by James Axler
* * *
MEANWHILE, ON THE FACTORY floor, Kane rushed back to the metal staircase that ran up the side wall of the busy factory. A moment later, he was at the top of the stairs, coming up behind the remaining guards who had been forced to seek cover when Grant began firing. The rearmost guard turned as he heard Kane’s heavy footsteps thumping up the metal stairs. The Sin Eater in Kane’s hand spit fire, drilling a 9 mm slug into the guard’s leg, shattering his kneecap before he knew what was happening. Clutching his ruined leg, the guard let out a scream as he dropped to the metal walkway, his head slamming into it with the clang of a clock-tower bell being struck.
As the other guards realized that they were now under attack from two directions, Kane flitted into Pellerito’s office, ducking out of sight. A smattering of impacts came from beyond the room where the remaining guards had turned their blasters on this new enemy, but Kane had a new problem. Without warning, the bald-headed accountant tossed his glass of water at Kane, liquid and glass spinning through the air until they struck the wall just inches from Kane’s head.
Kane spun on his heel, bringing his Sin Eater up to target this new attacker.
“What is it? Double cross?” the accountant asked. “Rival outfit wanting more? Think you’re going to cut a deal?”
As the accountant spoke, he threw a hard-backed notebook at Kane’s face. Kane swept it aside without thought, knocking it to the floor with his free hand.
Then the accountant was on his feet and running across the long table, and Kane saw the flash of something in his outthrust hand. Before Kane knew what was happening, a jointed length of metal cut the air toward his face, striking his cheek with a stinging blow.
Kane spun, dropping away from the strike as the accountant drew the strange missile back to his hand. It was some kind of whip, Kane noted, made up of flexible links of metal that could extend to almost three feet. The odd weapon must have been hidden in the man’s sleeve, tucked away in much the same manner as Magistrates would habitually carry their Sin Eaters. It should have come as little surprise to learn the man was armed—this was, after all, an arms factory. Kane cursed himself for naively expecting otherwise.
Before Kane could counterattack, the bald man’s other arm snapped up, and the distinctive scent of cordite whispered in the air along with a crack like a book being slammed shut.
Gun, Kane realized even as the bullet zipped past him and shattered the glass in the office door.
* * *
OUTSIDE ON THE CATWALK, Brigid grabbed hold of Jerod Pellerito as he pulled himself up from the tangle of limbs, realizing too late which way the tide of battle was turning.
“Pit bitch!” Pellerito screamed, baring his teeth.
Before Brigid knew it, Pellerito was driving one crooked elbow at her face. Brigid reared back, bringing her head just barely out of reach of that outstretched elbow. Fingers clenched in an arrow shape, Brigid jabbed her attacker in the side, striking the nerve cluster. Pellerito screamed in agony, stumbling back against Brigid.
* * *
KANE SPUN RAPIDLY ASIDE as the bald accountant snapped off a second and third shot from his tiny blaster. The pistol was a tiny 18 mm, its barrel no longer than a man’s index finger.
Kane grunted as one of the bullets clipped his flank, breathing through his teeth as the impact was dulled by the armorlike weave of the shadow suit he wore beneath his clothes. Clinging to its wearer’s body like a second skin, the shadow suit was made of incredibly flexible material with the capacity to deflect a blade or small-arms fire. The durable suits had other properties, too, including acting as an artificially controlled environment, regulating the wearer’s body temperature and ensuring comfort in the most extreme of locales. Just now, Kane was thankful it could stop a small bullet.
Kane brought the Sin Eater up, squeezing the trigger and sending a burst of fire at the accountant as he leaped from the table. The shots followed the man, boring into the back wall as Kane ducked aside. The accountant’s weapon was also firing, blasting bullets at Kane as he continued moving in the confined space.
