The tunnel’s rock gave way to fabricated walls and platforms of chrome and glass. The compartment brightened, causing the Spindlefingers to shield their small, reddish eyes in unison. Cooper didn’t move; he simply concentrated on maintaining the illusion and looked for signage that might indicate their level or location.
He had visited the Workshop’s headquarters on two occasions. The first was when he was relatively new to the Red Branch and snuck in with Antonio de Lorca to spy on the engineers’ latest initiatives. The second was several years ago when he’d accompanied Max McDaniels and David Menlo on a quest to recover Bram’s Key. Cooper’s memory was excellent and he recalled everything he had seen on both visits—the Workshop’s layout, research areas, dormitories, and transportation networks.
The main building was an inconceivably enormous pyramid set within an even larger cavern four miles underground. He had arrived by car on his last visit and there had been no visible train tracks leading into the gargantuan facility. Unless something had changed, they would be arriving at a sublevel somewhere beneath the main gates. Living quarters were located in the pyramid’s upper levels, reached by pod tubes that could be accessed at frequent intervals throughout the facility.
When the train eased to a stop, the Spindlefingers clambered out, one after the other, and filed toward the back of the train.
“We wait ten seconds and go,” Cooper whispered. “How do you feel, Hazel?”
“Rather exhilarated.”
He glanced over to gauge her sarcasm. There was none. His wife was beaming.
“This cloak-and-dagger stuff’s exciting,” she observed. “I’ll be in the Red Branch yet.”
Cooper grinned. “Forget fading, then. Light’s too bright anyway. Can you manage a nondescript engineer?”
She flexed her fingers. “I think so.”
“And how about you, Toby?” asked Cooper.
The smee fired up at once. “Child’s play!”
“Good. Follow my lead and let me do any talking.”
Three Workshop engineers climbed out of the cramped compartment and walked forward through clouds of cool water vapor. The station was large and brightly lit with half a dozen tracks and platforms. A robotic feminine voice was speaking over a loudspeaker, welcoming the arrivals.
As Cooper climbed a stairwell onto the platform, he saw that passengers were this train’s only cargo. And not just any passengers, but senior personnel and dignitaries from the capital. Among the engineers and diplomatic liaisons, Cooper counted ten imps, three kitsune, and an imperious rakshasa wearing golden robes and an expression of bored, smoldering disdain. This certainly explained the unscheduled train; rakshasa went wherever they liked whenever they chose. Judging by the anxious expressions on the Workshop guards’ faces, this visit was a surprise.
Setting down his pack, Cooper pretended to search for something, anxious for the demons to go well ahead before they followed. While Toby’s shape-shifting could fool most demons, Cooper’s and Hazel’s illusions would not. Demons could perceive auras. Spying two mehrùn would make a rakshasa very curious.
While the rakshasa posed a potential problem, he also served as a wonderful distraction. The demon’s presence so terrified and overwhelmed the engineers that no one gave Cooper and his companions a second glance as they brought up the rear and left the platforms through the sliding doors.
They followed the group for fifty yards into a glassed atrium with artificial sunlight before Cooper led them off down another hallway. He walked confidently, pretending to be reading something on the imaginary device his illusion was holding while Toby and Hazel trailed behind him. A pair of junior engineers was waiting at a pod bank. Cooper halted beside them, nodded hello, and went back to consulting his imaginary computer. The engineers continued their quiet conversation.
A pod arrived within thirty seconds, a silvery egg-shaped vehicle that slid to a smooth, hovering stop within the tube. The junior engineers stepped aside so their superiors could enter first. Cooper brushed past them and occupied one of the molded seats that ringed the pod’s interior. Hazel and Toby sat next to him as the two engineers filed in. They remained standing.
“Where are you going, sir?” asked the first in German.
“Dormitories,” muttered Cooper, his accent flawless.
“Eh, which ones?”
“You tell me,” said Cooper irritably, flicking his pretend computer screen. “I need Dr. Barrett. Jason Barrett. This damn thing isn’t working.” He flicked it again.
