Metal Angel: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 3)

by A. L. Knorr

  Stewart stared at me for a long moment as Ramid finished his bandaging and then looked at the sealed doorway. The sounds of gunfire ricocheting off had ceased, and only the faintest muffle could be heard from the other side, but the distinct impression of orders being issued and bodies moving was present.

  “Alright,” Stewart sighed, head shaking, suddenly looking two decades older. “You’re a big damn hero for buying us minutes, instead of one blaze of glory. We still have no way out.”

  “The escape tunnels,” I said and then looked around for the survivor. He stood in front of the far wall, hands splayed across the dark surface. “He can tell us where they lead.”

  Stewart looked at the shivering little man and then swung his gaze to Bordeaux, who had led point team back when the shooting started. Bordeaux shook his head once, his expression as flat and unreadable as ever.

  “Remember the part where the tunnels are collapsed?” Stewart asked, tired eyes waiting for another disappointing response.

  “I can open them,” I promised, ignoring the weak feeling in my limbs from the energy I’d already used. I squared my shoulders and put my hands behind my back in a confident stance. It wouldn’t do any good for the soldiers to see my hands shake.

  Stewart looked at the sealed door, then at Bordeaux, who stared back. Stewart finally shook his head and then met my gaze.

  “I hope so, lass,” he sighed with a shrug and a wince, putting his hand on his injured arm, a gesture I thought was unconscious. “Otherwise, you just bought us enough time to think about how inevitable our deaths are.”

  With that, he raised his voice to address the rest of the security team.

  “All right, you lot, we’ve got minutes before they blow that door down.”

  As if on cue, a thunderclap sounded on the other side of the door, that left our ears ringing. The portal trembled but didn’t give way. As the ringing subsided, there were more shouted commands and the sound of hurried movement.

  “Point’s going to clear out what they can for Ms Bashir while Central does the fastest sweep for intel we’ve ever done. Rear-guard keeps our arses covered.”

  “As usual,” someone muttered, and a few forced laughs followed.

  “You know your business,” Stewart called out. “Hop to!”

  As the soldiers rushed to their duties, I nodded toward the survivor, and with Stewart just behind me, we approached. He didn’t notice us, his face pressed against the thick, tinted material, fingers tracing over two spiderwebbed sections where stray shots had struck.

  “Hey,” I said, realising that we’d made it this far without the man’s name. “You never told us your name.”

  I was halfway through repeating the question when he began to speak, his voice low and choked.

  “I watched him born anew,” he said, eyes fixed ahead as his forehead rested on the darkened glass. “Saw it with my own eyes. Saw it right there.”

  My skin rippled up into goose bumps. But though my stomach felt like a cold lump, I moved closer and looked through the shaded wall.

  The lights had been fitful throughout the compound, but in that room, through the dark glass, was the steady glow of work lamps shining over a bowl dug into the stone. Within the bowl in concentric rings expanding out from a cavity at the exact centre, jagged crests of metal stabbed upward. It was like a detonation at the centre of a pool of molten metal which had sent up sharp waves, only for the metal to cool and harden at the instant of its violent expulsion. It was a cold, bladed court arrayed around a single point where something momentous happened, now left as an eternal, silent testament.

  “What was it like?” I was unable to tear my eyes away.

  He drew in a breath that was equal parts pain and longing.

  “Like dying,” he whispered. “At first, it was terror, then acceptance as the inevitable stole over me. Then it was freedom.”

  He turned, eyes boring into me.

  “I was his then. We all were. Even my superior, Herr Niemand, threw himself at his feet. Before his naked feet, we all worshipped. Just as you will soon worship.”

  I dragged my eyes from the alien nursery of Ninurta’s rebirth, an argument nearly coming to my tongue until I saw his face. Adoring tears rolled down his cheeks, and for a bare second, I thought they were for the memory he’d shared, but then I saw the way he was looking at me. The emotional display was for me, as he looked at me with rapt attention and wonder.

