‘Thank you, Sir,’ she said, and turned to her team. ‘Ready? Okay, let’s go.’
Frankie walked up the ramp and found her usual spot and strapped herself in before rechecking her guns. As usual, she carried her two Carran Arms guns, the M.14 rifle and the P.22 pistol strapped to her leg.
Since dealing with Hellion a few weeks back, she had also taken to carrying a blade on her back as well and using it whenever the chance arose. She wanted to be better with it.
Seconds later, everyone was strapped in, and the flyer rose up into the night sky of Neo-London before powering away towards the edge of the city. They were headed north east, and it would take them a good few minutes to get where they wanted to go, so Frankie sat back and watched as the city lights floated past the window. The slowest part was getting through the towers of the central part of the city where they had to take it slow, keep out of the established lanes of air traffic, and avoid the towering dagger shaped buildings that reached for the stars.
‘So, what’s the plan when we get there? I’m guessing they will have security on site,’ Cole asked.
Frankie sat up. She was going to go through this in a few minutes, but, as Cole brought it up, she figured now was as good a time as any.
‘We’ll drop in using the wing-suit function of your stealth suit. Gibson and Kalypso have assessed the security of the building, and a roof assault seemed the best option. As we fall, I will tag and assign targets for each of you. You will need to take them out quietly, ideally without them alerting others to our presence. Use your neural plugs to neutralise them. We’ll then meet up and head inside. From there, we’ll be feeling our way a bit as we don’t know the layout, but hopefully, it will become self-evident as we progress where we need to be. Any questions?’
No one had any, so she sat back down and returned her gaze to the vista outside the window.
‘We’re thirty seconds out,’ Jude said over the comms suddenly.
Frankie unclipped herself and moved to the rear of the flyer, where she pressed the button to lower the rear ramp. The hydraulics wailed as they levered open, revealing the skyline of the city of Neo-London in the distance. Innumerable towers stretched up into the sky, lit up by a million lights of all colours while spot lights swung this way and that. It was a beautiful sight from out here, and you could really begin to appreciate the size of the city as well. They were miles out from the centre now, but the towers spread right across the section of the horizon they could see out the back of the flyer.
‘Arrival in ten,’ Jude said over the neural link he shared with them.
‘Copy that,’ Frankie answered as she turned on an overlay in her vision that tagged the building they were heading towards. The holographic lines in her vision moved as the flyer slowed to a stop a short distance from the target. They didn’t want to get too close. Otherwise, they would likely be spotted. It was better for them to jump out at a high altitude and fly in using the wing suits.
‘We’re on station,’ Jude said over the link.
‘You heard the man, you ready for this?’ Frankie asked to a chorus of affirmative answers. Satisfied that everyone was ready, she took three steps to the end of the ramp and jumped out, enabling her suit’s wing configuration the moment she left the aircraft. Sheets of thin material snapped out between her arms and body on both sides and another between her legs, turning her into a flying wing. She stretched her arms and legs out to pull it taut as it caught the wind and suddenly, she wasn’t falling anymore; she was gliding.
She gave it a few seconds to let everyone else jump from the aircraft before she opened the link between them all.
‘Everyone okay so far?’ she asked. Every one of them came back with a brief affirmative answer as they shot through the night sky, silent and nearly invisible in their black outfits. Frankie used her enhanced vision to zoom in on the building ahead and switched to night vision. Suddenly, she could see as clear as day, although her vision was now black and white. But she could easily make out the guards on the rooftop as they moved lazily around its perimeter. The chances were that they had never seen any action up on that roof, so they would have their guards down and not be expecting attackers to drop from the sky.
Frankie tagged each of the guards, assigning each of them to one of her teammates, and one to herself. She wasn’t about to lose out on some action early on.
Focusing on the target up ahead, Frankie adjusted her position and angle of descent, aiming right for the guard. As she dropped lower and lower, it was as if the buildings shot by below her even quicker. Frankie knew it wasn’t, of course, it was just the proximity to the buildings that gave her that impression. She forced herself to ignore it, though, and keep her focus on the job at hand and make sure she hit her target. She watched him walk, tried to anticipate his movements and follow him as he went, making tiny adjustments to her flight path as she dropped.
At the last possible moment, she changed her position, dropping her legs and putting herself flat on to her target, making her wingsuit act as an air brake to slow her down, allowing her to make a more controlled landing. Half a second before she slammed into her target guard, the webbing between her limbs snapped back into her stealth suit and she kicked out with her foot.
The guard turned at that moment, seemingly sensing her approach, but it was too late for him, and she kicked him solidly in the face. His head snapped back, and he flipped over backwards as blood squirted everywhere from his smashed nose.
Frankie dropped to the floor, ending up standing over the guard as she heard more dull smacks from her teammates hitting their own targets.
Not a single gunshot was fired.
