2xs

by Nigel Findley

  There was nothing diminished about the impact as the bullet hit me on the left side of my chest. My armored duster stopped the round, spread its kinetic energy over a wider area, but it was still like taking a wild pitch in the ribs. I was sure I felt a rib crack, or maybe two, and the pain was like a knife in my side.

  All my muscles down that side seemed to convulse in reaction, jerking me further around and taking my gun offline. It was all I could do not to cry out from the agony.

  Before that gun could blaze a second time, I saw Hawk bring his AK-98 to his shoulder, trigger off three single rounds. I heard a cry from the other end of the room, and the big weapon sent a shot into the ceiling as the figure pitched backward. The two chipped samurai flashed forward, and I followed as fast as I could ... pulling up short the moment I was near enough to get a good look at the first prone figure.

  Long, slender limbs, blonde hair. Face peaceful in what looked to be sleep. It was Theresa.

  Chapter 27.

  Hawk and Rodney knelt by the motionless body of my sister, conversing in quiet tones. I stood behind them, concentrating all my willpower on not hopping from foot to foot in impatience. Jocasta had her hand on my shoulder, probably in an attempt to calm me. Though I appreciated her solicitude, I didn't want to be calm just then. It was my sister, frag it. The others were fanned out around the room prepared for any other unpleasant surprises- expecting them, in fact: the two gunshots from the other end of the room hadn't been silenced. Scott Keith kept glancing my way, but didn't come over to say anything, for which I was thankful. He was probably still wondering what he'd gotten himself into.

  After what seemed like an hour but was probably only a few minutes, Hawk looked up. His handsome face was troubled. "What?" I demanded.

  "She's comatose," the Amerindian said. "Probably has been for more than twenty-four hours. And there's something else." He held up something that looked like a sickly yellow umbilical cord.

  That was the first mental impression I got, and I only realized how appropriate it was when Rodney carefully rolled Theresa over onto her back. She was wearing shorts and a singlet, and that disgusting cord vanished up under her top. The elf pulled up her singlet to bare Theresa's stomach, and I could see the thing spread out into a grotesque parody of a placenta, which was somehow attached to her skin. The flesh around the fist-sized attachment was reddened, and I thought I could see blood vessels, an abnormal concentration of them, under the skin. I tracked the yellow cord with my eyes, realized that it merged with the soft material of the wall. Slowly I reached out to touch it, drew back my finger at the last moment.

  Nausea churned in my belly, and bile rose in my throat. I wanted to turn away, but forced myself to keep looking. "What...?" was as far as I got before my voice gave out.

  It was Rodney who answered. "I'm not exactly sure," he said quietly. "The connection"-he indicated the umbilical-"is active, but I can only guess what it might be doing."

  "Guess, then," I said sully. "It's feeding her," Hawk replied. "Keeping her alive."

  "There's more," Rodney said, though he seemed reluctant. "Something is very wrong with her aura. I don't really know..."

  Hawk's powerful voice overrode him. "There are other presences in her aura," the shaman said. "As though other elements have been incorporated into it."

  "Elements?"! asked. "What elements?"

  "They have auras in their own right," Hawk said. I could see, despite his monolithic control, that he was disturbed. No fragging joke. "Auras of astral creatures. Like she is the host to astral parasites." He trailed off.

  "There's more," I snapped. "Tell me."

  "The auras are like ... I've assensed them before."

  "Like what?"

  "Like those." Hawk pointed at the shattered bodies of our monstrous assailants.

  "You know what they are?" In answer to my question, he nodded slowly, unwillingly. "What the frag are they?"

  He hesitated, then seemed to make a decision. "Insect spirits," he said quietly. "I thought they were of the Wasp totem, but this"- he indicated the umbilical- "changes things. Another form of Wasp, maybe." He shrugged his shoulders.

  Too much, too fast. I wanted to withdraw, tell the world "time out." I felt myself begin to sag. This mental shock, so soon after the physical shocks of Dempsey's attack and the bullet in the ribs, made me want to curl up and forget everything. But then I heard Rodney's voice softly chanting something in Latin. I glanced over at him, saw his eyes steady on me, and I felt relief flood through my body. My mind cleared, and I felt as rested and ready for action as if I'd just slept for eight hours. Even the massive bruising and the putative broken ribs on my left side didn't hurt as much. The elf smiled faintly and stopped his chanting, looked back at my sister.

