Hammerjack Read online

  Caleb felt an electric tingle as they reached the electronic surveillance, the waves of sensor energy playing across his skin—but beyond that, there was absolutely no sensation of presence. The closer they got to the security zone, the more it felt like they were stepping into a void. It was as if a veil of nothingness surrounded the entire building.

  They paused when they reached the top of the steps. There was a clear line between them and the main entrance, but a quick glance over his head told Caleb what really stood between. Three remote cameras were already tracking him, while a particle-beam microturret turned to acquire its new target.

  Abby had spotted the thing as well. They crouched down, waiting to see what the tiny cannon would do. After a few moments, they were satisfied that it would hold off—for now.

  “You ever seen one of those in action?” she asked.

  Caleb nodded. “Takes about a microsecond to cut you in half,” he replied. “Better watch yourself.”

  Carefully, they slid past one of the support columns to get a better view of the entrance itself—and found themselves faced with something even more problematic. The emergency door had descended, putting a fifteen-meter-by-fifteen-meter slab of titanium alloy—ten centimeters thick—between them and the lobby. Not even a pulse weapon could blast through it.

  “Lovely,” Abby observed.

  “Something must have tripped the fail-safe system,” Caleb said. “Locks the whole place down. Whatever happened in there, it was pretty serious.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it for us.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What are you going to do? Knock on the door?”

  “Something like that,” Caleb said, drawing his weapon. “You stay here.”

  “Lieutenant—” Abby began, but before she could protest Caleb was on the move again.

  He took a few steps toward the edge of the security sphere, making sure that his gun would be totally visible to the electronic tracking system. He guessed that the program would be sophisticated enough to detect any weaponry within the sphere; if that was the case, then it would turn on him the moment he stepped inside. There would be no time for him to react—only the whine of the alarm Klaxon. After that, the high-pitched, almost human scream of the particle beam.

  They never came.

  Looking up, he saw that the cameras still followed his movements. There was no way the countermeasures could have missed him. Even so, it seemed as if they didn’t consider him a threat. It defied all logic—but it was just as Caleb expected.

  He looked back at Abby, who stood mesmerized.

  “Come on,” he told her. They ran for the entrance.

  When they arrived, Abby was breathing hard. She pressed her hands against the cold, brushed surface of the door.

  “Security must be slipping,” she whispered.

  “It’s just the automated sentry,” Caleb told her, even though he had no way of knowing. “There’s nobody watching us in the control center.”

  “It still should be taking shots at us.”

  “I know. The system is active—it’s just not responding.”

  “Could be a malfunction,” she suggested.

  Caleb shook his head. “Too many backups. Somebody must have reprogrammed the system to let us by.”

  “You think somebody jacked the system?”

  “Maybe,” he said. Caleb had never dealt with a hammerjack himself, but he knew they were tops on the Collective’s public enemy list. To them, busting the security at the Collective’s tightest facility would be like stealing the Holy Grail. But Caleb didn’t think it was that simple.

  Then, as if in response to their arrival, the titanium slab began to move.

  They both jumped back as the huge door retreated into the ceiling. Caleb had expected a deep rumble, like the jaws of a dinosaur opening up—but found it more unsettling that he heard only a hydraulic whisper, followed by a metallic clang as the locking clamps fell into place.

  The Works was now open to them.

  Abby’s mouth dropped open, her face a mix of epic fear and insatiable curiosity. Caleb, meanwhile, tightened his finger around the trigger of his gun—though the weapon itself gave him no sense of protection.

  “Were you expecting this?” Abby asked.

  Caleb was honest. “I don’t know.”

  Carbon smoke trapped behind the emergency door parted like a fine mist, revealing the windows that looked into the building atrium. The reinforced carbon glass was cracked and pitted, still smoldering in places. A few clear spots remained—though nothing wide enough to permit a glance inside the building.

  “Jesus,” Abby breathed. “What happened here?”

  “They were all inside when the fail-safe came down,” Caleb said. “Looks like they tried to shoot their way out.”

  The crackling smell of ozone rode in on the cloud that drifted past them.

  Pulse fire, Caleb thought. Only a few minutes ago.

  Seconds passed. Quiet remained.

  “Something got loose in there,” Abby decided. “They didn’t want it to get out.”

  “If that’s the case, then why did the door open just now?”

  He didn’t need an answer. Something was still in control here, drawing him the same way it had drawn everyone in the plaza.

  Caleb walked toward the entrance.

  It was hard to find a place where he could see through. The glass was so badly damaged that he had to put his face up against it just to get a decent look. It was still warm to the touch, a ghostly trace element of weapons fire.

  “Lieutenant?” Abby called from behind.

  “Just a sec,” Caleb said, moving to one of the smaller windows. He spied a clear spot near the ground and crouched down to peer inside.

  A cloudy mist obscured the atrium—a mixture of carbon smoke and other random elements. What was strange was how the cloud was thinning. It didn’t just hang there; it was on the move, retreating into the building’s ventilation system. And as it departed, Caleb began to see the outline of human forms.

  Everywhere.

