Dominant Predator (12 page)

“They’re shielding something within him,” I said, not sure where the thought had come from, but the instinct was one that felt right.

Feliu nodded thoughtfully. “Or allowing through only the information they want us to see.”

Fuck. That Singapore may have had the ability to use modifications to hide information from us was potentially disastrous. Who was I kidding, though? Neither option was optimal.

“You think he knows what it is?” Feliu asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“You seem sure about that.”

I settled my head back and extended my arm to him. “Part intuition, part experience. Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter Eight

We couldn’t breathe without respirators. Another electrical storm had passed through the capital last night, and that, in combination with the stench of ignited gunpowder and dust off the kicked-up, bombed-out streets, left the air less than hospitable. Thin on oxygen and weighted with particulates. The masks over our mouths and goggles used to protect our eyes would also have helped to hide our identities, if we had at all been concerned about that.

We were dressed in our Revolution uniforms, not bothering with the jacquerie get-ups this time around. Yes, I was hoping that removing our chips would keep them from immediately tracking us, but I knew that wasn’t likely. Even if they couldn’t track Exley or me we didn’t know what tracking systems existed within Armise besides the normal chips.

I’d used the Opposition hack into our systems as an excuse more than anything else. I’d wanted my chips out of me—perhaps permanently—and this mission had provided the best cover for that request.

I trusted the President, but he was the only one in that control room besides Armise whom I trusted. The rest of them could fuck off. Armise was the only one I cared about knowing where I was, and for the foreseeable future we wouldn’t be far from each other, so why did I need any of my chips?

My step was lighter knowing they weren’t there anymore, my thoughts and intentions clearer without the burden of their prying presence. It was the first time since I was sixteen that those grain-of-rice-sized trackers weren’t keeping me tethered to command. If the President was good on his word that they had removed everything, I was operating outside of the system—even more so than normal.

There were few who had the power or the money to opt out of the validated identification system mandated by every government. Children were implanted with trackers at birth. The optional chips were highly coveted—despite the knowledge that every time a chip was used it was monitored—and they cost way more than the vast majority of citizens could afford. Communication chips were rare and transport ones even more so. Every citizen was tracked, their movements stored in servers scattered across the globe, each government collecting various bits of information, all with the purpose of controlling their individual agendas.

I’d run into very few people who were able to make it completely off grid. Most of them were soldiers for hire or deviants and criminals. Utilising the technology to manipulate the system and mask their true intentions.

That there was someone in that building who had evaded notice for this long was troubling to me. Criminals knew how to run the black market and trade out or manufacture chips that disguised their identity. But I’d never heard of anyone maintaining old technology. Old trackers, even the decommissioned ones, were still logged into the system so they could be tied to one citizen. That this person didn’t exist in any of the databases brought a host of questions. None of which I would have the answer to until we found out who he was.

It was yet another complication. And I really didn’t like complications.

Armise kept point at my right shoulder, scanning the weather-beaten tent city. He carried his rifle across his chest, ready to fire. Exley had a pistol at his hip, but I wasn’t sure if he even knew how to use it.

I had over-prepared, bringing a rifle, two pistols that sat at my hips and knives strategically placed over my body. Neveed had even pushed a grenade into my hand at the last minute, saying that you never knew what might be needed.

The Opposition forces remaining in the city were scattered. Fighting had been heavy over the last four days, and the Revolutionaries were hunting them down and killing them en masse. The bombs taking out the Opposition gatherings we could detect. All the transport centres across the city were now held by Revolution forces so we didn’t worry about Opposition forces sneaking in that way.

We weren’t yet to the point of bribes buying Opposition forces their way into militarised zones. That would come later, when the hardcore Revolutionaries were worn down and desperate, unwilling to put the cause above their own survival. Hopefully we would never get to that point.

In front of me, Exley surveyed the area then dropped into step with me.

“You ready to tell me the real reason I’m here with you?”