  I took a deep breath. The fear and the tension were still there, but I felt able to cope with them now.

  "So," I said, "astral parasites. What can you do about them?"

  "Nothing here," Hawk replied at once. "I believe it might be possible to do something, under the right circumstances. The first problem is to free her . . ."

  "Without harming her," Rodney added, "or killing her."

  I looked at the umbilical cord, nodded, and averted my eyes. The sight still sickened me. "Okay," I told them, "do what you can."

  When nothing else had jumped, out and tried to eat us or gun us down, the others had spread out even further around the large chamber. Toshi was just returning from the far end, carrying something. It seemed virtually weightless, judging by how little it slowed down the samurai's movements, but I recognized it as a body even before the elf dumped it unceremoniously at my feet. "Know him?" he asked.

  I was about to make a smart-mouth answer, but froze. I did know him: not personally, but from a picture in a computer file. It was David Sutcliife. "Old home week," I muttered.

  Toshi fixed me with a sharp stare, waited for me to enlighten him further. When I didn't, he shrugged and turned away. "Big double doors at the end down there," he told Argent. "Where now?"

  Argent came over to join me, pitched his voice for my ears alone. "Where to, Mr. Johnson?" he said, but I heard no sarcasm. "She's the target, right?" I knew what he was really saying. Our deal had been for a lift-out, the rescue of my sister. Anything beyond that was beyond the scope of our contract, and Argent had the right to pull his team out-bringing us out with them if we so wished-if he felt it was too heavy. That was something I had to know to make sensible decisions from here on in, and I appreciated his keeping it confidential. Jocasta and Rodney weren't a problem, but it was something I'd rather not have Scott Keith hear.

  I nodded my thanks. It wasn't a tough choice: I had what I wanted. "How's it going?" I asked Hawk.

  He and Rodney were doing something inexplicable with a couple of fetishes. The shaman's big killing knife was out, and in the ruddy light its blade looked to be already wet with blood, but I forced that from my mind.

  "It's going," he said without looking up. "Couple minutes."

  I nodded again. I raised my voice a little and said, "We're pulling out when Hawk's done. Call it in, Argent." The big samurai nodded, started whispering into his wrist phone.

  As I'd expected, Scott Keith was in my face in a moment. "What the frag's this, pulling out?" he demanded. Like many people I've known, he was covering up his own fear with anger. "You haven't got the dirt yet."

  I made a gesture, encompassing the soft-walled chamber. "Then what's this?" I asked quietly. I pointed to the dead creatures. "What are those?" I indicated Theresa. "Or that? Why don't you take some pictures, and get the hell out with your life, you drekhead? Or stay if you want, it doesn't matter to me." I pointed at Theresa again. "Looks like there's a vacancy opening up." And then I turned away from him, leaving him sputtering and blustering.

  Hawk and Rodney were just finishing with Theresa, Jocasta-ever the scientist-was watching over their shoulders. Hawk was using his big knife, but as delicately as a scalpel. The umbilical cord came away f
rom my sister's belly in a spray of blood and liquid that wasn't blood. Rodney pressed a slap patch into place over the raw flesh that had been exposed, while the shaman touched the end of the umbilical, which instantly burst into flame and shriveled. Theresa stirred and moaned- a heart-rending sound-but didn't awaken.

  The big Amerindian picked her up, and she looked like a child in his arms. "What about the others?" he asked me.

  I looked around the room. There were another eleven figures, presumably in the same state as my sister. Could we just leave them here, to whatever god-awful fate to which all this was a prelude? If not, what else could we do? There were enough people, if you included the DED troopers, to carry them all, but that meant all but one of us would be loaded down with a body if we had to fight our way out. There was more to it than that. I checked my watch: it had taken Hawk and Rodney almost ten minutes of intense work to free Theresa from the umbilical. Assume they'd get better with practice, so call it an average of eight minutes. That meant it would take one and a half hours to free them all. I couldn't believe that we'd be left to our own devices for even a quarter that long.

