smell of gasoline filled my nostrils as bullets zinged by over my head. I dropped, trying to flatten myself into the pavement. That wasn’t good. It would only take one spark to blow us to kingdom come.
“Damn,” Roberto said, and I swung my head toward him. He was staring across the street. My gaze followed his to see what looked like an army of Roombas coming toward us, only there was some kind of spout mounted on their tops. A burst of flame exploded from the closest one, singing my hair as I threw myself backward against the truck.
The metal next to my head exploded in a flurry of superheated metal as a thin rivulet of gasoline caught fire. Flame raced hungrily toward us as I got to my feet and sprinted toward the Roombas, bullets whizzing by my head.
“I’d definitely say they know we’re here,” Chuck said as he punted one of the robots fifty feet in the air. It impacted a power pole and exploded in a cacophony of flame and debris. Wires tore free of the pole in a spray of sparks, the huge cables whipping back and forth like squirming snakes. The lights along the road winked out, plunging us into darkness.
Lightning burst from the top of the pole as the Gatling guns ground to a halt. The robots stopped in their tracks. “Hurry,” Roberto said, pointing to a manhole cover at his feet. “We won’t have very long before she reroutes the backup power to restart the defenses. The default setting is for it to maintain life support, but I’m willing to bet it won’t be that way for long.”
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” I asked as Chuck grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me into the air like I was weightless. He sprinted toward the manhole with me under his arm as Roberto dropped into the sewer.
“Even super soldiers don’t get to be this old without learning a few tricks,” Chuck replied, no longer grinning. “You’d do well to remember that.” He leapt through the air as huge strobe lights flickered to life, lighting up the street around us. I’m not sure how he managed it, but we landed perfectly inside the sewer, his legs absorbing the fall like a pair of springs.
Thankfully, the tunnel wasn’t dark because a bunch of emergency lights embedded in the ceiling cast enough light to banish most of the shadows. Chuck put me down as Roberto ushered us forward, a huge machine gun in one hand. Where had that come from? I glanced around and saw a broken glass case with a sign that said ‘break in case of emergency’ a few feet in front of him.
“Well that seems reasonable. I mean everyone needs an emergency machine gun.” I smirked and Chuck glanced back at me, scowling.
“You’re making a joke, but you should always have a backup plan. Then have a backup to that, and that.” When I didn’t respond, Chuck shook his head. “You know you’re not the first augmented person I’ve taken down, right? You know what the key is? You people always think your specialness will overcome everything.” He turned away from me as we approached Roberto. “It won’t.”
His words rang in my ears like church bells. The truth of them was immediately clear. I was just some kid. Sure, I had a bunch of knowledge and stu
ff stuffed in my head, and maybe, just maybe, that would get me out of a lot of sticky situations. I swallowed. What would have happened if Roberto hadn’t been there when Chuck came after me? A shiver ran down my spine. That was a thought I didn’t want to entertain…
“You’d be dead,” Donovan said, his voice surprising me so much I jumped. “You’re just lucky he actually turned out to be somewhat trustworthy.” Donovan stepped in front of me and stared at Chuck. “But I’m not sure why you trust him. He has government goon written all over him.”
Instead of replying to my hallucination, I asked the one question that had been bothering me this whole time. “Chuck, is there something worse than the Agency?”
He glanced at me like I was very dull and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, specifically?”
“I mean, okay Tom is bad, and Gabriella is bad, like way, way bad. I get that. The Agency seems just as bad as either of them. But then there’s you, and while I’m not sure why, I think that if they have people like you, well, maybe they have threats that are way worse than Gabriella. I guess… I’m just wondering if, well, maybe they’re not all bad. That maybe I’m missing something.”
He stared at me for a long time before wiping his face with his hand. “Abby, Gabriella was a puppy dog compared to the real threats the Agency deals with. This,” he waved his hand at the tunnel, “this is like a vacation for me. It’s why they only sent me after you. Let me be clear, Abby. The Agency is letting you do everything. If they wanted you, they would have you.”
I glanced at Donovan who was standing there scowling. He nodded once at me. I swallowed back a burst of rage that they were orchestrating everything because ever since I’d been abducted by Stephen back in Folsom, it always seemed like the Agency could have stopped Gabriella whenever it wanted to. If that was true, why were they letting things play out?
Roberto could believe whatever he wanted, but I was reasonably sure the Agency could have taken over Gabriella’s bases if it put its mind to it. Hell, it had the flit. The flit was a thinking computer, and I had no doubt in my mind it could hack into anything given enough time.
Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3 Page 31
