“We move,” Alexei said.
“I disabled five suicide bombers,” Sean said from behind him.
Alexei glanced back at him at the same exact time something arced through the air from the lower level. Annabelle swore and used her power to push the grenade higher, but she couldn’t block the blast. Alexei redirected the fire even as they dove for cover around the corner. He had the surreal sensation of falling through Sean as they got clear of the shrapnel cutting into the wall and flooring of the stairwell. Looking up at Sean with the other man’s legs sticking out of his torso was just fucking weird.
“We should go,” Sean said as he stepped out of Alexei’s body.
“You think?” Alexei snapped.
“I need to clear more people.”
You got about six more suicide bombers on your floor alone. They’re all running for the main entrance, so get a move on, Katie ordered into their minds.
“You heard Viper,” Annabelle said. “Wraith, go do your thing.”
Jamie cut over her order, his words echoing in Alexei’s mind. Alpha Team, switch to comms. Call in.
“Am with Icarus and Wraith. He’s off comms. Have disarmed five suicide bombers,” Alexei replied.
Alexei took point, half his attention on their comms even as he ignored the people who screamed at them because of the weapons they carried. Annabelle watched their six, but so far no one was coming up the stairs they’d blocked with charred bodies. They cleared the long gallery and pushed into the smaller one after it. Art displays were a blur of color behind energy shields as they ran by, catching up to stragglers in the crowd.
Sean pulled ahead as they reached the other side of the small gallery, locked on to the crowd shoving their way into the next one. He ducked his head and walked through someone like a ghost, making them shriek. Since he was the only one of them not wearing nanotech strips, Alexei hoped Katie could scramble enough memories to make people forget their faces.
Seconds later, feet thundering on the stairs just ahead made Alexei and Annabelle pull up short. A half a dozen men in evening clothes raced up the stairway to their left with assault rifles in hand. They didn’t look like they belonged to the Reborn IRA group who’d come up through the tunnel, which meant they could’ve been trying to protect themselves if Alexei didn’t recognize the man at the head of the group.
Sean plunged back into view right about then and skidded to a halt as he caught sight of the group. Tomas snapped his head around in Sean’s direction, an ugly snarl twisting across his face. “Ye fuckin’ bastard.”
Alexei didn’t hesitate and got a shot off, but not before Tomas managed to get his own off.
Alexei’s bullet went through Tomas’ unprotected skull.
Tomas’ bullet passed harmlessly through Sean, slamming into someone behind him judging by the pained scream.
Annabelle ripped the weapons out of their hands with her anti-gravity power, sending them floating out of reach like the last batch. One or two gaped at Sean in disbelief while the others desperately tried to get out of the line of fire as Alexei switched his assault rifle over to burst mode and took them out to keep Sean’s cover intact.
Sean didn’t seem all that affected by the carnage Alexei and Annabelle were leaving behind them, more worried about the job at hand. He gestured at the crowd of people practically trampling each other in their search for safety behind him.
“Viper can guide me to the targets, but I need to get moving. Take the stairs and get down to the first floor. Someone’s got to get control of the tunnel entrance.”
Alexei waved him off as he and Annabelle stepped over dead bodies. “Go.”
Sean disappeared. Alexei didn’t like leaving him behind, but since the agent could phase, he’d be safe from pretty much every attack the enemy could throw at him. Alexei knew they were running out of time. Katie could only stretch her telepathy so much, and at some point, something had to give.
He and Annabelle were halfway down the stairs, keeping their backs to the wall as they covered each other’s six with their weapons, when they heard the teeth-shivering sirens wail a warning into the night.
The pair shared a grim look before pushing forward, into the fray.
Jamie reflexively ducked at the sound of the bomb going off behind him. They were far enough away from the blast, with layers of bodies between them, that neither he nor Tariq and Samaira were affected in any way.
The same could not be said of the people surrounding the entrance.