  I glanced at Jocasta. Her eyes were on my face, and I knew that she knew what I was going through.

  Hawk, too: his dark eyes were full of empathy. I wanted someone else to tell me what to do-to tell me the right thing to do-but this was my call.

  The choice was between saving Theresa and ourselves by bailing now or possibly killing everyone by staying around. Put that way, it was clear that I could make only one decision-still not easy, but clear.

  Sometimes you've got to grab the little victories when you can. "We move out," I said aloud.

  Scott Keith was about to say something, but I just flipped him the finger. The DED officer reached for his sidearm, but a targeting laser from Toshi's H&K, centered on that fat man's nose, dissuaded him from making an issue of it. Toshi didn't seem to like me much, but he liked Keith a lot less, and was obviously itching for an excuse to geek him. That seemed like sufficient insurance to me. I turned my back on Keith.

  Hawk passed Theresa's unconscious body to Argent. The big samurai slung her over his shoulder, but seemed unaffected by the additional weight. "Out the way we came," the leader of the Wrecking Crew said.

  I turned, cast one last, long look around the chamber. Eleven comatose figures, each one quite probably host to astral parasites. And I was leaving them here. I knew I'd be seeing a lot of this place in my dreams.

  And that was when the screaming and the shooting started. I spun.

  Three of the hulking monstrosities-"insect spirits," Hawk called them-were suddenly among the DED troopers. There'd been no warning. The creatures seemed to appear out of thin air just as they had in the Capitol Hill apartment. The troopers were fast and well-trained, I'll give them that. They spun, rolled aside, sprayed bullets into the twisted figures. But the attackers were even faster. DED troopers became dead troopers. I saw a monster lash out with its clawed arm, tear the spine from an armored trooper, then break the back of another with a back-swing. One of the things seemed to explode under the concentrated fire of a half-dozen SMGs, but the other two seemed little damaged. The troopers were trying to withdraw, to put some safe distance between themselves and those rending claws. If they could extend, they could pump fire into the things with no risk to themselves. But the monsters wouldn't let them extend. They kept pressing forward, moving with inhuman speed, seeming not to feel the dozens of rounds slamming into their bodies. I had my Roomsweeper up, and was looking for a chance to use it. But the things were too closely engaged with the troopers for me to risk a shotgun blast into the melee. The troopers might be working with Scott Keith, but that wasn't-quite-enough reason to waste them.

  Toshi and Argent didn't have the same problem. Their smartguns pumped short, precise bursts of fire into the creatures whenever an opening presented itself. A second monster collapsed in a heap, its head literally blown to pieces. The odds didn't look good. Three troopers were down-most definitely dead-while a fourth stared, screaming, at the mangled ruin of her left arm. That mean one fully effective trooper left, plus Keith-count him as one-half-plus my team.

  The remaining trooper backed off fast, still pumping shots into the creature. Then his MP-5 clicked empty. He ejected the empty magazine, slammed another into place. In that second, the monster leaped. It reached out with both hands, grabbed the trooper's head, lifted him clear of the ground. The man's agonized scream broke off in mid-ululation as his skull ruptured.

  The under-barrel mount of Hawk's AK-98 spat flame. A mini-grenade slammed through the exoskeleton of the creature's chest, detonated an instant later. The monster's torso literally exploded, spraying black fluids and tissue for meters in all directions. Fragments of natural armor lacerated the final, dying trooper, and she collapsed. The air reeked of cordite, blood, and more disgusting odors. "More of them!" Rodney screamed, pointing at the door through which we'd entered the chamber. The knee-level lighting in the ramp chamber cast hideously distorted shadows onto the ceiling and into the room. Despite the angular distortion, I knew what they were: more of the insect spirits-or whatever-at least four of them.

  I turned, looked at the big double doors at the far end of the room. We were down to the Wrecking Crew, Jocasta, Rodney, and me, plus Scott Keith. Against four more of the things? We didn't have a chance. I pointed at the doors, yelled, "This way!"

  Argent, still carrying Theresa, was by my side before I even saw him move. "We're being herded," he hissed. The same thought had occurred to me. If the things only wanted us dead, why hadn't they simply materialized or manifested or whatever among us the way the first three had?

