Chapter 14
Brigid stepped back as the gymnasium-style room came to life, bright lights illuminating every corner. The strange wall plate was alight, too, its indicators rotating in their dial casings, the oscillator showing a wave form, a thick black line drawn on off-white paper.
There was someone else in the room, too, Brigid realized, and she spun automatically to face them. The figure wore loose, colorful silk robes and had a yellow pallor to his flesh. A long sword was sheathed at his belt. He looked inhuman, a stylized representation of a man, tall with broad shoulders.
“Hi, there,” Brigid began uncertainly. “Now, just where did you appear from?”
Brigid felt trepidation as the figure strode across the gym toward her, face fixed in a cruel expression of hate, not saying a word. The lights had altered around her; they flickered continuously at a level Brigid was aware of only subconsciously, and suddenly she had the impression she was standing in a wild jungle, great ferns arcing above her to create a canopy of lush green.
The silk-robed figure was still striding, drawing his glinting sword from its sheath as he hurled himself at Brigid. She sidestepped, ducking under the figure’s first attack without hesitation.
Behind her, a second figure appeared through the thick foliage that now defined the space, lunging with his own sword as Brigid leaped aside. This one looked just like the first, a fixed, grim expression on his face, a coned hat propped over his dark, braided hair. The two-foot sword cut just to Brigid’s side, and the flat of the sword slapped against her flank with a solid rebound. Brigid grunted with the strike, dropping down out of the path of the next swishing arc of the sword.
“They’re samurai,” Brigid realized, speaking to herself. Stylized representations of ancient samurai.
Another blade sliced through the air and Brigid felt the brush of falling leaves against her arm as she dodged aside.
“What the heck did I walk into?” Brigid muttered as she tossed aside her flashlight and swung her blaster round to bear on the first of the opponents.
* * *
O
N
THE
TINY
,
gas-lit theater stage, Kane struggled with the naked man as he pressed his fingers into Kane’s windpipe. The man was strong, superhumanly so, and it was all Kane could do to grasp the man’s wrists and keep him from crushing his throat.
“Git...” Kane muttered through strained lips.
The bald man loomed over him, pushing harder against Kane’s neck, bringing all of his weight to bear as he tried to strangle the ex-magistrate. The man’s lips were pulled back from gritted teeth, the whites of his eyes wide, creating a complete white ring around his mismatched irises, blue and brown. There was something about his eyes, the look not of intelligence but that of a wild animal, one that had been caged too long, had turned on its master.
Beneath Kane, the bare boards of the stage felt hard and unrelenting. He had been strangled before, by men and by other, stranger creatures. The strength in this man’s arms surprised him. The rational part of his brain tried to figure out how this seemingly normal man could be so strong. He remembered what Grant had said about the strangers he had faced in the factory, recalled how swiftly Grant said they had moved, how their stamina seemed far superior to a normal man’s.
Kane shifted his grip, struggling to find the leverage to push the man away, hands grasping up and down the man’s bare arms as he strove to gain purchase. His face was already turning beetroot-red with the pressure, yet he was unable to get any force into his response.
“Don’t...” Kane requested, but the word came out like a whine, barely a word at all.
His throat was aching now; it felt for all the world as if he was trying to swallow liquid concrete before it dried. In another minute I’ll be unconscious, Kane realized, then after that I’ll be dead. Unless I can do something—now!
* * *
U
P
IN
THE
GYMLIKE
ROOM
, Brigid Baptiste found herself meeting attacks from every side. There were six of the stylized samurai warriors now, their faces fixed in horrific masks, their blades glinting in the thrumming lights as they cut through the air.
It was eerily silent despite the number of attackers. Brigid brought her blaster around and targeted the first of them, sending a clutch of 9 mm parabellum-sheathed steel at a samurai figure in fluttering bloodred silks. The samurai’s blade whipped before him, slicing the air in a multiple flash of receding bullets.
“Did he...?” Brigid muttered incredulously. “Did he just cut my bullets out of the air?”
