“You’re sure?”
“You’re in the basement?”
“I’m in the basement.” Mike nodded.
“Everyone’s going to the basement. I figured that was you. The good news is I’m pretty sure I can get that off.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know what it was.”
“Yeah. No clue. But I can get it off.” Mike felt the link flare wide with data, his local systems reaching out. “Wait just a … there.”
There was a click, the collar snapping open and falling to the ground. Zacharies’ eyes flicked open, and he looked at the door. “They’re coming.”
Mike pointed. “A bunch of guys are approaching from that direction, and they’re going to shoot at us.”
“Are they bad men?”
He glanced at Zacharies. Good kid. Gets confused on the details. “I guess.”
“What have they done?”
“They work for Reed for a start. That’ll send you blind.” The kid looked at him, face blank. “Fair enough. Bad joke. They work for the people who’ve got your sister.”
Zacharies looked at the door, then back at Mike. “That doesn’t make them bad. They’re just in the way.” Zacharies left the chair, his posture slack and unsteady. “What did they do to me?”
“Probably nothing permanent.” Mike eyed the door. “Sam? Link the kid in.”
“He’s not—”
“Don’t care. No time for that.”
“He doesn’t have an overlay. Or a lattice.”
“He’s got a name and a voice though,” said Mike. “I’d like to have this conversation with the three of us.”
The link spat and hissed. Zacharies’ eyes widened. “What is this?”
“Kid?” Mike shook his head. “Not with your voice. Talk in your head. The link will pick it up.”
“LIKE THIS?”
“Jesus Christ,” said Sam. “It’s like sleeping with a virgin, isn’t it?”
“WHO IS THAT?” Zacharies was loud and bright inside the link frame, thoughts becoming words of thunder.
“Not so loud, but good enough.” Mike grinned. “Sam? Zacharies. Zacharies? This is Sam. She’s my—”
“I’m his best-kept secret.”
“She’s my handler. Sam, how long?”
“I give you five or six minutes before you’re dead.” Her voice was flat, distracted. “You want in on the pool?”
“No, how long before they’re down here?”
“About four or five minutes.” She paused. “There’s something weird in the Reed tower.”
Mike opened the door, nodding to the corridor outside. “Kid? Let’s get going.”
“WHAT DO YOU—”
“Not so loud,” said Mike and Sam together.
“Sorry.” Zacharies frowned, the link hissing. “What do you mean, weird?”
“Dark. Quiet.” Sam sighed. “Nothing digital. Or not a lot.”
“People?” asked Zacharies.
“Yeah.”
Zacharies tapped his fingers against his thigh. “Are they walking all the same way? Their legs, arms, all moving at the same time.”
There was a crackle of static before Sam said, “How’d you know?”
“Seekers,” said Zacharies. “Puppets of the Keeper.”
“A what?” Sam sounded confused.
“Seekers. Thralls, men and women under the spell of the Keeper. You would call it a demon, or a spirit. Keepers are the Masters.”
“Huh,” she said. “Kid, are you crazy?”
“Sam, it’s legit.” Mike stepped into the corridor, his weapon ready in his hand. “You know it’s true. You’ve seen the vids.”
“Sure, fine, I’ll humor you. You’ll be dead soon anyway.”
“No.” Zacharies shook his head. “We won’t be dead. Not yet.”
“Odds aren’t—”
“It’s not about odds.” The kid’s teeth were showing, his face feral. “The Master has my sister, and that can’t happen. Not again.”
Mike looked at Zach. There was something buried deep, ready to burst like a cyst. “Kid? We’ll get your sister.”
“Great.” Sam’s tone was breezy. “Tell you what, though. If you can get out of the basement I might be able to help out. You guys think you can do that?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah.”
“Any second.” Sam’s voice was tense.
“You need to relax.” Mike felt relaxed. He was relaxed. “It’s just Reed.”
