Legacy

by A D Starrling

  ‘That bitch!’ Scoleri glared at the security feeds from the cave on Level Three. The computers monitoring the status of the experimental subjects showed their tanks going offline one after the other. ‘Is she disabling the pods?’

  ‘Yes,’ said one of the technicians. ‘Basic life support is still working though. She hasn’t killed them.’

  Scoleri chewed his lip. Jonah had already left the command center. ‘Where are the snipers?’

  ‘They’re in the ventilation system above the cave. It’s about the only place where they can get long-range sight on the target down there.’

  ‘Good,’ said Scoleri.

  A nervous voice called out from the other side of the room. ‘Sir, we’re detecting an unknown convoy heading our way.’

  Scoleri’s gaze swung to the security feeds showing the outside of the facility. He could see no sign of their enemies yet. ‘Part of the training exercises?’

  ‘No. We have a schedule of the activities taking place across the proving ground. The vehicles and helicopters coming toward us don’t appear to be part of the program.’

  Scoleri scanned the camera displays. ‘Mobilize our troops to defend our access points. Use every possible means to delay them. I want to secure Olivia Ashkarov before they get here.’ A savage smile curved his lips. ‘And release the super soldiers from their holding chambers. Let’s see what they can do on a real battlefield.’

  The lead sniper stared through the scope of his rifle. The target’s neck came into focus three hundred and fifty feet beneath the dome of the cave.

  ‘Sniper Two, what’s your position?’ he murmured in his microphone.

  ‘I’m in the north ventilation shaft. In position and target acquired.’

  ‘Sniper Three?’

  ‘In position in the west ventilation shaft. Target acquired.’

  ‘Sniper Four?’

  ‘East ventilation shaft. Target acquired.’

  The lead sniper moved his finger to the trigger. ‘Fire at will.’

  Howard heard something clang on a nearby tank. A small object skittered across the aisle ten feet away.

  Further clangs and thuds echoed across the cave as more objects struck the suspension pods and the ground around them.

  ‘What the hell are those?’ barked Madeleine, looking up.

  Howard followed her gaze and saw tiny silver arrows raining down from the ceiling.

  ‘Shit! Those are tranquilizer darts!’

  He moved toward Olivia.

  Lines marred the Seer’s brow as she concentrated on disabling the suspension pods. Although the psychokinetic force she was exerting had shifted the projectiles from their trajectories, the reach of the pressure field protecting them had shrunk since she started directing her focus on the tanks.

  ‘Olivia! Watch out!’ he shouted.

  The Seer blinked.

  A dart twisted through the air and found her neck. Two more sank into her arm and leg.

  One thousand feet above the Sonoran Desert, Ethan felt a stutter in the link with his soulmate.

  The Black Hawk helicopter was still twenty miles from the target site.

  ‘Ethan?’

  The Crovir noble met Asgard’s anxious stare across the cabin.

  ‘Hurry.’ The Elemental gritted his teeth. ‘We need to hurry!’

  The drugs seeped into her veins and brought a wave of lethargy crashing down on her body. Olivia shook her head and staggered sideways. Arms caught her as she started to fall.

  Madeleine peered above the top of the tank. Bullets pinged off the metal, raising sparks close to her head. She ducked behind the structure.

  The snipers had switched to live ammunition.

  They had pulled Olivia under the cover of one of the suspension pods. Howard crouched over the Seer and felt her pulse; he had removed the darts from her neck and limbs.

  A fine sheen of sweat coated Olivia’s brow. She moaned and shifted agitatedly on the floor, eyes fluttering rapidly beneath her lids.

  From the scattered thoughts fleeting through Madeleine’s head, it was obvious the immortal was trying to fight the effects of the chemicals coursing through her bloodstream. She peeled one of Olivia’s eyelids back and registered the pinpoint pupil in a sea of green.

  ‘I really wish we had some guns,’ said Howard bitterly. Another volley of shots scored the floor next to the tank. ‘I should have taken a couple from the soldiers we came across before.’

