The blow turned her around faster than her own muscles could ever have done. In time to see a black-outlined shape running up the trunk of the tree that had been behind her. It had a human outline; she could see that much, and see that it held a weapon shape in its left hand. In its right was something long and slender with an edge of silvered moonlight. Then the run ended in a momentum-driven crouch and the figure leaped out and away from the tree, whirling in midair somersaults with knees drawn up to chest. In a long arch that took it back over their heads.
Help! I've fallen into a Ninja movie and I can't get out! The thought bubbled through her mind as she scrambled to get the plasma gun back.
Finch was snarling and slapping another magazine into her firearm, trying to track the target and jerk back the slide in the same motion.
Chen felt her whirl turn into a stagger that left her groping dizzily for the plasma gun. Something flashed. There was a huge cold impact across her stomach, and her legs dropped out from under her. Her hands felt numb as they groped for the wound, tried to hug the savaged, razor-cut edges of flesh back together and contain the slick wetness that bulged out. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
Finch was off the ground, gripped from behind with an elbow-grip on her neck and an arm about her waist. Her own arms and legs kicked uselessly, the H&K firing off bursts into the night.
A voice hissed, every syllable as distinct as if it were cut from etched glass.
"Where is the Samothracian?"
"Fuck you!" Finch shouted, her fox-sharp features contorted with rage. The hillbilly accent was back, sharp and nasal.
"No time."
The arms wrenched and cast her aside. There was a single squeal, as fierce and shrill as an animal turning in the owl's claws, then the body hit the ground with limp finality.
The figure in black took a long stride toward Chen. The dying woman tried to turn away, but all that moved was her head, rolling loosely to face her other shoulder. She remembered the heel marks on the necks.
Impact. Nothing.
***
"Move your ass," Carmaggio shouted. "Face left!"
The vector arrow was pointing back the way they'd come. All the friendly dots turned left and south, scurrying to try and make their formation face the enemy and give mutual support. All except for one dot that kept right on going away, as fast as he or she could move their feet—and Henry couldn't blame whoever it was one little bit. Saunders was cursing under his breath, voice a little shaky; Jesus did the same on his other side.
Sixty seconds since contact. Jesus fucking Christ.
A voice rang out from behind a statue-fountain set in a pool.
"Where's your Samothracian?" it mocked. If a battle trumpet could live, it would sound like that. Even at this instant, the beauty of it struck him. "Where's your strong protector now, humans?"
The sound firmed the attack vector to a brilliant dot. Bullets and a dozen plasma bolts lashed out. Bronze exploded into flying molten gobbets. Several thousand gallons of water also exploded, and the steam burst flung chunks of stone coaming right back in their faces. Something wet spattered Carmaggio over half his body, and a heavy limp weight struck him hard enough to send him staggering. He clutched at it automatically, arid found himself holding Jesus Rodriguez—his body, since the top had been clipped off his skull by a knife-edged shard of rock. Bits of the granite still glistened among the pink brain and fragments, and his friend's body shuddered and flapped and bucked in his arms.
He thrust it away with an involuntary shout. Images flitted before his eyes and clawed at his attention.
"Regroup," he called out. The iron calm of his own voice shocked him, at some level far below the clarity that gripped and moved him. "Ten-yard intervals, circle formed on me."
The AI would show everyone where to go, if they kept their heads and did it. They were doing it. The enemy vector arrow was a blur, moving around his defensive position. Every now and then someone would shoot at it, but Ingolfsson seemed to know they were shielded against her plasma weapon—
She knows how to use these things and we don't, Carmaggio knew with deadly certainty. And she's doing a better job of figuring out how to use them against us.
A rock whined by his head and went crack against a treetrunk as it shattered into fragments—not even a superhuman could make an irregular object perfectly accurate. He didn't intend to stand up and see a trial of strength between this Fritz helmet and Ingolfsson's arm, though.
"Hit the dirt. And nail the bitch!"
