The Plague Forge [ARC] (31 page)

Toward the back wall, behind the stairs, she saw the sickly form of Kip Osmak. He peered out from a shadow like some kind of back-alley drug dealer, all hunched over and eyes shifting. Stringy hair clung to both sides of his hollow face.

“There,” Sam said, nodding toward him.

Prumble strode across the nearly empty floor and made to say something, but Kip shushed him. He stood, Sam realized, at the top of a stairwell that led down.

“Uh, Prumble. Hello,” he said. “And your friends, too. Wasn’t expecting you.” He stole a glance at a small slate he held in his right hand. The hand, Sam saw, was shaking.

“Well, we’re here,” Prumble replied, “and time is short. Can you take us where we need to go?”

The frail man chuckled nervously and retreated a step toward the downward stairwell. “I’ll try.” He glanced at the slate again.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked him.

He glanced at her. “Ah. Uh, just waiting for the changing of the guard. Five minutes.”

“Can we get out of the lobby, please?” Skadz asked.

“Of course, of course. Um, this way.” Kip descended the steps half turned, as if he needed to be ready to run back up at any second. No, that wasn’t it, Sam realized. He moved more like a host who’d just let guests into a house he was embarrassed to display.

At the bottom of the stairs there was a wide, square landing that fronted a pair of gray double doors. A sign stenciled on both said
AUTHORIZED
PERSONNEL
ONLY
—
NO
VISITORS
BEYOND
THIS
POINT
.

Kip pressed his thumb on a reader adjacent to the entry while simultaneously leaning down to stare into a retinal scanner. A second later a sharp click emitted from the doors and he pulled one open for them. Sam noted sweat on his brow as she passed him into the corridor beyond. “Relax,” she said.

His response came as a feeble, nervous laugh.

The subfloor below the Elevator tower lobby had none of the grandeur of the space above. Grimy tile floors that had once been white matched the walls and ceiling as well. Sam had explored enough buildings outside Darwin to know the drill: rooms for janitors, maintenance crews, property managers, and various closets for a litany of supplies. Perhaps a small break area for those types of employees someone like Neil Platz would generally prefer didn’t mingle with visiting dignitaries.

Kip led them to a dismal space lit by a single LED bulb embedded in the center of the ceiling. He pulled the door closed behind them and stood next to it, his gaze fixed on the slate in his hand.

Prumble cleared his throat. “Secure storage is just at the end of that hall. Once Kip here gets us past the biometrics, I’ll spring the safe. It may not trigger alerts anywhere, but we’d best conclude our business quickly.”

Sam nodded.

Skadz turned to Kip. “Do you know a girl named Eileen Arkin?”

“Err, no,” Kip said. “Sorry.”

“Can you look her up? She’s here in Nightcliff somewhere, and I need to find her.”

“Why?”

“Can you look her up or not?”

Kip fumbled with his slate, almost dropped it, then started to tap away at the screen. “Um … okay, yes. Royal—the old hotel—room 3636.” His eyebrows raised. “That’s a prison floor.”

Skadz gave Kip a single, sharp nod. “Once they’re in the vault, you take me there.”

“I … Okay, if you wish.”

The air tasted stale and smelled of mold. Sam was about to push for a change of scenery when Kip finally broke the uncomfortable silence. “Almost time,” he said.

Sam eyed him. “You haven’t even asked what the plan is. I mean, what happens after this.”

He paled and then shrugged. “I figure you’d get what you came for and … leave.”

“That’d put you in a fix, wouldn’t it? Grillo would know you helped us. Especially with the prisoner.”

Kip looked at the floor and his head bobbed.

“Come with us,” Prumble said. “You’ve helped me enough over the years, I owe you that. All you’d need is an environment suit, but I suspect most any would fit you just fine.”

Kip almost—almost—looked up at that. It was no doubt an option he’d considered but assumed impossible. Still he kept his head down, strands of sweaty gray hair dangling in front of his face.

This is one sour son of a bitch,
Sam thought, and felt sorry for him.

The slate in his hand beeped. He glanced at it and turned to the door. “Um. Follow me.”

