Silicon Override, page 29
Given the patrol, he’d need to bring at least one more of his team back with him to take out the Trax. The greater issue being that at the moment of fire, the rest of the team would need to move. If the gunfire didn’t bring down more Trax, their deaths would. He’d seen that enough to count on it.
The other option was less appealing. He’d need to convince Adrian to backtrack and take the secondary path straight down the Transverse. Dixon agreed with Adrian’s reasoning for avoiding it. But with this update in the sitrep, things had changed. He’d need to—
Why did they stop moving?
The trio was frozen. It sent spikes up and down Dixon’s spine.
The female snapped her head to the right, looking into the shadows. And straight at Dixon.
He swallowed and backpedaled, doing his best to keep his panic in check. When he spun around, though, he found a fourth and fifth Trax waiting on him. The nearest one grabbed him right after he registered their presence, and tossed him twelve feet down the walkway. He landed hard and gasped for air just as the fifth Trax pounced. It tore gashes into Dixon’s abdomen and left arm, nearly spilling his intestines before he managed to get a bullet into the Trax’s head.
The other four froze, screamed, then ran in pursuit.
The pain in his arm and abdomen flared, but adrenaline and terror shot clarity through his mind. Dixon forced himself to his feet and sprinted, his motion hampered by pain and blood loss. He fired a few half-aimed shots over his shoulder. They went wide, barely even noticed by the Trax. He’d bought himself a second, at best.
He continued his blind run, hoping for a miracle.
It never came. A fresh tear of pain ripped through him as a Trax landed on his back and took a chunk from his shoulder. Dixon slammed into the half-wall overlooking the bottom floors of the Junction. He used the momentum to throw off the attacker, and the Trax fell three stories.
Dixon glanced over to watch. But the motion proved too much for his broken, bloodied body. The twist sent a fresh spike of pain through him, fierce enough to turn his world gray. He tried to turn back around and make it to a nearby staircase, but he’d lost control.
Gravity took over, and he tumbled down the staircase. His world went black and cold before he even made it to the landing.
Chapter 61
Adrian paced the ice cream shop for the eighth time, then stopped at the back and leaned against the wall.
He glanced at Shaw. “What do you think?”
“Been a while.”
Adrian grunted and checked his watch for the fifth time in less than seven minutes. Dixon had been gone too long. Adrian’s face went red with another wave of self-directed anger. He shouldn’t have let Dixon go, and Dixon shouldn’t have gone alone. Stupid.
Adrian sighed and forced himself to sit. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths, seeking calmness. That proved impossible. He drummed his fingers on the table, his leg bouncing at two hundred beats a minute as he stared at the sealed door.
His watch beeped, belying the grim tone of its meaning—time had expired. And with it, every bit of his patience chewed up.
They had to move. Adrian had to think of his crew. The thought of it twisted him. He’d sent men to die before, and he wasn’t naïve. He knew the full scope of his profession and work. Leaving a man behind, though, that was the line he’d told himself he’d never cross.
He looked up, taking in the rest of his crew. Shaw and Garrett stared back, resolved but wary. Adrian saw past their bravado, to the fear behind their eyes. He shut off the alarm on his watch. The whole room fell silent in its absence. No one mustered the will to talk. No one mustered the courage to suggest what Adrian knew had to be done.
He cleared his throat. “Everyone, gear up. We’re moving out.”
“Sir,” Shaw said, “what if we give Dixon another five? He’s got to be—”
“We’re moving out.”
The room fell silent again as Adrian stepped over the line he swore he’d never cross. And kept walking.
* * *
They’d been moving for what Abbey thought were days. Though, a glance at her watch told her it’d only been forty minutes since they’d fled the destroyed restroom near the Axon. Forty minutes or forty thousand—it didn’t seem to matter, as every step was a battle.
The physical exhaustion was only part of it. The terror pressed in on her, a vise on her mind that threatened to crush her at any moment. Ever since she’d regained consciousness back in the Axon, she could feel…them…the Initialized. Or what was left of them. The remnants of their humanity reduced to rage and darkness.
She could feel everything. Her mental travel to that…other place had sent her mind into overdrive. Now, it took no effort to reach. Without trying, she could make out impressions, like echoes, of everyone, human or otherwise. Most of the survivors were scattered, holed up, hungry, terrified, exhausted.
Despite all the new insights, she still couldn’t read him. Chase came back a void—pure nothingness. No sense of thoughts. No sense of focus. Not even a sense of his emotions.
Emotions…
She sighed. That was a troubling topic. No matter how much she tried to deny it, her attraction to him kept growing, not just physically, though she felt those stirrings more acutely than she liked. It was more than that. Chase was frustrating, obstinate, infuriating, and damaged. She didn’t need to read him to see that. Still, underneath that shroud, beneath the impenetrable nothing, that core of his essence, his soul—whatever name you wanted to give it—was a thing of breathtaking beauty. When she reached for him, she could almost see it. For the faintest shard of an instant, she could sense it, and then the nothingness would crash in with such ferocity that it made her mind and heart ache.
