Suddenly his gun swiveled away from me and pointed to the other side of the desk. There was someone else out there in the open—and he was about to shoot them.
Sticking my head out as far as I dared, I tried to follow his line of sight, eventually spying a familiar head of silver-streaked hair.
Oh God. Nathan hadn’t had time to get his helmet back on.
He had his back to me and the Authority agent aiming at him, using his own gun to fire occasionally.
I saw him pause, fumbling in his uniform for another ammunition clip, and as he half turned to slide it into the gun, he caught sight of the gun trained on him.
His eyes went wide, but there was a strange calmness to them.
Everything skewed into slow motion at that point. I could almost see the thoughts going through the Authority soldier’s head as he looked between the two of us. I had my gun up and pointed directly at his forehead; Nathan was, for the moment, unarmed.
I saw the exact moment he decided to take Nathan out first and then come after me.
Nathan saw it too, for he spoke a few words into his comm, lips barely moving.
Corona.
He was talking to Corona.
He was saying goodbye to his wife.
The promise I had made her only a few hours earlier seared itself across my mind’s eye. She’d said that losing him would destroy Little John. I wondered if what she meant was that losing him would destroy her.
The Authority soldier’s gun came up as he aimed at Nathan.
It took me exactly three nanoseconds to react. The synapses in my brain fired to the nerves in my arm. I stiffened my wrist, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The soldier dropped in a spray of blood and bone.
It was a perfect shot. The small, cold bead of satisfaction I felt at that knowledge terrified me.
Nathan gave me a nod, eyes filled with a gratitude and respect I didn’t deserve.
The room had grown suddenly quiet, and I bit my lip. Quiet didn’t seem like a good thing.
I looked around, trying to see through the smoke, but all I could see was the soldier I had shot, his eyes wide open in surprise. But beyond that…
The computers looked like they were whole, for the most part. The door up to the execs’ offices was still standing wide open, and the other side of the room seemed to be in slightly better shape than this one, in terms of smoke presence.
But it was also empty. Where was the rest of my team? Where were the other Authority soldiers?
Then I heard a tiny, wavering voice drop into the silence of the room.
“Little John?” it said. “Are you still out there?”
It took me a moment to recognize the voice. It was Lux from Savannah’s team. And she sounded like she was on the other side of the room.
“We have two Little John team members over here,” I replied after a second. True, there might still be Authority soldiers in the room, and they might hear me, but we still had a deadline we were working with. “Lux, are you okay? Where’s everyone else?”
“I seem to have been shot, which is really rather inconvenient,” she replied, attempting humor, but her voice was breaking a bit. “Savannah’s been shot, too. I think she’s dead. I don’t know where anyone else is.”
“I’m here,” I heard Nelson reply grimly.
“Me t-too,” said Gabby’s shaking voice.
A second later, Nathan responded as well. “Present and accounted for. Do we have eyes on any of the Authority soldiers?”
“I have one right here,” I said. “He’s dead. I shot him.”
It seemed important that I said it out loud. Maybe I was trying to assure myself that I was the one who had done it. That I was the one who had saved Nathan.
“Two more dead over here,” Jace called.
A knot between my shoulder blades released. Jace. He was okay.
I barely kept myself from jumping up and running to him in relief. But we only had three of the soldiers accounted for. There had been five of them. Where were the other two?
“I’ve got the other two right here,” Alexy said grimly. “Took them both out. One. Two. Easy as pie.” She suddenly emerged from a tower of computers to my right, visor flipped up, her face dark and speckled with crimson.
I scuttled out from my hiding place, the rest of the crew emerging from theirs as well. Jace and Kory had been in the same spot, of course, and Nathan and Nelson had been quite close to each other. Gabby crept out from behind Alexy. Lux was on the other side of the room, and I could see she was leaning heavily on Rio, who looked unharmed, if a bit shaken.
One look at Lux’s face reminded me that we hadn’t all come out unscathed.
“Savannah’s dead,” she wheezed. “Ajax too. They took him out before he could even turn around.”
“Dammit,” I breathed. I glanced at my watch. “And we only have ten minutes of the reboot left.”
My hip hurt something fierce, but the second-skin suit had done its job. I was still functional. Which meant I still had a job to do.
“Team, let’s move,” I said. “Kory, get these bodies hidden as best you can.”
We only had ten minutes to get up to the executive suites and find our people before the cameras came back on. Ten minutes after that, we wanted to be out of the building. If we kept collecting bodies like this, we were going to have to spend part of that ten minutes figuring out what the hell to do with them. We were down two techs, and though Nelson and Gabby would step in to account for that, they didn’t need us standing around distracting them.
On the very tenuous plus side, we’d found the other Authority team and taken them out. With any luck, that meant we could get to the execs and get them out of the building without running into any other government soldiers. Or losing any other team members.
39
The door that led up to the executive suites was still operational and opened easily enough, thanks to my glove. Jace, Alexy, and I started up the stairs, our boots muffled by the black carpet running all the way up.