  Madeleine stared at the room on the other side of the row of tanks in front of them. A wild scheme was taking shape in her mind.

  ‘Shit,’ Howard muttered.

  Madeleine looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I think I just saw a soldier poke his head around that containment door.’

  She followed Howard’s worried gaze to the steel walkway in the distance. A couple of black-clad figures slipped through the opening.

  Ice filled her veins. It was time to see whether her crazy-ass plan could work.

  ‘Stay with her!’ she ordered the Crovir immortal.

  Madeleine whirled around, grabbed a freestanding cart next to the tank, and used it as a shield to scuttle across the aisle. Howard yelled something behind her. His words were lost in a loud crash as the medical equipment on the trolley fell on the floor.

  Shots slammed into the top shelf of the cart and peppered the ground around its legs.

  Madeleine clenched her teeth and kept moving toward the line of suspension pods. She reached it seconds later, let go of the cart, and slipped beneath the cover of a tank. She rolled to the other side and scrambled to her knees.

  The lab she had her eyes on was now only fifteen feet away. Glass cabinets were fixed to the wall on the far side of the room. Their shelves were filled with boxes and vials of drugs. She was only interested in one of the standing units.

  Madeleine poked her head from under the protective curve of the tank. Bullets whined through the air and struck the floor five feet away.

  Hmm. So they haven’t got a perfect line of sight on my position. She studied the spot where the shots had landed. But they will once I get close to that wall.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  Howard was gaping at her with a “What-the-hell-are-you-doing?” expression from the other side of the aisle, Olivia cradled in his arms.

  Madeleine squinted into the gloom to the right. She could see movement some two hundred feet away.

  Her gaze alighted on the bottom of the cart she’d abandoned. A large syringe pump had survived its impromptu trip across the cave; it lay on its side on the lower shelf. She slipped under the pod, grabbed it, and crawled back to face the lab again. She hefted the device in her hands and studied the glass window, her heart pounding in her chest.

  You’d better be moving at the speed of light when this hits, Black.

  Madeleine squatted on her heels and took a deep breath. She leapt to her feet, lifted the pump above her head, and hurled it at the window in front of her in one quick motion. She was running before it crashed through the glass. Bullets whizzed around her. The alarm tearing through the lab became audible as the pane started to shatter.

  Madeleine winced. This is gonna hurt like a bitch!

  She jumped and twisted sideways, smashing shoulder-first into the window. What remained of the glass exploded into glittering fragments beneath the impact of her body. Madeleine curled up protectively as she sailed into the room beyond, shards slicing across the exposed skin of her hands and arms. Her hip glanced off the edge of a countertop, sending numbing pain shooting down her leg. She landed hard on the floor and skidded toward the cabinets on the opposite side of the room, the alarm painting the walls around her with pulsing red light.

  A gasp escaped her lips. She threw her arms out, spun onto her back, and brought her legs up, grinding her teeth at the throbbing pain in her left hip and flank. Her feet collided with the metal base of one of the cabinets, halting her deadly slide and sending shock waves up her spine. The unit shu
ddered above her. Madeleine swallowed and stared at the glass wall, blood roaring in her ears.

  Bingo!

  She’d stopped in front of the cabinet with the word “Resus” stamped over it in red.

  She rose to her knees, yanked the door open, and scanned the contents of the shelves. She registered the names on the vials on the top one before focusing on the stack of pre-filled syringes beneath them. She grabbed several, jammed them inside the pockets of her pants, and twisted around to stare at the shadowy space beyond the broken window. Sporadic gunfire echoed across the cave as the snipers continued their assault on the area where Howard sheltered with Olivia.

  Madeleine glanced at the door at the back of the lab. There’s no way we’ll be able to get her out through here. I’m gonna have to do this where she is.

  She bit her lip. But how the hell do I get back out there without being shot to pieces?

  She studied the interior of the room. Her frantic gaze landed on a couple of fire extinguishers and an axe by the door. She snatched them from the wall, placed them on the counter beneath the window, and climbed on top. She peered out into the cave.