I considered lying to him. Then didn’t. “Because you know what my parents look like.”

Exley tripped over his feet, caught himself with a hand to my arm that made me feel more twitchy. I kept walking.

“Shit. You’ve only seen the files,” Exley said as his eyes widened, putting together the pieces of why I needed him on this op.

“We have to be sure it’s them,” Armise added.

Exley nodded. “Yeah, no problem. I got this.”

“You know how to use that thing?”

Exley looked at the device in his hands that Chen had given him to monitor the tracking chips in the vicinity. “I’ve used one before. This is more advanced, but technology and I are on good terms.”

“I meant the gun.”

Exley pursed his lips and shook his head.

Well, wasn’t that just fucking great. That was now four people Armise and I would have to protect from an unknown number of Opposition forces. Plus get ourselves out alive.

More complications. I ground my teeth together.

“So what’s up with the shave?” Exley asked, his head swiveling over the empty camp.

It took me a moment to centre in on what he was asking, then I turned towards Armise barely restraining a smile. I crooked an eyebrow and Armise huffed.

“It was time for a change,” Armise grumbled in reply.

Exley fidgeted with the device in his hands. “What’s that myth you’ve told me about, Merq? The one about the guy who cut off all his hair and lost his power?”

I didn’t bother to correct him on the origins of the story. That it was from the Christian Bible and not in fact myth. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Exley had sat in on enough of my history lessons with Chen to make conversation, but still be embarrassingly uninformed.

“Samson,” I said with a smile.

“Yeah, that’s the one. You don’t see my shearing off these braids. I’m not risking it.”

“Well maybe if your dry-ass country wasn’t so barren my skin wouldn’t be this itchy,” Armise quipped.

“Singapore’s only one transport away,” Exley retorted, then swore out loud when the device in his hands beeped, indicating the presence of someone new in the area.

Armise and I acted without thought, scrambling for cover, ducking under the tattered tarp of a citizen’s home. Armise and I made sure the makeshift structure was empty before facing the alley again as Exley slipped in behind us.

“What is it, Ex?” I whispered, scanning the tents around us for movement.

“We’ve got incoming. One person. Just transported in.”

“Where’d they come in from?”

“Don’t know. It’s a split sequence. Designed to mask the origination mark.”

“Anywhere around us?”

Exley studied the device for another heartbeat. “In the building. Not in the camp.”

“And you’re sure the three signals we’re tracking are still there?”

“It’s still clocking back to them,” Exley verified.

I stepped up to Armise, keeping my rifle trained on the alley even though Exley had said the new arrival wasn’t around us.

“What are you thinking?” I whispered to him. “A lure? Bait?”

Armise knew without me telling him that I was talking about the real reason for my parents being held in this location.

“Bribe,” Armise said definitively.

I searched his face, taking in the set of his jaw and the way his entire demeanour became more guarded, his attention laser-focused when he was in full-tilt battle mode. And there was only one reason he would make that swift a change.

“You think he’s here.”

“Who?” Exley asked, his voice cracking with fear.

Armise nodded, confirming that we were thinking the same thing.

“Ahriman Blanc,” I replied over my shoulder.

Exley rotated on his heel to retreat but I grabbed his arm, yanking him back.

“No fucking way!” he began and I shot him a look to keep his voice down. He waved his hands in the air and whispered emphatically, “I did not agree to anything that has to do with him.”

I’d never seen Exley frightened, but I supposed if anyone deserved that reaction it was Ahriman. Then Exley pulled his pistol and aimed it at me.

I eyed him. “Don’t fucking point something at me you don’t know how to use.”

Armise yanked the weapon out of Exley’s hand. “Or at least take the safety off.”

Exley turned on Armise and grabbed for the gun, which Armise kept away from him. “What the fuck is a safety?”

“Fucking ancient technology,” I grumbled in reply and motioned for Armise to give the gun back to Exley.

