But it
did
recognize her, and an instant later, after the computer had double-verified her voiceprint, Nerva’s image appeared on the display. Even via the motorcycle’s communication’s package, his dark eyes burned with intensity and rebellion. Nerva was the epitome of darkness, a man who, when he contracted the disease, had immersed himself in the lifestyle of a Hemophage and reveled in it. In fact, Violet often wondered if he had been made for it all along . . . destined. His pitch black hair and matching clothes emphasized skin the color of fine ivory and lengthened the bruised-looking shadows beneath his eyes and under his cheekbones; when he talked, Violet could clearly see the elongated incisors in his red slash of a mouth. His passion and anger at the way Hemophages were treated and the way he had responded—waging his own war against those in charge of the uninfected masses—had earned him the unofficial sobriquet as the “Che Guevarra” of vampires. It was a reputation he thoroughly enjoyed and strived to maintain.
“Did you get it?”
he demanded.
“Yes.” Violet’s gaze darted from left to right as she checked her side mirrors. Oh, yeah—there they were. The lights of a Command Security Tanker just appearing in the darkness far behind her. They were the only vehicles on the road allowed to have gold headlights. Even though her motorcycle was a lot lighter, the tanker would have more power. They would be relentless, and it wouldn’t take long for them to catch up. “But they’re serious about not letting me keep it.”
“Fine,”
he retorted without hesitation.
“The objective is the destruction of the weapon. If you can’t make delivery, destroy it.”
“Copy that.” The tankers had cut the distance in half, and now she could clearly see them in the mirrors. She felt like a tidbit fleeing from a pack of hungry wolves. “Will determine nature and destroy.”
“No!”
The unexpected vehemence in his voice made her blink in surprise and glance at the tiny com screen.
“Categorically
not
,
V! Under no circumstances are you to look inside that case! If you are compromised, you
must
destroy immediately. Do you read?”
She frowned and swerved sharply around trash containers that had been left in the center of the alley. Strange that Nerva and his cronies wouldn’t want to know what the weapon was . . . unless he already did. That wouldn’t surprise her a bit. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Speaking of not being surprised, the tanker pursuing her was close enough so that now she could actually see the helmet and visor of the driver. A second or two after she glanced backward, the tanker ran over the trash cans, flattening the plastic and metal like an ant under the heel of a soldier’s boot. As for the weapon, there was no time to argue about it and besides, she, too, was a soldier—obedience was second nature. “Read,” she said, and hit the disconnect button. Obedience or not, she had a dozen questions, but they would have to wait until later. It was imperative that she and Nerva keep their conversations as short as possible to avoid a satellite trace.
The Command Security Tankers were nearly on top of her now—she could hear their engines screaming right behind her. The comfort zone she’d been maintaining was gone, so Violet went for the left turn coming up, sliding so long that she nearly put the bike on its side and the side of her tight leggings, made of a nifty combination of leather and armor, grew uncomfortably hot from the friction of the concrete. The two Tankers behind her weren’t quite that agile and they had to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop, then jam the transmission in reverse before they could reposition and turn. Great stall, but it wouldn’t take long before they were breathing down her neck all over again. She had maybe fifteen seconds, but that was all she needed to snap the line of red switches at the top of the motorcycle’s console; where the gas tank would normally be installed—a slim, double-sided version that held just enough fuel to complete the mission ran up and under the uncomfortably modified version of the seat—was another gyroscope. This modified ’scope was big enough to handle a whole lot more than the weight of her slender frame.
The top of the gas tank slid open so the heavier-duty gyroscope could lift itself out of the cavity on miniature hydraulics. The machinery was a work of art, and it needed less than two inches to operate; when it spun to life with a whine that she could hear even above the roar of the motorcycle’s engine, Violet grinned wickedly and aimed the motorcycle straight at the rounded front end of a clunky-looking street cleaning vehicle parked up ahead. A sharp jerk of her shoulders lifted the front wheel over the street brushes on the front of the machine and the bike climbed up the vehicle’s front grillwork and kept going, up and up until it was airborne. The gyroscope reoriented the bike’s gravity base and then she was skidding, right up the side of the nearest building. Violet got the motorcycle—and herself—righted and left a trail of heavy white smoke as she fired off in a diagonal direction while the Tankers raced along on the street below, following her weaving trail as best they could.
