“No, sir. But you’re welcome to call them and check,” Evyan says.
She sounds supremely confident, but it’s a dangerous bluff. What if he does check?
“I think they’re mighty keen for us to get there quick as we can, officer,” Quinn says. “Seems there’s sewage spread from one end of their ladies’ room to the other.”
“It’s going to be a crappy job,” the officer quips, and Quinn and Evyan laugh sycophantically. “Tell you what — I’ll escort you there. That way you can help those folks with their emergency even quicker.”
And he’ll get to check out the cover story by seeing whether we’re admitted to the ASTA grounds.
“Thank you, officer, that’s much appreciated,” Quinn says. Evyan doesn’t reply. She’s probably using all her energy to prevent herself from cursing or rolling her eyes. “May we be on our way then?” Quinn asks.
“Sure,” says the cop. I sigh, but my relief is short-lived, because the cop continues, “In just a minute. First I need to check the back of the truck.”
“Of course, sir.” Quinn must be feeling as panicky as I am, but there’s no trace of it in his voice. “Let me help you lift those panels.”
I kill my flashlight, take a deep breath, and pull my knees up as high as I can in the cramped space, cursing silently when my movement bumps the ladder, sending the plunger toppling over. It makes only a small noise, but it rolls out of arm’s reach, and now my white face is clearly framed by the rim of the toilet seat. Any second now, the cop will see me.
One of the panels lifts up, allowing the yellow glow from a nearby streetlight into half of the interior. Rain blows in. I cover my face with my hands — but they’re white, too.
“The other side, sir.”
Frantically, I tug the sleeves of my hoodie down over my hands and clutch the inside of the cuffs, covering my face with the dark-gray fabric just as the other panel creaks open.
“As you can see, officer, we’re fully equipped for any plumbing emergency,” I hear Quinn say.
I stay frozen in place, breathing as slowly and shallowly as I can, but my heart thuds so loudly in my chest, I’m sure it must reach the cop’s ears. I can feel sweat prickling under my arms, and my rifle presses painfully into my back. What’s taking so long? Is the cop planning to climb inside and check the contents? I nearly squeak in fright when the panels bang shut again.
I stay where I am, even when the engine starts up and we begin moving again, the siren sound of our unwelcome escort coming from up ahead. After about fifteen minutes, we slow to a stop, and I hear the exchange between Quinn and a guard. We’ve arrived at PlayState. Sofia must have come through for us, because we’re immediately allowed in.
When the plumber’s truck comes to a halt, I ease myself out from behind the ladder but wait until Quinn gives me the all-clear before I climb out. We’re in the parking lot in front of the PlayState headquarters, and the only vehicle there is one of the reinforced people carriers that organizations use to transport essential staff to and from work under armed guard. From the back of the truck I grab a coil of wire and a heavy wrench — I figure they may come in useful — and offer them to the other two. If there’s going to be any shooting, I’ll need my hands free. Quinn takes the coil of wire, and Evyan eagerly grabs the wrench.
“You okay?” Quinn asks.
“Yeah.”
I’m relieved that the rain has eased up — I’m already uncomfortably damp and have no desire to drip my way into PlayState.
I’ve been here once before, when I won The Game and was invited to play a simulated sniper session inside the massive gaming arena around the back. I’ve never been inside the headquarters itself.
Fitting the suppressor attachment onto the end of my rifle, I look over at the building. It’s four stories high, with sealed windows and a multi-person decon unit set into the glass-fronted bottom level. The fish-eye camera mounted above the entry doesn’t have the usual red power light glowing. Thank you, Sofia.
We climb the stairs up to the entrance and peer through the glass front but don’t see anyone inside the brightly lit interior. I point to the lock on our side of the decon unit.
“Can you pick that?” I ask Evyan.
“Sure. This type of low-grade lock will be easy.” She snags a small kit out of an inner pocket, removes a couple of metal picks. “Done,” she announces a minute later.
