Something inside his head clicked. I could see it in his eyes.
"I'm sorry. It's just been a long day waiting for you." His apology, though forced, did a good job of diffusing the situation.
"It's alright. I'll be done as fast as I can." I released his arm. Sometimes I wondered about my level of impulse control.
"Thank you," he replied. His voice sounded a little funny coming, as it did, through gritted teeth.
I heard him spit something that sounded a lot like "Asshole!" after me as I walked away. I didn't let it bother me. He was right, after all.
It was quiet. I liked that. It let me adjust to the new situation without that painful lashing-out phase I went through if I wasn't left alone long enough to shift mental gears. Okay, it wasn't something I did every time I was in a new situation, but it was a common problem. The sheriff's deputy I'd just threatened was a perfect example.
I needed to get a grip on it before I crossed the line with someone who was going to cross back. I'd been lucky with Grid Iron. By that I meant I wasn't being actively hunted by anyone new. If I tried it on a cop I'd be calling down attention like ugly at a bad drag show.
Given a chance I would reach some kind of homeostasis with any situation I was in. When I was not given said chance I tended to act like a bull in a maternity ward.
I'd never questioned it before, but it did seem to be something rather different from the normal run.
I tried to think back to when I was in the lab, being injected and tested and trained, and I couldn't remember large swaths of it. It was possible it was an ability that had manifested itself at some point during the blacked-out periods and it was also possible that it was some kind of training they'd put me through during one of those times. I'd always been able to fit in, at least barely, but since I was told the testing was over I'd been able to do it on a whole new level. I also wasn't really affected by weather, though I disliked getting wet because it made my clothing heavy and it was uncomfortable. Maybe that was related to why the Dragon Breath hadn't killed me.
It wasn't important at the moment. Breathing was. I wasn't a cop and I'd never been trained to gather information like one, so this was a new one for me. As such, I needed to have all my wits about me and all my senses cranked to high gain.
Alright, show time.
I walked around the outer wall slowly, looking for anything out of place. My task was made more difficult by both the ingrowth of grass and weeds in what once had once been a well-cleared path and the poor light. The floodlights were mostly aimed inwards, so while their illumination spilled somewhat onto the path, it wasn't as much as I'd have liked. I cursed not having a flashlight, but that was my own shortsightedness. If I'd been thinking I'd have requisitioned one from the Guildhall in Watertown.
It was a long, slow walk, what with the pressing need to hurry to please the cops no longer there. The designers had built this Guildhall in a hexagon, and the outer wall mimicked the shape, the net result of which were a lot of annoying corners where the light didn't quite make it all the way out. It made me wonder why there were no lights on the outside. The corners, especially, seemed like the perfect spot to mount a wide-beam, high-intensity halogen or something. Unfortunately, with all the light glaring behind the wall and the clouds blocking the moon pretty thoroughly, I wasn't able to see anything when I looked up or tell if there was anything to see. The same neglect the path had suffered had apparently allowed all the bulbs to burn out and not be subsequently replaced.
I was starting to think I'd just wasted ten minutes of slow shuffling around the place when, to my utter shock, the Guildphone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin when my shirt started vibrating. I uttered a few choice curses and pulled the blasted thing from my pocket and answered it.
"Yeah?"
"Sorry, I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but I wanted to follow up with you on your report."
There was a pause while I forced my heart to slow down. I probably should have said something anyway.
"Did I interrupt something?" Venom's voice was hard to gauge over the phone. The voice clarity was spectacular, but something was lost in the digital decompression.
"No," I said. "I just nearly had a heart attack when this frigging thing started vibrating in my shirt pocket."
"Hmm. Be glad it was your shirt pocket, then. Where are you right now?"
"Canton, outside the Guildhall. I'm looking for anything out of the ordinary before I go inside, but I can't see shit."
"You'll have better luck once you get inside, I'm sure. At any rate, you were right about Firebug. He filed three complaints within fifteen minutes of your leaving. Normally they would have been handled in Reno, but I put a stop warning on anything coming out of Watertown as soon as I got off the phone with you. Good thing. With the accusations he tossed into the mix you'd have had a jumper-lead squad on your ass before the hour was out."
I snorted. "And what did our friend say I'd done?"
"Kidnapping, assault, theft, and that was just the first one. The other two got rather creative, if I do say so. Somehow you'd also found time to beat a prostitute to death and burn down a house with a group of little old ladies having a tea party. He even forged a fourth one in this Redgrave character's name, alleging sexual misconduct in addition to the other crap he'd put down. Speaking of Redgrave, are you sure it's a good idea to have him in custody?"
"He forged a complaint saying all that? Bloody hell, how did he manage to make it that high in the Guild when he's so frigging stupid? And about Redgrave, yes, I do. Even if he's only half as injured as he made himself out to be I'd rather he was being watched. I don't know if he's as out with Alpha Zulu as he said, but, you see, Jack used to be a big game hunter."