The metal whip jabbed through the air at Kane’s throat, lashing against him as he endeavored to weave out of its path. Then the accountant’s blaster was firing again, its stream of bullets tracing across the wall behind the long table as Kane ducked. One of those bullets struck the blank, octagonal box that resided on the sill behind the table, and Kane grimaced as his Commtact went haywire, sending a high-pitched burst of static through his skull. Kane tumbled down, slamming against the boardroom table as the echo jabbed at his brain, cutting through him like a hot knife.
* * *
ON THE CATWALK outside the office, Brigid and Grant both howled as their own Commtacts stuttered that same electronic shriek.
The sound was so penetrating that Grant’s vision blurred, and he dropped the MP-9 he had snagged from the guardsman. “What the—?”
Brigid, meanwhile stumbled backward, letting go of her grip of Jerod Pellerito. As she struggled to recover, Pellerito moved toward her, the five-inch metal nail file appearing in his hand, wielded like a dagger.
“You fight like a wildcat,” Pellerito snarled as Brigid writhed in place, the Commtact howling through her skull. “Now, let’s see if you scream like one.”
Chapter 6
Things had settled down in the Cerberus ops room. The puddle of goop that had started as a visitor had been cleared away at Reba DeFore’s insistence, leaving only a dark mark where it had been. Beth Delaney was back monitoring the communications feeds, and Farrell and Philboyd had joined Lakesh at his desk to report their initial findings.
“I’m afraid I haven’t located the source of the rogue incursion,” Farrell said. “I’ve tracked back as far as the mat-trans log can go, but there’s no indication of where she entered the system.”
“Same here,” Philboyd agreed. “And without that information we’re going to have a hard time blocking anyone else who utilizes the same pathway.”
Lakesh tapped at his front teeth absently as he worked this over in his mind. “No ‘in’ point,” he summarized. The mat-trans system required a sender and a receiver point. In this instance, the latter was the mat-trans chamber at Cerberus. So where was the sender? “Could there be another source behind our visitor?” Lakesh pondered.
Philboyd shrugged. “You know the workings of the mat-trans better than any of us,” he stated. “If anyone can answer that question, I’d say it’s you.”
Deep in thought, Lakesh fixed his eyes on the mat-trans chamber. “Every traveler requires a starting point,” he reasoned. “In essence, the mat-trans is a closed loop, and barring a few stray units, is comprised of what were military compounds of the U.S. military.
“We have seen proof that the system is compatible with its counterparts in other countries, such as the Soviet Union,” Lakesh went on. “But even they would leave a data trail of some form, some manner in which they could be tracked back.”
Farrell ran his eyes over his notes once more. “We can’t track her further back than our unit,” he confirmed. “It’s as if she didn’t exist until she arrived here.”
“A data glitch, then?” Lakesh mused. “Rogue data, old info somehow generated by the mat-trans?”
Brewster Philboyd adjusted his glasses as he spoke. “I can check into that,” he confirmed.
When he broke off, Lakesh encouraged him. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Philboyd?”
“Well, it just seems that those sort of things would have been ironed out at the development stage,” Philboyd reasoned. “We’ve not seen such a glitch before. Why now?”
“Could it be that the unit itself is getting older?” Lakesh proposed, deliberately playing devil’s advocate.
“I don’t see it,” Philboyd told him. “We’ve replaced and upgraded much of the hardware that lets th
is unit function. At a stretch, it could be something we’ve added recently.”
“While our unit may have been renewed,” Farrell pointed out, “what about the others? There are over two hundred of these things on the map. It could be one of them is corrupted and sending us rogue data.”
“In which case,” Lakesh reminded him, “we would be able to trace the source. And since we can’t, it seems reasonable to discount that possibility.”
“Which puts us right back where we started,” Farrell groused, eyeing his notes with vexation.
“Things don’t just appear,” Lakesh said. “Nor do people. Our visitor had to have come from somewhere, gentlemen. And if it’s an error in our system, I want it tracked and locked before it can happen again.”
“And if not?” Philboyd asked in a wary tone.
The question hung in the air unanswered as the three men went back to their investigations.
