Ciphers

by Matt Rogers

  He made it all the way to the opposite street when air washed past him and—

  Thwack.

  Searing pain, white hot in intensity, above his left collar bone. The skin burned, and the nerve endings fired.

  He’d been hit.

  He snarled, lost his grip on Rico, and the kid slipped away.

  Slater dove for him as more rounds traced past.

  It was dark. It was murky. Pain stabbed at him, clouding his vision and his dexterity. He thought he made out the shape of Rico’s silhouette nearby, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Desperation struck.

  He raised his gun and fired.

  Missed.

  But the muzzle flash lit up the street, like a momentary strobe light, and he saw the kid racing away from him, headed south.

  Toward the Bowery.

  Slater shrugged.

  He had to end up there anyway.

  He took off in pursuit of the kid, the skin around his shoulder screaming for relief.

  40

  Taking fire from four hostiles at once, it took King longer than usual to realise he was still in possession of both duffel bags.

  He ducked back behind the alcove as bullets tore past. There was nothing quite like the feeling of being shot at. You never quite adjusted to it. There was an uncanny detachment between the roar of the gunshots and the bone-breaking, flesh-tearing ferocity of the bullets themselves. They came in silent and unseen, and if one of them struck him in the head he knew he’d be dead before he even had the chance to register the report.

  Impact.

  Lights out.

  Nothing.

  It terrified him, but he used the fear as fuel. He crouched in the alcove and waited for a pause in the uproar. Seconds passed, and it didn’t come. The four remaining hostiles were taking turns with their weapons, firing in a staccato rhythm, laying down suppressive fire of their own.

  Suddenly he picked up movement right nearby. He steeled himself for a close-quarters gunfight…

  …and found it immediately.

  Someone bullrushed his position — from his perspective, all he saw was a big bulky silhouette tear around the corner, gun raised. He caught the slightest glimpse of a brown-skinned face twisted into a desperate grimace, but that was all he saw before he angled his Glock with trained patience and fired two shots through the underside of the guy’s chin. The grimace disappeared, replaced by a dark cloud of blood, and the body toppled forward from its own momentum.

  King sidestepped it, bounced off the adjacent brick wall, and came back to his original position.

  Three to go.

  It seemed a whole lot more manageable than five-on-one, but realistically nothing about his circumstances had changed. He was still trapped in the alcove with nowhere to go but out into the alley. He was sure there were three gun barrels trained on the open space a few feet ahead. He tried to listen out for any trace of Slater or Rico, but his hearing was too impaired for that. There was a shrill ringing in his ears — the high-pitched whine of tinnitus. And no wonder — before the gunfight, his surroundings had been as quiet as could be. Now there was war raging on the streets of Manhattan, and he was right in the heart of it.

  Then a panicked voice — foreign to King — cried out, ‘I saw Rico. He got free. He went right.’

  The voice trembled and wavered with each syllable.

  ‘You sure?’ a deep voice responded. More measured. More composed.

  ‘Yeah. He—’

  Rapid footsteps — a cluster of them, moving fast. King steeled himself for another Wild West-esque gunfight. First to the draw.

  But it never came.

  The footsteps headed in the other direction.

  And he pieced it together, just like that. The wavering voice must be Samuel, Rico’s mysterious friend. The sicarios weren’t affiliated with the kid — they’d simply been using him to get hold of their treasured possession. But with Rico gone, and King a non-factor, they’d hightailed it out of there. Racing back in the other direction, figuring they could intercept Slater or Rico a block or two south.

  Suddenly the alley was quiet.

  King didn’t hurry. Haste had led to the death of many men, so he employed as much patience as he could muster and waited for most of his hearing to return. He didn’t even chance a look out. For all he knew, the wavering voice might have been a bluff. The last remaining hostile — Samuel, probably — might be standing two feet away from the alcove, gun trained on King’s position.

  So for good measure, he reached back and clasped one of the chunks of brick torn free from the wall.

  He held it tight, then threw it like a fastball out of the alcove, where it practically exploded against the sturdier brick on the opposite wall.

  Half a second later, he materialised in the open space.

  Glock up.

  Finger on the trigger.

  There was a kid standing there. Maybe twenty or twenty-one, drenched in defeat, with a 9mm Glock in his hand and that hand in question pointed firmly at the alley floor. He showed no signs that he intended to use it. His shoulders were slumped and his stare was vacant.

  Despite gaining the upper hand, King felt a cold chill work its way down his spine.

  The kid was straight up menacing.

  He had barely a shred of body fat on his frame, and little muscle either. He was tall and pale and skinny and gaunt, like a skeleton in human form. His eyes were set far back in his head, surrounded by shadow, giving his head a hollow appearance. They were some of the widest eyes King had ever seen. He wasn’t blinking, but his eyelids twitched imperceptibly in the lowlight. King noticed every detail.

  He kept his own firearm pointed squarely at the kid’s head.

  He said, ‘Are you Samuel?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Put the gun down.’

  Samuel let go of his grip on the Glock. It clattered to the concrete beneath his feet, louder than King anticipated. He almost jumped from the noise, but he controlled himself.

