by Vikki Romano
Clenching his fists against the shock of the sharp pain, he turned his eyes back to Sierra to find her glaring at him, her body now bulky like his, her eyes alive with a sort of rage that he had never seen in her before.
And then the fight began in earnest.
He met her blow for blow, though he could not find it in himself to hit her full on, no matter how hard she hit him. In fact, he found himself not defending himself, allowing her to get the upper hand for much of the fight until she had him flat on the floor.
She beat his face until he could no longer feel the impact.
“I’m not going to fight you,” he said through bloodied teeth. “This is what they want. Don’t you get it?”
Her eyes remained dark. Nothing would get through to her no matter what he said. And as the pain of her emotionless attack hit him, something began to shift and spark.
His mind, now lucid and flooded with adrenaline, rolled open, and as the room slowly darkened, he could see the orange of the power lines, the yellow of the magnetics, and something more…
He opened his eyes to her, opened his mind to her; she pulsed with a brilliant purple glow that licked and spiraled around her like a wall of flame. The room filled with her energy, the heat of it bringing trickles of sweat to his brow.
Grasping her, he stared into her eyes and leaped in, his mind swimming through the clouded swirl of information that crowded her augment until he found the center, a mass of white light balled so tight with code it felt ready to detonate.
The nebulous movement of his mind crawled in like so many fingers, searching the code, sifting through it like sand.
When he felt her react, it was not unlike when he’d first connected to his rig, as if he had become it, the feel of the steel in his skin and the engine in his chest. With her, though, it was a different experience altogether, and one that caught him so off guard that it stopped his breath for a moment.
Being in her mind was intimate, something purely spiritual. For a man like Calder who didn’t have an ounce of spirituality in his body, it was mind-altering.
The feel of her running through him, her energy coursing through his veins, made him groan deep in his throat. It was a deep burn that boiled at his feet, traveled up his legs, and sat like red-hot coals in his chest.
And though he didn’t feel as though he were in her body, he could sense her confusion, her curiosity, and her consternation at what he was doing in her mind. There was pressure, as if she was trying to squeeze him out. Then he felt the buzz, but this time it was running through her core and into his mind. Sharp and bitter, it jabbed every nerve, made his muscles itch, and beneath the aggravating grind of the signal, Calder could see the code that drove it. It buzzed around him like a swarm of bees. It was stronger now, more painful in the back of his skull. He had to shut it off.
Turning his attention to its origin, tracing it back through its lines, he realized that it wasn’t coming from her at all.
He pulled back from her, feeling that uncomfortable snap in his mind as he stepped away.
Sierra faltered at his disconnection as well, and caught herself on the wall, dropping to a knee.
He could see her struggling with her augment, grasping at her head, and he knew the pain she was experiencing. He didn’t want her to have to go through what he did, not if he could help it.
Turning with rage toward the glass, he stood his full height, cracked his neck, and clenched his hands at his sides. He could hear the men talking, pushing buttons, trying to get Sierra to attack him again, and she was fighting their command. He could see her clenching her teeth, turning pained, confused eyes to him as she came to her feet and stalked toward him.
“No,” he said. “No more.”
He went to his gear piled near the door and pulled the AD452 into his hands, rolled his thumb over the mechanism on the stock, and cranked it up. Then he hoisted it up to his shoulder, aimed it at the glass, and pulled the trigger.
The sonic pulse shattered it in an arcing explosion, and it rained down around him as he walked toward the booth where the three men were now scrambling. Gripping the edge of the window, he threw his hip over the frame and slid down the side of the control panel, landing hard on his feet.
One of the men tried to hit him with a chair, and he turned and let off another burst, sending him and the others behind him flying into the far wall. The concussion of the blast had left them bloodied and unconscious.
Turning toward the control panel, Calder could see code filling the panel in front of him, text scrolling fast, and he saw her name there at the top.
Sierra Mason--Subject 11295
Looking up, he saw her standing there, her eyes marking her burgeoning frenzy as the code continued to upload into her augment.
“No more…” he said, pointed his rifle at the monitor, and let off a pulse that shattered the screen and had the rest of the control panel sparking and bursting into flame.
It wasn’t enough. He thumbed the stock once more and turned to unload round after round into the board, sending pieces of the equipment flying in chunks around him.
Sierra screamed then, and fell limp to the floor.
“Sierra!” He leaped over the control board and back into the room, where he found her collapsed in a heap, her body convulsing as she mumbled incoherently.
“Ghostwolf, this is Condor One, come in.” The message crackled in his comm.
Calder growled with relief and tapped his ear.
“It’s about time, Condor One. What’s your twenty?”
“Team is in the lobby--your twenty?”
“Third floor, end of the hall. I need to get Mason out of here.”
“I’ll be up in a second,” Gage said.
“I’m on my way down.”
Calder quickly put on his jacket, slung the AD452 over his shoulder, then stooped to lift Sierra into his arms.
She struggled against him.
