by David Jones
“Ah,” said the little secretary, opening his mouth in a show of agreement. “Just so.” He placed his mobile phone, which he had already been dialing, back on the desk with a knowing smile, as if Oliver had let him in on a shared secret, and he was loath to break her trust.
The elevator doors slid open, releasing the acrid stench of hastily smoked cigarettes and a woman’s perfume heavy with vanilla. Oliver stepped aboard, and turned to regard Jake who hadn’t moved. He was still reeling at how easily Oliver had manipulated the secretary. It had been like watching a perfectly executed football play, one that suckered the other team into making a critical error. Sure, Jake could fight, at least with the aid of his cybrid and the fact that regular humans simply couldn’t match his speed, strength, or dexterity, but he knew in his guts he could never so easily distract another thinking being. He stood staring at her for a long moment, giving no thought to what signals his face might be sending, or the fact that the secretary and guard were now watching him every bit as intentionally as he was watching Oliver.
“Coming, lover?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah,” Jake said in English.
Oliver winced.
Jake hustled into the car. He turned around to find the secretary watching him. Fortunately, the look on the man’s face wasn’t one of suspicion, but rather an expression of bemused pity. He thought Jake a hapless, bumbling idiot who had somehow found himself in the company of a cool, beautiful woman.
And Jake had to agree.
Oliver pressed three on the elevator’s control pad and the doors slide shut.
The instant they sealed, Oliver took Jake by the collar so fast, he had no time to register what had happened. And though they were nearly the same height, she managed to lift his heels off the elevator floor, pressing her face to his, their noses touching.
“Do I have to tell you how stupid you looked back there? How close you came to blowing our cover?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but this isn’t a game of cops and robbers. Our lives are at stake—so are the lives of the people we’re trying to reach. If you do something like that again, I’ll shoot you myself and finish this thing alone, got it?”
Jake nodded.
“Settle down, Oliver,” Anya said. “He’s new to all this.”
Oliver released Jake, though she continued to glare at him. “If he keeps up this stellar performance, he’s not going to get old at it.”
“I’ll do better,” Jake rubbed at the sore spot she had left on his throat, his heart racing.
“You’d better.”
The elevator chimed for the third floor and the doors trundled open to reveal a short hall that ended in a heavy steel door with a keypad where its handle should have been. Seated at a desk next to the door was another guard. Unlike the one downstairs, however, this man was obviously fit, and though he was no cybrid, he looked like the kind of man who could handle himself in a fight. He watched Oliver and Jake warily.
“Can I help you?” he asked in French as he stood up. Another difference between this guard and the pudgy man downstairs: he carried a semi-automatic pistol holstered at his side. He placed a hand on its butt.
Oliver, her demeanor once again cool and seductive, stepped off the elevator, pointedly ignoring the guard’s hostility. She too had a gun, hers securely concealed in a cross-draw hip holster hidden by her dress coat, but she made no move to draw it. Instead, she said, “Oh, have we reached the wrong floor? We were supposed to end up on two—Sigmund Lecessitor’s office?”
Oliver kept walking towards the guard as she spoke, her gait nonchalant, her manner innocent.
A domino line of expressions zipped across the man’s face as she moved his way. First suspicion, then confusion, then attraction, followed by a sudden lifting of his eyebrows, and tightening of his neck muscles, as something akin to realization passed over his face like wind-blown cloud shadows. “You’re one of them.”
He went for his gun.
The move was futile. He had let Oliver get too close. She bent, and Jake expected her to leap the remaining distance so that she could grapple for the man’s weapon, but she surprised him. She grasped the leading edge of the guard’s desk, and with a terrific burst of speed and power, flipped it upwards so that the near side caught the guard full in his teeth with a groan-inducing THWACK!