Outside the long hallway was empty. Kip glanced both ways and then hustled to the far end, where another fingerprint and eye scanner graced the wall next to a black door. He performed the unlock procedure again and held the door open, motioning them inside.

Sam was about to comment on the stupidity of leaving the room unguarded during a changing of the guard, but before she could speak another voice rang out.

“That’s far enough.”

Prumble froze in front of her and she, right on his heels, plowed into him. She fumbled to ready her gun.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the voice, a woman, said. “Hands where we can see them.”

Kip clicked the door closed behind them. “This is all of them,” he said.

“Excellent work, Kip.”

Samantha shut her eyes as she recognized the voice. A cloud of emotions rattled in her head. She stepped back from Prumble, her hands outstretched, and took in the scene.

Six Jacobite guards were fanned out in a half circle in front of the vault door. Each carried a machine gun, save for the leader in the center, who brandished a Sonton pistol. Unlike the usual improvised poncho, she wore a clean robe that seemed custom tailored. It covered her from head to toe, until she pushed back the hood.

“Kelly,” Sam whispered.

“It’s Sister Josephine, remember?” She glanced left and right. “Bind them,” she said. The guards to either side began to circle around.

Sam stared at her former friend, wondering what had happened, wondering how this remarkable woman could have been so completely transformed. She thought back to that day on the roof above Grillo’s office, the first time she’d seen Kelly in the robe. Her onetime friend had entrapped her, tricked her into talking about the very object they’d now come to steal.

Her thoughts turned to Kip. The slimy little weasel with his stringy hair and sullen face. She wondered if she could strike him in the throat, crush his Adam’s apple before anyone could stop her. He’d been on the goddamn comm when the whole plan had been discussed, and probably relayed the whole thing to Grillo, too.

“Traitorous bastard,” she said with a snarl at the pathetic, sickly man.

What little color his face had flushed away. “We all make our choices. We do what we need to do to survive.”

Kelly narrowed her eyes. “How right you are.”

She lifted her pistol, aimed, and fired.

Chapter Nineteen

The Flatirons, Colorado

31.MAR.2285

Two wrong turns left Pablo baffled and Tania completely disoriented. If not for the scratches Vanessa made at each turn with the tip of her rifle, they would have been hopelessly lost. She’d even thought to X out the dead-end choices.

Tania had just started to feel confident again when she realized the effort her breathing now required. And while it may have been her imagination, her head also felt light. The feeling soon grew into a headache that reminded her of a champagne hangover. She considered saying something to the others, but what could they do? Pablo was moving as fast as the party could go. To stop them now would only delay the one thing that would help her: fresh air.

The tunnel took a sharp upward slope and narrowed slightly. Tania remembered this part; she’d almost slipped down the incline coming in. At the point where the slope began to rise a narrow, natural tunnel broke off to Pablo’s right. The opening as a full meter up on the side of their tunnel wall and barely wide enough for one person to fit through. He glanced in as he passed but kept going straight, remembering the way as well.

He came to the top of the incline and paused just as Tania reached the bottom, holding the flare out behind him to help light the tricky slope. Rocks and pebbles still rolled down from his climb, leaving tracks through the patches of loosely packed dirt.

The shadows around Tania swam abruptly. She glanced up and saw that Pablo had whipped the light around in front of him. He was moving it about in rapid jerks, each time sending the shadows around her in a lurch to new angles.

A hand on her back, Vanessa’s, pulled her. Tania glanced behind her to see the woman’s face in the shifting light. Her eyes were cast upward at Pablo, her mouth a tight line. Tania felt the now familiar
whump whump
of gunfire coming from above. Vanessa was saying something, urging her backward. Tania went, letting the woman pull her back the way they’d come. Ten meters, maybe more, before she shoved Tania to one side of the tunnel and brought her gun up.

Tania looked at the slope. The red light grew as Pablo came back down. First she saw his feet, moving backward down the incline. Then his legs, torso. All the while bright flashes of white light erupted from ahead of him. His gun. She thought there must be a lot of subhumans up there because he kept shooting. Soon enough his whole body was visible. He took a knee at the bottom of the ramp and quickly reloaded. As he did so, a subhuman—muscular, compact—raced past him. It ran straight toward Tania. Silhouetted against the red flare it looked like an ape, except only the head and chin had hair.

