The guards weren’t much more than amateurs. The same kind of gung-ho morons you’ll find guarding gates the world over. These are the people who think wearing a crumpled uniform and a gun somehow makes them tougher than the donut-chomping fuck-wit that looked back at them out of the bathroom mirror that morning.
The first one went down hard, taking a jab to the nose that I hadn’t actually expected to make contact, and a stamping kick down on the side of his knee. I heard, and felt, the crack as he went down, but his scream almost covered the approach of the second man. I turned just in time to watch Mackenzie’s arm snake around his neck as she locked him into a choke-hold. It wasn’t the quickest way to take a man down, but I couldn’t fault her technique.
I kicked the screaming guard just hard enough to send him off to sleep and looked to Mackenzie as she disentangled herself from the now unconscious guard.
“What the hell was that?”
“Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,” she smiled up at me. “What? You think just because I’m a woman I should be cowering behind you? I rescued you, remember?”
I gave her a nodding shrug and looked down the hall. The closest side door led into another observation room. I scowled at it for ten seconds before Mackenzie said what I was already thinking, and we dragged the guards another hundred feet or so to what turned out to be a storage cupboard.
Neither one of the men were close to my height, but any clothes are better than none. My bare legs stuck out of the bottom of the stolen uniform like I was wearing a karate gi. Add into the mix that his shoes were far too small for me to bother with, and I both looked, and felt, like an idiot. Mackenzie, had none of these problems, shoving on a pair of stolen boots to go with her uniform; and the grin she wore as she looked me up and down made this more than apparent.
I snorted a laugh and then got to work. The guards weren’t carrying guns, but both had a taser clipped to their belts. I stiffened in remembered pain and then took them both. I’d rather have had a decent Glock, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“Do you know how to use those?” Mackenzie whispered, glancing up at me as she wound tape around the wrists of the second guard. Her confidence had left with her smile as she bound and gagged the guards. The tape was some kind of electrical tape that had been left on a shelf in the cupboard. The rest of the shelves were filled with cleaning supplies, so it had no business being in here. Maybe someone up there had finally decided they owed me some luck.
“Yes,” I told Mackenzie in a low voice. “They’re not much good past thirty feet or so, but something’s going to be better than nothing.”
I paused, looking her over. “We’re going to get out of here, Mackenzie. We just need to be smart.”
She nodded, glancing at the door. “Well, if we’re going to be smart, we better figure out where we’re going.”
“Up,” I said with a shrug. “From there we’ll work it out. Do you know anything about this place?”
“Not much, only what they told me about the project, and then what I saw myself later on. I didn’t have much access, only a couple of hallways, my own rooms, and the cafeteria.”
“Anything you know might help. How many people are in here, any idea?”
“Janan told me they had almost a hundred, not counting the guards and support staff.”
“Janan?” I asked her with a confused frown. “Afridi?”
She nodded and I grunted, busying myself with the belt as I clipped the tasers to it and chewed on what she’d said. She’d had her own level of access at some point, and she spoke of Afridi on first name terms. If she’d cooperated with them once then…
“Yeah, like you didn’t beg when it came to it,” I murmured.
“What?”
I gave her a look that was probably as guilty as I felt. “Nothing. Let’s get going.”
The hallway was clear which was both good and confusing.
“Didn’t you say there were guards looking for you?” I asked.
“At least two or three, yes.” Mackenzie sounded as confused as I was. “I don’t think these are the same ones. They would have been behind us.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but where are they then?”
Her shrug didn’t do anything to reassure me.
The corridor was silent as we made our way along, moving as quietly as we could, slowing only when the passage turned.
The lift stood at the end of a small corridor; an aluminium and steel cage that was next to useless to us, with a CCTV camera on the ceiling to keep it company. I was under no illusions as to our chances of getting out of this place in one piece, regardless of what I’d told Mackenzie, but I wasn’t about to gift-wrap and deliver myself to Afridi’s goons in that thing.
Mackenzie carried on as I paused, dashing to a door close to the lift and tapping her key-card to the reader. It beeped, and she cracked the door wide enough to peer through, then glanced back at me with a grin.
“Stairs,” she called in a hoarse whisper.
“Well that’s a plus,” said Turner, peering past me to the doorway. “Beats getting filled full of holes in that metal box, doesn’t it?”
I ignored him while he laughed at himself. Turner never had a problem with finding his own jokes funny. Death hadn’t changed him, apparently.
The staircase ran both up and down further than I could see and we’d barely started moving before our heads shot round at the sound of running from below.
“Go!” I said, but Mackenzie was already moving, running up the stairs faster than I could have managed with or without a bullet hole in my leg.
The steps were rough and cold on my bare feet but that was the least of my concerns. Whoever was coming up the stairs wasn’t taking a leisurely stroll, and the pounding of the boots on the concrete made it clear these weren’t lab-techs who were late for a meeting.
“Mr Carver,” the voice was calm as it came over the speakers. “I see you’ve met Ms. Cartwright. I really would hate to have to hurt either of you. Please hand yourselves in. There really is no need for any unpleasantness.”
