Soul Raging

by Ronie Kendig

  Shadows rippled below.

  He retrieved his weapon and aimed in the general direction of the wavering light. Pops of light appeared at the cave opening, and he recognized them for what they were—shoulder-mounted lamps on the Gen2s. If they were bold enough to wear lamps, then they were confident in their abilities. Very confident.

  “Enemy contact ten meters,” Leif intoned as he targeted the nearest lamp and fired. “Engaging.” He chambered another round.

  Light winked out.

  Water swirled around him as the enemy returned fire.

  This felt like a sick game of Marco Polo. Leif kicked harder, ready to erase the distance and get on dry ground. Deal with these super soldiers with violence of action.

  Vega and Gilliam were coming from directly above.

  “Bravo,” Canyon reported from topside, “we show ten enemy combatants closing in on your position.”

  Leif hesitated. Ten? He showed three. Where . . . ? His pulse jacked when he identified shadows spiriting toward them. Not slow like a swimmer, but fast. He fired and chambered. Fired and chambered.

  A blow to his back thrust him forward. He twisted and caught a limb, only to sense a vortex of movement—legs. He jerked away, feeling as if he’d had a brush with death. Startled at their agility, he dove after the guy, then noted he was right on top of the cave opening.

  His fear over Risen going online and Taissia down there forced him to act. That and his terror that his implant would activate. He aborted the skirmishes outside and went for the cave.

  Something yanked him backward.

  Leif thrashed against whatever held him but didn’t make any progress. He reached behind him to find not a person, but a line. His tank had been harpooned, punctured. Which meant he was losing oxygen.

  Crap! He eyed his O2 gauge, then the cave. Was it close enough? Could he reach it without a tank? And once he got into the cave, how far or deep till he found air or dry ground? If anyone tried to stop him . . . well, it’d get interesting real fast. But out here, he had no prayer.

  He surveyed the skirmishes around him. Iskra had somehow managed to kill her attacker, probably by getting a jump on him—she was fierce like that. A Gen2 and Andreas were making mincemeat of each other. The others weren’t doing so well.

  Amid a crimson cloud, Carsen Gilliam went limp.

  Wasting time, Metcalfe. He jettisoned his empty tank and mask, kicking hard toward the opening.

  Eight meters.

  Five.

  Twin shadows dove at him. Leif caught one, and the preternatural momentum of the Gen2 carried them toward the cave wall. Leif shifted, putting the super soldier in a chokehold and angling so that unusual force drove the man’s head into the rock.

  The Gen2 stopped fighting.

  Leif kicked off the wall and surged toward an opening the size of a dump truck. Though the other guy came at him, Andreas diverted his attention. Leif slid through the cave opening and spotted a glimmering light—the surface!

  Lungs burning, he swam for it. Felt the pressure against his temples. In his chest. With a shove, Leif broke the surface and sucked in a hard breath, taking in the cave.

  Water pelted him. The telltale splats of gunfire forced him back under. Diving, he used slow, gentle movements to create as little disturbance as possible. Eyeing the shooters on the ledge, he waited until his lungs demanded relief. A shadowy corner lured him into its darkness to hide and maybe float to the surface, where he could snatch some air. He angled his head back and let his nose slip above the water. Drew in a patient breath.

  A shape bobbed into his three—a body. He checked the face and twitched—Iskra! Was she dead?

  She blinked. He made eye contact and held up three fingers. Then two. He gently raised his weapon and aimed at the guy on the right. Mouthed, “One.”

  They both fired.

  A Gen2 got off a couple rounds as he fell backward.

  Leif surged. Rushed the bank. Grabbed the Gen2’s weapon and went to a knee at the entrance to the belowground facility for a quick look-see. It led down a tunnel that was half natural rock, half concrete. Cabling ran along the ceiling, providing a conduit for the intermittently placed lights. “Bravo Actual and Storm going in,” he subvocalized.

  “Copy,” Canyon said.

  “Speaking of storms,” Cell commed, “you’re not going to believe this, but there’s a storm brewing. Came out of nowhere.”