“Would you like me to look at it?” offered the engineer.
Cooper shook his head. “Just look up Dr. Barrett for me, eh? It’s urgent that I speak with him.”
The other engineer produced his computer at once and began searching. “It’s a busy day for everyone, I see.”
“Why?” asked Cooper. “What are you two doing?”
“Joining the search party,” replied the first. “There’s been a security breach.”
Leaning forward, Cooper casually moved his hand toward the blade at his hip. “You’re joking.”
“Not at all, sir,” replied the second. “Something’s been stolen.”
“What?”
The engineers exchanged embarrassed glances.
“A hag.”
“Pardon?”
“A hag, sir. There was a specimen in the Exotics wing, and it was discovered missing this morning.”
“When was it stolen?”
“We don’t yet know,” said the first. “The security camera was disabled and a hole was cut in the exhibit glass. The hag was taken and a note was left in her place.”
“What did the note say?”
The engineers reddened. “Obscenities, sir. Misspelled obscenities. They don’t bear repeating.”
Cooper stifled a smile. “It must be a prank. Who on earth would steal a hag?”
“We don’t know, sir, but Dr. Rasmussen’s furious. He’s taken a special interest in the case.”
I’ll bet he has, thought Cooper. Bellagrog, Mum, and the haglings had nearly devoured the Workshop’s former leader to avenge their cousin’s captivity. The idea that there might be hags nearby—stealthy, vengeful hags—must have terrified him.
“Well,” said Cooper, “good luck with your search. Now, if you will tell me where I might find Dr. Barrett.”
The second engineer tapped his screen. “SE-Sixteen, Apartment Four,” he said. When his colleague input the destinations, the pod proceeded smoothly ahead. It went about two hundred yards before reaching a vertical tube and accelerating straight up, gliding serenely past a dozen floors until they were staring down at the vast, interior spaces of the main level where redwood trees stretched toward artificial sunlight that filtered down from a false ceiling hundreds of feet above. The last time Cooper had seen those trees, he was marching out the front gate where Astaroth, Marley Augur, and an armed host were waiting for them.
The trees disappeared as their pod glided up past several floors dedicated to research and laboratories. It came to a stop and the young engineers bid them good day and departed. When the doors closed, Toby exhaled.
“How can you stand it?” he asked, mopping his forehead.
“What?” asked Cooper.
“You’re hiding in plain sight!”
“So are you.”
The smee pinched his fleshy cheeks. “But this is actually me! You two are just sitting there, plain as day. You might as well write spy on your foreheads.”
“You already know who we are,” Hazel pointed out. “Your brain expects to see us and thus you do. Have a look at our reflections.”
The smee glanced at their images, faint in the pod’s smooth, curving glass: a middle-aged engineer and a younger one whose features were not dissimilar to the man Cooper had strangled. Mirrors strengthened illusions. A person who questioned an illusion in the flesh would almost always believe it in a mirror. Cooper had exploited this fact on many occasions. Once or twice it had saved his life.
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“Well, I suppose I can unclench,” sighed the smee. “And apparently the haglings have rescued the hapless Gertie. Good for them. I never thought they could pull it off, the beastly nippers. What’s the plan when we reach this Dr. Barrett’s room?”
Cooper rose as the pod slowed. “We knock. If he’s not home, we hide and wait.”
“And this fellow attended Rowan?”
“Valedictorian,” said Hazel. “An excellent student.”
Toby clucked his tongue triumphantly. “And now he’s our spy!”
Cooper looked down at the smee. “Jason’s under psychnosis. He doesn’t think he’s on our side anymore. Stay back until until the trigger phrase takes hold. I may need to subdue him.”
The pod came to a halt, its doors opening as it hovered before an intersection of modern residential corridors. Leaving the pod, they entered a profoundly subdued environment whose neutral walls were smooth, the lighting recessed, the artwork tastefully bland. A piano sonata played from unseen speakers, but beneath the music, one could detect the Brownian buzz of energy coursing through the walls and floors. A woman’s voice, calm and artificial, interrupted the music.