  “You are one of his children.” He smiled and drew his hands from the wall to clasp them in front of him in reverence. “You will help him bring about the new order, the remaking of the world.”

  I recoiled, ready to tell him that I’d never be a servant of such evil. But arguing with a brainwashed zealot wouldn’t help anyone and I could feel Stewart growing restless behind me.

  “Well I can’t do anything if I am trapped down here,” I retorted. “I think I can open the escape tunnels, but I need to know where they go. Can you tell us?”

  His compliant demeanour clouded over with confusion, and he looked from me to Stewart and back.

  “Didn’t they provide you with a layout when they sent you on the rescue?”

  I froze as a realization struck. He thought we were with the Group of Winterthür. A look of understanding flashed between Stewart and I like lightning. Why had we not realized it before? One wrong word could turn this man from a resource into a liability.

  “The briefing was incomplete due to interdepartmental conflict,” Stewart offered, sparing me from having to come up with a fumbling explanation. “Herr Niemand’s branch could not render timely assistance, so we were scrambled from Frau Nichts’ branch, but for security reasons were not given complete layouts upon the contingency that this was a false alarm.”

  This seemed to be more than enough for our survivor, as he was nodding before Stewart had even finished. I couldn’t help but be impressed at our leader’s quick thinking and smooth delivery. The Sarge was an impressive liar.

  “Of course, of course,” the little man muttered. “The tunnels come out along the northern ridgeline above the valley floor. At least I think so.”

  I turned to Stewart.

  “Can we have the helicopters pick us up there?”

  Stewart looked grim.

  “We’ll need to get closer to the surface,” he said with a grunt. “And hope that we aren’t out of range.”

  ---

  “Almost there,” I murmured as I shifted more rubble upward with a tongue of metal that had once been a structural girder.

  A hand curled into a rictus claw jutted from the splintered rock for an instant before being entombed once more. I’d lost track of the corpses or pieces of corpses I’d seen. The tunnels were nearly choked with civilian operatives and technicians, and as I shoved load after load of pulverised rock, it seemed there was no end to the carnage.

  “Almost there,” I grunted again, driving another spike of power through the Rings and out, clearing another short stretch before shuffling forward. My clothes were soaked with perspiration, and even my boots were damp with the stuff. I stood there for a second, my hands on my knees, dragging a breath in before surrendering it with a reluctant wheeze. Not for the first time, I wondered if there was enough air down here to sustain all of us, but dwelling on the thought didn’t make things any easier.

  “Bashir, water.”

  I looked up in time to catch the canteen tossed my way by Ramid, and without a word, gulped a few mouthfuls.

  My camel-hump, a backpack born sack of water complete with a handy straw, had been drained quickly, and now the rest of the team was passing canteens up to me. The stifling air combined with the effort was sucking the moisture out of my body and onto my skin, but thanks to their efforts, I hadn’t collapsed into mummification just yet.

  “Almost there,” I gasped and slammed back another big swallow of water before tossing the canteen back and pushing forward.

  The tunnel was dark except for the flashlights of the
security team, beams strobing forward and backward, but I didn’t need the light. For the moment, my world was reduced to what my metal sense could tell me about the remaining structure of the tunnel and what I could move where. I wormed my way through, the head of a line of soldiers. Strained minutes seemed like hours, as I fear the moment of a call from rear-guard that we’d been found. I’d heard two more explosions, but so far no call of a breach.

  I pushed and scraped, shoved and shuffled the rubble over and over again, bracing the tunnel with reshaped spans of metal as I went. Beads of sweat poured down the sides of my face as I bent or fused as needed, ensuring the walls were as stable as I could make them. No sense in clearing a section just to have it collapse as the team came through behind me.

  Another flurry of clearings later, and the air in the tunnel changed. At first, it was just a welcome coolness on my cheek, then it seemed less choked with decomposition and dust. I could sense the surface nearing and my heartbeat surged with hope, my energy renewed.

  Stewart rasped somewhere behind me in the marching procession of lights. “Jameson, see if you can raise the birds over the comm-sat.”

