Surrogacy

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Surrogacy Page 18

by Rob Horner


  My guess proved correct, but what I hadn’t expected was the soldier-Dra’Gal waiting for me on the other side of the door. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t a soldier walking in with a rifle sticking out in front of me. The soldier brought his arms across, which would have worked if there was something to hit. Instead all he caught was air, and all I had to do was reach out and tap him on the side of the face. Light flashed and he collapsed to the ground.

  A quick look inside the room, pushing open stall doors and sliding back shower curtains, revealed no other hidden enemies.

  Which left the second barracks room and two soldiers.

  In hindsight, I was damned lucky none of them had shot at me. The first room was empty, true, but what if it hadn’t been? What if there were three soldiers just standing by their beds, pistols or rifles aimed at the door and ready to plug the first person to come through? So far, very few Dra’Gal seemed to realize the value of firearms, preferring to rely on their superior strength and the legitimate lethality of their claws and fangs.

  This occurred to me as I approached the third door. Call it my Spidey-Sense, or just good old intuition that wasn’t working at full speed before but had now caught up with a vengeance. I set myself up against the wall near the doorframe and stretched out my arm with Fish’s card in my hand. When the door unlocked, I waited.

  Nothing happened. No bullets, no head poking out with a confused expression on it.

  Nothing.

  After about ten seconds, the click sounded again, the door relocking automatically.

  I waited another ten seconds, then reached out with the card a second time.

  This time when the lock clicked, I only waited to a count of five before ducking low, reaching for the knob and rushing into the room.

  Both men were up and ready and obviously expecting me, or at least prepared to face me. Word that The Banisher—cue impressive super-hero theme—was in the house must have reached them over the Dra’Gal-network. Both were dressed in full operational clothing, black on black, complete with gloves and ski masks, which reduced their exposed skin down to a smudge of peach around each eye. The Dra’Gal influence was apparent in their stance. Rather than clenched fists ready to fight, their hands were open, fingers splayed, ready to claw. Neither held a weapon.

  I pushed off with my back foot, lunging forward, snapping my leading foot out in a skipping roundhouse. No points for style, just looking to connect. My left foot impacted the right soldier on the right side of his chest. My power kicked in and white light filled the windowless room. The sound of ribs cracking was almost as loud as the crash of his body thrown sideways, impacting the wall and falling to the ground.

  The second soldier rushed in behind me, wrapping strong arms around my upper torso, gripping, squeezing and pulling me away before I could rush in and finish the first. He let go as we twisted, so we ended up facing each other across a span of about two feet. A heartbeat later, he reached out and wrapped strong hands around my neck.

  There was no thought, no time for thought. I laced my right arm over his left then under his right, with my hand tipped up, so the backside rested against his right elbow. My left hand came in to meet the right, a clap more than enough to break any choke hold, made even more powerful with the extra force generated by my ability.

  His right elbow exploded under the pressure, sounding more like the crunching of a car under a falling boulder than the genteel snap of a bone, as his upper body spun away. Before he could recover, I launched a quick left-footed roundhouse into his stomach, blasting him back to fall against the wall between two of the beds.

  “We’re going to need Ricardo up here,” I said, moving toward the two downed soldiers. The first one tried an ineffective swipe, easily batted away, as I grabbed his ski mask and purged him with a hand to the face. The second resisted even less, and I suffered a moment of doubt as his mask came off. There was a look of stark terror in the eyes, the humanity overriding the possession as his chest spasmed, muscles traumatized by the kick to the sternum and unable to expand. Then his whole body heaved, the muscles relaxing enough for him to draw in air in a loud whoop. That’s when I touched his face and rendered him unconscious.

  The rest of the cleansing went quickly. Fish handed me a small mouthpiece, kind of like a pencil with a rubber mouthguard in the middle, which would filter out excess nitrogen. The Quins only bunked two to a room and were unsuited in their natural atmospheric environment. It was a simple matter of rush in, touch two, and rush out. Less than five minutes later, it was done.