Bolts lanced out through the woods. Trees toppled. Carmaggio felt a sudden something in his mind, a sensation like a mental click. He started to roll still prone, bumped into someone, rolled right over them despite their squawk of protest. As he did so another plasma bolt lanced out of the darkness, right into the mid-section of the tree he'd been under. The three-foot thickness of hardwood vanished in a meter-wide sphere of magenta fire, and the great crown of the copper beech toppled downwards. It crashed into the middle of their position, branches probing like spears.
Return fire lashed back at the firmed-up vector the bolt provided for the AI. Thudding feet warned him that it didn't stay accurate for long. He was surprised the footfalls were so loud, but you couldn't move a hundred and ninety-five pounds up to greyhound speeds that quickly on soft little tippytoes, he supposed. Carmaggio went up on one knee, the trigger of the plasma gun sweetly responsive under his finger.
Repeated hits or a point-blank hit will overload the shielding, Lafarge's remembered voice said. When that happens, the shield's energy storage coil will fail catastrophically.
"And fry the bitch to hell and gone," he snarled under his breath. The sights were steady—
—and a stream of tracer snapping right by his ear with flat stretching whackwhackwhack sounds showed somebody had the same idea.
The bolt went wide, snapping out across Central Park—at that angle, it could blast a hole in concrete in one of the apartments over on the Upper West Side. Carmaggio rolled desperately, trying to get a new bead on the running, jinking figure. It was as if they were all standing still, or wading through honey, and she was the only normal person there.
"Shit. Shit, shit."
The vector bead slid right across their circular position. People on the other side were shooting after her.
"Fuck, the captain's dead!"
Henry's head whipped around. Three or four of the National Guardsmen were standing shoulder-deep in the fallen beech tree, looking down. He forced himself to his feet and lumbered over. Saunders was lying on his back, and a stub of wood three inches around was through his chest.
"Oh, man, I'm outta here," one of the guardsmen said, backing away, his head shaking in an unconscious rejection of the scene before him. "Oh, man, I'm gone."
"Shut up!"
The AI blared it into everyone's ear in a shout that stopped them in their tracks.
"You want to be out there alone with that thing?" he went on. "And if you make it home, you want to wait there until it comes for you? Christ, if you're that anxious to die, eat your gun and do it easy and quick!"
Silence fell. "Get your attention back on the job." Rollcall, he whispered. Shock made him grunt. Chen, Finch, Jesus, ten more dead. Two run. And all in less than eight minutes.
The men and women faced outward. But the vector arrow had turned to a bead, and the AI drew him a schematic.
"She's going home," Carmaggio whispered. "We did it. I hope." Aloud: "Come on. We've got to get to the warehouse."
He walked toward the waiting vans parked along the edge of Columbus Circle. Past the bodies, past Finch lying like a pretzel, past shattered burning trees. How many—Two of the FBI types were kneeling by Dowding's body. He'd never really gotten to know Finch's boss, beyond the depressed-horse expression on his bony face. Now he was lying face-down, with a four-inch-deep cut running diagonally from left shoulderblade to right kidney. That must have happened as she left, running through their position
.
The night smelled of death. Eighteen living humans followed him out of the park. None remained but the dead, as they walked toward the killer.
Jenny, he thought.
***
"Who's there?" a voice demanded over her head, after she punched in the code.
She pressed the button again. "Jennifer Feinberg for Ms. Ingolfsson," she snapped, putting her palm to the plate beside the door. "She told me to report here in an emergency. Now let me in."
A wait, while whoever was behind the video monitor let the computer confirm who she was and bring up its instructions.
Now she lived, or died. If the door didn't open, Lafarge attacked it himself—and he said the chances were better than five-to-one he couldn't defuse the biobomb in time. She closed her eyes and rumbled for a prayer, the first in a very long time.
There was a click "Come through," the speaker said.
She did, into a lobby now dimly lit. Two tall black men stood by either side of the door, looking out through slits. They had rifles, absurdly huge spindly-looking things. Lafarge had said . . . Barretts. Or something. They ignored her. The one who'd let her in was a young Latina woman, with a wicked-looking machine pistol slung across her body, incongruous against the chic outfit.
