There was a pause. “Can you let me go?” They both felt waves of distrust flowing off of the teen. He wasn’t sure what to expect from them, but it seemed that he was at least willing to listen, for the moment.
“If you will pledge not to attack us further.” Sera paused. “I will trust your word.”
“…Okay, lady. But don’t try anything.”
Slowly and carefully, she unwrapped her wings, flipping them slightly to get them settled properly on her back, then let go of him, taking her place at John’s side. She left her hands empty, at her sides, but her eyes, still glowing gold, never left his. The teen immediately whirled on the couple, his hands up in a defensive stance, but they could tell that it was just a reaction; he didn’t give off any intent of doing them harm. He was confused, and very, very frightened.
“Why are you here? Are you with the Program?”
“We are here to take you away from this place,” Sera replied steadily. “And no. We are not with the Program. Although John knows all there is to know about it, to his sorrow.”
He stared at her, confusion starting to penetrate his fear. “How? You’re both metas, right?”
“I went through somethin’ like what you went through, kid. I got out, though. Sorta seems like you were in the middle of doin’ the same thing. We can take you the rest of the way, an’ somewhere safe, if you’ll come with us.” John didn’t make any sudden movements; he figured that the kid was right on the edge, and any little thing might set him off.
“Why me? Why go through all the trouble?” The kid is sharp, I’ll give him that much.
“It’s a long story. Judgin’ by those lovely bells goin’ off over the intercom, we don’t have a lotta time to go into it. You’ve gotta make the call, kid. If we were here to hurt you, we would’ve done it already. If we were with the Program, we wouldn’t have put down those guards that you see behind us.” Zachary leaned to the side to see past John and Sera at the pile of unconscious and dead guards behind them. “Trust us, or don’t. Either way, figure it out fast.”
Sera cocked her head to the side, looking momentarily up and away. “There is not much time remaining. The Thulians are here.” John got the flash at the same moment; there was a Sphere outside, sending troops—armored and unarmored—to the entrance of the facility. The new alarms were not for John and Sera. The alarms signaled the arrival of a threat whose only purpose was to wipe this facility off the map, along with everyone in it.
“Thulians? What—”
John felt the chill of great danger tracing the line of his spine. “Bad guys, kid. Worse than these goons. We’re officially outta time. What’s it goin’ to be?”
Zach looked from John to Sera, then back again. He sighed, then called over his shoulder. “Come out, everyone. We’re leaving.” What looked like two dozen teens emerged from behind a corner further down the hall. All of them were scared, wearing the same coverall that Zach was. Some were very obviously metas; various physical manifestations of their powers showed that plainly enough. Trainees. Lab rats. Just like I used to be.
“Is that all of them?” John said, unslinging his rifle and making sure it was charged with a fresh magazine.
“There were more of us,” Zach muttered quietly, looking down at the ground. In that moment, John and Sera both wanted nothing more than to hug the teen and let him know that it wasn’t his fault, that everything would be okay in time. But they couldn’t wait a moment longer. Danger was closing in.
“John, we must seek another way out,” Sera said quietly. “You must speak to Vickie. Our priority is to escape, not confront.”
“Gotcha. Overwatch, you on the line?” John motioned for Zach and the other escapees to follow; they needed to get moving. Finding exactly how they were getting out would depend on Vickie.
“Any natural materials around there? Slap a hand on them.” Vickie did not waste a moment in greetings. She already knew that if John called her, the need had turned dire.
“None…hold a second, goin’ to try somethin’. Darlin’?” John slung his rifle behind him, manifesting the fiery claymore with a whoosh of flame, sending several of the teens stumbling backwards.
“Fear not,” Sera said over her shoulder as she manifested her spear. Waves of reassurance came from her. “We need only an access.”
She rammed her spear into the wall, burning a small hole through it to the earth beyond. Steam immediately began to issue from around the spear. She withdrew and quelled it, as water followed it, leaving a hole for John to plunge his claymore in, widening it enough that he could force his hand and arm into the earth beyond.
