It seemed the NSA weren’t content with the situation and had sent in another squad to finish what the others couldn’t. Did they know Jacob and Emma weren’t among the dead? Were they still after them, or just the synthetics? He briefly considered approaching them, giving himself up, telling them about Agent Vega being taken away by Gray. But there was no way he could trust them, especially after what Agent Vega had told him.
Jacob sat up, stretched out his legs and winced as he bumped his ankle against a rock. Taking a minute for the agony to dissipate slightly, he turned back to face the compound and saw Emma slink around the right wing of the building, her focus on the front. She came to the edge and looked over to Jacob.
He waved at her, hoping she could infer that the way was clear. The soldiers from the chopper on the left had disappeared, and he assumed they had entered the same door that the synthetic had come out of. Then he heard gunfire.
Emma hesitated. Jacob checked the way again and waved her toward him.
Jacob pointed to the larger boulders to his left where they had first gone after escaping. He hobbled across, dragging his ankle rather than putting any weight on it.
Emma sprinted out and reached the boulders before he did. She helped him sit when he caught up. They both sat there, breathing heavily, their backs against the cool stones.
“There’s eighteen of them,” Emma said between gasps. “Must be more soldiers sent by the NSA. There’s still four synthetics inside, or at least the ones I could see.”
“You scared the shit out of me. You were so close to that damned thing, I thought…”
“I’m all right, don’t worry.” She flashed him a grin.
For ten minutes the firefight continued. Short bursts were interrupted with loud thuds, probably grenades of some kind. Jacob took some grim satisfaction in knowing that Gray’s subjects were probably being butchered inside. Eighteen against four seemed like good odds for the new arrivals. He doubted the synthetics would survive.
The shooting stopped and a quiet replaced the gunfire.
“Wait,” Jacob said, peering over the boulder. “Someone must have won. Who do you think, soldiers or synthetics?”
“Synthetics. Those things are crazy.”
“Outnumbered four to one, though?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“If you’re going snooping again, I’m coming with you. I’m sick of sitting around waiting for something to happen.”
They waited for what felt like ten minutes, and when there was no sign or sound of any movement, they snuck out from behind the boulders and made their way to the compound. Jacob took the pistol this time. Emma helped prop him up, taking the weight from his ankle. They reached the right-hand edge of the wing, where Emma had been earlier. Jacob carefully went to his knees and crawled until he came to the barred window. He slowly rose up on his knees until he could just about peer through the bottom of the window.
The lights were on inside. He could see through the corridor to an open door separating the interrogation wing from the warehouse section. He saw the body of a black-clothed soldier lying in the doorway, propping the door open. A second body had joined it, slumped to its side.
Blood pooled on the floor and covered the walls on either side. It looked like a brutal killing. Something had shredded the agent apart.
“Can you see anything?”
“Dead soldiers, but no movement.”
“We should go around the front. There’s a couple more windows there.”
Emma slipped past Jacob and he followed, hobbling after her. The two helicopters sat like guard dogs at the front of the compound. At first, Jacob thought they were empty, but then he saw the two pilots slumped in the seats. The first hung over the flight sticks, his face resting on the control panel, blood spattered against the window. The other had his head pressed against the side of the door, a gunshot wound in his neck.
Emma crouched against the front of the building beneath a window.
Jacob moved beside her, the pistol still in his right hand. He still couldn’t detect any movement or sound from inside. One of the radios within a chopper came to life. A voice gave garbled instructions that Jacob couldn’t quite make out. It sounded panicked, though, making him think that perhaps these soldiers weren’t able to overpower the synthetics.
As he pondered their next move, a shadow passed the window, blocking the light for a second. His hand gripped the pistol harder in response as his body tensed. Emma pushed against the building and crouched lower, whispering, “Someone’s coming out.”
Jacob started to back up, but it was too late. The front door burst open and a synthetic lurched out into the open.
“Jesus Christ,” Emma said, falling back, knocking into Jacob.
Jacob rocked back on his knees and twisted his ankle again.
The synthetic turned to look at them. Its face was a bloodied mess. Its clothing featured a dozen or more bullet holes. Jacob realized then how damaged it was. It twitched its head as it grimaced. Its legs bowed and slipped with each step. Its left hand was bruised and swollen and the right had lost a finger.
A pained keening noise came from it as it stepped closer, but its legs collapsed beneath it. Its head bounced off the stony ground. Yet it still kept coming, reaching out, its left hand dragging itself forward along the dirt and stones.
Emma got to her feet and lifted Jacob up.
He hopped on one leg and moved back until they were fifteen feet away. The synthetic looked up at them with one eye, the other swollen shut. Its lips moved, breathy words dying on the air. While they were standing, Jacob stole a look through the window and saw no other movement.
“We’ve got to kill it,” Emma said, looking down at the pitiful sight.
Jacob didn’t have to remind himself of what these things were or what they did. He didn’t buy that they were completely under Gray’s commands. He’d seen enough to know these things were autonomous, thinking beings—at least to some degree. Watching the glee in the other one’s eyes as it broke Brian’s neck told him that a part of these things enjoyed what they did.
