Prometheus Vengeance (The New Prometheus Book 4)

by Andrew Dobell

Satisfied that the room had been cleared, Frankie moved along her balcony and checked each of the guards she had shot, and found each of them to be dead. Satisfied that the room was now safe, she stepped up to the balcony and found a clear spot on the floor below. She moved a little further along to get closer at it, and then jumped from the balcony, landing on the floor of the commons chamber without any issue.

  Gibson walked over to her with a man following just behind him.

  ‘Hey. Everything okay,’ she asked him.

  ‘The room is clear, but this isn’t finished yet,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘The prime minister isn’t here,’ the man beside him said. Frankie looked at him again, and suddenly realised she recognised him. Her cyberbrain quickly cross referenced his face and came up with a match in less than a second. He was the speaker of the house, the man charged with maintaining order in the chamber during the debates.

  ‘Mr. Speaker,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Call me Anthony, a pleasure to meet you,’ he said and offered his hand. Frankie took it and gave it a shake.

  ‘You, too. So, where is Susan Weaver?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Honestly, I’m unsure, but when the attack happened, she was moved away pretty quickly. If I had to guess, I would say she was taken to the panic room downstairs. It’s the safest place in the building.’

  ‘That’s on the floor below?’

  ‘In the east wing, yes. Follow the signs for the Cameron Suit, it’s opposite that, marked as PR on the door,’ he said. ‘But…’

  ‘But what?’ Frankie said.

  ‘I think you need to hurry, there were a lot more terrorists in the building than just these twelve. They all went to hunt everyone else down, including the PM.

  ‘Understood. We took out six more in the corridor outside before we came in here.’

  ‘I’d say there must be at least maybe ten or more in the building then,’ the speaker guessed.

  Frankie nodded, ‘Thank you. We’ll deal with this, but I suggest you stay in here for the time being just in case,’ she said. Frankie sent a quick command to her drones and quickly retasked them with mapping the entire lower floor, with a focus on the east side of the building before she turned to Gibson. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We need to find the PM. If she dies today or is kidnapped, this could turn into a major incident. Way bigger than it already is,’ he said.

  ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘I’ll inform the director of our progress. Get the team together, we’ll head out shortly.’ Gibson nodded and walked off, the speaker went with him as she opened a link to William. ‘Sir,’ she said.

  ‘Frankie. Good to hear from you. What’s your status?’

  ‘We’ve found the majority of the hostages and freed them. They’re in the commons chamber, but the PM is still missing. We have a lead which we’re about to follow up,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Keep me informed. We’ll hold off for the time being. If we come in now, it might jeopardise the prime minister’s life. Also, the Dolls are still active. You need to find a way to shut them down,’ William suggested.

  ‘Copy that,’ she said and shut off the link. She saw Gibson bringing the team over, and waited for him. Looking around, her gaze fell onto one of the guards by the door who was still alive but bleeding out and clearly incapacitated. She was about to pull her gun and shoot him when she had an idea.

  She stepped over to him and crouched down next to the guard, checking his neck. Sure enough, there was a cluster of sockets there, indicating the presence of a cyberbrain. Frankie initiated a scan of the local net and quickly found the wireless access ports to the man's neural net and moved to access it, sending in a cracking program as she did so. It took several seconds before the software reported back and gave her access to his cyberbrain after having broken through his firewall, but she wasted no time in diving in once she was able. A quick scan of his cyber functions and she soon accessed his comms and brought up a list of his neural links in date order.

  Just below the top was a large group link of over twenty people, which looked to Frankie like what she was after. She checked the list and went through the names, looking to see if any stood out. Typically, agents were either given a new name by their sponsoring Corporation or chose a new one themselves, whereas operators did not. On that list, four names stood out from the others as strange sounding, which likely meant they were agent names. In alphabetical order, they were Arden, Destine, Vex, and Zealotte. If she had to guess, she felt it was likely that one of them was the leader of the group.

  Leaving that to one side, she accessed his profile and pulled out his name and a voice sample that she could use to synthesise his voice and hopefully talk through his link to the remaining terrorists in the building and maybe figure out who was running this mission.

  A moment later, her cyberbrain informed her that the voice modulation was ready as she re-accessed his links and opened up the large group link before using his voice profile to overlay her own.

  ‘Hey, boss, we have a situation up here; they’ve sent in a strike team. We can hold them off, but… What do you want us to do?’ Frankie asked over the open link.

  ‘Hold tight,’ said a female voice. Frankie looked at the list of names in the link group and saw that the name Zealotte was flashing as the woman spoke.

  Gotcha, Franke thought.

  ‘We nearly have her, we’ll be out of here shortly,’ Zealotte continued.

  Got her? Frankie thought, with a creeping dread. That could only mean one that they nearly had the prime minister.

  4.07

  ‘Frankie?’ Gibson said from close by.

  Frankie looked up to see the former detective, and the rest of her team, standing close by. She stood up and withdrew her cyberbrain from the guard’s neural net. ‘They’re close to getting the prime minister. We have to go, now,’ she said, reloading her gun.

  Gibson looked down at the guard and then back up at her. ‘You hacked him?’