  More soldiers were pouring through the door on the upper walkway to the right. The first men were about twenty seconds from where Howard crouched with Olivia.

  This had better work.

  Madeleine wedged the first fire extinguisher against the windowsill with one foot and raised the axe in both hands. Her thought went briefly to a certain Bastian immortal with blue-green eyes. She scowled.

  Dammit, I should have ravished that grumpy bastard when I had the chance!

  She brought the blade down sharply on the head of the fire extinguisher. It parted with the body of the canister with a violent pop and disappeared in the direction of the cave, white fumes jetting out at high pressure in its wake. She kicked it out of the window and went to work on the second canister.

  A thick cloud formed outside the lab when Madeleine rolled the red cylinder out onto the ground. She slipped under the cover of the smoke.

  Shots rained down around her as she darted to where the closest tank should be. The hulking shape of the pod materialized out of the mist. She ducked under it, rolled out into the aisle on the other side, and scrambled to her feet.

  Shadowy shapes appeared some thirty feet up the row as she lunged toward where Howard hunched, his arms wrapped protectively around Olivia.

  A bullet punched through the flesh of her right calf. Madeleine cried out and started to fall.

  Howard reached out, grabbed her arm, and yanked her into the cover of the suspension pod, his face grim. She ignored the burning pain in her leg, removed two of the syringes from her pocket, and crawled across to Olivia.

  The soldiers were mere seconds away.

  ‘What are you—?’ Howard started.

  Madeleine yanked the caps off the needles with her teeth, said a short prayer, and jabbed the syringes straight into Olivia’s chest.

  A fresh wave of heat exploded inside Olivia as the new drugs shot through the chambers of her heart. One jolted the golden lines of her souls while the other raced through her accelerating bloodstream, erasing the effects of the potent chemicals dampening her consciousness. Her powers erupted from their sedative prison and burned away the last vestiges of the tranquilizers.

  She opened her eyes in time to see a soldier point a pistol at Madeleine’s head.

  Howard blinked. One second he was staring into the barrel of a gun. In the next, the men crowding around them had gone flying across the cave. They slammed into the nearby tanks and walls and slid to the ground, unconscious.

  Olivia sat up beside him.

  Howard swallowed at the pulsing energy radiating from the immortal. He could hear a faint hum from the tanks beside them as the metal vibrated to the tune of the psychokinetic field.

  ‘You’re back,’ he said weakly.

  Olivia acknowledged his words with a dip of her chin and rose to her feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ she told Madeleine in a hard voice.

  Madeline nodded shakily.

  Olivia stepped out into the middle of the aisle and turned to face the wave of men charging across the floor toward them. More soldiers appeared in the doorway above the steel walkway.

  The Seer narrowed her eyes.

  Howard looked at the syringes in Madeleine’s white-knuckled grip. ‘What was in those?’

  Madeleine winced and pressed a hand against the fresh wound on her leg. ‘An antidote for the tranquilizers and adrenaline. They always had them around the labs at AuGenD when they did these kinds of experiments.’

  Howard tore a piece off the bottom of his shirt and tied it around her bleeding calf. Movement above caught his eyes. He looked up in time to see a man with a rifle fall from a collapsing air duct. The soldier screamed, his arms and legs pinwheeling wildly through empty space. Three more followed, the metal shafts they lay in giving away violently beneath them. Their bodies thudded to the ground seconds later.

  Howard’s gaze shifted to Olivia’s enraged face.

  Oh boy. They’ve gone and pissed her off now. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

  Chapter Thirty

  They landed in a shallow valley amidst the foothills of the Kofa Mountains, forty miles northeast of the Laguna Army Airfield.

  Ethan and Asgard jumped to the desert ground with Reynolds and a group of Rangers. More soldiers poured out of the second Black Hawk helicopter. Immortal Hunters in tactical gear piled out of the other two aircrafts, a Bastian team leader at their head.