The first time I met Sarge, our cadet sniper unit’s tough-as-nails commander, was during that “real-life” simulation in the arena. He told us that there’s a weak spot on every target — the sniper just needs to find it and hit it. It looks to me like PlayState’s weak spot is that they rely too heavily on their tight perimeter security and are laxer about defenses inside the grounds.
Trusting that the building’s alarm won’t be armed while people are still inside, I push the door of the decon unit.
Chapter 6
Outside the door
The door of the decon unit swings open under my hand. I pause, holding my breath, but there’s no beeping or screeching of an alarm.
We all go into the unit at the same time — it’s roomy, big enough to take ten people at once — and cover our eyes with our hands to protect them from the ultraviolet light bath and disinfectant mist. When the decon unit beeps to signal completion and the inner door pops open, I step out, scanning the lobby of the building for potential dangers.
A surveillance camera is mounted on the wall near the elevators. It, too, looks dead. The metal detector directly in our path is switched on, but I’m able to ease out sideways and avoid passing through it. I step forward, cradling my rifle in my arms.
The only living things in the lobby are the small trees in massive planters lining the walls, and the long vines of ivy trailing down from above. Looking up, I see that above us is a triple volume of open space crisscrossed by suspended walkways. I tilt my head and listen intently, but hear only the faint hum of the air-conditioning.
When I signal, Evyan enters, then Quinn, who closes the door softly behind us. Unsure where to go, I study the information board on the wall behind the reception desk. The first two floors seem reserved for offices, while the third houses the Operations Room, and the fourth the Data Center (Networking Room and Server Floor) and the office of Roberta Roth (CEO). This is proof, if I needed it, that PlayState and ASTA are one and the same, because Roth is also CEO of ASTA.
“Sofia said Robin’s being questioned in the programming division,” Quinn whispers.
I point to the board that lists the Programming Suites on the second floor. Evyan walks over to the bank of elevators, and I only just reach her in time to bat her hand away from pressing the button. Placing my finger on my lips in a shushing gesture, I lift my eyes to the lights above the elevator door. She pulls a face but follows me over to the emergency stairwell. I pull open the door and hesitate, wondering if they’re expecting me to take the lead. I’m beginning to understand why the military is organized in ranks, with clear leaders for every mission. I gesture to Quinn to go first, but he shakes his head and mouths, “No, you.”
I’m only marginally less clueless than they are, but I go first, moving as quietly as possible up the stairs, hugging the outside wall so as to be less visible to anyone above who might look down. The stairwell smells of smoke — I hope no one comes to have a cigarette in the next few minutes.
The stairs end on the second landing. I open the door a crack and peep out. All clear. It occurs to me that I ought to set up some signals with the others so we can communicate silently.
“This means stop,” I whisper, holding up a hand. “This means follow me, wait, crouch down. And this means on the count of three, one, two, three.” I unfold my fingers in time to the counts.
“Who died and made you queen?” Evyan hisses.
I’d like to give her a different kind of hand signal, but I step aside and murmur, “You want to take the lead on this, be my guest.”
“I want Quinn to le
ad.”
Quinn shakes his head. “I know my limits.”
“So with your permission, Evyan, may I go now?”
I ease through the opening of the door and, once I’m sure it’s clear, signal the other two to follow me into the big open-plan area filled with desks and chairs. Framed posters of stills from The Game decorate the walls — repbots and Alien Axis Army soldiers and their leader Jahkil — and the usual If you see something, say something notice is stuck above the coffee machine in the corner. The main lights are off, but several of the desktop computer monitors glow faintly in the dark.
At the far end of the office space is the suspended walkway that leads over and above the lobby, to the other half of this floor. The bridge has a Plexiglas dome, giving the effect of a glass tunnel. If Robin is here, he must be on that opposite side, because I can tell at a glance that this half of the floor is empty.
No sooner have I thought this than a sudden noise makes us jump. I give the signal to duck down, and we each crouch behind a desk.
“It’s the printer,” Quinn whispers, pointing to a huge machine now spewing papers into its print tray.