“This is a security alert. Unauthorized persons may be at large in the Workshop. The museum wing is closed until further notice. Report any suspicious activity to Central Command. Have a productive day.”
Following posted signs, they made their way to SE16, which was a corridor in the pyramid’s southeast quadrant. Soft music was playing once again as they passed a young engineer munching a piece of fruit and clutching a computer tablet as she trudged off to work the evening shift in some laboratory. She nodded hello, her features eerily similar to those of Hazel’s illusion. The Workshop was a great believer in the economies of scale. When they liked something, they made it again and again. This extended to human beings.
Jason Barrett answered on the third knock. Apparently he had been asleep, for he stood shirtless in the doorway, looking tousled and somewhat annoyed. “What is it?” He yawned. “This is the first I’ve slept in two—”
Cooper leaned forward. “Three little kittens have lost their mittens.”
Upon hearing the rhyme, Jason’s face went slack. He opened his mouth as if to speak and promptly shut it again. He looked profoundly lost and disoriented. “Am I dreaming?” he wondered aloud.
“No. Invite us in and we’ll explain.”
The young man stood aside as they stepped in, gazing at Toby and Hazel as if they, too, were apparitions. When he closed the door, Cooper dispelled his illusion.
“You know who I am?”
Jason nodded slowly, his eyes traveling over Cooper’s scarred, disfigured face. “Are you here to kill me?”
“Of course not,” Hazel interjected, dropping her own disguise and becoming a familiar face. “It’s excellent to see you, Jason Barrett. You’re looking well.”
“Miss Boon?”
“Mrs. Cooper,” she corrected, smiling. She eyed the apartment and its stark kitchenette with pinched disapproval. “Do you have any tea?”
“Just coffee,” said Jason, pointing absently at a machine.
“You’re worse than Menlo,” she sighed, breezing past him to investigate. “Will I need an advanced degree to operate this?”
“Just hit the green button,” Jason murmured, his eyes falling on Toby. “Who are you?”
The smee’s engineer puffed out his chest.
“His name’s Toby,” said Cooper, heading off the smee before he could recite various monikers and exploits. “Have a seat, Jason, and I’ll explain.”
The young man sat at a small dining table, staring at his visitors as though still trying to process what was really happening. Placing his pack upon the table, Cooper sat across from him.
“When you graduated from Rowan, you volunteered for a process called psychnosis. Under its influence, you became a staunch Workshop convert capable of earning trust and advancement. All these years, you have been our man on the inside—you just didn’t know it.” From his pack, Cooper retrieved a slim metal box and slid it across the table.
“What’s that?” asked Jason, looking anxiously at it.
“A package. From yourself.”
Frowning, Jason picked up the box and turned it over in his hands. When he tried to open it, he found that it was locked. “I think it needs a key.”
Cooper gestured at Dr. Barrett’s neck. “You’re wearing it.”
The engineer’s hand drifted up to a chain that had his parents’ initials engraved on a small charm. Removing it, he examined its length before squinting at its unusual clasp. When he fit the clasp into the keyhole, the box’s cover sprang open. Inside was an envelope. Breaking the seal, Jason removed a folded letter.
“This is my handwriting,” he breathed, his eyes moving slowly down the page. Jason’s eyes widened in what seemed like blossoming awareness. Rowan’s top psychnosist—a scholar named Vivek—had told Cooper the subject’s letter almost always ensured successful reorientation. It looked like Vivek may have been right.
Putting down the letter, Jason closed his eyes and massaged his temples. Hazel set down a coffee before him and took the neighboring seat. When Jason opened his eyes, a steady, determined gaze had replaced the look of foggy bewilderment.
“I remember,” he said. “I remember everything.”
“Good,” said Cooper. “Because I need to know everything you do about Prusias’s Workshop defenses.”
“Okay,” said Jason, drumming the table with his fingers. “Let me think of the best way to break it down.
