Investigating Deceit

by Michael Anderle

  Despite the tunnel being jammed with monsters running mandible to tentacle, none of them attacked each other. More pheromones, presumably.

  Erik added his plasma grenades to the carnage. The larger blue-white explosions joined the orange-red fire flowers of the Militia’s grenades and incinerated countless yaoguai. Almost the entire front half of the horde had been annihilated, but fresh monsters rushed forward.

  An endless deadly swarm.

  A new tentacled cyclops scuttled into the tunnel. Several small monsters surged over it, but it didn’t pay them any attention as it continued its advance.

  “When does something pass from the realm of the merely ridiculous to the absurd?” Jia mused.

  “That typically happens between Tuesday and Wednesday for us,” Erik joked.

  “But it’s Sunday!” Jia complained.

  He shouldered his rifle. “That’s why I said ‘typically.’” He pulled the missile launcher off his back and glanced behind him before aiming the launcher at the cyclops. “Backblast area clear,” he shouted and launched the missile. It screamed away from the launcher and struck the cyclops. The explosion turned the monster into gory confetti and scattered several smaller charred yaoguai.

  He hooked the empty launcher on the carryaid and grabbed his TR-7.

  Jia’s mask amplified the harsh sound of her ragged breathing. Her heart raced, but she kept her focus, firing shot after shot at the monsters. There had to be a limit, and while the creatures were relentless and fast, so far, they weren’t bulletproof.

  The soldiers’ staggered, disciplined bursts annihilated the renewed horde’s front line. The monsters had speed, strength, and numbers, but technology made the soft, squishy humans stronger, faster, and deadlier. The tiger-like beasts took several bursts to put down, but even they crashed to the ground eventually.

  Agent Koval pulled two small black cubes from her suit pockets and threw one toward a tunnel wall before pivoting and hurling the other toward the opposite wall. The cubes hit the wall, clicking. A thin barrel popped out and flashed as it fired. It wasn’t large enough for a decent bullet, but its projectiles ripped huge holes in nearby yaoguai. The barrel jerked into a new position with each shot.

  Jia had no idea what the device was, but she could use a few in her glove box for when apartment interviews turned into fights against monsters.

  Erik swept his TR-7 from left to right, firing single rounds. The exploding rounds lacked the clearance power of a frag or plasma grenade, but the shrapnel and flames blew holes in the smaller flying forces, and the half-shredded and charred monsters careened into others. He jerked the rifle down and emptied the rest of his clip into a newly arrived tentacled cyclops, blowing it to pieces.

  Agent Koval didn’t fire as fast as the soldiers, but each flechette that flew from her gun exploded against a flying target. Erik wasn’t the only one to bring interesting ammo. Agent Koval and Erik kept spitting out explosive rounds and knocking yaoguai out of the air or off the tunnel walls.

  The helmet’s audio dampeners kept the constant roar of gunfire and explosions from shattering Jia’s eardrums.

  Jia’s gun went dry after she sent two rounds into a furry yaoguai. She shoved a new magazine in, the impact of the battle striking her.

  This isn’t a police raid, she thought. This is demon-hunting.

  A heavily armed Militia unit, along with an ID agent and two cops with big weapons, were only holding the line because the mindless enemy was contained in tight quarters. When the squad had set out on the mission, everyone had believed that there would be a modest number of yaoguai. More than in Karton’s apartment, but nowhere near an entire deadly army.

  Jia understood why it was important to conduct simultaneous raids. Before, they had worried about a few dozen yaoguai making to the surface, but if these had made it to the Shadow Zone, they wouldn’t have ended up boxed in and easy targets.

  The average citizen, even in the Shadow Zone, didn’t walk around with a tactical suit, grenades, and assault rifles. They didn’t carry portable turrets or guns that fired guided explosive flechettes.

  The yaoguai would have swarmed the area and butchered hundreds of people. Even flitters might not have saved victims from the flying monsters.

