by A D Davies
Sally looked up at her from the corner of the room. “You still haven’t understood yet, have you?”
“Understood what?” Bridget scooted over to her, crouched at her eye level, ready to hit her once more.
The professor smiled, her eye having swelled a little. “That I was right. Isn’t that worth at least a little kudos?”
“You really are crazy.” Bridget returned to the door which Toby was holding closed. “Any luck?”
“Power to the security grid is out of our control,” Toby said. “Normally, it’s power that keeps it open. When that gets cut, a room like this is sealed. No one can get in. Of course, a key would have been simpler.”
“That’s what Charlie meant by ‘overengineered’.”
Charlie had departed with two guns that were in a box within this room, hoping to slow down the Koreans enough for reinforcements to arrive. She’d taken one look at the complicated setup and despaired.
“It looks like a panel in the wall,” Toby said. “And soundproof. If we keep it closed, they have no reason to come poking around.”
“Maybe Charlie will take them out before they get here,” Bridget said.
“Oh, that would be awful, dear,” Sally said. “That way, I’ll never get to visit Korea.”
In the now-deserted control room, Ah Dae-Sung gasped for breath. He’d been sloppy, and his aching chest served as punishment. The vest had saved him, but he had to rip it off, sucking air into his lungs as he lay on the floor. Had they used a higher caliber weapon, been a couple of meters closer, or one more shot through the weakened plates in the vest, and he could have died.
The soldier beside him had not been as fortunate. The grouping of the witches’ bullets was tighter, penetrating the armor thanks to the weakening of the protection by the first two slugs, then the third punched through. The near vicinity and the accuracy of the shots combined to finish him.
Shame. He’d been a fine soldier. Ah Dae-Sung would find out his name later and address the man’s family with tales of his heroism.
He rolled over and pushed to his hands and knees. Had someone under him made such an error, he may have shot the idiot on the spot. He would not be so slack again.
He stripped his fallen comrade of spare ammo and moved on, checking the display on his forearm that the microwave transmitter was still working. The American professor appeared to be located up the stairs in a security center. Or at least, her glasses were.
Assume nothing, he reminded himself.
“Commander Ah, we are ready for transport.” The words from Pang Pyong-Ho were loud and unexpected, but welcome.
Dae-Sung blinked away his grogginess and focused on his target. He was a professional, yet here he was concentrating on his own wellbeing. Perhaps he’d spent too much time in the west, associating with the enemy.
No, just because something was hard, because it came at a personal cost and exhausted the body and mind, it did not excuse selfishness. Nor did it excuse leaving an advantage on the table when it lurked within one’s grasp.
“Good,” he said. “I am bringing additional assets. Stand by.”
Charlie had no doubt what the enormous gurney was for. Resembling the type of wheeled stretchers used by paramedics, it was manned by four soldiers and bore more straps than civilian equipment and a harness. It was also three times larger with eight wheels and sprung suspension.
“What do we do?” Prihya asked.
They were hidden in foliage twenty yards from the access hatch.
“Hold,” Charlie replied.
There wasn’t much they could do given the firepower in opposition. When the headcount had halved, Charlie thought they stood a chance. But the four departed troops had returned, all they could do was shadow their progress and hope for an opening.
A howl filled the air, followed by two lower trills, a keening of grief and fear.
Prihya said, “We have to do something.”
Charlie didn’t verbalize an answer, but she moved sideways, following the route of the four men who’d had to take a circuitous path to make it over the ground. The layout had been carefully designed, mimicking nature but offering channels where equipment could be wheeled and carried. Although she and Prihya kept well hidden, that didn’t take into consideration the wilder areas that actually were natural.
The howl eased, but Prihya sped up. “Come on.”
“Not so fast,” Charlie urged. “We have to be smart.”
Prihya pulled ahead of Charlie. As Charlie grabbed her arm, Prihya rounded on her, hissing her words. “If they are this agitated, there is no telling what they will do.”
“What do you mean? They’re docile. Peaceful.”
“With a strong survival instinct. And inhuman strength. How can you not get this yet? Our friends engineered the bodies, but not the minds. In times past, Gilim would have been born into a tribe, not a lab full of scientists. He’d have learned their language, not cobbled one together. They’d have had societal rules, emotions, friendships, families. These look like the giants of the past, even have many of the same instincts, but they are not what we think of as civilized.”
“What are you saying? Summarize. We don’t have time for the lecture.”
“That they are instinctive animals. Like a domestic cat whose owner dies, and no one comes by to find the corpse. It will stay a domestic cat until the second it realizes it has to fend for itself, and then it will never curl up on a human’s lap again.”
“You’re saying they’re feral? Reduced to their lowest form?”
Prihya shook her head. “I would not say lowest. But basest, perhaps, yes. They are socialized, not domesticated. Nan’s mate is in danger, and that might mean her children are in danger too. The other family unit will find safety, but if they perceive a threat, we cannot stop them.”
Charlie envisioned a gang of apes rampaging through the undergrowth, desperation driving them toward what would quickly become prey.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “I have an idea.”