  Samuel said, ‘I ain’t got nothin’ left to live for. Shoot me.’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  King sensed Samuel studying him.

  The kid finally said, ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘What’s your last name, Samuel?’

  ‘What’s that matter?’

  ‘Tell me, or I’ll make it painful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that.’

  ‘You don’t really mean that.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Tell me your name, kid.’

  A pause.

  A long, drawn-out pause.

  Then Samuel told him.

  A knot formed in the pit of King’s stomach.

  The silence was suddenly daunting.

  Suddenly cold.

  Piece by piece, it started adding up.

  ‘Samuel,’ he said. ‘My name’s Jason King. Is there something you wanted to say to me?’

  Samuel’s face collapsed, and his eyes went wider.

  41

  Sometimes, Slater wondered if fate conspired against him.

  Truthfully, he should have known what was coming. He and Rico had emerged on Second Avenue, and now they were sprinting through a sea of abandoned vehicles — Rico fleeing, Slater pursuing. He should have considered the fact that Second Avenue cut through the heart of the Bowery, and that the address Violetta had fast-tracked to him and King was positioned along this route. All he knew about it was a rough summary — an old abandoned bank building yet to be refurbished, resting on an ordinarily busy intersection. He figured it’d be a hulking slab of old-school New York architecture, and he figured it’d stand out from its surroundings.

  But none of that played on his mind as he ran flat out after Rico Guzmán, his legs burning almost as bad as his collar bone. Blood had soaked through his compression shirt, and the wet material slapped against the wound with each step. All the sensation made him largely oblivious to where he was headed, and he didn’t realise what was happeni
ng until it was too late.

  Rico fled at breakneck speed, his long black hair bouncing up and down as he sprinted. He was covering ground faster than Slater, taking advantage of his youth, his weight, and his desperation. In comparison to the smattering of surrounding civilians, he stood out. He probably had a savage intensity in his eyes, which wouldn’t have helped his case. But he threaded through the cars and trucks and vans and burst up onto the sidewalk and pushed himself even faster.

  Straight toward a huge looming building across the intersection.

  Really, he didn’t know what it was. Slater recognised that. The kid had an evil streak, no doubt, but he wasn’t wrapped up in a greater conspiracy. He was a hotheaded, volatile little shit with a rich powerful dad and a slew of bodyguards. He had nothing to do with the blackout. The building wasn’t even his destination.

  But he’s sprinting in its direction.

  And, if the intel is correct, the residents are prepared to wage war to defend their turf.

  Slater opened his mouth to shout a warning.

  Before any sound left his mouth, Rico’s head exploded.

  The long black hair blew apart in all directions and gore showered the sidewalk. A moment later the concussive boom of a sniper rifle’s report resonated through the Bowery. Impossibly loud. A .50 cal round, without a doubt. Civilians screamed all around Slater, but he barely noticed. As soon as he saw the kid die he hit the deck, lurching forward and diving for cover between two parked sedans. Milliseconds later a round blew past the air he’d been occupying. He knew it was the same calibre, fired from the same long-range sniper rifle, because it felt like a truck had missed him by inches. He knew that amount of displaced air could only emanate from a huge goddamn bullet.

  And then it impacted a van several dozen feet behind him.

  With the force of a bomb going off.

  He rolled underneath the nearest sedan, clawing his way to cover. He tore the skin off his hands in his haste, but he barely felt it. He had tunnel vision and unparalleled focus. The cool metal of the sedan’s undercarriage pressed hard into his upper back, but he didn’t feel a shred of claustrophobia. Being skewered under a stationary vehicle was infinitely more desirable than being out in the open, vulnerable to a .50 cal bullet blowing his bones and muscles and organs apart like they were nothing.

  Boom.

  The vehicle above him reverberated.

  Struck by a round.

  Then something flashed beside him. It took him about half a second to recognise it was another bullet, smaller than the first, fired from a different angle. It had sparked off the asphalt and ricocheted into the undercarriage of the sedan.

  Oh, fuck.

  It had missed him by less than a foot.

  Someone could see him from a neighbouring building, and was honing their aim.

  He burst into motion, kicking and clawing and scratching for the left-hand side of the car. As he moved he was keenly aware of his lack of recon. He hadn’t even managed a decent look at the bank building in question before everything had gone to hell. So he was blind, in the dark literally and metaphorically, focused on sheer survival. He couldn’t believe his bad luck.

  He made it out from underneath the sedan and leapt into a low crouch. He caught a glimpse of the looming building across the intersection, but all he could make out were multiple rows of dozens of windows framed by granite façades. To make matters worse, King still had both submachine guns. They’d take Slater’s head off before he could even attempt to return fire with his Glock, and that didn’t even take the second shooter into consideration.

  For all he knew, there could be five shooters with their sights trained on him.

  Retreat.

