Authors: Jon Land
He and Wareagle spun out toward opposite sides, opening fire with their submachine guns. The bullets clamored off both robots, unable to pierce the armor protecting the machines’ inner workings but drawing sparks upon severing tight bands of coil extending out their legs and arms. The coils had the look of an external circulatory system, carrying lubricant and diode-generated power instead of blood.
The prototypes kept right on coming, seeming to home in on Katie DeMarco with a straight line of red LED lights built into their boxlike heads going from flashing to static. McCracken aimed more of his fire for what he thought were the antennae to no avail, the group backing up as far as it could against the lobby’s glass entry wall.
He and Wareagle spun toward the glass doors, submachine guns leveling toward them until Folsom jerked McCracken’s barrel down.
“It’s bulletproof—don’t bother!”
“Blainey!”
Wareagle tossed him a fire axe he’d yanked out of a nearby wall-mounted glass firebox, keeping what looked like a four-foot steel bar, curved at the end like a fireman’s wedge tool, for himself. The Atlas on his side was nearer the group and he stepped out to confront it, lashing his wedge around like a baseball bat. It impacted against the thing’s shoulder extremity, steel meeting steel leaving barely a ding. The prototype blocked Wareagle’s next strike as he went for a spearlike jab into the thing’s rectangular head extension, the attack resulting again in no more than a small dent.
By that point, across the floor McCracken had brought his fire axe around low, going for an articulated visible ball joint where the prototype’s knee and ankle extremities converged. His intent was to sever the lowermost portion of a leg to rob the thing of balance and thus motion. But, again, his effort drew only a resounding clang, the titanium steel too strong to sever.
Next, he brought the axe up and around, feeling his whole body shudder from the impact of the axe blade against the Atlas’s arm, raised in blinding fashion for a block. The prototypes continued advancing for Katie again, forcing McCracken and Wareagle to lose precious ground between them and her.
In the reception area beyond, meanwhile, all three elevator doors opened to allow a slew of New Orleans police personnel to flood out, helpless to do anything else but watch the ongoing battle through the glass wall and doors.
McCracken let the axe rebound off the prototype’s arm and rerouted it for a blow akin to chopping firewood, a looping overhead blow that sank deep into the space between the thing’s shoulders. Sparks showered outward, the prototype going shuddery in what looked like pain. McCracken tried to jerk the blade free for a follow-up strike, but the axe had wedged in too tight to pull out.
The thing started on again with the axe stuck in place, McCracken backpedaling to keep himself between it and Katie, noticing the red lights flashing again as the Atlas sought to retrain its sensors on her.
“Find me a way to blind this thing, Captain!”
“Already on it!” Captain Seven screamed back at him, ducking under a wild blow from the prototype that had broken off its battle with Wareagle to try to cut him off.
Wareagle worked the heavy wedge tool nimbly about, lashing it one way and then the other, searching for some weakness in the prototype’s defenses. It countered with a series of blinding, powerful strikes with its overly long extremities, each drawing only air as Wareagle managed to duck under or arch back from each one.
For his part, McCracken lurched in toward the prototype on his side, grabbing a cluster of strung together cables and twisting, hoping to disable the thing that way. But the cables wouldn’t give in the slightest, his fingers trapped within the cluster long enough for the thing to hammer a powerful blow downward. McCracken evaded that one, but not the next that came in from the side, crashing into his shoulder and sending him sprawling to the floor. The prototype continued on past him, brushing Hank Folsom aside effortlessly and measuring off the final distance toward Katie DeMarco who was pinned in the corner.
“Johnny!”
Wareagle continued to battle the other Atlas to a stalemate, and could do nothing about the oncoming one without freeing up this one to attack as well. McCracken struggled back to his feet, his shoulder exploding in pain and his arm on that side hanging limply. He pushed himself into motion in the same moment Captain Seven tore the fire extinguisher from its bracket and rushed toward him, yanking out the safety pin and righting the nozzle straight for the Atlas that had downed McCracken.
His first thought was that the captain was going to use the extinguisher as a ram. Instead, though, McCracken watched as he angled the nozzle straight on with the thing surging straight for him, steadying his aim.