  Leif’s gut churned. What were the chances? “Meteoroi?”

  “That’s our guess,” he said. “Weather was clear when we left dock.”

  “Bravo Five and Four going in. Bravo Three down,” Andreas reported.

  Huber. Leif winced at losing two people this early into the execution of the mission.

  Glancing at the cave opening, Leif saw a member of team Charlie clamber onto the bank, the water, like some twisted miracle, turning red. “Charlie . . . Two . . . shot.”

  Vega appeared behind him, moving fast onto the cleft. “Seven inside as we—” He arched his spine as a harpoon pierced his chest, and he collapsed as several black-clad heads popped up in the water.

  Andreas ducked behind a stack of crates and provided protective cover. “Go!” he shouted to Leif.

  Turning, Leif shoved Iskra through the exit, hearing the pursuit of angry bullets. Weapons tight against their shoulders, they hurried down the tunnel with the daunting realization that ArC had cut their number of Neiothen in half before they even penetrated the building.

  * * *

  THOREAU SUBMERSIBLE, CARIBBEAN SEA

  “I’m losing the signal!” Mercy cried as the submersible dove away from the facility to avoid projectiles.

  “If I stop, they won’t,” Jones said. “Arrive alive or drown. Your choice.”

  Gritting her teeth, Mercy focused on an encryption, hoping, praying, begging this would be the right one. It was ridiculous how many she’d already attempted, but—

  Without warning, she was pitched forward violently, throwing her into Baddar. He caught her, but she heard a loud crack. She gasped, searching the hull for a breach. Hands trembling, she removed herself and glanced at their pilot. “Did we get hit?”

  “Depth charges,” Jones called back. “They’re searching for us, and that one was close.”

  “Searching?”

  “Might want to finish your thing before they switch charges for missiles.”

  Right. Mercy retrieved her laptop from the deck—and gasped. “No!” Her screen was cracked. No, not just cracked. Shattered. It looked like funky crackled glass. “I can’t . . .” This was like trying to see coding through a sheet of ice. It was there, but next to impossible to make out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My screen.” A sickening sensation swirled through her gut. She was not going to be the one to fail the entire world. “It’s shattered. I dropped it when we got tossed around.”

  “We have a system up here—”

  “No, the Kali Linux virtual machine is on here.” Panic crept along her shoulders and skittered down her spine as she thought of Leif and Iskra down there. In the cave. Facing off with Veratti. If she couldn’t get this disabled, it meant they had to destroy the whole facility with Veratti and ArC inside, which wasn’t terribly bad if it weren’t for one thing: Leif and Iskra would die with them. And Mercy would not be the one to bury her friends in a watery grave.

  * * *

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION NEAR CUBA

  With the singular focus of finding Taissia, Iskra stayed close to Leif as he hurried to the hatch that separated the facility from the tunnels. Behind her came Mitre. As they approached the hatch, he and Saito covered their six. The four of them were the only ones who had made it out of the water.

  Leif attached a box over the security panel. “Device attached, Topside.”

  “Copy.” Cell and Alisz would work to remote bypass the locks. “Establishing link . . . accessing now.”

  This was it—the point of no return. Once they went throug
h the hatch, they would lose communication with topside and be on their own.

  Leif cast her a glance that said he was thinking the same thing.

  A definitive shunk rattled the hatch.

  Leif trained his weapon on the hatch and commed, “Locks disengaged. Going in.” He tugged the handle and eased back a safe distance.

  The hatch lumbered aside with a painful slowness. Beyond it was a steel and pale gray passage that distinctly marked it as part of the facility, not the stone of the cave. A series of torches ran its length until a left turn junction. Beyond that, darkness.

  As point, Leif crossed the lip of the hatch, taking Iskra’s heart with him. But he was focused. Intense. Cheek to the stock as he cautiously advanced. Mitre and Saito sidled in behind her.

  Whirp. Whirp. Whirp. A sound trilled through the steel passage. A grating, forbidding sound that announced their intrusion and warned they would soon have a lot of company.