Big game hunter. Ripped from the "darkest jungles of Africa", the phrase had taken to mean a norm who specialized in killing supers. There wasn't a super alive who hadn't heard the stories of the men and women who had been caught and killed by a norm for any one of a thousand reasons. The ones who did it for profit and sport were legends, much in the same way Ted Bundy was legend. Asking the Guild to babysit one was pushing it, but goddamn it, they needed to be professionals.
Even when they were dealing with someone that scared them.
There was a longer pause. I waited patiently for what I'd just said to sink in.
"Why did you leave someone like that in the care of people who don't know what he does?" This time I could clearly hear the reproach in her voice.
"He said he got hit by a brainsucker while trying to clear out a nest of zombies. He blames his employer at the time for the injury. Seeing as how that employer is also my former boss, I thought it might be a good idea to keep tabs on him. Besides, he was good at what he did but he didn't hunt without someone paying the tab. Unless someone put a bounty on Firebug's head, I think everyone's safe."
"You do realize that he could have been feeding you a line, right? That maybe he was responsible for the killings you're investigating?"
No, I hadn't. Damn it.
"No, I hadn't. I'm think going to trust my gut on this one, though." I cracked my neck by twisting it to relieve a little pressure. "Besides, if you were that worried you'd be calling Watertown and talking to each of them in turn to make sure they were alright." Standard military procedure. Check in with the patrol you're worried about unless they were under radio silence. "If, and this is a big if, anything is amiss, you tell me and I'll be landing on the roof in less than ten minutes if I have to, now that I know the way." What I didn't add was that if Jack had pulled the wool over my eyes he'd be long gone and everyone in the building would be rather dead. If that was the case I would make it my own personal goal in life to find him and remove every single one of his vital organs in alphabetical order.
"On that note... I'm going to call Watertown to check in. I'll confirm receipt of these complaints since that should be a sufficiently valid excuse, just to make sure everything's on the up and up. Then I'm going to start a full-on i
nvestigation of the Guildhall. What you said and what I saw in these complaints is reason enough, and I think I'm going to give this a V-2 priority. That should get things going ASAP. Do be a good boy and behave nicely till you get back, okay?"
"Yes, mommy." I chuckled as I said it.
"Don't ever call me that again." There was still no venom in her voice.
I was standing in a particularly dark spot as I closed the phone, not having moved during the conversation, and I noticed an interesting phenomenon. The light from the small LCD screen, when held horizontal to the ground as I was closing the phone with only my right hand, illuminated the grass and scrub just enough that I could see some of the heretofore-hidden detail. A flashlight it wasn't, not by a long shot, but it was better than nothing. I refused to get on my hands and knees and crawl, but I paid a lot more attention to the ground as I continued my circuit.
It was a lot better than nothing, as it turned out. If I hadn't had it I wouldn't have noticed a spent shell casing halfway hidden under a dandelion leaf.
Actually, what I noticed was a strange reflection. I almost dismissed it because of an ache in my back, but I decided to check out after I'd taken two more stooped-over steps. The reflection turned out to be a piece of glass laying in a random scattering of other pieces of glass, all rather small, and of the same type. My first guess --- that I'd found a broken beer bottle thrown there by some drunken teenager --- was immediately disproven by both the lack of glass and the fact that all the pieces were flat. A beer bottle would break into pieces that curved at least a little bit, would it not? I'd certainly broken my share over the years.
I gathered a couple of pieces because, frankly, they intrigued me. Flat pieces of tempered glass snuggled up against the back wall of a quasi-military installation that had just been massacred? I was going to spend a few minutes looking into it.
It also guaranteed that, should Venom call me back, I'd be able to take flight immediately.
It was during my hunt for more shards that I came across the shell casing. My first impulse was to ignore it, since it was the same color as a thousand pebbles I'd already seen, but something about the shape intrigued me. It was perfectly round and looked like it had been stepped on, judging by the faint remains of a footprint.
I stared at it for a few seconds before I pried it out of the dirt with my fingernails. If it had been there much more than a dozen hours I'd eat my hat, not that I wore one. I wiped a little grime off the rim and brought the phone in closer for more light. Sure enough, it was a green lacquered steel case with a Russian headstamp and I could still see the remains of the red sealant around the mouth where the bullet had been seated and maybe the hint of the same around the primer, though I wasn't sure. I didn't really need to be.
I was intimately familiar with this particular case as I'd seen and fired thousands just like it, both on the range and in the field while working for Kinsey.
It wasn't conclusive evidence, I had to admit. Russian ammunition was readily available on both the black and commercial markets. This particular type was even in use by some police forces, if my information was still current. But, damn, it didn't feel right. How many people would be popping off a .45 pistol this close to the edge of a frigging town? And what would someone have fired a .45 shell at, this close to the frigging Guildhall? Most likely the Guildhall itself, I decided. But what about the wall? Well, why not something on the wall?
