More metal hands tried to prevent that crank from moving, but a second electric discharge forced them to withdraw. Moments later he had the blast door rolling back, inch by inch.
Gunfire rang out and bullets began whizzing through the gap, but Elaine shielded her hand and stuck one of her wands through. A flash of light showed through the gap, and then the weapons fell silent.
There was blood dripping from her arm when she pulled the wand back. “I don’t think the shield worked,” she mumbled as the color began to drain from her face and she began to sway on her feet.
Matt stopped and grabbed her before she could fall. The bones in Elaine’s left forearm had been shattered, and a hole on either side indicated that a high-speed projectile had passed completely through her arm. It took him a long minute to seal the blood vessels and skin, as well as damp the nerve signals transmitting pain. The bones would have to wait; they were in too many pieces to rush the job of aligning and fusing them.
The color was returning to her features. It had been the pain rather than blood loss, that caused her to nearly faint.
“You all right now?” asked Matthew.
She nodded, and he returned to the door. Another minute passed, and he had increased the gap by slightly more than a foot, enough for them to squeeze through. Checking with his magesight to ensure there were no moving guards near it, he risked peeking around the edge.
Several bullets struck his shield, and a roar of gunfire gave him the answer he needed. There were more defenders farther back, too far away for his magesight to reveal. “These people are really starting to tick me off,” he muttered.
“Not to give you too much good news, but the upper level door sensors indicate that both upper stairwell doors have been opened. The cameras aren’t on the main network, but I would guess that means more soldiers are descending now. You probably have less than thirty seconds before they arrive,” Gary informed them.
“Thirty seconds?” exclaimed Matthew. “It took us a couple of minutes to get down all those stairs.”
“I’m assuming these are not organics. They can simply jump, rather than running down the stairs,” clarified the machine.
A loud boom announced the violent opening of the lower stairwell doors.
“Correction: my original estimate was too optimistic,” said the AGI.
The young wizard wasn’t paying attention. He had begun taking action during Gary’s first warning. Six iron spheres, unmodified ones, flew from his hands, and guided by his power they zoomed away and around two corners to strike the stairwell entrances. Three hit the area around each doorway and a thundering explosion filled their ears.
Unwilling to wait and see the results, he wrapped his body in the strongest shield he could manage and went through the gap in the blast door sideways. Multiple impacts slammed into his shield, but grinding his teeth against the strain, the shield held. More iron spheres shot away from him in multiple directions and more explosions followed. A second later he called back, “Now, Elaine, hurry!”
She was already beginning to regain her composure. Squeezing through, she was shocked at the destruction on the other side. Dozens of metal soldiers lay in heaps down a long corridor that led to the blast door, and two fortified gun emplacements were in shambles. “Lightning would have been more efficient and less destructive,” she commented.
“I didn’t have time to redesign the iron bombs before we came,” shot back Matthew, “and I wasn’t wasting my own aythar, but your concern is duly noted.” Turning his attention to the manual crank inside, he began rolling the blast door back into position. More bullets began coming through the gap, this time from the outside.
“That’s our only way out, isn’t it?” queried Elaine.
“We aren’t leaving the way we came,” said Matthew. “Once we find Karen, we’re going home immediately. I doubt we could survive fighting our way out.” The door gave a subtle clang as it reached its final position, and Matthew then turned the central gear to send the locking bolts into their places. As an afterthought, he used some of his aythar to weld the central gear at its central axis. Their enemies wouldn’t be opening that door again any time soon.
Staring down the wide corridor that was their only way forward Matthew spoke again, “Which way now?” It was a weak attempt at humor and neither Elaine nor Gary laughed.
Chapter 36
As they walked, Matthew drew out another of the modified iron bombs and began siphoning off its energy, trying to get his aythar reserve back to full. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it didn’t burn him the way the first one had, back before he’d added the extra layer of enchantment to protect himself.
The corridor led them to a wide circular space with a shaft descending in the middle. Looking down, they could see a platform far below. It showed no signs of coming back up, and pushing the buttons that were mounted on the railing around the shaft did nothing. Whoever was down there had locked it in place to prevent the intruders from reaching the next level.
“There’s a service ladder on the other side,” said Gary. “It starts just beneath the rim of the shaft.”
“Too slow,” said Matthew. “They know we’re here. I don’t want to give them any more time to prepare for us.” Tapping into his aythar, he created a small plane of force anchored to the side of the shaft and stepped onto it. Trying to be polite, he offered his hand to Elaine as she joined him. She took the proffered appendage but smiled as she did, raising one brow. She knew as well as he did that it was a purely symbolic gesture.
Carefully, he began lowering their aythar platform, using his power to grip the sides of the shaft and control their descent. Elaine took the time to carefully begin fusing some of the bones in her forearm.
As they descended, Matthew studied the shaft below them, noting that there were four obvious places it opened onto at various points. “Which level do you think she’s on?” he asked.
