“Recon east thirty-six, inbound with a prisoner. Hold your fire. Acknowledge.”
“Copy that,” said the voice on the other end of the COMM, but his inflection lacked confidence. The guard wasn’t expecting the arrival of a recon team member. Rena would have to make it clear that her approach from this direction hadn’t been planned.
“Move!” she yelled at Lukas.
The OCON field operative stumbled around the corner and into the hallway, his hands bound in front of him. His head was hunched in the posture of someone who’d been beaten into submission. The gunshot wound in his left shoulder bled profusely, running down the sleeve of his white shirt and leaving a trail of drops along the floor. Spots of red dissolved into cloudy halos in the shallow puddles left by the fire suppression system.
Rena followed a few steps behind, aiming Lukas’s pistol at the back of his head—far enough that the hostage couldn’t turn and disarm her, yet close enough to take him out if he tried to run. It had to appear believable.
At the end of the hallway, the faintest sliver of movement appeared behind the left corner of the intersection. A gun barrel and part of someone’s face stuck out from behind a wall perforated with evidence of a recent exchange of gunfire.
“E36, visual contact confirmed,” said the guard over the COMM. “Any pursuers?”
“Negative,” Rena answered.
When they reached the end of the hallway, five Outlier soldiers stepped out with their weapons centered on Lukas. Rena was surprised to see they were recon and not defense. She lowered the pistol and tried to appear relieved.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” said the team leader, a middle-aged man with a pockmarked face. “How did you get through?”
She let out an exhausted breath. “Man, it’s good to see some friendly faces. My mission went sideways and … I had to get creative.” She tilted her head toward Lukas.
The team leader glanced at the prisoner, and his eyes lingered on the gunshot wound. “Who’s this?”
“Our key to OCON’s surveillance database.”
His eyebrows scrunched together.
“Ryce said to bring him to the director’s office immediately.”
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
“I lost one trying to secure the prisoner. The other three are about to blow the doors off the server room if I don’t get up there with this walking, talking access key.”
His eyebrows relaxed. Then he nodded.
Rena didn’t wait for further confirmation. She pointed the pistol at the back of Lukas’s head again. “To the elevator. Slow and steady,” she ordered.
Lukas began shuffling forward, doing a great job of looking pathetic as he walked past the soldiers.
“You need help?” the team leader asked.
“Would have been nice a couple minutes ago, but he’s compliant now.”
“Bullets have that effect.”
Rena let the corner of her mouth turn upward, just enough to mirror the smirk on the team leader’s face. Then she followed Lukas down the right hallway and into an elevator. When the doors closed, she let out the breath she’d been holding. “Are you OK? How’s your arm?”
He pressed the button for the top floor, then stepped back and glanced at his shoulder. “I’ll be fine if I get it plugged up in the next couple minutes.”
The elevator began rising through the building, pushing Rena’s weight into her feet. Out of habit, she looked up as if she could see the challenges waiting above them.
“That was fantastic, by the way,” said Lukas.
“Thanks.”
“Just keep doing the same thing until we’re inside that office. Short sentences. Don’t explain more than you have to.”
Rena understood the strategy of using someone’s own imagination against them, probably better than Lukas did. But it was comforting to hear him say it anyway, and reassuring to know she wasn’t doing this alone.
The elevator began slowing down and Rena’s heart did the opposite.
“Here we go,” said Lukas, stepping in front of the door and hanging his head.
Rena pointed the pistol at him.
The doors slid open, revealing a three-story atrium to the left and a hallway to the right. Lukas shuffled to the right and began making his way down a long corridor lined with windows on one side. Through the windows, the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the city. Aside from being on top of the Canopy, this was the highest vantage point Rena had ever experienced, and the view of Esh was breathtaking. She had to make a conscious effort to ignore it.
“That’s far enough!” said a voice from down the hall.
Lukas stopped.
Five Outlier soldiers came jogging down the corridor with their weapons aimed.
Rena swung around to Lukas’s left side and kept her pistol pointed at him. “Ryce said to bring this prisoner to the director’s office.”
“Yeah, that’s what the team downstairs said.” The soldiers came to a stop a few meters away, and Rena could see now that a couple of their rifles were aimed at her as well as Lukas. The team leader stepped forward. “The problem is … Ryce isn’t in that office.”
The shock of his words hit Rena like a punch in the stomach, but she managed to limit her reaction to a narrowing of her eyes. If Ryce wasn’t inside Terrell’s office, monitoring the movement of OCON soldiers, it had to be someone he trusted implicitly.
