He and Heidi searched through Sierra’s belongings, but didn’t find anything of significance. Most of what she stored there were clothes, and those didn’t reveal anything useful. Heidi even tried slicing open the jacket lining, searching for any information or pieces of technology that might be stored there, but it was a fruitless endeavor. They were sitting in the pile of clothes when they heard Ty’s shout from the other room followed by a sudden thump.
They rushed back to the main room to find Ty lying on the floor, his body shaking and covered in sweat. Panting heavily, he pressed trembling fingers against his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.
Lucas rushed forward and knelt next to his companion, easing him to a sitting position. The dwarf sat up slowly, clutching Lucas’s arm tight enough to make it bruise.
“What happened?”
“Sorry, just give me a second.” The dwarf took a deep breath. “Water?”
Heidi hustled to the kitchen, filled a glass, and brought it over. Ty finally let go of Lucas’s arm and took the glass in both hands. The liquid sloshed over the top as he lifted it to his mouth. After taking several deep swallows, his trembling ceased. He took a deep breath as he lowered his hands, still clutching the empty glass.
“I dug around like you wanted, looking for any info about Sierra. I had some things to go on, just basic stuff from before. But I decided to go a little deeper. Invade her privacy, given the situation and all.”
Lucas gestured for Ty to get to the point. He didn’t need to know the details of how, just what was going on.
“Well, I found some stuff. Old records and whatnot. Checked her bank account and man, is she loaded. I was curious where all the money came from, so I spoofed her account to look at the history. Not foolproof, but good enough to get access to the records.”
“What did you find?”
“She worked for Aztechnology. Seriously. She was a wage slave!”
Lucas sat back on his heels. At first he didn’t believe it, considering how much Sierra had supported going against corporations for their work. But then he realized she never suggested or supported a job against Aztechnology. Wouldn’t it benefit them if other competitors were negatively impacted? It wouldn’t be unreasonable.
“How long ago was her last payment? Maybe she used to work for them before she started running the shadows?”
“That’s what I thought too, so I checked. But her last payment was three days ago.”
“That’s the same day Mr. Johnson contacted me about the Evo job.”
Silence filled the room as everyone digested that statement. It was far too convenient that Sierra had gotten a large payment from Aztechnology the same day a Johnson stepped forward to personally offer a job striking back against Evo. At least now they knew where she would go with the relic.
“So what happened?”
“She caught me messing around in her personal files. At first I thought it was just a sprite, something she left behind to safeguard her stuff. But it must have sent off an alert or something, ’cause then she showed up and worked her magic. I couldn’t keep up. I jacked out as fast as I could before she fried my brain.”
Heidi slammed her fists down on the counter hard enough to make the floor tremble. She growled around her tusks and reached down to her dagger, clutching its hilt and releasing it repetitively. “And now she’s gonna get away with it. Stabbed us in the back and she’s off scot-free?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I managed to sneak a tracer onto her avatar. I just checked, and it’s active. I know where she is.”
Lucas burst into motion, snatching up a couple of extra magazines for his gun and tucking them into his pockets. Heidi was at the door before he was, jerking it open so quickly that one of the hinges popped loose with a groan. They rushed downstairs, climbing into the truck in a matter of seconds after leaving the apartment.
“Should take us about ten minutes to get there. She stopped moving, so I’m guessing she’s either waiting or setting something up.”
“You’re sure she doesn’t know we’re coming?”
“I’m sure. No way she could have found the tracer, even if she is a technomancer. I know how to write my agents.”
“Hasn’t she seen you use these agents before?”
The silence in the cab of the car was all the answer Lucas needed. He sighed and reached back to knock on the rear window to get Heidi’s attention. She held her hand up to her ear to block the wind noise. It roared through the commlink, almost drowning out her words.
“What’s up?”
“Odds are she knows we’re coming. She’s currently holding position, which means we could be walking into a trap. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Not at all. Means I’ll have plenty of stuff to shoot. I like it when they’re all bunched together.”
“Are we really going to shoot her? I mean, this is Sierra we’re talking about. We’ve been through a lot. Maybe if we talked to her first, we could figure out what this is all about. Maybe she just wanted a better cut…” Ty’s words and volume trailed off until they became a soft murmur. Lucas waited until they stopped at a light, and then grabbed the scruff of Ty’s shirt, forcing the dwarf to look at him. He pointed up at his face, red and raw with barely-healed lacerations from the shattered glass.
“She shot me in the face, Ty. Does this look like a misunderstanding to you?”
He let the decker go and dropped back into his seat, staring out the window. It took him until after the truck started moving again and had gone a couple of blocks before he calmed down. He spoke to Ty while looking out the window, the edge gone from his voice.
“You said it yourself. She has more money than she needs, so it isn’t nuyen she’s after. There’s something else, some type of corporate loyalty. I just can’t believe she managed to fool all of us into believing her. We’re going to stop her, one way or another, even if that means putting a bullet in her skull.”