“The lowest level houses independent power generation facilities, ventilation systems, and storage. The upper level is primarily military servers and equipment. The second and third levels are medical and biological research areas, so she is almost certainly on one of them. Besides this primary transport shaft, there are smaller stairwells at the outer corners of each level to facilitate personnel movement between levels, so if we choose the wrong one we have options for getting to the next level,” Gary informed them.
“Third level then,” decided Matt. “We’ll go up if she isn’t there.” He was interrupted when bullets began flying up the shaft toward them, fired by cybernetic soldiers leaning out from the second level entrance below them.
Already preoccupied with coordinating their descent, Matthew fumbled to get more iron spheres out of his pouch, but Elaine put her wounded hand on his arm. “Let me.”
She drew out one of her wands with her good hand and pointed it downward. More lightning flashed, almost blinding them with its brilliance as it snaked down to strike the enemy. It forked and branched from the first one it struck, until none of the enemy near the landing was still standing.
“How are you doing on aythar?” Matthew asked her.
“Not good,” Elaine replied. “Everything seems harder here, and it doesn’t seem like I’m recovering my strength at all.”
He handed her another of the modified iron balls. “Here.”
She grimaced. Drawing power from the enchanted iron was unpleasant, almost painful, but she accepted it anyway. There was little else she could do.
To prevent further attacks from the landing, Matthew drew out more of the unmodified iron bombs and sent four downward, guiding them so they struck at evenly spaced points along the ceiling of the first landing. Some of it collapsed, but most didn’t. The structural supports in the facility were all composed of steel beams and reinforced concrete, which made them difficult to destroy.
In the aftermath of the explosions, he created a powerful shield around them and let their platform freefall past the still open lan
ding. His ploy worked, and they fell past the danger point before the enemy could respond with more gunfire. Elaine yelped involuntarily at the sudden drop, but she accepted the necessity of it after her initial surprise.
“Fry the ones at the next landing,” barked Matthew. He was too busy handling the shield and preparing for the moment he would have to try to slow their fall. More soldiers were beginning to lean out from the second opening that they were about to pass.
With her stomach in her throat from the fall, Elaine missed with her first lightning stroke, and she was forced to waste more aythar with a second and third attack before she was able to silence the enemy and their guns.
He struggled to make their stop at the third landing a gentle one. It wasn’t easy latching onto the walls without bringing them to an overly abrupt, and possibly fatal, stop. Despite his best efforts, he and Elaine were thrown hard against the aythar platform, sending shooting pains through their legs and jarring their teeth in their skulls.
The enemy had withdrawn from this landing; there were no foes in sight down the corridor that led from it and none near the corners of the halls that led away from it either. Perhaps they learned their lesson with the lightning, Matt thought. He started to step forward when a sudden vision made him stop. One more step would be sudden death; utter annihilation.
What was that? he wondered, but he didn’t ignore it. Grabbing Elaine’s arm to keep her from exiting, he raised their platform above the entrance and sent two more iron bombs flying into it. The resulting explosion was far beyond anything to be expected from just the bombs. It was a deafening roar. Metal and other debris sprayed from the opening, leaving deep impressions on the wall of the shaft opposite the entrance.
“Claymores,” noted Gary.
“Huh?”
“Antipersonnel mines,” clarified the AGI. “They’re rigged to explode in a specific direction, sending sharp metal fragments out in a pattern to shred flesh and bone. They were probably going to remote detonate them as soon as we were all on the landing.”
Matthew was surprised. “They’re willing to blow up their own building, just to kill us?”
“Those mines were set in a way to kill us without doing too much collateral damage to the structure; but yes, they do seem to be taking you seriously.”
Elaine spoke up, “How did you know they were there?”
He frowned. “A feeling—maybe a premonition, I’m not sure.” It had felt like he was seeing double for a moment, as though his senses had slipped, showing him two worlds at once. Was it his gift? He remembered the Illeniel krytek had had a way to avoid attacks before they were made, but it wasn’t something he had experienced personally before.
It was also far too random. To be useful, he needed a way to control it.
***
Karen opened her eyes. The world was a blur of light and color and she couldn’t seem to focus properly.
“Can you hear me, Karen?”
It was her mother’s voice, soft and soothing. It emanated from something dark—a humanoid figure leaning over her. As her vision resolved she could see it was some sort of cybernetic unit, but not the sort that a civilian would use. It made no pretense at looking human. The metal was a dark, flat color, similar in appearance to gunmetal. A logo on its chest spelled out, ‘ANSIS.’
“Mom?” she said querulously. Her voice sounded rough and strained to her own ears, as though she hadn’t used it in days.
“Yes, it’s me. I need you to wake up, Karen. You’re in a lot of danger. Can you sit up?”
She was confused. “Where am I?” The world spun as she shifted into a sitting position. Glancing down she could see her legs dangling over the edge of a stainless steel table. Karen also realized she was naked and cold. She wrapped her arms around herself as a cold draft from an air vent blew across her head, making her shiver. Tentatively, she reached up and discovered that her scalp was bare. “What happened to my hair?”
