“There was only a handful left anyway,” Shifty said. “Scattered around, too.”
Cass looked over the wounded. “We’re going to need to get them to the roof. Teleport them to the hospital.”
“You’re not going to be doing anything,” an angry voice said.
Dennett. He was unhurt, along with Dr. Keaney, who Cass still couldn’t stop calling “Egghead” in her mind. The two of them picked their way through the wounded FBI agents towards her, Egghead looking like he wanted to either cry or throw up, Dennett looking like he wanted to punch a wall until his hands bled.
“Dennett, we can’t leave them here,” Cass said. “We don’t have a Healer on site, and…”
“Oh, we’re moving them to the roof for teleport,” Dennett said. “But you’re not doing a damn thing.” He shifted his focus to Shifty. “Just what the hell were you thinking?”
“About what?” Shifty said slowly, which only seemed to infuriate Dennett even further.
“Get these three disarmed and secured in a locked room,” Dennett said to Michael.
“Sir?” Michael asked.
“Wait, what? Me, too?” Shifty said.
“Especially you. Releasing two prisoners, and arming them?”
“Well,” Shifty said, “technically, I only armed one of them…”
Cass shook her head. Usually she was the one cornering the market on pissing off the bosses with her mouth, but Shifty seemed to be doing a pretty good job of prodding the bear just now.
“Dennett,” she said, “we don’t have time for this. You need everyone.”
“What I need, are team players,” Dennett said, turning on Shifty. “Where were you during the attack? When all my agents were getting torn to shreds?”
“Getting Cass and Dread,” Shifty said. “I figured we needed everyone, and they’re the best…”
“While you were wasting time releasing two prisoners and giving a felon your sidearm, Kel and her mages were tearing this place apart. You could’ve been up here, with your shields, and that would’ve tipped the balance in our favor. How many lives could you have saved if you had come straight to the defense rather than run to get your friends?”
“I…” Shifty began, but Cass interrupted him.
“Dennett, it’s pointless to argue over this. We need to get to Revival Tech and stop Kel.”
“What are you… why am I even talking to you?”
“Because you know I’m right. Kel is moving into her endgame, and if we don’t…”
“Here’s what I know. We have an entire goddamn city coming apart around us. No power. No cell communication. Conjurations and ghouls running through the streets killing civilians everywhere. And now we have reports of some sort of red energy barrier at different spots around the city.”
Cass traded a look with Dread. “We’ve seen that before.”
Keaney finally stirred out of his shocked daze and spoke. “You have? Where?”
Dennett glared at him. Cass could tell he didn’t want to hear a single word out of any of them, no matter how valuable the information could be. He was furious over so many of his people getting hurt right under his nose, and that fury was blinding him to anything but lashing out at whoever he could.
“At the prison,” Cass said. “She’s doing the same thing she did at the prison. Seal off an area with a force field. Kill as many people as she can, and use that death to fuel her sphere.”
“That’s…” Dennett began to say, but now it was Keaney’s turn to interrupt him.
“She could be right,” he said. “Kel did seal off the prison with an impenetrable shield matching the description of the reports we’re getting.”
“That was different,” Dennett said. “The prison was… what? Two city blocks long on each side? These reports are coming from all over the place.”
Keaney paused to do the math. “The field must be a mile across or more.”
Dennett shook his head. “Impossible.”
“Not with the sphere in play,” Cass said. “Not to mention whatever device they’ve built at Revival Tech to use it. Adjani said it could amplify the power of the sphere.”
Now it was Michael’s turn to speak, still cradling his injured arm. “Sir, if she’s right, that means that we are totally cut off from any help outside the city.”
“Not to mention that Kel won’t stop until she’s killed everyone inside the force field,” Cass said. “We have to get there and stop her. Once she goes down, all this madness stops.”
Dennett shook his head. “No, we need to stop the bleeding, first. We need to coordinate with local PD and get this situation in the streets under control.”
“The way you get this situation under control is to take out Kel, at Revival Tech, not by chasing around after her playthings. That’s what she wants, for you to scurry around trying to clean up, so that you leave her alone in her fortress to finish her work.”
“I am not leaving these civilians to die, Wheeler!”
“You guarantee they’re going to die, once Kel activates that machine and uses the Code,” Cass said. “We don’t have a choice. We have to risk leaving them on their own so that we can stop the problem at the source.”
“Like you tried to do here?” Dennett said, waving around at the bodies and wounded lying around the floor.
“I’m not saying it’s an easy choice, but…”
“No. No,” Dennett said, shaking his head. “I’m done arguing about this.”
“Dennett, there’s only one reason to come get Adjani. She needs him. Something he knows. It’s the only thing that was holding her back. Now she’s got him. She’s got everything she needs. The sphere. The Intron Code at Revival Tech. And now, the man who knows how to make it all work.”
“The entire city is under siege, Wheeler. I am not going to abandon all of those civilians to get slaughtered by an army of ghouls and conjurations.”
“Don’t. You do exactly what you said to do. Coordinate with local PD to control as much of this chaos as you can. Let me and my team get over to Revival Tech and cut off the head of the snake.”