  Had the DD suspected there might be yaoguai? Given that they were ready to bring in more troops, it must have been considered a strong possibility, but she doubted the close-lipped military superiors would be willing to admit it.

  A small growl escaped Jia’s mouth. The demonic horde of twisted chimeras wasn’t from an insane Mother Nature. Every single beast they’d killed had been carefully designed and grown by a human for something as petty as money.

  Jia fired four quick shots, one each into the heads of advancing centipede yaoguai. The bodies collapsed on the bed formed by their predecessors, the recent victims’ green life fluids painting the bodies.

  She missed one, but the ricochet hit a hideous example of demented brilliance behind what she was aiming at.

  The squad needed to kill the monsters to get to the breeding facility, and Jia prayed that someone human was there. She wanted satisfaction and closure. They needed to feel the fear they had inflicted on the innocent people in the Shadow Zone.

  A soldier screamed as a crab yaoguai dropped from the ceiling, knocked him off his flitter, and tore into his suit with a claw. Jia and a couple of other soldiers fired into the crab. Its indigo blood splattered across the soldier’s suit from the first few shots, but the combined fire left it a perforated, twisted mess.

  The soldier staggered to his feet. The attack left a jagged tear in his RBC suit, but it had only scratched the tactical suit. That was a relief, but Jia didn’t want to put their suits to the test against the horde, and now he was at risk of contamination.

  She glanced at several unobtrusive graphs in the upper right-hand corner of her goggle display. One of the most important, background radiation, was yellow. The exposed soldier would be okay for a short mission, but he wouldn’t want to risk red-level exposure with a damaged RBC suit.

  Captain Phillips hissed. Vitals sensors in the tactical suits of all the soldiers transmitted their information to her goggles. She would know if any of them got in trouble, even if they didn’t make a sound.

  “Pull back, Private,” she ordered.

  He remounted his flitter. “I can still fight, ma’am.”

  She blew the head off something that looked like a meter-long dragonfly before responding. “We’re in the damned Scar, and you’re exposed. Pull back, and that’s an order. Reinforce our entry point in case we have to run. Pull back and request reinforcements, just in case.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the soldier yelled and fired several bursts into yaoguai before turning his mini-flitter around and flying away.

  The screeches, howls, and shrieks were as loud as before, but there were fewer, and the sound of near-constant rifle fire smothered them.

  Fighting a horde of monsters in darkened tunnels with low-light vision wasn’t an optimal situation. The piles of bodies and body parts, both rigid and twitching, along with the necessity of firing not just at the ground, but into the air and ceiling made it hard to track the enemy’s true numbers in the midst of battle. The sounds didn’t lie, though.

  The horde was thinning. The squad was winning.

  Erik grunted and ejected his magazine. “I’m out of explosive rounds.”

  “Me, too,” Agent Koval admitted.

  He shoved in a new magazine and fired a burst into one of the surviving furry white yaoguai. Even without an explosion, its head didn’t react to the metal poisoning well.

  Jia had burned through about three-quarters of her ammunition already. She assumed the other soldiers had as well. Battles were as much about supplies as they were weapons. With hundreds of enemies, even a single bullet could prove pivotal.

  A few volleys more echoed in the tunnel before the soldiers ceased fire. Jia searched for a target but couldn’t see any yaoguai movi
ng forward. Some lay dying, twitching or flopping around. Most were in pieces. None presented a threat.

  “Is it over?” asked a soldier.

  Captain Phillips prodded a bullet-filled tiger yaoguai with her boot. “These things don’t come back to life, do they?” She looked at Erik and Jia for confirmation.

  “They’re twisted, genetically engineered mutants that look like demons,” Jia began, “but they’re just products of science in the end. They aren’t magical. Nothing can come back from the dead.”

  “We just fought things I’ve only seen in movies, Detective.” Captain Phillips shook her head. “At this point, if an angel showed up with a portable nuke launcher to help us, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I don’t care if we killed the yaoguai.” Erik pointed to the back of the horde, toward the intersection feeding into their source tunnel. “They didn’t decide to rush at us on their own. Somebody sent them or let them out, and my gut tells me that somebody is still here. We owe them a little chat.”

