Helix, Episode 3

by Nathan M. Farrugia

  ‘Wireless mike.’ Valeria smiled. ‘Voice activated.’

  Shit.

  Shouts and screams came from outside. Valeria’s fingertips shimmered an electric white. Her arms and legs buzzed, rippled. The operative’s entire body was luminous.

  Not again.

  Sophia looked down at her pistol hand. It flared with brilliant color. She could feel Valeria’s emotions shift and intersect like colors on a Rubik’s cube. Sophia dropped the UMP. Staggered. Found herself on one knee.

  It was happening, just like in the Berlin nightclub.

  Valeria knocked the gun from her hand, then straightened Sophia’s arm to break it. Sophia rolled forward, slipping free. She couldn’t see what was happening or where she was going. She could only feel it.

  She kicked out, knocked Valeria’s leg away. Valeria staggered and her knee struck a floorboard. The operative drew a pistol from her hip, got off her knee.

  The wood creaked as she moved. A loose board.

  Sophia hammered her fist down on it. The other end lifted and struck Valeria’s face.

  Sophia rolled on her shoulder and sprang back to her feet. Her vision slowly returned. The UMP was right under her, but she didn’t bother picking it up—it would be fingerprint encoded. The operative stood by the window, now open, her pistol missing. Sophia couldn’t see it on the floor.

  Valeria hurled herself out the window.

  Sophia swore, ran to the window. Below her, Valeria missed a parasol entirely. She rolled across the pavement, still moving and uninjured.

  That’s not possible.

  People stood around Valeria, but they weren’t watching Valeria. Their attention was riveted on something else.

  Shots rang out from the market square.

  Sophia jumped from the window.

  The parasol rushed to meet her, wrapping and entangling her. Her descent slowed, then she landed across the table. It knocked the air from her lungs. Around her, people were screaming. Fleeing in blind panic. But not from her. She launched to her feet and stared down the front of a suppressed pistol and a wry smile.

  Valeria had found her pistol then.

  There were five meters between them. Too far for Sophia to close on her.

  ‘Children three that nestle near, eager eye and willing ear!’ Sophia shouted over the distant screams. ‘Pleased a simple tale to hear.’

  Valeria smiled. ‘No tales for the wicked, my love.’

  Sophia’s heart skipped. It couldn’t be…

  Valeria was firewalled.

  The shots kept coming. Sophia needed to get out there and stop the proxy, help Czarina and Ieva. But she had to get through Valeria first. And Valeria was closing on her right now.

  Sophia swallowed. ‘Execute parapsyche, designation Lycaon!’

  Valeria aimed her pistol.

  Sophia pulled back into the café doorway. ‘Echo parapsyche installations!’

  She retreated, almost colliding with a waitress inside, frozen and holding a tray of coffee cups. Valeria’s attention shifted for just a moment. The tray fell on Sophia and she grabbed it, flung it at Valeria. The edge of the tray knocked the pistol from her hand. Sophia drew her own.

  Valeria used her knee to knock the tray up and into her grasp. She sliced it back at Sophia. It knocked Sophia’s aim off. The operative stepped in closer and punched her in the sternum. The air rushed from Sophia’s lungs. Her feet left the ground. She flew backward and crashed into a table. Plates and flatware crashed around her, loud and sharp. She smashed through another table—only the solid barrier of a wall stopped her.

  She slumped to the floor, gasping for oxygen that didn’t come.

  That punch … Valeria must be using an exoskeleton.

  Valeria stepped inside the café, heading straight for her. Sophia sucked in air, trying to breathe, to use her throat mike, call for help. But her words were soundless.

  Chapter Ten

  Quito, Ecuador

  Nasira moved fast. Pistol in one hand, she searched the white fog that curled ahead, her magnetoception guiding her to the banks of cooling units. She could sense their cuboid shapes and cool metal surface. She led Aviary, Jay and Damien toward them.

  ‘Stop,’ Aviary whispered from under her hood.

  Nasira pulled the covering from Aviary’s head, exposing her vermillion hair to the rain. ‘Peripheral vision,’ Nasira reminded her.

