SINdicate

by J. T. Nicholas

  And away from the truck, which was rolling to a stop at the light.

  “Go, go, go!” I said.

  I put action to my own words, exploding from my feet and charging the truck. We didn’t have to worry about a driver seeing us—there wasn’t one. Hell, there wasn’t even a cab where a driver could have gone. The truck was basically a cargo box with an engine and computer brain. I hit the back of the truck, hand already reaching for the door latch as the fire alarms—or whatever it was that Silas had triggered—blared in the distance. There was a keypad by the door, and Silas could deal with that if need be, but I was hoping no one would have bothered. I hadn’t spent much time in burglary or organized crime, but glassware had never been high on the hijacking scale.

  The latch handle twisted at my pressure and the door popped open just as Silas and Al’awwal reached the truck. Cardboard boxes lined both sides of the track, held in place with rubber webbing, but there was a clear aisle between the boxes. I hopped into the truck, then reached back to pull up first Silas, then Al’awwal. Al pulled the door shut behind him, cloaking the interior in darkness. That darkness was broken only by the pale glow of Silas’s screen. He hit a few buttons, and I had to grab the webbing as the truck lurched forward.

  “All right,” I said, dropping my pack to the floor and pulling out a flashlight. “Easy part is done. Now let’s get to work on the rest. We’ve got a lot to do before this thing gets to the lab.”

  * * * *

  The truck that, roughly a half hour later, pulled into the large loading and unloading area of the Walton Biogenics laboratory didn’t look any different from the one that had departed Quark Glassworks. We had, however, made a couple of slight modifications. The first had been simple—rearranging some of the boxes to block visibility to our more…comprehensive…changes to the vehicle’s architecture and to give us a place to hide when the unloading started. Not that we waited for that, of course.

  In keeping with the Keystone Cops level of operational planning that had taken us this far, as soon as the truck stopped, I dropped through the hole we had cut in the floor of the truck using a laser welder. I had to lie flat, as there wasn’t quite enough clearance beneath the truck to crouch. Silas dropped my pack down to me, and, resting on my stomach, I shimmied out of the way of the opening. I couldn’t make out much of my surroundings, save that we were in a garage or loading dock of some sort. There was motion and activity—I could see a few legs whisking by here and there—but not a lot of it. Good.

  Silas dropped down next. The barrel-chested synthetic barely fit beneath the truck, even lying flat on his back. His pack, and then Al’awwal’s, followed. I had been watching the movements of the feet I could see and trying to get a lay of the land. I could make out stacks of boxes, a wall, a few pallets here and there. According to the plans Al’awwal had found, there was a freight elevator along the western wall. That was our objective. But we needed to get there without raising any alarms and, preferably, without killing anyone. I’d known going in that there was a chance blood would be shed, but so far, despite all the crimes I’d committed by supporting the synthetics, I’d managed to avoid harming innocent people. Maybe I was a bad revolutionary, but I couldn’t blithely justify the deaths of ordinary citizens doing their jobs as acceptable collateral damage for the greater good. The security thugs were an exception to that rule—I’d had ample evidence already of how Walton Biogenics used them as a wet-work cleanup squad that would make a third world dictator blush. But I couldn’t hold the people—or maybe synthetics—in the mail room responsible for the actions of the corporate bigwigs and their hired guns.

  But I also wasn’t going to fail. I left my sub-gun hanging from its strap and eased a telescoping baton from its sheath on my belt. I didn’t open it, but I kept the slug of steel at the ready as I waited for my opening and then crawled from beneath the vehicle. I rose to a crouch, staying low between the truck wall and a “wall” made of steel racks holding a variety of boxes.

  There was some activity at the tail end of the truck, but I hadn’t been noticed. I moved, low and fast, sliding along the truck and away from the movement, until I found a break in the shelves. I stepped through the gap and found myself in a corridor between the shelving.

  The loading and unloading dock, or so I surmised it to be, apparently had room for a fair amount of storage. There appeared to be several rows of shelves, like the aisles of a supermarket. A closer look made me step back. The top shelves did hold a few boxes that I assumed contained lab equipment or glassware. The bottom shelves held plastic drums labeled “Medical Waste.” They reminded me—violently—of Fowler’s place, where I’d rescued Evelyn and Hernandez’s daughter, and of the plastic bins in Fowler’s barn. I fought down a surge of bile. I had little doubt that the contents, while not as vile as that psychopath’s personal abattoir, would be of a similar make.

  It took only a moment for Silas and then Al’awwal to join me amidst the storage racks. So far, it appeared that our infiltration had passed unnoticed by the workers managing the loading dock. That couldn’t last, not if a pair of heavily armed men and one synthetic obviously not designed for any sort of aboveground labor kept standing about. “On my six,” I whispered as I moved out. It occurred to me that they might not understand the military jargon, but my concerns were eased as they fell in line behind me.

  The shelves ran along the length of one half of the loading dock. I instinctively moved away from the garage doors, deeper into the stacks. I’d lost all orientation, so I couldn’t be sure which wall we were heading toward—but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the one housing the freight elevator. That didn’t matter quite so much right now as finding a place out of the flow of traffic where we could regroup.

