Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  His only price was a sample of the antiviral for the disease, as well as a sample of the disease itself––he said so his people could reverse-engineer both back in London, to prevent or mitigate any further attacks.

  Chandre tried a few times to read him to determine more, but there were blocks on his light that felt like military. Even Varlan admitted to her that Eddard was well-shielded––which likely meant the Rook hadn't been able to penetrate those defenses, either.

  The whole arrangement made her nervous.

  She wanted to know who hired Varlan––and their motives in acquiring the disease. Eddard and Varlan both called him “Shadow,” but that name meant nothing to her. Even as an alias, it was essentially worthless.

  More to the point, Varlan was a Rook. The idea of conducting a joint op with one like him did not sit well with her light.

  Turning, Varlan gave her a sideways smile.

  She returned his gaze, unapologetic.

  “Do not pretend such sentiments surprise you,” she said.

  “I do not,” he replied, looking back through the rifle scope. “But I do wonder at the loyalty you feel towards the Sword, in spite of this aversion.” Varlan smiled. “He is, after all, my master, too, sister Chandre.”

  Chandre didn’t reply. She highly doubted Varlan worked for the Rebels. So he must be religious, then.

  That, or he viewed the Sword as the new Head of the Rooks’ network on Earth.

  “Who else did you imagine held that spot?” Varlan asked, clicking humorously as he stared through his scope.

  “Salinse,” Chandre said at once.

  Varlan gave her a dismissive look, but didn’t comment.

  “So you think Eddard’s plan will work?” Chandre said, changing the subject.

  “He certainly seems confident,” Varlan said.

  “I asked what you thought.”

  Staring back through the scope, the male seer shrugged.

  Her face hardened when he didn’t elaborate, but she decided to drop it, figuring there was no point in haranguing him to verbalize his thoughts. Clearly, he was satisfied enough with Eddard’s plan to be here––unless he was running a secondary op of some kind, one perhaps ending in her, Eddard and Maygar being left dead in the California scrub brush.

  Varlan chuckled, without lifting his eyes from his rifle’s scope. “No wonder you like the Sword. You’re as paranoid as he is.”

  Chandre didn’t answer that, either.

  She had gone back to watching the main doors to the green building, checking her watch periodically, when it finally happened.

  A dark blue pick-up truck grew visible in the distance, bumping down the long service road to the fenced main gate. The road was paved, but the truck’s massive tires still kicked up a thin cloud of dust when the truck swerved, making the final turn before the substation’s driveway.

  Slowing as it reached the perimeter gate, the truck came to a full stop beside a stand-alone terminal located directly outside the line of the OBE.

  “Do you have him?” she asked Varlan.

  He didn't answer at first.

  Chandre continued to watch the man in the truck.

  He only sat there for a minute, engine idling.

  Just when she was beginning to think the pause was too obvious, that they’d know something was wrong on the surveillance feeds, she saw the truck driver lean over to roll down his window. The truck was old enough that he had to crank the window down by hand; but, like the antique parked in front of the glass doors, it also looked refurbished. She wondered about the obsession with antique cars, then it clicked.

  Non-organic components.

  The military often used older models in their civilian-based fleets, to keep them from being hacked. The station probably logged every kilometer they traveled.

  “Do you have him, Varlan?” she asked again, feeling her pulse rise.

  Varlan gestured an affirmative. His eyes clicked back into focus as the gates opened in front of the truck’s grill.

  Neither of them moved as the driver threw the vehicle into gear and drove through the opening created in the OBE field. Chandre found herself watching Varlan’s face. By the time the driver was steering the truck down to a lower parking lot, one she hadn’t seen before now, the tautness in the male infiltrator’s eyes had relaxed.

  Glancing up, he nodded to her. “It’s there. Underground, like the human said.”

  She felt herself relax, but not much.

  She watched the truck slide into a parking spot in the empty lot, to the left of a long, rusted storage shed with a corrugated metal roof. She hadn’t noticed the empty spaces over there before, since they were partly blocked from view by another low cement wall and a row of elm trees along the back boundary.

  The man got out of his truck.

  He wore a dark blue security guard uniform, carrying a non-uniform jacket over one arm and what looked like a lunchbox in his other hand. Even from where they crouched, Chandre could see his gun belt and shoulder harness.

  He began walking leisurely back towards the shed’s main entrance, sipping from a paper coffee cup.

  “Well-armed for a rent-a-cop,” she noted.

  Varlan didn’t answer. He continued to focus on the guard.

  In order to get through the OBE and the secure Barrier construct, they needed someone on the inside. Rather than doing the usual and getting their own person hired with clearance, Eddard proposed they wait until the shift change and establish a tap with the new security guard on duty. It was risky, of course––something they wouldn’t have even attempted without Varlan with them. A lower-ranked infiltrator couldn’t have pulled it off without being seen by whoever held the lab’s construct.

  But the main risk for that part had been overcome already; Varlan had gotten to the guard and established the link before he entered the substation construct.

  Given the short window they had, that initial tap was the difference between success and failure. Anomalies in a seer’s or human’s light would most likely be noticed when they first passed through the gate. Once inside, he wouldn’t be watched as closely.