  ‘But I’ve got you guys to—’ Aviary cut herself short. ‘Fine.’

  Nasira peered through the grill of a cooling unit. A large fan whipped air inward. Aviary pulled the laptop from her ruck and laid it on the ground. She struck a key and the fan slowed.

  Nasira checked their surroundings while Jay and Aviary stepped away from the grill, allowing Damien to hold it. His hands heated the corners just enough for Jay to move in with wire cutters and snip the soft metal. Carefully, Damien and Aviary lifted the grate clear.

  Nasira didn’t like this one bit. She hadn’t seen a single camera or sensor for Aviary to disable. Did they care so little about the roof of their data center?

  She nodded to Damien, who moved far enough away so the other fans wouldn’t interfere with his attuned hearing. Jay’s infrared vision was gone and they were in open ground with no concealment save for the cooling units. Damien was their only early warning system.

  Wearing gloves, Jay removed an altimeter and a fishing reel—minus the rod—from Aviary’s ruck. He checked the knot on the heavy line and the attached wireless repeater. To Nasira, it looked like a stubby gray antenna. Jay took another repeater from her ruck and slapped it on the inside wall of the cooling unit, just above the fan.

  ‘Go,’ Aviary said.

  Jay flipped the wire bail on the fishing reel. The line unspooled, plummeting the wireless repeater down the chute like a giant lure. Aviary tapped on her laptop keyboard, mining for wireless connections and devices she could hijack.

  Nasira paced around them, her fingers resting on her pistol. She didn’t want to be here a moment longer than necessary. She reached out into the fog, feeling for shapes or disturbances in the magnetic fields.

  She walked past Aviary’s laptop. On the screen, multiple connections blinked and console windows trickled with text. The repeater on the unit wall was talking to the repeater dangling from Jay’s fishing line. And that was sending everything to the laptop.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Nasira asked.

  Aviary stared fixedly at her screen. ‘Searching everything from any device. Keywords are “Rio” and “research.” Getting a few things on Rio, but nothing else.’

  Rio de Janeiro was the headquarters for many private, national and multinational corporations. If Jay was right—going off what he’d learned from his stay in Colombia—Intron’s headquarters would be there. And maybe their research center would be too.

  ‘How much longer?’ Nasira asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The rain stopped. Nasira could only hear Aviary’s quiet keystrokes and the light hum of other fans. Beyond them, white fog and unnerving silence. Nasira dropped to one knee and watched Damien, reading his expression. He was calm, just listening.

  ‘You good?’ Nasira asked.

  Damien nodded. ‘Just thinking about that cloaked operative from the parking lot in Colombia.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Why’d she save us?’

  Nasira raised an eyebrow. ‘Why’s the operative a she?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just guessing.’

  Nasira did another three-sixty before checking on Aviary again.

  Aviary spoke. ‘Let it go.’

  Jay was holding the fishing reel in one hand, leaning on the unit. He flipped the metal bail and the line unspooled some more.

  ‘Stop,’ Aviary said.

  Jay flipped the bail back, holding the line in place. He read something off his altimeter. ‘Forty-meter depth.’

  Aviary’s fingers rattled across her keyboard. ‘I think I have something.’

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nbsp; Damien’s voice was soft in Nasira’s ears, speaking through his throat mike. ‘Standby-standby,’ he said.

  Nasira and Jay went for their pistols.

  ‘Could be nothing, but get ready,’ Damien said.

  Aviary typed hurriedly.

  ‘Keep us posted.’ Nasira turned to Aviary. ‘Get ready to move.’

  ‘Our luck about to run out?’ Jay asked.

  Nasira sighed. ‘What luck?’

  ‘This luck,’ Aviary said. ‘I have a possible address. Coming up as a research center and headquarters on a few devices down there.’

  Google Maps filled her laptop screen. ‘Presidente Vargas Avenue.’

  ‘Business district,’ Jay said. ‘Financial sector, right near the ports.’

  ‘I have movement.’ Damien’s words sent a chill through her.

  ‘Pack it up,’ Nasira said. ‘Pack it up now.’

  Aviary closed her laptop. ‘Transferring to my watch.’

  ‘Cut the wire,’ Nasira said to Jay.

