Once it was back online, she tapped the comm button. Cora had no idea how Gideon had networked the team together without using the call system. She’d just have to hope they were still there.
“Control, this is Echo-1,” she said. “I’m in hostile territory and need to get home.”
“Good to have you back, Echo-1,” Gideon replied.
“Echo-2, still in position,” Giovanna’s voice came through the comm, sounding like Cora. It was as unsettling as she imagined it.
“I have a route for you,” Gideon said. “You’re pretty far from where we left you.”
Cora looked at the bodies all around her. “You have no idea.”
Shell Game
Cora needed to switch back fast. Stealing one of the cars was the best way to accomplish that, but it’d been a while since she’d been behind the wheel. Driving from the right side of the car disoriented her, but she was making time. The hacker’s rig rode shotgun, propped up floor to headrest beside her.
“Make your next left and go down a quarter mile,” Gideon said. “You’re back inside the perimeter, so you’re going to park and walk it the rest of the way.”
“Understood,” she replied. “Echo-2, are you still on the roof?”
“Yes,” Giovanna replied. “I’m in the middle of a very important spectrographic analysis and can’t be disturbed.”
Cora put the car in park and ran down a nearby alley. Gideon led her back in reverse, weaving through side streets and back alleys. She reached the corner of a building before the coffee shop. Pressing her back to it, she peered over. One Bauer Security guard had a view of the alley some forty yards away. She was too close now to get spotted. With a tap to her earpiece, she closed her eyes and began her breathing exercises.
“Echo-2,” she said between breaths. “One guard with eyes on the alley. I need a distraction.”
“Incoming,” Giovanna replied. It was still odd to hear her own voice coming back at her.
The deep breathing prepared her. Another spell, another tax on her body. Her head ached and throbbed. Her eyes wanted to shut forever. A wild cat, stalking prey. An unsuspecting target, never hearing the approach. The spell coursed through her and lit up her fingertips with yellow-tinted bulbs of energy. She swiped the bulbs across her boots.
“You! Yes, you there!” Giovanna called out from the roof. “Is your visor equipped with thermographic lenses?”
Cora watched from the corner as the Bauer guard moved out of her line of sight, his head in the air. She ran, her footfalls silent. With a running start, she leaped up and grabbed the rung of the fire escape. Pulling her weight up the first few steps with only her arms, by the time she reached the first platform, she was winded. Her vision blurred and faded. Giovanna’s voice called out to the soldier from the other side of the world. A sudden dizziness overcame her, almost dropping her to her knees. Cora leaned against the wall and tried to let it pass, breathing in through her nose with a slow exhale through her mouth. The magic was taking too much from her now. She couldn’t dare use it again without fear of passing out. Regaining her composure, she raced up the remaining flights of stairs and reached the roof.
“Well, don’t go far, I might need you again in a few minutes,” Giovanna shouted to the street below.
Cora dropped to her knees and tried to strip. As she pulled off the plated armor, she seethed at the extension of her shoulder. The armor protected her from the bullet back at the warehouse, but the impact left a massive bruise. The world started to spin again. She felt herself lurching forward, but then a mirror image of Cora held her steady at the arms. She didn’t recall seeing Giovanna walk over.
She pulled off Cora’s face mask and startled. “What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” Cora said.
“No, seriously. You have dark circles under your eyes, your skin is pale, and you’re hot to the touch,” Giovanna said, touching her face.
“I’m using too much magic without rest,” Cora replied.
Giovanna grabbed up Cora’s chin between her thumb and forefinger. Her accent changed back to her more familiar Italian one. “No more, patatina. Not until you sleep.”
Cora nodded. She’d do it if she had to, but she wasn’t about to argue. However, she would let Giovanna help get the Norex bodysuit and boots off. As she pulled off the second boot, a blood-stained silver bracelet fell out. Giovanna snatched it up.
“Oh, that,” Cora said. “They had a hacker. That was his Arcadia. He also had a rig, it’s in the car. Get them to Gideon right away.”