I pushed off and brought myself up to the edge of the wall. I had to cover my eyes to keep from being blinded, but sure enough, I saw what looked like the remains of a light protruding just below the edge and at about what I judged to be the proper angle to illuminate both sides of the corner. I felt around till I found it, almost cutting myself in the process, and brought myself down for a closer look.
A motion-activated floodlight, showing a few years of oxidization and a big frigging hole in it from where the heavy, slow-moving, probably-silenced slug had torn through it.
Bingo.
"So let me get this straight. You found a bullet case and a light that didn't work and that makes you think someone shot it." Venom had checked in with Firebug and been reassured that everything was fine, but she didn't sound very happy that I'd called with nothing more than a shell casing and a broken light. "Well call a jury in to hang someone for six counts of murder! You'll need more than that and a gut feeling to convince me it's who you say it is, buddy."
"Very well," I said and closed the Guildphone. No sense in getting annoyed at her just because she wanted something other my gut feeling to back the spent shell. Especially since I'd admit, albeit grudgingly, that there were other explanations.
I'd let myself drift back down to the ground, still outside the wall, to make the call simply because I'd been too lazy to continue to keep myself aloft. Before I'd called, though, I'd checked the wall more thoroughly and, as I'd expected, I found eleven other lights in the same condition. Why I hadn't noticed the two flanking the front gate before was beyond me, but I kicked myself mentally for not seeing them sooner. If someone had gone through with a metal detector they'd probably find at least one other casing kicking around.
Not that they needed to, as I found out when I stepped inside the main building. My Guild ID had worked here too, for some reason. Probably a hard-wired computer running the security system hooked into the main Guild network. That wasn't cheap.
Spent cases littered the floor, thrown every which way from submachine guns locked on automatic. The fact that nobody had heard the shots was a testament to either the soundproofing or silenced weaponry. Unfortunately I couldn't tell much from the random patterning covering the floor except there'd been several guns and a lot of firing.
The shells might have gone everywhere but the bullet holes covering the walls were in fairly tight groups. It looked like most of the assaulting forces had been using three-round bursts, which was smart. If too much pressure builds up in the barrel or silencer they tended to split, sometimes with catastrophic results. Three-round bursts were still dangerous, but at least they let the pressure bleed off between bursts.
Blood splashed the walls in a few places where bullets had found their mark. Bodies had been dragged away, though. The Guild had taken their wounded deeper in, though it looked like the assailants had managed to avoid casualties this early in their attack. Spray patterns don't lie. Most likely the Guild hadn't expected any kind of attack so the victims at this point were either whoever had pulled shit detail on the overnight guard or norms employed to do security. The lack of bullets in the walls around the entrance seemed to testify to the suddenness and viciousness of the attack.
Fast movement and heavy firepower, shock-and-awe. So far it seemed to fit the pattern.
I looked around some more to see if I could find any other evidence, but nothing sprang to mind. If only there were some...
Cameras. They hadn't shot out the cameras. That meant if I could find the security office I could pull the recordings if they were still there.
First things first, though. I had to check on the dead Heroes. The police had confirmed they were dead before pulling back to wait for whoever the Guild was going to send for the first look.
Come to think of it, that was odd. Why didn't the Guild have someone on-site as soon as news of the attack hit the higher levels? A jumper could bring a few heavies with them and pop in fast. Throw in some fast fliers from Syracuse or Watertown or any other locale with a Guildhall and there should have been a least a dozen people here before the cops should have been called in.
Unless someone else had called the cops. Maybe someone heard the gunfire. Then again, why would the cops have responded instead of calling the nearest Guildhall for reinforcements?
I rubbed my eyes. I was seeing conspiracies everywhere I looked. Not a good sign.
The scene in the next room, which appeared to be a common room with a TV in one corner (with four bullet holes crossing the screen at an angle), a microwave on one wall (front smashed out,
two holes in the touchpad and another in the screen), and blood-stained furniture at useful locations around the room, looked exactly like what it was: The site of a fast, close-quarters battle between surprised defenders and attackers with overwhelming firepower and no sense of mercy.
I'd been on the dealing end of that kind of assault more than a few times. I'd never bothered to look around afterwards, but even without the bodies I could see what had happened. It had looked very different on the other side of a gun.
A chill ran up my spine. Whoever had lead the attack had known what he was doing, but he was inexperienced. I saw no signs of the flash grenade I'd have tossed in to soften things up --- no scorch on the carpet, no mark on the ceiling, nothing. Of course, if I hadn't wanted any prisoners I would have swapped it up for a fragmentation grenade or two. Hell, at the very least I'd have had someone with a 40mm launcher fire a shell into the room before I committed any forces to the fray.
Something welled up inside me. It quickly turned to anger, but before that it was something else. I wasn't familiar with the feeling, but it made me feel like what had happened was a waste. There was more to it but, honestly, I was so unfamiliar with the emotions raging through me I couldn't identify any of them further.
At least one body had been dragged into yet another room. The blood trail got thicker the closer it got to the door.
The body was still propped up against the wall where the defenders had been forced to abandon it.
Subject 12 Page 19