  Mandatum was cleansed.

  Now, how do I describe the Quins?

  I saw them in their rooms, walking in flowing robes like a woman’s nightgown, not so thin as to be provocative, but not winter-flannel-thick either. The colors of the robes seemed to follow the same gender-based preferences that ruled human men and women—softer colors for the females and darker solids for the males, but that could just be my imagination. The two in the first room both wore pastels, one pink and one yellow, while the two in the second room wore solids in blue and green. The third and fourth rooms were empty, their occupants lying unconscious on the lower level. The final two Quin were in the fifth room, and they wore pastel gowns of purple and green. There was no real difference in face and form to differentiate otherwise, though I’m sure the Quins could tell.

  Now the faces… First, they were hairless—I mean, no stubble or anything--and colored like their hands, a pasty-pale yellow that might have different shades depending upon the lighting. Their foreheads were high, sloping back to a tapered point at the tops of their heads, similar to how their fingers rounded off. Their eyes were large, liquid, and luminous, but still with a white sclera and round, colored iris in the center. They were shaped like the eyes of the aliens in science fiction dramas, which themselves recreated the stylized drawings from conspiracy theories about what was trapped in Area 51. Except these looked more human than not in color and design. There was a protrusion in the center of the face that might be a nose, but it was more a gentle swelling than something growing outward. At the base of it were two slits for nostrils. Their mouths were fanged but looked more like a small-toothed vampire than anything else, as only the incisors were affected. All their mouths were the same, no pig snouts or canine muzzles.

  The rest of their bodies were humanoid. The only extra joints were on their fingers. A part of me marveled at seeing an alien race, at being able to experience this wonder, while another part cataloged and compared, seeking similarities between the Quin and Dra’Gal, certain there should be some and surprised there weren’t more. It was strange, because I hadn’t yet spent any time talking to Bradley, but that image of a world divided between two colors had set a deep suspicion within me. Discovering our atmosphere wasn’t immediately dangerous to the Quins only heightened my suspicion. Maybe this technologically advanced race wasn’t here for purely altruistic reasons.

  None of that could explain why they’d present themselves as helping us.

  If they were only interested in sharing the planet with the Dra’Gal, why go to such lengths? Why not just team up?

  Many of the questions that plagued me during the first days of the invasion had been answered, some of them during the van ride from the carnival to Mandatum. Knowing there were others out there, banding together with a plan and the will to fight, might have made us a little less reckless in the beginning. Maybe Tanya would be here with me now, fighting by my side, as we worked to defeat the Dra’Gal, instead of a prisoner in her own body.

  Having so many doubts removed made it easier to fight. Especially now that I understood the stakes and had a goal to work toward. I could stop second guessing and devote myself fully to the cause.

  The only thing missing was a plan to get back to the carnival, to get a chance to rescue Tanya.

  And Crystal. Of course, her too.

  Iz said the resonator with the carnival was a top priority, so even though my heart ached for every moment Ta
nya spent as a puppet, we weren’t going to abandon her.

  Voices chattering in the Port-Comm drew me out of my thoughts.

  The police had found our friends in the vans and were in pursuit.

  And they had a helicopter.

  Chapter 17

  Good thing it wasn’t Airwolf

  We appeared along the outer wall of the Sears store, a field of parking spaces between us and Independence Boulevard. I growled through the nausea, willing my stomach to settle and my eyes to focus, staggering forward to get clear of Jeff’s landing area.

  “God, I hate that,” Jack said beside me. Then, “Where are you guys?”

  From the Port-Comm came a storm of voices, everyone trying to talk at once.

  Jeff reappeared behind us, the displacement of air enough to make both of us take another involuntary step forward.

  “I’m going to the roof so I can see,” Jeff said, and disappeared again.

  “Just the co-pilots,” Fish said. “Everyone else silence on the line.”

  It took a second for me to realize that his voice came from behind me as well as in my ear. Jack was just as surprised, turning to look at the helmeted Quin. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  “It was my people that started this,” he said soberly. “It doesn’t matter if it was because they were…possessed or not. I need to be here.”

