Loki continued to make his way down the corridor as he spoke, feeling Anale walking behind him, and Kalgi and Holo just ahead, following Rex.
“Report?” he queried the others. He could already feel and see Illeg and Ontari jacking open the panel he’d told them about from the Sword’s specs.
“Still clear,” Holo said.
“Clear,” Rex confirmed, peering into a doorway to what felt to Loki like a much larger conference room. It contained an enormous, real-wood table that shimmered with the remnants of the tree’s light, as well as at least twenty, leather, high-backed chairs, and numerous imprints from human and seer light.
Loki felt Rex’s light pan slowly through the room, sharing a snapshot with the others. Along with the rest of his team, Loki felt the denser, more complex imprints contained in the light still flickering in the four corners of the room.
They’d had important meetings in here, when humans still roamed these halls.
Loki almost wondered if he should call that in, too, ask the bosses back at the carrier if they wanted him to try and collect more on what had occurred down here.
Yumi must have been monitoring him closer than he realized, however, for her voice rose in his headset only a few seconds after he had the thought.
“Adhipan Balidor says no,” she said, her voice sounding suddenly very far away. “Complete mission goal and get out. Boss says to hurry it up, too. He doesn’t like some of the signatures in the area...he thinks someone might have been tipped off that you’re down there.”
“Understood,” Loki said.
He knew by “boss,” his Sark sister meant Balidor that time, not the Sword. He couldn’t feel the Sword at all anymore, and suspected he was not participating in the op at this stage.
“Correct,” Yumi said. “Do you need him? He’s under...” She hesitated, as if stopping herself from saying something she shouldn’t. “...He’s indisposed,” she finished. “But I could try to pull him, if you need him.”
Loki shook his head, once, feeling Illeg’s pulse of satisfaction as she broke through the key in the door’s lock.
“No,” he said, watching with his light as they opened the door. “Negative. We’ll be in and out, as requested. Tell Adhipan Balidor I’ll report again once we know what we have here.”
He continued to follow Illeg and Ontari’s light as he spoke, watching as they entered the room beyond the security panel. Holo and Jax now held point over the door as the other two went inside, covering Illeg and Ontari with their rifles.
Loki had caught up with them in the physical now. He could see all four bright lights only a few meters away. He’d already passed Rex, Kalgi and Mika on the way towards the door, and he could feel Anale close behind him, as well.
“Report?” he sent to Illeg.
“You’d better come in here, sir,” she replied.
Loki was already at the door. Keeping his rifle raised, he walked inside, scanning the room in rote, right before he lowered the rifle’s barrel.
He could see what Illeg had brought him here to see.
In front of him, the faint outline of a picture or wall hanging of some kind stood out on the far wall, covered with different sets of hand and fingerprints, especially on one side, where it appeared it had been touched or grabbed more frequently.
Behind those duller, more static outlines of imprints, Loki could see tendrils snaking in complicated trails through the wall behind, far denser and with more vein-like, gold and green branches than what Loki had seen in the organic and semi-organic wall fixtures and sensors in the hallway outside. Seeing Illeg grinning at him through the Barrier, only a few feet away, Loki himself let out a quiet whistle.
The safe was exactly where the Sword had told him it would be.
The same safe that the Bridge had supposedly only dreamed existed in the first place.
Loki clicked his fingers, sending a pulse towards the painting, and to the wall safe behind it.
“Open it,” he said to Illeg, using the link despite how close they stood to one another now, and the fact that they hadn’t felt a single soul in the building since they’d arrived on these floors.
“Hurry,” he added. “They’re saying we may have company when we surface.”
He felt that ripple of humor on Illeg and Ontari’s light cut out at his words, stilling their aleimi back into focused stillness. Loki stood there, waiting, periodically glancing at Holo and Jax at the door and then back and Illeg and Ontari as the latter first used a physical scanner to determine if any dead-combustion (meaning non-organic) charges lived in the hinges, then proceeded to slide open the hinged image hanging on the wall to reveal the safe.
“Kind of old school, isn’t it?” Illeg asked, her voice holding a faint smile once more. “A safe in a wall? Hidden behind a painting?”
Loki smiled, but his light didn’t move as he watched the other two.
“Humans can be nostalgic,” Ontari said, smiling through the dark.
“Can you break the lock?” Loki said, quiet.
None of them bothered with the links at this point.
“Working on it, sir,” Ontari said.
Loki could feel a pulse of adrenaline hit his bloodstream, seemingly out of nowhere. Up until now, the danger Yumi warned him about had felt abstract, like something theoretical. Now, he felt the difference in his light. They were in trouble.
He touched his headset, opening yet another channel.
“Preela?” he queried.
She answered at once, even as his light skated out, taking a quick snapshot of what he could now feel converging on the grounds of the White House building.
“In the air, sir,” she confirmed. “We’re looking at structural damage on the roof...”
“And?” he said.
“No good, sir. Sensors say it won’t hold us...not safely anyway. Looking for an alternate until you’re ready for pick up.” She paused, and Loki heard the whine of the Chinook’s rotors in the background. “...Any idea when that’ll be, sir?”