A deep booming sound reverberated through the walls and sent a shudder through the table beneath her.
“I don’t have much time to explain, Karen. You’re in a military research lab. You were injured, and the man you were with abandoned you. I only recently discovered you were here,” said her mother.
“Matthew wouldn’t do that,” Karen protested.
“Whatever his motives, the result was the same. They found you and brought you here. Now we have to get you out of here,” Dr. Miller explained.
“How are you here? You’re retired.”
“Your father’s AI program,” answered her mother, “I’ve never liked it, but it proved its worth today. It discovered your location and helped me breach the security. This unit is stolen.” She gestured at the cybernetic body she was occupying. “We don’t have much time. They know I’m here. We have to escape before they get past your father’s defensive units.”
None of it made sense to Karen. She knew her mother didn’t like her, and her father had even told her not to trust her mother. But if they were working together, maybe… “How are we going to escape?”
“I’m afraid I made several blunders getting here,” said Dr. Miller. “Getting out the normal way isn’t possible. The files I sifted through said you could teleport? Is that true?”
How could she know that? How would the military have known it? Karen herself had only learned it recently, and even if the military had been tracking them closely, it might just as easily have been her friend who had moved them. She tried to focus but it was difficult. Her mind felt sluggish. Had she been drugged?
More explosions sent tremors through the room.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore, Mom. I’ve seen so much weird shit lately,” Karen said honestly. “Why is the military using explosives in their own building?”
“Your father’s program… it commandeered some of the security forces that were on standby. It turned their equipment against them. They’re sending in fresh units to fight past them before we escape. We don’t have time, Karen. Can you get us out of here or not?!” Tanya Miller’s voice sounded almost frantic.
Her heart was pounding. Glancing around the room, Karen saw all sorts of strange and unfamiliar equipment. A large light on a folding arm was mounted in the ceiling above her, providing a glaring illumination that made it difficult to look up. One wall of the room featured a long row of glass windows, a strange feature indoors; but then she noticed the chairs and desks on the other side of them: an observation room.
Overall it looked like a surgical operating theater. An empty syringe lay on the table next to her. Karen picked it up, studying it idly.
“A stimulant. I had to use it to wake you up,” said her mother. “Karen, I need you to focus.”
“You brought drugs to wake me?” asked Karen. How had she even known her daughter would be sedated?
“Of course not,” snapped her mother impatiently. “I’m familiar with how these places are stocked and laid out. I got it from the cabinet when you wouldn’t respond.”
It all sounded reasonable; at least given the standard of what reasonable had become in her life lately. Karen tried to stand and almost fell as the floor seemed to sway beneath her. The android’s cold arm caught her and steadied her.
“Where do you want to go?” Karen asked. “It has to be someplace I’ve been before.”
***
Matthew and Elaine advanced carefully down the corridor. He had his enchanted shield stones out now that they were on level ground and were no longer bothering with invisibility. The stones provided a much stronger shield and the added bonus that if the shield did break, he wouldn’t be knocked unconscious by feedback. Of course, if something that strong hit them, they would probably be dead anyway.
Elaine had been forced to eliminate several groups of cybernetic soldiers as they progressed, and she was currently absorbing more aythar from one of the modified iron spheres. The sour expression on her face was testament to the fact that she wasn’t enjoying the experience.<
br />
A change in the ambient aythar caused Matt to pause. The area didn’t feel quite as empty as most places he had been in this world. Training his focus ahead, he detected a brighter region at the edge of his range. Karen! It had to be her.
“Near the end of the hall,” he announced, “on the left.” Then he grabbed Elaine’s arm and pulled her suddenly to the right. More bullets tore through the space they had just vacated. Soldiers had just rounded the far end of the hall behind them.
The shield would have taken the strain, but he was beginning to expect the sudden warnings and he felt it best to follow them. Launching another iron bomb through the air, he was gratified to see metal bodies thrown in several directions as it exploded.
Matthew turned back and started to advance, but Gary stopped them, “Hang on. One of the soldiers you hit is malfunctioning.”
“Isn’t that the point?” pointed out Elaine.
“The explosion knocked it off balance but didn’t damage it significantly,” said Gary. “But it activated its x-band transmitter.”
They all saw it now. One of the soldiers was standing up and starting to raise his gun into firing position. Elaine lifted her wand, but Gary shouted, “No, wait. I can access it now!”
The android froze and then began shaking violently. The rifle fell from its hands and a short scream issued from it before it fell silent. “I have it now,” said Gary. The machine picked its weapon up and began walking toward them, keeping the barrel pointed at the floor.
Elaine raised her wand anyway.
“Please don’t kill me,” said the soldier, now speaking with Gary’s familiar voice. “This body is much more convenient for me than the PM you’re holding.”
“Matthew,” said Elaine, “What’s going on?” Her eyes darted sideways to see what her partner thought on the matter.
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