  “Don’t you want to be there when your friends—” Jack began.

  “If you humans are any indication, they’ll be out for hours,” Fish replied. “I’m better off here, doing something.”

  I nodded, turning to scan the skies. The sound of traffic was everywhere, muted only by the distance between us and the major roads. Bass boomed out of a red hatchback stopped at the traffic light on Virginia Beach Boulevard. I strained for the whup-whup of a helicopter but couldn’t hear one.

  “Fish, you reading me?”

  It was Iz’s voice.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Bart’s got us running a huge circle down toward Trashmore. He plans to come back up Constitution—”

  “Just come on up,” a strange voice said. “I’ll be ready.”

  “Bradley?” Iz asked. “How did you—”

  “Jason and I got tired of waiting. You know Speedy Gonzales can’t stand sitting still too long. Speaking of which, where are you guys, Fish?”

  “Over by the Sears…oh, Jason’s here now.”

  The tall Asian man appeared as if by magic, a blur of motion not even recognized until it stopped moving in front of us.

  “Hey, it’s the new dude,” Jason said to me. “Brad’s over on the other side. Man, he’s achin’ to lay some hurt on that ‘copter.”

  “I’m not sure what that means,” Iz said, “but I’ll take it.”

  “Who’s got the other van?” Fish asked.

  “This is Brian. Ray’s driving and I’m riding shotgun. We had Bradley and Jason in the back, but apparently they took off—”

  “Like a rocket, you know?” Jason put in.

  “I get it,” Brian said wryly. “We got Michael, Chris, Danny—he’s loaded up like Jack with all kinds of ordinance—and Josh.”

  “Okay,” Iz said. “We’ve got me and Bart up front, with Gina, James, Scott and Angie in the back. Oh, and Austin.”

  “Austin’s one of my guys,” Jack said softly, “like Danny and Josh.”

  “What’s your twenty, Brian?” Fish asked.

  “Running like hell through some suburbs north of the mall,” came the reply. “But we’ve got a tail of our own. Three, no…four units trying to hem us in.” His voice got quieter. “They’re from my precinct.”

  “Can you get around them? Lead them back to the mall?” Iz asked.

  “Ray’s trying, but there’s one pacing us on the parallel to each side, and two behind. I think the only reason we’re still rolling is that they couldn’t get one ahead of us. Doesn’t mean they won’t try to pit us sometime.”

  “Anything you can do from the back, Danny?” Iz asked.

  It was weird, playing spectator without being able to see anything. All I could do was listen to the play by play as Iz quarterbacked his team from a different vehicle several miles away.

  “I dunno, Iz,” came the reply in a high-pitched, quavery voice. “Lemme get a visual.”

  Road noises became apparent. Maybe the Port-Comms normally filtered them out, but this sounded like someone threw one of the devices into a wind tunnel. Immediately after the surge of wind came several loud pops about as scary as a cap gun. Danny’s reaction made them sound worse.

  “Christ! They opened fire as soon as I got one of the doors cracked. What kind of cops shoot at a moving car?”

  “Don’t worry, bro. I got this!” Chris said.

  There were more noises, much louder sounds immediately recognizable as gunshots.

  “What’s happening?” Iz asked.

  “It’s Josh, sir. Chris is doing his Superman thing, shielding Danny. And he’s firing back at the cop cars.”

  “Christ, what a clusterf—" Iz swore.

  “We’re coming up on the mall,” Bart said, cutting into the end of Iz’s comment.

  “I see you, and the bird on your tail,” Bradley said.

  We could see it too, a dark shape moving slowly through the sky about two blocks to our east, on the other side of the mall. The trees, traffic, and buildings prevented us from seeing the black van.

  “One down!” Danny cried.

  “Aw yeah! White boy can shoot, so long as Krypton’s dark meat is standing guard.”

  More gunshots sounded, louder than any voices trying to come through the Comms.

