Spires of Infinity (45 page)

Waiting somewhere ahead of him was a fight with the Apostle, and blood would

spill, likely his. He
knew
he wasn’t lucky enough to avoid her completely until the completion of his mission. Call it karma, or divine retribution, but Gabriel felt that whatever happened to him when he faced her, that justice would be served. If he survived, perhaps it meant that god could forgive what he’d done to poor little Allison. If he died, it was little more than he deserved.

He’d become a lawyer to change a world where bullies got away with torturing

those that were smaller and weaker than them. Somewhere along the way he’d forgotten justice for fame. Lies, twisted words, deception and trickery had been his weapons. He would meet the Apostle with none of these, and he’d kill her if he could, because she was too dangerous to be left alive. If he died in the attempt he’d accept it as atonement for killing Allison.

Though depression and anger gnawed away at his insides, Gabriel pushed them

away and focused on the task at hand. He had to reach the Containment Area before the Apostle did, and he was not going to let anything get in his way, including his own self-loathing. It was a trick he’d learned as a child, pushing away everything bad in his life just to get through another day. It made him feel empty and hollow inside, like a soulless automaton, but better that than the pain and the guilt. When he pretended there was nothing wrong it felt as though nothing could stand in his way.

Except maybe the armed squad of soldiers hiding behind a barricade blocking off the entire hallway ahead with an intense firefight going on above their heads. He’d been so intent on his reflections that he hadn’t even noticed the deafening thunder of continuous gunfire.

Several desks had been dragged from nearby offices for the soldiers to use as

cover while they fired fully automatic rifles in short bursts. The sound was deafening in the nearly enclosed space. The explosions of gunfire and the whine of ricochets drowned out nearly everything else.

The floor behind and in front of the barricade was littered with bodies, and blood was splattered and pooling everywhere. The air was filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder, and death.

Ducking, Gabriel raised a hand to hold his hat on as a bullet whined so close to his face he actually felt the wind of it.

Everyone was shouting at once, but Gabriel couldn’t hear a single thing over the gunfire. Though their mouths moved, and he could read curses on their lips, no voices reached him.

“What now,” he muttered.

“Look to your right,” Allie said clearly over the noise without raising her voice.

Turning, Gabriel found an open office door with a steady stream of soldiers

running in and out like crazed animals, keeping their heads down to avoid having them shot off.

“You will probably find the one in charge hiding in there,” Allie said.

“Great thinking,” Gabriel drew both of his pistols. It felt strangely good to have them both in his possession again.

Creeping toward the office, trying not to be noticed, Gabriel ducked inside finding himself face to face with Henry, the man who had questioned him earlier. He appeared to have been sidetracked in searching for implements of torture. His bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise, as Gabriel scanned the rest of the room to find several other soldiers pouring over holographic maps and schematics, while others shouted orders into communication devices.

“Shoot this man at once,” Henry shouted, jabbing a finger toward Gabriel.

Naturally, with seven or eight men ready to fill him full of lead, Gabriel did the only thing that seemed sane. He lunged forward and shoved the barrels of both pistols into the face of the one giving the orders, Henry himself.

Everyone froze.

The racket of the firefight just outside the door seemed distant, quiet, and

unimportant.

Giving his most winning smile, Gabriel pulled back the hammers on each of his

pistols until they locked. Their clicks echoed through the stillness. Feeling the eyes of every man in the room boring into him, he scanned their faces from the corners of his eyes. By their frightened expressions, he thought that they’d open fire in a second if they could get a clear shot.

“Hi Henry,” Gabriel said brightly. “I’m just here to talk, so how about you order your men to lower their weapons. Then I won’t have to shoot you and try to escape before they shoot me, and we can have a nice little chat with no one pointing guns at anyone. Deal?”

Those bushy eyebrows drew together until they merged into one, looking like a

small animal taking an afternoon nap on Henry’s forehead. Winking, Gabriel jabbed a pistol into his nose to let him know he meant business.

“I just shot a little girl in the head. Why wouldn’t I shoot you?”

“Lower your weapons,” Henry ordered, sounding more than a little harassed.

“He’s serious!”

When all of the weapons were lowered, Gabriel pulled back on the hammers of

his pistols until they unlocked and slowly set them back to the resting position, dropping his arms to his sides.

“How in the hell did you get out of your cell,” Henry asked.

“A talking cat let me out. Let me guess. A crazy chick in a black cloak just stormed past here waving a sword with twenty or so of your men, heading for the containment area. Right?”

“Friend of yours?”

“Enemy, actually.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Who cares what you believe? Look. She followed me here from the future. I

have little doubt that she’s trying to destroy the facility, and I really need to get into the containment area before her.”

“She’s doing exactly what you claimed
you
were going to do! Why would you want to stop her?”

“You’re really an idiot, aren’t you,” Gabriel growled. “Do you really think I’d come all the way from the future to destroy this place and
save
your world if I didn’t have some way of ensuring that the paradox I created would be balanced and dissipated? I’m trying to help. She just wants to destroy the universe. I need to get into the containment area before she does. I can contain my paradox, but I have little doubt that if she creates one, she’ll take steps to make sure such a thing is impossible.”

“You want to destroy this facility,” Henry asked flatly. “To save the future by creating a somehow balanced paradox? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?

Without the Spires of Infinity we have no future at all. This facility will save us all from the dwindling fossil fuels and carbon emissions that are strangling us to death.”

“Trust me, you’re months away from nuclear war over shutting things down when

you realize you screwed up. You’re protecting the greatest threat your world has ever seen. There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave,” Gabriel shouted, mentally thanking Barry McGuire for a truly profound song lyric. “We’re on the eve of

destruction! You think it was easy to come back here to set things right? You think I can just buy a ticket online? Why would I bother, if things weren’t bad enough to warrant it?”