“Contact made, Vic.”
“Roger. I’m using my geomancy to find all the spaces with unnatural crap to get a floor plan for the facility. Aaaaand…done. Watch your HUD for directions.”
“Who are you two talking to?” Zach had edged forward, watching the couple work.
“Roger that, Vickie.” He withdrew his arm from the hole in the wall, shaking the muddy water off before extinguishing the sword again and reshouldering his rifle. “Eye in the sky, kid. Our Overwatch; kind of like mission control. She’s gonna help us get out of this joint.”
Suddenly his HUD showed an overlay; the directions led back through the way Zach and the others had apparently come. There was a dead end back that way, that according to Vickie was not a dead end at all. Somehow they were supposed to gain access to a vertical shaft that lay past that wall.
“Get to the dead end and cut your way past it. If you can get through a Thulian dragon’s hide this should be cake.”
“Copy, we’re on it.” John and Sera broke into a trot; Zach and the others followed a short distance behind until the assembled group reached the wall that Vickie had specified.
“What now? This is back the way we came!” Zach threw up his hands in exasperation; some of the others were muttering, growing uneasy.
“Ramp up that fire to melt the edges, otherwise you’ll be swimming to the surface. ’Kay?”
“Stand back, kid. Time for a magic trick.” John manifested his claymore in his off-hand, keeping his rifle shouldered in the other. Sera thrust her spear forward into the wall that Vickie had marked. She kept her spear just hot enough to burn through the wall into the void beyond. John, however, ramped up his sword as high as he dared; it was brilliantly white-hot when he started cutting into the wall. First, he made a man-sized square around Sera’s spear; he worked quickly, but not so fast that the heat didn’t have time to fuse the edges. Once that was done, he cut an X right through the center of the box, from corner to corner. “Open sesame.” Sera pulled her spear from the wall in one quick motion; the four chunks from the X came with the spear, spilling dust and concrete to the floor.
“The escape for the masters, denied to the slaves,” Sera said briefly. “Follow me, my dears. John, guard our rear.” Without hesitation, she plunged into the dark hole, becoming a literal light in the darkness. “There is a ladder,” she added, even as her fires showed it to the rest.
While Zach hesitated, three of the youngest metas did not. One of them, a girl who looked to be no more than nine or ten, practically flung herself after Sera, as if she was afraid to let the former angel out of her sight. That seemed to decide it for the rest, if not Zachary; they crowded up to the hole John had cut in the wall, jumping for the ladder as fast as there was room.
Perhaps the water on the floor in the hallway, at first only a slick, but now deep enough to make their shoes soggy, persuaded them. One way or another, this facility was done for.
John felt what was coming before he saw it: three men rounding the corner at the opposite end of the hallway, maybe a hundred feet away. Two of them were wearing suits, while the other wore a tactical outfit like the security guards, but with the addition of a red armband on the left arm. He knew what they were: heavy hitters, Program metas like he had been meant to become. They started running towards John and Zachary, the one in white leading.
“We
gotta cover the others while they get out, kid. You up for this?”
Zachary didn’t take his eyes off of the approaching enemies. “The better question is, are they? I’ve wanted to kill these guys for years.” He squared his shoulders, crouching low with his hands balled into his fists at his sides. John brought his rifle up, aiming for the center; best to take out the leader first, if he could. Fighting metas was unpredictable; no telling what bag of tricks this trio had. Just as John depressed the trigger, one of the suited goons dodged in front of the meta in white. The bullets found the center of his chest…and then he vanished in a whirl of something that looked like black smoke. Two identical goons were in his place, running side by side. John fired two more fast bursts at each, to the same effect; when hit, the goons vanished and were replaced by two more. Now there were five goons in suits, and all of them were grinning nastily.
“Well, shit. This just got more complicated.” John dropped his rifle, using the quick detach on the sling to let it completely go; it’d only hang him up if they got into serious hand-to-hand unpleasantness.