"Hi, Dolores," Jennifer said.
"Buenas noches, Jenny," Dolores Ospina said. "Welcome to the Household. Glad you decided to be sensible." A flash of a smile. "Welcome to the harem, that is to say . . . . Come on."
Jennifer forced a sickly grin as the other woman led her down a corridor and into an elevator; the sheer normalcy of the closed-down offices was jarring, with plastic covers over the PCs and Post-it notes stuck to desks.
The elevator had glass panels on the other side, and they had a view of the main section of the converted warehouse as they rose. Nothing dramatic, floodlights and a few workers fussing around enigmatic machinery. She recognized Dr. Mueller—his name should be Mengele—and the Sikh in their white coats, bent together over a console. The elevator clicked to a stop at the third floor. Armed men patrolled the walkways, or stood around the outer wall in positions barricaded with curved shapes of heavy metal.
"We're parking everyone here," Dolores said, indicating the door of a lounge down the top-floor corridor. "Just until the Mistress gets back, you understand." Excitement sparkled in the dark eyes. "They're actually going to take us through to the Prime Line, while this area gets pacified! I hope we get to see some of it."
"That would be fascinating," Jennifer agreed. About as fascinating as a tour of Hell, guided by Beelzebub. "How long?"
"Oh, not more than a couple of hours, she said." Dolores giggled. "And then it'll all be over. We can relax and never worry about anything again, just swim and feast and make love."
"Yes," Jennifer nodded. Hours. I will not scream. I will not smack this repulsive little slut.
She was very glad when the lounge door closed; it probably wasn't a very good idea to try and strangle someone with your bare hands when they had an automatic weapon. There were a dozen more in the lounge, and they raised an ironic cheer when she walked in. Jennifer smiled and waved, angling over toward the coffee urn and pastry tray, trying to look natural.
My God, that's Fred Lather! she thought. Is he in on this? And his wife. My God, I've got five of her exercise tapes.
Janeen Amier walked over. "Nice to see you again," she said, chattering nervously.
Jennifer took her hand. It felt dry against hers, which was damp with nervous sweat. The ex-actress didn't look nervous; more of an exalted expression.
"Did you know," she said, "did you know, the Mistress says Fred and I did so much, we can be made young again?"
That shocked Jennifer; enough that she really saw the aging woman for a moment, instead of her eyes skipping over the face in an unconscious search for danger.
"Young?" she said.
"Young, and beautiful. Gwen herself said," Janeen simpered and blushed, "that we'd be pretty when we were rejuvenated. How I envy you that experience."
"Yes," said Jennifer. She felt herself blushing. "Where's the powder room?"
"Just down the hall," Janeen said, skittering back to her husband's side. He was looking a little stunned himself, as if he couldn't quite convince himself that this was really happening.
It not only is happening, Jennifer thought grimly, it's your bloody fault, you idiot.
She sipped at the coffee and gave the others a quick look. A few politicians, some heavy-duty financial types, a black police officer . . . My God, that's Henry's boss! A Somali model married to a British rock star. An odd assortment . . .
"Souvenirs," she muttered. This was a collection of souvenirs. She remembered Gwen's words: I look after my own. Some weird sense of obligation, the sort you had to a dog. "And I'll look after myself, thank you very much."
She set the coffee cup down; it was Limoges; no plastic here. Nobody was standing out in the hall. She pushed open the ladies' and went into a stall.
Embarrassing. But it was the obvious place to hide something internally, and that little bit less likely to be detected, according to the expert. Henry had had the good grace to look embarrassed himself.
"I am going to have a talk with that man, when this is over."
If it got over. The thought heartened her, and she walked out of the room with an air of casual authority. You belong here. Nobody will suspect you. Just another one of the souvenirs.
Lafarge had given her a probable location, based on his scouting and her descriptions of what went on here. "Drakensis psychology means the ultimate controls will be near its nesting site." That was just wonderful.
