Sarah stood over one of Joshua’s victims; his arm and one leg had been snapped. The guard lay there whimpering, unable to move. Before Joshua could open his mouth, Sarah hacked downward, taking a mighty bite out of his skull.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?!’ Joshua wanted to tear at her. He wanted throw up.
She had killed at least four men, one of whom had clearly been no threat. She was visible now, being covered in blood. It seemed to hover there and drip off her, like a ghostly red spectre.
Sarah shrugged, and wiped at the blood. It didn’t come off. She wouldn’t be invisible again any time soon.
‘There will be more on the way,’ she said.
She didn’t explain herself any further, just hurried off towards the bunker, sword in hand, leaving Joshua to follow in her bloody wake.
Chapter 20
The bunker looked like something out of a history book from an earlier war. It was a low, flat building - but huge, the size of a stadium. It had slits in the thick concrete walls to allow guards to shoot out. They were empty now; Joshua guessed they had just slaughtered the men that were posted there. The bunker looked incredibly out of place, as though it came from another world, and dropped down into this hole. The buildings on the surface of the Colonnade were all sleek glass, not very defensible but intimidating nonetheless. The bunker looked as though it could withstand a bomb. Maybe that was the point.
They reached the door, a solid metal barrier. Joshua couldn’t see any seams in it. How did it open?
‘Let’s ask one the guards back there how to get in.’ Joshua jerked a thumb back at the pile of bodies. ‘Oh wait...’
His voice dripped sarcasm.
He was covering for his mixed convictions. Sarah was beautiful and deadly and it frightened him. He didn’t know how he felt about her any more. Would he be able to kill if he had no other choice? Certainly those men would have brought in reinforcements if left alive, and they had no time to be gentle. He shook himself. No, they should have made time. It wasn’t worth it. He looked at Sarah, bits of gore still hung from her lithe frame, the beauty and barbarity displayed in stark contrast. Joshua wasn’t sure if he was horrified or turned on.
Sarah ignored him and ran a hand over the door. But there was nothing to find. ‘The entire door must somehow slide into the wall...’ she said.
Joshua wasn’t listening. He’d heard a swishing sound. It wasn’t the wind.
A figure tucked and rolled onto the top of the landing platform. Had some reckless Confederate guard followed them down?
Joshua ran up to the man, determined not to let Sarah take care of him first. He’d never seen a Confederate use a wingsuit before, unless...
‘Ichiro!’ Joshua recognised him, and lifted the shorter man off his feet in a bear hug.
‘Ha ha okay, big guy, put me down,’ Ichiro said.
‘Oops- I guess I’m still not used to my own strength.’ Joshua set him down. ‘Why are you here? How did you find us?’
‘Jayson gave me ride. We had to dig his ship out of the rubble you had left it in back at the Academy, but everyone pitched in, even Casey,’ Ichiro explained. ‘He is pissed with you. But he knows how much we need Brock to be able to use the bio-ID. Everyone is on the look out for him since Casey showed the General’s iPC to the entire school. He would have approved this mission.’
Joshua felt a weight fall off his shoulders. He hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath, or even that the Academy meant that much to him. It had become his home, and it was a relief to know he would be welcomed back. Hopefully he could bring his sister with him one day too.
Ichiro looked over Joshua’s shoulder at Sarah. She was still feeling up the door.
‘I can help with that,’ he said. Sarah stepped away, and Ichiro fished out a pen-shaped device from his jumpsuit’s belt pocket. He aimed it at the door and clicked the end. A bright red laser beam shot out, slicing through the thick door like butter. When there was a hole big enough for them to squeeze through, Ichiro shut his pen-laser off and holstered it.
‘I need to spend more time down in R&D,’ said Sarah, impressed.
Ichiro grinned. ‘Just do not point it in anyone’s eye.’ Sarah rolled hers. The three of them ducked through the hole in the door, into the bunker.
Joshua wondered if he was the only one who thought this had been way too easy so far.
The interior of the bunker was not what Joshua had imagined. He had expected tight, claustrophobic concrete passages, bunks for soldiers, maybe an ops centre with communications equipment. Instead they entered through a brightly lit, plush lobby, complete with potted ferns, a fountain, and a secretary’s desk.