Now that we’d eliminated the official Authority team, we had no reason to move quietly. As we climbed, I had everyone double check that their comm links were open and broadcasting to the right channel. Now that the team had split up, it was more important than ever that we were in close communication.
“This is Robin,” I said as I ran. “We’re at the first floor, heading for the second. Haven’t seen anyone else yet. How are things going down there?”
Nathan was the one who answered. “The way they should be going, more or less,” he said firmly. “We’re searching for the main computer down here, and once that happens—”
“I don’t need to hear the details, Nathan,” I said, cutting him off. “Unless it changes what I’m about to do, I don’t need to know anything you’re doing. Just call us if you need help.”
There was a minute pause. “Got it.”
“How’s Lux?” I asked.
Nelson was the one who responded. “Bleeding,” she said. “Badly. We need to get her out of here as quickly as possible, or I don’t think she’s going to make it. Just get those execs and do whatever you have to do with the Little John people, Robin, then get back down here. We can’t afford to dawdle on this one.”
“Understood,” I said and silenced the comm.
As we rounded the landing to the last flight of stairs, a door came into view above us, and I slowed.
I didn’t know what to expect on the other side. It was meant to just be the executive suites, with the five former execs patiently waiting for us to get there so that they could hand off their special keys, or whatever they were going to do. Yes, we were meant to find friendlies there: the Little John plants waiting to take over the executive positions. But my instincts were screaming about the possibility of there being a trap up there. And we were only three people.
“Everyone good?” I asked, pausing to give myself a second to think.
“Good?” Alexy sn
apped from behind me. “What the hell do you think is good about this situation? The shooting, maybe? The dead teammates? The fact that we’re in the middle of a Ministry building and you, me, and Jace now find ourselves alone? Oh yeah, I’m just great.”
I turned to face her, popping up my visor so she could see my eyebrows rising up to meet my hairline.
“Is it possible for you to ever give a straight answer?” I asked, half annoyed and half amused at her constant snark. “Possible to just give me a yes or a no? Like, at all?”
She pulled up beside me and glanced up through her lashes. “Yes,” she said, her face completely serious.
Jace put a hand on my arm before I could answer her and squeezed. “I’m fine too,” he said quietly. “Let’s get this done. There are five execs. We need to make sure they hand off their security cards to their replacements, check with those replacements and make sure they’re good to go on this floor, then escort the old execs back down to the computer room.”
“One question,” Alexy said, frowning. “They must have heard the gunfire. The walls are thick and we’re two floors up, but they must have heard something. What do we say if they ask?”
Jace thought for a second. “We act like we’re the Authority. We act like we belong here. Tell them some of the staff went rogue and we had to take them out.”
“Noted,” Alexy said.
I just nodded. “You think we’re expecting any trouble up here?”
Jace gave the door a quick look, eyes narrowed. “Probably not,” he said. “But you never know. Guns out when we go in. We’re posing as Authority, so I don’t think that will be out of place.”
Alexy glanced at me and gave a quick grin. “I second that. I mean, every time I see them, they seem to have a gun pointed at me.”
I bit my tongue and crept after Jace toward the door.
He put his hand up to the pad and held it there for a moment. When the pad beeped approval, he withdrew it, and the door slid open on its silent track.
Beyond was a corridor that could have been in any office building in any city in the nation, with dark blue carpet and white walls occasionally interrupted by windows and doors.
From our position, we could see five windows and five doors. There were also several other hallways splitting off to who knew where. We were officially off the map regarding our knowledge of the holding center layout.
At the end of the hall was another door the same shade of gray as the one we stood in.
“Another staircase on that side?” I asked, wondering where that one led and whether it would cause us any problems.
“Not our problem,” Jace answered, giving me the only answer I needed. “Our problem is the execs, and that’s it.”
We’d have a lot more than that on our minds if anyone else came through the other door, but I didn’t say anything about that. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and walked semi-confidently through the door after him, my gun in my right hand and pointed at the floor.
“We’re in!” a voice yelped in my ear, and I jumped in shock and pain at the volume.
Alexy’s hand came down on my shoulder, and I turned to see her giving me a questioning look.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Had my volume too high on my comm.” I pointed to the floor. “Their little celebration just now nearly blew my eardrum.”
“If they’re in, it means they’re doing their part,” Jace said from in front of me. “Let’s get ours done.”
We strode forward, our footsteps cushioned by the deep carpet, and I glanced into the windows we were passing. Definitely offices, and the plainest offices I’d ever seen. They were all painted a dull beige, the desks made of aluminum and steel. All the fittings, like the shelves and filing cabinets, were either white or the same matte metal as the desks. Although the carpeting was the same blue as in the hall, it somehow managed to look almost colorless in this dull space.
