by T. C. Edge
That’s where they were, Mikel knew instinctively. The drone, the scent, signalled their position. He continued on quickly, narrowing his focus on that crumbled wall. He could smell them, hear their beating hearts. He rushed as close as he dared, and then he saw it - a head, hidden within a black helmet, sneaking up to take a look, peering over the top of the wall.
He glanced behind him again - he was too quick for the soldiers pursuing him, extending the distance between them. They were shadows in the mist, quickly taking firmer form as they poured onwards through the rain - and heading right for the building in which Hunt cowered.
Mikel stopped for just a second, turning back to the crumbled wall. He saw another black helmet now, and the tips of rifles creeping up to take aim. Behind him, the pursuing soldiers grew closer.
One more second…Mikel thought.
He waited until the last moment, bringing these two groups together, playing the perfect matchmaker. And as the men behind came flooding through the fog, he swerved straight off to the right, disappearing into the shadows of another lane and out of sight of them all.
He stopped, hearing the footsteps splashing loudly. And then…shouting coming from behind him. Sneaking into a recess, he smashed through a doorway - the door was simple for him to break - and moved out of the storm outside. He listened closely. Shouts of confusion whistled from the main road, coming from both sides.
Then, after the shortest of lulls, gunfire burst into the air.
Perfect, thought Mikel. Let chaos reign.
23
The streets here, though the city centre was still some way off, had clearly seen recent fighting. The further north you ventured, the more damage you saw; broken down walls, battered buildings, piles of rubble and detritus littering the streets. There were bullets everywhere, empty shells sparkling on the rain-drenched floor. There was even the occasional corpse, forgotten and left behind when the dead were salvaged from the fight.
Right now, Ragan and the gang were in another ground floor apartment, just as they’d been only a minute or so ago. They hunkered low behind a collapsed section of wall, the rain battering hard just outside, keeping watch on the streets ahead. All stayed quiet and still, hoping they’d escaped from their previous position before being spotted. Up above, Remus was keeping watch, Chloe relaying what he was seeing. Ragan’s scanning lens was also searching ahead, seeking out movement in the fog.
“Nothing so far,” Chloe whispered. “Quinn’s unit must have continued on east, or turned south…”
“And we’re sure it’s them?” asked Tanner sharply, cowering below the brick, black combat suit dripping wet and rifle clutched tight, just aching to be used.
“Certain,” whispered Chloe. “Remus recognised them.”
That’s all that was required now, no further explanation needed. If Remus recognised someone, it meant it was them. His analysis of body shape, gait, movement, and so on made his conclusions irrefutable.
“We should move again,” Tanner went on. “Head further north.”
“I’d rather not get too close to the central fighting,” countered Ragan. “Quinn will pass, and we’ll move in behind them. They may have a lock on Mikel that we don’t.”
It seemed likely that that was the case. The manner in which they moved, quickly progressing up the street, suggested they were getting somewhere fast, rather than searching as they went. The intelligence analysts and hackers back at the base in the mountains would be feeding them regular updates. Dax was good, but he was just one man. There was only so much he could do.
Ragan turned his attention back out, his lenses currently set on night-vision to help see through the deluge. He was searching through a crack in the wall, so wasn’t required to poke his head over the top of it to see. To his side, Tanner and Nadia’s view was entirely blocked off. Both were hunched low and completely out of sight.
He peered out, even this function of his lenses largely affected by the storm. The grumbling thunder was now growing a little louder, though the beating heart of the storm remained some way off. It wasn’t looking like the rain would cease for a while.
A sudden crackle filled the air.
The group looked to each other, tensing.
“Gunfire,” said Tanner. “To the south…”
The chatter grew clearer, louder, more intense. It was spreading from the way they’d just come, towards the large intersection down the street.
“That’s gotta be Quinn doing the shooting,” said Tanner. “Who’s he fighting? Chloe?”