The guard staggered back, obviously dazed, but to his credit continued trying to draw his weapon. Oliver vaulted the overturned desk, but didn’t immediately attack. To Jake’s astonishment, she let the guard draw his gun before closing the final distance between them. It had just cleared his holster when she clamped a hand on his wrist, stopping his arm motion with the pistol still pointed at the floor, and brought her fist down hammer-style on his forearm.
Jake heard both bones snap inside the guard’s wrist.
The guard started to scream, but Oliver followed up her first blow with a short, sharp jab to his throat. The big man gagged, trying to cough, but managing only a constricted wheeze like a guy trying to blow air through a coffee straw.
Oliver took his gun with ease and tossed it to Jake who caught it on the fly. Without stopping her momentum, she bounded off one of the overturned table’s legs, spun around the big guard so that she landed on his back, and snaked an arm under his chin to catch him in a rear naked choke.
He was out inside ten seconds.
Jake wanted to believe that he had influenced Oliver into letting the guard live, but he knew better. The only reason she had wasted time choking him out rather than simply shooting him in the head was that firing a gun might have aroused suspicion.
“Anyone see that?” Oliver asked the air.
“No,” Anya said over the channel. “There are two security guards watching live feeds on the second floor, but they don’t have access to the cameras where you’re standing.”
Oliver had bent to search the downed guard’s pockets. She paused at Anya’s words. “Wait, you mean there’s a camera pointed at us, but no one’s watching it?”
“I have a menu of their screen choices,” Anya said. “I don’t see the camera I’m watching you through right now as one of their options.”
Oliver turned to face the small, black dome protruding from the hall’s ceiling—an obvious camera station. “So who’s watching it besides you?”
“No way to tell. I can’t trace who might be sampling the feed, only what feeds are reaching a specific terminal.”
Just then the elevator chimed and its doors slid shut.
“Stop those doors!” Oliver cried, lunging for them, though even with her speed she had no way to reach them before they had closed.
Jake pressed the down button, but it was too late, the car had already dropped. He turned to Oliver. “You think someone knows we’re here?”
She nodded once, a slight bob, and turned her attention to the security door behind them. “We might have company in a minute, Anya. Can you get this thing open? I searched Mr. Muscles here, but I didn’t see a key card. I think it’s code only.”
“One sec,” Anya said
A heretofore unseen light on the security door’s number pad glowed green. Something inside the wall clicked, and the door swung open, revealing a long hall lined with black, steel doors. A plastic keypad hung on the wall next to each of them.
“Tia’s in the room two doors in on the right,” Anya said. “Two of the cybrids are in the cell across from her, and the other two are next door.”
Oliver nodded, but did not immediately move into the hall. Instead, she lifted the unconscious guard’s overturned desk and wedged it between the open security door and its jamb.
“Good thinking,” Jake said.
Oliver, her expression all business, nodded.
Each cell door contained a palm-sized window. The glass looked bullet proof and was sewn through with a steel mesh to keep it from crumbling should someone try to break it.
Jake peered
into Tia’s cell. She lay on a small cot so low to the ground she might as well have been sleeping on the floor.
“I’m opening her door,” Anya said.
“Open the others as well,” Oliver said. “I’ll check the first two while Jake gets Tia.”
A loud click, and Tia’s door popped open. Jake stood in the doorway, afraid to barge in lest he frighten her. She sat up, her brows knit, her mouth drawn down nearly to a pucker. She didn’t look surprised that her door had opened, only resigned to face whatever hardship came through. She peered at Jake and he saw one of her eyes was swollen as if someone had punched her. A flicker of surprise crossed her face, probably at seeing a stranger rather than one of her usual guards, but even that expression was fleeting.
“Well?” she said.
“I’m Jake Harris.”
Tia flinched.
“Don’t be afraid,” Jake said. “Anya sent me. We’re getting you out of here.”
Tia threw back the blankets covering her legs. She still wore the sweats and an overlarge pull-on shirt with no shoes. “Are you for real?”
“Yes. Have you got shoes?”
She fished the hospital style slippers from under her cot and stuffed her bare feet into them. “Ready.”
