Breena shot across the room and began to shove Liaison’s gear back into her knapsack.
“What?” Kathryn and Peter asked in unison.
“Found Geneering,” Liaison said in a staccato voice, grabbing the knapsack from Breena and shoving the deck inside. “But the port was too obvious. Looked some more for a back door. Found it. Ran some browse programs.” She went over to the window, looked outside, seemed satisfied, and crossed to the door. “Found a data file with the doc’s name on it. Very cold. Looked good. I opened it and found another big file about nanotech protos being loaned out for a bioresearch job in Chicago. Before I could read it, a home-court decker showed up. He stalled me while the system launched a White Wolf—”
“White Wolf?” asked Peter.
“Trace program. They’re onto us,” said Kathryn.
“They’re in France,” said Peter.
“But they’ve got a deal with a corp in town,” Kathryn told him.
Peter shot a quick look around the room. So much for the cockroaches.
Then came the unmistakable sound of chopper blades in the distance.
He jumped for the window and pulled the shade back. “There’s a Stallion heading this way.”
“Metro?” asked Liaison.
“Yup.”
“Okay. That’s okay. We can avoid them.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. Outside he saw another chopper coming from the south. “Crusader Security is on the way, too.”
“Metro will sign the job over to them,” Kathryn said.
“Yeah. They’re going to make a stink,” said Peter. “We’d better move now.”
Liaison pulled a Scorpion machine pistol from out of the backpack.
Peter opened the door, and everyone streamed from the apartment toward a stairway at the back of the building.
“We’ve got to get out of this area fast. I don’t want a repeat of the last C raid on a project,” said Peter.
“What…?” said Kathryn.
“Not now,” Peter said.
They hit the door to the stairs and Liaison started down. “No. Up, for now,” Peter said. Liaison looked to Breena, who nodded. The sound of a door being smashed open echoed up the bare cinder-block stairwell.
Liaison led the group, then came Breena and Kathryn. Peter held back, making sure everyone was all right.
Suddenly he heard a child say, “Hey, what are you pinks doing here?” He looked up and saw a troll child looking down the stairs at them. Then the kid spotted the guns, and screamed as he ran off through the landing door.
From below, Peter heard several pairs of boot-clad feet running up the stairs.
“Frag,” he sighed.
Liaison set herself against the central banister, her Scorpion pointed down the stairs. Kathryn stopped, but Breena said, “Come on. Just keep moving until you’re near me door up there. If things hose up, just run.” Then Breena took a step back and waited for the guards.
Peter tensed, the anticipation of battle warming him. Crusader was a pure humans-only crowd. And one thing Peter had learned over me years was that he loved to take down pure humans armed with guns; no other group had caused him so much pain. When he was one of them again, he would open his liberal heart and worry about the unjust treatment of anyone by anyone. But for now…
Liaison fired off three shots before the first guard had cleared me bend in the stairs. The first two hit the guard’s black armor, doing little damage. But Liaison was targeting with each shot, raising her aim a bit on each one. The final slug ripped through the man’s neck, sending him reeling back. He grabbed at the wound, and blood spurted through his fingers.
His companion stayed back beneath the stairs.
“West stairway, fourth floor!” the second shouted into his mike. “Armed. Dangerous.”
Nervous, the guard leaned forward and fired his HK227 submachine gun on full auto.
Liaison jumped back. The bullets chewed concrete fragments from the wall.
“Let’s move it,” Peter said just above the racket of the HK. “Up one flight, over to the other side of the building, and down.”
The women ran up the stairs. Peter held his position to give them some time; then he squeezed off three shots before racing up after them.
By the time he hit the fifth floor, they were already halfway down the corridor.
Breena and Liaison had just passed the elevator banks when a stairwell door next to the elevators opened.
A guard looked out, and Kathryn came to a dead stop, just few steps away from the man. He looked surprised, then raised his HK227.
Peter had no idea whether or not the guard would shoot, but he called out “Hey!” before anyone had to find out. The guard pulled the trigger of his HK227 even as he turned toward Peter. Rounds bounced off the walls and pierced the flimsy doors of the surrounding apartments. Kathryn dropped to the ground. Screams filled the air.
Peter leaped to the other side of the corridor, away from the bullets, then dove to the floor. A flash of blue light filled his peripheral vision, and he thought the guard had pulled out a taser like those used by cops years earlier. Instead of feeling pain, however, he heard a gun clatter to the floor. Looking up, Peter saw the guard clutch at his face, the flesh turning to ooze and dripping down his neck. The man stood there, suspended by reflex for a moment, then collapsed and lay still.
Far down the corridor stood Breena, her hands still crackling with blue energy. Kathryn looked at the fallen man, then quickly turned away.