I started to feel a little bit sorry for the people who worked here. I’d been angry at them for years, knowing what they did to people like me, what they helped to steal. But looking around, it occurred to me that they might not be bad people. Just working in bad jobs. Or worse, people who thought they were doing the right thing.
Jace, after a quick peek around the corner, swung to the left into one of the halls that split off from this main corridor, and I saw that offices weren’t the only thing in this section of the building. Ahead of us, a set of open doors revealed a very large conference room, inside of which were several people.
Well, “several” might have been pushing it; there were only five of them. They were all dressed in rather crumpled business attire, as if they’d been wearing it for some time. The three women had dark rings of mascara under their eyes, and the men were sporting very obvious five o’clock shadows. These poor people must have come into the office at their standard eight or nine in the morning, even though they would have to stay here until midnight to see to this handoff. And then they’d sat in their offices all day, knowing they were not only about to lose their jobs, but were also going to be taken to Ministry HQ directly afterward for a rigorous interrogation and debriefing.
They had to be scared out of their wits. I felt even sorrier for them now than I had when I saw their offices.
“Authority, Team 45,” Jace called out in a deep voice. “We’re here to escort you to headquarters, as per the protocol.”
I wondered how many guesses he was making in that one statement, until I saw he was holding an Authority badge out in front of him. But where had he—
Oh, that was clever. He must have taken one of the badges off the bodies to give us some, well, authority.
One woman, who appeared to be about Corona’s age, wearing a bright red blazer with matching slacks and a hairdo that looked like it was going to pull her hair out at the roots, stepped forward, head held high.
“We are the execs of Smally, and we’re ready to do whatever is necessary,” she said. “But please be warned that we were not prepared for this. We received orders at seven this evening to stay in our offices until someone came for us. We… We had no idea this was even happening.”
Her voice wavered a bit. They hadn’t been thinking about what they were up against all day. They hadn’t even known. I wasn’t sure whether that was better… or worse.
“If you were told to stay in your offices, what are you doing in the conference room?” I asked, making my voice gruff and terse.
The woman’s face fell, but then she jutted her chin out. “We were frightened,” she said honestly. “We heard what sounded like some kind of fight going on downstairs and agreed, amongst the five of us, that we would feel better if we at least waited together.”
Right. Well, I couldn’t say I blamed them—but it didn’t change the fact that we needed to get them out of here, and as quickly as possible.
“There’s nothing to concern yourself with,” Alexy said. “Just an unruly staff member. They’ve been dealt with.” The menace in her tone almost made me shiver.
“We won’t mention your breach of instructions due to those mitigating circumstances,” I told her. “That said, we are under a time constraint. We need to move you downstairs so we can leave the building as soon as the update is over. Where are your replacements? Are they due to arrive soon?”
The woman shook her head, but her eyes went over my shoulder and grew suddenly wider.
I turned, already assuming we had trouble.
I was right. Three more Authority soldiers were standing behind us, their guns up and ready.
“Badge numbers and ranking!” the lead soldier shouted.
I had a split second to think that I was well and truly tired of living this scenario over and over again.
“55347,” I said quickly, having no idea whether that was the right amount of numbers or even whether it would make sense. “Elite ranking.”
Also completely made up. But it sounded reasonable. Sounded Authority-like.
The
man’s expression grew suspicious, and his gun came up higher to point at my face.
I gulped. I had my gun in my hand, but I didn’t think I was going to be able to get it up in time, and I really didn’t want those soldiers shooting into the group of people behind me. Little John needed them.
There was an uneasy moment where no one moved. Dammit, we didn’t have time for this.
“Drop it,” Jace said suddenly from my right, and I slid my gaze in his direction to see that he did have his gun up and had it pointed at the soldier who was pointing his weapon at me. A breath later Alexy stepped up on my left, her gun also raised, and twitched her head slightly at me, indicating that I should do the same.
I jerked my gun up, sparing a thought to thank whoever was watching over me that my teammates had thought more quickly than I had.
“What are you doing here?” I asked abruptly. “We have orders to escort these people to Ministry headquarters. We weren’t told there would be another team in the building.”
“On whose authority?” he snapped. “We have the same orders.”
“Aurora’s,” I said, grasping at the only name I knew—thought I knew—of someone in the Ministry.
Wrong again.
“We were warned we might find imposters here,” he said bluntly. “We were warned we might find them in all the holding centers. I’m glad to see we—”
He never got to finish. Instead, he jerked and spasmed for a moment, like a marionette whose strings were being handled by a maniac, and then fell to the floor, unconscious, swiftly followed by the other two Authority soldiers.
Behind them, I saw five people holding electro-stunners.
“Who the hell are you?” I snapped.
The older woman in front, her shoulder-length hair gleaming silver in the light, came rushing forward, gesturing for the others to follow her.
“We’re the new executives of this branch of the Ministry,” she said firmly. She gave me a onceover and then narrowed her eyes. “And you, I suspect, are part of the special team sent to help us.”
The Child Thief 4: Little Lies Page 30