by P. R. Adams
Another pop of power, another burned section of cloth and flesh. And now there was the smell of urine.
Heidi shook. “I-I—” She rocked back and forth. “Please. I’m dying.”
Huiyin’s finger tensed, ready for another jolt. I snatched the tip of the staff away, grunting when the current hit but keeping my grip. It was powerful, painful. It probably should have stunned me.
The new limbs. Maybe they have a little something more going for them.
Huiyin released the staff and moved to the sink, calm, emotionless.
I collapsed the staff and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I squatted at Heidi’s side and said in a soft voice, “Tell me what you know.”
She wiped tears from her face. “Nearly a year ago, I received a call. It was one of Chambliss’s people. I don’t remember the name. She was asking about my health. They knew I was burning through my savings, trying to deal with—” It looked like she was fanning her face. “This.”
“What’s this?”
“Early-onset dementia. Aggressive.”
The meds she’d had in her hotel room. “You ever hear of these people before that?”
“No. Never. She offered to help. I met with her; she discussed some opportunities. It was all gray but not explicitly illegal. They offered a lot of money for the work.”
Huiyin’s face was still frozen. She knew the story or accepted it.
I probed at the first burn—gentle. “We’ll need to get this cleaned up.”
Heidi sighed, relieved. “Thank you.”
“When did they talk to you about me?”
“A couple months later. I’d heard you were dead. I—” She looked away. “I told them I’d rather not work with you. They eventually insisted. I assumed your reputation had been smeared by Stovall.”
“Someone spent a lot of money preparing me for the job.” Had they recruited Gillian around the same time? So many questions. “And they never told you why?”
“I knew not to ask. That’s how you end up dead.”
“When it fell apart, you disappeared.”
“I received a call from the same woman. She said my contract had been terminated. I—” A long exhale. “I thought it was a warning. I ran.”
“You’ll need to run again.”
“I was already planning to, but—”
Danny was in my ear, urgent. “Incoming. Air limo and cars. What is it with these guys and their flying cars?”
Huiyin’s eyes widened. She apparently hadn’t expected problems.
I helped Heidi to her feet. “They asked you to stay here until we showed up?”
Heidi nodded. “You knew?”
“It’s how this sort of thing goes. Did they offer you a payment or promise you they’d be in touch?”
Heidi leaned against me. “The drawer next to the sink.”
I helped her over and pulled the drawer open. The corner of one of the data devices we’d used during the Weaver operation poked out from beneath yellowed, crumpled papers. Heidi took the device from me and logged into it, then handed it to me.
I was familiar enough with the communications interface to pull up the history. “Chan?”
Chan’s voice had an edge to it. “Yeah.”
“Can you hop through our connection to get into this device?” I sent a short video of it, low res over the area’s flaky Grid.
“Inbound. You heard Danny.”
“Stay low. We’ll deal with them. I want to know who’s behind this.”
“A trap. This was a trap.” Chan sounded manic. Drugs again? Already?
“It’s always a trap. It’s just a matter of whether you can turn it to your advantage. Can you get into this device or not?”
A window opened in the display, then another, then another. Data flowed. More windows opened.
I set the device on the countertop. “I’m assuming that’s you? Chan?”
“I’m in. Looking.”
I waved Ichi over and said, “Take her to the bathroom. Heidi, you have anything for the burns? Alcohol? Something to numb it?”
Heidi grimaced. “Alcohol.”
Ichi wrapped an arm around Heidi’s hip. I stopped them. “One thing.”
Heidi’s eyes were wet with tears. She was hurting. “Yes?”
“Stovall. He’s still with the Agency. They’re running this at some level.”
She bowed her head. “People like him never leave the Agency, not until they die. They know what’s going on.”
The Agency was behind Stovall at some level, and he was behind whoever was coming for us. All we needed was a lead to start making sense of things.
And once I had this matter dealt with, I could take care of Stovall.
Chapter 12
Heidi’s apartment was cool and silent except for the occasional groan of the settling structure. I’d dragged the cheap entertainment center display into the kitchen. That was the only source of light as it played the drone video. The thing smelled like its chipped and faded black resin frame was melting. Jaggy artifacts dragged behind some of the fast-moving objects. Some pixels flickered intermittently, and sections of the display never lit at all, but there was enough for everyone to make out the important elements. Water arced away from six cars speeding down the single feeder road that led into the parking lot. Headlamps glowed pure white, revealing the cracked asphalt and muddy rain pools. The vehicles dodged left and right to avoid potholes and clumps of concrete carried into the street by runoff.
Huiyin wrinkled her nose as her eyes jumped from one corner of the display to the opposite corner. The effect was almost rabbit-like, but she was no helpless prey waiting for the hunter to come for her. She wiggled her fingers and shook her head, then said, “A dump like this, why not just fire rockets from that flying car?”
I’d wondered about that myself. “They probably want my body in good enough condition so they can confirm my identity. There’s not a lot of potential for DNA collection.” Or they wanted the computing device intact.
Her mirror shades tracked up and down my body, then returned to the display. “Six cars. Eighteen, maybe twenty people. Snipers in the air limo?”