  A few were scattered across the atrium, lying where they fell. But most were piled against the doors—hands frozen into claws trying to scratch their way out, faces frozen from those last few moments of terror: people stacked on top of even more people, their bodies crushed from the force of the oncoming stampede. Caleb hoped the end had come quickly for them, because it had not come peacefully.

  Then he saw it.

  The image shoved him back, a force so quick and powerful that it sent him reeling. He tasted electricity, but it was only his own fear—a creeping, venting thing that filled his mind with nightmare images and replays of what he had seen inside. Abby was at his side, almost before he realized it, but by then Caleb had sorted out enough to know that what he had seen wasn’t his imagination. It was real—and that was even more terrifying.

  “What happened, Lieutenant?” she asked, helping Caleb up.

  He didn’t answer. He had to see it again to be sure. This time Abby went with him—and as they worked their way down to the opening in the window, Caleb saw his proof pressed up against the glass.

  Eyes wide-open in horror. Mouth opened in a soundless scream. What was left of a human face staring back at them. As far removed from life as any other corpse.

  But alive.

  Abby didn’t think about what she was doing when she followed Caleb through that open door. So many bodies lay in the way that they had to drag out half a dozen before they could get inside. Then the full scale of what happened revealed itself, in all its brutal scope. Everywhere she turned there were people—motionless, contorted, like mannequins on display at some Goth show. There were scientists and engineers, executives and support personnel—the whole stratum of corporate culture brought down from their respective castes to lay together in death. There were also the security officers, who still appeared sharp in their crisp maroon uniforms. Abby saw a whole line of them, still holding the puls
e weapons they had used in a useless attempt to blast their way out. Looking into the open space of the atrium, which rose fifty floors into the belly of the tower, she understood that everyone else had suffered the same fate.

  Except for the creature they had seen in the window.

  The man crawled toward them. It was impossible to tell how he might have looked, beyond the thick shock of black hair that fell across his face. Everything else resembled a human being in shape only. His skin was pale and mottled, blotched purple and blue from the millions of capillaries that had exploded beneath the surface. The same thing had happened to his eyes, which now glistened dark red and reptilian. His labored breaths fogged the clear plastic mask that covered his nose and mouth, while his right hand clutched a small bottle of oxygen.

  They rushed over to the man’s side, just as he collapsed from the sheer effort of moving. Abby turned him over and cradled his head in her hands, while Caleb peeled the mask away from his face. The man struggled a little, holding the oxygen bottle to his chest like a talisman, but was too exhausted to put up any more of a fight.

  “It’s okay,” Abby said, trying to comfort him. She then looked at Caleb. “What the hell happened to these people?”

  Caleb held up the oxygen bottle. “They were asphyxiated,” he pronounced. “Had to be the fire-suppression systems. When the door came down, they had no way of getting out.”

  The survivor they found floated in and out of consciousness. His eyes fluttered, but Caleb doubted he could even see. His mouth moved as his head lolled back and forth, uttering dry whispers.

  Abby tried to hold him.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Just keep still.”

  He seemed to relax a little.

  Caleb leaned in and spoke: “Can you tell us who you are?”

  Again his lips trembled, and he managed to exhale a single word: “Holcomb.”

  “That’s good, Mr. Holcomb,” Caleb said. “We’re with the police. We’re here to help you. Can you tell us what happened?”

  Abby watched the memories flood Holcomb’s eyes. He jerked convulsively, the horror so strong that it dug deep into the paltry energy that remained in his body. His blotched hands grabbed for the oxygen mask again, while his lungs gasped harshly for air.

  It took both of them to hold him down, and no matter what they said the spasms would not stop. Whatever was left of Holcomb’s mind was draining away in front of them, and there was nothing they could do.

  Finally, his body gave up. The convulsions ceased and he went rigid. After a few moments he sank back into the floor, taking in one more breath.

  He held it expectantly, one hand reaching up to Caleb and drawing him closer.

  “Lyssa,” he whispered. “One hundred . . . floor . . .”

  His head fell over. Abby felt the last of the trembles leaving his body. She placed him back on the floor, then closed his eyelids.

  “I want you to go back outside,” Abby heard Caleb say. “Wait exactly five minutes, then contact the Collective and tell them everything.”

  “Five minutes? What the hell are you going to do in five minutes?”

  “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer,” he said, picking up Holcomb’s oxygen bottle and mask. “Just do what I say, Abby.”

  “You’re going up there.”

  “Yes.” Caleb draped the mask around his neck, then went over to where the CSS officers had made their last stand. He grabbed one of their pulse weapons, quickly checking to make sure it still had power. “By the time I get up there, CSS should be on its way. Get them to send as many people as you can.”

  “He was half out of his mind, Lieutenant,” Abby protested. “He didn’t even know what he was saying!”

  “He was scared. That’s enough.” He looked at her in earnest. “I need you to trust me, Abby—please. We came this far. Just go with me a little further.”

  A part of her knew he was crazy. But that same part also knew why he was that way. She felt the same thing, day in and day out—working a job that nobody cared about, having authority in name only. This was the first time in their lives either one of them got to act like a cop. And once CSS became involved, the Service would see to it that this time would be their last.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  Caleb smiled. “Five minutes.”