When the edge of the building suddenly appeared, Violet pulled the bike on its side and stopped, bringing it back upright at its corner just as she teetered on the very edge. A normal person would have had vertigo, but not Violet. Oh, no—suddenly she gunned it, hard, and the Ninja went over, launching her straight down and away on the opposite side of the building.
A sound, like a hot buzzing, worked into her hearing, loud enough to be heard over the scream of the motorcycle’s straining engine. Violet jerked and looked over her shoulder, scowling at the two Whisperjet helicopters that had swung around the corner of the building and were headed after her. They looked like gigantic black wasps, with their fronts bubbled out and the rears extending back and tipped by dual stabilizers. In another situation she might have been annoyed by the myriad and multisized windows pocking the side of the building at random intervals, but today those same windows might be saving her life—it was having to hot-dog the cycle around them that kept the heated lead from the helicopters’ 70mm machine guns from taking her down.
Another edge, and this time Violet gunned the motorcycle and felt it swing into open air, projecting her across the intersection far below and ramming the tires onto the face of the next building with enough force to make her teeth jitter inside her mouth. Bullets chewed up the metal and mortar behind her like blades whipping through soft butter, and the window glass blew inward with sounds like mini explosions. Leave it to the L.L.D.D. to care little—if at all—about the people behind those windows; the pilots were probably leaving a trail of blasted, blood-soaked bodies. She had a single second to orient herself and look forward—
And she skidded onto the surface of the huge bay window at the front of the new Harlem and Irving Mall.
There was no way Violet could avoid it. The cycle went on its side and slid like a downed skater across an ice rink, and all she could do was hold on and hope. The gunfire from the Whisperjets followed her, eating up the glass around her, the pilots still not giving a damn about anyone else getting hurt. This expanse of glass didn’t so much shatter as disintegrate, and then there wasn’t even time to think about what to do next. Violet kept everything together on instinct and autopilot, and when she fell, the only thing that saved her butt and got the motorcycle turned nose-downward into normal gravity was good old-fashioned training . . . with a heavy dose of extraordinary reflexes.
A couple hundred shoppers screamed and fled in all directions as Violet spun onto the mall’s concourse and revved the engine. She took off before things could get worse, dodging the scrambling people as quickly as they tried to get out of her way. She’d seen a lot of things in her life, but even Violet couldn’t believe it when four Whisperjets hummed into position in front of the great, jagged hole left by her untidy entrance . . . and then the front one opened fire on full auto. Men, women, children—the bullets didn’t care who was in front of them as they chewed everything in their way to nothing but piles of red and bleeding mincemeat. It seemed to go on and on, but in reality it didn’t take long at all to empty the rest of the oversized magazine—the gunner on the helicopter had already expended most of his ammo trying to take her down on the outside. Suddenly the screams stopped, the gunfire stopped, and the only sound in the mall, besides a few sad sobs and one faraway and pathetic store alarm, was Violet’s motorcycle engine and the dry clicking of the minigun’s magazine.
Violet came to the end of the concourse, then revved the engine into a skid that spun it around to face the remains of the plate-glass window and the helicopters hovering outside. There was a long, quiet moment . . .
Then she looked up and sent them all an evil grin.
The gunner gaped at her. Violet couldn’t see his eyes behind his safety goggles, but she’d bet her life that they were as wide as golf balls right about now.
“Oh, shit!”
he suddenly screamed in a voice loud enough for Violet to hear above the motorcycle
and
the helicopters. He twisted around in his seat, gesturing wildly to a munitions crewman she couldn’t see in the tail of the helicopter.
“Load the next drum! Load the next drum!”
Violet jumped on the throttle and went wide open.
Tires belching foul black smoke, she ate up the distance on the concourse and headed straight for the front helicopter, banking everything on the idea that the pilot would try to be a hero and stay in place rather than move aside so the next Whisperjet could take his place. The gunner was still screaming—
“Come on—COME ON!”