“Not yet––” he began, but Illeg cut him off.
“Gotcha,” she said, smiling grimly at the safe door in front of her.
“––But soon,” Loki added into the comm, his light once more refocusing on the safe and the now three seers standing in front of it, since Rex had joined them, and appeared to be the one who had cracked part of the locking mechanism.
Loki remembered that the big-shouldered seer had a background in explosives and safes. He’d been a professional thief at one point, back in Russia. Like many seers had been in those years, he’d been recruited by Galaith directly out of the Russian gulag, where he’d been awaiting sentencing for one of those crimes.
Loki heard somewhere that the Sword had been recruited similarly by the Rooks, once upon a time.
“Where are you with it?” Loki said.
His physical voice sounded more noticeably tense outside of the link.
He watched with his light as Illeg and Ontari peered inside, using small penlights to illuminate the greenish-blue walls of the organic safe. Now that he could see the whole thing with his physical eyes, Loki found himself more impressed with Illeg and Rex’s work. The safe’s walls stood at least four inches thick, cut at a diagonal angle to fit perfectly over the hole in the organic wall itself. Even with the physical light overpowering his Barrier sight to a degree, Loki could still see those vein-like strands of aleimic light, pulsing under the strength of the living components of the nearly full-blooded organic.
“Tick-tock,” Holo muttered from beside him.
Loki glanced at him, but could not disagree.
Turning back to the safe, he watched as Ontari, Rex and Illeg began pulling out data keys, stacks of paper and larger organic devices, all but the paper appearing to consist of what had been the cutting edge side of high tech. Loki saw the three of them starting to examine these contents one by one and snapped his fingers impatiently.
“We don’t have time for that,” he s
aid. “Bring all of it. We’re leaving.”
THEY ENDED UP using the elevator to go back up, too.
Loki decided on the tunnel initially, thinking it would be safer for the team’s exit. Yumi agreed. Something made Loki change his mind, though...some tightness in the higher areas of his light, which felt clear for the first time since he’d left the Chinook, maybe because adrenaline had finally penetrated the issues he’d suffered around the female human.
In any case, Loki had the team reverse direction, before they’d even accessed the tunnel.
He already had Anale and Mika jacking open the elevator doors, when Yumi pinged him via the link.
“Do not use the underground exit, brother. Repeat. Do not use the underground tunnel. Acknowledge receipt.”
“Acknowledged,” Loki said. “Can you tell me anything?”
“Reception party. We’re working on getting you more intel now...they have seers with them, so we’re working to crack the mobile construct they’re using.”
“What about elevator access?”
“Secondary team is approaching from the south and west. Advise leaving through the East Wing or the North Portico...”
“Government?”
“We think so, yes. But you understand they might not only be that?”
“Copy, and understood.” He glanced at the others, knowing they hadn’t heard him through the sub-vocals. “They have seers,” he told them through the link.
He felt Ontari, Holo and Rex all look at him.
Mika and Jax already had the doors mostly open.
Loki’s light stayed out of that part of the Barrier, even as he glanced at where Mika activated the power source on the semi-organic. The tool moved smoothly, almost like a living thing, forcing the heavy doors back open with a metallic screech.
They didn’t wait.
Loki’s team filed into the elevator even as Holo slipped quickly through the open doors and knelt down by the open panel on the inside. By the time Loki entered and moved to the back, Mika was already re-opening the secondary security panel while Holo worked quickly to reattach the power source via the squid appendages hanging out of panel in front, directly under the round buttons to the upper floors. The squids sparked with their own aleimic light as Anale and Holo spoke to them.
When the physical lights of the elevator flickered, then rose suddenly, Loki and the others raised hands in reflex, squinting and blinking up at the light.
Within seconds, the elevators began to move.
“Status?” Loki said through the link, talking to the carrier again.
Rex, Jax, Ontari, Illeg and Kalgi already had their weapons up, and faced the doors as the car rose through the sub-basement levels.
Yumi’s voice came through distant again, probably due to interference from all of the organics inside the elevator shaft and car.
“Four minutes before they breach the South Portico,” she said, her voice flickering in and out of his ear. “We count thirty infantry, dressed as SWAT. They could be police, but Balidor says they have a military imprint. He’s guessing Navy SEALs, from the aleimic signatures.”
Loki frowned, glancing at Rex.
Rex shrugged, smiling at him a little.
Loki had opened the channel so the others would hear Yumi that time, mainly to save time. When he saw the harder look in Rex’s eyes, he was strangely reassured. A lot of seers had a tendency to underestimate human-run military units. Loki knew from personal experience that it wasn’t always a wise attitude to take.
“Engage or avoid?” Loki asked Yumi. “Or are we too late for that?”
“They’ve got seers,” Yumi repeated. “At least four. You won’t be able to push them, Loki. Balidor advises avoid. We can see you now...you should have about a thirty second window to get to the North Portico if your elevator doesn’t malfunction. We can shield your trail for that long, we think. They’re already trying to hack the illusions we’ve put up around you, so they know enough to know you’re there. Balidor thinks it will take them at least three more minutes to make real progress...which might be enough. We’re in touch with Preela already...she’s standing by. She can’t come in too soon, so if we get cut off, she’ll wait for visual confirmation. They have RPGs, so she’s on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue...”