  Even as they sidled up to the corner, Iskra thought of Taissia, worried the alarms would force Veratti to flip the switch early—

  “Bravo,” Canyon commed, “we have a signal boost from the bunker. That may indicate Kitty has yet to deliver . . . Risen . . . live.”

  “Copy.” At the juncture, Leif paused and used a snake camera to see around the corner. He used a penlike instrument to disable the cameras, then sent Mitre and Saito across to check the rest of this tunnel.

  Mitre slid around them and crossed the open space into the unlit portion of the passage. She keenly felt the loss of protection on her six as he and Saito headed away from them.

  With a nod to her, Leif banked left around the corner with a new intensity and urgency that drew Iskra behind him, knowing they all understood the danger to Taissia. To the world.

  This passage was at least forty meters long with no door or exit. There was nowhere to go. They had no choice but to advance. Leif moved as if he knew where he was going. Was that the implant? Or had he seen something? Unease slithered through her stomach. Her nerves jounced as the end loomed closer and still there were no doors.

  Relief struck when a gap presented itself. What seemed like a dead end was in fact a cross-shaped juncture. Passages banked right and left, and then another ten or twelve feet straight ahead were more doors.

  They flanked the entrance. Using the camera snake again, Leif assessed their new path. About twenty feet long with three doors—one on each wall, two of them in recessed wells. A lot of concrete but no people. Corner-mounted cameras glowered down from both directions.

  Leif disabled the cameras again, then motioned her to the right. Six feet down, that section ended in a door well. Anxious to find Taissia, Iskra started right, knowing Leif would follow, his back to hers to guard their rear.

  Shouts sounded distantly. Or maybe just through the walls. She scanned around, trying to home in on the source, but it seemed to be coming from all directions, the steel carrying the sound heavily.

  On her toes, she peered through a high-set rectangular window in the door. Darkness shrouded the room. A dull lamp sat to the side but did not cast enough light to see more than a few feet beyond that source of illumination. In the shadows stood a table with several drawers and a locked floor-to-ceiling cabinet. The far right was so dark it seemed black, making anything else indiscernible. Definitely no people. No Taissia. Defeat pushed Iskra back down, and she shook her head at Leif.

  At her signal, he slipped to the juncture and cleared left, to be sure no threat had come down that first tunnel since they had left it. He advanced to the other side, toward the doors set in all three walls, this time with Iskra moving backward to watch their six.

  This was too easy, too quiet. They should have encountered—

  Shouts arose again, this time much closer.

  She felt the soft bump of Leif and glanced back, seeing his raised fist. He pivoted and stepped back, planting his spine in the corner so he had a door on either side and diagonally across.

  Iskra checked their rear again—and stilled as light swooned through the rectangular window in the door she’d checked a moment ago. The glow wasn’t bright enough for a switch to have been turned on. Maybe a shoulder lamp? A torch? Light from another room?

  She shifted to notify Leif, but he was clearing doors. He checked one, then rolled around to the next one, his movements quick, precise, determined.

  Voices filtered through that far door, snatching Iskra’s breath. That stern, forbidding voice. Bogdashka!

  Iskra was gliding forward before she realized it. She chastised herself for leaving Leif, not signaling him. She knew better. But if Bogdashka was there. . . .

  She again peered through the window. Halos fluttered across the room, spilling their illuminated hem across a small cot in the far corner.

  Taissia! Her daughter lay with her back to the door, facing the wall. Men moved toward her. One shifted, enabling Iskra to see Bogdashka a step ahead, reaching for a sleeping Taissia.

  Rage erupted. It took everything in Iskra not to scream and bang on the steel barrier. Whirling, she motioned to Leif, but he was focused on the final room. She spun back, a mother’s determination carving a hard line through her restraint.

  Iskra was not going to let them escape with her daughter, not when she was right there. Aiming at the lock, she fired—careful to avoid the steel door and a ricochet. She kicked, but it held. Another shot and another kick. The door bucked free. Iskra rushed in, her weapon tucked firmly against her shoulder, only to find the trio already slipping through the other side.

  She eyed the cot—empty. Iskra surged toward the door, firing at the retreating guards. One stumbled into the wall and collapsed.