“There was one last time. Chan will take it down when it gets closer.”
“How capable are they?”
“They’ve been competent enough so far.”
She unzipped her left pants leg, revealing a slender but shapely thigh and a molded black holster. The holster held part of a small pistol. She unzipped her right pants leg and pulled the other part of the pistol from there. As far as I could see, assembling the weapon involved slapping it together and flipping a couple of latches. She pulled two magazines from the lining of her jacket, loading one into the gun and stuffing the other into a pocket.
I snorted. “You must be great at parties.”
She zipped her pants legs closed. “I like being prepared. Is that a problem?”
I pulled my own pistol, which dwarfed hers. “Not for me. What kind of round does that thing use?”
“Five millimeter. Explosive tip.”
She liked her explosives. “They wear armor.”
“I don’t shoot at armor.”
She moved to the hallway leading to the front door, searched for a few seconds, then crouched in the opening opposite the kitchen. It was a much more effective place than Heidi had chosen. I jerked the display power cord from the wall, then yanked the cord from the back of the display. They would send someone up the back porch. I filled a bowl with water and splashed that onto the porch near the wall, then set the exposed wiring in the puddle and plugged the cable into the wall socket before sliding the glass door nearly all the way shut again.
The apartment was small—kitchen and living room, hallway, then bedroom and bathroom. Not even eight hundred square feet. There was a smell about the place, like it had been abandoned for a while. Dark patches of mold ran along the bathroom baseboards. Heidi was in the bathtub, hunched over, shaking.
Ichi looked up. “S
he will be safe in here.”
“Yeah. I want you on the roof.” I held a hand up before she could protest. “They’re going to come in fast, probably moving in a couple groups. You get on the roof, you can swing down when they’re bunched tight on the stairs. Knock some of them around, then get the hell out of there. The distraction will buy us time, and that’s something we’re going to need.”
She smiled and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. “I will—”
“This isn’t about you trying to kill an army single-handed, Ichi. Kick a couple around, then get back up on the roof. If they send someone after you, fine, kill him. But you’re not our ninja army, okay? These people have some nasty guns. Bullets don’t care how pretty you are or how fast you kick. Keep moving, stay out of sight. You hear me?”
A strange look—disapproving?—passed over her face. Because I’d called her pretty? She had to know she was.
She squeezed past me, head down. “I will do as you say.”
“I’ll call you when it’s time.” I tapped my temple. “I’ll be watching you.”
And I did watch her. From the second she exited the front door, Chan’s camera picked everything up in the hallway dividing the third-floor units. When Ichi reached the stairs, I could see her more clearly. She became a graceful, powerful shadow, hopping onto the rail where the two sets of stairs merged at the top, then climbing up and out of sight.
Her breathing was a comforting sound in my ear once I couldn’t see her anymore. “I am on the roof. The flying vehicle is moving away. The cars are coming into the parking area very fast.”
“Stay low. Wait for my signal.” I took up a position just inside the kitchen. “Chan, that air limo comes down as soon as possible.”
“Yeah.” The manic tension in Chan’s voice was thick. “Seeing the system now.”
“They won’t bother with your car. You’re safe. Danny, you copy?”
Danny hummed. “Yeah. I was watching the video on the entertainment center. Really nice. Um, I still have a good signal, but is it going to hold up?”
Chan sounded irritated. “Yes.”
Danny said, “Cool. What are my priorities?”
I wanted the limo down, but I needed for Chan to show me that the run-in with Jacinto hadn’t taken away our edge; we needed the best Gridhound on our team. “Keep them off Chan and Ichi. Huiyin and I will have a pretty good crossfire going in here.”
“Okay.” He hummed again, then said, “Here they go. Two cars coming straight at you. North side.”
Brakes, the splash of tires through puddles. They were coming around, sealing off the far stairs. That was fine, but it meant Ichi might encounter trouble from the far end of the roof after engagement.
“Ichi?” I cursed for not thinking about putting another camera up in the north stairs.
“Yes?” Calm. Fearless. The young always were.
“They’re sending people up the north stairs. You think you can handle that group first? Just knock one or two around, then get back up, just like I said.”
“I can do that.”
Glass splintered in the kitchen—the sliding door—and something tore through the wall inches from my head.
The sniper in the air limo!
I dropped low. “Chan!”
“Taking control,” Chan shouted. There was a grumpy, resentful tone.
Danny whispered, “Coming up the south stairs. Twelve. They left three people by the cars. Two heading along the back, going for the porch.”
Two coming up the porch. I had to hope they weren’t as good as Ichi, or that could be a problem.
A scream—panicked, cut short. Gunfire. Another scream.
Ichi. Get back up on the roof!
I swallowed, felt my heart racing.
More gunfire. A lot more. Were they going after her? “Danny?”
“I see two people up on the roof on the north side, another on the south. Ichi’s trying to stay low.”
“Scrape them off her.”
“Flier’s still up there. I fire, their sniper’s going to see me.” Perfect calm. Ice had to run through Danny’s veins. “Want me to bring the bird down?”