“Move, move!” Peter hissed and rushed over to Kathryn to help her up. “He didn’t get a chance to call in. He might be the only one up here.” Passing the guard, Peter scooped up the HK227.
They ran down the corridor. Just as they reached the stairwell, they heard the sound of autofire below them.
“What are they shooting at?” said Kathryn, after checking to make sure the group was still together.
“They’re hitting the apartments,” Peter growled, running down the stairs. Liaison and Breena rushed after him. “You three keep going!” he shouted back. “I’ll draw them out and catch up to you. Keep going!”
As the women continued past him, he heard Kathryn say with shortened breath, “I don’t understand.”
When he hit the fourth-floor landing, Peter slammed into the door and out into the corridor. Screams and cries filled the air. To his right and left guards were smashing open doors and firing autofire bursts. Some laughed.
“Hey!” Peter shouted. He turned to the right and shot a most of the magazine down the length of the corridor into four guards. “Can’t you pervos even aim at the right targets!”
Each of the guards caught a bullet and sprawled backward onto the hall floor. Guns firing from the left sent rounds into Peter’s duster. The rounds slammed him hard, shooting new pain through the wounds he’d picked up in the Shattergraves, but his duster and natural armor kept the bullets from penetrating his flesh.
He just had to remember to get Breena to heal him.
Peter jumped back to the safety of the stairwell. He made it look like he was beating a hasty retreat, but once out of sight, he leaned back into the corridor and fired at the guards rushing in pursuit toward the stairwell. He caught the two lead guards full in the chest.
The bullets tore up their armor, and they fell back into the guards behind them.
One guard, who had been right behind the lead two, caught Peter’s eye as he fell back. The man was a pure human, but he seemed to have the face of pig. For just an instant his eyes locked with Peter’s, and all Peter saw in them was the most profound loathing.
He dropped the spent gun and fled down the stairs, pulling the Predator out of his holster as he ran.
Just as he was clearing the second-floor landing, he heard the landing door behind him. He tried to turn and get off a shot, but as he grabbed at the banister for support, the world around him suddenly shifted wildly. Dark shadows filled the stairwell. The stairs beneath his feet seemed to turn to rubber and he stumbled down them, crashing into the cement wall. Out the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a figure moving, now red and warm, just a shadow. His father? Billy? He looked up and saw a man with fetishes pinned to his armored chest slip back into the second-floor hallway, then close the door behind him.
Peter tried to put his hand to the floor, but missed. And missed again. And again. Finally he got up. He took a few steps toward the stairs and fell again. The walls bent in toward him. He wanted to scream in rage, but couldn’t find his voice.
A mage had done this to him. The man. Hiding now. Sustaining the spell. Waiting for the guards to come for Peter. He looked down toward the first-floor landing. An exit sign hung over the door. Maybe he could fall down the stairs and out the door.
Then what? He’d never find Breena and what’s-their-names as long as his hands kept melting into his chest.
He had to take the mage out, or he was as good as dead.
Peter rolled back to the stairs and crawled up, very, very carefully. He kept his eyes shut, trying to keep out random sensory-feed. From the stairs above came the clatter of boots, guards getting closer.
He tried not to panic, but the world turned over on itself, and Peter thought he would vomit. He sent a hand toward the landing above him and dragged himself up. The doorknob was just above him. All he had to do was touch it. But it seemed so far away, as if he’d shrunk to a very small size. He glanced back down the stairs and thought he’d never been so high up before. If he fell, he knew he would never stop falling. He would fall and fall and stare at the bottom and see the impact coming forever.
His hand finally made contact with the doorknob, and he pulled it open. He fell into the hall and turned to his right. There stood the mage right next to him, looking down at Peter in surprise. Outside Peter heard the clatter of the guards’ boots.
“I…” said Peter. But he had nothing else to say. He reached out his hand and tried to grab the magician, but the man stepped back and Peter’s arm melted into the floor. Or he thought it did. He knew it was a lie. All he had to do was figure out where the image ended and reality began. Or did it matter? If he really thought his hand melted into the floor, what difference did it make if he thought it was illusion? He began to giggle. Maybe it mixed somewhere in the middle.
The door behind him opened. He rolled over and looked up at two Crusader security guards, their HKs pointed down at him. They seemed gigantic, yet like children, little boys playing by sandbox rules, but armed with real guns.
“Bye, trog,” one of them said.
Then another door from along the corridor opened and Peter heard the thunderous roar of a shotgun. A spray of pellets knocked the guards against the wall.
Peter suddenly felt much better. He glanced right and saw the mage moving his arms to cast another spell, something to take out an ork with a shotgun standing in the doorway behind Peter. Peter swung his gun around. Somehow it was still miraculously in his hand, and he was able to drop the mage with two shots.