Ah Dae-Sung edged the door open, scanning the security room: a series of monitors, lockers, with cameras watching those watching the monitors. A locked door at the end gave off a certain submarine vibe, a circular handle sealing the exit with electronic locks as well as what would likely be bolts. It would take several attempts with conventional explosives to make even a dent from outside.
He’d taken the correct decision earlier, blowing a hole in the structure itself rather than infiltrating via the human access points.
But there was something else.
He’d tracked Professor Garcia’s signal to this room. The room she passed through earlier, transmitting the complex and reverse mapping the schematics to allow Dae-Sung and Pyong-Ho intimate knowledge of the layout. He’d cautioned himself to not assume things were as they appeared.
They’d thought the young black man, Jules, might be useful, but it would require a greater detour to bring him to heel than it would Professor Garcia. And since they were on the verge of acquiring their primary goal, with their secondary individual seemingly in touching distance, a third side quest was an unacceptable risk at this stage. Jules was a bonus to snatch if the opportunity presented itself, nothing more.
He dusted his hand over the flat screens, brushing over the instruments and testing the padlocks on the lockers, listening, alert for movement nearby. He could shoot the padlocks off, but what would be the point? And all he heard was the battle petering out up top. Even if those defending the facility overpowered his forces, they had accomplished their mission.
Or as good as.
Then Dae-Sung’s patience found him brushing a panel which felt solid, followed by the tiniest imperfection between this one and the next. He pressed the raised slice of metal with his thumb.
It gave, pressing it flush with the other.
In such a precise, expertly constructed room, it struck him as odd. Gradually, the thought of it warmed him from within. At the same time, it sent a jolt t
o his extremities, a clarity to his mind and eyes. His ears tuned out the sporadic gunfire and shrank their radius to this area alone.
He let the panel go and the imperfection, the millimeters of difference, was gone. It was level. Flat.
He unsheathed a short-bladed tactical knife and set it between the panels. Twisted. The blade bit and levered the second sheet out slightly.
Something pulled it back.
There was no doubt.
Ah Dae-Sung prepared his sidearm in one hand, the knife in the other. He jammed the blade’s point into the gap and pushed, achieving another small measure of give. Whoever was hiding there pulled it again, but this time he was ready. He pushed the knife in farther, crowbarring the hidden door so a gap appeared.
The door sprung open, and three people piled out. On the bottom of the brawl was professor Toby Smith, who’d been clamped to the interior handle, while the girl had her hand on Professor Garcia’s mouth. Garcia had tackled Smith, and the three were now at Ah Dae-Sung’s mercy.
He stepped back and aimed his gun. “Professor, step aside.”
Garcia waited for the girl—Bridget Carson according to Executive Ryom’s intelligence sources—to let her go, then stood slowly, first getting to one knee then pressing upwards.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for that. Can we leave?”
Dae-Sung sidestepped, keeping Bridget in sight as she also rose to her feet. “Just let me finish—”
“Oh, no, mister.” Garcia wagged her finger. “No killing, no siree. That’s not part of the deal.”
“They serve no purpose. We can take no chances.”
“Except, if you do, I won’t cooperate.”
“Then we leave you here.” He turned his gun on Garcia. “And shoot you too.”
Garcia squinted at him, one eye on either side of the barrel. “Are you mad? I have more knowledge about those things and this technology than these people combined. And definitely more than you.”
Ah Dae-Sung reminded himself of the briefing regarding this woman. Corrupted by mainstream American influences of social media, conspiracy suppression, and the general malaise suffered by all decadent societies.
One bullet.
Three.
Then it was over.
But that would be easy. And prove his deviation from the plan was a waste of time.
“You could torture me, and I’d probably do what you wanted anyway, but wouldn’t it be so much cleaner and, frankly, a less hostile working environment if I actually wanted to help figure this all out with you?”
Ah Dae-Sung had switched to fifty-fifty about shooting her. Then an update came through.
“They’re attacking! Flank them. Defend the transport.”
There was no point going for the men. Charlie figured with Dan and Jules around they’d have had a chance to pick them off one at a time, but with Prihya an inexperienced shooter and Charlie having trained only intermittently over the past few years, they were not exactly an elite fighting force.
“Shoot the cart,” she’d told Prihya.
The plan bloomed to life fully formed and had felt like a revelation. But, as Prihya shot at the tires from an angle ten feet from Charlie’s position, the bullets thunked home into the rubber. Nothing burst.
Nothing, except Charlie’s sense of cleverness. It was like firing a BB gun at a tractor tire.
As the men with firearms swung toward her, Charlie picked off the first two.
The meathead they knew as Pang Pyong-Ho barked orders, forcing Prihya down behind the tree she was using for cover and to steady her aim. They reconvened their assault on Charlie, who was similarly ensconced. Wood tore off as the defensive group pushed her back.
Charlie had already accounted for this, though. She ducked and crawled behind a boulder to the next tree, where she popped up and drew down on the big guy.
Take out one of their leaders. That will hobble ‘em almost as much as losing the gurney.