* * *
KANE SAGGED AGAINST the long table as the terrible screech echoed through his ear canal. The Commtact was going haywire in his skull, vibrating his eardrum to a frenzy. It sounded like a hornet trapped behind glass.
As Kane sprawled on the table, the bald head of the accountant came into view, the stubby nose of his revolver swooping down toward Kane’s eye.
“Credit’s withdrawn, big man,” the accountant snarled. His words came to Kane through the shrieking howl of the Commtact. “Time to settle your account.”
* * *
OUTSIDE THE ROOM, BRIGID found herself staring at the vicious point of a metal nail file as Jerod Pellerito jabbed it at her pretty face, her own Commtact straining with the noise.
“I don’t like hurting women,” Pellerito admitted. “It will upset my stomach for days doing this.”
“Don’t...force yourself...on my account,” Brigid gasped, struggling to hear her own words through the quagmire of ghost noise.
* * *
A LITTLE WAY ALONG THE metal catwalk, Grant had scrambled behind a low stack of boxes, hiding from view as the once-cowed guards renewed their attack. His head was throbbing, too, the subdermal Commtact vibrating in its hiding place along his mastoid bone. Bullets pelted the other side of the crates as Grant crouched there, clenching his teeth against the awful noise. He was in trouble, he knew, but he couldn’t think straight—not well enough to mount a defense, at least.
* * *
KANE GROWLED AS THE accountant pulled the trigger, shifting his body even as the bullet left the chamber, dropping from the table in a heap. There was a loud report as the blaster fired, drilling a bullet into the table’s wooden surface as Kane slid away.
Finely tuned reactions kicked in, and Kane ducked and rolled as he hit the floor, the shriek in his head obscured by the sound of the bullet being fired. Kane had been so close the bullet had left him temporarily deaf, and that was just what he needed. While he could feel his eardrum vibrating as if it was an itch he couldn’t scratch, the static noise from the Commtact had been overwritten by the ringing of the bullet, masking one noise with another.
It gave Kane just enough clarity to think.
The accountant whipped the blaster around, tracking Kane as he rolled away. He snatched at the trigger again, sending another 18 mm shell in the direction of Kane’s fleeing figure.
Kane was in continuous motion, letting his highly tuned senses generate a random pattern that kept him just one step ahead of the bald man’s gun. Before the accountant realized it, Kane was on him, snapping out with his right fist in a blur of motion, squeezing his Sin Eater’s trigger.
There was a burst of propellant as the bullet left the chamber of the Sin Eater, but Kane heard nothing. It was like shooting underwater, the sound obscured into something like a distant, hollow pop. And then the accountant was dropping back, his face and neck erupting in a bloom of blood, its scarlet lashing out across the back wall of the office.
* * *
OUTSIDE, GRANT WAS STILL crouched behind the stacked boxes as three guards approached. He peered to his left, seeing their shadows get nearer as they closed in. He had to do something, but he was unarmed and the frenetic buzzing was still running through his skull with the force of a hurricane.
Grant watched the shadows get nearer, then did the only thing he felt able to do—he leaned back hard against the piled boxes, giving them one almighty shove.
* * *
KANE IGNORED THE BROKEN figure of the accountant, dismissing the man as he toppled back against the far wall in a splash of blood. Kane’s attention was fixed instead on the octagonal box that rested on the window ledge, its strips of light running a triplicate pattern of peaks and troughs. There was a bullet dead center; it had split the casing in two and now rested inside a mess of wires and circuits. Kane glared at it for a moment before reaching for a toggle switch on the side and nudging it to the off position with his thumb.
Kane was still deafened by the gun report, but outside his companions felt a sense of relief as the jamming signal finally abated.
* * *
THE STACKED BOXES toppled back, crashing into the guards who had been hunting for Grant. As they did so, the sound in Grant’s skull finally cut out, and he breathed a momentary sigh of relief, surprised at the sudden absence.
An instant later, Grant was on his feet, swiftly disarming the guards as they struggled to get free of the toppled stack.