Dennett glared at her.
“Look, I realize I’m a bitter pill to swallow. I’m impatient, I don’t play well with authority figures, and I’m an all-around pain in the ass. I get that. But step back for a second and ask yourself… if the message wasn’t coming from me, would you listen to it?”
He continued to stare at her with hard eyes.
“If you put us back in a holding cell,” Cass said, “we’re no good to anyone. Cut us loose, and we’re an asset that might put a stop to this whole disaster.”
“Get them back downstairs,” Dennett said to Michael. “Find another room to secure them in. All three of them.”
“Dennett…” Cass began to say.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t make me order him to restrain you as well.”
“Come on, Cass,” Dread said. “It’s no good.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” Cass said, as she was led away by Michael.
“I made a big mistake, listening to Michael when he vouched for you and your team of misfits,” Dennett shot back. “Now I’m correcting it.”
Cass turned to retort, but Dread put a hand softly on her shoulder. She bit down hard on her words, forced herself to not start swinging angry fists at the closest living thing in her frustration.
She managed to keep her words to herself long enough to walk to the elevators, but even as Michael pressed the call button, Cass couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Michael,” Cass said.
“What?” Michael said, glaring at her. “What, Cass? What do you expect me to do?”
“I… talk to the man. Make him understand. Kel is the source. None of this matters if we don’t put a stop to her. You know I’m right.”
“It doesn’t matter if I know you’re right. Dennett… he’s too pissed to hear anything. He’s never going to listen to me. Hell, he blames me for bringing you on
board in the first place. Right now, that’s all he sees.”
“Maybe once Dennett calms down, sees his people getting taken care of, has some time to process all this…” Dread began to say.
“By then it’ll be too late,” Cass said.
The elevator doors slid open.
“Guess we’re screwed,” Shifty said.
They filed into the elevator, shifting around to make room for Dread’s bulk, and Michael pressed the button to close the doors. Each of them stood in silence as the elevator began to move, Cass clenching her fists hard enough that her fingernails bit into her palms.
Dennett was so caught up in being pissed off about his losses that he couldn’t hear the truth. He was grabbing at whatever was in front of him, fixing that, just to be fixing something, anything, and feeling like he was getting something accomplished.
Dread was right. Once Dennett had a chance to recover from having the rug pulled out from under him, he might be able to see things more clearly. But by the time that happened, the entire city would be ashes.
Michael pressed the STOP button on the elevator, holding it for a moment in silence before he spoke. “You’re sure she’s at Revival Tech?”
Cass traded a look with Dread before she answered him. “Michael, you’ve seen the same intel I have. You know the same things I know. Where else could she be?”
“And you think the three of you can take her?”
“Six,” Dread said. “There’s six of us on our team.”
“Hold that,” Michael said to Cass, indicating the STOP button. He reached into his jacket pocket with his good hand and drew out a key card. “You’re going to need this.”
“Michael?”
“Code to the armory is six eighteen alpha twelve. That card and that code will get you into the armory and the secure vehicle bay. It’s on the ground floor.”
“I know where it is,” Cass said. “Are you sure about this?”
“Fuck it,” Michael said. “Either way, my career is done. Besides, if you’re right, and I don’t let you go stop Kel, there’ll be nothing left alive in the city. Including me.”
Cass took the card out of Michael’s hand, and he grabbed her arm firmly and looked her in the eyes before he spoke again.
“You get your gear,” he said. “You get your people. And you get your ass to Revival Tech. And then, Wheeler…”
“Yeah?”
“You put that bitch in the ground.”
Cass nodded. “Count on it.”
Dread
It’s hard to not be impressed at least a little bit when you’re standing next to a military armored vehicle. Tanks are usually the most impressive, but even a light armored vehicle like the one sitting in the restricted area of the parking garage will grab your attention pretty quickly. There’s something about fourteen tons of war machine that commands respect.
It certainly made an impression on Shifty. “Holy shit balls!” he said, walking slowly around the massive, squat vehicle. “What the hell is this thing?”
“That,” I said, “is a LAV-25. Light Armored Vehicle.”
“You mean like, as in military?”
“You got it. We used them in the Corps.”
“Dude,” Shifty said, “please tell me we’re taking it.”
“Oh, you bet your ass we’re taking it,” Cass said. “But first we hit the armory.”
I’ve spent most of my adult life around guns. Training with guns, fighting with guns, but most consistently, carrying guns. Between the Corps and being a cop, it was hard to remember a time when I didn’t have a gun on my hip.
Then, ever since the prison, I’d been unarmed. It felt a little weird, like that feeling you get when you realize that you left your cell phone at home.
Between the four months at the prison, and the last few months of operating with the FBI unarmed… with the recent exception of using a borrowed handgun at the mall… walking into that armory made me feel like a kid walking into a candy store. They had everything in there; I mean, everything.
