Hammerjack Page 32

  “Evening, gents,” he said.

  One of the agents stepped forward, sizing up the enemy.

  “Where’s Alden?” he demanded.

  Funky flexed his hand over the pressure switch. It was easier than he thought it would be, though more sad than he anticipated. His only wish was that Lea could have known.

  “Just this side of hell,” he replied. “Would you like me to show you the way?”

  He let go of the trigger.

  The rest became ash and fragments.

  He had set four charges in all, mounted deep within the access pipes that ran down the center of the station’s support pylons. The explosive was boosted thermite, a high-yield cocktail that Funky had mixed himself—though he had never planned on being on board when it went off. Like everything else, it had only been a contingency; but like everything else, it was inevitable that someday it would be used.

  Initially, the station betrayed no evidence of a detonation. No plumes of flame burst out from beneath, no shock wave rippled outward through the waters—but instantly, a subtle change transformed the superstructure. Seismic meters onshore recorded the event as a tiny wobble, though its true nature was far more devastating. The active thermite burned through the reinforced steel that held the pylons together, causing them to become brittle and unbalanced. Solid concrete took on the characteristics of glass, chipping and cracking with each tiny movement of the station. By the time the next big wave crashed against the pylons, the horizontal shear was too much for them to take.

  Only one of them crumbled, but the damage proved fatal. The full weight of the station began to slide in that direction, tearing the other three pylons apart at their weakest points. A structural failure of colossal proportions, it elicited a groan from the beast that registered on the Richter scale before being consumed by the wind and the sea. The station, never built to withstand such stresses, broke apart even before it pitched into the water. Split into three large pieces, it imploded upon itself, spilling wreckage into the black depths and bellowing one last cry of resistance before surrendering to the downward plunge.

  The ocean cratered outward into a circle five kilometers wide, generating waves that spread in every direction. That was when the reactor itself broke apart. Suddenly exposed to a massive influx of seawater, the superheated elements within the core exploded. The reaction was not nuclear, but so intense that it vaporized what was left of the station. Tiny pieces of debris were blasted into the atmosphere, some of them soaring as far as the mainland before streaking like tiny comets back down to earth.

  All that remained was a gigantic, boiling hole in the ocean. Water rushed back in to fill the void, creating a whirlpool that sucked down whatever had bubbled to the surface. When it was finished, a huge cloud of steam hovered over the spot where the station had been. In the stark moonlight, it took on a glowing life of its own—a ghost of its former self, shimmering between reality and oblivion.

  Then the winds came and began the process of erasing it forever.

  Lea spotted them, shadows against the wall.

  They moved in firelight, elongated to grotesque proportions, entangling one another. Lea made two of them, rushing ahead with swift assurance as they laid down a continuous barrage of pulse fire. Only two of them—which struck her as far more dangerous than if there had been more. Something else was behind them, directing them. Something she hadn’t seen yet. The thought of it gave Lea fright, chasing the comfort of impending suicide.

  “Come on.” She trembled. “Bring it.”

  Their weapons fell silent as they neared the opening to the lab. There were whispers and hand signals between the two of them, a modified stealth that indicated they were coming in. Lea wrapped her hands around the pulse pistol, her fingers absorbing the beat of the cresting power within. It had become a live grenade, and still she waited. The moment had to be perfect, the execution flawless. Mayhem would be useless unless the timing was just right.

  Then she saw it: a glint of armor.

  It conformed to the shape of a head and shoulders, sneaking a glance through the doorway before turning into a smear. There, then gone—camochrome confusion in a carnival of light, shifting patterns to keep up with the change in background. The agent ducked in and out, probably grabbing a shot with his infrared before deciding how to proceed. Lea stepped closer to an open flame to mask her presence, the heat crawling up her back while she waited.

  That’s it. Come on in.

  A larger blur stepped into the doorway, hugging the walls to carve a hiding place in the open. Lea caught glimpses of the agent’s form as his armor adjusted between heat and cold, finally settling on a semitransparent medium. The second agent entered immediately after, moving along the opposite wall and covering his comrade. Neither of them saw Lea, who remained on the other side of their blind.

  Just a little closer . . .

  The first agent stooped down at the side of his fallen comrade. He picked up the dead man’s rifle and tossed it to the other agent, then peered into the wreckage. Lea could taste his anger, which was good. It meant his judgment would be clouded—and that gave her a better than even chance.

  She threw the pistol.

  It landed with a loud clunk, tumbling across the floor and skidding to a stop at the agent’s feet. He looked down and saw the weapon lying there, and responded by firing a burst in Lea’s direction. That the pistol was a threat to him didn’t even register—not until he heard the thrum building to its climax, and he realized the damned thing was on overload.

  The agent turned to run, shouting at his comrade to do the same. Two steps later his body was heaved into the air, blasted back out into the corridor when the pistol exploded. He smashed up against the outside wall, falling down on the jagged end of a pipe jutting out of the floor. Dead before he got that far, his body spasmed once and fell limp.