“Hurry up, hotshot, the shaft is starting to fill. Unless you’re really good at breathing water, you’re running out of time.”
“Nag, nag, nag.” John focused for a moment; fire sprung to life in the palms of his hands, traveling up his arms. Zach was startled enough to flinch away from him. He was reminded again of his time with the Program…and how it ended. He shot his arms out in front of himself, sending waves of flame into the narrow hallway. Again, the duplicate goons shoved to the front, meeting the attack head on. John ramped up the fires, sending a pulse through the waves that crashed over duplicates until the hallway was filled with a truly impressive conflagration. John killed his fires once the automatic fire-suppression systems for the facility kicked in; thankfully, it was sprinklers instead of Halon gas, though he supposed that it would only speed up the flooding. A mass of oily black smoke was all that was left where the goons had been.
“Not bad. For an old guy,” Zach said nonchalantly, relaxing from his fighting stance and scratching his nose.
“Y’know what they say, kid. ‘Older the bull—’” John’s head snapped around to the hallway again. Something didn’t feel right…Zach picked up on it from John’s expression, but didn’t have time to prepare for what came next.
Charging through the smoke, like creatures from some sort of nightmare, were too many duplicates to count; if they had been grinning before, they now had near-rictus wide smiles, all teeth and hate. At the back of the clamoring mob was the one in the white security uniform, watching. That standout tilted its head to the side. Then the screaming began.
The escaping children—Zach included—were all screaming as if they were being tortured. John whirled around for a split second, taking in the scene. Some of them were on the ground, clawing at their ears or the sides of their heads, balled up in the fetal position. Two fell from the ladder but somehow Sera slid down to them and caught them, holding them between her chest and the steel with her wings cupped around them. John turned back towards the most immediate threat; he could tell that Zach had managed to get a grip on whatever was happening to him, and was still on his feet.
“P-pain! One. White—Mr. Cutter! N-nails and knives!” Zach rasped out through gritted teeth before screaming again, this time in both pain and rage, before he uncoiled like a spring, bolting towards the goons. Must be a telepath of some sort; induces pain…Sera and I are protected, but I can feel the bastard scratching at the edges of my mind, trying to wedge himself inside like a roach in a crack in the wall.
He didn’t have any more time to think; the goons were almost to the hole in the wall, and Zach had rushed forward alone. John manifested his sword; with his enhancements already keyed up, he was nearly a blur as he ran. He knew that it didn’t matter how many of the goons he cut through, more would pop up. He had to get to that bastard in white, Mr. Cutter; shut him off, and the kids would have an easier time of it.
Zach had already waded into the mass of the duplicates, his hands flashing and sweeping and breaking and tearing at a whirlwind pace. The duplicates were definitely physical, not just illusions. And they had knives. Zach was giving them a run for their money, but it was coming at a cost; his coverall was slashed open in several places, and he was bleeding freely from several of his wounds. John saw that he was about to go down in a dogpile of the duplicates, Roman stabbing style. Can’t have that. The duplicates were all so focused on Zach that not a single one of them saw him coming. With three overhead cuts, he took out four duplicates that had worked their way behind Zach. He brought his sword downward from a high guard viciously, using the back edge, amputating the hands of a duplicate that had just missed a thrust for John’s sternum. He noticed that this duplicate didn’t immediately disperse and double; it seemed to freak out, twitching and shaking as it fell to the floor. But it didn’t “die.”
John changed tactics. He started to wound and incapacitate the duplicates instead of going directly for the kill. Holding his claymore in front of himself, he swung the blade in a windshield wiper motion, advancing forward with each cut. Hands, arms, parts of legs, and knives all fell to the floor. A few of the duplicates were killed anyways—they were all so close together, it was impossible to be one hundred percent discretionary with his attacks—but for the most part, John only injured them enough to take them out of the fight. Swinging his sword out in a long arc in a low sweep with one hand, he easily hobbled a half dozen of the duplicates, sending them toppling onto the floor, legless. Whoever was controlling the duplicates got smart to the game, though; the still-functional duplicates started to kill their wounded “comrades,” brutally and without hesitation.