  “We’re only down one man,” Captain Phillips observed. “And that’s got to be their final play.”

  “Everyone ignore what comes next,” Agent Koval requested.

  “What are you talkin—”

  Agent Koval’s two box turrets exploded with a pop.

  She shrugged. “Sorry. The ID can’t have some things just sitting around where anyone can find them.”

  “You couldn’t just pull them off the wall?” Jia suggested.

  Agent Koval shrugged. “I have my reasons. Now, what were we discussing? Whether this is over?” She looked around. “I have my doubts.”

  “I agree, and there is nothing called ‘too careful,’” Jia suggested. She patted her outer pockets to confirm her magazine count. Next time she ended up in an underground tunnel, she should bring an entire hoverpallet filled with boxes of ammo. “We don’t know if they’re in communication with Kerrigan headquarters. The raid up there might already be over, and they’re perp-walking everyone. This might be a suicide mission for the survivors down here.”

  “These aren’t fanatics, like terrorists,” Captain Phillips noted. She kicked a few broken-off mandibles off her mini-flitter. “These are just greedy bastards. They might be afraid of prison, but they’re probably more afraid of dying.”

  Erik chuckled. “These bastards were willing to test genetically engineered monsters on innocent people. I’m willing to bet they don’t want to end up in prison with people knowing that. Lots of people locked up who still buy into Purism.” He patted his TR-7. “We followed the trail before. Let’s keep at it. I wouldn’t mind a little poetic justice.” He accelerated, and his mini-flitter floated forward.

  “Poetic justice?” Jia asked.

  “Yeah. It’d be nice if when we find the suspects, we found the yaoguai ate all their faces.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The squad flew over the graveyard of homicidal scientific hubris and into their source tunnel. They kept their weapons ready to fire at any new threats. The sheer number of yaoguai killed any hope that the raid would have been easily taken care of without overwhelming military force.

  There was a certain irony. In several incidents, Erik and Jia had been pushed to their limits because they were the only ones there, but now they had an entire Militia squad and even an ID agent, and things weren’t any easier.

  It was like the universe, or perhaps the Lady, had made sure to adjust everything to suit the situation.

  No new monsters appeared, but their path disappeared after only a hundred meters. A massive metal wall stretched across the tunnel. Its unblemished condition and lack of discoloration made it seem odd in the middle of the otherwise abandoned remnants of a murdered city. Two thick gray doors pierced the center of the wall. There was no visible access panel.

  They didn’t need an advanced AI or drones to know they had arrived at the yaoguai facility. The squad brought their mini-flitters to a stop and carefully searched the area, including the roof, for hidden monsters.

  Erik dismounted. “I thought the monster factory might be above in the Scar proper, but they must have built their entire facility directly into this tunnel system. It’s not like they have a lot of inspectors coming to check them out down here, and from what we saw at the front, they had to excavate to even reach these tunnels.”

  Captain Phillips pointed to the doors. “They must be able to open if they let all the yaoguai out, but how do we get inside? I doubt they’ll do it if we just ask nicely. Maybe they’re already gone.”

  “Let’s hope they aren’t,” Jia muttered.

  The captain hopped off her vehicle. “Our squad didn’t bring any antimaterial explosives, and unless you’re hiding another missile somewhere, Detective Blackwell, we might have to wait for reinforcements.”

  Jia shook her head. “They could be destroying evidence in there or escaping out the back if they haven’t already. I didn’t fight through a horde of monsters to sit on my hands while the suspects got away.”

  Agent Koval laughed. “Their brilliant escape plan is to flee into the Scar? The Militia is actively searching inside the Exclusion Line. It’d be a bad idea. No, whoever it is, is still in there. We just need to figure out the magic word.”

  Erik strapped the TR-7 over his shoulder and pulled the laser rifle off his carryaid, managing the bulk of the weight of the massive weapon with his left arm. He used the handlebars of the mini-flitter for support. He could extend the short tripod built into the weapon, but he could achieve a better angle using his first method.