  At the same time, the other agent was screaming. He was still on his feet, spared from the brunt of the explosion; but the intense flash of light, augmented by the visual receptors in his helmet, fried his retinas in an instant. He tore his helmet off, grabbing at his eyes with one hand while the other waved his rifle around. Firing at random, he kept on blasting until his weapon overheated. He then plucked another pistol from his armor and began firing again.

  Lea grabbed the quicksilver, holding the weapon out in front of her. It cut the air with a sound like music, sweet radiation trailing the blade as it arced back and forth. She saw herself reflected in that slick surface, distorted into the shape of a predator.

  Energized, she leaped away from the concealing flames and closed in on the agent.

  She rolled underneath his line of fire, approaching him from the right just as he began to get a taste of her presence. The agent spun to meet the perceived threat, blood streaming down his cheeks—all while he continued his barrage. Lea sidestepped the rippling bolts of pulse energy, swiping at him as she passed.

  The quicksilver made contact with the agent’s face, opening up a slit along his jawline. It was a tiny cut, barely enough to draw blood—but it turned his expression into one of dawning terror. He forgot about his eyes, dropping the pistol in a mad fumble to pull off his gloves. Lea stood back and watched him pat at the sides of his cheeks, searching for what he hoped he wouldn’t find. His fingers stopped over the cut just as it was beginning to seal itself, and it was then he understood he was doomed.

  He began to shake, losing all control as the quicksilver took effect. An isotope-neurotoxin hybrid, it hijacked the closest nerve cells and amplified their electrochemical impulses a hundredfold. To the agent, it was like stepping on a live wire. As the signal jumped from one neuron to the next, its intensity multiplied until it overwhelmed his entire nervous system.

  The shock reverberated down the agent’s spine, then outward, buckling his limbs out from under him. He opened his mouth in a guttural shriek, but all that came out was a confused gurgle. His body was gone. As soon as his lungs collapsed, his mind would follow a
s well.

  Time . . .

  Lea left him, jumping over the debris that littered the path between her and the air lock. She kept her eyes fixed on the MFI, falling down countless times but never slowing. Resisting the urge to look back, she crawled the last few meters on her hands and knees. On the tiny screen, she watched what she hoped were the last few seconds ticking away—but as she got closer, she found it was all an illusion. Impossible as it seemed, no more than three minutes had passed since she had set the timer.

  Three minutes. Three dead men.

  Her hands. Her work.

  And something else—something that refused to die.

  Avalon.

  Lea knew the free agent would be there, even before she whirled around and saw her standing in the doorway. The figure was passive, almost below the threshold of life. Lea expected an outburst of poetic motion, a beautiful stab at murder that would have left her with no choice but to detonate the MFI she clutched in her hands. Avalon, however, did nothing but imply a smile.

  “Stay there,” Lea warned. “I’ll torch us right now.”

  “I know,” Avalon replied.

  Lea blinked. The MFI became heavy, her resolve weak. All she could do was stroke the surface with her thumb and wonder why it was so damned hard to act—why it was so damned hard to die.

  You know why, Lea thought. It’s because you don’t want to kill HIM.

  “Get out,” Lea said.

  Avalon took her glasses off and turned a casual glance toward the dead agents. She nodded slightly, as if in approval, then lifted her stare back toward Lea. The free agent’s eyes glared at her with an array of dazzling colors.

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  Mind game. It’s a just mind game, Lea.

  “I mean it,” Lea said.

  Avalon wasn’t concerned. She took a few more steps into the lab, keeping her distance. “Miserable thing to die alone,” she remarked. “I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go together.”

  Push the button, Lea. Just push the goddamned button.

  “Or we could walk out of here together,” Avalon continued. “You, me—and Alden. You helped him this far. It would be a shame for you to kill him now.”

  Lea could feel the words working inside her. It started deep, like tremors in the abyss, rising to the surface in powerful waves. But there was another component—an urgency that Avalon was trying to hide. Lea searched the free agent for some outward manifestation, and found it when her eyes fell upon Avalon’s left hand. Her fingers were clenched into a fist, tight enough to pierce the leather of her gloves. Tight enough to crush bones.

  She was in pain. Serious pain.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Lea said.

  She was prepared for the fire. She imagined it running up her arm, engulfing her body and radiating outward in all directions, consuming everything in a halo of destruction as her soul made the leap from her body. It was all so beautiful, so perfect—so fitting an end to a life spent in shadows, to go out that way.

  Then gravity took hold and pulled her back down.

  Spirit fell back into flesh—a violent act, like tearing your consciousness out of the Axis in the middle of a run. Lea actually screamed—not from pain, but from betrayal, her senses so confused that she barely registered the likeness of fingers prying the MFI from her hand.

  Dazed, she lashed out with the quicksilver. The weapon sang, but drew no blood. Lea made a few more stabs, certain that Avalon had gotten the jump on her, but as the world snapped back into focus she saw that the free agent was nowhere near. Avalon just kept her distance, observing Lea with a detached interest.

  “Good evening, Dr. Alden,” Avalon said. “It’s nice to have you back.”

  Lea spun around. He stood there, in the open air lock.

  “Cray . . . ?” she started to ask, then saw the MFI in his hands.