Oliver cursed, the sound of it bitter, and perfectly audible from across the hall.
Jake spun to find her backing out of the cell she had entered. A man stood before her, grinning. He was tall, white, and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, the sort prisoners wear.
He was also a cybrid.
Behind the him came a black woman, equally as tall as the man, and possessed of even more grace than her fellow. She moved like a cat, her brown eyes taking in the scene, jumping from Oliver to Jake to Tia and back again like radar dishes continually scanning a battlefield, constantly assessing, planning, and strategizing.
“Cooper,” Oliver said. “Do you recognize me?”
The man gave no indication that he even heard her. Instead, he crouched as if he were about to launch himself into Oliver’s legs for an MMA style takedown.
Cooper’s cellmate grinned at Jake. It was easy to see that she planned to leap over him the instant he moved so that she could come to grips with Jake.
“Guys,” Anya said over their private channel, her voice filled with panic. “There are men out here. They’re coming toward the car. Oh, God, they’re trying to get in.”
Oliver darted a quick glance at Jake, her face deceptively calm, though a thin sheen of sweat glistened on her brow. She already knew what Jake was fast realizing: they had walked into an even shrewder trap than they had anticipated. Seanan Reese had duped them completely.
The sound of breaking glass and Anya’s screaming curses echoed across their shared channel. “I can’t get away! They’ve surrounded me.”
The muscles in Jake’s face bunched, tightening without his consent. His ears burned and he could feel his stomach roiling as his mind sought some way to escape, to reach Anya and make her safe. He saw none.
The elevator chimed and everyone froze.
The doors trundled open to reveal six figures: four men dressed in black combat fatigues complete with goggles, helmets, and automatic rifles. They stood as sentinels around Seanan Reese and Moore.
The armed men exited the elevator in well-trained synchronicity, fanning out to secure clear firing lanes down the hallway.
Jake took an involuntary step back, pushing Tia behind him, steering her back into the cell. She did not resist.
Once their guards were in place, Reese and Moore stepped off the elevator to regard the scene. The short, plump woman’s lips peeled back from her teeth in some insectile pantomime of a smile.
“The next few minutes can go one of two ways,” she said. “You could be good little cyborgs and step into one of the cells for us, or there could be lots of pain which will result in exactly the same outcome. What shall it be?”
“Anya,” Jake said, his throat constricted so that his voice came out a tortured thing. “Are you still there.”
“Yes, but they’re almost in,” came her sobbing voice. “I’m so sorry for this.”
“Send the command,” Jake said. “Do it now.”
“Jake, I—” a loud banging on Anya’s side interrupted her. She screamed.
“Anya, you have to send the command before they take you. I have to become Harris!”
Chapter 22
Harris
For a moment, nothing happened.
Jake stared at Seanan. Her smarmy grin evaporated as her gaze flicked back and forth across his face, obviously looking for some change in his demeanor—some indication that Harris had returned.
But he hadn’t.
Jake felt suddenly weak—a sack of bones held together with glue and string. Vaguely, he realized this was the result of a massive adrenaline rush dissipating from his bloodstream. He had chosen to give up all—his mind, his body, his very personality—and the choice had come to nothing. It was like stomping on the gas in a hot rod only to have it choke and die before the race had even begun.
“Take them,” Seanan said.
The large man, Cooper, launched himself at Oliver’s legs. She sprawled, simultaneously kicking her legs back to counter his momentum while dropping her weight on his back. That kept him from knocking her over. She tried to snake an arm under his chin for a guillotine-type choke, but the large man probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds, and he was every bit as fast as she. With deft grace, he reset his feet and whipped his head back before Oliver had time to lock the hold.
Jake wanted to help her, but he had concerns of his own. Just as he had suspected she might, the black woman performed a perfect dive roll over Cooper the instant he attacked, her arms outstretched, her lips peeled back in a predatory grin. Given her speed and direction, she would land within two feet of Jake. He tensed, trying to quiet his fear so that his cybrid could help him fight. Not that it would do him much good. It didn’t take a genius to see she outclassed him in every way. He had a feeling their fight would last only seconds.