As they walked down the hall, the lady at the desk looked up from her work and gasped. Sarah raised her bloodied sword. Joshua dashed ahead of her and grabbed the receptionist in a headlock. He held her until she passed out, then dropped her softly to the ground. Sarah shrugged and pointed at the air duct above the desk.
‘Oh no, it’s your turn to go in the tight crawlspace,’ Joshua said.
‘Fine, give me a minute to get the lights in the next room.’ Sarah scrambled up to the vent, ripped the grate off using her suit’s strength and wiggled into the duct.
‘And then what?’ Joshua called after her. ‘You have a plan, I assume?’
‘...Always,’ came her reply, echoing off the air duct.
Joshua watched her shapely behind fade away, half wishing to follow. Ichiro snapped his fingers in his face.
‘Hey, wake up lover boy. You have confused feelings? Now is not the time,’ Ichiro tutted.
Joshua couldn’t argue. He kept his eyes on the light from the bottom of the door to the next room. ‘Do you think... you know, she and I...?’ he started.
Ichiro sighed. ‘You Americans... Naze kurushimanakereba naranai...’ he rambled off into Japanese.
Joshua couldn’t help but crack a smile.
The lights in the next room went out without warning. Hopefully that was Sarah’s work. They could hear yelps of fear from inside.
‘What’s the plan?’ Joshua whispered, unnecessarily.
‘I was just chasing after you,’ Ichiro shot back. ‘Do you not know where Brock is? We could be searching for hours!’
‘There will be a battalion of goons here by then,’ Joshua said, thinking hard. ‘If you had created the bio-ID’s interface, where would the Confederates keep you?’
Ichiro caught on. ‘Ah! In isolation, to keep everything in a controlled environment. Easy for the boss to keep tabs on.’
‘Right, Prewett said he’d never even met Brock, they both worked on separate components of the bio-ID,’ said Joshua, running with the idea now. He pointed at the door, tightly sealed with a retinal scanner off to the side. ‘Brock wouldn’t be allowed to work in a team. He’d be locked in his office.’
‘And how exactly do we find his office?’ Ichiro asked. ‘There are no visitor pamphlets handy,’ he said, looking around the lobby as if a tour group might wander through any second. Joshua picked up the unconscious receptionist and held her up to the retinal scanner.
‘Simple,’ Joshua smiled. ‘We ask for directions.’
The doors slid apart with a swish. Joshua and Ichiro rushed through into the darkness beyond, their suits’ camo easily hiding them. They weren’t taking any more chances however. Sarah may have killed the lights for them, but she wasn’t exactly subtle when it came to killing anything else. Being in a hurry was no excuse. Joshua made a mental note to talk to her about it later. He didn’t like how robotic she seemed to behave. What had happened to make her this way?
He and Ichiro had entered into a wide room filled with low, carpeted cubicles.
So this is where their conscripts work, thought Joshua. Looks almost ordinary.
Each cubicle had an old fashioned desktop computer, with cables snaking all over the floor.
Clever. Joshua huffed in admiration. It would be easier for the Confederacy to keep an eye on what
their scientists were up to, without letting them use any wireless networks that the iPCs required. Keeps everything isolated.
The juice was out, but in the dim light cast by the computers’ power backups, Joshua could see hundreds of people panicking. Some huddled in groups while others clawed at one of the other exits. Sarah must have gained control of the doors, as the way back to the lobby behind Joshua had now sealed itself. The underground bunker would have been claustrophobic at the best of times, now it was positively oppressing. Joshua felt a pang of remorse for these people. Most had never wanted to be here, torn from their familys’ arms when the Confederacy came knocking with some newly invented law.
He stayed low, indicating for Ichiro to do the same. They scrambled around the office cubicles in a crouch run. It wouldn’t have mattered. With the lights out, everyone was cast in silhouette. They hugged the outside wall, and Joshua finally ran into a map of the area. It was a simple not-to-scale diagram intended for new recruits, showing which rooms adjoined each other.