Though she didn’t reach often, when she did, she could sense the other. She had no name for it. Like Chase, it was something of a mystery. But unlike Chase, she could read its inner core with ease. It was a mind and spirit of staggering intelligence and ambition…and staggering malevolence.
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind and bring it back to the present.
Her stomach hurt. Partly from the tension, and partly from the long crawl-walk that she, Chase, and Rider had to maintain to keep below the half-wall that lined the walkway.
They’d made it to the Junction, far past the promenade, in a Spartan warehousing quarter where sterile white fronts blocked sightlines to the storage area beyond—a compromise meant to keep the illusion of a bustling market and social place, and a conceit to realities of life at ArcSIS.
She followed Chase around a corner, then a second corner, then nearly bumped into him when he stopped. Rider slammed into her with a grunt. She snapped her head around to glare at him. But he just shrugged and leaned up against the wall.
Chase shifted around so he could face her and Rider. Once in position, he glanced back over his shoulder, then locked eyes with her. She didn’t like the fear she saw.
“We’ve got a couple options,” he said, “and I kinda hate them both. It’s a straight run to the freight elevators…I think.”
Abbey leaned to peer around him, then nodded.
“But I gotta say, right now, with all the crazy going on, I’m not thrilled with the idea of being trapped in a small car, in a small tube, hanging in a vertical shaft.” He gestured to the right. “Pretty sure there’s stairs to the right up there. Longer, but more open. I don’t much like that path either. But it’s got my vote.”
Abbey thought about it. They were all in good—she glanced at Rider—well, reasonable shape. But even so, that would be a lot of stairs. Still, she had to agree with Chase’s assessment. The thought of being trapped in a freight elevator brought a rush of fear.
At last, she nodded at Chase, then turned to Rider.
“Can we get to your man cave from here?”
“Why you got to diminish it? It’s a fortress. A place where I can—”
She glared at him, and Chase punched his shoulder.
“Ow.” Rider rubbed the point of impact. “All right. Yeah, yeah. I think so. We’ll need to get down a few floors, then find a way across the entire place so we can get into the area above the living sector.”
Abbey ran the path through her mind. It was far. Getting all the way down to the living sector alone would be a hike. She reconsidered her thoughts on the elevators but rejected them. The distance did nothing to alter the danger of being in such a tight space.
The distance, though…
Will we even be able to get there?
Abbey bit her lip, closed her eyes, and reached. She could feel at least five of the Initialized ahead. Though, she thought they might be on the floor above them, frantic and active.
Hunting.
Screams of pain and terror tore through the veil of silence. They echoed down the empty corridor, rolling over the trio like thunder. Human screams.
The sounds were loud and close enough to provide a general direction, despite the Junction’s curved walls.
The screams came again, and Abbey knew that the chaos came from one of the cross corridors just ahead. Though, from their distance, it was impossible to tell which one. Regardless, she knew the Initialized were on the move. Time was limited. Their choices more so.
Chase looked to Abbey, then to Rider. She saw the conflict play out on Chase’s face. She understood it, the need to help, the fear to do so.
Finally, as a third wave of screams washed over them, Chase grimaced and looked back over his shoulder, toward the sound. He dropped his chin to his chest, sighed, then gestured quickly where the screams were coming from.
“We’ve got to do something. Let’s go.”
Abbey and Rider followed, with Rider keeping his eyes behind them while she and Chase checked each of the corridors, looking—hoping—to help whoever was screaming.
Chase halted at the fifth crossing and leaned against the nearest corner. He looked back at the previous corridor, and then up to the next. The corridor was empty. But the scream came again, weaker this time. It wasn’t one of fear or pain this time.
Abbey shuddered when she realized it was a scream of despair.
Chase held his fingers to his lips, then stuck his hand out in a stop motion. He tiptoed down the corridor and stopped halfway. Abbey moved another three steps along the corridor wall. The walls fell away on the far side, leaving a half-wall railing and overlook to the floor below.
A whimper echoed up at them.
Chase peered over the edge. Abbey watched him, waiting.
Her stomach clenched a beat later when he climbed over the rail.
Chapter 62
A moan in the darkness was all Chase had to go on. The emergency lighting flickered in the lower corridor, leaving him in alternating states of liquid gray shadows and palpable darkness.
The smell of blood filled his nostrils—a scent he’d never given much thought to until the last several hours. The metallic, coppery scent was something he’d never be able to forget.
He crept down the corridor, sliding along the smooth wall, and kept a hand on it as a guide when the lights fell to nothing.
He ignored his instincts to return to Abbey, pushing away the image of her face taut with fear. Fear for him. As much as that pained him, and as desperately as he wanted to go back, he couldn’t risk bringing her down here.
As he continued down the corridor, the moans came again. Now, though, they sounded more like whimpers, the tone hoarse and raspy.
He rounded a corner and neared the stairs he’d identified earlier. LEDs lined the decorative handrails and floor runners in the stairwell, adding some additional light that flared brightest on the landing a half-floor below.
The lights illuminated the body of one of the operators lying broken on the landing less than fifteen feet away. The man’s legs jutted off at odd angles, which made Chase’s own legs pulse in sympathetic pain. The man was conscious, his eyes open, but milky white and glazed over. Even at that distance, Chase could see an Initialized corpse near the man.
