No further conversation was needed as the three friends sprinted for the start of the narrow bridge where they rapidly attached the safety ropes to their harnesses. Jaego was first to step out over clear space on the track, Gwen following close behind. Ethan took one last look over his shoulder to see the enormous form of a Tri-Claw emerge from the gloom. It was all the encouragement he needed. He turned his attention forward and stepped out onto the track, arms held to either side for balance as he walked.
Once he was twenty metres out from the cliff, a heavy clang sounded from behind, transmitting a vibration through the metal track. Ethan stopped, glancing behind, the movement almost making him lose his balance. The Tri-Claw stood at the edge of the cliff, two pointed legs resting on the track as it seemed to consider trying to follow the friends out onto the bridge. The creature turned side on and started to move its weight onto the bridge. Ethan stood still, his breath held. Surely it wouldn’t attempt a chase? Suddenly one of the Tri-Claw’s legs slipped off the polished surface, the underbody of the creature slamming onto the track. The shell hit the metal with the sound of gong being struck, causing the entire structure to vibrate under his feet. It was enough. The Tri-Claw shuffled backward off the track and back onto the cliff. It stood for a moment at the edge, regarding Ethan with black soulless eyes before scuttling back into the shadows after easier prey.
Ethan exhaled with relief, then turned carefully forward again. Jaego and Gwen had already gained thirty metres on him. The wind whipped at his hair, spattering fine droplets of salt spray against his skin and leaving a greasy sheen of water on the polished metal underfoot. His shoes squeaked on the treacherous surface and slipped slightly as he took a step, making his gut lurch at the thought of falling. Ethan swallowed, taking a deep breath as he held his arms out to either side for extra balance. For the first time in days, the greatest danger would not come from a Tri-Claw or human, but rather a simple span of metal. Trying to ignore the abyss that yawned beneath his feet, he focused his attention on each foot placement and walked onward, leaving the island that had formed his life to date behind forever.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Pain drew Harris back to consciousness. He forced himself to rise to a sitting position, sour nausea surging as a hot poker of agony pulsed behind his forehead in time with his heartbeat. He winced as he opened his eyes, even that slight movement intensifying the pain. Vision from his right eye was partially obscured by something hanging down from his forehead. He reached up a hand to his face, his fingertips causing fresh agony like the burning caress of flame where they touched exposed flesh on his forehead. When Jaego had kicked him unconscious, his boot had partially scalped him on impact. A slab of tissue was torn from the lieutenant’s hairline down to his eyebrow on the right side, leaving glistening bone open to the air. Harris grit his teeth and scooped the segment of skin and muscle back onto his forehead, starting a fresh round of haemorrhage from the wound, the blood running warm and red through his fingers and over his face. Harris licked hot copper from his lips and pulled his beret on, using the front rim of the hat to hold the slab of tissue in place.
Wiping blood from his eyes so that he could see, Harris looked around the intersection, swearing with frustration at what he found. The teenagers were gone. His officers were dead, reduced to inanimate failures, lying in pools of their own blood. Harris pushed himself to stand, his head spinning for a moment as he gained his feet, not wanting to believe that a trio of bloody teenagers had bested his team of trained men. For the first time, a thought of potential failure began to gnaw at the corners of his mind, raising an unfamiliar buzz of anxiety in his chest. Other people failed, but not him. He’d never failed before and refused to let today be the first.
He turned around to make for the station entrance knowing he needed to regroup his surviving men, and nearly tripped over Zach’s body in the process. Jaego’s father lay on his back, arms crossed over his chest with eyelids shut in eternal sleep. The man was a mess; one side of his face so swollen and bruised it barely resembled a human visage. Memory flooded back of the fight now, how the man at his feet had proved the tipping factor, joining the girl in shooting his men before tackling him to the ground. What made it worse, was that Zach was supposed to be dead, a meal for Tri-Claw. Harris swore again, realising that Zach was probably responsible for Alpha team’s lack of response over the past hour.