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘The group’s leader is a woman called Zealotte, a fitting name if ever there was one. The name sounds like an agent’s name to me,’ she said as she led her team to the door out of the commons chamber, which had been left open by their entry.

  ‘Agreed, which way?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘That way, Frankie said, aiming slightly to their right towards another stairwell leading down that her drones had found. She instructed the drones to stay close, but scout ahead as she walked. This flight of stairs was a slightly grander affair. It was located in the middle of a large atrium and was wide enough for maybe ten people to walk down side by side. They reached the top and approached it cautiously, but no one was visible as they looked down. She checked the video feeds from her drones that were down there, keeping slightly ahead of her, and confirmed the lower atrium was deserted and made her way down. At the bottom of the stairs, she sent a pair of her drones to map out the corridors ahead as Frankie noted a nearby sign on a wall that directed them towards the east wing.

  ‘This way,’ Frankie said over the link to her team and moved towards a nearby hallway. She checked a video feed from one of her drones that confirmed they way ahead looked clear before she stepped out and started to lead her team along it. They continued on in near silence, watching and listening in case of ambush. Frankie had learnt her lesson from the ambush in the support building a few weeks ago and did not relish the idea of getting into a similar situation again. The drones helped in this regard, but they weren’t perfect.

  The hallways continued on for some way, but as they approached the end, she noticed that one of the drones she kept close by was sending her a video feed of another wide atrium up ahead. Right away she could see that this was the main entrance to the east wing, and that a small group of terrorists had set up a makeshift barricade to hide behind.

  ‘We have company up ahead,’ she said over the link and shared the video feed with her teammates.

  ‘Only looks l
ike maybe three or four of them. We should be able to handle this,’ Cole said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Frankie agreed as they approached a slight bend in the tunnel. Frankie glanced around it and saw that the hallway ended roughly six or seven meters further on before opening out. She could also see the barricade and hints of movement behind it.

  Frankie ducked back and looked around her for ideas of what to do. She needed to get in there and deal with these guys, who would almost certainly shoot her on sight.

  She was fast and could take quite a bit of punishment, but she didn’t much fancy getting shot.

  ‘Problem?’ Gibson asked from where he stood next to her.

  ‘Just wondering how to tackle these guards,’ she said. They were in the lower level in corridors where there were no windows, and as she thought about that, she remembered she had the building networks access codes. She immediately logged into the system and navigated to the building controls. It took her only a few seconds to narrow down her area and then access the lighting controls, and as she navigated the networks menus, she readied her gun and prepared herself to step out the second the lights went out. ‘It’s about to get dark in here for a few moments,’ Frankie announced through the link.

  Kalypso smiled, stepped up next to her and readied her own gun as well. ‘I have built-in night vision, too. I’ll help,’ she said.

  Frankie nodded at her. ‘You ready?’

  Kalypso chambered a round on her rifle. ‘Always.’

  Frankie accessed the network and set the lights in this area to “off”. Suddenly, the whole corridor and the atrium beyond was dropped into darkness. Frankie flicked over to her night vision and stepped out with Kalypso next to her. The lights going off must have taken some of the guys here by surprise as a couple of them suddenly popped up from behind their improvised cover like gophers popping out of their holes, much to Frankie’s amusement.

  Frankie squeezed the trigger on her rifle and fired at the guards. Kalypso did the same as they moved forward at a half jog into the room. The remaining pair backed up as they stood and fired blindly, their guns barking loudly in the darkness and lighting it up with strobing muzzle flashes.

  Frankie adjusted her aim, following the man nearest her, and fired again, dropping him while Kalypso did the same to the last one, and suddenly the room fell silent. Frankie scanned the room with her night vision but saw no movement on either side of the barricade. Once she felt satisfied that there was no further threat in here, she accessed the building network once more and brought the lights back online. Half a second later, light flooded the room, revealing the carnage they had caused.

  Gibson led the rest of her team into the atrium, their guns up and ready.

  ‘Everything okay in here?’ he asked.

  Frankie looked over at him. ‘All good. We should continue on, we’re close,’ she answered him.

  ‘Lead the way,’ Gibson said.

  Frankie led the team along further corridors, heading into the east wing of the building, past empty offices and meeting rooms, and could hear voices and banging coming from up ahead. Focusing on the video feed in her vision, she could see a team of people standing outside an office trying to smash down a door with a large metal battering ram. The door had a huge dent in it, but seemed to be holding fast. Frankie also noted that three of the team were on guard, pointing guns in the direction they were approaching from. Three more were on the other side.

  They approached a T-Junction up ahead, and from the map her drones had created, she knew that the scene from her video feed was playing out just around to the right. Frankie moved up to it and pulled a grenade from her belt pouch before looking back at her team.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  They all nodded. ‘Ready,’ Gibson answered. Frankie nodded back and then armed the grenade in her hand. She counted the seconds down before throwing it, timing the throw so that the grenade would detonate as it reached the terrorists.

  As she hoped, the explosive went off about a second after it left her hand and rocked the corridors they were stood in. Frankie brought her gun up into the ready position and ducked around the corner, aiming into the dust and debris. It was tough to see in here now, but she found she could make out some movement up ahead as shadows passed through the smoke. Frankie fired as she spotted them, with Gibson and Kalypso beside her following suit.