  Conversely, if they’d waited until he was inside the construct to attempt the tap, the chances of success dropped to nearly zero. Any changes to an individual’s aleimi––especially a human, and especially a human working in a security capacity––would show up as a flare in a military-grade construct like this one.

  “You’re sure you have him?” she repeated, rearranging her hands on the gun.

  “Yes.”

  “They didn't notice you in the entrance scan?”

  Tilting his violet eyes up, he clicked softly, shaking his head bemusedly. Then he looked down the length of the wall, making a series of hand gestures to the other seers.

  She caught the gist of his signed words, and frowned again.

  “That is dangerous,” she said, her voice blunt.

  He gave her a bare glance. “You can stay here if you like, sister.”

  He began making his way soundlessly past the gap in the wall and through the trees.

  After the barest pause, she followed, moving as quietly as she could. Behind her, she saw the other seers following the two of them in a single-file line.

  Varlan was going to have the guard open the OBE field for them. Apparently he could only open the field for up to six seconds at a time. Any of the guards had that ability, to run perimeter checks, but only within certain intervals.

  Glancing back at her, Varlan said in a murmur. “We have five minutes before the next interval, sister. There’s an access tunnel there.”

  He pointed to an area over by where the guard’s truck was parked, near the row of trees. He sent her an image in a snapshot, of what looked like a round gate.

  Following the direction of his fingers, Chandre nodded.

  They would all be entering at a single point now. Going together was riskier if they got caught, since they’d have no one left on the outside to help them esca
pe––but it would make it easier to communicate, at least. Once inside the construct, they would all have to maintain Barrier silence, which meant verbal and hand-signals.

  Even as she thought it, she saw Varlan hand-signal to one of his people, a female seer with another of those Nazi scars across her face.

  Chandre caught the gist of his signal that time, too, and stared at him in surprise.

  “Why?” she said, blunt.

  “You are right,” he said softly. “We need one on the outside, and we can spare her now. Maygar will take her place, bringing up the rear.”

  Hesitating, Chandre nodded, watching as the female disappeared into the trees.

  Seconds later, they reached the edge of the OBE by the outer fence.

  Chandre’s eyes scanned upwards, taking in the dense metal chains, the top covered in glass shards and razor wire. If anything went wrong, they weren't getting back out that way, even without the OBE in place to kill them dead.

  Rather than speak aloud, Varlan used sign language.

  Three teams, he signaled to the remaining eight of them. Three, three and three. Don't risk the gap. Go straight through. No stopping. We reconvene after the second fence.

  Chandre saw nods and gestures of acknowledgement.

  You're with me, he signaled to Chandre.

  Swallowing, she was about to answer, when he grabbed her arm.

  “Now,” he murmured, pushing her forward towards the fence.

  Chandre felt herself tense, instinctively reacting to the current she could feel from the OBE, but she didn’t fight him. That current spiked dramatically as she reached the edge of the trees, just before she and Varlan and a third seer broke cover.

  She crossed the line, sucking in a breath.

  The intensity of the OBE as they passed through the opening made her hair stand on end, her chest clench. She didn’t take a full breath until it was a few meters behind them.

  She’d seen what OBE fields could do to a person.

  They didn’t just electrocute you. They ripped you apart, removing the flesh from your bones, cutting bones off your body.

  Within seconds, the three of them stood on the other side of both fences.

  Crouching in the trees with Varlan and the other seer, she looked back at the remaining members of their team, which included four of Varlan’s, along with Maygar and Eddard.

  Eddard and Maygar joined with a hulking giant of a seer called Rex. He, too, had the Nazi scar on his face. It hadn't really occurred to Chandre until then, but all of them did, with the exception of the wiry but muscular seer who'd come through the OBE with her and Varlan. He appeared to be a few centuries younger than the others and had unusual coloring for a seer. Rather than some variety of Asian or Eurasian, he looked like a human of African descent, both from the color of his skin and the texture of his hair.

  Chandre knew seers like him went for a cool couple of million Euros on the black market. They were virtually impossible to visually detect as seers, so high-ranked ones could cost as much as twenty million trained. It was the rarest ethnic category for seers in the modern era––even rarer than the blond-haired and blue-eyed variety, which only showed up in something like one in several million seers, as well.

  Chandre glanced over her shoulder at the human security guard, who stood behind them by the controls to the OBE, as if looking casually out at the trees while he enjoyed his morning coffee. His blank-eyed stare remained peaceful as he worked the controls of the standing terminal just outside the second fence.

  He acted like none of them were there, like he was just testing to make sure the mechanism was working.

  They waited for the next interval, five minutes after the first. Then, abruptly, Varlan gestured urgently to the other six still outside the fence.

  Now! he gestured. All of you! We should not tarry here!

  They didn't wait.

  Within three of those seconds, all six of them bolted out of cover and across the line of the switched-off OBE. They joined Varlan, Chandre and the African-looking seer after the second fence. Then all nine of them were moving in a broken line, staying low behind the cement wall and using the cover of the trees to get closer to the long shed.