Giovanna nodded, scrambling to pull Cora’s shirt off and put it back on its owner. Within moments, the two had fully dressed. Giovanna winced and turned away from Cora as she returned to her normal form. She looked around the ground.
“Where’s the helmet?” she asked.
“Shit,” Cora replied. “They took it from me, and I never grabbed it back.”
Giovanna sighed and mumbled curses in Italian under her breath. She raised her hands to her head, pulling fingers through her hair. The hair shifted and receded until all that was left was a military buzzcut. She turned around and faced Cora, squatting down to her level.
“You can’t go on much longer,” she said, swiping information from her wrist computer to Cora’s. “You need to break away so we can regroup. We need the get the pieces together and figure out how we get out of this.”
“Miss Blake?” a voice shouted up from the street. It was Inspector Schulz.
“Go, go,” Cora whispered, waving Giovanna away. She gathered herself together and tested her shaky legs. The dizziness had subsided, at least for now, though she had no intention of getting too close to the edge of the roof. She looked down to the detective, standing in the middle of the street.
“Yes?”
“I’ll need a word with you,” he replied.
Cora went back down the fire escape much easier than she had gone up. It was a relief to be back on the ground, even if the coffee shop wasn’t particularly high up. She walked down the alley and crossed the street. Schulz turned and walked away before she could reach him, beckoning her to follow. He headed for the parking lot at the side of the building.
“I was in the middle of doing a spectrographic analysis. What can I do for you?” Cora recited. She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant and hoped he didn’t ask.
“Lucius asked me to bring you back to Tetriarch,” he replied. “He wishes to speak with you.”
“I could use some more time,” Cora said. She knew the attempt was in vain. If Lucius said so, the detective would follow his order without question. The Polizei in Berlin were just another PMC to Lucius, a state-funded arm of his reach.
“I’m afraid not,” he replied. “He is displeased with your lack of reporting over the past hour, and the fact that you have shared nothing with me, as well.”
Cora didn’t feel like pleading her case. She shrugged and waited for him to point out his vehicle and grabbed for the passenger-side door. The Inspector tried to make small talk, but Cora shut him down and rested her eyes. It wouldn’t be enough, but anything she could get would have to be enough just to keep her standing.
Tetriarch’s headquarters loomed over all of downtown Berlin. True to its name, the Tetriarch Cybernetics building was marked by four massive archways at the front of the building that lit up the sky when they came on at sunset. Schulz turned down the side of the building into the parking garage and drove in loops until reaching the fourth floor. He came to a stop just a few feet before the door to the campus.
“I’m sure you can find your way from here,” Schulz said.
Cora nodded and got out. After punching in the code and facing another pat-down, she took the glass elevator to the top floor and back to the wide-open and empty space of Lucius’ waiting room. She walked straight for his office door, blowing past the blonde secretary.
“Mister Lucius will...hey!” she said.
Cora helped herself to
open the tinted glass door and walk in. Lucius was not at his desk on the far end of the room. Behind the desk, a long row of glass windows let in the morning light. Cora hadn’t noticed them earlier, as they were tinted black enough to appear as a wall. Beyond the glass, Lucius stood with his back to her. She surveyed the windows for one with a handle and followed him outside.
The balcony of the penthouse suite was an open-air arena with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and tennis courts. Lucius overlooked the pool a dozen yards away. As she came up alongside him, she saw that the far end of the pool was built into the edge of the roof and walled by glass. It was exotic, thrilling, and guaranteed she would never swim up here.
“Cora, thank you for joining me,” Lucius said.
Cora looked out to the skyline. “I wasn’t aware it was optional.”
“It wasn’t. I was trying to be pleasant,” he replied. He turned to her. “I have tried since the very beginning to be accommodating, courteous, and open. I wish I could say the same for you.”
She had no idea what he knew. Playing dumb seemed the right move.
“What are you talking about?”