  Their rifles clicked as they fired. Operators screamed and yelled in pain as they were hit. Frankie could hear gunfire head of her, too. They were firing at something.

  With all the commotion and slowly clearing dust they were probably confused and shooting blindly in the hope of warning Frankie and her team to keep back.

  Frankie walked forward, keeping close to the wall. Checking her video feed, she noticed the group were backing away from Frankie and her team, leaving their dead and injured behind. The dust cleared enough for her to see the last few members of the group pause to fire back at Frankie and her team. She ducked down and hugged the wall as she fired off a burst herself, catching one of them that spun like a top before dropping to the floor.

  The last one of them seemed to laugh as he disappeared into a side corridor up ahead. That was odd, Frankie thought as she looked at the door to the armoured room and suddenly noticed the device on the door with a tiny flashing light.

  ‘Shit,’ Frankie said and leapt back they way they had come. With her arms wide, she threw herself into the teammates.

  The bomb exploded behind her. The force of the shockwave from it knocked her further away and into her friends as they tumbled to the floor in a tangled mess.

  A wave of dust passed over them before the hallway settled down again.

  ‘Everyone okay?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Gibson said.

  ‘I’m good,’ Kalypso answered her, followed by the rest, each of them affirming they were okay and had survived. Frankie noticed an icon in her vision she had not seen before and focused on it.

  -Low-Yield EMP explosion. Shielding holding. No damage.-

  -Drones offline due to EMP explosion.-

  Frankie raised her eyebrows and checked on the feed from her drones, and sure enough, they were all gone.

  ‘Whats up?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘There was an EMP blast. From that bomb, I think. It took out my drones,’ she said.

  ‘I saw that warming, seems like my cyberbrain is okay, though,’ he said.

  ‘It’s shielded. These drones weren’t; they’re too small.’

  ‘Oh. Bummer,’ he said.

  ‘Aah, well. I’m not worried. They were useful, but a little distracting, too,’ she said. ‘Anyway, let’s check on the PM.’

  Frankie stood and walked over to the door which was now badly scorched as well as dented, but seemed to be holding just fine. Scanning the door and the frame, she could make out where the intercom into the room was meant to be, or had once been, but it was missing now.

  Instead, Frankie walked up to it and banged on the door. ‘Hello? Susan Weaver? Prime minister? Are you alright in there?’

  Sudden metallic thuds sounded from within the door and it juddered open partway before getting stuck. Beyond the door, Frankie saw a nicely appointed room and a couple of men in suits carrying guns and pointing them at her.

  ‘Freeze, don’t move,’ one of them said.

  Frankie raised her hands, keeping them away from the gun slung over her neck. ‘It’s Frankie, Mrs Weaver,’ she said. ‘We’re here to help.’

  Susan stepped into view on the far side of the two men, looking out at Frankie.

  ‘Hi, Frankie. We knew it was you, but you can’t be too careful,’ she said before turning to her bodyguards. ‘It’s okay. Stand down,’ she said to them.

  Both men lowered their guns, but stayed close to their charge, watching Frankie carefully.

  ‘Thank you for coming, I wasn’t sure who or when someone would turn up,’ she said. ‘I was starting to think they would get through that door.’

&nbs
p; ‘Well, we’re here now. Are you alright? Do you need and medical attention?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘No, no we’re good. Thanks. Where are the people that were trying to get in here?’ Susan asked.

  ‘We drove them off, and, with your permission, I’d like to chase them down, if you’re okay to be left?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Go. We’re fine here. We’ll just keep the door closed and locked,’ the prime minister said.

  Frankie nodded and glanced at her team. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ she said and started off down the corridor. Frankie ran to the right turn the group had taken up ahead and started to hear voices and shouting up ahead, but could see nothing from here. They continued on, the voices becoming clearer as they reached a dog-leg turn that switched back on itself. Frankie edged around it and saw the team standing in the corridor. A woman who had short dark hair with blonde tips was talking quite forcefully with an operator who was stood in the doorway to an office.

  ‘That’s enough insubordination from you,’ the woman growled at the operator. ‘If you don’t like the way I do things, you can piss off and we’ll see how you do out there on your own. So, make your choice, we’re leaving. What’s it to be?’ she said.

  As fascinating as it was to see the terrorists arguing amongst themselves, apparently over when they should retreat, Frankie had more pressing matters, like bringing them all into custody or killing them to remove the threat they posed.

  Frankie opened fire, but the woman, who Frankie took to be Zealotte from the sound of her voice, must have caught some movement in the corner of her eye and ducked moments before Frankie fired.

  Zealotte and her team backed off as the operator in the room turned and fired at Frankie, rage clearly etched on his face.

  Frankie ducked into cover and took a kneeling position as another from the office up ahead leant out and fired. Cole joined her at the corner as Gibson and Veronica dashed across and pressed themselves against the far wall behind a load bearing pillar that jutted out into the corridor.

  Frankie fired, but the lead operator ducked back just fractions of a second before she shot and her bullets hit only wall.