Still bought us a little bit of time, an’ Zach some breathin’ room.
Zach was still tearing through the duplicates mindlessly, too caught up in pain to have any sort of technique to his attacks; what little he had in the first place, anyways.
“Enough of this shit!” John delivered a devastating front kick to the chest of one of the duplicate goons; the force of it was enough to leave a sickeningly deep boot-shaped indent in the duplicate’s chest before it crashed into the goons behind it, sending a cluster of them down in a pile. John grabbed the tie from one of the duplicates that was rushing past him to get at Zach, pulling it around until it was in front of him. Still holding on to the tie with his off-hand, he stabbed his sword through the duplicate’s midsection; he ramped up the power of the fires to the sword for a moment, cauterizing the wound…but not “killing” the duplicate. The duplicate looked at John, then the sword sticking out of its gut, and then back to John.
John ignited the fires at his feet; the rocket-motor report was deafening in the enclosed space. He held the duplicate—still impaled on his claymore—in front of him like a shield as his feet left the ground and he began to fly. The impacts as his makeshift shield struck its brothers were enough to make John’s arms creak, but he mustered all of his strength to keep pushing through, a human battering ram attached to a jet engine. He had seen what he had to do through the battle-sense, and knew when to release the now very dead duplicate right before it dissipated. He had punched through the mob of duplicates. He cut off his fires, extinguishing both his sword and his flight; in the same instant, he threw his arms wide, like a linebacker in full extension. His shoulder speared into the midsection of Mr. Cutter, tackling him to the floor. There was a loud crack as his helmet hit the floor. John had a second to see the man’s eyes; they were slammed wide open with fear. Before the meta could start to focus his attention or powers on John—or, even worse, Sera—he placed his right palm against the helmet at temple-level, then ignited a garden-hose-thick stream of plasma that cut straight through the helmet and the head beneath, splashing against the wall. Mr. Cutter was dead instantly, wisps of acrid smoke drifting from the two new holes in the dead man’s helmet.
Instantly, the screaming from the children behind him stopped, replaced by unce
rtain whimpering. I am getting them up the ladder again, beloved! he heard in his mind. You must end this and join us; we are running out of time!
John sensed that the action behind him had changed. While still on the ground and hunched over the dead meta’s body, he glanced over his shoulder to see all of the duplicates stop in sync, then turn and run straight for him. He was on his feet instantly, reigniting his claymore and sheathing his arms in flame, ready to meet the charge…when just as suddenly, the entirety of the mob of duplicates disappeared completely. There was a single goon in a suit in the middle of the hallway; he looked around frantically, pulling a knife from his jacket and squaring his shoulders towards John. Before he could do anything else, Zach walked calmly up to the man and snapped his neck from behind, as easily as if he was cracking a glowstick.
It was John’s turn to be confused. “What happened?”
Zach stared at the body of Mr. Cutter, still fuming. “When you killed him, the pain went away. I could fight back after that, use my powers, concentrate on them.” He kicked the goon in the suit, hard, in the ribs. “I do probability manipulation, or that’s what they called it anyway. If I focus on it, I can…make it work harder for me. Do bigger things. I guess I shut down this asshole’s power for a second.”
John glanced at the hole in the wall. The last of the children were just disappearing into the shaft. Hurry! he heard Sera send to him through their connection. The water is nearly at your level, and the Thulians are at the second basement!
“Time to get goin’, kid. We’re way past check-out—” John saw it coming before it happened, and rushed forward to reach Zach. The young meta swayed on his feet for a moment before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he swooned. John caught him before he hit the floor, then slapped him in the face a couple of times. The teen’s eyes fluttered open, though clearly it took some effort. “You’re played out, but we gotta get you outta here. Up an’ at ’em.” Zach nodded weakly as John helped him back to his feet. He half-carried, half-shoved Zach along as they ran for the hole in the wall that led to the emergency escape hatch.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 17