  In a burst of excited power, I cleared out another section as Jameson sought to arrange our rendezvous with aerial rescue. More rock scraped and rumbled, and I pushed forward and set to work again before realising I needed to pace myself or I’d black out before we reached our destination. Hope and adrenalin could only do so much.

  I grinned in the dark despite the bone-deep fatigue, sending my metallic sense to stretch to its utmost hoping for the tell-tale auras. Sure enough, I felt the resonance of a section where the tunnel was still whole, less than a dozen metres through the rubble. Beyond this, I could sense the change in metal as the tunnel became a bar-grated portal to the surface, complete with rail-flanked steps.

  A sound that was part laugh, part sob wracked my body but died off as the last of my metallic sense trailed along the periphery by the door and felt something familiar. The complex metallurgy of combat rifles, the sturdy steel of trauma plates.

  The enemy was waiting for us on the other side.

  “Sergeant Stewart,” I called behind me, and there was a rattling and grunting as he came to join me.

  “What?” Stewart snarled around the small flashlight clenched in his mouth like a cigar.

  “We are only ten metres from the way out,” I said, trying to force my tone to be even despite the exhaustion and anxiety plaguing my breathing. “But we have a problem.”

  He gave an impatient jerk of his chin. Well?

  “They’ve got men outside the tunnel exit,” I explained. “Once we go through, we’ll probably have seconds before they hear us and clog the way out with gunfire.”

  The light bobbed as Stewart nodded, taking it in stride. His calm demeanour bolstered my weary spirit. I felt ready to cry, but if our leader felt as unruffled as he looked by my discovery, then surely there was hope.

  “We’re going to have to punch our way out.”

  “Yes,” I sighed and then through the haze felt an idea bludgeon its way to the fore.

  “If you can have the whole team ready to move on my go,” I began mustering myself to the plan even as I spoke it, “I can use the last bit of rubble as a smokescreen to drive out the tunnel exit as I shove the grate away. If they follow the dust cloud out, they can make a way through.”

  Stewart considered this then flicked his chin up at me, the flashlight dazzled me momentarily.

  “What about you?” he asked with a grunt.

  I looked back down the wormhole I’d carved.

  “I need to collapse the tunnel so they can’t follow us.”

  Stewart gave something like a snort, and when he spoke, I swore I could hear mirth in his voice.

  “Dinna worry aboot that,” he told me, his brogue extra thick. “Had to find a use fer those noot-crackers after all.”

  I just grasped his meaning when somewhere below us a tectonic rumble shook the dust from the walls, followed by a grinding crash.

  “Breach,” came the static laden report of the rear-guard.

  Stewart and I stared at each other in the dark, and then he gave me a hard but jovial slap across the back.

  “Do what you got to lass,” Stewart growled, a wet, hungry sound. “We’ve got yer six.”

  I didn’t have time to bask in the rush of heady accomplishment to be treated so by the crusty sergeant. Straightening, I tucked it away for future reflection and turned back to the rubble clogged tunnel.

  “Almost there,” I snarled in my own leonine tone and then launched my powers forward.

  Seven

  “Herr Niemand, eh?” Marks asked, her voice dancing between the edges of amused and concerned.

  I wasn’t sure if the question was directed at me – had I mentioned Herr Niemand? – but I was in no mood to answer Marks’ probings.

  The office chair I was sitting in was unusually comfortable and gave only the slightest creak as I settled deeper. After our daring escape from the tunnels in Iraq, I’d done nothing but sleep between zombie-like shuffling from helicopter to plane to van, but it wasn’t enough. I was tired.

  “Yes, mum,” Stewart said. “Half of what the wretch said was loony whingin’ but that much was clear.”

  My thoughts wandered to the things the pitiful man had said concerning my connection to Ninurta. My mind swam with half-formed images, huge and ancient buildings, thrones wet with blood, and the sound of cities dying as mountains crumbled. Behind these horrific vistas was a burning awareness that some vast intelligence drove them all, racing forward. What forward meant I wasn’t sure exactly, but I was certain of some insidious purpose the same way you know you aren’t alone in a room.