“The little shell game you decided to play with the Italian Frankenstein,” Lucius replied, his tone menacing.
Cora faced him. Her lips parted, unable to hide her surprise.
“Oh, I know all about her, same as you,” Lucius said. “And I knew she wasn’t the poor girl at the morgue. A body with some thirty billion self-replicating nanites would be hard to miss. The only thing I didn’t know was whether she was with you or not.”
Cora shook her head. “If you knew, why did you let me go?”
“To see what happened. You dropped off the grid for some time with that little stunt. Care to share where you’ve been?”
Cora closed her mouth. She couldn’t focus enough to concoct a lie Lucius would even find plausible, but she wasn’t about to tell him, either.
Lucius’ jaw tightened. His glowing orange eyes flared. With a blink, his circular pupils became reptilian. His skin covered over in dark red, metallic scales. Cora stepped back as she realized his body expanded in size. First it was slow, with his frame enlarging evenly, tearing the fabric of his suit to scraps. As the pace of his transformation quickened, he dropped to all fours. His neck distended and stretched. Wings sprouted and grew away from his back. A tail elongated from his spine. Within moments, he had taken his true form before her eyes.
The sight of him was every bit as beautiful and terrifying as he made himself appear when human. His head stretched up beyond the roof of the building. His outstretched wings blocked out the sun and covered her in his shadow. Cora knew she should be afraid, but nothing had changed. If anything, he was more majestic now than any creature she’d ever seen. He craned his head down to her level, adjusting his body and tail. The deepest, darkest red scales covered every inch of him, but those eyes were still the same. She looked right into them, even as he roared out at her, tossing her hair back and threatening to throw her down with gale-force wind.
Cora slammed her hands over her ears to block out his volume. Half of downtown Berlin heard his anger this morning. Once the outburst was finished, Cora released her hands from her ringing ears. Even then, she still stared into his eyes.
“You dare to lie to me? To provoke me? I am the only thing you have even close to an ally,” Lucius boomed.
“There was a reason my people died, Lucius,” Cora replied. “Whether you did it or not, it was because of the information we had taken from you.”
He grunted, and hot air burst out from nostrils as big as Cora’s fist. “This is the information age, child. It is the new currency. Some will kill for it. Others will die to protect it. Then there’s you, playing the part of Icarus.”
Cora put her hand on her hip. She knew the myth, but failed to see the analogy.
“You try to flee as you are caught between the savage sea and the burning sun,” Lucius continued. “Yet you take these wings I have given you and disregarded my wisdom.”
“So you’re my Daedelus?” Cora replied with a smirk.
Lucius snapped open his maw at Cora’s body. Two small cyclones of flame circled around orifices on both sides at the back of his jaw. Cora flinched, throwing up her hands and reeling back. She lost her balance and fell to her rear.
“I am the sun!” Lucius yelled. He breathed out black smoke from his nostrils, regaining his composure. “You’d do well to never forget that.”
The threat over, Cora got to her feet, defiant as she locked eyes with the dragon towering over her again.
“What is Project Ashes?”
“A great bird, rising from the ashes of our past,” Lucius replied. “The Awakening has only just begun. The trolls, elves, dwarves, the Natives reborn...that is only the beginning. Right now, your immediate future doesn’t revolve around what you know. It revolves around the danger you are in, and what lifeline I offer you to get out of it.”
“Now who’s the one keeping information to themselves?” Cora said, putting a hand on her hip.
“I don’t know why you ever thought we were equals in this endeavor,” Lucius replied, his tone condescending. “You were given one task. Your freedom was the reward.”
“I warned you-”
“Warn?” Lucius boomed, his deep voice rattling the glass doors behind her. “Look upon me! I am thousands of years old. I carry the scars of legions of men that dared threaten me. Entire bloodlines have come to my lairs, only to fall at my feet. Better and stronger men than you have tried, Cora.”
Cora steeled herself, staring into Lucius’ eyes, refusing to back down. “I have nothing left to lose.”