Next to him, Kalgi swore softly in Prexci.
Loki gave her a scarce glance.
“Understood,” he told Yumi. “Taking recommendation in full. If you talk to Preela, tell her we’ll be at the North Portico in approximately...” He looked at the clock inside his headset display, which he’d synched to the estimate for reaching the ground, based on the speed of the elevator going down with minor adjustments for gravity. “...Two minutes.”
“Will do,” Yumi said. “Take care, brother.”
Loki felt as much as heard the mental muttering sliding around the minds and lips of the group. He didn’t bother to answer Yumi, but motioned Mika to cut the security protocols entirely, now that they no longer had to worry about the alarms. She did, and all of them winced, feeling the silent alarm as a surge in energy through the organics, even as the elevator car briefly shuddered. It didn’t stop, though, which had been Loki’s only fear.
Now it would not stop them at the top floor and scan them, either, prior to opening the doors.
When they reached the ground level, Loki motioned for Anale to leave the power source attached. When the doors began to open, four of his people had already squeezed through and into the corridor near the kitchen before those doors finished disappearing into the walls.
Loki felt the difference in the nearby Barrier space at once.
He motioned for Anale to take the lead.
They began to jog down the center hall, single file, keeping against the walls and moving almost soundlessly as they aimed for the North Hall, only a few doors down. They turned into that opening at Loki’s soft prompt, then all of them were more or less running for the North Portico entrance, still moving quiet, and with Kalgi taking up the rear like before, with Loki not far from her.
Loki worried briefly that the entrance itself might pose a problem, but the bullet-proof glass doors to the North Portico entrance had already been blown out in some previous skirmish. The opening stood as a ragged, gaping maw, only slightly lighter than the shadowed interior, since the sun had already started to fall towards the horizon while they were below ground. Loki now glimpsed a pre-sunset sky tinged with pinks and oranges, even as sunlight itself continued to slant sideways over the lawns and driveway and Pennsylvania Avenue to the west.
Loki watched Anale and Rex disappear through that opening first, then felt a ping when they let him know they didn’t see or feel anyone waiting for them.
He touched his headset again, briefly. “Okay, Preela. Now would be good.”
“Roger that.”
She might have said more after that, but before she could get it out, gunfire erupted from the west, directly in front of where Loki stood.
Loki found himself shifting directions quickly, right before something pummeled into his shoulder, knocking him to his back. Next to him, he saw Kalgi fall, too, even as Mika dove behind cover in front of him, firing past the opening where the glass doors had once stood.
“Fuck,” Kalgi said next to him.
She was up again, and dragging him, even as Loki fought to regain his feet. She brought him around to the east side of the doorway, behind where Mika continued to fire. Loki gasped, got to his feet, and followed her, glimpsing through the opening where Rex and Anale were firing back at whoever was coming towards them from the west. Loki could see Kalgi’s free hand pressed against the middle of her chest, holding it as if in pain, but he didn’t see any blood. He assumed that, whatever her injury, it hadn’t penetrated her bullet-proof jacket or vest.
Looking down at his own shoulder, he realized he hadn’t gotten off so lucky.
“They’re packing organics,” he said through the link. “Armor piercing. Don’t assume
the vests will hold.”
He felt the acknowledgment from Anale and Rex, then from Mika, Illeg, Holo and Kalgi. Raising his own rifle, Loki realized he couldn’t quite brace it with his injured arm, and slid it up against his hip instead, handling it with his right arm instead, which was awkward, since he usually used his left.
He could still shoot, but not well.
Even as he thought it, he realized he hadn’t heard anything or felt anything from Jax or Ontari since the engagement started. He turned, scanning lightly with his eyes and aleimi, looking for them as Kalgi fired through the opening with Mika and Illeg, who had joined them. Holo had already disappeared through the opening to reinforce Anale and Rex behind the stone walls leading to the steps.
Loki finally found Jax behind where he and Kalgi crouched, and near the main staircase in the foyer. Jax was trying to drag Ontari, who was probably twice his weight.
Loki touched Kalgi faintly with his light.
“I’m going back,” he told her.
Glancing over her shoulder, Kalgi frowned, as if about to protest. Seeing Jax then, she seemed to change her mind and nodded, seeing where Loki’s light pointed out Ontari’s weight. Being wounded, Loki figured it should be him.
He would not be much good to them on the line like this, anyway.
Kalgi let out a snort, raising an eyebrow at him. I’d still take you on a bad day over most on a good one, brother, she sent.
Loki smiled at her faintly, surprised at the warm words, then turned around, staying low as he approached Jax. When he reached the seer’s side to help him with Ontari, however, he froze, staring down at Ontari’s face. It was completely blown off. Loki knelt at once, checking the male seer’s pulse. He was dead. His light had shifted already.
When Loki looked up at Jax, he saw that the light in the seer’s violet eyes had receded to that other place once more.
Jax was gone, too.
Shell-shocked, as the old timers used to call it.
Allie's War Season Four Page 79