“Looks inviting,” Tiernan observed.
Lea nodded grimly.
“Any biologicals down there?” she asked.
“Not that I can detect. But our sensors aren’t working, and the plume off those reactors effectively masks body heat signatures.”
“Doesn’t sound promising, Tiernan.”
“It’s not all bad,” he said, pointing toward the tallest building. “Our target should offer us some cover, as well as the radiation—once we get close enough. If we make it that far, they’ll be as blind as we are.”
“Confidence. I like that in a man.”
“I wouldn’t bet a bottle of scotch on it, Major,” Tiernan warned, “but it’s the best we got.”
Lea nodded in agreement. She zoomed in on the direction of their approach: a stretch of open road that went about fifty meters and ended at a guard gate that used to block the entrance into town. There was no cover between, which made it a dangerous run. If they were going to get made, that would be the place.
“So who gets to go first?” the lieutenant asked.
“No guts, no glory,” Lea replied, rising to her feet but keeping her head down. “Once I’m there, give me a few minutes to make sure I’m clear. If nothing happens, send down one person at a time.”
“What if something happens?”
“Then you get the hell out of here and call in an air strike.” She flipped up her visor. “I mean it, Eric. Nobody leaves—even if that means cracking that reactor wide open. Promise me that.”
Tiernan hesitated, but only for a moment.
“I got your back,” he said, then slipped away to join the others.
Alone now, Lea stepped out into the open, scanning the horizon for any signs of movement. Dead leaves blew across the cracked pavement of the road, while a door on the guard booth swung open and shut, urged on by the same wind.
She ran.
Powered by adrenaline and instinct, she went as fast as she could. With body armor weighing her down, that wasn’t nearly fast enough. She darted from side to side to make herself a harder target, all the while searching the nearby rooftops for snipers. Meanwhile, the entry gate loomed in front of her, tantalizingly close and impossibly far.
She hit the ground just short of the guard booth.
Lea rolled the rest of the way, dragging herself into the ramshackle hut and pulling the door shut. She stayed on the floor for a time, waiting for her breath to slow. Painstakingly, she inched herself back toward the door, opening it just enough to get a look into the heart of town. The small towers stared down at her, their empty windows like black, vacuous eyes, revealing nothing within.
Minutes passed. Lea stood absolutely still. Eventually, she heard the frantic pattern of approaching footsteps. Looking back up the road, she saw Tiernan closing in. He ducked behind the other side of the booth, then shuffled over to join her.
“Glad you could make it,” Lea said.
“Hell of a spot,” the lieutenant replied, sighting his pulse rifle on the skyline. “Next time, I get to pick where we go on vacation.”
“You got yourself a deal.” She pointed down the street, which was flanked by a number of alleyways that snaked between the buildings. “We’ve got to go through there. I’m thinking two-by-two sweeps, one block at a time.”
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks.” Tiernan studied the approach as other members of the team arrived, frowning at what he saw. “Cross fire could turn this into a real meat grinder. I hope the Inru aren’t as smart as we think they are.”
“We’re about to find out.”
Everyone crowded in and around the guard booth, using the shadows to conceal their positions. Lea conveyed her plan to them using hand signals, then headed into the street with Tiernan. The two of them sprinted toward a nearby building, then inched along with their backs against the wall, staying in the shadows as much as possible. When they reached the first alley, Lea tried to use her sensors to peek around the corner, but thermal interference rendered them useless. Tiernan tapped the side of his visor and made a slashing motion across his throat, indicating that he had the same problem.
Looks like we’re doing this the old-fashioned way, Lea thought, and poked her head past the edge of the wall. When nothing jumped out at her, she leaned into the alleyway and pointed her rifle into that narrow gauntlet. Tiernan leaped to the other side and did the same. Lea’s visor cut the opaque darkness, revealing a scattered array of latent heat and random shapes—dumping bins mostly, along with other assorted junk, most of it collapsing under the weight of ancient rust. She probed the alley while Tiernan covered her, just long enough to be sure it was free of Inru jihadis and the booby traps they liked to leave behind.
Lea turned back toward Tiernan and gave him the all clear.
Tiernan did the same for the next pair, who advanced farther down the street and swept the next danger zone. The team picked up the pace as they went along, jumping from alley to alley with increased confidence. Within minutes, they reached the end of the block and found themselves staring down a clear path to their target.
The apartment building dominated the meager cityscape, a cement-gray edifice, long since leached of paint, that rose sixteen floors into the sky. Not far beyond that, the slim outline of a cooling tower gave them their first close-up glimpse of the nuclear plant. A halo of invisible light hovered there, bathing the immediate area in an infrared glow.
“Nice and peaceful,” Lea said to Tiernan as they studied their objective.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s what scares me.”
Lea grimaced. Her senses prickled as well, mostly because they had advanced so quickly. Getting this deep and finding nothing to shoot at was enough to put everyone on edge. On top of that, there were no signs that anyone had even been here lately—no tire marks, no disturbed wreckage, not a single clue that pointed to any recent activity. Either the Inru had done an incredible job covering their tracks…
Or Avalon is leading me into a trap.
