Demon Accords 05.5: Executable (18 page)

“Let’s head into the gym,” Rory suggested since we were already headed that way.

The East gym is the smaller of Castlebury’s two high school gyms, but it was big enough for most of the crowd to huddle inside.  Let’s face it:  Castlebury is really just a bedroom community for the Burlington and Essex Junction area.  The whole population of the town could probably fit into
both
the gyms.  So while it was a little crowded, it wasn’t bad.  Frankly, most of the younger kids didn’t care if they were out on the field or inside; the social gathering of their friends was the only important factor.  The adults all gravitated to each other, and the older kids formed circles.  We were standing together, forming our own group, when Candace found us.

“Hey guys, what’s happening?” she asked.  We all shrugged, not having a great deal of exciting news, so she went on.  “Hey look, there’s a reporter!” she said, pointing.  

Across the gym, standing just outside the boys’ locker room, the blonde reporter and her giant camera man were interviewing Trey Johnson.  He was nodding at her question, looking at her photo, then looking out around the gym.  His eyes found me and my companions, and a triumphant sneer spread across his features.  He pointed our way and before we could move, the reporter’s head swiveled to us.  Caeco froze, then darted behind my back and into the crowd.  She shoved her way through the bodies, moving so fast, it was hard for me to catch up, even with the kids making way for me.

“What is it?”

“That’s Miseri… Agent Miseri!  I’ve got to get out of here!” she said.

“Not that way!  It’ll be blocked.  The janitors always lock the doors on that side.  Here, come with me,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her sideways into the door on my right.  It would be the quickest way into the school proper, although I had never been through that particular door myself, seeing as it said
Girls Locker Room
in big letters across the wood.  Still, I knew that it mirrored the boys locker room across the gym, both having access doors to the hallway outside the cafeteria.

Behind us, I saw Rory, who had no chance of keeping up, fall back and deliberately get in the way of the lady reporter and her giant, who had dropped his camera and started our way.  The lady was speaking into her shirt sleeve as I slid into the locker room and immediately faced a dozen shocked faces. 

Ignoring the suddenly vocal and outraged cheerleaders, some of whom were changing out of wet uniforms and toweling off, I pulled Caeco past the lockers, the bathrooms, and the running showers where tantalizing glimpses of flesh almost distracted me, and then out into the hall.

We turned left toward the main entrance but down the hall, two black-uniformed men with rifles turned the corner and shouted when they saw us.  We turned and bolted back the other way, deeper into the school.   Despite my much longer legs, Caeco had pulled ahead of me almost instantly.  She slowed slightly when she looked back. I sped up, reaching for reserves of speed I hadn’t had to access in years. 

I don’t play organized sports a) because athletics are visible in local papers, television, and on the Internet, and b) most of my peers tend to fear and avoid me, including the coaches.  Levi had me run with him, but it was a jog type run, not a flat-out sprint.  But fear is a wonderful motivator and guys in black ops swat suits with assault rifles tend to scare me.  I kept up… barely. 

The hall opened up into the classroom area: two floors of lockers and mostly locked doors.  There were also multiple fire exits, but as we drew close to the first of those, I could see flashlight beams playing across the windows in the doors.

Caeco stopped to try a classroom door, but it was locked.  They all would be.  But I knew a couple of things—like the three-digit combination to the teachers’ lounge.  They never changed it and I had been dragged in there dozens of times to fix laptops, tablets, and cell phones. 

I punched in the numbers and yanked the door open.  Caeco darted in after me, moving so fast that she was fully in the room before I was.  The door locked itself as I closed it, and I moved deeper into the dark room.   In the back corner, chest height on the wall, was a locked metal box about the size of a box of Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts.  I pointed it out to Caeco. 

“If we can open that, there is a master key to all the doors in this section of the school.”

She glanced at me, slid over to the box, and examined it.  Then she cocked her head and listened.  “They’re outside the building, and two search teams are coming in behind us,” she said, tapping the side of her head rather than her ears.  I got it.  She was listening to their communications with her nannites.

She gripped the box with both hands and ripped it off the wall.  It was still shut, but before I could point that out, she worked the fingers of her right hand under the edge of the lid and pressed the box down on a table with her left.  Then she pulled.  The metal squeaked and squealed in protest, but it gave up the fight after a few seconds, the lid snapping open with a loud bang.  Triumphantly, she held up the key.  Blood dripped down her hand.  I ignored the key and grabbed her right hand; the sharp lid had cut her fingers.  Looking around, I spotted the school-mandated first aid kit on the wall and plucked it off.  At least
it
wasn’t locked.

The kit yielded gauze wrap, which went around each torn finger and tied off at the back.  She flexed her bandaged hand and gave me an odd smile. 

I picked up the key.  “This will let us in everywhere.  The floor above doesn’t cover the full footprint of the building.  It’s slightly smaller.  There is an emergency door next to the Chem Lab.  It leads outside to a fire escape. We can get down from there, and we end up across from the parking lot.”

“They have people on the ground,” she replied.

“We need to call Agent West and have him send his people here.  The Chem lab could buy us some time.”

“I’ve already texted his cell.  He’s on his way, but I doubt his men will be a match for Juiced soldiers.”

“They’re stronger, faster, and better equipped.  We need to put them off balance,” I replied.  We looked at each other, both of us starting to grin.  “The Chem lab!” she said as I nodded.

Slipping back into the hall, I noticed a red light on the wall-mounted camera system.  I held out a hand and concentrated.  The light died.  We moved.

The crowded gym chocked full of noisy, bleating adolescents had been worse than walking into an urban firefight.  It was a measure of Miseri’s devotion to duty that she didn’t turn around and escape the mass of sheep she was technically supposed to protect.