The suicide bomber who detonated the Splice chemical bomb, subsequently blowing themselves up, did so at the entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The explosion of Splice and blood and ravaged bits of human flesh tore through the surrounding bodies with deadly force. Those in the initial blast zone were ripped apart by the explosive aspect of the bomb, losing limbs and life in the process. The rest might be considered lucky if Splice hadn’t rained down on them like a plague.
When people realized what had happened, nothing on earth could stop the screaming.
“Viper!” Jamie called out over comms.
Jansen is still unconscious, Katie reported, her mental voice wavering loud and soft through his mind. Whoever detonated made the decision to do so on their own. Whatever the Pavluhkins have on them must’ve been too terrible to risk it getting out.
“How many are left?”
At least fifteen. Wraith is handling the last two up here. The rest are on the first level or outside.
“Shut them down, Viper,” Liam said harshly over the comms. “Any which way you can.”
I can do a hard strike and hit them all at once, but they might not survive it. They’re all human. The other option is I deal with them one by one and they live to see prosecution.
“We don’t have time to deal with them one at a time. Go for the hard strike.”
This was them playing judge, jury, and executioner, and while it might not be fair, nothing in war ever was.
Movement out the corner of his eye had Jamie shifting position and opening fire on the cluster of Reborn IRA fighters who scrambled for cover across the way in the adjacent gallery. Jamie knew he was running low on ammo and would need to reload soon. Tariq touched his shoulder and jerked his head in the enemy’s direction.
“I’ll handle them,” Tariq said.
Jamie swapped positions with him and shifted around to face the decimated crowd in the grand entrance. Bodies lay on the floor around the pair of doors leading outside while those lucky enough to be alive wandered in a daze, a good amount of them splattered with Splice. Jamie knew the chemical could no longer harm him or his team, but he still felt a minor surge of panic at knowing it was present in the people around them.
People who would soon be dying.
Jamie caught sight of a familiar figure running down the side hallway, not bothering to gain cover every few feet. Trevor didn’t really need to when he could wrap himself in a telekinetic shield.
“Don’t bother with the wounded,” Jamie told him.
Trevor grimaced at that order but nodded his assurances. It was a harsh order to give, but considering almost everyone in the grand entrance and some of those outside were contaminated with Splice, saving them wouldn’t matter. If their wounds didn’t kill them, the chemical would. This was a fight, but it wasn’t technically a warzone. Jamie doubted a mercy killing would be appreciated by the public, even if that’s exactly what it would be.
A mercy.
Trevor picked his way through the wounded and dying on the periphery of the grand entrance. Jamie knew when he’d erected his telekinetic shields by the way people went from shocked to frantic when they realized they couldn’t leave the area. A flutter of fabric caught Jamie’s eye and he watched as a woman in a voluminous ball gown suddenly crumpled to the ground. He thought maybe it had all become too much for her, or Splice was working exceptionally quick on her, but then Katie touched his mind, her telepathic voice sounding tired.
Suicide bombers are
no longer a problem. Still got hostiles in the museum.
“Let’s start clearing them out,” Jamie said as he reloaded.
A chorus of affirmative responses echoed over the comms. Jamie mentally tagged everyone with relief, but he came up one short.
Wraith?
Here. I’m making my way to Viper’s position, Sean said through a mental link.
“Wraith is clear,” Jamie announced for the team at large. “I’m heading toward the underground entrance.”
“Inferno and I will meet you there,” Annabelle said.
“I’ll cover you,” Samaira said as she braced her own assault rifle against her shoulders.
Tariq stayed behind to cover the area outside of Trevor’s shield in the grand entrance while they advanced toward the Exhibition Road entrance. The once-white marble statues had scorch marks on their surfaces from the fire, their shields having failed, and the floor was slippery from the water Samaira had created earlier. Jamie wished his dress shoes had more grip as they moved through the sculpture gallery in quick bursts of movement, using some of the larger statues for cover.