‘Here,’ said Ichiro, pausing. He tapped a small room on the map with a finger. ‘Experimental technology. That is where they would have Brock. It is a secure wing.’ He traced a line with his finger down to a larger room, labelled “Observation”. ‘This is us here,’ he said. Ichiro pointed across the room. They couldn’t see the other side through the gloom. ‘That way.’
‘Are you crazy, man?’ Joshua whispered fiercely. He glanced around, but no one had heard the sound from the seemingly empty area.
‘Come on, do not be a baby,’ Ichiro whispered back, then hustled away into the depths of the room.
Joshua hesitated, and someone darted in front of him, nearly toppling over his invisible form, before hurrying off to beat on another exit. Ichiro had vanished. Sarah was long gone. Joshua was rooted to the spot, panic rising in him, the room’s mood becoming infectious. He couldn’t go back the way he had come. He thought he had gone mad when he saw a head bobbing towards him, low to the ground. It got closer and Joshua recognised Ichiro, the hood of his jumpsuit thrown back to reveal his face.
‘I have found Brock,’ he said. ‘But you are not going to like this.’
Chapter 21
Joshua trotted behind Ichiro as they slipped past Confederate guards and security checkpoints, as they wound their way through the huge “Observation” room. He briefly wondered what it was they were observing here. The room itself was fully enclosed, with no windows or viewing areas. That meant the scientists had to have been observing things on their desktop computers. With the power out there was no way to snoop on what they were up to.
Ichiro reached the far wall and stopped at a door. This one was different. This door was a thick slab of cast iron; its hinges were bigger than Joshua. The door itself stood four metres tall and swung out over a wide area into the Observation Room.
Joshua figured it was normally well guarded, but Sarah’s distraction had saved them a lot of trouble. He wondered where she was, and hoped she wasn’t currently slaughtering the men who had been posted to guard the door.
Ichiro whipped out his pen-laser and hit the button. It flashed, sputtered and died.
‘Argh, tawagoto,’ he muttered.
‘Forgot to charge the battery this morning?’ Joshua grunted.
‘Hmph, there is a portal on that side.’ Ichiro led Joshua over to a thick glass slit in the gigantic door. The hole was too small to fit an arm through, but Joshua could see a wide panorama of the room beyond.
There were computer parts and manufacturing equipment strewn everywhere, like an orgy of evidence. Squatting atop a pile of useless parts heaped high off the ground was a man in a lab coat. He swayed precariously on the soles of his feet and rubbed the temple of his brow with his hands. As Joshua watched, he hit himself with an open palm over his forehead, and then went back to rubbing. But Joshua recognised him from Prewett’s photo. It was Brock.
‘What is wrong with him? It looks like he has lost his mind,’ Ichiro said.
‘Let’s get him back to Prewett, he’ll figure it out.’ Joshua looked around. ‘How do we open this thing?’
Before Ichiro could answer, a section of roof crashed down over their heads. They were covered in white chalky dust, revealing the outline of their bodies. No one in the room noticed, because at the same instant a distraction disc set to overload sounded from the other end of the room, back the way they had come. The powerful noise brought every last guard in the room running away from their position. They’d be back shortly however, and not at all happy to have been fooled.
When the dust from the collapsed ceiling had cleared Joshua looked up into Sarah’s eyes.
‘So that was you huh. All part of your plan right?’
‘Actually yes,’ said Sarah. ‘I did a bit of scouting while you two fumbled about in the dark.’
‘And?’
‘There’s another way into that room.’ Sarah nodded at the imposing iron door. ‘Through Mr. Meyrick’s office.’
The three of them were crawling through the air ducts before Joshua could say a word of protest. He couldn’t deny it was an efficient way to travel, since every scrap of air had to be pumped in through the ducts to each room. Though the high priority areas, like the Experimental Technology room Brock was in, would have their own separate air circulator.
Joshua just felt like a rat in a trap, and he had plenty of experience trapping rats, it never ended well for them.
Fortunately the journey was over quick and Joshua dropped down with the others into a plush private office adjoining the room Brock was in.