“Take this,
motherfucker
!”
And Captain Seven opened up on the thing with a shower of white, foamy spray. Absurd at first glance until McCracken realized the captain had focused all the spray toward the bank of red LED lights and lenses that held the prototype’s sensory and visual capabilities along its boxlike head extension.
“Heeeee-yahhhhhh!” he wailed as the thing suddenly veered right, then left, then right again.
It seemed to refocus its attention on Wareagle this time and swung blindly toward his shape, looking almost drunk with its motions turned clumsy and awkward and leaving Johnny to battle both prototypes now.
Beyond the glass entry in the reception area, meanwhile, a pair of helmeted SWAT police frantically worked explosives into place along the doors, wedging a transistorized detonator into place. The rest of the police scurried for cover, obeying orders unheard within the Homeland office’s lobby.
McCracken rushed across the floor toward Wareagle, forgetting the pain long enough to knock him aside and sparing him a wild blow from the now blind prototype. Instead, the strike slammed into the other Atlas, which retaliated by hammering its twin with a pair of strikes that left them tied up like wrestlers, whirling across the floor together and obliterating anything they struck.
BOOM!
The glass entry doors blew open in a spray of glass behind a white-hot flash. SWAT personnel poured into the Homeland lobby and opened fire on the prototypes in a nonstop stream, continuing until they keeled over to the floor as a single, twisted assemblage of smoking steel.
Wareagle helped McCracken back to his feet, Blaine careful not to test his injured shoulder, which that ached badly but felt structurally sound. Folsom was still down and dazed, while Captain Seven clung to his fire extinguisher the way a gunfighter would his pistol after shooting down someone intending to do the same to him.
McCracken started for the corner where Katie had pinned herself, freezing just as fast.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Because Katie DeMarco was gone.
Leander Levy watched Shinzo Asahara enter his shop and approach the counter with hands clasped behind him. Four other Japanese men followed him inside, their motions so precise as to appear robotic right up to their eyes that didn’t seem to blink.
“It’s been a long time, Shinzo-san.”
Asahara bowed slightly. “Too long, Levy-sensei. But I understand a samurai sword fashioned by a disciple of the great Masamune has come into your possession.”
“It did,” Levy nodded, feeling himself stiffen, and he leaned forward casually to appear more at ease. “But I’m afraid I’ve already placed it with another party.”
“How disappointing,” Asahara told him. “I thought we had an agreement on such items, that I would always be informed of their procurement first.”
“These were extenuating circumstances. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”
“I trust that it won’t, Levy-sensei.” With that Asahara pulled his hands forward and swept the one encased by a black mitten sideways, sending an elegant crystal vase tumbling to the floor where it smashed into unrecognizable fragments. “You must forgive my clumsiness,” he apologized, holding up his covered left hand as explanation. “An unfortunate malady, I’m afraid.” His gaze moved to the shattered vase. “I trust it wasn’t too valuable a piece.”
“Waterford dating back two centuries. Priceless,” Levy managed, through the thick clog forming in his throat.
“Another pity then,” Asahara said, reaching into his jacket pocket with his uncovered hand. “But if you help me with something else, I can assure you I will be more careful.”
He unfolded the simple sheet of copy paper and laid it on the counter. Levy lifted the reading glasses dangling at this chest to his nose to better regard a series of unrecognizable symbols. Based on the discolorization and degradation of those symbols, Levy guessed the copies had been made from photographs taken of whatever had originally contained them.
“I’ve never seen anything like these before,” Levy told Asahara.
“Any idea what they mean, Levy-sensei?”
Levy lifted a magnifying glass from the counter, trying to still the trembling in his hand.
“They aren’t figures or drawings,” he said, running the magnifying glass up and down, and then side to side. “Nor are they from any symbol language I’ve ever seen before. There’s no pattern, no discernible repetition that would indicate any language at all, at least none I or anyone else is familiar with. Except . . .”
“Proceed, Levy-sensei.”