“I didn’t say he was. I said I was ordered to bring the operative up here. Ryce isn’t the one running the interrogation. Fijal is.”
The name-dropping seemed to shake the soldier’s confidence. “No one … said anything—”
“What’s your name, soldier? What village are you from?”
The team leader’s eyes darted around the hallway.
Rena had him off balance, and now it was time to knock him over with something she’d learned from Zamoro months ago.
“Did you ever stop to think about why you’re out here securing the hallway instead of downstairs holding off OCON? In my village, we follow orders. Maybe that’s why I was tasked with bringing in this operative and why the rest of my team is inside that office doing useful work. If you think it’s a good idea to prevent me from fulfilling my orders, I guess we can just discuss it with Ryce later. Or better yet, why don’t you get on your COMM and ask Fijal if I’m supposed to be here or not?”
He was clearly offended, but his anger was clouded with uncertainty. He had so many reactions coursing through his mind that he couldn’t choose one. Then something subtle shifted behind his eyes. Rena could see he’d found a reason not to comply.
“Oh! Never mind,” she blurted out, glancing over the man’s shoulder to the door at the end of the hall. “Here he is now.”
The soldiers all turned to look.
Rena swung the pistol away from Lukas and fired as quickly as she could, not bothering to aim. The suppressor deadened the shots to muffled cracking noises as the weapon recoiled in her hand multiple times. When the first soldier dropped dead to the floor, the others began spinning back in her direction. One after the other went down, each a little closer to firing on Rena. She got through four of them before Lukas slammed into the fifth, driving his shoulder into the man’s weapon and sending a stream of bullets into the windows on the right.
Bursts of white appeared on the windows around each crater, fragmenting the view of the city through the bulletproof glass.
As Lukas hit the floor, he rolled out of the way, leaving the soldier sprawled exposed.
Rena put two rounds into his chest before swinging her weapon back to the other men on the ground. No one moved.
The door at the end of the hall suddenly swung open, two soldiers appearing in the doorway.
She took aim and started firing, moving left toward the wall. But the pistol only jolted twice before the slide locked open, the weapon having expended its last round. She immediately dropped to the floor and reached for one of the Outlier rifles.
Lukas had the same idea and was already on his stomach in a prone position with an Outlier rifle in his hands. He opened fire, sending a volley of rounds at the door.
The two soldiers fell backward with multiple hits to their midsections, leaving an unobstructed opening into Terrell’s office.
But Rena knew there were at least three other soldiers inside. She ripped a couple flash-bang grenades off the belt of the nearest soldier, pulled the pins, and threw them through the doorway. Then she raised the Outlier rifle. “I’ll take left. You take right.”
“Got it,” Lukas said, climbing to his feet.
The flash-bangs detonated, jolting the office with a concussive boom that knocked several ceiling panels to the floor. Blinding flashes of light accompanied a semitransparent fog designed to disorient anyone inside.
Rena ran down the left side of the hallway and into the office, pivoting left. Lukas was only a step behind her, mirroring her movements. The bulky outline of a soldier and a rifle appeared against the far wall, and she fired a quick burst at its center. She could hear Lukas firing to her right as she continued pivoting, sighting another soldier in the far left corner of the room. She fired another burst and watched the soldier fall before pivoting back in the other direction. When she faced the center of the room again, she yelled, “Clear!”
“Clear,” Lukas echoed.
Rena dropped her weapon to low-ready and moved around the side of the large, metal desk that dominated the opposite end of the room. As expected, Fijal cowered on the floor behind the desk with his hands over his ears. When he looked up, the terror drained from his face. “Rena?”
She took aim at him. “Where is Ryce?”
He put his hands up, but he didn’t answer.
“WHERE IS RYCE?” she yelled.
“I guess he was right about you.”
“Not even close. Are the explosives in place?”
Fijal squinted. “You think I’m going to—”
Bang!
Fijal’s leg shuddered from the impact of a single shot. He glanced down in disbelief for a full second before he grabbed at the wound and started screaming.
Rena lowered her rifle, pulled out her knife, and knelt in front of him. She seized a handful of his hair and laid the blade against his cheek. “You think you’re on the right side of this, but you have no idea what’s at stake here. Tell me what I want to know, or this is going to become even more painful for you.”
o o o
Terrell lay on his side, hands bound behind his back. His piercing, gray eyes, once filled with cunning poise, now stared vacantly at the ceiling. The tiny hole in the middle of his forehead probably had a larger, messier companion on the other side, but Lukas couldn’t look—the sprawling stain on the floor under the director’s head was as much as he could stomach.