She palmed a featureless black rectangle from her purse, about the size of an old-fashioned cigarette case. Up a flight of stairs, and to a heavy steel door; she must be right under the roof in this section of the warehouse. A single guard, a Haitian. She didn't recognize him, but from the way he looked at her he probably did, perhaps from the Bahamas.
"Sorry, miss," he said, the submachine gun in his hands pointed down. "This off limit."
Jennifer raised the black rectangle with the business end pointed out between thumb and forefinger, and thought. There was a heavy tug in her hand. Whump. Pressure popped her ears in the confined space, two sharp little pains. The Haitian flipped backward as if punched in the face; his head gonged against the thick door, and he slid downward with his eyes rolling back in his head and blood running from his nose and mouth.
"I had to," she muttered to herself, keeping a fixed stare away from the man as she moved towards the door. "I had to do that."
She pressed the black cone against the electronic lock. Something pulled it out of her fingers, the last fraction of an inch. Crackling sounds came from beneath it. The door clicked; when she took the cone off the wall it came away easily, leaving the keypad riddled with tiny holes.
Into the inner sanctum. Lifestyles of the rich and inhuman, she thought. A series of big rooms, leading into each other open-plan. An office setup; a gym room with equipment like nothing she'd ever seen, and lead-weighted free weights of ridiculous, cartoon size. Bedroom. Huge curtained bed, and beyond it an elaborate . . . bathroom wasn't really the word. Bathing facility. She walked quickly over to a terminal set beside the bed and opened the cover of the CPU. Even a non-tech type could see that someone had been making heavy modifications; cables attached here and there, new circuit boards. Gingerly, she laid the black thimble down on the exposed equipment.
Tendrils the color of clear ice and thinning off to invisibility grew out of the instrument. They waved over the circuit board, hesitated a little, then pounced, burrowing.
Jennifer shuddered. There was something unpleasantly alive about the tendrils, in an insect-like way. Now they were a writhing net over the surface of the computer, and the black thimble was melting away, shrinking and disappearing before her eyes.
"Now to try and get out of here," she said, hurrying through the suite of rooms.
A
man was waiting at the door. Medium height, broad-shouldered, ugly-handsome Mediterranean face with a heavy blue-black five o-clock shadow. The cross-draw holster showed under his opened jacket.
"Vulk," she said. "I was just—"
"Just what?" the Serb said. The Walther in his hand moved, and her eyes were drawn to the 9mm opening of the muzzle as if it were a cavern into night.
She moved back as he advanced, two Haitians behind him. He looked behind her.
***
Intruder, the transducer whispered in Gwen's mind. Central interface units are compromised. Attempting to contain.
The knowledge almost froze her in mid-stride, moving through the enemy formation. Reflex carried her through; she slashed at a last figure as she ran, the layer-knife cleaving flesh as if it were jelly, bone with only a slight catch. Out into the night, dodging trees.
Containment will fail in fourteen point seven three minutes, the transducer said.
The non-voice was slower than usual, too much of the quasi-machine's capacity diverted to the link with the human-built computers controlling the fusion plant and gateway.
Self-reproach was bitter as she ran. Diversion. One she had to respond to, but she shouldn't have stayed once it was plain the Samothracian wasn't there. He'd used the psychology of the Race against her, the tight-focused aggressiveness that had kept her there, killing like a lion in a herd of penned zebra. While the real enemy crept around behind her.
The streets ahead were pitch-black save for the headlights of an occasional car, and there were a fair number of humans abroad. With hormones pouring into her blood at maximum combat-load, she could treat automobiles and pedestrians alike as a series of static encounters. At times she vaulted a moving car, or used a walker as a resilient buffer at a corner, shedding momentum and turning her vector on them the way a billiard ball did on the padded edges of a pool table. Black against black, the passersby saw her only as a glimpse of movement in the night, a flash of light on teeth or the edge of her layer knife, a hurtling weight that left broken bone and torn flesh behind it. The screams were swallowed in the greater turmoil of the nighted city. Once she found a column of armored personnel carriers across an intersection, moving out from some National Guard armory to maintain order in the chaotic streets.
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