I opened a dedicated connection to Chan. “What’s going on with that—”
The front door burst in. Gunfire—automatic, the submachine guns—peppered the wall above my head.
I put a round into the shooter where the left thigh met the hip. A groan, and the shooter fell.
More gunfire over my head. Closer. Close enough for plaster to rattle off my face.
Huiyin’s gun fired—a short burst, almost quieter than the sound of explosions, but louder than the screams of the wounded. I risked a glance at the video—eight forms, one of them writhing.
More gunfire from the roof. Ichi, pinned. They would kill her!
“Chan!” I took another shot as a form charged into the hallway. The form’s head rocked back, then the feet stumbled and a heavy body crashed to the floor.
A terribly loud drone overwhelmed other noises—the air limo’s fans, whipping by close overhead. It was just over the rooftop. The sniper would get a clean shot at Ichi.
My heart skipped a beat at the crack of a high-powered rifle.
Then I heard a popping sound, felt a hum, like electricity. Shadows twitched and twisted on the back porch. The backdoor team was here.
I popped up long enough to put a round into both of them, then dropped down again.
“Danny, can you hear me? Take that limo—”
More gunfire from the front, and something nearly took my leg out from under me.
I returned fire, then Huiyin did the same.
Screams. Bodies falling.
Had Chan frozen up again? Had Jacinto gotten through and shut my Gridhound down?
The high-powered rifle fired again. And again. And again.
It didn’t sound right. The air limo was overhead. There was no way for the sniper to get a shot off, and it came out sounding like those shots had.
“Stefan?” It was Danny, still cool as a chunk of ice in the Arctic Ocean.
“Yeah, go!” I ducked as more automatic fire blasted the wall behind me.
“Drivers are down. They were moving toward Chan’s vehicle.”
I ducked back into the kitchen as more automatic gunfire chewed up the hallway. “Scrape the rooftop. Get those people off Ichi!”
“Ichi’s fine. Chan used the fans to take care of a couple of them.”
So Chan was in control of the air limo. “What about the sniper?”
Danny paused, and I could almost hear a smile. “Dumped him. About eighty feet up. He’s not moving.”
“All right. Fire at will on the enemy.”
“Sure.”
Automatic gunfire punched through the kitchen walls. A bullet rattled off my left hand, and another off my right. My gun fell to the floor, and once again, booted feet charged down the hallway.
Huiyin’s weapon barked, and someone screamed, but the booted feet kept charging.
A burly shadow filled the area I’d retreated from and I caught the slightest yelp. One of them had gotten in and was on Huiyin!
I rounded the corner just as another of the attackers entered the hallway. There wasn’t anything to do but cover my face with my arm, hunch down, and charge.
The sweetest sound imaginable reached my ears: the dull click of a jam!
The gunman swung his weapon at me, but I was already on him. The stock bounced off my shielding arm ineffectively.
I grabbed the gunman by the front of his armor and slammed him against the wall with all the torque my back could handle. Muscles protested all along my ribs, below my shoulders, and through my abdominal region. The gunman went airborne, cracking against drywall, shattering a strut, then bursting out the other side of the wall. I had a sense of the form hitting the floor, starting to get up, then falling back.
One of the legs was bent completely wrong.
There were no more gunmen in the hall outside
. I turned, ready to tear the big one off Huiyin, but she was holding her own.
Then the big man grabbed her armored jacket, and she struck his wrists with enough power to break his grip.
How? The speed of her strike…
I closed on the guy, wrapped an arm around his neck, and flipped him over my hip. He went to the ground, spun as if he had trained for this a million times.
So I stomped his arm. And then stomped again, pushing the cybernetic limbs to give me everything they had.
And his arm shattered. Not a little. All the way. Bone pulped, a muffled popping mixed in with the stomp.
He snort-whimpered, then collapsed.
I retrieved my pistol, saw the calm nod of Huiyin’s head, and ran to the hallway. Three of the bodies there twitched and moaned. I put a round into each one’s head. “Ichi?”
“I am fine.” She swung into the area at the top of the south-end stairs and waved.
“Danny?”
The air limo’s motors revved, then a few seconds later, the vehicle crashed into something, and the fans died.
“All clear,” Danny said. “No movement.”
I ran to the back porch, unplugging the cable before opening the door. Glass fell away in clumps as the frame slid along the track. One of the assassins was halfway to his feet, gasping, trying to pull himself up using the wall, his black ski mask askew. I grabbed him, hefted him up by his armored vest and hung him over the wall, head down, then shifted my grip to one of his booted ankles. The ski mask he’d been wearing fell away, and long, dark hair unfurled.
A woman, young. Too young for the job. She gasped. Blood trickled up her face, and she looked at me with dark eyes alternately filled with fear and fury.
I held her away from the wall. “Thirty feet up, fall upside down like this. It won’t end well.”
“F-f-fuck you,” she managed.
“Any other night, sure. Tonight…” I shook her. “Who are you working for?”
Her lips squeezed shut.
Brave. I shook her again, and my guts twisted when the fear and determination settled onto her face. “One last try. It’s not worth dying over this.”
She shook her head.