Vanessa shot the former human twice in the chest and it crumpled to a heap a few meters in front of Tania. The gunshots were so close she could hear them through her helmet, like the sound of snapping fingers. Tania hardly had time to feel helpless when she saw Pablo’s flare move again. He’d tossed it aside so he could aim with both hands. A subhuman body rolled down the incline before him, forcing him to step aside. Another came down, running on all fours, again trying to slip past him rather than fight.

Pablo turned to shoot it as it passed, putting his back to the narrow side tunnel. He fired into the creature’s side. She saw it react as if merely swatted at. One hand went to cover the wound, and the other continued to act as a leg as the creature rushed toward them. Vanessa finished it off.

Pablo must have told her to retreat, and shoot any that got past,
Tania realized.

A shape, a blur, exploded out from the side tunnel. It leapt onto Pablo’s back and the two went down in a cloud of dust. Kicking. Flailing limbs. A flash of gunfire.

Tania screamed, pointless even if anyone could hear her. She heard more gunfire from her left. Vanessa, firing into that confused mess? Too risky! Tania moved to stop her and realized she wasn’t shooting toward Pablo: She was shooting behind them. She glanced back to see, but the tunnel was pitch-black. Each time she fired a small spark would erupt off the rocky walls behind them, giving Tania a brief glimpse of shapes moving toward them.

Trapped. Oh God.

The light Pablo had dropped faltered. Dirt, or rock, kicked on top of it. Tania dropped the pack that carried the alien object and rushed forward without another thought. Churned dirt and dust filled the tunnel now, giving her only a few meters of visibility. She saw movement. Feet, kicking—no, convulsing. Booted feet, Pablo’s. The creature was on top of him, swinging wildly down where his head must be.

Her combat training kicked in. She kicked, and though she’d taken the correct stance her suit made the motion stiff, awkward. She’d aimed for the thing’s head but hit it in the back of the neck. No matter, she had its attention. Tania followed up with a punch that landed perfectly on the sub’s throat. She felt the Adam’s apple shift under her blow, even through the thick glove of her suit.

The creature fell back, gasping, clutching at its throat. Tania stomped down on its abdomen, forcing the air out of it. It might not die, but it would be down for a while, so she shifted to Pablo. His face was a bloody mess, and he wasn’t moving. His eyes were open, staring upward.

No. No!

She slipped her hands under him, lifting him by the armpits and dragging his heavy, limp form. Pablo’s boots scraped two horrible trails along the floor of the tunnel. Subhuman bodies littered the ground, their blood mixing with the churned dirt. Tania could only see a meter in any direction, so thick with dust the air had become. It probably tasted dry and tinged with brass, but Tania would gladly breathe it right now if she could. The air in her suit wouldn’t last much longer, of this she had no doubt.

She pulled Pablo’s body around a fallen subhuman. All the while Vanessa kept shooting, ahead and behind. The half-buried red flare sputtered one final gasp and then the tunnel plunged into absolute darkness. With the black came a strange serenity. Tania groped around until she found Pablo’s neck. She felt no pulse, but couldn’t be sure if she would feel it through the gloves of her suit. So she pressed her fingers to her own neck.

The vein below her skin pounded against her gloved fingers.

Pablo was dead.

Tania slumped forward, clutching the quiet man to her, not caring now if her own supply of oxygen would run out as she wept. Another life, another good person, sacrificed to whatever these goddamn aliens wanted. She wanted to take that triangular slab of exotic material and throw it into the cold dark waters below. Let all the subhumans jump in after it. If they wanted it so badly, maybe they should have it.

Vanessa lit the extra flare and Tania found herself staring into Pablo’s eyes. His face was a horrific mess of blood and deep gashes, but the eyes … his eyes were perfect. Strong, intelligent, calm.

No
. No, she couldn’t quit. If everyone else succeeded, then all this would be for nothing, and she wouldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let this man’s death be for nothing. With one gloved hand, Tania reached out and drew his eyelids closed.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. A second later Vanessa collapsed on the ground next to her and fell over her friend’s body. The anguish on her face knew no equal, Tania thought, and though it hurt to admit it, she felt glad in that moment that she couldn’t hear the woman’s cries.