Wait, I signal. What if someone comes to collect the print job they sent?
After a few minutes, I figure no one’s coming. Signaling to the other two to stay put, I creep over the carpeted floor to the walkway, crouch behind one of the giant plant pots trailing ivy vines below, and lift my rifle to peer through the scope to the other side. It, too, is dimly lit. From what I can see through the enclosing tunnel, it consists of several smaller offices, some with their doors open and others closed.
My eyes are drawn immediately to a strip of light shining out from beneath a shut door. I move my scope across and see a pair of shined black boots, then move my gaze up the legs.
My heart gives such a kick of shock that the scope dips, and I have to take a deep breath before I can steady it again.
It’s Sarge. He’s standing outside the door, smoking a cigarette. And he’s armed.
I slink back to Quinn and Evyan. First, I tell them the good news. “I think I’ve found the office where Robin must be — it’s on the other side.”
“How do you know which one it is? Can you see him?” asks Evyan.
“It’s the only one with a light on, and it’s guarded.” I look at Quinn when I give them the bad news. “Sarge is standing outside, and he’s carrying a submachine gun.” I gesture with hands about fifteen inches apart, so they have some idea of the sort of tactical-style weapon I’m talking about.
Quinn purses his lips in a silent whistle, while Evyan asks, “Who’s Sarge?”
“He’s the worst possible person who could be standing outside that door right now. I have no idea how we’ll get past him.”
“You could shoot him,” Evyan suggests at once.
“No I couldn’t,” I whisper back furiously.
I may have shot infected animals and terminally ill plague victims, but I’ve never shot a healthy person.
“And anyway, they’ll hear the sound of the shot,” I point out.
“But your gun’s got a silencer on,” Evyan protests.
“It’s called a suppressor — because it only suppresses the sound. It doesn’t eliminate it completely.”
“Well, that’s a fat lot of good. Can you sneak up and hit him on the head with this?” Evyan holds up the heavy wrench.
I shake my head. “There’s no way to sneak up on Sarge.” Besides, a blow to the brain from that heavy chunk of steel would surely kill him.
“What would happen if you just walked up and appealed to his better nature?” Quinn asks.
I love Quinn a lot, so I don’t tell him not to be stupid. But I do cock my head and shoot him a disbelieving glance when I reply, “If I walked up holding a weapon, he’d shoot first and ask questions later.” Scratch that — if Sarge shot me, there would be no later. “And if I went unarmed, he’d take me hostage, and then he’d have the Robin and Jinx twin-set.”
“Maybe we could distract him somehow?” Quinn says.
I can see he’s desperate for things not to get violent. He’s probably fighting off flashbacks of the time he shot a guard.
“In the movies, they always distract the guard by throwing a stone. I’ll give it a shot,” says Evyan.
“And then what?” I ask.
“We’ll wing it,” she says with a shrug. “We can rush him and pin him down when his back is turned.”
I don’t think it’ll work, but what do I know? I don’t stop her.
Evyan moves in a low crouch over to the walkway and positions herself behind an enormous planter. She sets the wrench down and picks up something — a pebble or a piece of bark — from the base of the plant, takes aim and flings it through the walkway tube, aiming it as far away from Sarge as she can get it.
From where we’re hunkered down, I can’t hear the sound it makes. But Sarge obviously can. His head snaps up to check the direction where the sound came from, but he doesn’t do anything as stupid as going over to investigate. Instead, he pinches out the glowing tip of his cigarette and tosses it aside, lifts his weapon and scans the entire office.
We’ve only succeeded in making him more alert.
I signal to Evyan to retreat. She steals back along the wall and hides behind a desk.
Having apparently assured himself that nothing is amiss on his half of the floor, Sarge takes a few steps toward the walkway. The red light of his weapon’s electronic sight moves from side to side as he checks the area.
Quinn curses. I move around to the side of the desk closest to Evyan, where the shadow is deepest.
“Shoot him!” Evyan says urgently.