The two guards were back up now, their armor having protected them from serious damage. But before they could get off their shots, the ork fired another shell, and Peter slammed them with several more rounds, the crack of the shots firing one after another. They staggered a moment, then fell to the ground.
Peter stood up woozily and faced the ork. “Thanks.”
“Just get out quick.” The ork smiled, checked the corridor, and ducked back inside.
When Peter hit the first floor, he pushed wide the exit door and rushed into the snow, at the same moment hearing a car screech around the corner of the building. It was an Ares Master van, painted black, but he knew it was a Crusader vehicle. Peter raised his gun and fired into the windshield, but the bullets merely bounced off.
The van came to a skidding halt facing him, and Peter heard the back doors open. Glancing around desperately for an escape, he saw that the door he’d just exited had locked behind him. As he turned back, ready to give the guards a final fight, he saw a fireball rushing from behind a distant dumpster straight into the rear of the van.
Breena was very good.
He hit the snow and covered his face.
The next instant came a loud explosion and a wave of heat washing over him, followed by screams. Looking up, Peter saw the snow around the van had melted away. Torn bodies lay scattered in a clean radius from the blast point, streaks of blood melting through the snow.
As he was getting up, Peter saw Liaison behind the dumpster. She signaled him to keep moving to the right, toward a building at the project’s northeast corner.
At her signal, he began to run. Even though he heard the door of the building open behind him, he knew he couldn’t look back. Getting to cover was all that mattered now. It was all right, though. Liaison was taking shots at the security guards and had driven them back into the building.
Peter ducked behind a dumpster for a quick glance back, then a few seconds later he was around the corner of the building, breathing hard. The area was clear, probably because the explosion and machine gun fire had sent everyone running for cover.
Breena, Liaison, and Kathryn rounded the other side of the building at a run. Peter thought Breena looked as though the effort was almost too much for her; the fireball had knocked the wind out of her.
“Frag, that was lucky,” she mumbled. “A mage in that van.”
“Plan?” asked Peter.
“Car. Go,” answered Liaison.
“Where’d you park?”
“Down there.” She gestured down the street.
“Great,” he said and the four took off at a run once more.
One of the guards spotted them just as they reached the car, a gray Ford Americar. He pulled up his gun and fired. Bullets splashed through the snow and raced up to Peter just as he slipped into the back seat. The car, re-tooled for moments like this, bounced the bullets off its body panels. Liaison put the car in gear and shot down the road.
“How is everyone?” asked Peter.
Breena was breathing heavily, but said, “Fine.”
“Fine,” said Liaison.
He felt Kathryn tightly crammed against his right. The heat of the action and the warmth of her body twisted in him like an aphrodisiac. He looked at her closely. Her eyes were like glass, her breathing deep and steady. “You all right?”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“All right,” said Peter, pulling himself up to a more dignified position. “Let’s hit the Crusader headquarters.”
“What do you mean, hit the Crusader headquarters?” demanded Breena, suddenly alert.
“I mean, the clue we need to find Clarris is in that building.”
“Yeah,” said Liaison. “They’ll have a record of the phone call that came in to send the guards after us. It’ll give us the name of the corp, the address—at least a telecom code. Crusader keeps all contact data in cold storage. I’ve tried getting in before.” Driving madly down the street, she turned to look briefly at Breena. “If we want it, we make a house call.”
“We’ve got two elements working for us,” Peter said. “A lot of their men are out of the base and looking for us—”
“Exactly!” said Breena testily.
“And second, Crusader’s not going to expect us to show up in their own backyard.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Liaison. Breena gave her a look that said she was no more than a child, and should wait a few more years before offering opinions.
“The place is built like a fortress,” said Breena. “The tower guards are armed with MAG-5 machine guns. They’re just ready and waiting for somebody to try what you’re suggesting. They’ve planned for it.”
Peter punched the ceiling of the car with his fist.
“Hey, watch the merchandise!” shouted Liaison.
“Breena, listen, we don’t have a choice. The closest link we’ve got is in France, and Liaison got bounced out of it. That’s it. Our only other lead is in the Crusader building. It had to be the Chicago company that called them in. If you can think of something else, great, but I can’t.”
Kathryn looked up at Peter with a bit of a smile, then nodded her head proudly.
Breena thought about it for a moment. “Yes. But it sounds really stupid.”
“It is stupid, Breena,” said Liaison. “That’s the fun part. Being smart enough to live through something really stupid.”
“So we need a plan, right?” said Kathryn. Peter glanced at her. She seemed to be getting into it.
“Yes,” he said.
Kathryn and Breena looked at him. Liaison glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. “Well, Profezzur, you got the idea. You come up with a plan.”
Peter nodded and smiled at her in the mirror. “Null perspiration, chummer,” he said, recalling a phrase from the streets, and Breena laughed.