by Brad C Scott
The vitals for Bennett and Rollins flatline on my visor.
“Hawkins, above you, your ten!” yells Anderson.
“I got him,” transmits Evans.
I focus on my visor’s tactical display, looking for a way out. New hostiles have materialized above. So they do have drones – three of them, shielded from detection until the moment of attack. The shrieking cacophony of rail racks on full burn means Patton is engaging them alone. We can’t help him, but if he can keep them off us, we might stand a chance.
“Redeemer, to your left!” transmits Worthy.
Explosions thunder above. As the platform shivers, I pivot around the column and put fire on a pair of constables moving to flank. I nail one in the chest while their return fire pocks into my concrete cover. A flash passes within inches of my visor. I lunge back behind the column as more shots streak by.
“We need to displace!” shouts Worthy.
This is bad. Worthy hunkers down with one of the rooks on the tracks to my left, using the edge of the train platform for cover. HK-2 shields them from the constables on the concourse above, interposing itself to draw their fire while returning its own. To my right, Murphy’s pinned down like me behind another column. Only Evans and Anderson hold a good position, close to the tunnel entrance with two columns and the escalator ramps for cover.
“Stay in cover!” I shout. “Patton, can you get a signal out?”
“Emergency transponder is active,” he transmits. “However, localized scrambling prevents any outgoing comm traffic.”
“Goddamnit!” I turn and fire from cover again, death streaking by from three constables firing on my position. This won’t last, we have to withdraw or bunker up. Two choices: tunnel entrance or upper deck. Retreating back the way we came might work – the tunnel provides a nice bottleneck – but we’ll be too exposed in getting there and have zero cover moving down it. The concourse and the wide hallway beyond it would provide more room to maneuver and more options. We could hold in one of the restrooms or hit the maintenance tunnel and push through to the bunker. And Patton’s already clearing the road. Upper deck it is.
“I need some help here!” transmits Murphy.
My right leg catches fire. I brace against the column and look down, but there’s no fire, only a gash where a coil round shredded the armor to graze my thigh. The hard suit activates pain stims, enough to take the edge off, but I won’t be running anytime soon.
“We’re making for the upper deck!” I shout. “Evans, suppress for Murphy! Murphy, on Evans’ signal, displace to Anderson!”
“Copy!” shouts Murphy.
“Go!” transmits Evans.
As Murphy breaks from cover, I turn and fire while Evans snipes. We each tag a target and keep the others suppressed. Pivoting back into cover, I see Murphy dive to the ground next to Anderson, coil rifle shuddering in his hands as he fires past her.
Then I go down to one knee as my leg gives way. Not now!
I twist my head over in time to see HK-2, fuselage riddled and smoking, crash to the tracks behind Worthy and the rook. We’ve got to get them out of there, but first we’ll need to secure the concourse. A quick glance at tactical reveals two constables left up there, though neither is positioned to menace an advance up the escalator ramp. Patton’s drawing their attention, including from the enemy’s remaining tacticals – we’ll have to ascend without him.
“We can’t maintain this position!” transmits Worthy.
“Anderson, Murphy, suppress for Worthy! Buy them time! Evans, get topside!”
Before I can lean out to add my own fire, the clatter of a metallic object striking the ground sounds nearby. I don’t need to look over – a grenade clatters into view, directly below my head. I stop myself from grabbing it at the last moment – it’s a cherry popper, will go off if I do. No choice, then – scrambling up with everything left, ignoring the pain, ignoring the rest of the combat, I lunge away from the impending –
A fist punches me hard in the lower back as debris shoots past, launching me airborne. Time does its slow crawl again as rounds drill through the shrapnel-speckled air. For a timeless moment, I’m a kid again, watching fireworks with the folks before the world ended. Then I arc down, crash through a barricade, and hit the edge of a gap where the floor used to be. My hands won’t work, so I bounce and slide and then fall away into darkness.
