Danger's Cure: (Holly Danger Book 4)

by Amanda Carlson

  We all took a step back.

  “There’s no way they don’t hear that,” Lockland said, flipping his infrared visor down. We all followed suit. “We move on three.” Lockland raised his arm and swiped it down after three, grabbing on to the door handle.

  Nothing happened. It was locked.

  Bender moved forward, lifting his leg and smashing his boot into the housing next to the handle. The door popped open. No reinforced locks behind the force field. That was a shame for them.

  We rushed into the room, knowing our entry had made enough noise to alert them of our presence, sweeping our weapons up, across, and down, checking for anything that could potentially harm us.

  Lockland led the way in the direction Maisie had given us.

  A call came from the hallway. “Grif, is that you?” It was a woman, which was mildly surprising.

  Lockland motioned for us to fan out, taking cover behind the door, so she wouldn’t see us unless she entered the room.

  “The live feed just blinked out again,” the woman said. “Albert said he was going to fix that short.” She sounded mildly innocent and unarmed, but it could be a ploy.

  If shorting out the electromagnetic field had triggered an outage in the building, we might’ve just saved ourselves from this woman ringing the alarm for the rest of the group.

  With my back against the wall, I slid toward the opening, nodding at Lockland as I holstered my Gem.

  “Grif? Are you in here?” the woman said, taking a step into the room.

  I grabbed her by the arm, twisting her so her back was tight against my chest, my elbow locking around her neck, one hand covering her mouth. I didn’t need to point my weapon at her, because the Blaster, Pulse, Web, and HydroSol held by everyone else were enough. “Don’t say a word,” I whispered in her ear. “If you value living and breathing for another five minutes, don’t make a sound.”

  Movement sounded from upstairs.

  Lockland stepped forward, the barrel of his Blaster aimed directly at her forehead. If he were to shoot, he’d kill both of us, but as long as she believed the threat, we were fine. Darby edged forward, exchanging the HydroSol for his taser. He knew that was the only thing that would leave me unscathed if the woman had to be shot.

  “Is the man upstairs the only other person in this building?” Lockland asked. “If you lie, we will kill you.”

  She slowly nodded.

  “Ask him to come down here,” Lockland ordered.

  I shook my head, indicating I didn’t think we could trust her not to reveal our position.

  Lockland placed the Blaster against her skull, pushing her head backward. “Ask him to come down here, and sound convincing. If you don’t, I will insert this into your ear canal.” He showed her a long, skinny tube that he’d taken from his pocket. “It won’t kill you immediately, but you will wish you were dead. Nod if you understand.”

  She nodded. I wasn’t going to interfere again.

  As I unwrapped my hand from her mouth, she took in a breath. Lockland placed the tube inside her ear, exerting enough pressure to make her wince. What we were doing was critical for the well-being of thousands of people in the city. It was essential that we didn’t let the situation get away from us.

  I didn’t often get to witness Lockland’s interrogation techniques, but I was finding this one to be pretty effective.

  For some, like Freedom, it never would’ve worked.

  Her voice rang with unsteadiness. “Grif?” she called. I gripped her side, pressing hard to make her understand that she had to get it together, or she would receive a brainful of titanium. She stiffened, clearing her throat, and raised her voice a little. “Hey, Grif, can you come down here? We have another short in the system. The video feed is locked up.” Much better.

  Heavy footsteps trod down the stairs. “Haven? Is that you? I’m not supposed to leave my post. The guys should be back soon.”

  “I’m sorry to call you away,” she said. “But there’s another short in the system. Can you help?” As soon as her mouth closed, she began to sob silently, barely making a sound. This man meant something to her. But she wasn’t going to ask us to save him. She knew what was at stake as well as we did.

  As Grif came down the stairs, the pace of his steps increased. But as he neared the room where we waited, he hesitated.

  We all heard it.

  My hand was back around the woman’s mouth, but she had stopped crying. Bender edged forward, repositioning himself down on one knee, aiming at the doorway with his Web laser, which shot hot light in a web pattern. It was an effective weapon to disable many at once, as the laser was broken up into small, individual units, but it wasn’t as effective as a concentrated blast. For most anyway. Bender had perfected killing a single person with his trigger pattern and wrist movements.

  Before Bender could shoot, laser fire hit the doorjamb, exploding around us.

  As I maneuvered myself and Haven out of the way, she hooked her ankle around the back of my calf, bending quickly, trying to flip me over her shoulder. She’d taken me by surprise and would’ve been successful if she’d been a little heavier than I was.

  Damn. I’d underestimated her when I knew what it was like to be constantly underestimated as a woman. I’d fallen for her soft voice and tears.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Bender and Lockland returned fire as I grappled with her. We tumbled to the ground, but before I could adjust my hold on her, she slid her hand into her pocket.

  I heard the telltale click of a hydro-grenade a second later.

  “She’s rigged!” I yelled.

  Case was over us in the next instant, hauling her up and tossing her into the hallway where Grif was firing on us.

  We all dived to the other side of the room.