Exley palmed the weapon, his brow furrowed as he appeared to be trying to piece together what part of the hunk of metal in his hand was the safety.

I sighed and flipped the lever down. “This is the safety. You have to release it to fire. Only once and then it will be ready. You want it off or on?”

“I’m going to shoot myself. Leave it on.”

I flipped the lever back into place and he put the gun into his holster. Exley picked up the tracking device where he’d dropped it into the grey dust during his attempt to run.

“How many other people are you registering on that thing?” I asked.

Exley cracked his neck and I could see him trying to get himself back under control. “Your parents, the new arrival and the mysterious nomad. That’s it.”

“No one else?” I checked.

Exley flashed me an annoyed look. “What did I just fucking say?”

Armise ignored him and spoke to me. “There could be more soldiers in the building. If their chips were removed. Or they could be using some kind of shield?”

I drew my rifle across my chest. “No. It’s only them and him.”

I was certain now that Ahriman was leading us into some kind of a trap.

“We go without the masks,” I ordered and ripped mine off, discarding it on the ground and listening to Exley’s mumbled protests as he got rid of his too.

I stepped out of the enclosure into the sunlight and defiantly continued towards the PsychHAg buildings. Armise was in step with me immediately and I could hear Exley scrambling behind us to catch up.

“You’re just going in?” Exley said with disbelief.

“That’s the plan,” I answered.

“That was not the plan,” he insisted. “Not even close to it.”

“It is now.”

We crossed over the barrier between the tent city and the buildings, the nervous energy nearly rolling off Exley as he took up a shielded position behind Armise and me.

Before I pushed through the door of the main PsychHAg building I had to consciously wipe away the memories that came flooding back. The lingering trauma from those days couldn’t set me off my intent. I wouldn’t allow it.

The building itself was in near-pristine condition when we entered. No longer furnished and covered in a layer of the same grey dust that floated around the Underground, but unlike some of the other abandoned buildings I’d had the privilege to hole up in over the years, this one hadn’t been ransacked or picked apart for usable materials. The entryway was as I remembered it. Military-grade polymaterials in the windows, metal archways and stark white walls.

“They’re to the south. Upstairs,” Exley said, looking at the tracking device. “Possibly in two separate rooms.”

“Which floor?”

“Third.”

Of fucking course they were.

I knew exactly where we were headed. The ‘practice rooms’ as the PsychHAgs had so delicately called them. And I had no doubt I would find Ahriman and my parents in the room my bloodied half-dead body had been carried out of on the day the programme was shut down.

We had three flights of stairs to go up to get to that half-level above the floor of classrooms. With Exley’s ragged breaths and the nearly deafening thuds of his boots as he tromped across the dusty floor, Ahriman would hear us coming. It didn’t matter, he already knew I was here. I shouldered my rifle and approached the stairs.

Exley abandoned the device in his hand for his pistol, this time remembering to click the safety off. Armise walked silently behind me, the only hint of his presence the ever-present feel of his eyes on me.

We climbed the stairs quickly. I didn’t pause on the second floor, instead pushing through the soundproof door leading to the practice rooms. I breathed deeply, slowly, taking stock of my surroundings clinically. Listening to the depth of silence above me. There was the shuffling of steps to my right as we stepped onto the third floor and I swept my rifle in that direction. The hallway was empty, the door to the first practice room open. Through the door I could see the side profile of a woman seated in a chair, her mouth gagged and her eyes wide. Her head snapped around as we approached the door and I could see the tracks of tears streaming down her face.

But that wasn’t what stopped me cold.

Armise slid around me and into the room, securing it and waving me inside. I willed myself to move, to keep the rifle hoisted to my shoulder even as my heart thundered in my ears.

Besides the woman secured to the practice room chair with those too-familiar metal cuffs over her wrists, the room was empty.

Armise stepped up to me, his body flush against my right and his back to the woman as he whispered in my ear. “Where is he?”