Four of his officers were dead and his quarry free to run. Most importantly, he was no closer to regaining the data files. Anger built in his gut as he stared down at Zach’s body, firing into an uncontrolled rage. Harris lifted his boot and stamped down, hearing a satisfying crunch as his heel snapped bones, deforming the face inwards.
He did it again.
And again.
Blood spattered outwards, a mush of grey and white brain mixing with bone on the concrete. A recess of consciousness realised he was yelling fury at the corpse beneath his boot as he transformed its head to an unrecognisable trauma of mashed bone and blood. Harris stepped back and drew a ragged breath, leaning forward with hands on knees as he forced some semblance of control over himself.
A metallic chirp sounded, the noise echoing off the deserted buildings about the intersection. Harris’s head snapped up, searching the darkness for the source. He reached for his gun only to discover his holster and weapon were missing, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see his closest officer had been stripped of his weapon as well. Harris cursed under his breath as he ran for the station entrance, the barred gate still hanging open and unlocked. Not only had he lost the teens, but now he knew them to be armed as well, the thought intensifying his headache.
The metallic chirp sounded again, this time closer and coming from the direction of the bridge. Harris slammed the gate closed and activated the lock, knowing the last thing he needed was a Tri-Claw loose within corporation grounds. Outside, the sound of footsteps slapping on concrete drew his attention and Harris leant close, his face up against the bars of the gate to see who approached.
“Open the gate!” screamed a man.
Harris kicked the gate in frustration, recognising the voice. Was it too much to hope that it be one of the kids?
Marco skidded to a halt outside the gate, grabbing hold of the bars before Harris’s face, a set of keys still gripped in one hand. “Lieutenant Harris, please unlock the gate—there’s not much time!” Marco looked over his shoulder into the night, a hail of spike tipped legs growing in volume.
Harris stared at him impassively. “You were here when my officers were shot. What happened to the teenagers?”
“Let me in, then I’ll tell you everything I know, I swear!”
“No. You can tell me first.”
Marco’s eyes were wide, his gaze flicking back and forth between Harris and the direction of the Tri-Claw’s approach.
“All right. They stole your gun and bolted once they realised the rail line was blocked. I think they were heading for the foreshore to attempt a swim. There was nothing I could do to stop them once the boys were armed.”
Harris raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “You let your daughter attempt a swim across the channel at night? I don’t think so.”
“She’s dead, you bastard!” spat Marco. “She got taken by the Tri-Claw that’s following me. It’s only the boys left, and the bastards can drown for all I care.”
“Huh,” grunted Harris. At least one of them bit the dust.
“I told you what I knew, are you going to let me in?” yelled Marco, his voice cracking as he stared off to the left, eyes widening in terror. The legs strikes were loud now, each step a crowbar slammed against rock.
Harris turned back to the Marco and regarded him for a moment. It had been a shit night so far, time for someone else be on the losing end of a deal for a change.
“No.”
A blur of red streaked in from the side and Marco was smashed into the gate. The Tri-Claw gripped the transit worker with each of its huge claws, one clampe
d about his thighs, the other about his upper chest like two massive secateurs. Marco screamed as the edges of the claws tightened, blood welling, dropping in wet plops to the ground. With a convulsive snap, the claw about his thighs closed, severing both legs beneath his hips. He screamed, blood squirting in rhythmic pumps from the femoral arteries. Abruptly, Marco’s cry was cut off as the second claw closed about his upper chest, clipping neatly through ribs, spine and vital organs like butter. The body parts dropped to the ground, spattering Harris’s boots and pants with gore.
A glint of metal caught his eye. The set of keys that Marco had been holding had dropped through the gate when the Tri-Claw struck. He darted a hand down to retrieve them, keeping one eye on the feasting monster on the other side of the barrier. The lieutenant stepped back then walked up to the station concourse, wet crunching noises following him up the hall as the monster fed.