  A hundred kilos collided into me as the explosion ripped through the room a second later.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  My ears rang as I blinked. The weight on top of me shifted and groaned. “Case?” I said, rolling him off me. “Are you hurt?” He’d covered me on the way down.

  He sprawled on his back, his arms wide, breathing hard. “I don’t think so. Other than having the wind knocked out of me.”

  I sat up, glancing around.

  By the looks of it, Haven had made it partway back into the room before the hydro-grenade in her pocket exploded. Just about every surface was covered in red, sticky goo. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Beside me, Lockland shuffled to his feet, shaking his head. Bender was farther away, groaning. The only one I couldn’t see was Darby. From my vantage point, it looked like Grif hadn’t fared too well from his position in the hallway.

  Lockland moved toward the doorway. “We’re going to need to amend our defense tactics,” he said. “People who are eager and willing to die must be handled a different way.”

  “Agreed.” I stood with the help of the wall, my ears aching and my head throbbing. “Darby? Where are you?” A loud moan came from behind a seating unit closer to the door. It was the only big piece of furniture in the room. I moved that way, my arms cartwheeling as I began to slip in the mess Haven had left behind. It was disgusting. Once at the couch, I didn’t want to touch it. The thing was covered in red spray. “Just tell me if you’re hurt. I can’t see you.”

  “I’m okay,” he muttered. “At least, I think I am.”

  Bender sat up, rubbing his head. I made my way toward him. “Is that your blood? Or hers?”

  He brought his hand in front of his face to examine it, squinting. “Mine. I think. Well, mine mixed with her fucking body parts. I gashed my head on that table when the explosion tossed me.” He gestured at the piece of furniture that was now in fragments on the floor next to him. “I can’t believe these assholes want to die that bad. I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. Ending yourself without even knowing if you took out your adversary makes no sense. We all survived, and those two are dead.” Everyone I’d ever known spent t
heir entire life trying to survive in this rotten, drizzly, iron-caked world. It was all we did all day, every day. To end it without thought or a fight didn’t correlate in my mind. “Whoever indoctrinated these people led them astray.” I walked over and put a hand out to Case. He grasped it, and I hauled him up, both of us stumbling a little. “Thanks for covering me,” I said. “That hydro-grenade was macro. We’re extremely lucky.” Grenades were ultracondensed, so their explosion diameter was greater than a regular bomb of the same size.

  Case shrugged as he began to swipe blood and bits off his coat in long strokes with his gloves, flinging the gore to the ground. “I figured there was no reason for both of us to go.”

  It made sense to me. “Well, I appreciate it.”

  Darby made his way out from behind the seating unit. I moved toward him, grabbing his arm to stabilize him. The status egg had been in his pocket. “Maisie,” I called, “tell me you’re okay. If you’re not, Daze might not forgive me.”

  She replied, “I am in stable condition. My polymer coating is military grade. Hydro-grenade explosion detected. Severe damage and loss of life within two-point-five meters of detonation.”

  “That is correct,” I said. “Are there any other humans in this building besides us?”

  “There are no other humans in this building. Only human remains.”

  I was relieved I didn’t have to tell Daze that his favorite thing of all time had been destroyed.

  Lockland made it to Grif in the hall. The man whose face we’d never seen was nothing more than a blown-out carcass.

  “Come on.” Lockland brought his arm up. “Let’s find where their operations are and see if we can locate the others in the group before they arrive back. There’s no way we’re hiding this mess, so we need to be ready when they return.”

  We all stumbled after him, slipping and sliding as we went. I helped Darby, steering him through the doorway. He made a retching noise, covering his mouth, as we passed Grif. “What a horrible way to go.”

  I said, “At least it was quick.”

  “Quick and disgusting.”

  “I’m just glad that wasn’t one of us,” I told him.

  From his position down the hallway, Lockland called, “I found a room with monitors.”

  We all converged in the small space, which had several displays set up. This was where Haven had to have been sitting before she’d heard us come through the electromagnetic-rigged door.

  Bender pointed at one of the screens. “That’s the medi-pod room, for fuck’s sake. She knew we were here!”

  I bent over to examine the image. Sure enough, it showed the medi-pod and the hole we’d made with the laser. We’d asked Maisie to detect live feed, and she’d failed to find their cameras. Either Darby hadn’t been specific enough, or the video cameras had been altered enough to fool her database. “Why didn’t she alert Grif we were in the building? She had enough time. It took us a while to short-circuit the electromagnetic field.”

  “My guess is she was trying to protect him,” Case said. “She seemed the wrong temperament to be put in charge.”

  I pulled out a chair in front of the monitor and sat. “I don’t think she was in charge. She was probably left here to ring the alarm. But when she saw us come in, she must’ve panicked about how to handle it. The bureau has probably never been infiltrated before, and clearly they weren’t expecting us this morning, or they would’ve left someone more competent.”

  “Grif might’ve been her lover,” Darby added. “She seemed so sad in the end when she knew that he would probably die. I felt bad for her.”

  “I did, too,” I said. “Which almost cost us our lives. I underestimated her, and by doing so, I allowed her to get her hand in her pocket. It was my fault we were almost blown up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” I noticed movement on one of the screens. This particular camera appeared to be focused on the short hallway between the two buildings. “It looks like someone is coming through the tunnel from the housing building.”