  “I’ve got one fully charged cell, and another one hanging from my carryaid,” he explained. “That’s ten shots. This can blow through flitters, so a door should be easy.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Captain Phillips admitted.

  Jia nodded. “Do it.”

  Erik grinned. “Why don’t I see if this is a skeleton key?”

  Captain Phillips eyed the weapon. Most of her face might be hidden by her mask, but the interest and jealousy in her eyes were obvious. “I’ve been meaning to ask you where you got that. I’ve heard rumors of a Special Forces unit getting them. Is that something you had from your days in the service?”

  “Nah. This is something I picked up recently. A friend of mine thought it might be handy in situations like this. We end up in these situations a lot.”

  “So I’ve heard. This would have been handy against that King sentry.”

  “Exactly.” Erik lined up the shot. “Everyone ready?”

  The other squad members aimed their weapons at the doors. There were no obvious gates or vents, implying the yaoguai had emerged from the doors. This area might be the back of the facility. Despite what Agent Koval said, it made sense for the criminals to flood the tunnels with monsters and make their escape.

  Erik pulled the trigger, and sparks showered from the upper-right of one of the doors as the invisible beam struck. The shot left a shallow gouge, ringed by blackened metal. He hadn’t penetrated the door.

  “Not that easy, huh?” Erik sighed. “Well, I guess we can appreciate that the monsters would not have escaped until they intended for it to happen.”

  Another two shots bored a deep hole, allowing light to spill out from it. He’d carved the entire upper-right of the door away from the doorframe. Progress.

  “Now they can shoot at us,” Agent Koval offered cheerfully. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Detective Blackwell.”

  Jia scoffed. “If they thought they could win a firefight, they wouldn’t have sent out their monsters. If they’re still in there, they’re probably hiding and wetting themselves.”

  “Oof,” Koval replied. “Aggressive sort, aren’t you?”

  “We’re almost in.” Erik fired two more shots toward the center-left of the door to dig another hole. The charge indicator blinked on the side of his weapon. He pulled the conical cell out and shoved it into a pocket of the carryaid before grabbing the other cell and screwing it into the side of t
he weapon.

  His next four shots blew away the upper- and center-left portions of the door, but it remained standing. With one shot remaining, he hooked the rifle onto his carryaid.

  “I don’t have any hidden ID explosives laced into my boots if that’s what you’re thinking,” Agent Koval mentioned. “And I also don’t see any Trojan Horses around to trick them into letting us in. If I get closer, I might be able to hack it.”

  “No need. I did enough. It’s good enough.” Erik marched toward the door confidently. Even if someone inside had a gun, his tactical suit would protect him, and the contamination levels remained low. The holes weren’t big enough to fire rockets or missiles through, and probably the only man carrying a laser rifle in all of Neo SoCal was him.

  Hope I’m not wrong about that, he thought. If I am, I won’t live long enough to care.

  Jia jogged after him. Captain Phillips gestured for her soldiers to follow him.

  Agent Koval chuckled and shook her head before following. “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”

  “I’ll give up when I’m dead.” Erik stopped in front of the door. “You’re not getting away,” he bellowed. “I know you’re in there. I’m sure you’ve been watching us since we pulled up to your little horror factory. You might even have cameras set up in the tunnels. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen us or not. We’re here now, and you know what that means. All your yaoguai are dead, and we’re not.” He waited a few seconds for a response before continuing, “I wonder how many millions, if not billions, of credits you just wasted, trying to stall us. That means you are desperate, or it could mean you’ve got something more to hide. Waiting for reinforcements? It’s not going to happen. Ours will get here before yours. If you want to do this the easy way, you can surrender. If you make us do it the hard way and resist, you should remember these aren’t stun rifles we’re hauling. Sure, you’re going to end up in prison, but that’s better than being dead. After what I’ve just seen, though, I wouldn’t mind making you dead.”