  We moved maybe twenty feet deeper into the facility before I felt far enough removed from the activity taking place around the Quark truck. “Where are we?” I asked, looking toward Silas and Al’awwal.

  Silas, of course, had his screen out. “We’ve been headed toward the north wall of the loading area,” he said, his voice barely audible and pitched not to carry. “Freight elevator is in the west wall. That way.” He pointed.

  I nodded. “We’re probably already showing up on some camera, somewhere. Anything you can do about that?”

  Silas didn’t answer, but he was already at work. The man was not just good when it came to things electronic—he was damn near magical. I had no idea how he did what he did, but it was maybe three tense minutes later when he said, “There are two separate circuits for the cameras. The low-security areas—including these docks, the elevators, and most of the offices—are accessible. Under my control. I have injected a virus that will scrub our presence, real time. Someone watching closely might catch a blurring or pixilation, but to the casual eye watching on a screen, we’re effectively invisible.”

  “The second circuit?” Al’awwal asked.

  “If I have to, I can try the same tactic. But it looks like those cameras are only covering the actual laboratories themselves and some of the executive offices. We shouldn’t need to access those areas, and trying to spoof those cameras may trigger an alarm.” He paused. “I should note that the cybersecurity is very good. I doubt I could break into any truly sensitive systems. The cameras in the areas that I can access seem geared more toward preventing employee mischief rather than any real security measure. Deterrence rather than actual security. But even with these, there is a risk of detection.” He smiled, a slight ironic twist of the lips. “Which is to say, we should move things along as quickly as possible.”

  I grunted. “Good enough. Let’s move out, then.” I tossed a look at Al’awwal. “No shooting, unless we run into security people. And even then, better if we do it quiet.”

  He nodded in reply.

  We moved again, heading toward the west wall. That meant moving down the aisle between the shelves. It was fairly wide, maybe eight feet, enough to ge
t a forklift down to access the upper shelves. We stuck to one side, not that it mattered. With the overhead fluorescent lighting, it wasn’t like there were any shadows to hide in. But maybe it would be enough to obscure the fact that we were carrying weapons if someone happened to walk by and look down the aisle.

  We reached the end, and a quick glance showed the path was clear. I could see the elevator doors maybe fifteen feet farther down the wall. “We move to the aisle directly across from the doors,” I whispered. “I call the elevator. Then we all move. Got it?”

  They nodded, and, after another quick check to make sure the coast was clear, we moved, slipping from aisle to aisle until we reached the one across from the elevators. I tossed my pack to Silas and my gun to Al’awwal. I pulled my shirt loose from my waist and let it fall so it covered the holstered forty-five. It wasn’t much concealment, but better than nothing. From afar I would, hopefully, look like a worker who happened to wear mostly black, waiting for the elevator.

  I stepped confidently from the stacks, my stride long and full of purpose. Slinking about would only catch the curiosity of anyone who happened to glance my way. If you moved with determination, acted like you already knew what you were doing and where you were going, few would bother to question. I hit the call button—and thank God the elevator had an actual old-style call button and not a more direct method of operation—and waited.

  To my surprise, the doors opened almost immediately.

  And showed me the unsmiling faces of three men wearing dark blazers with the suspicious bulges that identified them immediately as security.

  Shit.

  Chapter 20

  I could play it soft, try to bluff my way past, hope that the security guards were headed somewhere, anywhere, else. No alarms were going off. No bustle of activity. Maybe it would work. Maybe.

  Or, I could play it hard, attack now, before anyone had the chance to react, and hope that I could use that instant of surprise to end things quickly and quietly.

  The options flashed through my head in a fraction of a second, but in the end, it wasn’t even a choice. Training took over.

  The doors hadn’t finished opening before I was lunging into the elevator, both hands striking out in front of me in a high-low double punch. It was a tactic normally reserved for bad martial arts movies and anime, but there were a few instances where it could have real-world success. The best being when you catch your opponent unaware and want to simultaneously drive him back and do your level best to disable him. My left fist connected just beneath his sternum, striking with enough force to knock the wind out of him. At the same time, my right fist crunched into his throat. I pulled that blow a little, enough to avoid outright killing the man.

  He went down, choking and gasping, hands raising feebly to clutch his throat. But I had already moved on.

  Stepping into the elevator, dealing with the man right in front of me had violated one of the core principles of facing multiple opponents—it had put me right between two enemies. Couldn’t have that. Fortunately, the attack had surprised them and been fast enough that they’d yet to recover. The one to my left was moving, so I moved that direction, angling away from his outstretched hands as he tried to lock on and grapple me. Two quick steps put me behind him, my back to the wall of the elevator. I kicked out, my leg smashing into the back of his knee, causing him to stumble. I smashed my palm out and down, connecting where neck met spine, around the C1-C2 vertebrae. Again, I pulled the blow, striking to stun, to injure, but not to kill.

  The third man was moving now, but unlike his friends, he was smart. He wasn’t coming toward me but backing away, putting as much space between me and him as he could. At the same time, his hand dipped into his blazer, moving for the bulge that had identified him as a security guard.

