Cora gritted her teeth. “You son of a bitch. Why would you step on that nerve?”
“I haven’t even begun,” he replied. “Do not ever forget how merciless I can be.”
“How can I? All you do is keep reminding me. You won’t even tell me why,” she lamented.
Lucius stood up. “Figure it out yourself. Once you do, we can get to the ugly business of killing each other so one of us can move on with our lives.”
Her eyes started to well up with tears. She struggled and restrained, desperate to hold them back. She didn’t want to give Lucius the pleasure. Only, when she looked up at him, there was no joy. He winced for a split second, barely enough time for her to catch it. He turned away and walked to the hostess, anxiously standing on the far end of the room. He swiped out from his Arcadia towards her and tapped buttons.
“My apologies for my temper. I will be compensating you greatly for my outburst,” he said. “Along with something for you, personally. I would appreciate your discretion.”
“Of course, Monsieur Lucius,” she replied, trying to smile even though she was visibly shaken.
He made his way for the door. “I’m sorry about your breakfast. Feel free to order another on me.”
“Lucius,” she said, stopping him in his tracks. “You can’t hide yourself from me forever.”
He turned his head, slow and threatening. “If you come after him, I will stop you. Personally.”
“These are people, Lucius,” she said, standing up from her chair. “Lives you are ruining.”
“Cancers,” he replied, his tone curt. “A small price for the health of the body.”
Cora let out a loud, exacerbated breath. Her emotions got the better of her. “Damn you! What about Dante? He was harmless. Why did you kill him? Because I escaped you? Because you were mad?”
Lucius shook his head, confused. “Dante? From the cabin? I had already done everything to him I was going to put him through. I didn’t kill him.”
Cora took a step forward, eyes on his. His lies were rarely so direct.
“I’m serious,” he pressed. “Quite honestly, I felt guilty about losing my temper and costing him an arm. I wasn’t about to murder him, least of all not in another fit of rage.”
“Well, I guess some of your men didn’t get that memo,” she replied. “He was found shortly after we escaped, shot to death.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, shaking his head. “Truly. I did not order it.”
Cora stepped over debris and drew even closer. “You have one of yours infiltrated among us already, don’t you?”
Lucius’ mouth curled to a dark smile. “Indeed, as do you. I haven’t found them yet, but I will deal with them accordingly when the time comes.”
Cora raised an eyebrow. Julian hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. More concerning was how readily Lucius admitted they had a mole. Her mind jumped to everyone in the computer room. It couldn’t have been Julian, there was over a millennia of reasons why not. Michael was his number one and bent on revenge for Dante. Gideon, Johnny and Giovanna all came from the Project Phoenix debacle. That only left Madeline and Tesla. Gideon was still hard at work on their backgrounds, but she witnessed Madeline receive her gift. Tesla was in hiding from Lucius. Unless it was a random soldier on the sub, she couldn’t imagine who it could be.
“Ah, now I see the gears in your head turning, Cora,” Lucius said with sickening glee. “Now you’re casting doubts on your own allies, giving yourself reasons to lose trust. Know that the only one you can count on is you. Like me, you will learn the 687 souls are tools. A means to an end, to put you and I in a room for a fated, final conflict.”
Cora took another step forward, only inches away from him. She looked up. He was so much taller and wider than her. “You’re wrong. They’re people, and I love them. I will do everything to protect them. I told you before, I don’t want to hate anything. Even you.”
She reached for him, a gentle touch aimed for his cheek. His arm snapped up, clutching her by the wrist with amazing speed. She struggled in his grip like iron.
“Be very careful, Cora,” he said, his eyes low. “If you keep reaching out, you may get hurt.”
With a sudden twist of his hand sideways, a crack echoed throughout the room. Cora’s eyes flared wide, long before the pain reached her brain. Lucius opened his hand and turned away for the door without a second glance. She fell to her knees as the sear of sharp pain registered. She cried out, overwhelmed by it, gasping for air. She’d broken her arm before, the feeling was not new. She was no stranger to pain, either. The shock that Lucius hurt her at all wounded more than anything else. So desperate to prove she couldn’t stop the war, he would stoop to physical violence against her to make a point?