“Pain,” she said, clutching her head with her hands.
“I know. Shhh,” he said, and hugged her to his chest. He’d experienced what she was feeling and hated that she had to go through it. “Jordan will fix you up as soon as we get you out of here, I promise.”
He rushed down the hallway and made it to the first landing before running into Gage, who was racing up the stairs toward him with two other men.
“Take her out, get her back to the safe house as soon as you can, have Jordan look at her, and have him get back to me,” Calder said as he passed her to one of the men, who took her and raced back down the stairs. He hated that he couldn’t be with her to help her through the pain, but he still had to do what he came to do.
He had to finish this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After briefing Gage on the intel he had collected to that point, they made their way down to the sub-level to finish what he’d started. The door into the area was bolted and locked tight.
“Sealed like a bank vault. We won’t get through that without some charges,” Gage said, examining the door, running his fingers along its seams.
Calder moved him aside and laid his hands flat on its surface. Closing his eyes, he let his mind flow and unfold.
“It’s got an electronic catch and a thermal relocker,” he said, turning his head to the side to get a better feel for it. “I could try to fry the board, but the relocker will snap the bolts in place.”
He stepped back and looked at the wall, followed the orange lines, and traced them around the room to a cluster near the door.
“What’s going on?” Gage asked.
“I have thermal vision, can see where the lines go. There’s a cluster here.” Calder punched into the wall effortlessly and opened a hole wide enough to see the small bunch of wires.
“If you disrupt the power, won’t that trigger the backup locks?” Gage asked, looking over Calder’s shoulder.
“I’m not going to disrupt the power,” he said as he pul
led a blue wire from the cluster. “This is the feed going into the box in there.” He pointed to the lock, then clenched the wire in his hand and closed his eyes.
The immediate surge from the line made him jerk, and he could feel Gage’s hand on his shoulder steadying him.
GenMed had certainly pumped up the encryption and security, all the way down to their smallest nodes.
He felt his way up the line to the lock where he was met with another encrypted shield. Absorbing the energy from the line, he pressed in, feeling the code resist, struggle against him and then give a fraction, just enough for him to get inside and disable it.
Once he was through, he concentrated on the lock itself, the code stacked before him like a brick wall. His mind moved forward in a slow, seeping mass, melding with the code. It became a hard, solid block to him, like ice. With one last push, it shattered and fell into a pile of shattered code around him.
“We’re in,” he said, opening his eyes, and took the handle. The huge door opened with effort and Calder held up his hand to stop Gage from going in. “Wait, there’s more security. Electronic… some thermal…” He twisted his head. “And something else.”
The room still came off blue to him, even brighter now that he was closer to it. He could see the faint lines of the laser system, and the glowing orange of several electronic security triggers throughout the room, but the floor was blue, and that threw him.
Gage questioned his look.
“I think the fucking floor is pressure sensitive. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Calder said, and he poked his head inside to have a look for himself.
The floor was glossy, like glass, and each tile had a faint blue-glowing border.
“Fuck!”
“Can you disarm it?” Gage asked, poking his head in to look as well.
Calder stood stunned for a moment, blank.
“I don’t even know where I’d start. Each tile has its own code and there must be thousands in there. I’m assuming there’s a pattern, a sort of hopscotch someone has to deal with to get to the central room.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Seriously fucked up.”
“So what should we do?”
Calder shook his head and went back out into the hallway, where he clasped his forehead in his fingers to think.
He was no programmer, no hacker. His ability to break into simplistic two-way systems was easy enough, but this was beyond his scope. He dropped his hand and leaned his head back, closing his eyes.
Allowing his mind to roam into the secure room behind him, he was met with a cacophony of sound and code. There was so much going on in the room that he wasn’t able to decipher one signal from the next.
He was not trained for this kind of recon, and the limited usage of his augment based on his untrained knowledge only pissed him off more.
He was so close. There was no way he was going to end it here.
He tapped his comm.
“Ghostwolf to base,” he said, then looked over to Gage, who watched him curiously.
“Base, go ahead.”
“I need Steven on the line,” he said, and waited for a moment.
Steven’s voice came on, the giddiness apparent.
“This is Steven, ten-four!”
Calder smirked and shook his head.
“Jay, is there a way you could link to me to be able to see code that I’m seeing?”
“Um… what? See code you’re seeing? Like remote view?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, never thought of that. Pretty genius. Sure. You have to give me a few so I can route to your signal, but sure, I can.”
“Good. Do what you need to do and get back to me when you’re ready to link.”
“Ten-four, Ghostwolf. Over and out.”
“Out.” Calder chuckled and tapped his ear.
“Remote link… to your brain?” Gage asked, crossing his arms as he looked at Calder’s head diffidently.
“Yup, that’s what I told him.”
“You can do that?”
“Apparently,” Calder said, then patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t look so freaked out. If you were aware of half the shit I can do, you probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room with me.”
Gage glared at his hand on his shoulder, then shook his head and sighed.