From what Chase could tell, the operator took out the Initialized before it managed to finish its job. He could see the blood pooling under his body. What little wasn’t sprayed across the walls, anyway.
Chase saw the circuitry pattern weaving across the man’s exposed skin. A tapestry of the webbing had already traveled up his neck, and additional nodes were starting to form on the man’s temples.
The man turned his head toward Chase and looked through him. The operator was too far gone to focus his vacant eyes.
“Is…someone there?” the man asked.
Chase opened his mouth to answer. But no words came. He locked in place, watching. Part of him wanted to help. Another part—his lizard hindbrain, in partnership with his frontal lobe—piped a river of skepticism through his synapses.
Is this a trap? Something else?
“Please. Please, help me.”
Chase studied the man. He ventured a few steps closer, his movements still cautious, but loud enough to make his presence known.
“Is someone there? Please.”
The man’s eyes had gone white, except for the flecks of inky black fluid at the corners, which were slowly expanding.
“Looks like you’re having something of a bad day.”
The man turned his head toward Chase again, the movement coming in fits and shifts. Then he coughed a laugh and offered a half-smile.
In a raspy voice, he said, “Well, it’s not going to plan.” He coughed again, his smile gone. “It’s all happening faster than I expected. I can feel it, you know. Etching up in me. I can’t see, but I can see. I can hear, too. Mostly them. My own thoughts are…I don’t even know. In. Out. Second by second, I’m less me and more them. They’re everywhere, all over. And then there’s the one.”
Chase said nothing. He just watched as the circuitry patterns continued to expand, consuming the man. It moved fast, no doubt, but slower than he’d expected. It had consumed the bodies in the commissary in moments.
Chase crouched and touched the man’s leg. He was an enemy before, and once the transformation was complete, he’d be an enemy again. For now, though, he was simply a person in a world of pain and fear.
Still, Chase knew he’d have to run soon.
“Please. I need you to help me.”
Chase stood and sighed. “I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. It’s spreading fast like you said.”
The man coughed again and shuddered. His body went into spasms for a few moments and nearly shut down before he gasped and turned his gaze back to Chase. The man—what was left of him—shifted, and with the effort of an Olympian, he lifted his arm and offered up his gun, handle first, to Chase.
“Yeah. Fast, like I said.”
Chase took a step away from the man. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“We both know you do.”
A wave of revulsion ripped through Chase.
“I can’t.”
“Please. I can’t be one of…of these.”
Chase shook his head. “No. I can’t do it. I’m not like you.”
“You wanna get out of this, kid, you’d best learn.” He offered the weapon once more.
Chase took it. “I don’t—”
“You know I would have killed you before this, right? And you know damn well I’ll try as soon as this thing takes me, except I’m gonna be a whole lot tougher to stop.”
“I’m not like you.”
“I know.” He coughed. “That’s why you’ll do this.”
He dropped his arm, and his body convulsed. His face contorted in anguish as the spasms became a full seizure. It passed, and he looked up at Chase one last time. His eyes nearly all black, the circuitry pattern starting to ripple and illuminate.
“Please,” he rasped. “Please, while there’s still part of me here.”
Chase stood frozen, trembling.
“Please. Ple—”
Chase fired. The recoil sent the weapon wide, but at that range and with that caliber, he’d still managed to put a hole in the man’s skull. The circuitry along the skin flickered, then went dead.
Chase recovered his balance and wiped a tear from his eye, clearing the blur in his vision just in time to see the man’s commander, Adrian, and the rest of his crew on the far side of the corridor, staring at him with murderous rage.
Chapter 63
Adrian’s vision went red. His world narrowed to a single point. His body and mind paralyzed as he watched the young man execute his second-in-command.
He’d seen death, of course. His own men had died in conflict. But that was with honor. On the battlefield.
Not like this. Not lying broken, begging.
The paralysis faded, replaced with a surging tide of blind rage as the young man looked up from his terrible work and locked eyes with him.
Time froze.
Adrian seared the features of the man into his mind. He’d seen him before. As he ignored the protests of his men and took off in a blind run toward conflict and retribution.
Rage consumed Adrian. He planted his feet and raised his MP5 in a fluid motion that was more art than function. He opened fire the moment he jammed the MP5 in position, unleashing a torrent of gunfire while he screamed.
The chattering stopped when the clip ran dry. To his dismay, he saw the young man scramble out from cover and sprint, his gait wobbly. The run of wounded prey.
Adrian smiled, happy to oblige the chase. He jammed another magazine home and brought the gun to his shoulder to unleash focused bursts aimed to kill.
His target juked at the last moment. But the motion looked sloppy. Adrian felt confident he’d struck him as he watched him disappear around a corner.
But confidence wasn’t certainty. He wanted the man dead.
Strike that. He wanted him in pain first. Then dead.
He wanted vengeance.
Adrian ignored the continuing protests from Garrett and Shaw. He shut out the electronic screams coming from all sides, the unerring pronouncement that the Trax were coming. He didn’t care. All that mattered was retribution.