Frankie reached down and grabbed the unconscious man and flipped him over. She pulled the collar of his jacket down and spotted two sockets on the back of his neck. All cyberbrains were implanted with at least one hard wired port as standard. Most cyberbrains worked wirelessly, but in the case of some kind of error or failure, having a socket you could plug into was always useful. However, it could also be a weakness if you had the right tech. Frankie pulled out a small metallic device from her belt pouch that was little more than a small plug with a tiny bit of tech on the end. They were neural disrupter plugs and could be programmed to do various things. The A.C.T. used them whenever they took an outsider to their secret base to disrupt their GPS and mapping systems, but they could be used to keep a hostage from accessing the web or keep them incapacitated entirely. Frankie slotted one of these plugs into one of the sockets on the back of the guard's neck. An icon in her vision popped up to show her the plug was online and keeping him incapacitated.
‘Down and clear,’ Frankie said over the team’s link, satisfied that the guard was no longer a threat.
‘Clear,’ each of them repeated after her, letting her know that their landing had been a success.
‘Move to the hatch,’ Frankie said, and swung her gun from her back, giving it a very brief check over to make sure it was all okay before she started to step over the roof. It was quiet and dark up here, with very few lights to speak of. The trapdoor down into the building below was easy to find as it had a light next to it, marking its location. Frankie made her way over to it, using her night vision to watch her teammates as they approached from various points on the roof. Thirty seconds later, she was standing next to her entire team. ‘Open it,’ she said to Gibson, who was closest. Everyone’s gun was up and ready as Gibson reached down and gave the handle on the hatch a good pull. The hatch lifted up easily and light spilt out into the night.
‘Hey, what’s up? Your shift doesn’t end for another two hours, dude,’ said a voice from below.
Frankie didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward and dropped down the hole, tucking her arms in as she dropped, before landing cleanly on the concrete below. She was in a mid-sized oblong room with a table and chairs on the far side next to a door. Two guys sat at the table, one with his feet up, and both of them held playing cards. They looked up at the sound of
her dropping in and froze in place, obviously shocked at this turn of events. Frankie raised her gun and stepped into the room and away from the hatch, which was directly above her.
Both guards just stared at her for a moment, but as she stepped in towards them, they leaned back in their chairs, clearly scared of her, and raised their hands in surrender.
‘Who’s down there?’ Gibson said over their link.
‘Two guys. Just security guards by the looks of them. I just need one of you down here to help me deal with them. Once they’re subdued, I’ll bring the rest of you through. No need to reveal our hand to these guys so early on,’ she said.
‘Understood. I’ll come down,’ Gibson said.
‘Both of you, on the floor, face down with your hands behind your head. Do it slowly,’ she said and watched both of them move slowly into the position she asked of them.
Gibson, having made it down, stepped up next to Frankie. ‘Everything under control?’ he asked through the link.
‘Seems to be. Can you plug them for me?’ she asked.
‘No problem,’ Gibson answered her and stepped over, pulling the tech from his pocket. After a few more moments, they were both incapacitated on the floor.
Okay, let’s go. You can come down guys,’ she said over their link while moving over to the only door in and out of here. There was a reinforced square window in the top of the door around head height, so Frankie peered out through it into the corridor beyond. It looked empty for now, so she tried the door, opening it easily. The hallway went straight ahead away from the door she stood in, and also went to her right as well. Both directions were deserted, and doors were spaced along the walls of both corridors. It wasn’t terribly well appointed in here, just smooth hard flooring and barely decorated walls.
‘Which way?’ Frankie asked through her link.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Kalypso said. ‘Just choose one; let’s see what we find.’
‘Fair enough,’ Frankie answered and stepped out, deciding to go straight. After a few steps, she took out a black plastic box from her belt and opened it. Inside were six tiny, barely visible, autonomous drones. Frankie accessed the icon for them in her vision, and suddenly each of them started to buzz and come to life. She issued two simple commands to them from choices on a menu in her vision, to map the building and to do it stealthily. With that, the six drones buzzed again before lifting off from the box. They did make a quiet high pitched noise as they flew, very much like a mosquito would make. If you weren’t close to it, you couldn’t really hear it, and while they were in stealth mode, they would be looking for movement. If they noticed something on their sensors, something that suggested a person, they would land and power down somewhere discrete until the threat had gone.
The drones were tiny and looked just like small flies when seen at a distance. The six little robots split up and disappeared down the corridor. They wouldn’t go far, but would send location info back to Frankie that would allow her cyberbrain to map the building. They could also send a low-quality video feed to her if she requested it, which was useful. For now, though, she just needed a map of the building.
Frankie tucked the box back into the pouch on the back of her belt and looked up to see a door to her left labelled as “Observation Lab”.
She stopped and took another look. This sounded promising, she thought. She motioned to the door. ‘We’re breaching this door,’ she said silently over their link, and backed up, aiming her gun at it.
Gibson, Veronica, Cole, and Kalypso stood to either side of the door, and once they were ready, Frankie stepped forward and gave the door a good solid kick, aiming her boot close to the handle to try and break the lock.