  His brain spoke the command, and his body answered. He ran flat out through the maze of cars, weaving left and right like an NFL linebacker, anticipating a gunshot at any moment. Spending most of his adult life in combat had helped develop his sixth sense, and he used it now to throw himself down at just the right moment. He figured a shot would follow soon after, and—

  Two separate rounds impacted the vehicles around him.

  One louder than the other.

  .50 calibre, versus a standard round.

  Dead ahead, resting diagonally across the intersection from the old bank building, was a residential apartment complex. It was a chic establishment, new and stylish, with lots of glass and lots of new brick carefully curated to seem rustic and faded. It was huge, too — he figured there must be at least two hundred apartments within. Not one of them was glowing with artificial light. In his peripheral vision he spotted faint candlelight in some of the windows, but overall the building was just as invisible as the rest of Manhattan.

  Most importantly, it had a manual revolving door set beside the electronic doors.

  Slater couldn’t see a thing inside the lobby.

  It was as close to a safe haven as he was going to get.

  He made a beeline for it, keeping as low as possible, moving as fast as possible.

  Another enormous bang sounded across the street, but he didn’t feel any displaced air, and all his limbs stayed intact.

  So the bullet had gone wide.

  Heart in his throat, he sprinted over the sidewalk and leapt into the open partition of the revolving door.

  Momentary terror seized him. What if it’s locked in place?

  If the doors didn’t move against his resistance, he’d be trapped in a glass box.

  A sitting duck to a trained marksman.

  He threw his weight into the sturdy glass, hoping, praying, silently pleading.

  It rotated instantly.

  He pushed it harder until it was spinning faster than it was designed to, which got him to the other side in a couple of seconds maximum.

  He dived into the empty lobby and threw himself to the cold tiles on his belly.

  The momentum carried him, and he slid a dozen feet into the space. One of the glass panes in the revolving door shattered behind him, accompanied by the distant reverberation of another report. Slater’s blood ran cold as he slid, and when the skid petered out he leapt up and ran for his life, toward the abandoned reception desk. He vaulted over it, came down in an ungodly heap on the other side, and lay on his back panting for breath.

  Still clutching his Glock 22 in a palm slick with sweat.

  Safe.

  Just.

  42

  Click.

  She was through.

  Violetta sat bolt upright in her chair. She normally maintained a respectable posture in front of the people who worked for her, but fatigue and frustration got to everyone after long enough. She’d been halfway slouched in the seatback, her glassy gaze fixed on the room, her ears prickling in the tense atmosphere. Her men were exhausted, jacked up on copious amounts of caffeine and more obscure stimulants to keep their pulses going long after their bodies were screaming for sleep. They seemed unimportant in comparison to the hard and uncompromising auras of her field operatives like King and Slater, but they were equally as important, if not more so. This was the new world, and most of the new world took place within computers and digital clouds.

  But even they hadn’t managed to make a dent in this chaotic situation.

  Now, though, reinvigoration flowed through her as someone finally patched her through.

  After endless waiting and countless attempts, she’d managed to get a hold of Detective First Grade Jim Riordan.

  Infamous for supposedly being the toughest, meanest son-of-a-bitch in the NYPD.

  That’s who she needed right now.

  She had connected to him via digitally encrypted radio, and she pressed her satellite phone to her ear. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘Someone at One Police gave me a vague description,’ he said. ‘I think I get the idea.’

  1 Police Plaza, she thought. NYPD’s headquarters on Park Row.

  She thought about it.

  Figured someone there would be privy to her team’s presence in
Manhattan.

  Shrugged and continued.

  She said, ‘Do you understand I’ve been granted full control over any cop I can get a hold of?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They told me that in the same breath they said who you were.’

  She paused. ‘You okay with that?’

  ‘I have to do what I’m told, don’t I?’

  ‘You understand what’s at stake here?’

  Riordan grunted an affirmation.

  Violetta said, ‘You got a problem with someone you don’t know telling you what to do, Detective Riordan?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said, but his voice betrayed the truth.

  She said, ‘Is it because I’m a woman?’

  He scoffed. ‘You think a lot of yourself, lady.’

  ‘How about we cut the shit?’ Violetta said. ‘Tell me what’s really on your mind. I can handle it.’

  ‘I’m on the phone with you when there’s people who need help. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘In thirty-six hours there’s going to be a million more people who need your help, and that’s not an exaggeration. You can’t get to everyone. You need to prioritise.’

  ‘And what is it exactly you want me to do?’

  ‘I take it I can rely on your discretion.’

  ‘Stop talking fancy and just tell me what you need. Then I’ll see how I feel about it.’

  ‘There’s an address in the Bowery. Write it down.’ She fed it to him, and faintly heard him scrawling it on a piece of paper. ‘That address is the key to cutting all of this short. The intelligence myself and my team gathered has led me to believe there are people in that building who currently have control of the power grid. I’m going to cut right to the chase — I’ve heard you’re the unofficial ballbuster on the force. Your word is law on the street. So right now I need you to round up every cop you can find and get them to that building.’

  ‘What do you want us to do when we get there?’

  ‘Establish a perimeter and await further instruction. I have my own men attempting a breach right now. You and your men are going to be there for backup.’