* * *
RELYING SOLELY ON HER well-honed battle instincts, Brigid Baptiste had spent the past minute and a half deftly avoiding the jabs of the metal nail file that Jerod Pellerito held, straining to ignore the shriek from her own Commtact. As soon as the awful buzzing stopped, Brigid was moving like a tigress, leaping up and into Pellerito and swiping at the vicious little blade he had attacked her with. In a matter of seconds, the man was disarmed and held in a firm grip.
Down below the struggling figures, the factory was all but abandoned now, almost all of the production-line workers having disappeared once the first shots were exchanged.
Brigid looked up as Kane reappeared from the far end of the catwalk, stepping from the self-contained office. There were still two guards standing there, close to the staircase, unsure of what to do.
Kane leaped over a fallen guard, turning his weapon on the others who remained. Up ahead, Grant was taking potshots at them with a stolen MP-9, and with Kane descending on them from behind, the guards found themselves caught in a pincer movement. As they realized this, the last of them threw their weapons to the ground in surrender, raising their hands in defeat.
“Wise choice,” Kane acknowledged as he gathered up the discarded weapons.
For a moment, Pellerito struggled in Brigid’s grip, raising one foot and trying to stomp on her toes. She pushed forward with the full weight of her body, driving the arms dealer forward until he was doubled over the safety bars that surrounded the catwalk.
“Do that again and I’ll drop you,” she warned, “bitch or not.”
* * *
GRANT GLANCED UP FROM where he was now crouching over the fallen form of Robert Buchs, checking the man for hidden weapons, and he laughed. “Gotta know when the hold ’em...” he reminded the sec man.
Grant’s ears were still ringing as Kane disarmed the remaining guards, but the pain was subsiding by the time he joined his companions at the far end of the catwalk.
“I should have recognized a Magistrate sting op.” Pellerito cursed as he watched Kane approach. “Didn’t expect to see you this far out of the villes, though.”
“I told you before, Jerod,” Kane said, shaking his head. “We’re not Magistrates.”
“Then what are you?” Pellerito demanded.
“Something much, much bigger,” Kane told him.
Grabbing Pellerito by the collar, Kane brought the Sin Eater up to his nose, shoving it so hard th
at the gunrunner was forced to tilt his head away.
“Now,” Kane growled, “you and I are going to have a chat about where this nuclear material of yours is. And if I don’t like your answers, you won’t like mine.”
* * *
IT TRANSPIRED THAT PELLERITO had been bluffing about the nuclear material. All he had was a potential supplier and, as he put it, the ink hadn’t dried on the deal. Kane tried to find out more, while Grant and Brigid worked their way through the abandoned factory, setting charges that they had found in the factory’s own supplies. Pellerito proved to be of little further help. Wherever the nuclear material was coming from, there were multiple layers of intrigue between here and there. Kane wasn’t surprised. This was black market stuff, and he knew from experience that it was the territory of aliases and double agents. In fact, that was one reason that he and his team had been able to infiltrate it with such relative ease.
When Grant and Brigid returned, they came bearing new weapons. Grant had opted for a Sin Eater like Kane’s, and he tossed his partner several ammo clips from a bulging box he’d jammed into a workbag strapped over one shoulder. Brigid had chosen something larger, a 12-gauge shotgun based on the old Mossberg design. She held it comfortably by one hand at its rear-mounted grip, its eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel stretching down to almost scrape the floor beside her heeled boots. The shotgun had no stock and ended abruptly at the grip end. Seeing it, Kane gave Brigid a quizzical look.
“Not your usual choice,” he observed.
“Only thing I could find rounds for,” Brigid told him, the box of ammunition chinking as she bounced it in her other hand. “Well, other than the Sin Eaters, and I just wouldn’t feel right showing you boys up like that.”
Having set the charges, Grant led Pellerito, Buchs and the few stragglers from the factory out into the hills. “The whole place is going up,” Grant said. “The only thing you’re going to find here after is a fire sale.”