  He ignored Lea, and walked past her to meet Avalon in the middle of the room. The free agent remained inscrutable as ever, treating this development as no surprise. She held out her hands, which had stopped shaking, and greeted Cray like he was an old friend.

  “Cray,” Lea intoned. “What are you doing?”

  Something about him was different—far beyond the symptoms of the Ascension. It was like he didn’t exist at all, his body a memory of its former self. Every move seemed calculated in advance, executed with machinelike precision: the way a computer would approximate a human being. He allowed himself to get close to Avalon, close enough for her to take him out with a single blow; but she stood down, sensing the determination of his challenge.

  Cray wanted something from her. And she was ready to listen.

  He held the MFI close to his chest, putting pressure on the detonator.

  “You came for me,” Cray said. “If that’s all you want, I’m prepared to give it to you. Any more, you’ll have to take it the hard way.”

  Avalon looked past his shoulder, toward Lea and the air lock.

  “You know what the Inru are about,” she told him. “That thing back there must be destroyed. We may never get another chance.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Use that, you destroy Lyssa as well,” Avalon pointed out. “What’s the difference?”

  “Phao Yin loses his prize,” Cray said.

  She was baffled.

  “You would do all this,” she asked, “for a machine?”

  Lea leaned in to hear his answer, shocked that Cray was giving Avalon the choice. At first she thought he was crazy, and for a fleeting moment she considered attacking him. If she could get the MFI out of his hands, she could do what she should have done in the first place. But something had happened back in that Tank—something that Cray needed to protect.

  Lea eased off, letting him play it out.

  “This is my thing, Avalon,” Cray told the free agent. “And you need to decide. CSS is probably on their way up right now.”

  Avalon hesitated. She stepped back to check the corridor, then turned back toward them when it was obvious she detected nothing. It was also obvious that she believed at least part of what Cray said. She put her glasses back on and examined him coldly, sizing up his intentions.

  “You would come, willingly?” she asked.

  Cray gestured back toward Lea. “To keep the girl alive,” he said, “yes.”

  Avalon could barely disguise her contempt.

  “Your word that she lives,” Cray demanded, “and we’ll both come with you. Or we can all die here, Avalon. It’s your choice.”

  For a moment, Lea believed that the free agent would choose death, a spectacular end to a warrior’s life—but that would not satisfy her utmost need. If she were to watch Cray die, it would have to be at her own hand. Nothing else would do.

  But to take him to Phao Yin—that held much more promise of suffering.

  “I won’t kill her,” Avalon promised. “Not until she gives me a reason.”

  Lea started to protest—but then she stifled herself, because she understood what Cray was doing. He just was buying her time—time enough to stay alive, time enough to figure a way out. It was far better than what CSS would offer—but it still filled Lea with horror to hear Cray speak the word out loud.

  “Deal,” he said.

  The hovercraft lifted off amidst a battery of ground flak, scattershot beams that rocketed up from the plaza and exploded around the small ship. Avalon eased herself into the fireworks, taking a few glancing blows before punching it through the overflight grid and into the free-departure routes. Lea glanced back and saw the Works spin away beneath her, then sink back into Manhattan and the obscurity of a million other lights.

  The ship was buffeted a few more times as it encountered some turbulence, turning to the south and a path that took it out over the open ocean. Avalon climbed up to ten thousand meters, then assumed a parallel course some fifty kilometers from the coast. Through her window in the back seat, Lea could make out only a thin line on the horizon, far aw
ay from the Port Authority tracking stations. She then looked down into the black void of the Atlantic, where her thoughts cleared and drifted.

  “I lost contact with Funky,” she said quietly.

  Cray stirred next to her, uneasy at the mention of it.

  “What?” she asked.

  Cray drew breath to speak, but couldn’t meet her eyes when he did.

  “Funky’s dead.”

  “How—?” she began, realizing she had known on some instinctive level. Funky would never have abandoned her like that, not as long as he was still alive. But to hear Cray say it, and with such finality, made it all the more real. And all the more painful.

  She swallowed hard, then asked: “How did you know?”

  “I picked up on some Directorate transmissions while I was in the Tank,” Cray explained, his tone distant. “Emergency traffic. They lost contact with the whole fusion cluster—some kind of catastrophic failure.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “A satellite pass confirmed it.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “The main station was completely destroyed.”

  Lea’s jaw set firmly.

  “How could you know what the Directorate was saying?” she asked. “When did you have time to jack their communications?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then where is this coming from?”

  “I hear everything now,” Cray muttered. “Every goddamned thing.”

  He passed the MFI over to her, immersing his face in the shadows so she couldn’t see him. He stayed that way, huddled and alone, not speaking but hopelessly connected. Lea observed him for a time, breathing but not breathing, heart beating solely out of reflex—going through all the motions of life, pretending. It was clear that he wanted out, yet still he hung on. Lea wished she could understand why.

  She ran her fingers along the contours of the MFI, engaging the screen and watching the keys light up. It would have been an easy matter to end it right there. Perhaps that was the option Cray was giving her. But she was curious, and there were things she had to know. Otherwise, it would all be useless—and her death, however noble, would have no meaning.