She clutched her arm, staring at it in disbelief. As the pain receded and her regeneration got to work, she got back to her feet. Her brow furrowed. She scowled out the front window as Lucius and his men got into a limousine. Searching within her for the tether to Vincent, she spoke in a strained whisper.
“Go get him, boy.”
Outside, a blur of black feathers swooped down and touched against the rear bumper. He bounced off it as if it were a trampoline and took to the skies.
“Mademoiselle? Are you...are you alright?” the hostess asked.
Cora rolled her neck and gritted her teeth. She awaited the tell-tale pop that let her know the bone was back in place. Her regeneration took care of everything now. When it finally came, she let out a grunt, drowned by the sickening pop that filled the dining room. At first the pain subsided to a bruise, then an itch. It would be fine in a matter of moments. The waitress stood motionless, shock and horror all over her face.
“I’m fine,” Cora replied. “Good day.”
Reaching across her chest to hit the comm button on her earpiece with her good hand, she told her Arcadia to call Gideon. He answered within a few rings.
“So, how’d that go?” he asked.
“Much worse than I expected,” she said, stepping out to the street for a breath of fresh air. Her right arm dangled limp at her side as she awaited it to finish healing. “Vincent just dropped a tracker on the limo, are you getting a signal?”
“Affirmative,” he replied. “It won’t be as exact as having the tracker on him, but we can guess where he is, for the most part.”
Cora looked down the street, to the taillights of his car disappearing in the distance. “Good. Let’s get started.”
Sweep and Clear
Cora marched down the hall of Camelot, her eyes still ablaze with resentment. Giovanna walked beside her, shaking her head.
“He’s a monster, patatina,” she said. “I don’t even know why you tried.”
“I thought I could reach him,” Cora replied, her voice hollow. “He wanted to prove me wrong. So he did.”
Turning a corner, the pair stepped through a doorway into a wide expanse in the submarine. Black mats were affixed to the floor, making humped bridges to navigate the room over the mass of cables crisscrossing the floor. Doctor Tesla’s computer rig rested on a desk nearest to the door, and the tall metal box loomed behind him. On the other end of the room, a white platform sat on risers a foot off the ground, the final home for the mass of wires running about. Tesla gesticulated at two of Julian’s soldiers, frantic.
“You tell me now, or EVERYTHING IS SHIT!” he shouted.
Cora stepped to his side and faced the soldiers. “That’s how I feel all the time. What are we trying to figure out?”
Tesla motioned to the men. “I need to know our exact depth in water! Engineer do not trust me, even though I need to calibrate FUCKING MACHINE!”
“Okay, okay,” Cora said, holding her hands up. She looked at the men. “Get confirmation from Julian if you have to, but I’m leaving in five minutes and the doctor better have the information he needs.”
“Aye,” an engineer replied. He nudged the man next to him.
The second engineer sighed
and lifted his wrist. A band at his forearm, almost to the elbow, swiped out an enormous holographic screen that stretched to his palm. Cora stared at the device, impressed. She didn’t even know Arcadia made screens that large. With a few swipes, the young engineer pushed his hand in the direction of Tesla’s computer rig.
“There you go, sir,” he said with a sigh. “I better not get reamed for this.”
“If Julian says anything to you, tell him I made you do it,” Cora shrugged. “He likes hearing that.”
She rolled her shoulders and adjusted the three straps across her chest. Two attached to satchels at her hip, the katana on her back the third. Her belt had her Predator holstered, rows of clips around her waist, and a small pouch with a zipper. She wasn’t used to traveling into hostile territory with so much gear.
Giovanna walked to the platform on the far end of the room. “How does it work?”
“We’re not asking that question,” Cora replied, shaking her head. “He doesn’t have time to explain it, we wouldn’t understand it, and I don’t want to know.”