He knew this was all just lines of code on a server, but that coding had been the virtual consciousness of a person. A real person. One of the few who had invested in Lukas. Taught him and guided him. Favored him and challenged him. Terrell had been the closest thing to a father Lukas had ever known. And though the director of OCON had ordered Lukas’s execution, he’d done it out of duty. Commitment to a cause for which he’d dedicated the majority of his unusually long life. The horrific scene before Lukas’s eyes might have been nothing more than a detailed illusion, if it didn’t serve as proof that his father-figure hadn’t prepared an escape to the physical world.
Lukas’s head began to swim, whether from his sense of loss or his loss of blood, he couldn’t tell. The gunshot wound in his shoulder was becoming unbearable since he’d removed the swelled, packing pellets. He turned away and looked across the room to Terrell’s desk, behind which Rena conducted her interrogation.
“OCON’s tracking system is tied into Esh’s rating system,” explained the hostage. “We need it to monitor enemy movements.”
“Then what?” Rena asked.
Lukas walked toward the desk and the holographic map hovering in the air above it. The lingering smoke from the flash-bangs created a glowing aura around the colored spheres, highlighting the standoff taking place on the streets below.
“When all their agents are dead, Ryce will detonate the explosives.”
“How can you possibly defeat so many?”
The hostage didn’t answer.
Rena pressed the point of her knife against his face until blood welled up on its tip. “What’s the ambush plan?”
“Listen for yourself,” he mumbled.
She grabbed the old-fashioned earpiece and microphone system she’d removed from the hostage and put it up to her ear.
Lukas sat on the edge of the desk and took a deep breath of the humid air. The office felt uncomfortably warm, and he wondered if the Outliers had adjusted the climate control system for some strategic reason. Looking again at the hologram, he could see that the captain had begun pulling back his assault teams as promised. Lukas waved his hand through the map, trying to spin it to a top-down perspective, but nothing happened. He tried again, before realizing it would only respond to the implant in Terrell’s hand.
Rena pulled the communications system away from her ear. “It sounds like recon teams are positioning themselves outside of the OCON perimeter. But how is that possible?”
Lukas heard the question, but his sluggish mind was occupied with another mystery. He turned to look at Terrell’s body lying on the floor, and it felt like his vision was slow to catch up. When it did, he noticed the mesh glove on Terrell’s hand and the coiled wires running to a nearby backpack.
“How are there so many recon teams left?” Rena asked.
The hostage laughed under his breath. “The attack on this building was carried out mostly by civilians.”
A trickle of sweat ran down from Lukas’s temple as he experienced a moment of panic. If the tracking system wasn’t operable by anyone other than Terrell, his supposed elevator wouldn’t work either. How was Rena going to get up above the Canopy? The answer hovered beyond his reach, and probably had something to do with those wires and the glove on Terrell’s hand, but for some reason, Lukas couldn’t make the connection.
“So the ambush is coming from behind the OCON perimeter,” Rena said. “Are they using standard firepower or something else? Rockets?”
“I’ve said all I’m going to,” the hostage replied.
Rena moved her knife down to the hostage’s neck, its sharpened edge scraping across the stubble on his face.
“Go ahead.”
“You’re prepared to die?”
“Of course. Because I’m not a traitor.”
Rena shook her head. “You’ve already betrayed the Outliers by what you’ve told me. Why stop now?”
“I didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t have figured out on your own. And I only told you because it’s too late to do anything about it. So go ahead and kill me. It’s a small price to pay.”
Lukas realized he’d been staring at the hostage. Fascinated by the arrogant expression on the man’s face. The place on his leg where Rena had shot him. The mesh glove he wore on his right hand, with wires stretching down the length of each finger. It was unlike Lukas to fixate on such things during times of stress, but the darkness at the corners of his vision seemed to funnel his attention.
Oh yeah …
The connection between his observations blinked into existence like Esh’s lighting strips at dusk. “Hey, Rena,” he said, his words strangely drawn out. His tongue felt heavy, sticking to the roof of his mouth. “We’re going to need that glove.” He raised his hand and pointed at the prisoner, fascinated by the beads of sweat glistening around the light of his rating. Then everything went black.
o o o
“Lukas? Can you hear me?”
His eyelids twitched, and he began to stir.
“Lukas?” Rena repeated.