Turn the lights out, dear. Rachel’s voice, welcoming me home.
CHAPTER 9
“Malcolm. Come on!” My eyes crack open – must have dozed off. Rachel’s calling to me from the water’s edge. She’s got Rosalie in her arms, the two of them in lime-green swimsuits, beckoning with big smiles and a giggle from my baby girl.
“Daddy, come!”
Just like her mother. She always did like the water.
I smile back and stretch out underneath our beach umbrella. It’s a perfect day at Sunset Beach – blue sky, warm sand, even a cool breeze coming in from offshore. Not a soul in shouting distance save for my wife and daughter. Perfect.
“Daddy!”
“Alright, alright,” I say, pretending to be put out. I try to get my feet under me, to join them, but somehow, my legs won’t work.
“You’ll never catch us!” calls Rachel, turning to step into the lapping waves.
Fear grips me. Why can’t I get up? What’s going on? I watch as Rachel moves into the water while bouncing Rosalie in her arms.
“Wait for me!” I shout. “Rachel! Wait!”
She doesn’t respond, just continues to go deeper, the water now to her waist.
“Ooh, cold, Daddy!” cries Rosalie.
I struggle to move, to get to them, but it’s no good. I’m stuck. Fear turns to panic. I look up and see that the sky, only seconds earlier cloudless and azure, is darkening, clouds massing offshore and interposing themselves before the sun.
“Rachel!” I scream. “Rachel! Rosalie! Come back!”
She’s to her neck now, they both are. But she doesn’t stop, continues right under the surface, vanishing beneath the darkening waters. Day turns to night.
◊ ◊ ◊
I struggle up only to fall, banging my elbows on cold concrete. I groan and roll onto my back, clutching at my throbbing head. That bloody nightmare. Again. That’s all it was.
Where am I? Craning my head around reveals concrete walls, floor, ceiling; grill lights providing uneven lighting; the bed I fell from, some old hospital number; no other furnishings save for scattered chairs, empty shelves, and a gleaming steel IV rack. I pull the IV needle from my right arm. There’s a closed steel door, far side of the room. A door – have to get out of here.
“Here, let me help you up.” A man I’ve never seen before rounds the foot of the bed into my line of sight. His hands are empty, his agenda unclear.
“No,” I croak while holding out an arm. “Back off.” Pushing up from the floor, I drag myself into a nearby chair while stifling a groan. Everything hurts, though my right leg protests loudest. A fresh bandage covers the wound there, obvious as I’m dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and briefs. Where’s my hard suit?
“Can I get you anything?” asks the stranger, hovering nearby.
I give him the twice-over. If the compassion he’s evincing isn’t real, then he’s good at faking it. With his pale skin, round-framed spectacles, and relaxed demeanor, I’d label him a desk jockey or lab rat of some stripe. His clothing – denim jeans and a old button-down shirt – don’t quite match the face. Nor does the semi-automatic holstered at his waist, protected from my grasp by a thumb lock.
“Start talking,” I say.
He pulls up another chair and sits opposite me. “This is the undercity, not far from where we found you. About two days back. You were injured and unconscious, so we brought you here and treated your wounds.”
“So, I’ve been out for two days?”
“That’s right.”
“Where is this?”
He tries on a reassuring smile. “I
t’s a safe place.”
“What the hell is safe?” My fingers flex with the urge to prove him wrong.
“Sorry, but I can’t say.”
“Won’t, you mean. Who are you?”
“Jim Metcalf.” He reaches forward, hand extended.
I don’t take it, just search his face for clues.
“We saved your life, you know.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Excuse me?” he asks, hand dropping to his side.
“You heard me. Who’s in charge here? Which group?”
“Mr. Adams, I’m a veterinarian. I have a clinic topside that I had to abandon when your people invaded the city. I ended up here. Most here have a similar story.”