  The police came first, then the mall. Then the ambush, but from the police. So, if this encounter with a police helicopter and police vehicles was what set the ambush in motion, perhaps there was a way to counter it before it happened.

  What if we—

  Streaks of light, so small they might have been my imagination except that others saw them too, like bright photon blasts out of a futuristic laser gun, shot from the ground near the mall and up toward the helicopter. There were too many to count, flying faster than the eye could track.

  “Crap! Floor it, Bart!” Iz growled and though we still couldn’t get a clear line of sight on the van, it was obvious something was going wrong with the helicopter. Not wrong as in flames coming out of the engine, or the rotor suddenly not working. This looked more like the pilot lost control or…

  “What’s Bradley’s power?” I asked, my eyes glued to the spectacle of the police chopper tilting nose down, then suddenly lurching up, already banking, like someone sitting beside or behind the pilot was trying to control the stick and not having much success.

  “I can throw daggers,” he said into my ear. “Daggers made of light. They won’t hurt a normal person and go right through walls like nothing happened. But if they strike a Dra’Gal, they cut.” His voice jigged when he talked, like he was jogging.

  The helicopter banked far enough away that it was lost to sight, losing altitude in the general direction of Princess Anne High School. Though we waited, muscles clenched in expectation of an explosion, none came. Maybe they were able to bring it in safely.

  “Okay, we got both of them cop cars with busted up tires,” Chris said. “Now what?”

  “Now you cruise past the next intersection,” Iz said. “Make it look like you’re just powering on through, trying to outrun your flankers. Once you clear it, stop and back up, find a way back to us.”

  “Will do,” Brian said. Then, “Give it some gas, Ray.”

  The dreams.

  In the dream I was in the Distilling Room, and Angie and I talked about what we’d done to the police, then in the mall. It was no wonder they wanted to come after us. And of course, they knew where we were. If Josh didn’t tell them, the converted Quins upstairs would have.

  The second clip had me in the Assembly Room, but an assault had come from an unexpected direction. So, if I skipped go
ing down to the Distiller, the assault would still happen. They could come from another direction because the Quins upstairs let them. The fourth clip showed the same thing. In addressing that problem first, we should have negated the Dra’Gal’s ability to come at us from more than one direction.

  So, what about the third, with me in the parking lot, and Iz talking about rendezvousing somewhere else? Was that showing me a scene after the assault, and if so, which one? And did it matter?

  The one common denominator in all four scenes was the identity of the attackers. They were Virginia Beach police. Not federal agents. Not police from a different city. What if we did something else to preempt their ability to mount an assault?

  What if we did what Brian asked us to do?

  The revving of an engine heralded the arrival of one of the black vans. It approached from the backside of the mall and pulled to a stop next to us. At the same time, Bradley with his lean face and sharp features came into view, jogging past the main entrance, heading toward us along the sidewalk.

  Iz remained in the passenger’s seat, one finger on his earpiece and eyes closed, as if he was visualizing Brian and Raymond’s position to better guide them away from pursuit.

  “Okay, we did what you said,” Brian was saying, “and it looks like it worked. Heading back to your position now.”

  “Which was what?” Ray asked. “I was kind of busy when you were setting up the date.”

  “Outside of Sears,” Iz answered.

  The doors at the back of the van opened, revealing Gina, James, Scott, Angie, and a nondescript young man with tousled brown hair over a medium build. Austin, I presumed. James jogged out to meet Bradley, giving him a high-five. “That was righteous, man! Took down a chopper!”

  If Bradley made a reply, it wasn’t audible over the Port-Comms. Maybe there was a way to not broadcast everything you said.

  Shaking my head, trying to drive away the distracting thoughts, I fought to keep my attention on where it needed to be.

  The police were the answer. They were obviously compromised, even without the questionable reliability of my dreams, which wouldn’t stand up in any court of law. I’m sorry, yah Honah, but we had to take out them coppers, see? They wuz demons, and if we didn’t do them, they wuz gonna do us, see?

 

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