Taking a few staggering steps closer, Jacob raised the pistol and aimed for its head. The synthetic just stared at them both with its one good eye. It sneered at him as if daring him to pull the trigger, with the arrogance to believe Jacob couldn’t do it.
“Fuck you,” Jacob said as he steadied his aim. Before he realized he had even done it, he pulled the trigger, sending a bullet crashing into the synthetic’s head.
The sound of the shot dissipated into the open air as the bullet struck true. The synthetic’s head jerked back violently before slumping on the ground. The body jerked once and then was still. Jacob let out a breath and dropped his arm down to his side, trembling with the adrenaline and relief.
“One down,” Emma said with a grim determination.
“There could still be more. They’ll have heard the gunshot.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to finish this. I’m going back in.”
Emma saw the determination on his face and didn’t argue. Instead, she retrieved the pistols from the dead pilots. Jacob thought about taking a rifle, but he had never shot one before and wouldn’t even know how to work it. He didn’t like the idea of struggling with a weapon if he had to use it quickly. He removed the magazine from his pistol and pocketed it, preferring to use the unspent one in the pilot’s gun.
Together, Jacob and Emma entered the building.
With the adrenaline and fear, the pain in Jacob’s ankle had subsided slightly, allowing him to limp on it. The swelling stretched against his sock, but if he kept to his toes and didn’t twist on it, he could manage to hobble along.
Emma went first, keeping her back to the wall of the corridor.
They turned right at the end and saw the carnage. A steel door that separated the actual compound compartment from the faux-domestic rooms hung open.
A whitewashed hall led off with
doors spaced on either side. Interrogation rooms. The hall looked much like the one Agent Vega had let them out of on the other side of the compound. Separating the two wings was the warehouse department.
Jacob counted nine bodies in the hall.
Some slumped against doors, others lay flat on the floor. He needed Emma’s help to step over them. Of the nine, eight were soldiers, and one a synthetic.
They approached an interrogation room with the door hanging off its hinges.
“I can smell smoke,” Emma said, even with her hands around her mouth and nose to block out the stench of blood.
Jacob smelled it, too. He hobbled further down the corridor until he came to the door that separated the interrogation rooms from the warehouse. There were the two soldiers who had been killed earlier, slumped in the doorway. Inside the warehouse, two synthetics lay spread-eagled on the floor against their metal crates. It appeared they had succumbed to multiple shrapnel wounds. A grenade, Jacob thought.
Looking between the crates, Jacob saw other dead soldiers and flames coming from the corridor that led to his and Emma’s interrogation room. The smoke whirled away until it drifted out of the skylight they had opened.
The heat was noticeable at this distance, forcing them to turn back as the fire raged and gathered potency. If anyone were in the other wing, Jacob doubted they would survive. The flames roared as they came into the warehouse, licking up the sides of the walls, lighting the various boxes stacked on the shelving units.
“We’ve got to go,” Emma said. “Come on.” She helped him turn and head back the way they’d come. They’d just reached the room with the open door when Jacob heard a noise. He poked his head inside slowly, pistol in hand.
A soldier lay against a metal table. Agent Cooley and a plain-clothed man were slumped in the corner, neither moving.
“Help… me,” the soldier said. He looked young, not much older than Jacob.
“Who are you?” Jacob asked, his pistol trained on him. He noticed that the soldier’s leg was bent at an awkward angle as he sat with his back against the table. He held his chest. Blood covered his hands.
The soldier coughed up blood as he tried to speak. “Smithson, Charles. I’m dying. You’ve got to…” He coughed up more blood and choked.
Emma rushed in and knelt by him, lifting his head. “Are you NSA?” she asked. “Who sent you?”
He spat the blood from his mouth. “The director. We’re cleanup. Everyone’s dead… you have to take this.”
Smithson opened his left hand. A bag with broken laptop parts fell to the floor.
“What’s so important about this?” Jacob said. He noticed the biochip within the bag, connected to a dongle.
“It connects to their network.”
For the last time, the soldier coughed up blood. He slumped to the side, his mouth and eyes wide open. Emma reached for him, pressed her fingers against his neck and waited. Then did the same with his wrist.
She didn’t need to say anything. It was clear he was dead.
Jacob examined the room and saw a broken laptop screen. It had come away from the chassis, which was now in parts in the bag.
Black smoke started to fill the corridor, making Jacob cough.
“We’ve got to go,” he said. “Grab the bag.”
Emma clutched the bag of parts and left the room, helping Jacob out as the flames reached the corridor, filling it with heat and smoke. They hobbled out of the compound, finally reaching the door and breathing in the fresh air. Jacob leaned against his knees and coughed the smoke from his lungs.
“These poor men and women,” Emma said. “Sent here to be butchered.”
“Cleanup,” Jacob said. “We’d have been among the dead if they’d had the chance. I have no sympathy for them.”
“They were probably just following orders,” Emma argued. “Set by their director.”