“I can’t see them,” she said. “It’s just—”
“Sam? It’ll be okay. Talk soon.” Mike dropped her from the link. He turned to Zacharies, local link still live. “We need to get through here, kill these—”
The doorway at the end of the corridor exploded as charges tore the doors free, sending them spinning through the air toward them. Mike felt the overtime wash over him, started moving in front of the kid to try and catch the debris, but he was going to be too slow.
The doors slowed, holding themselves in the air. Zacharies strode past him. He held up a hand and the doors lapped over each other, forming a moving barricade. Small arms fire started from the other side of the breached doorway. Zacharies pulled his hands wide, then clapped them together.
The doors flew down the corridor, colliding with the men and women on the other side. Mike couldn’t see how many there were. He clicked his optics to thermal to get a better view through the smoke.
He saw a man, held twisting in the air before his body was pulled in half in a spray of heat. A woman’s weapon, torn from her hand and spun to face her before blowing a hole through her visor and out the back of her skull. Another man swung through the air by an invisible hand, slamming into two of his comrades with the wet snap of breaking bones. The last woman lifted from the ground, arms pinwheeling, before she was slammed headfirst through the ceiling.
Mike looked at his sidearm.
“You didn’t even get a shot off, did you?” asked Sam. Mike wasn’t sure when the link had gone live again, but it felt new and steady.
Zacharies faced him, a snarl on his lips. “They aren’t evil. They’re in my way. He has my sister, and they’re in my way.”
“Kid.” Mike jogged to catch up, clapping a hand on Zach’s shoulder.
Zacharies spun, embers burning bright in his eyes. “Don’t touch me.”
“Zacharies.” Mike pulled his hand back. “It’s me.”
Mike watched as Zacharies’ face softened. “Yes.”
“You don’t need to do this by yourself.”
“He doesn’t need your help,” said Sam.
“Sam? You should practice not using your outside voice for a while,” suggested Mike.
Zacharies looked at the twisted remains of the Reed strike team. “I’ve got to find her, Mike.” He touched a spot of blood coming from his nose.
Mike looked at the tip of Zacharies’ finger, the blood almost black. “You okay?”
“It’s hard.” Zacharies looked up. “Sam said we needed to get out of the basement.”
“I’m right here,” she said. “I can hear you. But yeah. You need to go up.”
“Up it will be.” Zacharies closed his eyes. The ceiling bucked and twisted, metal and rebar and concrete spilling in from above. Dust hung lazy in the air. Electricity sparked in the hole.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” breathed Sam.
Zacharies turned to the hole, stumbling. Mike held him up. Zacharies’ hand came away from his nose, glistening and bright.
“Maybe we could take the stairs next time,” said Mike.
“We don’t have the time.” Zacharies shook his head. “Come.”
“Are you going to be able to keep this up?” Mike looked at his feet. “It’s going to kill you.”
“I don’t know.” The kid pulled away, climbing the rubble. “If you knew … if you’d seen her and him… If I had to die twice over, it would be a cheap price to pay.”
Mike tried not to breathe too much dust and smoke. �
�Tell you what.”
“What?” Zacharies face was guarded.
“Let’s see if we can make other people do the dying. As a game plan, I like it better.”
Zacharies laughed, then turned sober. “You’ll look after her, won’t you? When I’m gone?”
“She’s got a guardian angel already, kid.”
“An angel. Yes.” Zacharies’s eyes were bright. He looked at Mike from the top of the rubble. “She saw it. He’ll save us all before the end.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Apsel HQ felt like a cemetery after midnight. Mason had walked these halls a hundred thousand times, but this was the first time he felt a stranger. Not even on his first day, a wide-eyed kid with blood on his hands and hate in his heart, had he felt so out of place.
It wasn’t the emergency lights, or the lack of people. This time, Mason carried a weapon, and he was an enemy of one of the world’s largest syndicates. He was in the heart of their power, and all their might was focused on Carter. It felt an impossible ask to extract her.
Mason would do it anyway. Whatever it took.
“What’s in the case?” Carter’s voice was softer than usual. “Guns? An explosive?”