There was no time to find the answer. Already the faux samurai was upon her, his two-foot blade swishing down to meet with the center of her skull. Brigid dropped, letting her body sag as she kicked out with her right foot. The foot connected, delivering a punishing blow to her foe’s left knee even as his blade cut through the empty air where she had stood. The samurai tumbled back, tripping over himself as his leg gave way.
So, they’re immune to bullets, Brigid realized, but not to physical assault. Interesting
.
The beautiful redhead brought herself back to her feet as more samurai approached, nudging past the thick foliage with their cruel blades. Brigid spun as seven ugly masks burst through the greenery, arms sweeping as one, seven razor-honed swords swishing toward her. Surrounded, she did the only thing she could do—she leaped, reaching out with her empty hand and grabbing a handful of overhanging branch, dragging herself up into the nearest tree.
The samurai watched her depart, their blades cutting silently through empty air, one blade clipping the heel of her boot with a clank as she pulled it out of reach.
There was something going on here, Brigid realized as she pulled herself up higher into the tree. A minute before, she had been in a gymnasium, working that metal plate thing she had found on the wall. Then the plate had spoken, describing this as the WarCreche and addressing her as...
Dorian?
Below, the samurai were pacing around the tree, watching like cats to see if Brigid might slip. They had the right idea, she concluded—sooner or later she would have to come down, and when she did there would be no escaping the cruel justice of the samurai’s blades.
* * *
K
ANE
COULD
FEEL
the pressure on his throat like a vise, constraining his breathing, cutting off his air supply. Above him, the deranged figure he had come to think of as Harold wore an insane expression, haunted eyes wild with animal rage.
Kane had been trying to remove the man’s hands from his throat, but it was no use. Harold’s pounce had given him the leverage, and he was strong as all get-out. Kane could feel his own strength ebbing, could feel that burn in his lungs where the desire to take another breath became pressing. Caught by surprise, Kane had expelled his breath when Harold had leaped onto him with such suddenness, had had no chance to take another.
Kane let his hands slip, sweat moistening his palms as his knuckles rapped against the wooden stage. The whole battle was almost silent, so there was no chance that Grant—just feet away—would hear while he searched in the little dressing room. Well, screw that, Kane thought. He’ll hear this and when he does he’ll come running.
With that, Kane’s arms whipped up and his open hands slapped against the sides of his attacker’s head with as much force as he could muster, letting out a great clap as he cupped them over his foe’s ears. As he did so, Kane also tensed the tendons in his right wrist in a specific, well-practiced way, calling forth the Sin Eater pistol he had sent away to its holster just minutes before.
As Kane’s hands drew back from the vicious strike against his foe’s skull, the Sin Eater materialized in his right hand, his index finger locking in the curve of the trigger, sending forth an angry flurry of bullets.
Ten feet away, Grant heard the noise where he stood examining another play manuscript, this one even more ornate than the first. He spun to face the open doorway, pushing the heavy drape back farther and eyeing the scuffle that was occurring on the stage.
“Kane? What the—?”
Grant didn’t finish the sentence. Already the naked, bald-headed figure on stage had turned his attention to him, and Grant saw that he was smiling like a loon. Grant watched in horror as the man gnashed his teeth before opening his jaws wide and dipping his head down toward Kane’s exposed throat.
* * *
C
LINGING
TO
A
BRANCH
, Brigid tentatively leaned out, bringing her TP-9 semiautomatic in line with the pacing samurai’s heads. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered, squeezing the trigger and sending a burst of 9 mm slugs into the crowd of patrolling warriors.
As one, the samurai raised their swords to a high, horizontal position, and Brigid watched incredulously as her bullets were repelled. That was impossible—wasn’t it?
She clung to the tree, trying to figure out what to do. Her Commtact was no use underground like this; she tried it quickly but there came no response, not even from Cerberus headquarters. She had to think.