“I was only asking because you’re not wearing the tactical suit, like Madeline,” Giovanna said, motioning up and down Cora’s body. “You’re just wearing your usual panhandling attire.”
Cora sighed and pet Vincent on her shoulder. “Haven’t I been attacked enough for one day?”
“You’re two minutes out from storming a Tetriarch building...”
“So I don’t need it from you,” Cora stuck out her tongue. She pointed her thumb to Tesla. “He says Madeline doesn’t need the suit anymore, she’s just using it for the bells and whistles.”
Tesla nodded and stood behind his desk, fiddling with his holographic screens. “No longer burns. Upgrades. Still garbage machine.”
Cora feigned excitement to Giovanna and clapped her hands. “Can’t wait!” She tapped the comm button on her ear. “Control, Lucius check.”
“Limo is still at Tetriarch headquarters in Berlin,” Gideon replied. “He’s going to burn the midnight oil to avoid a PR disaster come morning.”
Cora’s brow furrowed. “Geez, what did you do?”
“Tetriarch has the Optics 4.0 software update coming for cybernetic eye implants in June,” Gideon explained, sounding proud of himself. “Unfortunately, several news outlets are trying to confirm a study released earlier today that a glitch rendered a number of users blind until the software was uninstalled. He’s in Berlin trying to quash the story.”
“You wrote the study?” Cora asked with a smirk.
“I had some help,” he laughed, his robotic voice coming from the annals of NeuralNet. “Wait a second...okay, Fox is confirming the bird is in position.”
“Go time,” Cora said, tapping the comm. She turned to Tesla as she walked for the platform. “Are you ready?”
Tesla hurried through screens, pouring over vast amounts of information as it streamed across. “Something wrong with coordinates Gideon give. Is forty feet above roof.”
“That’s not a mistake,” Cora said, taking a deep breath. She bowed her head siphoning magic from her core. The warmth radiated down her thighs, knees, then to her feet. She looked up at the doctor. “I have to reduce the chance anyone sees my entrance. Catching them by surprise is the best weapon I have.”
Giovanna stepped toward the doctor. “If anything goes sideways, can we get her back?”
Tesla didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Whole team is outfitted with tracker. But I transport, coil explode. Then I have to replace, five minutes.”
“That’s a long time without any ability to abort,” Giovanna turned around, worry etched in her beautiful face. “Are you sure about this?”
“Nope,” Cora said, stepping onto the platform. “Gonna do it anyway.” She turned her head to Vincent. “You ready, buddy?”
“Caw,” he said, uncertain.
“Ready,” Tesla announced. “I replace coil after you go. Helicopter still best evacuation.”
“Come back, patatina,” Giovanna said.
Cora nodded and held up her hand, staring at her palm. Sparkling orange dust swirled from thin air, gathering in her grip. It grew in intensity and size until she held a baseball-sized orb. She squeezed it tight and locked eyes with Tesla.
“Hit me.”
A flash of white light momentarily blinded her. Wind screamed in her ears. Her stomach tried to differentiate between the upheaval of nausea and her freefall. Vincent vanished from her shoulder. Cora blinked repeatedly, trying to rid the flashing blobs from her eyes. She was on course, falling for the ground. She would land a few feet from the edge of the building, where two corners met and pointed north. The ground came up on her fast. She braced herself for it. Her biker boots smashed to the cement and gravel without a sound, the force driving her to a knee. Her magic held.
She looked to her left. A metal platform four feet high stretched from the north corner of the building. Atop the platform, a slow, rotating turret looked for nearby threats in the sky. She was partially hidden by the massive enclosure for the SAM launcher beside her. The whir of its internal motors filled her ears. Over the din, she heard a man’s voice.
“I think I saw something fall over there,” he said in an American accent.
Her hand still clutching the Stunbomb, its faint glow would be visible long before she was. With her free hand, she pulled the first satchel from across her chest. Tossing it to the corner of the building, where the metal platform met the roof, half the work to get Johnny in was finished. She closed her eyes and envisioned the diagrams and models, and with it every piece of cover available to her. Footsteps drew close.
