Beyond the Pale (24 page)
Ryan leveled the snub barrel of his MGL-6 and fired four grenades into the corner, watching them bounce down the hall and come to a rest a few meters from the advancing drone. He ducked into the passage before they went off, and he had nearly reached the others by the time the explosions shook the air.
Axler’s voice came harsh in Ryan’s ear. “Decision time, stairs or elevator?”
Ryan reached the group; they had paused around the corner from a small room. The hall continued on about twenty meters before making another sharp right. “Which is closer?”
“Elevators are here.” Axler indicated the room. “The main stairs just a bit further.”
Ryan used his mirror to peek into the space, noticing the three guards—two humans and a ork woman—standing in front of two elevator doors, alert and nervous. The ork paced back and forth, the emergency lighting flashing red and white over her tan uniform. The others stood still, trying to look confident.
Jane was insistent over the tacticom. “I can get you up the elevator shaft,” she said. “It’s faster and safer than the stairs.”
“What about the power?” Ryan said.
“I’ll restore it temporarily,” came Jane’s response. “Null sheen.”
“I hate elevators,” Axler said. “Too confining. One burst from an SMG could take us all out.”
“You won’t be inside the elevator,” said Jane.
“We climb up the ladder then?” Axler’s voice was thick with incredulity. “Or what about on top of the elevator car?
They’d never think of that. Come on, Jane, they’ll nail us either way.”
“Not on top, Axler. Underneath.”
Axler said nothing. It was a good idea.
“Let’s do it,” Ryan said, running up to the others.
“You have no choice,” Jane said. “There’s a hoopload of Jag Guards coming down the central stairs, maybe fifty or sixty. No way you can make it out that way. But if you get past them, you’ll be almost to the main entrance.”
Dhin’s gruff voice broke in. “I can help you when you get there,” he said. “My Wandjina is itching to see some action.”
“I hope you’ll get your chance, chummer.”
Jane’s voice came over urgent and all biz. “The power outage means that the sec cameras are dead. They won’t see you enter the elevator shaft.”
In Ryan’s mirror, the ork guard paced up close and glanced out into the hall. Close enough that Ryan could smell her foul breath. But she didn’t see him; his magic served as a cloak. Whether she noticed Axler and the others, Ryan couldn’t be sure.
Her eyes went wide as she focused on Burnout, standing level with her, his perfectly proportioned head giving her a wry smile.
With a quick, precise jab Ryan sunk a narcotic dart into her neck. In seconds the drug made her slump to the floor. Ryan grabbed her weapon as she fell. “Axler?” he said.
On cue, Axler doused the room with her Ares Supersquirt.
The other two guards sank to the floor in seconds.
“Burnout,” Ryan said. “Can’t you go invisible?”
“That’s Lethe’s territory.”
Sorry, I’m still a little rattled from the banishment.
“Well, spirit, pull your drek together before you get us all geeked.”
On it,
came Lethe’s response.
Ryan watched in mild surprise as Burnout vanished into nothing more than a heat shimmer. “That’s better,” he said. “Now can you open the elevator doors?”
The vitreous cyberzombie stepped up to the metal doors
and pushed them to either side as though he were opening
curtains.
“Let’s get these guards into the shaft,” Ryan said. The elevator tube was dark and square with a hydraulic system instead of a cable and weight. In the center of the shaft, a silver pole gleamed in the dim light, telescoping up from the pump mechanism below to hold the elevator car.
They dumped the bodies into the opening, watching them fall the three meters to the bottom of the shaft. This was the lowest level, and Ryan could see that a maintenance ladder of round rebar rungs ran next to the door and up into the darkness.
“I’ve taken control of the elevator and put it on emergency power,” Jane said. “It’ll stop on the level above yours. But you need to haul hoop. I don’t know how long I can keep control.”
Ryan looked up and saw the elevator car come into view like a huge ghost of machinery. It stopped about four meters up, and Ryan searched the undercarriage with his low-light vision, trying to find enough hand-holds for everyone.
The bottom was made of smooth stainless steel that gleamed dimly in the low light. Along the edges of the car, a metal grating extended about ten centimeters below the floor of the carriage. Whether it would hold them all or not, Ryan didn’t know.
The sound of movement came from the hallway behind. “All right, everyone in,” Ryan said. “We'll have company any second.”
“Let’s go.” Axler climbed nimbly up the ladder and swung out onto the grating. Grind followed, with Talon just behind him.
Ryan pulled a couple of smoke grenades and set them off in the passage. He could hear the team that was following them; they were close, but moving cautiously.
Perhaps the smoke will make them mistake each other for us.
Ryan turned quickly and climbed into the elevator shaft and up the ladder. He latched onto the grating, joining the others, whose feet dangled over the darkness, looking like meat hanging in a smoke house.
Automatic gunfire sounded in the hall, followed by yells and screams.
They’re shooting at each other.
Burnout came last, swinging onto the ladder, the illusion magic unable to mask his massive silhouette, like a prismatic robot. Something had happened to the cyberzombie, Ryan knew. His entire demeanor had changed, and it wasn’t simply due to Lethe’s influence. It had happened too fast for that—ever since he and Ryan had fought in the arboretum. Burnout had nearly died that day, had nearly taken Lethe with him.
Now, Burnout sank his fingernails into the doors and slid them shut, first one then the other, plunging the shaft into utter darkness. A few seconds later, Ryan felt his weight on the grating.
“We’re on, Jane,” Ryan subvocalized.
With a lurch, the elevator began to ascend. Rising in the darkness. “You’re going up five levels,” she said. “To the fourth floor. The main entrance is on the third. You’ll have to climb down and force the doors.”