“He’s out of his goddamned gourd!” I muttered as we passed another floor.
Mackenzie said nothing, her head was low as she hauled herself up the stairs, relying on the rail as much as her legs to force herself up each step. We were both slowing, the weeks I’d spent chained to the frame had ruined most of the muscle I’d had, and the half-healed bullet wound throbbed with each step.
“This isn’t going to work,” I gasped, pulling a taser from my belt.
Mackenzie gasped beside me, bent double as she sucked the breaths in. “How many shots do those things have?”
“One each,” I admitted. I didn’t need her to reply. The odds weren’t great and I knew it.
The guards were still coming and I crouched low as I readied the taser. Mackenzie shot me a look from where she knelt, her face creased in concentration.
“Don’t freak out,” she muttered between clenched teeth.
Flames erupted from the steps, roaring upwards until they met the bottom of the next flight. Even at this distance I staggered back from the heat. I couldn’t see the guards, but I heard their cries of panic. I’ve said before my Pashto isn’t that great. It’s one of the childish things about us, or maybe it’s just men, that we tend to learn the swear words in other languages before anything else. I couldn’t be sure but I’m reasonably certain that the sudden burst of Pashto from the guards translated to, “Fuck that!”
I looked from the flames, to Mackenzie, to the thick frost that had coated the stairs beneath us. “What the hell was that?” I asked, but she was already running before I finished the sentence.
The fire guttered and died behind us before we made it up another two flights. The guards were still down there, following, but definitely not rushing about it.
“Seriously, what the fuck was that?” I demanded.
Mackenzie shrugged. “You stop bullets,” she glanced at my thigh where the bulge of the bandage was
visible through the stolen uniform. “Badly, apparently. I do fire.”
There was no time for questions, the sound of boots on steps carried well in a concrete stairwell, and this time they were coming down to us from above. Mackenzie had long enough to give me a startled look as I grabbed at her with one hand, tapped the card to a reader, and dragged her through the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The hallway was dark as I pushed the door closed behind us but fluorescent lights in the ceiling were already flickering to life. The darkness was both good and bad, I knew. On the one hand, it meant this floor was quiet enough for the lights to turn off on their own; on the other, it meant that we would literally be leaving a blazing trail behind us. The one bit of good news was that there were no cameras in this corridor.
“Come on,” I muttered, reaching for Mackenzie again.
“Don’t grab at me,” she snarled, snatching her hand away. “I’m not a bloody child.”
I ignored that and started running. Of course, when I say running, I mean a lurching hobble. My leg had not appreciated the run up the stairs. The pain was sharp, stabbed with each step, and the bandage felt too warm and wet for my liking. I’d probably ripped the stitches.
I didn’t have the patience for dealing with a civvy right then. I’d always hated it. It’s one of the major reasons I didn’t go into security, or close protection work, after the army. A life in the forces rewires your brain to a certain extent, you learn to put your emotions on a shelf whilst you get the job done. It doesn’t matter if someone is being a prick, if the job doesn’t get done then people die. You can bawl them out later. Civilians are unpredictable and emotional, two things that can get you killed in a heartbeat.
I slapped at the light-switch just before we passed through a set of double doors, plunging the hallway back into darkness. We hadn’t been fast enough though, and before we’d gone ten feet, I saw the lights flicker back to life through the small windows in the doors.
“Shit!” Another minute or two and there might have been some question over which way we’d gone. As it was, the light from our hallway had shone through the small rectangles of glass towards the guards like a beacon, pointing out the way we’d fled.
“There is nowhere to run to, Mr Carver,” Afridi’s voice came over the speakers, echoing what I was thinking. It didn’t help my mood that the bastard was right.
Fuck it. I dropped to a crouch, pulling both tasers and training them at the doors as I shuffled closer.
“Carver, what the—”
“Shut up!” I hissed back at her, not bothering to turn.
The doors parted as the guards wrenched them open and I was firing as soon as the figures emerged. Two needles erupted from the ends of the taser and flew the ten feet it took to bury themselves in the flesh of the first guard. I was already focusing on the second and firing before the distinctive click-click-click came from the first taser. The guards didn’t have time to scream. The most either of them managed was a low moan from between clenched teeth as the electric pulses over-rode their nervous systems.
They were still writhing on the ground when Mackenzie gripped my arm.
“Carver, that’s enough!” she ordered.
I blinked and took a deep breath, shaking myself. It had been a long time since I’d locked up like that. I moved quickly; searching the guards produced both cuffs and a gift from God—a pair of guns. They were nothing special, Glock 17s, or clones of it. I didn’t have the time to inspect either of them, beyond checking that they were loaded, and the safeties were on.
It took the work of moments to have them both bound. I glanced once at Mackenzie. It would be better to kill them both—dead men don’t tell tales—but she’d probably throw a fit. Another good reason not to work with civvies, they have odd ideas about what’s important. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bloodthirsty murderer, but I’ll do it if the occasion demands it. Right now, it would be easier, faster, and smarter, to kill both these guys than to tie them up.