Ty didn’t reply, and Lucas was more than happy to have it that way. He wanted this job done as soon as possible so he could go back to hunting down Evo. He should be happy since his target had suffered a significant loss, but the backstab left a bad taste in his mouth. He needed to end this, one way or another.
The truck stopped in the wealthy part of Bellevue, where individual houses were situated on lots big enough to house entire apartment complexes. The house across from them was no different in that regard.
The lot was surrounded with a wrought-iron fence, cameras clearly visible over the main entrance. Not only that, but a turret was in plain view over the front door of the house, some ten meters back from the gate. Around here, the law was open to interpretation, usually benefitting the owners of the property.
Lucas stared at the front of the house, using his cybereyes to zoom in and scan around. The turret was active, and sensitive enough that it twitched when a bird flew past, but didn’t fire. It had the Ares brand logo, so clearly it was good at dealing death.
Scanning the windows, his eyes identified the glass as being bulletproof, capable of stopping anything less than a .50-caliber round. So much for a mad dash across the front lawn and bursting in through the window.
Switching his focus to the front door, Lucas saw it had a maglock. His eyes even reported the model number when he focused on it. He closed his eyes and shifted his view. It was just like the doctor had warned him during his rehab: using a muscle that he didn’t know he had. When he opened his eyes, he had switched to a thermographic view. His head started to pound, but he ignored it and continued scanning the building.
Unfortunately, the house’s walls shielded his view, masking everything as a single wash of color. Only the windows gave him any glimpse into the interior, and no one was standing near any of them.
Lucas blinked, restoring his vision to normal. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the pain throbbing inside his skull. Once it had subsided a bit, he turned to face Ty and pulled up the maglock model on his commlink. “
Can you get through this maglock? How long would it take?”
“I could, but it’d take a couple of minutes. A little bit longer if you also want me to run interference on those cameras.”
“Don’t worry about the cameras. I can take care of them.
I just need you to handle the lock. That’s something I can’t do anything about.”
“So you just want to blast through the front door? If she’s expecting us, that seems like the stupidest idea I could think of. We’ll be ripped to shreds before we get there, let alone what’s going to happen to us once I get the door open.”
“Trust me. I can get us there. I’m more worried about what we’re going to face once we’re inside. Still, we don’t have time to scope the place out properly. If we lose her here, there’s no telling if we’ll be able to pick up her trail again. You know as well as I do how well she can hide. Hell, you probably know that better than I do, and I don’t think we’d find her again.”
Ty nodded, even if he didn’t look happy about the news. But Lucas knew he could count on the dwarf. The man might be Eeyore incarnate, but once he finally did get moving, he stuck to his guns and made sure he did what was expected of him. That was what Lucas needed right now.
He glanced back at Heidi, crouched in the truck with her assault rifle in one hand and her trusty knife in the other. He wondered if she had several copies of the same blade, or if she’d managed to retrieve it from the corpse when he wasn’t looking. Then again, he had been stupid from shock and pain at the time, so a lot of things could have escaped his notice.
As soon as he opened his door, Heidi jumped out of the truck, making it rock and groan. Her predatory smile indicated her readiness. She stared at the turret as if viewing it as a challenge rather than a threat. “Want me to try and take out the turret? I could shoot it down from here.”
Lucas was pretty sure that would end in her pointless death. If any of them were going to die, it should at least be for something meaningful. He shook his head. “Open gunfire in the middle of this street would attract way too much attention. If we can help it, we shouldn’t use our firearms until we’re inside. At least then the sound might be muffled or dampened, depending on what the walls are made of.”
Lucas reached out to feel Mountain’s presence, tapping into reserves still drained from their earlier adventures. They had refilled somewhat, but it would take a good deal of rest before he was back at full strength. Nonetheless, the energy was there for him to tap into, a warm flow of magic that let him send forth a call to his familiar storm spirit.
“Thank you, great bringer of storms and harbinger of rain. I hope to ask a favor of you. Would you hide me and my companions from sight?”
The spirit responded by moving forward and enveloping all of them within its domain. Lucas was used to the sensation of feeling like he was both walking through and floating on a cloud, but he heard the surprised gasps from his companions. Heidi reached out and gently swatted at the empty air in front of her, a puzzled look on her face.
“It only appears to be a mist. It’s not an actual fog. But it will shield us from both the cameras and people. Let’s go, but make sure you stay close to me. The spirit can only reach out so far.”
Lucas walked toward the gate, Heidi and Ty close on his heels. He glanced up at the camera, glad to see that it didn’t shift in the slightest, oblivious to their presence. Now was the true test though. The turret was the far more dangerous instrument of detection.
He stared at it while he grasped one of the bars and began to climb. Heidi saw what he was doing and gave him a boost, pushing him up so he nearly vaulted the gate in a single movement. The entire time, his attention was centered on the turret. It didn’t track his movement, remaining steadfast and still in its vigilance.