“I can’t see anything yet,” said Chloe. “The rain’s too thick.”
“It’s gotta be NDSA soldiers,” said Nadia. “They must have run into a patrol.”
Ragan stared out, pulse spiking. More gunfire sung into the storm. It all seemed to originate from about the same place.
“That’s no firefight,” Ragan growled. “There’s no return fire. It’s all coming from one group.”
The chattering grew a little nearer, before calming suddenly and then stopping. A few moments passed, a silence falling. Then, from the fog ahead, Ragan thought he saw a figure materialise, black, sleek, ghostly in the mist.
His eyes narrowed, breath holding. He heard a distant voice cry out - Hey! He’s here!
The figure continued towards them, and Ragan could feel Chloe’s breathing begin to rise as she crouched next to him.
“Someone’s coming,” she said. “One person, alone.” Her voice grew clotted with hate and fear. “It’s Mikel.”
“So that’s who they’re shooting at,” growled Tanner, keen to get a look. Ragan noticed him peering up and over the top of the wall.
“Stay low,” whispered Ragan harshly. “He may not know we’re here…”
“He knows,” said Chloe. “He can smell us. He’s…he’s leading Quinn’s group our way.”
Now, more shadows were beginning to materialise, pouring after the vamp from the south. Mikel grew close, moving quickly, glanced back, and then fled suddenly towards another alley, disappearing. Quinn and his men appeared a moment later, eyes searching. They came upon the group’s position behind the wall, and stopped.
Ragan looked over at Tanner, who was still peering over the edge, the top of his helmet visible.
“They’ve seen us,” grunted Ragan.
Voices suddenly began murmuring from the group, confused. Ragan made a snap decision. He called out into the storm, “Don’t shoot! Captain Quinn…we’re on the same side!”
His words were muffled by a thunderous roar from the heavens. More words came in reply from down the street, the ten men of the Crimson Corps still standing out in the street, unprotected. Ragan glanced at Tanner, eyes narrow and glaring through his visor. All stayed low, a short lull falling. Ragan could see the men aiming rifles, moving into cover in crouching positions.
And then, without further warning, they began to fire.
Bullets started peppering the wall, cracking chunks, bits of brick breaking off and pinging into the soaking ground. Tanner and Nadia reacted immediately, instinct taking over. They drew their rifles up, steadied them over the top of the wall, and began firing right back, keeping their heads as low as possible and out of sight.
Ragan’s instincts were the same, but a more powerful urge took him. His first thoughts went to Chloe, crouched to his left. He grabbed her immediately and pulled her down, making sure she was in full cover. Her eyes opened in a flash, leaving Remus to fend for himself. She took up her own rifle, eyes crunching up with a sudden fear.
“Stay down,” Ragan grunted, before lifting his own rifle and adding it to the chorus.
A moment later, a fourth weapon was singing on their side. Chloe’s eyes changed, losing that fear, narrowing with resolve. She placed her rifle down on the wall, body kept low, and shut her eyes. She didn’t seem to be aiming.
It took Ragan a second to figure out what she was doing - she was using Remus to guide her.
Chloe’s heart was thrashing, adrenali
ne pumping. She felt alive, a state amped up to the max by such dangerous, ferocious confrontations. Her fear was cast aside, her nanites swarming inside her like bees from a hive, attacking anyone with the temerity to get near.
She stayed low, body out of sight, her rifle placed onto the wall, finger to the trigger. Then she did the last thing anyone else would do when aiming a gun - she shut her eyes.
Returning to Remus’ perception, she worked in tandem with the genius little drone. He drew lower in the skies - though not low enough to be at risk from an errant bullet - and began mapping the positions of the men ahead, hidden in their cover behind car husks and piles of rubble.
The process was intuitive, just as when Ragan tried to capture her outside LA. Then, he’d been chasing her down, trying to take her out with a knock-out dart from his pistol. Though she’d been running away from him, she had a big enough lead for Remus to analyse and predict the trajectory of the darts. He had fed that information right to her, an instinctive process that had her moving out of the path of the incoming bullets before they hit.