Revived with coffee, Jason provided them with a concise overview. It was a sobering discussion. Even if Rowan’s army could win its way to the city gates, Jason did not believe they could possibly break or force the gates open. The walls were no better, standing hundreds of feet high and constructed of something called folded masonry.
“Perhaps we could scale them,” Toby suggested.
Jason shook his head. “Their surface is almost frictionless—far slicker and smoother than anything you’ve ever touched.”
“Are all the walls made of that?” asked Cooper.
“No,” said Jason. “Too expensive. Just the outer curtain. Even if you could somehow breach the walls or gates, five dreadnoughts are stationed within.”
“Are the dreadnoughts still controlled by imps?” inquired Hazel hopefully.
“Not after David Menlo possessed the ones attacking Rowan. Prusias banned that approach. These dreadnoughts can’t be summoned instantly to a location by a pinlegs but they can’t be possessed either. They use artificial intelligence.”
It was Cooper’s turn to massage his temples. Until David had possessed the dreadnoughts, the colossal creatures had been poised to obliterate Rowan.
“Are more dreadnoughts stationed throughout the city?” he asked.
“No, they make too many people nervous. Once you get to the inner tiers, the only Workshop creatures you’ll find are gargoyles. You’ll find them throughout Blys.”
“What on earth are gargoyles?” asked Hazel, frowning.
Pushing back from the table, Jason led them into a small office with a sleek workstation. Sitting down, he input a password and leaned forward into a retinal scanner before pulling up several images that made Toby recoil.
“What in the bloody hell is that?”
Cooper shared Toby’s disgust. The creature resembled a muscular spider with many eyes, suction-padded feet, and a tusked and tentacled mouth. From the orthographic drawings, it looked to be some twenty feet tall with a multibarreled artillery turret on its back and a control capsule containing two human operators.
“It’s highly mobile and has three different guns with different calibers and ranges. The smallest can fire a hundred rounds per second without overheating.”
“How accurate are they?” asked Cooper.
“They don’t miss. Once a target’s chosen, the computations are instantaneous—distance, elevation, wind speed.
Here’s a demonstration. I’ll warn you it isn’t pretty.”
Punching a key, Jason pulled up a film clip showing a gargoyle leaping onto a vertical test wall and running powerfully up its surface. Once atop the battlement, the hideous creature turned about just as three gazelles were simultaneously released from automated cages spaced well apart on a field. The frightened animals promptly bolted in three different directions. The gargoyle’s guns moved in a blur of flashing muzzles. The gazelles simply vanished into red mist.
“Dear God,” breathed Hazel.
Cooper stared at the screen. “How many of those does Prusias have?”
“Six hundred.”
Toby let out a shriek. “Six hundred? Six hundred of those monstrosities shuffling about the city walls and mowing down everything in sight? We have to contact David and tell him to turn the army around!”
Jason glanced quizzically at Toby. “Are you an Agent?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never heard an Agent shriek before.”
Toby scowled. “I am a smee, sir. A smee that will not be a party to needless slaughter. Cooper, I appeal to you—we must stop this madness. Rowan cannot possibly—”
Cooper held up his hand. He asked Jason to replay the clip in slow motion. This time he could actually see the guns independently aim and fire at the three targets from the back of the stationary gargoyle. The sequence was so swift he had missed it the first time. “No human did that,” he muttered. “What are the operators for?”
“They steer the gargoyle using controls connected directly into the creature’s brain,” said Jason. “A computer fires the guns.”
“How does the computer select its targets?”
Jason zoomed in on the gargoyle’s compound eyes. “The computer’s tied into the gargoyle’s vision, which can pick up movement, heat signatures, you name it. Once the gargoyle’s in attack mode, the guns will target anything in the kill zone that isn’t an HVA.”
“What’s an HVA?” asked Hazel.
“Sorry,” said Jason. “I give almost everything an acronym—helps me remember. HVA stands for ‘high-value asset.’ Prusias doesn’t want important persons killed indiscriminately. He prefers them captured.”
The Red Winter Page 36