Without my consciously willing them to do so, my arms lift the rifle, nestle the butt against my shoulder.
Sarge reaches the walkway. He’s going to come across. He’s going to find us.
I rest the stock against my cheek, align my eye with the scope.
“Shoot him! Before he shoots us!” Evyan hisses.
My sniper’s gut instinct is to shoot him in the chest. A kill shot would be easy at this distance, in this still air, and it would instantly incapacitate him — preventing any possibility of his raising an alarm.
I’m immediately shocked and ashamed by the impulse. This is Sarge. He’s a real person to me, not just some nameless “tango”. He’s somebody’s son — he may even be someone’s husband. He might have kids. I know firsthand what it does to a family to lose a husband and father, and I won’t put anyone else through that pain and grief.
But there’s a dark, angry part of me that wants to take him down.
This is the man who christened me Blue, who plucked me out of the stifling boredom of home and pushed me to the limits of my endurance, who helped me find a depth of inner strength that I’d never suspected I had. This is the man I grew to respect and trust. This is the man who drank coffee while in a nearby room, I was tortured. This is the man who didn’t tell me that I was actually killing, not tranquilizing, my targets.
He’s halfway across the walkway now, and my finger curls around the cool trigger of my weapon.
“You could just wound him,” Quinn says quickly.
The sniper inside me that Sarge selected and trained, the girl he called his ice-maiden angel of death, shakes her head at Quinn’s suggestion. She reminds me of what Sarge told me just two months ago — if you don’t end a threat to life permanently, it’ll come back and bite you on the ass. Put an enemy shooter down, and you eliminate the danger. Merely injure him, and he’ll be back to kill you or one of yours.
Sarge takes another step. He’s squinting in our direction. In another second he’ll spot us.
I take aim. Center the crosshairs on his chest.
As he steps off the walkway onto our side, Quinn says, “Jinxy, please.”
His voice is a low plea. It tugs at my heart, nudges my conscience, and shifts my position ever so slightly a split second before I squeeze the trigger.
Chapter 7
Monsters out there
The rifle thuds. Sarge drops his weapon and clutches his right forearm. By the time he looks back up, Quinn and I are charging straight at him.
I snatch up Sarge’s weapon as Quinn tackles him with a hard shoulder to the gut. The breath leaves Sarge in a grunt, and he doubles over, winded. He gasps a couple of times, then straightens up and gapes at me.
“Blue? That you?”
I point my rifle at his head. “Don’t even think about yelling,” I warn him. My voice sounds cold and icy calm, but inside, I’m full of doubts and fears.
“Princess, you just turned a corner you can’t go back round,” he wheezes.
“You took my brother. I never did buy that ‘squad before blood’ crap.”
“How does the door open, the one you were guarding?” Quinn asks.
“There’s a secret knock,” Sarge says, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
His wound is bleeding through the fingers gripped tightly over it, and it must be hurting like a mother, but apart from his white face, I see no sign that he’s in pain.
I peer at the office across the way through the scope on my rifle. “It looks like a biometric scanner, so we’ll have to take him along. Move,” I say, jabbing my rifle in Sarge’s ribs.
“You are in a whole world of trouble, my girl,” Sarge says.
“She’s not your girl,” snarls Quinn. “Now shut up and do what she says.”
“Walk slowly. And don’t try anything stupid,” I order.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me again?” he replies, his face twisted in a scornful grimace. “Go ahead —I’ve got another arm and a couple of legs. But you and I both know, princess, that under your big talk you’re still just a bleeding-heart softie. You won’t kill me.”
“Maybe not, but I will,” says Evyan, snatching the submachine gun out of my left hand and pressing it against Sarge’s temple. “Now I’m no super-sniper, but at this range, I don’t think I’ll need to be. Move!”
He glances at Evyan and apparently sees something in her face to convince him that she, unlike me, means business, because he turns and starts walking. At any moment that door could open. We need to move quickly, and we need to keep Sarge quiet.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 50