“Are you so sure?” Lucius cocked his head, his long next twisting with it.
Staring into his gorgeous eyes, she stayed strong. “I promise you, I will not be pushed any further.”
The dragon scoffed, his mouth turned sour. He faced away from her, toward the skyline.
“I brought you here in good faith,” he said. “Acting in our own mutual self interest. I no longer care what happens to you. You are free to go as you please. Conspire with the Italian. Seek your answers. You have twenty-four hours to bring me the data before I turn over you and anyone working with you to the UNS as a terrorist. They will bury you in a hole sooner than damage relations with the most powerful nation in the world.”
Cora didn’t reply. She doubted herself, even the smallest fraction, and it gnawed at her.
“Now, leave me,” Lucius said, disgust in his voice.
Cora lingered a moment before turning for the door back to his office. She grabbed the handle and pulled it open, but didn’t step through. A thought, perhaps a whim, wouldn’t let her walk away. She turned to Lucius.
“One question,” she said.
Lucius craned his neck, turning only one eye to her. He said nothing.
“Have you dreamed of me recently?” she asked.
Lucius raised an eyebrow. “I slept for seven hundred years, awaiting these times. I assure you, I have not slept since.”
Cora nodded and continued through his office and back to the elevator. Lucius was angry and cold this time, but she wasn’t buying his wounded heart routine. He wasn’t angry about some perceived betrayal, he was mad that he didn’t know where she was after she swapped with Giovanna. Either way, letting her loose for a day in his city wasn’t any freedom at all. His eyes would be watching constantly. She sighed. The ride down the elevator was silent, save for the occasional and obnoxious static and squawks in her earpiece. The noise did not stop until she was escorted out of the building.
“Testing,” Gideon came through with a screech.
“Ow. Echo-1, go ahead,” Cora replied, making her way down to the next floor.
“Are you okay?” Johnny asked.
“I’m fine,” Cora said. “He cut my leash, but we need to talk.”
“Say no more,” Gideon replied. “I’ll have a cab to your position in a few minutes, and we’ll d
o a few switches to get you to a rendezvous.”
“Is it bad?” Johnny asked.
“Still not clear. Control, do we have anything?”
“I’ve worked non-stop throughout the morning,” Gideon replied. “Other than a mass of inventory lists and AI meant to sort them, I still don’t understand what I’m looking at.”
Cora put her hands in her pocket and fished out her music player.
“Keep at it,” she said, syncing it with her earpiece. “I have a feeling this is going to be a long afternoon.”
Chasing Ghosts
Almost two hours of transferring from one cab to another had left Cora no time to rest. Johnny finally picked her up only a twenty-minute drive from the cabin. She retold her meeting with Lucius and the warehouse disaster. By the time she walked in the door, she was ready to fall down. Giovanna got up from the dining table and met her in the living room.
“Are you okay? You look even worse than when I last saw you,” Giovanna said, holding her by the chin and examining her face.
“I can keep going,” Cora replied.
“You need sleep,” Giovanna insisted.
Cora shook her head. “Can’t. The clock is too short.”
She looked at Gideon, limp at the table with wires connecting him to his rig. She shook her head. Hackers were known to binge in NeuralNet, as the feeling of time passing moved differently there, but prolonged exposure was unsafe.
“All this tech, and you didn’t bother to bring yourself a pillow to sit comfortably on,” Cora jabbed as she approached the table.
“The cybernetics in my arms, legs, and spine stimulate my muscles as needed,” Gideon’s voice came through the speaker on his rig. “Not that hackers are known for their great posture, anyway.”
Cora shuddered at the thought of all that tech. “Everyone at the table,” she announced. “You, too, Gideon.”
Johnny and Cora took their seats. Giovanna rummaged through cabinets in the kitchen. Gideon twitched several times before convincing his body to sit up straight. He rubbed the back of his neck as he removed the datajack and sensors. Cora looked back at Giovanna, still busy in the kitchen. Their eyes met, Cora staring expectantly.
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