I worked quickly, cuffing both men behind their backs, overlapping the cuffs so they were bound together. I tossed the keys along the hallway and debated gagging them but there was no time.
“Here,” I handed the gun from the second guard to Mackenzie. “Do you know how to use one of these?”
She looked at it like it was a live snake, which more or less answered my question before she spoke.
“Look,” I told her as she shook her head. “You’ll only need it if things go tits up. Hold it like this.” I showed her. “This is the safety, just hold it firmly and squeeze the trigger. You don’t need to be a great shot, just point the noisy end at them and fire.”
She took it without comment, I’ll give her that much. She was no damsel in distress. This woman was made of barbed wire and rusted nails. Any other place or time and I’d be looking at her with different eyes. Unfortunately, we were probably going to get shot, so I needed my eyes elsewhere.
The second guard also had boots which fit me, and I pulled them on quickly before silencing them both with a quick kick. Tasers might shut your body down, but they don’t do a lot to keep you quiet for long.
The hallway led through the complex in a winding mess lined with storerooms and what might have been empty living quarters. There was no time to really inspect them and, at this point, all we really needed was another set of stairs heading up.
I stopped dead as the lift came into sight and Mackenzie raced past me before lurching to a stop and looking back at me. “What?”
I shook my head. “This is no good.”
She cuffed at her nose and sniffed between snatched breaths. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re being herded. Afridi isn’t an idiot and there have been cameras everywhere but this level. Even if we weren’t being watched to start with, they sure as hell ought to have tracked us since we reached the stairs. They know exactly where we are.”
“So… what?”
“So, they know where we’re going and, sooner or later, we’re going to run right into a full squad of Afridi’s men.”
“So, what are you suggesting? We hide? I can’t see that working.”
I shook my head. “No, you’re right. Hiding in a closed complex like this won’t help us at all. The only way out of here is up, and that’s exactly where Afridi will be expecting us to go.”
She frowned at me. “But we have to go up to get out of here.”
“We do,” I nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we have to do it on our own.”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
“Not here.” I tapped the card to a reader and motioned her into a storeroom.
“Nice…” Johnson sniggered as she followed me in. I gave him the finger behind her back and pulled the door close to the frame, but didn’t close it.
“You were let out of the cells, weren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, you had some level of freedom, right?”
She nodded, giving me a guarded look.
“Did you see any others, down in the cells? We can’t have been the only ones still down there.”
“No,” she said in a quiet voice. “We weren’t but, Carver, you need to understand what this place does to people. It breaks them. That’s the whole point. Janan and Elias, that’s what they built this place to do—to drive people mad.”
“What the hell would be the point of that?”
“That’s where they think these powers come from. Didn’t Elias ever talk to you?”
I nodded, chewing on a lip as I thought. “Okay, so how many others are down there?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “I only ever met two others aside from you. The first one, Janan burned to death in front of me.”
“Why?” The question crept out before I could stop it.
“To see if I would be able to put the fire out,” she muttered through clenched teeth. She looked away for a moment and I inwardly kicked myself for asking.
“Well that was smooth, John,
” Johnson told me from the corner. “No wonder you’re so good with the ladies.”
He grinned back at me as I glared at him, silently telling him to go fuck himself. If he was just a hallucination, I hoped maybe he could hear me.
“And the other?” I prompted Mackenzie.
She shuddered as she looked back at me. “He was broken, completely gone. All he wanted was to die.”
“Was he…?” I trailed off, not having the words.
“Like me?” she finished for me. “Yes, sort of. He had these things that came out of his skin, like smoke but somehow solid at the same time.”
“Well then, let’s go and pay him a visit and see if he has any friends.” I reached for the door.
Mackenzie stared at me. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Probably,” I admitted. “That’s what Afridi wanted, after all. Let’s go and give it to him.”
“What?”
“The other prisoners. Let’s let them out.”
She looked at me like I had lost it. “Carver, we can’t do that. I mean, if even one of them has powers like me… We can’t let that loose on the world.”
“I’m not letting them loose on the world, Mackenzie,” I told her with a cold smile. “I’m letting them loose on Afridi. As for the world, well the world can look after itself.”
The lift was made for cargo, built to hold fork-lifts and pallets. A camera looked down on us as I punched a button and then smiled up into its lens. Mackenzie shook her head in mock despair for a moment, and then reached up to slam the butt of the gun into the lens, showering us both in glass and plastic.
“You know, Roasties,” Turner said, leaning against the wall of the lift. “I could grow to like this girl. Try not to fuck it up, eh? You’ve got a bit of a history and it’s the little disappointments that can really stay with a person. Forgetting birthdays, showing up late, letting them get shot in the head…”
The lift motors whined as we descended, and I fingered the gun, flexing my hand around the grip. There had to be a real response to us at some point. So far, we’d blundered into a handful of guards who offered no real resistance to us. The real danger here would be growing complacent.
The Lore of Prometheus Page 24