It looked like a jungle for sure, but there was something missing. The smell. This jungle had no scent, despite all the lush greenery that was apparently growing all around her. Brigid had been in jungles before. She knew the smells, like mulch and dew and sweat—but she wasn’t sweating. It should be hot here but she wasn’t sweating, not unduly, certainly no more than the shadow suit could compensate for.
It was an illusion, then, somehow generated when she had turned the dial on the metal plate. Some kind of virtual-reality program perhaps, like the dream structures she had entered in the backstreet dream factory in Hope.
Nuzzled in the safety of the high branches, Brigid looked around. The door was still out there somewhere, doubtless hidden by the illusory trees. If she could reach that, maybe she could exit? But if this was some training program, would it allow her to exit? Wouldn’t it block her, to prevent a participant’s accidental egress during battle?
Think, then. Another answer. The wall plate, the one she had tinkered with, had switched on. Any machine that could be switched on could be switched off again, right?
“Program,” Brigid called out in a loud voice, “shut down.”
Nothing happened.
“Switch off.”
Still nothing.
“WarCreche—this is Dorian. End training simulation.”
Nothing.
Below, the samurai warriors continued to wait patiently for Brigid to drop from her perch.
* * *
O
NE
LEVEL
DOWN
,
Kane turned as the bald head lunged toward him, jaws wide, ready to bite his throat. Still in the grip of the deranged figure crouching over him, Kane felt the man’s teeth graze his neck.
As sharp teeth nuzzled against his exposed throat, Kane heard a distant explosion—the boom of Grant’s Copperhead subgun. Seemingly at the same instant, the grip on his throat was relinquished as the naked man went tumbling backward, a stream of bullets drilling against him one after another.
Grant stood at the side of the raised stage, one booted foot on the stage itself as if to climb up, holding the trigger of the Copperhead down on continuous fire. A rapid stream of 4.85 mm slugs slapped against the bald figure who had attacked Kane, striking against his head and shoulders, knocking him back across the stage with the force of their impact. The naked man scrambled back with each strike as if he was being hit with a water cannon, his body trembling as the bullets struck.
Grant stepped up onto the stage, still holding the blaster on Kane’s attacker. “Get back,” he snarled, “you evil sack of crap.”
Lying on the stage in a semidelirious state, Kane struggled to take a breath, feeling the rawness in his throat as if it was sandpaper. He rolled and spluttered, forcing himself up, striving to inhale. The air hurt his windpipe and made him cough more, great whooping splutters as he tried to hold some air in his lungs.
Grant’s gun was cycling around rapidly, and he had maybe five more seconds before the ammo clip ran out. Before him, the naked figure was now at the back of the stage, jostling in place as the bullets lashed him, snatching at them like insects as he tried to fend them off. Grant took another step forward, expending the last of the Copperhead’s clip as he brought himself right up to the struggling figure.
He may look like a man, Grant realized, but he was certainly something more than that. No man could survive the impact of that many bullets; it was simply impossible. Shell casings lay all about the stage, littering it like cherry blossoms fallen in the wind, a great carpet of steel flecks.
Grant felt the trigger pull just slightly, heard the abrupt silence as the Copperhead ceased firing. He stood over the crouching figure, eyes narrowed as he watched it. And the figure was an “it” in Grant’s mind; he refused to think of something that could survive such an assault as human.
The thing looked up at Grant with its mismatched eyes, fear showing in its hairless features.
* * *
W
HOEVER
HAD
DESIGNED
this WarCreche, whatever it was, had clearly meant for the participants to complete the task before it shut down. The task being deadly battle with opponents who were only too happy to exploit a weakness and maim or perhaps even kill whomsoever they perceived as an enemy. And right now, they perceived Brigid as one.
Her blaster wasn’t doing anything, Brigid realized, just making dents in the gymnasium floor where it lurked beneath the illusory jungle. Reluctantly, she flipped on the safety and shoved the TP-9 back in its holster.
Twelve feet beneath her, the samurai were milling about, pacing in silence as they waited for their prey to drop. However this illusion had been created, their swords seemed plenty real enough.