Grind’s voice came on. “Nice thinking, Jane. Even if they think we’ve taken the elevator, they’ll send troops up to the fourth.”
“Maybe,” said Axler, her voice sounding dubious. “But I still feel like a clay pigeon.”
“Cut the cross chatter,” Ryan said. “We go out by the numbers. Talon do you know how to levitate?”
“Yes.”
“How many of us can you hold?”
“Two, maybe three.”
“Do it,” Ryan said. “Levitate yourself, Axler, and Grind. Float down to the doors while Burnout and I get them open. We can’t afford to come out one by one, just in case they’re ready for us.”
“Got it.”
The elevator slowed and came to a stop. At the limits of his low-light vision, Ryan could see the number three over the doors below.
“Burnout, do you want the pole or the ladder?” he asked.
“Call me Billy,” he said. “I’ll take the pole.”
“Billy?”
“The man once known as Burnout no longer exists.”
“Very well,” Ryan said. “I’ll take the ladder.”
“Ready, Talon?”
“When you are.”
“Let’s go.” Ryan swung over to the ladder and climbed down to the doors. There was a tiny, five-centimeter ledge between the doors and the shaft, and Ryan balanced on it, standing on his toes. Behind him, Billy slid down the center pole, stopping level with Ryan. Talon levitated himself, Axler, and Grind into position, holding them stationary, level with the door.
Everyone was ready.
Ryan put his hands into the crack between the big metal doors, and pulled. The doors slid back, letting in a shower of light.
A startled guard turned toward them in the alcove. A woman, her red-blonde hair pulled back against her scalp and tucked into the rear collar of her Leopard Guard uniform. She held an AK-98 up and ready to rumble, and as she pivoted toward them, her chrome cybereyes gleamed as they widened in recognition.
Behind the guard was an archway that led into a huge central chamber. The room’s details registered in Ryan’s mind in the fraction of a second before he made his move on the guard. The chamber had a high ceiling and was dominated by a massive sculpture of a dragon with feathers instead of scales. A feathered serpent, with plumage of purple and deep green.
Quetzalcoatl.
The walls and ceilings were a mosaic of tiles, depicting the sacred rituals of the ancient Aztecs in glorious reds and blues and golds. The main entrance was a huge archway, situated at the far end of the large chamber, beyond the sculpture. Next to the archway was a security station complete with weapons and cyberware scanners, and a lot more Leopard Guards.
The whole chamber was packed with people—acolytes and priests, guards and Aztlan military. There were perhaps a hundred metahumans between them and the main entrance at the far end of the chamber.
Frag me,
Ryan thought.
A hundred people who wanted them dead.
Ryan gathered his focus and stepped toward the first guard.
Lei’s see if these Azzie slots are as tough as their rep.
Blood gurgled inside Lucero. It boiled in her ears, reddened her vision as the pain of her death lived on and on in her mind. The vicious cut of the
macauitl
slicing its way from her sternum to her crotch. The sickening lurch of her intestines as they burst forth from her wound.
This pain defined her very nature, and it repulsed her.
Yet she must obey her master; she was bound to him now as she planted soul after soul, spirit after spirit into the tip of the outcropping. Somehow, the sound of drums reached her from across the metaplanes. The primal beat of an alien heart that drove her to snatch up the bloodless specters of the sacrifices as they piled up behind her. Drove her to heft the souls and slam them into the earth.
The rock beneath her was new ground, freshly created from earlier sacrifices that hardened beneath her feet as she advanced. She walked on spirits, on the ghosts of those who would remain trapped in the bridge forever.
Oscuro’s commands made her move faster and faster. She created the bridge, extending it like a thin feeler across the bottomless Chasm between planes. How much time
had passed? She had no way to judge.
How many sacrifices? How many spirits had come, channeled up from the Locus, through the column of fire and blood maintained by the Gestalt? She had no way of counting, but judging from the incredible distance she had come, it must be in the hundreds now, perhaps thousands.
She felt the presence of the
tzitzimine,
the creatures from the other side. They were much closer now, nearing with every passing beat of the drums. They spoke to her in delicate whispers, pleading for her to listen.
Winnowing their way into her mind. Lying to her with such sweetness. Telling her that she could be free of Oscuro. They could make her free.
When she glanced up, she was surprised at how narrow the gap had become. In the absence of Thayla’s light, the creatures had redoubled their efforts. They had made much progress.
But it was Lucero’s side of the arc that had grown at a phenomenal rate. She moved faster than she ever could have while alive, tireless in the completion of her duties.
She paused for a beat as she saw them clearly. Hideous monsters of sharp bones protruding through skin, alien shapes, flesh-ripping teeth and claws. But as she looked, they transformed into creatures of wonder, of misunderstood beauty. They were going to make the universe a marvelous place.
The eels in her mind slithered toward control.
The
tzitzimine
would free her. They would give her power. Whatever she wanted.
She believed them. For a fraction of an instant, Lucero succumbed.
The eels coiled around her sanity.
They yanked at her will then. Terrible, bone-crushing pain shocked through her.
She worked harder and the pain lessened. She plucked up the sacrificed souls and plunged them into the earth, moving faster and faster.
Blood dripped from her, bits of gelatinized flesh and chunks of internal organs flying as she tore into a frenzy. She began interring sacrifices, two and three at a time, then rolling over them to plant the next group.
Lucero’s agony dissipated.
Her pain was gone. Her will was gone, giving way to a mounting ecstasy. A sublime shock of pleasure that increased as the bridge grew under her onslaught. The gap was only meters wide now. Soon the distance would be closed.
Soon the bridge would be complete, and the world would be forever altered.