“Can you stop her,” Henry asked after a long pause.

“Hell if I know. Honestly, I don’t think so. Dude, she cut a bullet out of the air with a freaking
sword.
A
bullet
,” he paused for dramatic effect, “out of the
air
,” another pause, “with a
sword
! That was the craziest samurai move I’ve ever seen. She’s beyond human. If it comes to an even fight, I’m a dead man.”

“Then why bother?”

“I have to try. I was sent here for a reason. Maybe because I have what it takes to defeat that crazy bitch, maybe not. So you’re going to help me? I’m not completely certain what I have planned will work. But it has a
chance
of working, and that is more chance than
she
will give you.”

“It does sound like the lesser of two evils, sir,” one of the soldiers said.

Henry shot him an annoyed look.

“I need to get to the containment area,” Gabriel said. “I assume that’s what

they’ve got blockaded down the hall, right?”

Henry nodded. “There’s an underground tunnel into the containment area from

each of the eight outer towers. Those eight tunnels are the only way to get in or out of the containment area, or the Central Spire.”

“Great,” Gabriel wondered how long it would take to get to the next tower over.

The hologram of Allie appeared by Gabriel’s side, causing Henry to bite off a

curse and step back in alarm.

“Meet Allie,” Gabriel said. “She’s the little girl whose mind you ripped out of her body and shoved into a computer. I installed her over your current OS. In short, this facility is now under
my
control. And
you
are at the mercy of someone you tortured and murdered. Allie, is there any other way into the containment area?”

“The containment field is cooled by condensed humidity that flows through a

series of coolant ducts,” the hologram replied. She waved her hand and a holographic schematic appeared in the air between Gabriel and Henry. A glowing red triangle marked “you are here” floated in one of the rooms. “There are ducts here and here.”

Two glowing red dots appeared on the map. One was just outside the door. The second was on the other side of the tower.

“There is fighting reported in all eight outer towers,” Allie said. “It appears as though the Apostle has blocked off all access into the containment area except for the coolant ducts. These ducts follow a more direct route. If you hurry it may be possible to cut ahead of her.”

“Where is she now,” Gabriel asked.

“I am unsure. I seem to have lost her. She is hard to follow. Her armor appears to have some sort of sensor jamming capability to it.”

“Great, all right, where is this coolant duct?”

The hologram waved her hand at the schematic and it changed to a high angled

camera of the firefight just outside. There was a trapdoor in the floor with a latch and handle on it twenty feet beyond the barricade. The little hatch began flashing red on the image.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful! I’ll get shot to pieces before I even get close!”

Surprise flashed across the hologram’s face a split second before she flickered and vanished, along with the image of the maintenance duct outside. All of the holographic displays that soldiers were using in the room winked out as well. A moment later the lights flickered and died, plunging the room into complete blackness for a split second before dim emergency lights came on. The gunfire outside momentarily faltered, replaced by shouted curses before it began again. Bright flashes from the shots in the semi-dark of the emergency lighting flickered through the door.

“What the hell,” Gabriel said. “Allie, what’s going on? Allie?”

The hologram did not reappear, but Allie walked into his vision and gave him a shrug and a shake of her head. “I’m unable to remotely contact the mainframe. It appears as though it has either been shut down, reset, or destroyed.”

“The squad that was headed for the control room,” Gabriel muttered. “So you

mean we went to the trouble of uploading you into the computer for nothing?”

“Not entirely,” Allie replied. “I still have some minimal access to security

systems, and I was able to change all of the passcodes for the containment system before they destroyed the mainframe. Plus I added security profiles for you and your friends so that I’ll let you in when you all arrive in the future. I guess you were right about that part.”

“What’s going on,” Henry asked. “What squad? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve got a copy of Allie loaded onto this and linked directly to my brain,” Gabriel raised his left hand to show the jewel implanted into it. “She says that she lost all remote access to the mainframe and thinks it’s been shut down or destroyed. The Apostle sent a squad to disable your computers.”

A round of rather inventive curses passed through the room.

“Thank god the containment control is on a separate circuit,” Henry breathed.

You said any console linked to the mainframe could make a Gate Jump back to
the future for me
, Gabriel thought at Allie.
Am I trapped back here now
?

“The computing power of the AIOS is required,” Allie said, “but the consoles in the containment area can create a Gate if you can manually input the calculations.

Luckily you have a copy of the AIOS with you.”

“I’ve got to get into the containment area
now
,” Gabriel growled through gritted teeth. “How much more could possibly go wrong? What can you do to help me get to that hatch?”

“Simmons,” Henry sneered. “Call in the Lawmen.”

“Lawmen? Finally, I get to see what people keep mistaking me for.”

“They’re the Emperor’s personal elite soldiers,” Simmons explained to Gabriel.

“Best of the best. Each man is like an entire army, and we’ve got
four
of them stationed here because of the Purple Haven threats we received.”

As he finished, four men strode into the room as if they hadn’t just walked past a raging firefight. Wearing clothing similar to Gabriel’s, cowboy hats and all, they looked like big, scary, Clint Eastwood types. Each of them had a golden plaque much like the one in his pocket on their belts next to one of two holstered pistols.

“What the hell’s going on here,” a man with a face that looked as though it had recently been used to pound in fence posts asked.

“I’ve got a job for you, Dorlan,” Henry said. “There’s an access hatch just past the barricade. Get this man into it and accompany him into the containment area.

Someone’s trying to blow up the facility and half my men seem to have been terrorist plants all along.”

“The Celestial Mother’s sweet left titty, man,” Dorlan said in even, gravely tones.

“How could you let something like this happen?”

“Well where the hell have
you
been,” Henry retorted.