The American civilian had fallen far from the solid, independent colonists that Agentes in Rebus had been created to serve.  These mewling, self-absorbed parasites were weak in body and mind, and to Miseri, it seemed, unworthy of her organizations’ efforts.  But that was not her call.

Finding AIR’s wayward 112-million-dollar teenage weapons system was her task.  Luck was with her as the door to the boys’ locker room opened and the well-constructed young quarterback appeared, his bored eyes looking about for someone.  When he spotted her and Clay standing fifteen feet away, his expression changed to delighted interest.

Another self-absorbed adolescent, but at least one who was an appropriate physical specimen, Miseri thought.

“Mr. Johnson is it?” she asked quickly, hoping she remembered the name the announcer had been braying throughout the game.

A pleased smile formed on the handsome young athlete’s face.  It was a mixture of pretend delight and self-satisfaction, which became completely fake as he mastered his features.

“A moment for the camera?” she asked.

“Certainly,” he replied, moving forward to close the distance.

“You are obviously playing well tonight, but so is your opposite number on the Middleton team.  Any comments?”

He grimaced.  “If
I
was lucky enough to face a defense as poorly prepared as Castlebury’s, this game would already be in the bag.”

She asked him a few more game-related questions, all guaranteed to feed his overinflated ego as he laid the blame for everything on virtually everyone else, then moved to her real question.

“Trey, you seem to be dialed into this school.  Your insight is the best I’ve seen tonight.  One of my sideline stories is about the attempt by federal authorities to arrest one of your fellow students.  Do you know anything about that?”

He frowned, not liking that the topic had moved from him, but preening slightly at her description of his perception.  “You mean the new girl?  Williams, right?”

“Yes.  What can you tell me?”

“I think the Feds should have taken her the first time, if you ask me.  The girl’s obviously got issues.  She’s violent and almost certainly a criminal.”

Wow, Caeco must have shut this one down hard to earn that much
dislike
! Miseri reflected.

“Tell me. I’ve obtained a copy of the photo the agent was working from.  Does this look like the Williams girl?” she asked, showing him her photo of Caeco.

He frowned, shaking his head.  “Not now.  Maybe before, when she first arrived, but now that she’s had some kind of makeover, she doesn’t match.”

Miseri’s heart beat faster at his words. 
Not now?  But earlier?  Gotcha!

“Have you seen her tonight?” she asked.

He was losing interest in the interview, now that
he
was no longer its focal point.  “No, but all you have to do is find that freak, O’Carroll, and you should find her,” he said, scanning the gym.

“There, the tall kid in the dark green hoodie.  He’s a criminal
, too, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, pointing across the gym at a slim young man who looked familiar.  Then the boy moved slightly and a pretty girl became visible behind him.  She didn’t look like Caeco, but her movements were familiar, smooth and controlled.  The girl looked her way and spotted Miseri, eyes widening in alarm.  She was gone in a blur that was almost too fast to process. 
Got her!

“Gladius One, this is Miseri.  Target spotted, in pursuit.  Cover all exits on the west side and send two men inside.”

“Confirmed, Miseri.”

She was moving as she spoke, but the hordes of kids blocked her path.  She started throwing them out of her way but finally waved Clay forward, his massive bulk clearing a path like a bulldozer.

“Do you see her?” she asked her companion, trusting his height to provide him a view.

“Already gone.  The boy cleared a path,” he rumbled.

That was the equivalent of the Gettysburg speech for Clay.  To say he didn’t speak much was a gross understatement.  He’d gone entire weekends without uttering a syllable and in those moments when he did speak, it was almost always just to her.

She had found him by accident, a chance visit to the AIR training facility where all new recruits were indoctrinated, retrained
, and hooked on Juice.  The instructors were at a loss as to what to do with him, a silent giant who had decimated their combat course but wouldn’t respond to direct commands to speak.

Miseri had rarely been back to the facility since her own introduction to AIR but had been saddled on her way back from a foreign mission with delivering a set of new recruits.  After dropping off the two newbies with Administration, she had been headed back to her vehicle when she heard a hell of a commotion at the Close Quarters Combat field.  Curiosity getting the better of her, she’d strolled over to find the then-unnamed Clay standing silently amid a mess of broken and bloodied instructors and training drones.  The Head Instructor was demanding answers to questions that Miseri could see the giant didn’t know.  Finally losing his patience, the instructor drew his sidearm and pointed at the silent hulk’s head.

Something snapped inside Miseri; some unknown mental link had slipped into place, and she found herself snatching the gun out of the instructor’s hand.  Turning to the giant, she had given him one simple command.  “Follow me!”  He had, and had belonged to her ever since.  Utterly loyal, surprisingly capable, and absolutely terrifying in combat, he was her perfect assistant, one who didn’t natter on and on like almost every other human on the planet.

“She’s moving deeper into the school.  The team will block the exits, but you and I had best track her.  She’ll roll right through the others.”

“The boy?” he asked, concerned.

“What about him?  Isn’t he just a kid?” she asked, curious.

He shook his massive head.  “Not.”

Her taciturn Claymore was a veritable chatterbox today, and while his intelligence was average or slightly below, his perceptions of all things combat related were razor sharp.  Interesting.  He felt there was something different about the boy, and with Clay, different meant dangerous.

“Aren’t you just a chatty Cathy tonight.  C’mon, let’s hunt ourselves a CAECO.  And her new found boy toy.”

She pushed open the door to the girls’ locker room, the hyper-excited conversations all stopping instantly as the cheerleaders inside watched her and her giant walk through.