“I don’t care. Everyone makes a personal choice. And where did it get them? All of them dead.”
Jacob shook his head and hobbled to the nearest helicopter. The radio was still working, someone on the other end demanding a status update. Jacob lifted the receiver and did just that.
“Who is this?” the voice barked.
“My name is Jacob—”
“Miller? How the hell are you still alive? Where’s Zoe Vega?”
“Was it your order? For my death? Is this the director?”
“Now you listen to me, you little punk—”
“Cut the crap. I’ve got something you need, something you sent a lot of people to their deaths for. If you want to stop me from going public with this, you’ll listen to me.”
The line went quiet for a moment. The voice returned nearly a minute later.
“Speak to me, Miller. What’s the situation over there?”
“Gray and his group left by chopper before your cleanup crew arrived.”
“What direction?”
“West. But one took a transport plane east.”
“What about my team and the synthetics?”
Jacob looked at the dead synthetic on the ground and the growing flames devouring the building, burning evidence. Soon there would be nothing but a few charred bricks left.
“All dead. There’s just me.”
Emma gave him a quizzical look, but he thought it would make sense not to give away their hand completely. He still didn’t know where any of this was going or what threat he was exposing himself to.
“And Vega?”
“Before we get to her,” Jacob said, thinking over what to ask for, “I want some assurances and answers.”
The director sighed impatiently. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you and the other agents really think I was guilty?”
The director hesitated. “Well, guilty has many shades. You have to understand that this is bigger than any one person.”
“So you were prepared to throw me under the bus and blame this clusterfuck on me?”
“Like I said, this is bigger than you or me. I had to do what I had to do.”
“Yeah, for your own good. I wonder what would happen if the world found out about your secret pact with Gray and his homicidal enhanced humans, and that you were at the root of a cover-up. There’s a lot of deaths with your name on them here.”
“Listen, I don’t have time for this. Let’s just do a deal and move on. There’s too much at stake here to score points. Tell me what you have, and what you want, and we’ll come to an arrangement.”
Jacob released the trigger on the radio. He turned to Emma. “What do you think?”
Emma shrugged and looked around. “It’s not like we’ve got an option. But we do have negotiating power. We can’t just hand over the evidence bag; he’ll have no incentive to keep us alive. We need to keep something back as insurance.”
The radio belched the director’s voice. “Miller? You still there?”
“I’m here. Okay, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to send someone to collect me and take me somewhere safe. Not one of your safe houses, but somewhere public. In return I’ll tell you what I know about Vega and Gray. Additionally, I’ll add that if you do try anything, I will expose you. I’ve made copies of the data recovered from XNA Industries’ servers and have sent them to a secure location. If I don’t access the remote server in an unspecified period of time, the data will go public.”
Of course, it was a complete bluff, but it was the only way he could ensure his safety, and maybe his rescue. There was also the thought of helping Zoe. She had released them, after all, and he felt he owed her for that.
He knew Gray wouldn’t have taken her if he just meant to kill her. She had something valuable to him, and all the time that remained the case, they had a chance of finding her and ultimately dealing with Gray. The cat was well and truly out of the bag now, and if Jacob could help end Gray’s plans, then perhaps some of those poor soldiers’ deaths wouldn’t have been in vain.
“Fine. I’ll have some
one out to you within the hour. Are you still at the compound?”
“Yeah, the choppers are out front. Where am I, anyway?”
“Montana. Now, time for you to answer my question. How can you help us find Gray and Vega?”
“You’ll find that out when you deliver on your promise. But let’s just say I’ve recovered something that will help.”
The radio line went quiet again. Jacob’s nerves stretched taut as he waited for the director’s reply. Had he pushed him too far? Been too vague? Negotiating with the head of the NSA wasn’t something he’d ever thought he’d have to do.
“Miller, stay where you are. A car is on its way to pick you up. It’ll be there within the hour. The driver will be in a local Montana police uniform. He’ll answer to the name Officer Jameson. He’ll take you to a hotel in the local town, where I’ll have my guys meet you to discuss the Gray situation. If you don’t do anything stupid, both of us can come out of this in one piece.”
“Okay, I’ll—hello, hello?”
Jacob dropped the transceiver and turned to Emma. “The prick cut me off.”
“At least we’re getting picked up. You think they’ll stick to the deal?”
“We’ll have to play it by ear. Keep that pistol on you, hidden if possible, just in case.”
Jacob searched the jacket of the dead pilot, finding a knife, and limped over to the synthetic. The fire was raging now, the flames licking up the sides of the compound. The heat warmed his face as he looked down at the dead synthetic.
“What are you doing?” Emma said.
“We’ve got those bastards’ laptop and a dongle. We need a biochip. That other one looks completely ruined.”
Jacob pressed the knife into the back of the synthetic’s neck and carefully cut out the biochip, placing it in the plastic bag. He and Emma dragged the synthetic into the building before taking a seat inside the chopper.
Through the window, huddled together, Jacob and Emma watched as the compound slowly burned down, the smoke rising in the early dawn morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sequence Page 23