  Ibukun

  The whisper was soft as silk, but I felt its pull like gravity.

  Ibby

  I knew I needed to fight, to shove it away, but I was exhausted body and soul.

  Ibukun Bashir

  The will behind the whisper slowly enfolded me like a velvet-lined python coiling around my mind.

  “Ibukun Bashir! Attention!”

  The martial bark, suffused with years of assumed command, smashed through the encircling glamour, and I started awake.

  Sitting bolt upright, my seat tilted and I tumbled forward. It was then, in that half-second of falling, that I realised my chair hadn’t been on the floor. I landed hard on my shoulder with a wounded uffh and rolled to my back. Suspended above me--spinning in a slow orbit--was my office chair, a second chair, and several office items.

  I hadn’t felt the current of power keeping the objects suspended like that, and the very second I realised it, the floating items did too. I scuttle-scooted on my back and posterior just in time. The chairs crashed down together, one losing an arm in the fall, while the hole-punch, stapler, and paper clips pattered and thumped down like hailstones.

  Hoisting myself up onto my elbows, I looked around. I was still in Marks’ office. Stewart and Marks were standing by the door, the sergeant standing protectively in front of his superior despite one arm bound to his chest by a harnessed sling.

  “What happened?’ I gaped. “Is everyone alright?”

  “You tell us,” Stewart said, his voice flat and hard to match his gaze.

  I flushed and had a childish urge to jump up and run away. This wasn’t the first time my powers had been at work while I slept, but it was the first time anyone else had been around when it happened.

  “I … I’m not sure.” I climbed to my feet. “I must have fallen asleep. Sorry.”

  I bent down to right the chairs and gather the scattered office detritus.

  “Sorry,” I muttered again as I put the arm of the office chair on the seat. “I’m not sure what happened.”

  I wasn’t sure if seeing me picking up after myself like a repentant child had helped, or just the fact that no one seemed to be under attack, but Stewart and Marks both moved back into the room. Marks took her seat, a venerable and immacula
te piece of leather and dark wood that hadn’t answered my metallic summons. Thankfully, her computer seemed to be mounted to her desk, though she took some care in setting everything else back in its proper place. Stewart remained standing, his expression one of acute attention. I finished making a little pile of office bits n’ bobs on the corner of Marks’ desk, squirming under her scrutiny.

  “Thank you, Ibby,” she said with practiced civility as I stepped back and stood next to the broken chair, hands folded in front of me.

  “Again, I’m sorry,” I offered and my cheeks flushed again.

  Marks gave me a long look, and then one of her expert smiles appeared, bidding me to be at ease.

  “Not at all, my dear, happens all the time,” she said, pointedly ignoring the quick look Stewart gave her. “But I do think you need to be checked out to make sure everything is alright.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to find the right thing to say.

  “I don’t think it is a … eh, physical issue, ma’am,” I said suddenly finding it hard to look her in the eye. “I think it’s more …”

  I searched for the word and remembered with a pang how Lowe would have described such things.

  “More of a metaphysical issue.”

  Marks nodded, and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Good thing I keep a metaphysician on staff, then.”

  ---

  “I think Ms Marks was being a little … dramatic in her description,” Dr Hiroki Emoto explained as we sat drinking tea in his office. “I function more as an assessor than a counsellor, though I am a very good listener if that helps.”

  The small, not-quite-smile that followed was equal parts self-deprecation and invitation, and I couldn’t help finding the slight man endearing. I was glad for this as when I’d first stepped into his office I’d been a wreck of nerves and suspicion.

  His office was an exercise in minimalism, except for a few curated plants and a single large photograph hanging on the wall. The picture looked like golden sand dunes rising out of white rock, with a dark churning sea on the horizon, all lit by a harsh dawn or grim sunset. The landscape, sinister and alien in its strange, inhuman proportions, made me even more nervous than I’d been when Marks had first told me I was to see a metaphysician.