It was a function the two had used many times before, though Chloe could take no credit. She didn’t have to think about it at all. Remus did the work, and then fed the intel to her nanites. All she had to do was act.
So it was now. She crouched low and out of sight behind a thick section of wall, and Remus told her exactly where to point. Reaching up to her rifle, she moved it ever-so-slightly, changing its position, aiming where Remus told her. On his command, she pulled the trigger. And from above, through his perception, she saw a man fall.
She’d fired right at a man using an old car for cover. He was hidden as well as he could be, behind its opened door, using the window to rest his rifle and fire. It would take a perfect shot to hit him, an impossible shot in this rain.
But Remus was capable of impossible things.
The bullet ripped right past the window, through the cracked glass, over his rifle, and through his visor. It cracked through the plastic, met his eye, and passed right into his brain. The soldier’s head was knocked back in a whiplash motion, his body slumping immediately to the floor.
One shot from Chloe’s rifle. One kill.
And it felt awful.
Still, she aimed again, guided by Remus, and fired once more. The next missed, the man just moving at the right time, ducking into cover as the shot was made. From above, Chloe saw another fall, though not by her doing. She wouldn’t have known who’d done it were it not for Tanner’s celebratory grunt of, “Got one.”
It seemed odd to celebrate such a thing. These men were part of the Crimson Corps. Whatever had happened back there - whether Slattery had betrayed them or whether he simply thought he’d been betrayed - these soldiers likely had no part in it, nor any say. They were men committed to their cause, just like the group they were firing at. It was heartbreaking that anyone had to die.
That was the world, though. People had a profound gift for finding ways of killing one another, and reasons to justify it.
Chloe fired on, not wantonly, not with any desire or passion. It was through need that she did it, through that most primal of instincts embedded within every human - survival. She shot, one bullet at a time, following Remus’ guidance as the rest bobbed up and down into cover, firing in short bursts in the mist.
The wall, however, wasn’t made for such a battering. Holes started to appear within it as the bricks and concrete got chipped away. The team had to shift their position and move as the gaps grew wider, bullets spraying through and into the apartment behind them. Chloe kept a keen watch on it all, occasionally returning to her own vision to check where the others were, before switching right back to her airborne friend. The transition, given the adrenaline flooding her system and powering up her nanites, happened quicker than normal.
That was good, and might just have saved them. As she returned to her eyes in the sky, alerted by a sudden alarm spreading through her nanites, she saw the shape of a grenade curving through the rain, its trajectory set to take it right over the wall and into the apartment beyond.
“Grenade!” Chloe shouted, warning her friends.
They were quick to see it, a little black orb rushing through the air towards them. Tanner acted quickest of everyone, lifting his rifle from its perch, aiming it high, and firing. His spray of bullets hit the explosive, causing it to bellow loudly in midair. The resulting boom shook the air, a sharp burst of fire flooding the sky before turning quickly into a cloud of black smoke, dispersing quickly amid the falling rain.
“Great shot!” cried Nadia. “But we can’t stay here!”
Her eyes shot for Ragan, and he nodded. With the cloud of smoke still lingering and covering their retreat, they heaved themselves up from the floor and hurried deeper into the apartment. Ragan and Tanner stopped and fired as they went, offering further cover. The girls were first to reach the rear; a door gave entry into a corridor beyond. Nadia kicked right through it, and they poured out of sight, hurrying as quickly as they could through the building as bullets chased them down, cracking into the plasterboard covering the interior walls.
They could hear shouting behind, Quinn’s unit quick to realise they’d made good their retreat. There must be only eight left now, Chloe thought. They’d killed a couple at the farm, and another two now. Their original dozen or so was being steadily depleted. How long would it take for them to cut their losses and run?