“I see a light,” the soldier said. “Cover me.”
Cora put her Stunbomb behind her back and took cover at the edge of the metal base. With the soldier two steps from her position, Cora tossed the Stunbomb high into the air, blind, aiming for the center of the roof. She spun out from cover, under the soldier’s rifle. She reached up and grabbed hold of the barrel. He gasped.
“What the-”
Standing erect, she pushed the rifle skyward while she slid her Predator from its holster. Pressing the barrel at the center of his stomach, she needed only one pull of the trigger at this range. Body armor or no, the magnetically propelled bullet tore through fabric and muscle alike. Behind him, the Stunbomb shattered. Men flew through the air. Cora was already in motion, leaving the soldier where he’d fall. Six seconds was all she had before the men struck by the magical shockwave recovered. Soldiers on the south end weren’t affected at all, and responded to the commotion by taking aim for her.
In a sprint, Cora raced to the center of the rooftop, dropping into a baseball slide to get a moment of cover behind an air conditioning unit the size of a refrigerator. Magic pulsed in her again as she envisioned her legs like springs. Using the momentum from her slide, she pumped her arms and bounded from the ground. The burst of magic exploded from her legs. She sailed into the air ten, then twenty feet. Below her, soldiers sprawled out on the ground, struggling to get their wits about them. Her legs kicked as though she ran on air, landing mere feet from five soldiers awaiting her arrival. A ball of light streaked toward them from behind.
Before Cora’s feet could touch the ground, Vincent swooped down and dropped a second Stunbomb from his talons. It shattered behind the men, tossing them in her direction. She heard a pop as she landed and prayed it wasn’t her ankle. Adrenaline pumped like a chill through her veins. Her heart pounded. Without missing a beat, she broke into a run, hurdling over the fallen and dazed Bauer soldiers in a final run to the southern SAM launcher. She yanked off the satchel from her chest and froze. Her fist clutched the bag, soaked red with blood. She looked down. Her Frampton shirt had a hole just above her breast. The black fabric glistened with a hidden pool of blood.
“Oh,” she said. “Is that all?”
Dizziness took hold of her brain. She didn’t have time for this. Looking up, the platform was steps away. Behind her, the first gro
up were getting to their feet. She took a step. The world spun. Pushing herself, she lurched forward and demanded her legs keep going. She reached the corner, where the platform met the roof. The safety railing struck her in the stomach. She let her hand go limp, dropping the bag beside her.
Her brilliant plan was to make it back to the center and detonate the satchel bombs from the safety of cover. Judging by where she saw the wound, that was no longer an option. There was a good chance she was hit in a main artery for her heart. At the very least, her lung was punctured. Turning herself around was a struggle. There was no way she’d make it back to the AC unit. She needed to get cover immediately and let her regeneration kick in before she fainted.
Breaths turned to wet gasps. Ahead, four Bauer soldiers got to their feet at the center of the rooftop. Three more lolled their heads in front of her, trying to get their senses back. With only seconds left that she could remain on her feet before the dizziness turned to loss of consciousness, she dove for the nearest sprawled soldier. Grabbing him under both shoulders, she pulled the soldier to a seated position, resting his back against her chest. The exertion made her cough crimson into her mouth. She spit it out and double-tapped the comm button on her earpiece, locking the channel open.
“Johnny,” she struggled to make the words. “You are go...hit hard...need time to heal...southwest corner.”
Ahead, soldiers took aim, shouting orders at her and each other. In her confusion, she couldn’t make out anything they said. All she could think was what a bad idea she was about to put forth. Using her held guard as cover, she rested her arm over his shoulder and fired off rounds from her Predator at the men ahead. They dove for cover, careful to avoid returning fire and hitting their comrade. Taking them out of the way for the precious seconds she needed, she swiveled and faced her soldier toward the SAM platform. Holstering the Predator, she swiped out the screen on her Arcadia, the detonator app already waiting for her.
The Pendragon Codex Page 17