“Well, these do somewhat resemble portions of ancient cave drawings found in the Andes Mountains and elsewhere. While those drawings and symbols have never been successfully translated either, I see some similarities, particularly in the use of lines, dots, and circles, that would indicate they may have originated with the same source.”
“Those Andes drawings have sometimes been linked to extraterrestrial beings legend says once visited earth, yes?”
Levy nodded and lowered his magnifying glass.
“And can you draw any conclusions based upon that?”
“I’ve read some linguistic analysis that speaks of those symbols forming a warning, Shinzo-san. Perhaps as simple as Do Not Enter or No Trespassing.”
“And if not as simple?”
Levy found his mouth too dry to swallow, the unblinking stares of Asahara’s four henchmen now locked upon him. “A warning about the end of the world.”
“You’ve piqued my interest, Levy-sensei,” Asahara said, leaning forward over the counter closer to Levy. “What about a location? Do the symbols say anything about a location?”
Levy pretended to regard the symbols again. “There’s not enough here to—”
“Mention of a weapon,” Asahara interrupted. “Is there any mention of a weapon?”
This time Levy didn’t bother checking the symbols again. “If you could bring me more, perhaps . . .”
Asahara moved his gaze to a lush landscape hanging directly behind the counter, centered over Levy’s head. “I’m told some of the most valuable paintings ever have been found behind other canvases.”
“That’s correct, Shinzo-san.”
“Then perhaps the message of these symbols is hidden in plain sight as well. Could that be?”
“It could.”
Asahara backed away from the counter, leaving the page containing the symbols atop the glass. “Then find that message for me. Tell me where I can find the means to end the world, Levy-sensei,” Asahara said, staring him right in the eye. “Or next time I come I’ll break more than just crystal.”
“There,” McCracken said, pointing at Captain Seven’s computer inside an office they’d appropriated still lit eerily only by the emergency lighting, which made the screen seem unnaturally bright.
Standing next to him, Folsom leaned in closer to better see. Outside, the wail of sirens continued to split the night, and they’d closed the office door to at least temporarily shut out the sounds of law enforcement and rescue personnel frantically at work beyond. “What am I looking at?”
“SF-5-16ARM,” the captain explained, reading the screen before McCracken had a chance to. “It’s the short code for a form of underwater explosives. Been around forever, and nobody’s come up with anything better since the very dawn of . . . well, something.”
“Who authorized the req order?”
“The e-mail notation belongs to the
Deepwater Venture
’s operations manager,” McCracken answered this time. The first paramedics on the scene had confirmed his shoulder was strained but not damaged, then offered him painkillers he refused. “But if you check the logs, I’ll bet you your pension that his assistant was actually the one who filed it.”
“Katie DeMarco? But why would—”
“Smart girl,” Captain Seven interrupted, words aimed at McCracken. “Doubt anybody would question a requisition for underwater ordnance on a deepwater oil rig.”
“And,” McCracken followed, “SF-5 works just as well above water as under it.”
Folsom backed away from the screen, hands planted on his hips. “Where the hell are you going with this?”
“We had it wrong, Hank,” McCracken told him. “Katie DeMarco, or whoever she really is, was on that rig to sabotage it the whole time.”
“There’s more, MacNuts,” said Captain Seven. “Just like you thought.”
“What I did was this,” he continued. “Took a still picture of our girl lifted off this building’s security camera and ran it through facial recognition technology in areas around the attacks at the Hastings Chemical plant bombing, the Royal Dutch Shell supertanker sinking, and the Valley Coal poisoning. I shit you not, managing that all straight was no easy task. If you don’t score me some primo weed like yesterday, I am going on strike and I mean that sincerely.”
“What’d you find?” McCracken asked.
“When was the last time you were wrong?”
“When I decided to come to New Orleans to celebrate my birthday. Now talk to me.”
Captain Seven hit the Enter button on his keyboard and rolled his chair backward to make room for McCracken and Folsom. “Voilà, boys!”
Four shots of Katie DeMarco, looking different enough in each one, appeared in equal sizes, each occupying a quarter of the screen. Her hair color and style altered, eyes changed by tinted contact lenses, but it was unquestionably her in each instance.