So, they know who I am. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He blinks and smiles but says nothing. He doesn’t need to – someone higher on the local food chain will try to sell me a story. I can’t afford to trust anyone down here. Not after what happened in Red Line Station…
“My squad?” I ask. “My people? What happened to them?”
“I wasn’t there when they found you.” He hesitates, fear gliding over his features. “From what I heard, there was some kind of explosion, maybe a tunnel collapse. That’s how they found you in the first place. From all the noise, I mean.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I can’t say more. You can speak to one of the others about it.”
“Others?”
“The man in charge is Ben Hancock. I’ll let him know you’re awake.”
“I need to get out of here. Right now. Where is my gear?”
“It’s safe.” He holds up a hand. “But you can’t leave. Not yet.”
“I’m a prisoner.”
“No, but… With respect, you’ve got a lot to answer for.”
Lurch forward, jab him in the throat, get his weapon, pistol whip him unconscious, search him… A decent plan, or the beginning of one, but the first step requiring me to lurch forward may not be doable, the idea of even standing ratcheting up the nausea twisting my guts. It’s fifty-fifty whether I could get my feet under me without help.
Instead, I lean forward and fix him with a merciless eye. “Holding a redeemer hostage is a federal offense with the severest of penalties. Get me my gear. Help me get out of here. Otherwise, I’ll reckon you as an accessory. You’ll never reopen that clinic.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his concern naked. “I can’t do that. I’m not the one in charge.” He nods at the hospital bed. “You should really be resting.”
I lean back and sigh. Harassing the help will get me nowhere, not in my condition. “What’s my condition?”
“You have a mild concussion and two cracked ribs. The laceration on your leg was serious, but not anymore. Multiple contusions on your arms and torso. You should recover provided you don’t exert yourself. And get plenty of rest.”
“Thank you, doctor. I’ll be fine.”
“Veterinarian,” he corrects, rising from his chair. “OK, just signal if you need anything.” He points to one corner of the room where a camera is mounted. Ah, missed that.
“Get me the man in charge.”
“I’ll pass it along.” He goes to the door and bangs on it. When it opens, I see two men dressed in civvies holding rifles. He steps out past them, the steel door locking behind him.
I spend the next hour hobbling about, mincing over cold concrete with the help of the IV rack. The leg wound hurts like hell, but the stitching holds up fine. The concussion makes it hard to focus, hard to stay awake, but sleep is something I can’t afford. There’ll be time to rest after a retrieval team extracts me. If it has been two days, they should have gotten to me by now.
Using thoughtspeak, I activate diagnostics to confirm that my interface device is functioning. The ID implanted in my head does many things, foremost among them acting as a beacon to allow my brethren to locate me. I run more diagnostic cycles and get the same results. It’s working fine, but nothing’s getting through. The area must be shielded.
So much for the retrieval team. Escape is on me.
The door opens. A middle-aged man dressed in flannels enters, standing ready with a bolt-action rifle. A young woman follows him in and sets a tray of food on an empty chair before both leave. Neither seemed comfortable with their roles. Maybe Metcalf wasn’t bullshitting me. If this was an NDL or cartel operation, they’d be feeding me pain instead.
Famished, I dig in. As I shovel bland stew down my gullet, I reflect that after managing to overpower someone entering my cage, I’d still have to disable the two guards outside. Then, I’d need to find an exit out of here while contending with any other guards, a difficult feat given I’ve no idea of this place’s layout. Doable, but no walk through the roses. Even were I healthy.
After the meal, I can fend off sleep only so long.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Time to wake up, asshole.”
The disembodied hostility coupled with somebody slapping my cheeks does the trick. I’m awake, sitting down; correction, tied to a chair, arms bound behind my back. Testing the bonds reveals no give. Nothing for it, then. I open my eyes and raise my head.
A seasoned predator looks down at me from a few feet away, his dead black eyes bereft of anything but necessity. No, not dead, just indifferent, somehow, the casual lethality in his half-lidded gaze at odds with the slackness of his cheeks, the lax set of his muscular jaw. I don’t know him – and with that mug, he’d stand out – but I can guess what he’s about.