  He was smarter than his friends, but not quite smart enough. He opened the distance, but instead of moving out of the elevator where he would have had much more space and the possibility of others coming to his aid, he put his back to the wall. He also fumbled the draw. Lots of security types spent time at the range, putting lead on a paper, working on sight pictures and trigger control and all the other fundamentals. A much smaller percentage actually bothered to practice deploying their weapon and getting it into action.

  It wasn’t a big mistake. Just an extra second or so where he failed to clear his blazer and his hand got tangled in the cloth. He resolved it quickly, but I was already on him, stepping over the two unconscious bodies between us in a single stride. I moved close, chest to chest, left hand clamping on to his right as it grasped the butt of his gun. I shoved the hand forward, trapping it between me and the Kydex holster. At the same time, my right elbow rose and fell, cutting down at a roughly forty-five degree angle that terminated just beneath the man’s ear. He went suddenly boneless, his legs collapsing under him.

  The whole thing, from start to finish, had taken less than ten seconds. I couldn’t remember if any of them had the chance or presence of mind to shout. The brain did funny things in the middle of combat.

  “Holy hell,” Al’awwal swore as he stepped into the elevator, my sub-gun slung over one shoulder and the bullpup at the ready. “Where the fuck was that when we were sparring?” He looked a little green around the edges as he stepped over the bodies.

  “Combat versus sport,” I grunted, not really thinking about it. “Different objectives.” Silas was in the elevator now as well, his finger stabbing at the close door button. You could always trust the guy to focus on the important things.

  “Come on,” I said to Al’awwal. “We need to get their guns, and then see if they have restraints. Need to find a way to tie them up and gag them.”

  Al was already bending over one of the guards, checking for a pulse. He must have found one, because he quickly stripped out the guard’s weapon and started rummaging on his gun belt for cuffs. He didn’t find any, but he did pull out a fistful of plastic ties. In short order, we had the three guards bound. I used their ties for makeshift gags, making sure not to obstruct their breathing too much.

  While we had worked, Silas had torn open a panel on the elevator and physically plugged his screen into it. I’d never seen him go old-school hardwired before, but he had an almost beatific smile on his face as he worked, so I trusted that he was doing something worthwhile. That trust bore fruit as he said, “The elevator is under our control now. It will not stop anywhere we do not want it to stop, and as far as the main monitoring system is concerned, it is working normally. If they need to use the freight elevator for anything, people might start to get suspicious when it does not show up, but at least for now, it is a ghost. And a ghost we control.”

  “Good work,” I said. “That means we can leave these fellows,” I patted one of the still-sleeping guards on the head, “while we go about our business.” I glanced around the elevator, really seeing it for the first time. It was all you would expect in a freight elevator—essentially a no-frills metal box with wider-than-normal doors to allow for loading and unloading. There was—or rather had been—a screen for accessing floors. It was now dangling from a series of wires with Silas’s own screen patched in its place. Or one of his screens, rather. I suspected that half the weight of his pack was throwaway screens.

  “All right,” I said, after taking stock. “Let’s get to work.”

  * * * *

  We emerged on to the third floor of the building looking somewhat different from the trio that had entered the elevator. First, only two of us emerged. Silas, with a direct line into the laboratory’s network, remained behind. He was to be our eyes and ears, and to run command and control. He’d take the elevator up half a floor, stopping it in between, and continue to send the tendrils of his intrusion programs deeper into Walton’s systems. I had no doubt that, in addition to guiding us along our merry way, he’d do his level best to pick up a few extra helpful tidbits of information.

  We’
d left the big guns with Silas—there was no way to blend in when you were carrying an assault rifle. That made me a touch nervous. We hadn’t needed it yet, but I was firm believer in superior firepower. Still, it would have been conspicuous, and now that we were in with minimal casualties, getting out again should require more stealth than bullets.

  From somewhere in the crumbling mansion, Al’awwal had produced a pair of lab coats. They’d traveled well enough in the packs, showing a few wrinkles but nothing that one wouldn’t expect from a harried and disheveled scientist. They wouldn’t stand up to any kind of close scrutiny, particularly since they lacked the identification badges, but from a distance, we should pass as two more employees going about their business.

  “Comm check,” I said as we strode down the hallway, briefly brushing the throat mic concealed beneath the collar of my shirt.

  “I hear you loud and clear, Detective,” Silas’s voice came back at once. “And I have your screens’ positions locked in. You are going to want to take your first left turn ahead.”

  “Roger.”

  We kept walking, eyes alert, but doing our best to appear relaxed. Just two more cogs in the vast machine of Walton Biogenics. No need to give us a second glance. The hallway branched to the left, and we turned down it. I had a rough blueprint of the place in my head, and I knew generally where we were going, but Silas’s voice, that preternaturally calm baritone, was reassuring as he said, “Keep going straight at the next intersection. Then take a left again.”

  I nodded, but my eyes had focused on the intersection ahead, where a man and woman had emerged from the hallway. They both wore suits, not lab coats, and were in deep conversation with each other. They were coming straight toward us.