Annabelle and Alexei joined them as they approached the stairs leading down to the tunnel that connected the museum to the South Kensington Station beneath the Exhibition Road. Annabelle held up a stun grenade for Jamie to see and jerked her head at the stairs.
“Want me to clear the way?” she asked.
“By all means,” Jamie said.
Annabelle primed the device before stealthily creeping down the stairs far enough to lob it over the side and onto the lower landing. Then she hustled back to where they waited as, seconds later, the stun grenade went off. With the floor and walls between them and its debilitating sensory attack, they were fine. The Reborn IRA tasked with holding the tunnel entrance weren’t so lucky.
Their screams echoed in the stairwell as the stun grenade let loose a burst of light so bright that, even with his eyes closed, Jamie could still see it. The noise of its eruption was slightly muffled through the flooring, but it still made Jamie’s ears ring a little. Blinking rapidly, he took point on the way down, with Alexei right beside him, the two of them sighting down their weapons and clearing the way. Jamie kept his finger on the trigger, doing wide sweeps as they descended.
There weren’t many Reborn IRA left below. Faced with a resistance they weren’t prepared for, most had fled down the tunnel, either out through the entrance near Hyde Park or into the crush of people in the Underground. Jamie wasn’t happy about that, but the less amount of enemies they had to face without proper field gear meant a lower chance of getting hurt. Alpha Team was hobbled by needing cover for protection more than the other side.
Drawn down into the brightly lit underground area, Jamie and Alexei held position at the bottom of the stairs and picked off their targets. With each person they took out, they advanced, taking back the area in increments until they were faced with a long hallway. At the end, one of the metal security doors leading to the tunnel beneath Exhibition Road was propped open, with only one man guarding it.
He opened fire, keeping them pinned where they were at the other end of the hall. When a lull happened, Alexei swiftly checked the threat before moving around the corner and down the tunnel. When the Reborn IRA guard popped back into view, Alexei took him out with ruthless efficiency. The body dropped to the ground and Alexei listened intently for any hint of sound as he advanced. Jamie was halfway to his position when Alexei chanced a look into the tunnel proper.
“Think maybe running to Underground,” he reported, sounding annoyed about that. “Can go after?”
“Knight, you got police at South Kensington?” Jamie asked, holding up a hand to Alexei, silently asking him to wait.
“The Met Police have it covered now. Hold your position in case they double back,” Liam responded.
Jamie signaled Alexei to stay put. “Confirmed. We’ll hold the tunnel.”
“Copy that.”
I’ll start scrambling memories, Katie said.
“We’ll guard the Exhibition Road entrance,” Annabelle said.
Jamie nodded. “Copy that.”
Annabelle and Samaira headed back upstairs to keep watch on the street level while Jamie and Alexei found what cover they could along the wall inside the entrance, which wasn’t much.
Alpha Team and the other UMG agents would do their best to keep whoever might survive safe and comfortable until the danger had passed. When all was said and done, their covers would remain intact.
The dead couldn’t speak, after all.
Kyle raced down Exhibition Road, the path he needed to take seared into his mind. He was glad for the long walk he’d done the other day. It made orienting himself easier, even at night.
Police and UMG agents swarmed the area outside of the museum. Police sirens whooped through the air as more people arrived to help with containment. Someone pointed and shouted at Kyle to stop, but he just kept running. He hit the intersection at Cromwell Road and sprinted across, breathing hard. The UMG, with the help of the police, had discreetly cleared several blocks around the museum, which meant he didn’t have to deal with vehicle traffic.
Rather than stay on the street, Kyle veered right, careening down the stairs of an Underground entrance to the tunnel that would take him to South Kensington Station. He wasn’t sure if it would put him ahead or behind Pavluhkin, but either way, he’d be on a more direct path to his target.
He came out in the underground tunnel with its brickwork walls and holographic adverts racing the length of long screens. Kyle caught his breath as he checked the tunnel in both directions and found it eerily empty. The only way to go was forward, so Kyle ran in the direction of the South Kensington Station.