“Keep it tight,” Lea said.
She took point with Tiernan again, while the others clustered together and followed closely behind. Everyone held rifles at the ready, their sights continuously searching for any potential threat. Tiernan moved ahead to check the corroded remains of an old fire truck, one of many abandoned vehicles that lined the street. Lea directed half of her people to fan out and inspect the others, while she and the rest of the team focused on the adjacent buildings. Some of them had collected intense pockets of radiation, which beat against closed doors and crumbling bricks, causing Lea’s dosimeter to jump whenever she got too close.
Up ahead, Tiernan signaled. The block was secure. Nothing stood in their way.
They marched toward the target.
A flicker of movement, more blur than substance, fluttered at the periphery of Lea’s visor. With an urgent gesture, she ordered her team to scatter across the overgrown courtyard in front of the apartment building. The commandos melted into a thicket of weeds and hedges while she and Tiernan dropped down and crawled to a position closer to the main entrance. As they took cover in the contorted shadow of a dead tree, Lea motioned for the others to wait. Tiernan, meanwhile, tightened the rifle strap around his arm, locking himself into a sniper pose.
Lea said nothing. Not until she was certain.
“There,” she whispered, pointing toward a bank of windows directly above the main entrance to the building. An afterimage of heat lingered at the edge of one of the frames, static but consistent. There was mass behind it, Lea had no doubt.
Body heat.
It assumed human shape as it moved fully into the window. The bright green outline lingered for a moment, seeming to stare back at her, though there was no outward reaction.
“Sentry,” Lea said.
“He’s got a pulse pistol,” Tiernan observed, studying the image in his rifle sight. “Hallway looks empty. I think he’s alone.”
The sentry leaned out the open window. Though it was impossi
ble to discern his facial features, he seemed to be getting tense—as if he sensed a disturbance outside.
“Clean shot,” the lieutenant said.
“Take him out.”
Tiernan pulled the trigger, releasing a silent burst of energy that singed the frosty air. The shot pierced the sentry’s head, killing his brain before his body had a chance to notice. He jumped once, as if in surprise, dropping the pistol to the grass below. He then slumped back, disappearing from view.
“Go,” Lea said.
The two of them ran toward the building. Tiernan stopped to pick up the sentry’s dropped weapon, while Lea stepped around the layers of old debris that littered the entryway. She flipped up her visor, relying on intuition to guide her, and as she neared the open doors she came to a sudden halt. Just above the floor, nestled in the dust and rubble, was a tiny cluster of sensor globes—an improvised device of some kind, since the thing was useless for video surveillance in this environment.
Tiernan slipped beside her and followed her stare.
“Surprise,” he said.
Lea nodded, taking out her integrator. She did a quick scan, and found a burst-comm link between the cluster and at least a dozen other nodes, forming a complex web of sensor beams that covered the entire first floor.
“Trip wire,” Lea said. “The whole place is rigged.”
“The Inru’s idea of a warm welcome.” As the lieutenant spoke, the other members of the team arrived. “At least we know they’re here.”
“And so are we.” Lea mapped out the other clusters, then jacked the web that linked them together. Her integrator easily mimicked the signal, which she used to reprogram the clusters and neutralize them. She waved a hand in front of a nearby globe to make sure they were all down. Pinprick lights blinked at her, but that was the extent of its menace.
“Stand back,” she told the others, and walked inside.
Lea stood there for a few moments, waiting for the flash that would tell her that she had missed something—right before some unseen trap swooped down to finish her off. When that didn’t happen, she took a few more tentative steps, her eyes drawn to an odd light fixture that hung from the ceiling above the entrance. Something about it struck Lea as wrong.
What are you hiding?
She stared at the fixture until she had walked far enough around it to see for herself. There, concealed by the frosted glass, was a particle-beam microturret—no doubt linked to the trip wire she had just bypassed. It was a crude assembly, but effective. If any one of them had set it off, the resulting bloom would have cut them all to pieces.
Lea released the breath she had been holding.
“Clear,” she whispered.
The rest of her team fanned out across the space, securing every corner and checking every door. One pair headed upstairs to take care of the sentry’s body, while Lea and Tiernan proceeded toward a nearby bank of elevators. The doors stood wide open, leading into a gloomy shaft that pierced the heart of the building—all the way into the basement, a black hole that devoured their vision as they stared down into it.
Lea listened carefully: for a voice, an echo, a hint of activity coming from the depths of the pit—something to indicate the presence of her enemy. Nobody answered. She flipped her visor down, passive infrared substituting green for black, pockmarks of static giving false impressions of movement. Still nothing.
But in the midst of that…
A low, steady rhythm infused itself into the fabric of darkness. Lea didn’t dare seize upon it, for fear it was an auditory illusion, but instead allowed it to play at the edge of her senses, where it could build without interference from her imagination. As the seconds passed, she became more certain of its existence—and she looked back up at Tiernan, whose expression told her that he felt the same thing.
Repeating, cycling, a surge and retreat.
Power.