He turned the set of keys over in his hand and wiped a smear of blood off the tag so he could read the underlying writing. “Maintenance Shed 9”. Now why the hell was he holding that? In his peripheral vision, he saw movement at the end of the station platform.
“Hey you!” Harris shouted. “Get over here, now!”
Another transit employee of the station slowly re-emerged from a side room. It was a woman who looked to be in her thirties, hair tied up in an economical brown ponytail above a dull grey shirt. Her face blanched as she took in Harris’s blood-spattered uniform, but she obeyed his command and walked slowly towards him, eyes now looking anywhere but at the officer.
“What’s your role here?” asked Harris.
“I’m the station manager on shift, sir,” said the woman, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Good, then you should know what these are for.” He shoved the set of keys under her nose. “What’s in Maintenance Shed Nine?”
“Just maintenance equipment for the rail line and bridge, but I don’t understand…”
Harris cut her off. “What sort of equipment? Is there anything that would help a person to cross the bridge?”
The woman seemed uncertain, her voice shaking under the glare of the lieutenant. “I… I don’t have a lot to do with structural upkeep. I think there’s safety harnesses stored there that our structural engineers use to inspect the track on the bridge.” She shrugged apologetically. “It’s been years since I’ve had a need to go in there.”
Harris ground his teeth together. Marco was playing me for a fool, re-directing my attention to the wrong place. He grabbed the radio from his shoulder. “Bravo Team, any sign of the targets down at the foreshore? Over.”
After a brief pause. “Negative, sir. Not a damn thing other than some Tri-Claw that are starting to show too much interest in our truck. If the kids are stupid enough to come this way, they’ll be sliced and diced by our friends in the water. How long do you want us to stay here, sir?”
Harris ground his teeth together and a sharp stab of pain lanced into his brain from a cracked tooth, sparking his anger to greater heights. “Get yourselves to the Maglev station. I think they’re using the track.” He hung up, breaking contact before receiving confirmation of his order. If they were using the bridge, there had to be cameras that could confirm their location.
Harris darted out a hand, taking a firm grip of the manager’s shoulder, his fingers tightening with manic strength. “Take me to the control room, I have a job for you.”
The woman cringed away, a confused eyebrow raised in question as she gave a slight nod of acceptance before leading him toward a door marked with the words “Transit Staff Only”. She paused at the door briefly, placing her thumb on a security pad to disarm the lock. A red light scanned her print up and down before turning to green as her identity was confirmed, accompanied by a short buzz as the electronic mechanism clicked open. Harris pushed the woman out of the way so he could enter first.
The light inside the office was dim compared to that of the platform. A series of screens covered the wall before a workstation. The top of the desk sloped up at an angle, covered in a myriad of back-lit buttons and dials, reminding Harris of a jet’s cockpit. A man who sat at the control panel slid a headset off his ears onto his neck, a look of confusion mixed with irritation at the interruption as he flicked his gaze from the police officer to the transit manager.
“Sue, what’s going on? This is a controlled area, there isn’t supposed to be any non-transit employees in here.”
Harris flipped out his badge, a smear of his own blood across the plastic. “I’m a lieutenant of the Special Operations Unit, and I have the authority to compel cooperation of any Viperob employee. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination of your contract.”
“It’s legit, Tony,” said the manager. “Do whatever he wants.”
Tony studied Harris’s ID briefly, his tongue darting out to nervously lick his lips. “Ok. What do you need me to do?”
“I have reason to believe fugitives are escaping over the bridge to the mainland.”
Tony snorted. “That’s impossible. No one can cross that bridge at night. The track’s only a foot wide and there’s no handholds. It’d be suicide.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” grated Harris dangerously. “There has to be security cameras somewhere on the damn thing—get me the footage.”
At a monitor to their right, Sue had begun to type furiously. “There’s only two security cameras monitoring that stretch of rail and both are attached to the single supporting pylon at the centre of the bridge. If anyone’s on it, we should be able to see them once I patch into the camera’s feed.”