  Everyone leaned forward.

  Bender growled, “If they go through that door—”

  The hydro-bomb Bender had fastened to the handle exploded.

  Then the monitor went black.

  “The explosion took out the camera, which means it was located close to the door,” Lockland said. “We have to assume there will be more people coming behind that person. Darby, you stay here and try to figure out where their communication devices are. We know they have a private bandwidth, and we need to find out how they’re communicating, so we can listen in. The rest of us will scout the building. Yell if you see anything on the monitors.” Once the four of us were out in the hallway, Lockland continued, “There are two staircases. Bender and I will take this one, you two take the other.” He nodded down the corridor. “You know what to look for. We need intel on anything they have, such as other monitoring equipment, weapons, antennas, and the like. Anything that will help us ascertain their current location.”

  “Got it. We’ll meet back down here in ten,” I said. “I want to be front and center when the others arrive home.”

  Bender nodded. “Good luck.”

  Case and I started down the hallway, skirting what was left of Grif. “Of course they make us go this way, while they got the clean stairway,” I said.

  We both had our weapons drawn. This was the first time I noticed the building was in good shape—really good shape. In fact, it was one of the most put-together buildings I’d ever seen. “This place looks almost how I would imagine it looked before the dark days. Not only has it been cleaned of debris, but they’ve cobbled it back together with decent materials.”

  We started up the stairs. “Yeah, I noticed,” Case murmured, sweeping his arms back and forth, prepared to encounter a threat Maisie hadn’t foreseen. “They definitely had access to resources nobody else had over the years. The materials don’t match the original, but they did a damn good job with what they had.”

  We reached the second-floor landing.

  I angled my body one way as Case’s attention went the other. There were only three doors in this section and a wall separating the rest of the floor. Bender and Lockland were investigating the other side.

  The first door was open, no detectable movement inside. A cursory glance showed it was a bedroom with no other doors and a single sleeping pod. The next door was partially ajar. A waste room. Case went in and gave the all clear. The next door was shut.

  “My guess is it’s another sleeping room,” I whispered. “You open it, I’ll cover.” Case stretched to reach the handle, clicking it down, pushing it open with his boot.

  Just as I suspected, it contained two sleeping pods. There were personal items littered about—a shirt, a trinket, some random hygiene products. We moved into the room. “This is a living level,” Case said. “We’re not going to find much here. Let’s head to the next floor.”

  On the third level, we found more of the same. Two sleeping rooms and a waste room. On the fourth level, we found what we were looking for. The first room was likely where Grif had been before he’d come down. It was full of monitors, but these didn’t have live video feeds. They were older computer screens hooked to static hubs. They were not as fast or as efficient as a pico, but they had access to large databases and could do calculations.

  I sat down in one of the chairs. Numbers and formulas were on the screen. “This is where they communicate with the S17 militia,” Case said. I turned to look. He stood in front of a large amplifier. “Look, the antenna goes up the side of the wall and into the roof. That’s how they get the distance.”

  A shout came from downstairs.

  Case and I took off, making it down the stairs within seconds. It was Darby. We headed toward the room where we’d left him, almost colliding with Bender and Lockland, who had rushed back down the other staircase.

  “What is it?” I asked as we all clambered into the room.

  Darby turned in his seat, looking pale. “
I think…I think…”

  “This is so not the time to go nonverbal. What is it?” I refrained from putting my hands on his shoulders to shake him.

  “I think they’re gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” I asked.

  “I don’t think anyone was waiting for us to arrive in The North,” he said. “Look, I found Haven’s status reports.” He motioned to the monitor behind him. Instead of a live video feed, there were words on the screen. “She tried to encrypt them, but it was easy to hack. The twelve members left quickly, tasking a few people to stay behind, like Haven, Grif, and somebody named Port, who may have just died downstairs. Port was their backup, in charge of setting off bombs if need be. But it wasn’t clear if he had them on his body, or if they were already here. It appears Haven may have signaled him. But they suspected Claire all along. Once she called a meeting and told them we were going to be in The North, they figured the info was false. For some unknown reason, they decided to vacate the premises right after. According to Haven’s notes, they weren’t entirely sure we’d come here, but knew our entre back into the city would bring trouble, which is why I believe she was indecisive about what to do.”

  “Do you think Claire is safe?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Darby said. “They didn’t want to arouse any suspicion, and according to this, they left quickly and quietly.”

  “So where did the bastards go?” Bender asked.

  Darby shrugged. “Her notes didn’t include that. But I’m assuming they went to rendezvous with Tillman and the militia. I can keep checking. There’s bound to be more information here somewhere, possibly journal entries by others.”

  Lockland sat in a seat across from Darby, his visor up, his face drawn. “I believe this outcome was unavoidable,” he said in a resolute tone. “Even if we had been able to take most of them out today, word would’ve likely gotten through to Tillman, or someone would’ve slipped by our arsenal. We tried our best to contain the situation, but this is what it is. We have to face facts and realize that the odds aren’t in our favor any longer. This is going to be a long fight.”