17

Outside the Ricker murder scene

The old man’s bullet had been a dud. He was still pointing the gun at Agent Daiss. It was obvious he didn’t know whether he had any live shells at all.

“Do you want to try your luck again?”

The old man pulled back the hammer.

A car came up the alley. Its shape was obscured by its own headlights but the finely tuned biocat sound meant it was Federal. Reda from the Thirteenth. The old man would surrender or be dead soon. Or both.

Reda popped out of the truck, aiming his weapon at one of the Mexicans who held a nonfunctional Gloria 6. A single shot rang out, and Reda slumped to the pavement. The old man leveled his gun at Daiss again.

The student Williams took a few steps back, still wielding the knife as if it could be of use against a Federal Agent. The Mexican kid with the sticks walked over to the other Mexicans. Then the whole group of them moved toward the girl. Daiss looked her up and down.

“You should have run when your elderly friend told you to,” he said. “I could kill you all right now, bare-handed.”

“But you won’t try,” the girl said. “Because, as you see, we’re not bare-handed.”

Murder scene of two Federal Agents

“I said there are two Agents down!” Daiss yelled through the EI. “The killers are moving toward the Zone. I need that helio now! It’s the Ricker case—Agency priority.”

“We’re on it,” the dispatcher said. “Street cameras show no group matching that description moving in your area but we have a signal from your Gloria 6. Now I’m checking back alleys … cameras are spotty there. I’m connecting you to the controller for Heliodrone Thirty-One, Agent Daiss.”

There was a brief silence.

“Agent Daiss?” a woman’s voice asked. Daiss started the truck.

“Yeah, this is Daiss. I’m in the truck, now. Should be coming up on them soon.”

“I’m following the tracking signal from your weapon—the helio will be right on top of them in a minute. We’ll get ’em.”

Running toward the Zone

The high-pitched whine sounded like someone gasping in horror or rage, except that it went on and on, echoing off buildings and growing steadily louder. A Federal heliodrone. Everyone had seen them as they routinely patrolled the skies above the city, but Eadie had never been close enough to hear a sound like this.

“Eadie?” Arrulfo said, taking a running step to catch up to her side. “Ernesto, he take the guns apart. He find little … signal? Little signal, to tell Feds where are the guns.”

“A tracking signal.” Eadie laughed. “Perfect. Can he throw them someplace, to get them off the track?”

“Noplace gonna help, he says. If some car come by, then yes, throw them on. But now, no. So he turn them off.”

“He turned them off?”

“Yes. There is no switch. But there is a … a battery? So he take out the battery.”

Eadie smiled. “Nice job, Ernesto.” She turned down a random alley to change direction and hopefully buy just a little more time. “If he fixed that thing, does that mean the guns will work for us, now?”

“No,” Arrulfo said. “I ask him that. That part work with … magnetics? Anyway, he say it is too hard for now.”

They took a few more random turns, finally reaching the end of a row of buildings that widened into open sky.

“Shit!” Eadie said. “How’d we end up at the fucking river?” She looked one way and another. “Shit, shit, shit!” She pointed downstream at an old highway bridge spanning the river. “Run for the bridge! Get as far under it as you can!”

The helio gained ground, its engine noise drilling into her eardrums.

The group was about twenty meters from the bridge when the helio floated into view, a small sphere suspended from an X-shaped frame with jets at each protruding end, silhouetted ghoulishly against the clouds in spite of its Federal camouflage wizardry. The sphere rotated, changing direction to follow them.

Arrulfo dropped back to help Rosa, who was struggling to carry Mari through the clotted, heavy mud. Rosa shook her head. Arrulfo let her proceed with Mari and walked backwards behind them, keeping his body between them and the helio.

Eadie stationed herself a short distance from the bridge, hoping to divert the drone pilot’s attention until the others could find cover. The helio opened fire and she began to run again, veering abruptly to the right and heading straight for the closest bridge abutment. The move bought her a few extra steps before the deafening blast of gunfire caught up again.

At last Eadie ducked under the bridge, her hair whipping in the draft from the helio engines. The pilot was attempting to descend enough for a straight shot under the bridge but the craft was listing from side to side, rocking in the air currents its jets created. Everyone crouched low, seeking as much protection as possible beneath the beams. Spotting a grate in the concrete bridge foundation, Eadie ran to it and tugged. To her surprise, it opened with little difficulty.

Somewhere behind her, the Prophet was smiling. The ice between her shoulder blades told her that.

In the Federal truck

“That’s right, Agent Daiss. Under the bridge. I angled the helio below street level and emptied both guns into the hole. Couldn’t have been half a minute since they jumped in, and audio picked up the shots ricocheting all around in there. And anyway, nobody who’s gone down into those tunnels has ever come out alive.”

“So, what you’re telling me,” Daiss said, breathing heavily as he pulled the truck up to the bridge, “is that a group of ignorant Zone animals got away from you, even though you controlled one of the most sophisticated pieces of flying weaponry known to mankind and had transmitters telling you exactly where they were?”

“Are you referring to the transmitters they got from disarming you, Agent Daiss? Maybe if you could hold onto your weapon you wouldn’t need me to chase your bad guys.”

“Did you scan with muon reflectors?”

“Sure. But you know what that shows—hundreds of life forms at all kinds of depths. It’s always the same. But nobody’s ever seen anyone come out.”

Daiss fumed, staring out through the truck’s windshield. The helio rose back into the sky.

(?)

Eadie’s eyes adjusted slowly to the room’s blackness as she rose to a standing position, trying to steady her breathing. She gingerly rubbed the knee she had landed on and began to look around for whatever it was that had sealed them in. The grate she had directed her group to climb into was the entrance to a tunnel, built with such a sharp incline that they had all landed on top of each other at the bottom. The air was wet and heavy with a mildewy, stale vinegar smell.

Her ears rang. Whatever heavy thing had slid across the opening had blocked the actual bullets, but the helio’s guns had sent horrible shrieking shockwaves through the tunnels.

Somewhere in the dark there was a soft sliding noise, followed by an indistinct rustling that came from all around them. Suddenly, small, luminous shapes and patterns seemed to float everywhere she looked. Most of them were groupings of one to four horizontal lines, but there was also a solid rectangle and an eerie glowing circle, which appeared to be only an arm’s length away.

Eadie fished out Kel’s lighter and flicked the ignitor, making sparks but no flame. She flicked again, and again, and finally a dim orange glow struggled to illuminate the underground chamber.

People?

She steadied the lighter with both hands. More than a hundred pairs of eyes squinted at her from pasty, thin faces, each with a pattern across the forehead. As she glanced quickly around the rest of the room, Dok, Lawrence and the others gathered behind her. Above their heads hung huge twisted pieces of metal, suspended from long ropes. On the concrete beneath their feet were stains, scrapes and cracks where the metal had come crashing down many times.

The lighter blinked out.