Nadia in the lead, the group rushed straight through the building, searching for a way out. They seemed to be moving without specific intent or direction, turning this way and that as they reached dead ends or blocked exits. Chloe thought back to the chase she’d had through that old tenement block in LA, when Mikel has stalked her through the building…
Mikel. He’s out there still…
The thought gave her pause. This was the nano-vamp’s doing, luring Quinn’s team to their position. He wanted them to engage in a firefight. He wanted to create some chaos, the best state for him to hunt. Was he watching them now? Was he tracking them as they went?
Running behind Nadia, she couldn’t help but glance back, suddenly fearing that Mikel would be there. She saw only Ragan, then Tanner, both tall and strong and layered in black. They hurried on, quickly catching up. Ragan reached Chloe and turned her around, hauling her back to running speed as they fled on.
They reached the edge of the building, a blocked metal door giving access to the alley. Nadia charged it with her shoulder but found herself bumped off, wincing. Ragan lifted his weapon, set to shoot the heavy lock, but Tanner came right past them at a gallop, raising his right leg - his bionic leg - and smashing it right into the metal. The entire thing gave way, frame and all, the thick rectangular sheet of metal crashing out into the lane, smothered immediately by the torrent.
They didn’t stop or delay, or spend any time on thanks and congratulation. That would come later. Instead, they continued on, forced right by a large blockage to the left caused by a crumbling building. Sprinting, they reached the end of the lane and moved out into the street. Remus came flitting through the rain-soaked sky, making his own way towards them after being so hastily abandoned. He buzzed an alarm into Chloe’s nanites, and she stopped and turned immediately right.
Down the street, Quinn’s team was coming again, blurs in the fog materialising into men.
“Cover!” shouted Chloe, dragging the others’ attention down the road.
They saw the enemy too, and quickly hurled themselves behind whatever cover they could see. Chloe flung herself behind a pile of rubble, dragging Ragan with her for company. Nadia, nearer the other side of the street, dropped behind the wall of a building, this one currently intact. Tanner, at the rear, slid right down into a gouge in the earth, a crater made by a grenade during previous fighting here.
The team were quick to lift their weapons again and begin to fire. Down the street, Quinn’s squad had done the same; seeking cover, firing back. Guns chattered and roared, joining the
growing rumbles of thunder hunting them down from the north. And in the same direction, the relentless, large-scale fighting at the heart of the city seemed to draw ever closer.
It became quickly clear that they couldn’t stay static for long. More grenades came flying from down the street, tossed high and spotted by Remus each time. Some were shot from the sky before they landed; others reached their marks, ripping at whatever cover the group were hiding behind. The rubble gave Chloe and Ragan good protection, and Nadia was well guarded by the wall. Tanner, however, wasn’t in such a good spot. As another grenade came near, threatening to bounce and bobble down into his crater, Chloe shouted down comms for him to move.
“Cliff! Get out!” she roared.
He saw it just in time, though too late to shoot at. With the group so intrinsically linked, they laid down a thick barrage of covering fire as Tanner jumped to his feet and darted further back, seeking better protection up the street. Chloe saw Ragan draw out a sensory grenade of his own.
“Eyes tight!” he called down comms. “Shield your eyes from the flash.”
He stood, hurling the little device down into the mist. A few moments later, the world lit up with a burst of pure light, and a deafening ringing spread through the air. It was nothing like before, when Mikel tricked them. They were further from it, shielded from its full force. The ringing was unpleasant, but would fade quickly. More importantly, their vision, this time, remained entirely unaffected.
They took their chance, not knowing how many - if any at all - of Quinn’s unit had been struck by the blinding light. Ragan grabbed Chloe and continued the retreat, forced to move further north. Nadia was already on the move, hurrying quickly towards Tanner.
Chloe’s ears rang, the residue of the piercing sound lingering. And through the light tone of ringing, she heard something else, muffled noises down comms.