But Pyong-Ho dove aside, fleeing another couple of potshots fired by Prihya. He used the unconscious Gilim as cover.
While Charlie was aware it took more than a 9mm slug to penetrate the colossus’s hide, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t find a weak spot, a wound already inflicted by the assault team. She fired on the gurney instead.
While the thick, possibly solid, rubber tires simply absorbed the bullets, she aimed for the mechanism at the center of the top rail. This was where the bed would slide backward, pivot down on a gimble, and allow the men to scoop the giant up like the back of a truck transporting cars to a showroom. Her rounds sent metal flying, sheering segments from the joint, but she couldn’t tell if it did any permanent damage.
“Excuse me.”
A man’s voice. Behind her.
She kept her aim but ceased firing. Turned her head.
Ah Dae-Sung led Prihya with her hands on her head, alongside Professor Sally Garcia.
Caught cold, Charlie flashed on the faces of her children, of her husband, furious at her for placing herself in danger, for risking her life yet again. Anger and grief tumbled through her head, nausea churning as she awaited the final blackness of a bullet in the head.
It didn’t come.
With what she prayed was a stay of execution, Charlie placed her gun on the ground, using wide, obvious movements. Couldn’t give him a reason to think she was going to try anything. Not that she had much faith in him taking them prisoner. It was far more efficient to drop them where they stood. She wondered why she was still alive.
“Professor,” Ah Dae-Sung said. “Help my men with the creature. I have to finish things here.”
“No killing,” Sally warned him.
“Oh, of course not.” But as soon as the traitorous woman swanned out to the clearing, all-but swooning to behold the ten-foot Gilim, Ah Dae-Sung cut the faint smile and ushered the women away from the professor’s eyeline. “Breaking my word is always awkward. But in this case, sadly, it is necessary.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jules didn’t gamble. It wasn’t in his nature. He took data—visual, audio, tactile—and processed it faster than most human beings on the planet. It was a quirk. An advantage most of the time. The only downside was his inability to switch it off without spending weeks retraining himself to ignore that segment of his psyche. When on patrol, he was glad of it. When not, he’d compartmentalized it.
Unfortunately, compartmentalizing it had made him rusty.
No longer did he simply “know” things. His mistakes on this expedition proved it. When he was down in Pukepuke, surfing the rooftops, evading capture, it seemed like it was coming back to him. Melding his duty through Tane Wiremu and his loyalty through Dan and Harpal, fighting back against the men infiltrating the village almost felt… good.
Now, though, after seeing what Charlie was up to, unable to warn her that the commander was approaching, a gamble was all he could think about. He didn’t know enough to carry out his idea effectively.
Okay, all the variables were there, from the air density to each giant’s location based on the noises emanating from them and the time it took to echo back off the volcano’s sides. What he hadn’t had time to study was the nature of Gilim and his family.
Alpha down—check.
His mate distraught—check.
A natural replacement for the alpha—nowhere to be seen.
If they were anything like animals in the wild, they would not respond well to Jules’s interference. The other male giant, Rosso, might take his attempts to communicate as a direct challenge, and nothing could stop a homo colossus from tearing him apart.
Perhaps Dan and Tane would cheer him on.
On the way back here, speeding upriver on a jet ski having changed into one of the captured soldiers’ uniforms, Jules had even rehearsed the argument that was sure to evolve once they were all together… if he survived.
- I don’t take orders from you.
- It’s not about taking orders, it’s about listening to peopl
e more experienced than you.
- The only person with more experience than me worth a damn is Tane, and that’s just because he’s known about these creatures longer than me.
- Wait on back up. It’s incoming…
None of that was said, though. Not out loud. There was some swearing, some shouting of orders, demands to return and not be so stupid, but it wasn’t stupid to Jules. It was the way he’d done things all his life. How he’d survived. How he’d taken on people more powerful than him and won, how he’d escaped the cops on five continents, how he’d missed living for the past year and now wondered if New York was a mistake.
Was Brittany a better option? He’d made enough money through his earlier cuts from LORI’s finds that he didn’t need wages, at least not for a decade or more.
No time for second guessing, though. Now was a time for gambling.
Thirty-five seconds after concluding he couldn’t help Charlie from his ingress point—the hole blasted in the mountain—Jules had located Nan and her two children, Wade and Noroth. She squatted, like a cat about to pounce on a sparrow, only nine and a quarter foot tall and stockier than the Hulk. Her clothing hung loosely, and she’d pulled her hair back over her ears, eyes pointing directly through the path leading to the central pavilion where Gilim had fallen. And where Charlie and Prihya were about to fall afoul of a rear attack.
During the thirty-five seconds it took for him to get here, Jules formed this loosest of plans, second-guessed himself over and over, and here he was about to chicken out.
The two children snorted with frustration, padding around behind their mother. The shaggy-haired one, Wade, occasionally stomped forward, clearly trying to return to his father, but Nan held out a thick arm and shoved him back. There was plainly a hierarchy that the youngsters respected.
Jules watched them, counting in his head. Forty seconds had passed, and he predicted Ah Dae-Sung would only need another thirty to be in range of Prihya and Charlie.