“I just can’t get used to it, knowing you have that thing in your head.”
“And now Mason does too, damn it,” Calder growled, and punched the wall, leaving a nice dent.
“Will Jordan be able to help her?”
“I don’t know. My augment is nothing like hers. Or, actually, hers is nothing like mine. I’ll have to explain it some other time. Too much information right now.”
“Yeah, I really don’t need to know. As long as you can’t fry my brain with yours, we’re good.”
“Never thought to try, actually.”
“Well, good. Don’t.”
Calder’s comm beeped then.
“Base to Ghostwolf,” Steven’s voice echoed in his ear.
“Ghostwolf here, are you ready?”
“Yeah, I triangulated your frequency and I’m ready when you are.”
“Will I feel anything?”
“Um, I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. If it’s painful, just let me know and I’ll kill the connection.”
“Got it. OK, I’m ready,” Calder said, blowing out a breath.
He heard a low whine, like a hum that he felt in his teeth for a moment, and slight vertigo, but no pain.
“I’m in. Any pain?”
“No, I’m good,” he said. “All right, now the reason I did this… we’re at their control room and the security is hellish. Laser, electro triggers, and some strange, sensitive flooring. I’m going to feed you the floor code, since that is our biggest obstacle.”
“OK, I’ll take a look. Go ahead,” Steven said.
Calder turned and nodded to Gage, whose skeptical look wasn’t helping his nerves at all. He cracked open the huge vault door and, leaning his forehead against the doorjamb, opened his mind and went inside.
There was a moment of pain, like a sharp jab that gave a bitter taste at the back of his tongue, but then, just as quickly, he could feel the information flowing through him and then out. Like a conduit, which was technically all he was at this point.
“I’m getting the feed now. I’m… Holy shit,” Steven mumbled.
“What’s wrong?” Calder asked, opening his eyes momentarily.
“The code is massive,” Steven said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Layers, lots of layers, and the crypto is unusual. This isn’t something I’m going to be able to hack in, like, minutes.”
“Damn it,” Calder said. “How long?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“Shit,” Calder spat, and laced his fingers behind his head.
Gage looked to him. “What if we just try to figure out the sequence?” he asked, pointing to the floor.
“The sequence?” Calder asked, quirking a brow.
“Yeah, the hopscotch thing.”
“Yes, good call! Jay, it looks like there’s some walking pattern needed to cross the floor, since there are sensors. Any way you could maybe figure that out instead?”
“Oh, yeah, that would be easier to figure out. Give me a few minutes. I’ll get back to you.”
“Right,” Calder said, nodding to Gage and giving him a thumbs-up.
He pressed his lips together and stood in the doorway looking into the room. He watched as the tiles began flashing a sort of shuffling rhythm.
“Is that you doing that?” Gage asked.
Calder shook his head.
“No, it must be Steven. I can feel them shifting. It’s really strange.” He stooped down and held a hand out over the tiles closest to the door. He didn’t touch them, but he didn’t need to. He could feel their energy
, like setting his hand in warm water. It traveled up his arm and, closing his eyes, he could see the floor start to dance. He sensed Steven’s connection as a faint tingle in his neck, like someone hovering behind him, and he watched as the floor cascaded with shimmers. It was the coolest light show he’d ever seen. It was a shame he couldn’t share the experience.
He sat back on his haunches then, pulling his hands into his lap.
He did have someone to share it with, someone who, with time, could possibly see the things he did. As much as that thrilled him knowing he would no longer be alone in this, it also angered and sickened him.
He didn’t want this for her.
Christ, he didn’t want it for himself.
In all probability, she could get hers removed. He was hoping she could. Would.
He didn’t have that option, not anymore. Not ever, if he really thought about it. When he was faced with getting it initially, he saw it as an obvious decision. He was a special ops soldier, one of the best, and he needed it to perform his duties. Or so he thought. So he was told.
Knowing what he did now didn’t change anything. It was too late for him to take it out, and from the look of the most recent scans Steven had done, it hadn’t been an option for several years.
This was who he was now.
Granted, with the calibration and adjustments to how he used it, it was becoming a benefit to his job. He could see and find things that others couldn’t. Since he wasn’t able to remove it, he damn well would make sure he could use it to his advantage, and right now, that advantage was niggling the back of his brain.
“Jay, anything yet?” he asked, tapping his ear.
“Negative, Ghostwolf, but I found a problem.”
“Fuck me, what now?” Calder groaned.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Steven said with a groan of his own.
Calder growled. “What, Jay?”
“The code you uploaded that started this whole crazy ride? Yeah, it’s plugged into their mainframe.”
“What?” Calder shouted, spinning on his heel to see Gage give a wide-eyed gape at him.
“Yeah…” Steven’s voice trailed off. “I’m so sorry. Jordan should pay for...”
“Stop,” Calder barked, shaking his head at Gage as he glared at him for information. “I don’t have time for that shit right now. What does this mean for us?”