  Jay drew his knife and cut the line. With no fingerprints, the repeater and the wire were safe to drop. Aviary reached for her repeater inside the unit.

  ‘Leave it.’ Nasira lifted the grill back with Jay.

  Damien emerged from the fog and whispered, ‘We’re cut off. Go.’

  They couldn’t get back to their car from here. Pistol in hand, Nasira started running in the opposite direction. Her team fell in behind her.

  Ahead in the fog, something shifted. Armed security closed on them from the front and, Nasira sensed, behind. If she headed right, she would fall off the data center and down the mountain. There was only one direction they could all take now. She pointed to their left. As one, they moved.

  Then Damien slowed.

  ‘What do you hear?” Nasira hissed.

  Something shaped like a manta ray tore through the mist, heading straight for them. It descended from above and a dazzling laser flashed over her. Her vision turned green, pulsing. Damien and Jay became silhouettes that swirled into each other, then slowly the shapes of her friends sharpened. Another manta ray appeared—a small, lightweight drone. It spat something web-like over her.

  The net wrapped around her, sticky and constricting, tightening over her arms and drawing her legs together. She pried at the net and stumbled forward. Beside her, Jay wrangled with another net.

  Pain exploded across her body and a heavy weight pinned her down. She could smell the minted breath of a guard as he pulled her wrists together and bound them. Her hands went numb. A boot crunched down on her pistol and a knee across her back. Air shot from her lungs. She burned for more. Above her, a voice.

  ‘We have them.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Kraków, Poland

  Rounds cracked through the market square. People crashed into each other as they fled in all directions. Czarina weaved around them, listening carefully as the sound of shots reflected off the buildings. Using the reflected sounds, her echolocation—a kind of passive sonar for humans—helped her zero in on the proxy.

  The sounds pulled her to a young man, tall and sinuous with shell-white skin. He wore a puffy red jacket with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, faded jeans and white sneakers, and held a pistol with one arm completely extended.

  Czarina drew her pistol from the concealed holster in her jeans. She lifted the weapon to her chest, both hands over the grip. The proxy pivoted to shoot at anyone who caught his attention. He looked relaxed, almost bored. Czarina extended both arms, angling for a clear shot. But as the crowd thinned, the proxy saw her coming, and lined up his own shot. He swiveled like the turret on a tank.

  ‘Drop your weapon!’ Czarina yelled, moving quickly sideways.

  Even as she said it, she knew her words were useless. He wouldn’t listen. He was activated.

  How many more people will he kill?

  How many would I have to kill to stop him?

  The sound of gunfire cracked through her earpiece and echoed across the market square. The proxy stared at her, his eyes wide with surprise. Blood radiated from one side of his neck and torso. His red jacket grew darker, wet. He turned his barrel to the sky.

  Off to one side, Ieva lay on her stomach with her arms out and pistol still aimed. She’d dropped flat to the ground and fired high to avoid shooting bystanders. Both shots had struck the proxy; she’d put the first under his rib cage to avoid ricochets, the second through his neck. She was likely aiming for his head on the second shot, but it still did the trick.

  The proxy dropped to his knees, his glazed eyes locked on Czarina.

  Then he shoved the pistol under his chin and fired.

  Ieva’s throat mike picked up the shot, making Czarina’s ears sting. The proxy collapsed face down, revealing the large, wet exit wound at the top of his punctured skull. Blood pooled around him, bright and oxygenated.

  Sophia staggered after Valeria, into the center of the square and under the archway of a domed classical building. Inside, rows of market stalls stretched away. The operative was ahead, moving down a vaulted aisle. People lingered around her, slow and glaze-eyed, inspecting amber jewelry, wooden crafts and embroidered cloth. With the noise in here, no one had heard the gunshots outside. Sophia weaved through them, keeping an eye on Valeria. The operative changed trajectory and sprinted up a flight of stairs.

  Sophia angled toward a flight closer by. She climbed them quickly to the next floor, hoping they would take her to the same place as Valeria. She stepped out into a large gallery, whisper-quiet with polished marble floors and skylights that cast afternoon light on sculptures and pastel walls.