  Fury drove her into the narrow passage after Bogdashka. She sighted the second guard turning right and fired. He tripped and staggered, going to a knee, but then he pushed up and aimed at her. A shot pinged the wall.

  Ducking, Iskra fired again and kept moving. At his slumped form, she checked the hall he’d been headed into. Empty.

  She strangled her cry. Where was Taissia? Looking back the way she’d come, she caught a shadowy form struggling around a corner.

  Iskra sucked in a breath. The guard had been a distraction! She raced back, narrowly avoiding a collision with Mitre, who emerged from the room. “I saw her!” She bolted toward a juncture and slowed, nearly skidding on the slick surface. She shouldered the wall. Peeked around.

  Crack!

  Iskra jerked back, smelling the chemical burn of the bullet that whizzed past her. Ducking, she rounded the corner. Sighted Bogdashka wrangling Taissia, who was thrashing in her arms, mouth gagged.

  “Stop!” Iskra shouted. “Stop, or I will shoot.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Bogdashka sneered, using her daughter as a shield. “You will not shoot. You could injure her.”

  “I would rather do that than let you have her one second longer.” Iskra assessed Taissia—her mussed hair, eyes wild with terror. There was a small knot on her head, but no other visible injuries.

  Bogdashka turned, apparently giving up on the door she’d been trying to access.

  “Put her down,” Iskra growled, advancing and ready to end this woman forever, “Wilhelmina.”

  Lifting her chin, Bogdashka gloated. “Took you long enough to learn who I was.”

  “I knew what you were from the very beginning.”

  “And yet,” she said, hoisting a crying Taissia into a firmer hold, “you brought your daughter right into my home and gave her to me.” She was eyeing something over her shoulder. Shifting backward. She pivoted toward it.

  “No!” Iskra growled and shot low.

  Bogdashka cried out, collapsing on a now-shattered knee, releasing her hostage.

  Shrieking, Taissia surged toward Iskra with wild panic and desperation.

  Iskra rushed at her daughter, weapon never leaving Bogdashka as she swept Taissia into her embrace. She struggled to remove the gag.

  “Well, do it!” Bogdashka shouted. “Shoot her!”<
br />
  Iskra scowled, confused. What did—

  A shadow loomed over her. She started, then saw her brother and relaxed. “Mitre.”

  “Do it now!” Bogdashka growled. “Or Veratti will kill you.”

  Iskra’s mind powered down, processing the information. Mitre. Bogdashka. Veratti. His weapon rising.

  Clutching Taissia, she strangled a sob. “No,” she breathed at her brother. “How could you?”

  Mitre stepped into the light. “Very easily.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION NEAR CUBA

  Confident Andreas was covering Iskra and with Saito now covering his six, Leif continued toward the main operations area of the facility, if the increasingly heavy security measures and thick cabling racing along the ceiling were any indication. When a shot cracked the air, he shoved himself to the wall.

  A head bobbed out of a door. Uniformed. Armed. Weapon up.

  “Contact.” Leif eased back the trigger. Delivered another man to the depths. He stalked forward, anticipating more engagement. At the door, he did a split-second look-see. Table and chairs. Vending machines. Break room. No threats.

  They advanced, fingers on triggers, ready to neutralize, and came up on an elevator. Where were the stairs? He scanned the passage, swiveled back in the direction they’d come.

  The door dinged.

  Leif and Saito backed away, ready as the steel barriers slid apart and a volley of fire vomited from the elevator. He fired several shots into the elevator, though the enemy had stacked at the front corners. A body slumped out into the passage.

  A swarm of black rushed from the elevator, and though Leif fired, he registered the tactical vests. Gen2s.

  Pain exploded through his leg even as he sprayed at their knees. His knee buckled and shifted, his boot slipping in his own blood as he tried to take aim. Another round struck his arm. Shock riddled his limbs.

  “Hold fire! He wants him alive.” The swarm shifted, two men hustling to Saito, who was laid out.

  Leif reached for his ankle-holstered gun, but blunt force slammed him into a wall. His head bounced, and the lights went out.