So subtle, it flirted between reality and fantasy—and stirred a memory deep within Lea. Paris, she immediately thought: Dampness and dust. Decay and bones. Point Eiffel…
Lea stepped away from the edge of the shaft, quaking within the confines of her body armor. Her right hand dropped to the compartment where she kept her quicksilver hidden.
Avalon, what have you done?
Lea went to work with terminal purpose. She ordered two of her people to remain behind at the elevator shaft, where they attached rappelling lines and waited. “Don’t move until I give the order,” she said to them, then departed with Tiernan and the rest of her team. They followed her over to the end of the lobby where a large metal door led into an emergency stairwell. Lea reached down and tried the handle while the others hung back and trained their weapons on that rusted, pitted surface.
The screech of the hinges made Lea wince.
A sterile glow crept up the walls of the narrow space, emanating from below—polluted light in the visual spectrum, some kind of fluorescent discharge. Tiernan inserted himself first, staying close to the wall with his rifle pointed downward. Gradually, he edged over to the first step, craning his head to get a better look between the flights of stairs that led into the basement. At the same time, Lea checked the upper flights for motion and heat—anything that might indicate another sentry. Accordion folds of concrete and steel tapered into nothingness, with no signs of life other than their own.
Tiernan nodded at her and pointed down.
Lea responded in kind and slipped back into the lead. Tiernan covered her until she reached the first landing, where she stopped and covered the next member of her team to make the descent. They quickly formed a chain that led all the way down, each person an extension of the others. Lea watched her dosimeter drop to near zero the deeper her team went, while an ambient compression seemed to build from inside her head. Drunk on the sensation, she staggered for a moment, steadying herself against the railing while it passed.
Just like the catacombs…
But no—different from that. More intense. More invasive.
And reactive. Their presence here was a provocation.
We don’t have much time.
Tiernan stepped down on the landing with Lea. They waited the few moments it took for the team to secure the rest of the stairwell, then headed straight toward the bottom. There, they came across a double set of doors that had, until recently, sealed the basement off from the outside world. Now one of them stood ajar, the crack between them aglow with the pallid light Lea had seen from above. Footprints crisscrossed the dust in front of the doorway, the mud they had tracked in still fresh.
Lea eased herself over to one side of the opening, while Tiernan carefully crossed over to the other. The rest of the team took up strategic positions, spreading themselves out to maximize their field of fire. As they leveled their rifles at the point of entry, Lea leaned in close and heard the sound of voices on the other side. Tiernan picked up on it as well and plucked a stun grenade from the belt hooked to his waist.
Lea motioned for him to hold off, listening intently to the conversation. There were two voices, both of them male—and obviously strained, their irritation manifesting itself in steadily increasing volume.
“I don’t know about this,” one of them said. “There’s no way we could’ve predicted resonance levels this far beyond the normal spectrum. I think we’re losing control of the process. It’s just a matter of time before—”
“You have to be shitting me,” the other one interrupted. “How can you talk about normal? Nobody’s ever tried anything like this before. We don’t even know what to expect.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not getting paid to like it. You’re getting paid to solve the fucking problem.”
“Not near enough for this kind of job. Goddamned place gives me the creeps.”
Tech mercs, Lea thought. Inru partisans didn’t care about things like money. If these guys were just the hired help, then where the hell were the others?
Where the hell is Avalon
?
She nodded at Tiernan, who pulled the pin off his grenade. She then raised a hand and counted down on her fingers.
Three. Two. One.
Go.
Tiernan yanked the door open and tossed the grenade in. Lea heard a clatter when it hit the floor, quickly followed by a cry of “What the fu—” Then the entire basement was engulfed in a blast that seemed to bring the whole ceiling down on top of them. Within half a second, though, the force of the explosion collapsed back in on itself—leaving only a haze of white smoke that poured through the opening.
The team went in. Using visors to peer through the camouflaging mist, they charged across the entire space of the basement. Lea heard them shouting orders in frantic, furious tones, overlapping one another in a terrifying cacophony: “GET DOWN! ON THE GROUND! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!” It was a battering ram of words, as effective as any deadly force, meant to shock the enemy into submission without firing a shot.
As the smoke thinned, however, Lea discovered that none of it was necessary. Other than her team, the only bodies in the room were the two mercs she’d heard earlier. They were both on the floor, lying at awkward angles, their skins singed pink from the stun grenade. Lea knelt between them, checking for life signs.
“Clear!” Tiernan announced.
One by one, in quick succession, the others answered with the same. By then, visibility was returning to normal. Tiernan flipped his visor up and walked over to where Lea examined the two mercs.
“We got survivors?” he asked.
“Affirmative,” Lea replied. “They’re a little cooked, but otherwise okay.”
Tiernan nodded, taking in the whole scope of the basement. Computer equipment was everywhere—stacked onto racks that ran the entire length of the walls, crowded onto desks that dotted the floor throughout. Bundles of fiber snaked across the floor, connecting all the nodes via an intricate web of laserlight pulses, while virtual displays poured raw data into the air with the flow and constancy of a waterfall. The entire space thrummed with electrical insistence, the finely tuned harmonics of a live wire: all that power confined to such a small area, converging on itself in wave after wave.
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