  Visitors quietly admired the art, barely registering Sophia’s presence and the blood flowing from her lips. She kept her pistol close to her body and strode forward. Twenty meters ahead, Valeria appeared. She turned, looked over the shoulder of a passing man and saw Sophia.

  Sophia raised her pistol in a snap motion—up her chest, then out. The man froze in place and Valeria grabbed him, used him as a shield. She jammed her pistol hard into the man’s eye. She was careful, kept her head directly behind his. Sophia didn’t want to kill Valeria, but if the programming triggers didn’t work then what else could she do?

  ‘If you shoot through his mouth, you’ll kill me,’ Valeria said. ‘Would you like that?’ Under pressure, her accent slipped. It was no longer American.

  Czarina appeared behind the operative, but Sophia knew she wasn’t close enough. Sophia tried to hide her glance, but the operative saw it. She kept hold of her hostage and sidestepped behind a statue, then pivoted and aimed for Czarina.

  Sophia needed to get closer for a clear shot.

  But Ieva launched from nowhere, tearing the pistol from Valeria’s hand. Valeria recovered, kicked Ieva away, sending her crashing into a wall. Then she turned to Czarina—who’d moved closer—and disarmed her, throwing the pistol across the marble floor.

  The operative drove her fist into Czarina’s throat. Czarina avoided the blow, barely. Sophia was close enough now, but Valeria sidestepped her pistol, kicking down on Sophia’s knee and driving a fist into her midsection.

  Pain flashed through Sophia, crushing oxygen from her. She was in the air for a moment, flying sideways. She floated across the polished floor and crashed into a tall wooden stand. A marble bust wobbled and fell from the stand, smashing in front of her. She lay on her side, pain slicing every breath. Unable to move.

  Czarina and Ieva were on the ground too. Sirens wailed in the distance, approaching the market square. Paramedics and police would soon converge on the square. How long would it take for the police to think to come in here?

  Valeria strode toward her. Along the way, she scooped up Czarina’s pistol. She stopped five meters short of Sophia and raised the weapon.

  ‘This was fun,’ Valeria said. ‘Let’s do it again sometime.’

  Overhead, the skylight shattered. Instinctively Sophia covered her eyes, and when she opened them, a figure moved in front of her.
/>   If nothing else, DC knew how to make an entrance.

  Steel flashed. Czarina’s pistol hit the wall. Valeria withdrew her hand just in time as DC moved swiftly, the blade of his tachi slicing and tearing her sleeve. The operative ducked and rolled, found an opening and struck DC in his chest. He went flying back through the air and smashed into the wall beside Sophia.

  DC groaned. ‘I didn’t think that through.’

  ‘She packs a punch,’ Sophia said.

  His sword landed nearby. Before the operative could scoop it up, Sophia was on her feet, and despite the pain, wielding it comfortably in both hands. Her Kali training wasn’t a perfect match for this kind of sword, but it would do.

  Valeria glared at Sophia, then at DC. He staggered, drew his pistol. The sirens were closer. The operative focused on Czarina’s pistol, lying there on the ground, then gave Sophia a wry smile. DC eyed it off too.

  Valeria went for it, diving across the marble floor and colliding with DC. He slid across the floor, his pistol knocked clear. Valeria was back on her feet and running, her sneakers crunching on skylight fragments. She was out of the museum before anyone could get in her way.

  ‘Leave her.’ Sophia said.

  DC was already standing, flustered. ‘I must be losing my edge.’

  She handed him the tachi. ‘No, that’s here. Thanks for dropping in.’

  He took his sword and struggled to stand upright. ‘So … I think that went well.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast

  Gleb flipped open the laptop, lighting up a large display on the briefing room wall, then retreated to a corner. Olesya found herself staring at a grainy CCTV image. In the center, a lone shooter fired into the fleeing crowd. Everyone stared at the image in silence, including Ark and the other operative hunters—Marina, Andrey and Nika.

  Marina’s large green eyes were focused on the CCTV image. She wasn’t wearing her headscarf today, and she stood apart from the other pair. Nika’s eyes weren’t as dilated as when Olesya had first met her, and Andrey stood unnervingly still.