The FBI had their own version of Wreck Squads… strike teams designed to take down mages. Ours had been wiped out the day before by Kel at the apartment building ambush, but all their gear and more was piled up in the racks and shelves crammed into the secure room that Cass opened with Michael’s key card. I found myself wandering the narrow aisles, running my hand across all the party favors stored there the armory, as if not knowing which one to pick up first.
You could practically wage a war with this stuff. Good. We were about to.
“Don’t forget to take gear for the others,” Cass said, shrugging out of her civilian clothes and pulling on tactical fatigues she found in some lockers set against the wall.
I followed suit, after taking a minute or so to find some that would actually fit me. Putting on those clothes made me feel like I was an old-time knight strapping on his armor. I found myself taking my time, savoring the feel of that heavy canvas stretching over my limbs.
It had been a long time since I’d worn this sort of thing. I used to live in fatigues like this, between the Corps and the Squads, and just like guns, ever since the prison, I hadn’t touched them. Now I felt like I was finally back in my own skin.
“Check it out, Cass,” Shifty said, digging into another one of the lockers set against the wall.
She looked inside. “Upgraded body armor, looks like.”
On the Wreck Squads, we used to wear basic body armor vests consisting of flexible Kevlar. The Kevlar could stop a pistol round, but something heavier from a rifle could still get through, so we would slide hard armor metal plates into wide pockets on the front and back of the vest to protect our vitals from heavy firepower… or something extra nasty from a conjuration.
The FBI clearly had a lot more financial resources than our old SWAT department, because the armor in those lockers was a distinct step upward in protection. First off, they had pieces to cover the arms and legs. At first glance, they looked a lot like riot gear, but on closer inspection, were clearly made out of something a lot tougher than plastic.
On top of that, all the pieces had little glyphs etched along their edges. I’m deaf, blind, and dumb to any of that magical stuff, so I asked Shifty what they were.
“Defense glyphs,” he said. “Wards. Protection against magefire and that sort of thing.”
“How strong?” Cass asked.
“Don’t expect it to keep out the heavy stuff, but a magedart might not get through.”
“We sure could’ve used this gear on our squad back in the day,” I said.
“Do you have any idea how expensive this kind of thing is to make?” Cass said. “I’m shocked even the FBI has it.”
“The vehicle outside is warded, too,” Shifty said. “Much more heavy-duty. That thing is a tank.”
“Light armored vehicle,” I said.
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“All right, well, strap it all on,” Cass said. “Take some that will fit the others. You see anything else that looks handy, grab it. Load heavy on ammo and grenades.”
Generally speaking, Wreck Squads and similar groups that have to deal with rogue mages are allowed a bit more leeway with lethal weapons than your average law enforcement. For example, regular SWAT doesn’t use fragmentation grenades, the kind designed to kill. They’ll use flash-bangs, grenades designed to distract and stun, but not kill.
That’s not their job. They’re cops, not soldiers.
Wreck Squads, though, walk a line that’s not always well-defined. Most of what we run into we have to put down with lethal force. If we can subdue a street mage and take them in alive, we do it whenever possible. But with Revived Individuals or street mages who are throwing around a lot of violence, or especially when there’s sharp-toothed conjurations running around ripping people up, we pretty much click over into Wreck Mode and start blasting the shit out of the bad guys.
Cass started loading up a bunch of those little P90 submachineguns
she likes so much. Shifty found some sort of riot shield that had a lot of those wards or glyphs or whatever he called them etched all over it. I asked him if he’d ever used something like it before.
“Nope,” he said. “But it looks expensive and awesome, so I’m taking it.”
Like I said, kids in a candy store. Next, it was my turn.
“There’s my baby,” I said, pulling a heavy weapon down off of one of the racks.
It was an F-Shok, one of those experimental niche weapons I used to carry on Squad Four. The F-Shok is a belt-fed fully automatic shotgun. For anything other than a Wreck Squad, they don’t make a hell of a lot of sense.
For anything other than a Wreck Squad. When you have to fight indoors at extremely close range against hordes of inhuman creatures, many of which don’t seem to feel pain, trust me, you want a ridiculous wrecking ball of a weapon on your side.
That was the F-Shok. Heavy as an anvil even without the ammo, you weren’t going to be winning any foot races with that beast in your hands, but it sure was good at shredding anything standing in front of it.
Needless to say, it was coming with me. I loaded it onto the vehicle with as much ammo as I could carry. By the time I got back to the armory, Cass was searching through the lockers with a frown on her face.
“Anybody find any explosives?”
“Over here,” Shifty said. “Door breaching charges, mostly. A little C4.”
“That’s it?” Cass said, once she saw what Shifty was talking about.
Shifty shrugged. “Why?”
Goddamn it. I knew why.
“You want to try to blow up the building again, don’t you, Cass?” I said.
“What? Like it’s a bad idea?”
I had to give her that. “Okay, taken in context… maybe it’s not such a bad idea. I’m just saying, blowing up the corporate headquarters of Revival Tech is becoming kind of a thing with you.”
“Putting a stop to this death magic nightmare is becoming kind of a thing with me.”
“I’m just saying, remember what happened the last time we tried…”
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 69