His eyelids opened, pupils constricting until it was clear that he was fully alert.
She pulled him up to a seated position. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah. What happened?”
“You lost a lot of blood. I repacked your wound, but it’ll take some time to recover.”
Lukas suddenly inhaled. “Rena! The glove!”
“I know. I’m wearing it,” she said, showing him. “They must have cloned Terrell’s implant.”
“Here … get me up.”
Rena put her hand on Lukas’s chest. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“There’s no time for this! Come on. We need to hurry!” he grunted.
“No, Lukas. You can’t go. And I can’t wait. I just had to make sure you were OK before I left.”
Lukas closed his eyes for a few seconds, clearly disappointed with himself.
“Here,” Rena said, handing him Fijal’s COMM. “You can listen in on their movements and alert the captain.”
He accepted it before looking over at Fijal, tied to the leg of Terrell’s desk and wearing a look of defiance. “You sure you want to keep him alive?”
“It’d be a shame for humanity to lose all his knowledge and experience.”
Lukas nodded before perking up. “Maybe I can do better than listen,” he said, his voice sounding exactly like Fijal’s.
Rena could hardly believe her ears. “How did you do that?”
The expression of defiance drained from Fijal’s face, replaced with a look of panic.
Lukas smiled. “Field operatives are trained to impersonate people. We have to fit in with normal citizens. And I’ve been listening to him talk for long enough.”
“It won’t work,” said Fijal. “They won’t believe you’re me.”
“It won’t work. They won’t believe you’re me,” repeated Lukas, perfectly matching Fijal’s accent and inflection.
Rena stood and adjusted the strap of the carbine around her neck. “Keep the fighting to a minimum, and draw it out as long as you can.”
“I will. And Rena … be careful.” His blue eyes weren’t glowing, but there was definitely a sparkle to them. He wanted to say more, and she wanted to hear more. But they’d run out of time.
Rena walked across the office, opening the door that Lukas had told her about on their way into the city. Just like he’d said, there was a long hallway ending at a staircase. She jogged up it and found herself on a covered balcony, with a broad skylight looking up at the central column and the Canopy far above. Beyond the glass-paneled railing, the afternoon shadows of the canopyscrapers had lengthened. Sundown was rapidly approaching.
She turned left and weaved through the potted shrubs and trees that Lukas had described. The balcony butted up against the column, and when she found a place where the spacing between the trees was wider, she raised her hand. Then she waved it, but nothing happened.
She stepped forward and inspected the painted, white surface of the column, looking for a doorway. As she dragged her fingers across the cold, smooth metal, a crack of light appeared in the form of a rectangle. The door glided inward and to the side, revealing a brightly-lit elevator with polished metal walls. She walked inside and turned, seeing four buttons aligned in a column.
The one at the bottom was worn around the edges. No matter which level Terrell went to, he’d always have to come back to this balcony, so that had to be the button for where Rena currently stood. Unless there was an intermediate stop halfway up, the other three buttons would likely take her above the Canopy. And since the explosives were being set on the data cables entering the base of the tower, she chose the second from the bottom.
As soon as she pressed it, the door slid into place. An electronic hum filled the cabin, and Rena felt as though her body weight doubled. When the hiss of pneumatic propulsion took over, she realized this elevator must have been the forerunner of the Transit system, installed early on while the column was being constructed. Her journey into the past had now brought her to the very foundations of Esh. And if her assumption was correct, what waited above her was even older still.
Or who’s waiting, she corrected herself.
As the elevator sped toward the Canopy, its cabin filled with subtle vibrations and soft murmurs. In the quiet space, Rena thought about the lives she’d taken over the course of the day. The assault team in the tunnels and the one behind her father’s cabin. The recon team in the hallway outside Terrell’s office and the one inside. Every life was precious.
But what choice did I have?
They would have killed her if she hadn’t killed them first. And the fate of humanity hung in the balance.
Will I have to take more lives before the day is over?
She looked up at the ceiling. The answer depended on what she would find when the elevator doors opened. Were the explosives ready? Was Ryce waiting in the tower for Fijal’s signal? Or was he already climbing down the Canopy in anticipation of the explosion? Maybe he’d discovered the Founders and had changed his mind about his objective. There was no way to formulate a plan ahead of time. Rena would have to react, which wasn’t the ideal situation for finding a solution.
The elevator began to slow, and she grew light-headed from the feeling of weightlessness. She took a deep breath and raised her weapon, fixing her eyes on the door. Then the elevator came to a stop.