His footsteps echoed in the tunnel, no matter how quiet he tried to be. Dress shoes weren’t meant for field work, and he couldn’t hide his approach. At every curve in the tunnel, Kyle waited just long enough to be sure the coast was clear before running again. Kyle wasn’t sure if the lack of people was due to the UMG or whichever camp laid claim to the Reborn IRA fighters currently shooting up history in the form of art.
The tunnel took a sharp curve to the right and Kyle checked for clearance before racing around it. The food stand at the end of the short section of tunnel had all its lights on, but no one manned the counter. Kyle would’ve passed it on by if not for the multiple bodies stacked up against a food case. He skidded to a hard halt before the next corner, staying out of sight. He swore under his breath as he took in the black and white uniforms of Metropolitan police officers. A thick pool of blood was forming underneath them and Kyle didn’t bother checking for a pulse on any of them.
The Reborn IRA had clearly gotten the upper hand, he just didn’t know how.
The noise of a crowd well beyond the tunnel echoed down to where Kyle stood. He could hear several people angrily asking why they couldn’t enter the tunnel, which told him someone was standing guard. Whoever they were, Kyle doubted they were legitimate officers. Kyle flexed his fingers around the grip of his handgun. Slipping around the corner, he quickly ran toward the bright lights of the station pouring through the tunnel exit. He took the stairs near the entrance two at time to the final landing right as one of the people arguing with a fake cop on duty pointed in his direction.
“What about that bloke? Why did he get to go down and we can’t?”
The man masquerading as a cop turned, but he was too slow. Kyle lashed out with his foot and caught him in the back of the knee with a hard kick. The man shouted in pain as he stumbled, unable to recover quickly enough to counter Kyle’s next attack. Kyle wrapped an arm around his throat in a chokehold and twisted him around, using his body as cover. Kyle put his back to the wall and brought up his gun, taking aim and firing at the pair of cops on the other side of the tunnel entrance who were already pulling out hidden guns.
The cops initially assigned to guard the tunnel hadn’t been armed police. The fact that these were just proved they were
imposters.
The sound of the gun going off prompted everyone in the vicinity to scream and run.
Kyle slammed the butt of his handgun against the temple of the guy weakly thrashing in his arms to knock him out. Dropping him on the floor, Kyle ran through the panicked crowd and what space the threat of his gun allotted him, making it to a railing that overlooked the ticketing area and the gates to the Underground. He scanned the crowd with a sniper’s eye, knowing he couldn’t have been that far behind, just needing a glimpse of his target, but coming up empty.
Spinning around, he raked his eyes over the crowd around him, Kyle caught a flash of blonde hair and the profile of a face he recognized from seeing it through his scope in Los Angeles. No hat this time, but that was definitely Oksana with Stanislav by her side, racing up the stairs to the food hall that linked to the street.
“Motherfucker,” Kyle snarled.
He got about five steps in their direction before the sound of fire erupting in the air had him diving for the ground, taking the people in front of him down with him. Twin pillars of fire burned through the air and the people unlucky enough to be in its way. The smell of cooked meat hit Kyle’s nose and he gagged as he pushed himself to his knees, gun in hand.
The metahuman had arrived the same way he had, from the tunnel linking the station to the museums. Dressed in military gear rather than evening wear, Kyle pegged him as a Reborn IRA member, though which faction, he didn’t know and couldn’t care. Sweat beaded on his forehead as the fire twisted through the air in unnatural ways. Knowing he only had seconds to respond, Kyle sighted down his gun, aiming for the metahuman’s face over his well-protected body. A headshot was always more difficult to achieve, but Kyle had been doing this for a decade.
The fire cut out at the same instant Kyle’s bullet found its target, a red mist erupting from the man’s head as the body fell to the ground. Kyle blinked sweat out of his eyes as he scrambled to his feet, making a run for the exit he’d seen Oksana use, shoving past people standing around in shock at what just happened.
In the Ruins (Metahuman Files Book 2) Page 29