Ty was next, getting over only with a lot of help from Heidi and a heavy grunt. Lucas shushed him as soon as the dwarf landed on the ground. While the storm spirit could block them from sight, sound was another matter altogether. Of course, the sounds the dwarf made were nothing compared to the gate’s crash and Heidi’s heavy thud as she hauled her large form over the fence and dropped onto the property. For a moment, all three of them froze, waiting to see if anything detected their presence.
Lucas shook his head and stalked toward the front door. It was a miracle they hadn’t been detected yet, but he wasn’t going to let the blessing go to waste. As they crossed the grounds, he kept an eye on the turret, tense and ready to bolt if it swerved to target them.
Halfway across the yard, Lucas heard a low growling coming from the corner of the house. Two large dogs stalked forward, each one almost a meter tall at the shoulder. These were not normal critters, and while they couldn’t see Lucas and his companions, he had no doubt they could smell them. The dogs crept forward, sniffing at the air and looking around for the trespassers. Lucas and his teammates still had almost ten meters to the front door, and then there was the small matter of the maglock. The dogs would be on them long before then.
“I got this.”
Before he could determine what Heidi meant, she took off running to the other front corner of the house. As soon as her first foot slammed into the ground, the guard dogs rose up, their pointed ears angled toward the sound. When Heidi got too far away, Lucas felt the strain of the spirit as it tried to keep her concealed. With another step, that control broke, and Heidi showed up in plain view.
The dogs rushed forward and the turret swiveled in her direction, letting out a quick burst before she got close enough to the building to gain some cover. She stumbled from the impact, clutching the corner as she reached it. The dogs closed on her, jaws trailing saliva and snapping at the air in anticipation. Heidi smiled, drawing her knife and crouching as she backed around the corner. The dogs rushed after her, and one bark was cut short with a sudden yelp.
Not caring about being quiet any more, Lucas grabbed Ty’s shoulder and ran forward. If Sierra didn’t know they were there before, there was no way she could miss them now. Speed became paramount. At least they were still hidden from sight, thanks to the storm spirit. That could give them an edge they needed.
Ty began working on the lock. Lucas flattened his back against the wall and peered around the edge of the window into the main room beyond. It was a large foyer, with a curved staircase that hugged the left wall to rise up to a balcony on the second floor. The room had a tiled floor and was well lit from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. He thought he saw something attached to the back of the front door, but it was impossible to make out from this angle.
“Got it.”
The lock clicked and Ty reached out to push the door open. Following a pure instinctual urge, Lucas gripped Ty’s collar, jerking him back hard enough that the dwarf yelped in surprise and fell to the ground.
A small explosion went off on the other side of the door. Shrapnel flew from the opening, shredding the area where Ty had been standing less than a second before. The color faded from his face, and his eyes widened so much they looked like they threatened to pop out of his head.
Lucas stepped over the dwarf’s body as he headed to the door. Pieces of it still clung to the hinges, but most of it had been shredded by the bomb. Lucas pushed what remained into the foyer, staying back in case there were any more traps. When nothing happened, he walked into the room, giving it a quick scan for any obvious threats. Nothing jumped out at him, so he examined the entrance. A small bomb was attached to the frame, wired to go off when the door opened. It was set at just the right height to take a dwarf in the center of the chest.
“We need to split up. The house is too big. I’ll cut off her escape,” Lucas said.
Ty opened his mouth to protest, but Lucas didn’t have time to argue. He needed to find Sierra before she got away. He sprinted toward the back of the house, assuming if there was a garage, that’s where she would be. Once he cut off her escape route, they could take a little more time to locate her.
As soon as he left the room, h
e heard shouting and gunfire. He slid to a stop. It was more than one gun, so it wasn’t Sierra. Or if it was, she wasn’t alone.
“Ty?” he asked into his commlink.
“A couple of goons burst in and have me pinned down. I think I can hack their guns.”
Lucas hesitated. He didn’t want Sierra getting away, but he couldn’t leave Ty alone. The dwarf was sturdy, but not the best fighter in the world.
“I’m coming back.”
Heidi’s growl came over the commlink. She sounded excited. “I’m on ’em. They’re about to get a surprise visitor. You go check for Sierra.”
There was a loud crash, followed by some screaming, more than enough to convince Lucas to continue on his way.
As he ran toward the back of the house, a door caught his attention. Lucas skidded to a stop, sliding across the hardwood floor as he turned to study it more closely. It was heavily warded, and he could feel the energy coming off it. If Sierra needed a place to store the artifact away from mystical eyes, this one would do the trick.
He hesitated, his hand hovering over the handle. The memories of the last time he opened a warded room came flooding back to him.
No, he had to check Sierra’s escape route first. That made the most sense. Then he could come back and see what this room was about. It would take time to examine carefully, time she could be using to get away. He turned away, continuing toward the rear of the house.
When he stepped into the kitchen, he saw two elven women standing off to the side, each holding a sword. He paused, holding his breath, but they didn’t react to his presence. He was so used to the misty appearance, he had forgotten his spirit was concealing him.
Lucas crept farther into the room, easing his weight onto each foot as he moved forward, trying not to make any sound. One of them chattered into her commlink in a language Lucas couldn’t understand.
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