“Have a look.” Mason let the little Tenko-Senshin nose its way forward. The weapon’s AI knew friend from foe. “Use a camera or something.”
“There’s no X-ray or thermal on this level.”
“You’ll have to wait and see then.” Mason flicked his optics to thermal, overlay grabbing the scattering of images and fitting them to the tactical map at the edge of his vision. “How many?”
“I don’t know. It’s your case.”
“No. How many guys?” Mason frowned. “How many are left?”
She laughed, a hard, brittle sound over the link. “Too many. We’re not making it out of this one.”
“We’re making it out.” A Federate agent walked from a corridor to the left, head down, looking at his weapon. Mason froze. The man looked up, saw Mason, then his eyes dropped to the Tenko-Senshin. “Hi.”
“Hi.” The Federate agent stood like a wax statue. Mason’s overlay tossed up information. Harkness. Thirty-two years old. TacOps Strike Division. Not Married. Three kids. “Harkness?”
“That’s me.” Harkness’ fingers shifted on the stock of his weapon.
“Two ways this goes. The first way—” Mason pushed himself into a sprint as Harkness ducked around the corner, overtime dragging colors from the light. Not just around the corner. Go higher. Mason turned his sprint into a wall run. He bridged the gap in the corridor, his right foot landing on the opposite wall as he rounded the corner.
Bullets traced an arc after him, but Mason rolled. He came up face to face with Harkness, bringing the Tenko-Senshin between the other man’s hands. Harkness’ rifle clattered against the wall as the pistol nestled under Harkness’ chin.
The man’s eye widened for a moment before the Tenko-Senshin shrieked, flechettes tearing through flesh and bone. Mason turned away as he fired, the heat drawing the skin of his face tight.
Harkness’ body dropped to the ground. Wet chunks dripped from the ceiling. Mason coughed as the taste of limes filled his mouth.
“What’s the other way that could have gone?” asked Carter.
“I had to give him a choice.”
“Whatever’s in the case must be important. You’re still holding it.”
Mason looked down at the case. Carter was right. He hadn’t dropped it during the encounter. A round from Harkness’ weapon had gouged the edge of the it, but otherwise it looked fine. “Yeah.”
“So, it’s important? It’s going to help you survive in this crazy place?”
“I don’t even know why I’m carrying it.” Mason stepped over Harkness’ body. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
“It’s not some big gun or neat door breaching tool?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ. What’s in the case?”
“It’s a present,” he said. “For you.”
“You’re nuts.” Carter’s voice carried satisfaction, like she’d felt this for years but only had the evidence today. “Plain crazy. Out of your gourd.”
“Yeah. Crazy feels good, though.”
She laughed. This time, it sounded right.
“The problem you’ve got is you’re hopelessly, and I mean hopelessly, outnumbered.” Carter sounded flat and tired.
“Tell me you’re not giving up on me.” Mason coughed smoke, kicking the body of an Apsel agent over. The heat scoring on what was left of his armor made it look like he’d been through a wood chipper made of fire and razor blades. Which described what the Tenko-Senshin did pretty well.
“How many magazines you got left for that thing?”
Mason eyed the Tenko-Senshin. The little weapon’s muzzle was glowing a soft cherry red. “It doesn’t take magazines, Carter. It takes bricks of metal, slicing them into flechettes with a laser.”
“You know what I mean. You’ve got one left. The one in the damn thing. I can see you, Floyd. That camera in the corner? I can see you through it. It’s a form of technology.”
Mason smiled at the camera. “It’s okay to be scared.” He walked through an open cafeteria. A small team of men with white armor and hard faces came at him from two doors the last time. Mason kept his guard up, eying the doorways.
“I’m going to die, Mason. You can’t fix it.”
“Then we’ll die together. I don’t need to fix it.”
“I don’t want you to die.” Carter sighed. “The whole damn point is you get to live. For me.”
“Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure. We got about ten minutes before we’re both dead. Let’s do Storytime with Uncle Mason.”
“Gotcha.” Mason swapped the leather case to his right hand, the Tenko-Senshin in his left. The lattice shrugged, nudging around his right-handedness. “This story is about a, I don’t know, call him a thief.”