Harris stepped closer, so he could watch over her shoulder as she worked. The flap of torn skin and tissue on his forehead slipped free of his beret and flopped over his right eye. Bleeding started anew, dripping in warm plops onto the manager’s shirt as Harris tucked the offending piece back under the hat and pulled it down tighter to keep it in place again.
“Jesus, you’re right,” muttered Sue, sitting back in her chair. Harris leant in to see the screen better. The footage on the camera was dark, but three moving silhouettes could be seen, shuffling forward on the track toward the middle of the bridge.
Harris turned his attention to the screens above the control station. One image appeared to be a view from the front of the Maglev train as it hurtled through the dark towards its next station. “Where’s the train now?”
“It’s about forty seconds out from its second stop. Why?”
“Good, I want it brought back here immediately.”
“But I can’t do that,” spluttered Tony. “It would affect staff shift changes at multiple locations and stuff up a myriad of production lines. I’d be crucified!”
Harris grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt and yanked him up off his chair so that his face was mere inches away. “One of the biggest episodes of industrial espionages that Viperob has experienced is underway. Stolen files are currently about to leave the island across your bloody rail bridge, files that could destroy the corporation if they end up in the hands of our competition. This is our last chance to prevent that happening.”
“Ok, even if those people have the information you say, I still don’t understand how bringing the train back will help,” said Tony. “There’s no way to access them from the carriages while they’re on the bridge.”
“I don’t care about that,” Harris said with a hard smile. “Once that train re-crosses the bridge, they’ll be reduced to wet smudges on her paintwork and that’ll do the job good enough for me.” He needed the kids dead, and if he couldn’t have the data chip in his hand at the end of the operation, the next best thing was to ensure it was destroyed. If it wasn’t crushed on impact, it would be lost into the sea below—both satisfactory options as far as Harris was concerned.
“But you’ll kill them,” said Sue, her face shocked. “They’re only kids, I won’t let you do it.”
Harris’s hand brushed past his empty holster then came to rest on the handle of h
is knife. The blade made a rasping noise as he withdrew it from the leather sheath. Light glinted off the polished steel, holding both transit employees mesmerized, frozen at the silent menace of the weapon as Harris advanced and pushed the tip of the blade against Tony’s neck. He whimpered as a single drop of blood welled from his skin, running in a crimson line to soak into his shirt.
“Oh, I think you’d be surprised at what you’re willing to do,” Harris said. “Now turn that train around!”
An acid tang filled the room. Harris looked down and grimaced as he saw a wet mark spreading at Tony’s groin. One god damned drop of blood and he pisses himself? For fucks sake! Harris let the knife drop a fraction and started breathing through his mouth to try and avoid the urine stench. “Well, are you going to bring that bloody train home or not?” he roared, a gob of spit flying from his mouth to land on the man’s nose.
Tony scooted back from him and turned to his keyboard again with shaking fingers, entering the necessary codes to alter the train’s route. Sue grabbed a phone and started to ring the other stations to notify of the change in service, her voice tight and clipped as she worked through a list of numbers.
Harris wiped the blood off his knife against his pants before sheathing the blade with practiced ease, his attention firmly on the screen ahead that showed the train leaving the station. The carriages had changed direction. Rapidly gaining speed, they were almost a blur as the last carriage passed the CCTV camera. Harris allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as he imagined the kids’ faces when they saw his gift bearing down on them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ethan walked with his arms held out to either side for balance, leaning slightly forward into the wind. He tensed his muscles as a fresh gust buffeted his body, making the safety rope that hung from his harness in a loop under the single track whip and writhe like a tortured snake. As the gust passed, Ethan ran a hand quickly over his face in a feeble attempt to wipe water away from his eyes. His skin was covered in a greasy sheen of salt water carried on the wind, his clothes a sodden second skin that chafed at his legs with every step.
The Viperob Files Page 18