  Varlan turned to Chandre, using hand signals.

  We need to get inside. The construct is sensitive. I’m worried it won’t be enough to stay out of the Barrier… at least not for long.

  Chandre nodded, her lips firming in a grim line.

  The security guard, still moving casually and whistling now, walked back to the long, featureless shed. Instead of going through the main entrance, he walked past it, striding easily past the corrugated metal walls, heading west.

  Hanging a left at the end, he followed a cement path that ran between the shed and a high, cylinder-block wall. The seers followed cautiously, but at the edge of the path, once shielded by the wall, Varlan raised a hand, indicating for all of them to stop.

  The guard walked without hesitation to a featureless segment of the shed’s wall.

  Chandre watched as he laid his hand on the bare-looking metal. Seconds later, a terminal revealed itself on the dirty gray surface.

  The guard entered a lengthy code, still whistling. Once he finished, there was a low tone, then a sliding panel door retreated sideways behind the outer wall.

  The security guard entered through the darkened opening.

  Chandre moved to follow, but once more, Varlan held up a hand, cautioning them all to wait.

  He’s disengaging the image recorders, the older seer signed. Be ready to move. We can’t keep them off for more than ten seconds without it being noticed in the control room.

  A few more seconds passed.

  Then Varlan motioned sharply for them to head for the door.

  Following his hand gestures, they darted for the opening in the shed wall. Chandre, since she was just behind Varlan, was one of the first to make it through the new door. Inside was a surprisingly small, squarish room with high walls.

  Every segment of those walls reflected a pale, organic green.

  She barely glanced at the mirror-like tiles before she turned, watching as the rest of their group joined her inside the shed. She watched the security guard re-engage outside imaging the instant Maygar entered behind Eddard. It wasn’t until they were all there and the outer door was closing that Chandre really looked around at where she stood.

  A few seconds later, she realized she knew exactly what the small room was for.

  Once it hit her, her brow cleared.

  She didn’t quite feel relief, but something in her relaxed anyway. Whatever else might happen to them here, they were definitely in the right place.

  She was standing in a decontamination chamber.

  36

  LABORATORY

  IT TOOK ABOUT twenty minutes to make it through all of the decontamination protocols.

  Chandre emerged on the other side feeling light-headed from the two chemical baths she’d been forced to endure, as well as the higher oxygen content of the air on the other side of the chamber walls.

  She found herself staring down the length of a long, low-ceilinged space.

  It hit her that the corridor was longer than the shed had been.

  The decontamination chamber must also have been an elevator. While it sprayed them off, it also brought them underground.

  The clock was now running. From what Eddard told them the night before, once inside, it was really a race against time. At the next feed scan, someone would notice the camera had been turned off outside the lab entrance.

  That gave them approximately forty minutes, assuming Eddard’s intel was sound, and they conducted the feed scans on the hour.

  Before that, however, someone would likely notice nine unauthorized persons had just gone through decontamination protocols––assuming someone hadn’t already seen nine unauthorized persons wandering around their laboratory complex.

  As soon as any one of those things happened, security protoc
ols would lock in and the lab would shut down. Secondary security measures would immediately be deployed. Whatever else happened to them in here, they definitely wouldn’t be able to leave the way they came in.

  Supposedly, Eddard had that end of things covered for them, as well.

  First, however, they had to get what they’d come for.

  Do you know where it is from here? she signed to Varlan. The secure area of the lab?

  He motioned with his head and hand for her to follow.

  She walked when he did, her gun now held out in front of her. The rest of the team followed behind her, moving soundlessly, single-file.

  She knew once they got to the secure lab, where the virus presumably was being kept and manufactured, their presence would be picked up at once by construct security. They could try to delay it, possibly by using Varlan’s tap to the security guard, but realistically, they couldn’t expect that to buy them more than minutes.

  They had to simply push through when the alarms went off, trust that Eddard could get them past the lockdown, and be in and out before anyone could show up with reinforcements from outside.

  Luckily, gas wasn’t likely to be deployed down here, according to Eddard. It would corrupt the integrity of the lab, he said, and pose a danger in the form of reactions with other chemical compounds in use by the techs. Security protocols would focus on locking them in, and keeping them there until someone could come and collect them.

  When they reached the first set of doors, Varlan motioned in a swift arc, signaling for them to go through. Chan jerked forward at the command, walking fast. She found she was jittering on her heels as they waited for the guard to open the locks.

  Beyond these doors, Chandre knew, lived another elevator.

  This floor’s mostly storage, Varlan told them with his hands. According to the worm, the labs are all three levels below this one.

  What is on the floor directly below us? Chandre signed.

  Residences for the scientists, he gestured back. Glancing at the others, he continued to sign with graceful hands. This human can get us most of the way inside. DNA and retinal scans will be required to get through the last set of doors. We’ll have to blow those, most likely, since he doesn’t have the requisite level of clearance. Either way, we should try to get there before the construct seers know we’re here. Surprise would be helpful. The noise of the blast, especially if they did not know it was coming, could create a useful diversion.