Joshua barely had time to take in more than the sickly green carpet and overly large mahogany desk before he noticed the cries from a man, in the middle of the room, bound with plastic handcuffs. Sarah had worked her magic on him already. She pranced over and gave him a swift kick in the ribs. The man looked as though he would rather die than be found in this position.
‘How do you know this is really Meyrick?’ Joshua asked.
‘I went through his emails. They’re all stored locally on his desktop PC,’ Sarah snorted derisively. ‘He’s been in contact with Ryan since the day he arrived at the Academy,’ she spat. ‘Ryan called himself a Fletcher, which means Meyrick must know something about them.’
Joshua nodded as he wandered around the large office, and Ichiro tagged along to study the walls. There were banks of screens covering most of them, monitoring the scientists in the Observation room, among others areas. So they’d found who policed the police. It was never-ending.
And a fine job he was doing, mused Joshua. He imagined the thousands of people tucked away further down the Colonnade, forced every day to construct more of the Confederacy’s dreaded drones. How many of them had been kidnapped into slavery on Meyrick’s orders? Joshua felt no sympathy for the man’s current predicament, down on the green carpet.
‘Hey guys check this out!’ Ichiro said, as he grabbed a framed picture off the wall. Meyrick increased the pitch and intensity of his wails when he saw this. Ichiro must have been on to something.
Joshua and Sarah crowded around him to get a look at the picture. It was a group of twenty people posing in rows like a team. Mr. Meyrick, struggling away on the floor next to them, was one of the faces. His picture was as fat and happy as he could possibly be, like a cliché image of a banker in a top hat and tails. All he needed was a pocket watch and monocle to complete the impression.
‘Not so jolly now eh, Mr. Moneybags?’ Joshua asked him. Meyrick stared daggers back.
Joshua recognised a General’s stars on the shoulder on one of the men in the photo. Had Meyrick known the General before the war? He recognised none of the others. They had no names. There was no way to trace them.
But one other man was unmistakeable; his face was being constantly broadcast throughout Chicago by his fleet of drones. It was Simeon Warner.
Which meant that everyone in the photo, including this pathetic creature worming on the floor, was a member of the Hig
h Council of the Confederacy.
Sarah snatched the picture off Ichiro and stomped over to Meyrick. She brandished it in his face.
‘Who are these other people?!’ she bellowed at him. ‘Tell me their names!’ Meyrick kept right on squirming, but he couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to with the gag in his mouth. Sarah seemed to have forgotten she wanted him to speak. She ripped the gag off and hit him with the picture. The glass shattered and she stuck the corner of the frame in his mouth and clamped his jaw down.
Joshua turned away, not wanting to see Sarah’s terrifying half again. Ichiro’s face paled, he looked like he wanted to puke. After a minute of listening to Meyrick gurgle and shriek, Joshua resolved to intervene. As he began to turn and rebuke Sarah, a sudden movement on one of the security feeds caught his eye.
Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were streaming into the bunker from the landing platform.
Joshua shouted at Sarah. ‘We’re done! Forget Meyrick!’ He pushed Ichiro towards the back door of the Experimental Technology Room. ‘Get in there and grab Brock!’
Joshua glanced inside at the piles of components Brock was perched atop of. The room was a mess; everything had just been dumped in there like trash. But it was a treasure trove of gadgets. Tracking devices, probes and recorders. Stacks of iPCs that sent a shiver down his spine as they seemed to follow him around the room.
Ichiro was trying to convince Brock to come down without hurting himself any further. He wasn’t having much luck. Brock was acting like a child in a timeout room, hitting his head and moaning with his eyes shut tight. Finally Ichiro simply leaped up on the pile in a single bound and scooped up Brock in his arms. He kept right on hitting himself.
Several small devices strewn about a table top caught Joshua’s attention. They were shaped like wristbands, with a single button and a large lump on one side. One was flickering a projection off and on from the lump. It projected a circle of energy that looked similar to the Stunner beams. Joshua hefted a circuit board and hurled it at the circle of energy. It bounced off, smouldering. He chose a wristband that wasn’t flickering, put it over his wrist, and mashed the button. The projection flared to life, creating a shield over his torso. This would come in handy.
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