—as her speedometer hit a hundred fifty. She didn’t hear it as the terrified crewman finally got the drum locked into place, but she knew it was coming by the triumphant look on the gunner’s face. She was well below the bulletproof shield on the motorcycle before the first burst of bullets hit, but even this top-notch custom shield wouldn’t hold for long against this kind of a barrage.
But that was okay. It didn’t have to.
At sixth gear, Violet and the bike went airborne and sailed out of what was left of the window. They flew through bullet-riddled air and hammered right into the open-sided helicopter, obliterating the pilot under the front tire, and the gunner and the rest of the tiny crew with the bike’s machine pistol. As Violet came out the other side of the copter, something in the cockpit—a spark or maybe a short caused by one of her bullets—suddenly turned the Whisperjet into a great blazing ball of hovering flame. It sagged slightly in the air, then careened into the one next to it. That one exploded . . . and then the next one, and the one after that, like a great game of giant, fiery dominos in the sky.
Violet and the bike smashed through a window in the building across the street. The motorcycle fell onto the crash bar on its side as she slid down the entire length of an office’s central corridor, taking out furniture, chairs, piles of paper, and anything else that was unfortunately in the path of her vehicle. There was no easy out through a window here, and when it was obvious that the end of the road was a wall of Sheetrock—probably covering reinforced metal studs—Violet made sure she had a firm hold on the briefcase and thrust herself off the bike, using her leg muscles to propel her as far away as she could. She spun to her feet at the same time the motorcycle boomeranged into the wall, tangling itself into the studs and a piece of some kind of heavy furniture—maybe an executive desk—on the other side. Wiring sparked dangerously amid the ruins, and she could see currents of raw electricity zinging along the now-exposed steel studs.
She twisted and spotted an exit door off to the side. Head held high, Violet strode smartly through the wreckage in that direction, moving as though she completely belonged there. She ignored the whining of the weak, uninfected humans as they peered from beneath their desks, makeshift hiding places that had she really wanted to do them harm wouldn’t have helped them a bit. One guy looked like he wanted to say something, but she waved him away and he changed his mind; in another moment she’d left that office behind and ducked into a different corridor branching off it, winding her way through the maze of interior hallways and staircases toward the ground floor. There was only one nerve-wracking moment when she came out of a utility door and spotted a couple of security teams just entering that hallway only a few feet away; a quick backtrack and a few turns gave her a fresh perspective on which way to go. A few more turns and Violet was on the edge of the expansive lobby. Amid the expensive green marbling that was on the floors, walls, and ceiling, she watched the security teams stream into the building and tried to mingle with the throngs of bewildered office workers. That in itself was nearly impossible. The way she moved, her dark and vaguely exotic beauty and clothing, her bold self-confidence—all these things were working against her right now. While everyone around her was babbling about the “situation” in the upper levels of the building and when could they get up there to see, all she could think about was getting the hell out of the building and
not
being seen.
Violet discovered a small alcove off to the side and ducked into it, pressing her back against the wall as her heart jackhammered and she tried to steady her breathing. She dug her mic-phone out of the tiny, flat-space pocket behind her ear, then activated the hand phone. It bleeped at her instantly. “It’s me,” she said. She inched forward and peered around the corner, keeping an eye on the people milling curiously about, making sure the security forces stayed well away from her as they rushed back and forth through the crowds, occasionally stopping to manhandle someone. This alcove was an easy trap so Violet couldn’t risk getting caught in here.
Nerva’s image shimmered into place on the tiny liquid crystal screen, but it was so small she could barely make out his expression.
“Three-D me,”
he ordered tersely.
That was probably not such a good idea given her situation, but Violet was used to obeying . . . at least for the most part. She pressed a nearly invisible button and his image fanned out from a pin-sized beam in her telephone. As he stood in front of her, Nerva was slickly dressed and life-sized; only the faintest of shimmers in his image identified it as anything but the real thing.
“Are you clear?”
he asked.