  He went for the elevator.

  The express lift ran on an electromagnetic column encased in a transparent tube that rose fifty floors through the ceiling of the atrium—then straight up into the heart of the building. The doors opened for Caleb as soon as he pushed the call button, then sealed shut with a hiss as the compartment pressurized.

  Inside, rows of translucent buttons were flanked by a flat panel touch monitor, a variable interface that provided for security functions. The panel came alive when Caleb touched it, rendering a schematic of all the restricted areas. Everything appeared open—including level one hundred, which blinked back at him with the cryptic words: BIONUCLEIC DIVISION.

  The elevator shot skyward.

  It gathered speed quickly, electromagnetic levs so quiet that Caleb heard only the sound of his breathing. The transparent walls gave him the disconcerting notion of weightlessness, a disassociation augmented by the spectacular and morbid view unfolding beneath him. Caleb couldn’t count how many were among the dead—but not a single floor passed that he didn’t see them. Cut down in the midst of fleeing, these people had no idea what was killing them. Caleb understood their astonishment, but only because he was still alive. The same systems that killed them had allowed him to live—and they called to him now, begging his curiosity.

  The sensation passed when he left the atrium behind at the fiftieth floor and continued his ascent through the main artery of the building. Caleb affixed the oxygen mask to his face and started the flow, the clear plastic steaming with every harried breath. Both hands gripped the pulse weapon, which had become slippery with his own sweat. Both eyes watched the floor indicator as it ticked past ninety.

  There was a sudden rush of deceleration as the elevator came to its programmed stop.

  Doors opened.

  Harsh red light spilled in from the halogen tubes that lined the walls of the corridor. A charge of static electricity coursed over his body, like it had downstairs, free-floating ions blasted out of the air by a stream of high energy; beneath that, the air itself was as still as a tomb.

  Caleb didn’t move for several seconds, tuning his ears to the sounds from outside. One of the halogen tubes had ruptured and was spitting out a sporadic, crackling shower of sparks. Beyond that, there was nothing. He thought there might be footfalls, or a distant echo of laughter, but they never materialized.

  Caleb slipped halfway past the elevator doors, tilting his head so he could get a look into the corridor. The emergency lights filled the space with a crimson flood, a light haze of smoke creating a scene that was entirely surreal. Even more peculiar were the bodies Caleb found. There were only four—a small number compared to what was down in the atrium. But more important, these people were . . . different.

  Caleb walked out into the open, aghast at the sight. The four bodies were laid out next to each other, neatly, compulsively, arms at their sides. They might have worn the white lab coats in life, but now those coats covered them like a burial shroud, their faces concealed beneath.

  Caleb took a few steps toward the closest one, crouching down next to the body. The flesh of its hand still felt warm. The skin was also clean and unmottled—not like the people he and Abby had found in the atrium. This one had died in a different way, no less violent but much more rapid.

  Caleb pulled the coat back.

  The body no longer had a face or chest. Both had been carved out by a burst of high energy. The remains of a few vital organs were still visible within the cavities, along with brain and jagged protrusions of bone, but no blood. Everything had been neatly cauterized by the intense heat.

  Caleb exposed the others, and found the same thin
g under each cover. They had been hit in different places, burned in different areas—but the end had been the same. They had been blasted to hell by someone with a pulse weapon, then that someone had stopped to arrange the bodies and carefully cover them up. It was hard to imagine how in all this insanity a person could have thought to take that last step.

  Then the wall above Caleb’s head exploded.

  Red halogen burst into white, pummeling Caleb with sparks. He fired back blindly, sending bolts of lightning down the corridor to give himself cover. Then he ran, going several meters before diving into a small alcove. It wasn’t much, but it was outside a clear line of fire. Hauling off two more shots, he squeezed himself into the tiny space and waited.

  Smoke and silence filled the space between Caleb and his unseen enemy.

  A minute passed. Caleb checked his oxygen tank and saw he had already burned up half of what he started with. He was running out of the few options he had, and it didn’t look like his attacker was coming out on his own.

  He peeled away the plastic mask and decided to do what he did worst—talk.

  “You still there?” he called out.

  Another searing white beam of plasma was the instant reply. An entire chunk of the wall in front of him came down, blasting heat and dust into Caleb’s face.

  Caleb resisted the urge to return fire. “You see?” he shouted down the hall. “You’re shooting at me, but I’m not shooting at you. What do you say we talk this over for a bit?”

  He listened closely. There didn’t seem to be anything at first—although Caleb thought he heard a quiet stammering, as if someone were whispering to himself. It gradually grew louder, words heaped upon words—fragments, incomplete thoughts, guttural sounds, gibberish. A man’s voice, babbling nonsense that finally built up to a raging outburst.

  “I WON’T LET YOU DESTROY HER!”

  Caleb braced himself for another onslaught, to complete the rage that crossed the short distance between them. But the voice only collapsed into choking sobs—which was, if anything, even more dangerous. If this man were suicidal as well as homicidal, Caleb’s chances of getting out of here were pretty slim.