Then time froze.
One instant Jake was drawing in a preparatory breath, ready to juke sideways out of the female cybrid’s path, and the next he was an observer—a passenger in his own mind. It was as if someone had pushed him backwards, out of the driver’s seat in his head, relegating him to a little room where he could see and hear what was happening in the outside world, but could do nothing to affect it.
His thoughts were no longer his own.
HARRIS AWOKE IN THE midst of battle. Somehow, this was not unexpected. He welcomed it. Life was easier when you summed it in the calculus of a war: allies versus enemies.
Peace brought complication. War was simple.
A woman flew at him. He knew her—Abasi Mutai. Odd that Abasi should be attacking him. She was a cybrid, an ally, one he had trained personally. Of course, none of that mattered now. She was on the attack. That put her in the enemy column.
Harris spun, allowing Abasi’s flight to carry her past him. As he twisted away from her, Harris took a moment to assess the situation, letting his cybrid parse the action. It was a two-stage battle. A tac-team of four men armed with automatic rifles held the far end of the hall, positioned so as to protect a man and a woman at the center of their formation. Spinning further, he caught sight of Oliver struggling against Tony Cooper. Two more cybrids. Oliver didn’t look herself—her cheekbones appeared higher and her hair was short and blonde—but Harris recognized the way she moved, the way she held her body in a standup fight. She caught his gaze on her in the fraction of a second it took Harris to spin around. A subtle widening of her eyes and flaring of her nostrils registered first Oliver’s shock, then her gratified pleasure at seeing him.
“Harris,” she shouted, “shut off their Spearcasts!”
Abasi’s momentum had sent her into a small cell where a young woman stood on a cot, cringing against the far wall. He didn’t know her name, but she bore a striking resembl
ance to Anya Nesmith, Harris’s primary target in his last mission. She looked at him, eyes wide, beseeching, as if expecting him to protect her from Abasi.
Another strange fact to squirrel away for later.
Abasi rolled to her feet near the wall and spun about to face Harris. He followed her into the cell. From the hall came the sound of booted feet, moving as a unit rather than a gaggle. The tac team was coming.
Abasi lifted her chin as if to indicate the noise. She said nothing. The implication was clear: Harris couldn’t beat four armed men and Abasi. He should give up.
But that wasn’t his style.
Harris feinted right as if he meant to get behind Abasi, or at least to her side for an easier takedown. She took the bait, she had always been a sucker for well-timed shoots and so overcompensated by falling for tricks. She dropped her torso as if to protect her legs. Harris put a stabilizing hand on her left shoulder while simultaneously hooking her right ankle.
Had she been a normal person, even an upper echelon wrestler or MMA fighter, Abasi would have pitched over backwards. But she was a cybrid. With thoughtless elegance she snaked an arm under Harris’s armpit, anchoring herself, and stomped down to escape his grip.
Harris allowed himself a smile. He had taught her that move, and it was exactly what he wanted from her. Snugged tight against him to stay his attacks, Abasi had inadvertently brought her head within easy reach. It was the work of a second for Harris to jab two fingers behind her right ear and switch off her Spearcast.
He wasn’t certain why that mattered. But Oliver had seemed adamant, so it must.
Abasi reeled away from him, her eyes wide, the skin around her cheeks bunched, her ears lifted ever-so-slightly. She stopped struggling, and let her arms go limp. “Harris? Is that you? What’s happening here?”
“Don’t know.” Harris released her and turned to regard the cell door. “Men are coming. Help me take them out.”
He didn’t look to confirm Abasi had heard. She would help or she wouldn’t.
The tac team moved well, progressing along the hall in ordered stages. They were human, not cybrid, but disciplined and unafraid. Harris could hear no hesitation in the clomp of their boots, the rhythm of their breathing.