“This a bad time?” I say.
His thin lips twist into a sadistic smile, a hangman’s grin good only for the gallows. It exposes an old scar splayed down one cheek, buried beneath stubble and the shadows spawned by a hanging bulb. The smile leaves as quick as it arrived.
I sigh. “Well, let’s get this over with.”
“Straight to business? No questions, no threats, no pleas for mercy?” The deep-voiced bastard smiles with inevitability. “It’d be rude to skip the pleasantries.”
Sharp pain erupts from my left leg. I cry out but manage to hold most of it in. The bastard has his hand on the wound, pressing. Breathe, Malcolm. BREATHE. He draws back and removes his hand as I continue to suck air.
“There, I’ve introduced myself,” he says, sonorous voice calm with the chilling calculus of mechanical cruelty. “And you are?”
Looking around, I see the room hasn’t changed, only my position in it. By the clock on the wall, I must have slept for six hours. Or eighteen, no way to tell for sure. Two other men stand in the room, one behind me and another leaning against the wall near the closed steel door. Neither seems the least put out by the situation – torture in progress – meaning that, despite their civilian clothing, they’re professionals of some stripe.
My tormentor lifts a leg and rests his boot on the wound. “Answer the question.”
I stare at him and smile.
“As you wish.”
Intense pain blooms again as he leans his weight down on the wound. The best I can manage is to turn groans into growls. Then he relents, leaving me gulping air once more during the temporary reprieve.
“I’ll answer for you. This time,” he says. “Malcolm Adams – Redeemer Malcolm Adams, thirty-five years of age, a fourteen-year DRR veteran. Recently widowed. A shame about your wife, but at least you don’t have to worry about her worrying about you.”
I test my bonds again. They’re tight, some sort of nylon rope chafing my wrists. They’ve even got my feet tied to the steel chair’s legs. I’m not going anywhere.
“You’ve caused me a world of trouble,” he says, sighing with apparent indifference, though his voice harbors grudging spite. “Consider this my way of saying thank you. Set it up.”
One of the other men drags a chair over and sets a box on it. A battery of some kind. Are you kidding me? He attaches wires from it to the steel frame of the chair. He connects a metal rod with an insulated handle to the batt
ery by another cable and hands it to the asshole in charge. Then a black bag is slipped over my head, leaving me to guess where the pain will strike.
“You know how this works, don’t you?”
Here it comes. Remember the training. Clearing my mind, I begin the mental gymnastics for pistol maintenance.
Searing pain where the metal rod touches on the wound, generalized throughout the leg, muscles shuddering, the sound of my own guttural growls. No sense of time, only that it stops at some point, leaving me gasping and disoriented.
OK. Magazine release. Clear the chamber. Depower gun computer. Slide back –
Again, a different spot, left arm, the dull throbbing burn of electricity coursing from the arm across the chest to the other arm, shaking in my restraints. It stops, leaving me more disorientation, labored breathing, strange flashes of light.
Engage slide lock. Rotate takedown lever –
Again. Pain searching, finding, muscles contracting. Nausea sets in, the dull taste of burnt metal in my mouth. Time begins to unravel.
Where was I? Hold slide, release slide lock. Slide forward and remove –
The cycle of pain and brief respite repeats again and again. He’s taking it easy on me, taking his time. I’m absurdly grateful he hasn’t targeted my junk. Yet. No, he’ll save the threat of that for after he’s softened me up, for when the questions start. I’m applying gun oil to the bolt assembly when I hear the sound of a door opening.
“What are you doing!” says a new voice.
The room gets more guests. Over my own labored breathing, it’s hard to make out how many from the footsteps. Three, I think.
“That isn’t necessary,” says my tormentor.
“He’s not supposed to be harmed,” says the new voice.
“He may have information vital to our safety. You put me in charge of security to –”