  "We don't have much choice, do we?" I said. Argent shook his head.

  We moved. The things were advancing much slower than they might have, adding to the impression we were being forced along this path. Hawk and Argent did what they could to slow them down some more by laying grenades in the doorway to set up a curtain of fire and fragments.

  Toshi led the way to the other end of the room. The double doors were huge, taking up half the width of the room and extending almost to the ceiling. The doors themselves were made of metal, apparently designed to slide back at the touch of a button mounted on the wall nearby. I wondered just what the hell these massive doors were built to accommodate . . .

  Hawk and Argent's rear-guard action was having some effect but not enough. The first two of the creatures were already into the room, advancing slowly toward us. The two shadowrunners were pounding fire into them, but the monsters weren't ready to drop yet. The two men backed rapidly toward us, still firing. "What's in there?" I asked Rodney. He shook his head uneasily. "There's a major astral barrier," he said, "and the background count is enormous. I can't see a thing beyond this door."

  "Do it, Toshi," Argent barked. I didn't like this at all, but we had absolutely no choice in the matter. I clutched the grip of my Roomsweeper tighter.

  Toshi punched the button on the wall. The big double doors started to open with a hiss. While Argent covered our backs, Toshi and Hawk spun into the opening, darted through it. "Clear," the elf samurai snapped a moment later.

  "Go," Argent ordered.

  We didn't need a second invitation. Rodney, Jocasta, and I slipped through the still-opening doors.

  Scott Keith was close behind us. His presence was an unpleasant distraction, but there wasn't anything I could do about it at the moment.

  We were in some kind of hall, actually more like a tunnel. As I picked up the details, my fear and disgust grew within me. The tunnel was oval in shape, about eight meters wide and half that high. It continued ahead of us for maybe ten meters, then turned to the left, masking from view whatever lay beyond. The inner surface gave under my feet, giving me the disturbing impression that I was walking on flesh. In color it was the same sickly yellow as the umbilical cord that had been attached to Theresa. In fact, in my imagination it was almost as if we'd somehow been reduced to the size of mo
squitos and were inside that umbilical. My stomach churned, and I wanted to puke. Thankfully, the image passed, as did the nausea, but the fear still remained.

  Toshi had found another button, a duplicate of the first, set into the soft wall beside the door. "Argent," he called.

  The steel-armed samurai triggered final bursts from both Ingrams, then ducked through the door. Toshi hit the button, and the doors hissed shut again. As soon as they'd closed, Toshi fired a short burst into the panel where the button was mounted. Sparks flew as the electronics shorted out.

  From the other side of the doors, I heard a harsh shriek of anger. Had one of those creatures tried the button, found the system was disabled? How intelligent were those things? Something heavy slammed into the metal doors.

  "Hawk, can you seal them?" Argent said.

  The shaman stepped forward, examined the doors. He set his assault rifle down at his feet, then pulled one of the many fetishes from his belt. Clutching the bone-and- feather item between his clenched fists, he began to sing quietly under his breath. The melody, what there was of it, seemed to tell of wilderness and solitude. As I watched in fascination, the shaman's face changed its appearance. His already aquiline nose extended, hooking further down until it resembled a beak. His eyes grew larger, became more piercing, and his skin took on the color and texture of golden feathers. For an instant, I realized, I was looking at the face of Eagle. The line where the two halves of the door met was limned in faint electric-blue light, and I smelt the tang of ozone in the air.

  When I glanced back at Hawk, his song was complete and his face had returned to normal. It was as if the transition had been only in my imagination. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and bent over to retrieve his weapon.

  "Hawk!" Rodney yelled.

  Chapter 28.

  The big shaman looked up, threw himself backward. An instant too late. The insect spirit that had shimmered into existence above his head lashed out with a clawed arm, tearing through the shoulder and chest of Hawk's body armor. Blood sprayed, and Hawk gasped with pain. The thing landed lightly, poised itself to spring on the wounded shaman. I raised my Roomsweeper, but Hawk was between me and the monster. Targeting lasers flashed over Hawk's back as the others sought a clear line of fire. The thing lunged.