Frankie was one of the strongest in the group, so kicking a door down wasn’t too difficult for her. The door slammed open, splintering the frame where she’d broken the lock and she stepped through into the room. She found herself in a wide rectangular room, lined with tables and terminals along the walls. The entire wall opposite the door, above a row of tables, was glass and looked out into an enormous open warehouse-sized room below.
Several men and women sat in here, working away on computers while a couple of guys to her left sat at what looked to be security terminals giving them video feed to watch. Everyone in the room turned to look at Frankie as her team followed her in, their guns raised and ready to be used.
Everyone in the room looked shocked, and as one of them raised their hands, the others followed suit, even the security guards. Frankie smiled. Using lethal force was part of her job, it was something she had been doing since she had first gone on the run from Psytech, and although it hadn’t led to a significant change in her personality, as she had once thought it would, it was not something she enjoyed doing. It was just a necessary and officially sanctioned part of her job, but one that she would be happy to never do again whenever that time came. So far, the people in this building were either workers or security guards rather than the more highly trained and ruthless operators and agents. She hoped that the rest of the mission would go as smoothly as this while she directed the people in here to lay down on their fronts with their hands behind their heads.
Moments later, all the people in here were laid face down on the ground as her team inserted neural plugs into their necks. As they worked, Frankie wandered over to the bank of video feeds that the guards were watching. As she looked, it soon became obvious that all the video on these monitors was from the room below. There wasn’t a single feed from elsewhere in the building.
When she’d first broken in here, she’d wondered why her team had not been spotted by these guys, but it seemed they weren’t even looking for her. Frankie frowned and walked over to the window to look down into the room below. What was so important down there, she wondered.
The room below was huge. Frankie and her team were on the top story, and the floor in there was maybe three or four levels below, giving her a great view over the whole room for the most part. She could see all kinds of things down there, including tables and terminals. Medical equipment sat next to beds with people laying on them. There were several cyber beds down there, many of them with people on them, as well a huge vat of curious looking liquid, submersion tanks, and stasis pods. The room was quite dimly lit, and there wasn’t much movement, either. It was night time, though, which was likely the reason most of the lights were off. She guessed this would be a fairly busy room during the day, but for now, although they were being watched by these guys, the patients down there had been left to sleep through the night.
Frankie looked to her right and saw Gibson looking through the windows as well. She walked over to him and put her hand on his back. ‘Do you think she’s down there?’ Frankie asked.
‘I don’t know. I hope so, but it seems too easy almost,’ he said.
‘Maybe one of these guys would know?’ Frankie asked, turning back to the four workers who were still being dealt with. She walked over to the last one still waiting to be plugged and crouched down next to him. ‘Hey, do you have records of who comes through here? Patients, I mean?’
‘We do, but they might not mean a lot to either of us,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘We rarely find out the patients’ real names or their full names. Usually, we are given a code for them or maybe just a first name. Everything we do here is experimental and secret to one degree or another. Are you looking for someone?’
‘Yes, a girl, age six, goes by the name of Stephanie.’
‘Um, well, maybe? The name doesn’t sound familiar, but we do have a sizable percentage of children come through here; girls and boys of all ages. It’s possible the person you’re looking for is in here somewhere or was recently, anyway,’ he answered her.
Gibson stepped up beside her and bent down, holding out his datapad. The screen glowed with a photo of his daughter smiling out at the world.
‘She looked like this,’ he said.
‘Erm, maybe? I don’t know. I don’t
interact much with the patients, none of us up here do, sorry. I wish I could help you more,’ he said.
Gibson sighed and moved away, tucking his pad into his pocket.
‘Thanks,’ Frankie said as Cole knelt down next to the man and inserted the neural plug. The man went limp, his eyes still open while his breathing grew shallow.
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. Breaking in might be easy enough, but finding Stephanie, if she was actually here at all, might be a little harder to do.
‘Okay guys, let’s get moving, I want to look through that big room below,’ she said, and led her team out of the lab they were in. Her drones had already found the closest stairwell, and she knew where to go to find the large room. They moved with purpose, their weapons ready in case of danger, but they found the stairs and hustled down them without issue. Taking point, Frankie reached the door out of the stairwell and peeked through the window into the wide corridor beyond. To her right, she saw a pair of double doors that led into the large room, and another security guard posted outside.
‘Wait here for a second,’ she said through her link and opened the door before striding through it, straight towards the guard.
He looked startled and hesitated for a second before suddenly understanding what he was looking at. He must have spotted the slung rifle on her back and the pistol in her drop holster as he suddenly went for his own weapon, but Frankie was right next to him by the time he pulled it.
She punched him right in the face with a swift jab, knocking his head against the back wall before his eyes rolled back as he dropped. Frankie caught his limp body, getting her hands under his arms, and managed to quickly move him into the stairwell. Placing him on the floor face down, she took out one more of her plugs and inserted it into his neck as well before moving him down the final flight of steps to the basement and hiding him under the stairs.
With him out of the way, they moved quickly into the large room, closing the doors behind them.
Prometheus Vengeance (The New Prometheus Book 4) Page 4