  ‘The entrance we’re headed for is half a mile over that rise!’ shouted the Rangers’ intelligence officer. He indicated a hill to the east. ‘The latest thermal pictures show a large concentration of bodies near it. They know we’re here, sir!’

  Apprehension flitted through Ethan.

  The major voiced the question in his mind. ‘How did they figure out we were coming? We didn’t know where we were going ourselves until twenty-five minutes ago!’

  ‘We are aware of at least one traitor among the foreign councils assisting us,’ said Asgard in clipped tones. He met Ethan’s eyes briefly. ‘He or she must have warned Jonah.’

  Ethan clenched his teeth. It must be the Crovir Council. Victor only just confirmed the details of our plans with them.

  ‘Jonah?’ Reynolds repeated.

  Asgard dipped his head curtly. ‘Although Gunnerson is listed as being in charge of this facility, the…man who’s really running the show goes by the name of Jonah Krondike.’

  Reynolds gave him a shrewd look. ‘From what you said before, you seem to know this guy well.’

  A muscle twitched in Asgard’s jawline. ‘Let’s just say he’s an old enemy.’

  ‘The rest of our convoy won’t be here for another fifteen minutes.’ Reynolds glanced at the helicopters flying past overhead, on their way to the other tunnels they’d spotted on the multispectral images. ‘I want all the exits covered before we make our move. Let’s look at that map again.’

  Ethan turned from the group and headed some twenty feet to the south. He could feel the violent power pulsing through his link with Olivia. She was angry. And he feared if he didn’t get to her soon, she would be consumed by her rage. The consequences, he suspected, would be beyond devastating. He studied the dirt and sand beneath his boots for some time before walking back to the Rangers and the immortals.

  ‘They know we’re here so we’ve lost the element of surprise,’ he told Reynolds. ‘What if we could regain it?’

  The major straightened. ‘What do you mean?’

  Ethan indicated the spot where he had stood a moment ago. ‘There’s a ventilation duct over there that leads straight inside the facility.’

  Reynolds looked at the intelligence officer. ‘Is that true?’

  The soldier frowned at the image on the laptop. ‘It’s difficult to tell, sir.’ He pursed his lips and magnified the picture. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What is it, sergeant?’ snapped Re
ynolds.

  ‘Well, there is a faint line on here that could be a passage,’ the man murmured dubiously.

  Reynolds’s suspicious gaze swung to Ethan. ‘How the hell could you know something like that?’

  Ethan masked his growing impatience behind a steady stare. ‘Same way I told you where the facility was.’

  Reynolds’s expression grew troubled. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘How far down?’

  ‘Twenty feet,’ said Ethan.

  Reynolds turned to his men. ‘Dig some holes for explosives. Let’s—’

  ‘I’ve got something faster and more discreet than C4,’ said Ethan. He caught Asgard’s stare and shrugged. ‘Well, it’s not as if we were going to be able to hide it from them forever.’

  He twisted on his heels and took several steps toward the area where he had detected the structure under the desert floor.

  ‘Hide what forever? What is he talking about?’ said Reynolds behind him.

  ‘Major?’ said Asgard.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did your superiors tell you anything unusual about this mission?’

  The major hesitated. ‘Unusual how?’

  Ethan focused his powers. The pentagram on his left hand started to tingle.

  ‘So they did tell you something?’ said Asgard quietly.

  Reynolds blew out a frustrated sigh. ‘If you must know, they mentioned a cockamamie story about some supernatural shit we might see. We weren’t to breathe a word of it to anyone, on pain of being court-martialed and never seeing the light of day again for the rest of our miserable lives.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Bastian team leader sounded relieved. ‘That’s great. We can just get on with it then. It was going to be a pain in the ass to keep up the subterfuge when we’re working so closely with humans.’

  ‘What subterfuge?’ Reynolds sounded like he was close to popping that fuse again. ‘What do you mean, humans?’ There was a twang of metal. ‘And where on God’s earth did that sword come from? I thought that was a rifle on your back!’