“Okay. I don’t know if I like him very much.”
“Me either. One day, this thief — he’s just a kid — sees a guy in a market. Street samurai.”
“I know the type.” Mason could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yeah, you know the type. He had all kinds of shit with him. Big sword with an energy field around it. A rifle. And he carried this tiny little gun. Small even for a pistol.”
“The Tenko-Senshin.”
Mason ignored her. “A bunch of guys jumped the samurai. There were guns, there were knives. The street samurai swung his blade like he was dancing, Carter. He used the sword in one hand and that little pistol in the other. He wasn’t just a samurai. He was a real kensei. Miyamoto Musashi? Amateur hour compared to this guy.” Mason arrived at a stairwell leading down, poking his head out into the dark beyond. Empty. He continued down. “But he was outnumbered. There are parallels here.”
“I get it,” she said. “What happened?”
“That thief didn’t know what the Tenko-Senshin was when he first saw it. He knew he wanted it. I figure, he’s maybe ten or twelve years old, and he sees a gun that makes the air catch fire. He figures if he pockets the little gun, he could eat tomorrow. Sell it on, you know? The samurai moved like water. Crashed like a wave against his enemies. The thief, he couldn’t use a sword, but he figured any idiot could use a gun. And if he couldn’t sell it, he could use it.”
“Use it against who?” Carter paused. “Use it when?”
“Doesn’t matter. The samurai dropped like a box of rocks in the end. No problem you can’t solve with a big enough gun and enough guys, right? The mercs taking down the samurai start arguing about the split, who’s dick was bigger. The thief scampered out and grabbed the pistol.” Mason paused. “The way the story goes, he was going to take the pistol and run. The night drops around him, and the job’s done. Free and clear. But when he’s there, the gun in front of him, he gets to thinking.”
“A thinking thief?”
“Everyone thinks. Wh
at’s bugging the kid is just how unfair it is. Shit situation, right? Samurai’s a hard person, skilled, decked in weapons and armor and tech and God knows what. Fought the good fight but went down anyway. And the thief thinks, ‘Fuck this, maybe I can shoot some of these fools as I get away.’ A little parting gift.”
“It wasn’t given to him?” She paused. “Why didn’t it kill him? Tenko’s weapons guard their owners.”
Mason looked into the dark. He wasn’t seeing the walls of concrete and steel around him. “The samurai’s on the ground. He’s got blood coming from everywhere, it’s coming out his eyes, for Christ’s sake. He drops his sword, grabs the thief’s arm. Dude’s there, bleeding out, and I felt like he put my hand in a bench vice.” Mason rounded another corner, dim lighting marking the SUB BASEMENT 12 in big letters over the Apsel falcon crest. His overlay chattered with static, a warning about authorized personnel only. He cleared the error. “Jesus, Carter. How far down is your office?”
“Keep going. I’m buried deep. All our monsters are locked away.”
Mason frowned. What the hell? “You’re getting morbid, you know that?”
“They’re almost here, Mason. I don’t have much time.”
He looked further into the stairwell below. Mason stepped over a body, white Apsel armor gray in the dark. “You kill this guy?”
“Yeah. There’s four more on the next level.”
“Right.” Mason moved to the next landing, finding the bodies. They looked like they were sleeping. “How?”
“Overloaded their link,” she said. “Finish the damn story.”
“Fine. Anyway, the samurai says to me, ‘Make it count. Save a life worth saving.’ And then he dies.”
“You’re the thief? You’re telling me you stole a Tenko-Senshin? What happened?”
“I shot those ass clowns dead. Guess there were six, seven guys, I don’t know. They were surprised as hell a kid opened up on them. The pile of bodies in that market square was epic. It was so loud, I remember the noise as the gun tore back and forth.” Mason stopped in front of a door, checking around it. “That samurai was Tenko. I met Imaburi Tenko, and he died in front of me.”
“Jesus, Tenko gave you his own gun?”
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