Fragments (31 page)

Someone moved to her left: friend or foe? She couldn’t tell; she listened to the footsteps,
trying to tell which direction they were moving, and heard the unmistakable squelch
of water. A wet boot, but whose? Unless they’d come in from the roof, the invaders
would have shoes just as wet as Samm’s and Heron’s. Possibly wetter, since they’d
been in the water more recently. That could be a clue in and of itself, but without
more information, Kira had no way of knowing. She reached for her own boots, slowly
easing them off, never making a sound. Her wet socks followed, leaving her barefoot.
She’d be the only one in the room who didn’t squeak and squelch as she walked.

Another flash of link data cascaded through her mind—
THEY
’
VE FOUND ME
—followed seconds later by another burst of gunfire. There was another sound behind
it, like a gunshot but different. Kira couldn’t tell what it was, but the gunfire
stopped and a body fell heavily to the ground; Kira estimated it was about ten yards
away, behind and to her left. She felt the sudden, confusing sensation of being sleepy
and not sleepy at the same time, and interpreted it as another message from the link:
One of her companions had been drugged or sedated. The not-quite-gunshot she’d heard
had been a tranquilizer dart.

That means they’re not trying to kill us,
thought Kira.
Who wants to capture us? Dr. Morgan? But how does she know where we are?

Kira rose to her feet, her back pressed tightly against the computer tower. She glanced
up and down the row she was in, seeing nothing, and slipped forward to the next one
as lightly as she could. Her bare feet made no sound on the concrete floor, but she
felt cold drips on her legs and looked down in frustration; her boots had been left
behind, but her pants were still soaked from the flood below, and she was leaving
a dim trail of water showing exactly where she was. She heard another squelch, behind
and to her right. Someone was getting closer. She slid to the floor and wrung her
pants dry, twisting the legs as tightly as she could to get rid of the excess water.
It was nearly impossible with her legs still in them. The squelch came closer—she
guessed he was three rows away. She gritted her teeth, wringing out her second pant
leg, trying to make them as dry as possible. Another squelch. She rose again, her
pants cold against her legs but not dripping, and slipped lightly to the next row
down. She left no trail this time. She moved another row, then another, slipping to
the side, trying to put as much distance between her and the attacker as she could,
in the direction he least expected.

The room erupted in noise again, shouts and automatic weapons and the harsh metallic
rips of bullets tearing through computer towers. Two bodies slumped this time, and
Kira felt again the faint of whiff of prescience from the link: sleep, pain, and victory.
Her final companion was down but had taken at least one of the attackers down in the
process. Kira was alone, and she had no idea how many enemies were left.

She heard a footfall, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from. A voice, too soft
to understand. A sudden sense of determined pragmatism: to find the last target and
complete the mission. Had that come from her, or from the enemy? Kira was frustrated
that she still wasn’t adept enough to tell. She took a deep breath, crouching low
in the darkness, sorting through her limited information: If that last impression
was link data, then the enemy were definitely Partials, and at least one had removed
his gas mask. The Partials worked in two-man hunting teams—she’d heard them constantly
on the radio in the raid of Long Island—but they used larger teams as well, depending
on the job. She might be facing a single combatant or a dozen. The reigning silence
in the data center suggested that only a very small team had infiltrated; if there
were more, they were waiting outside.

She thought further, looking for anything she could use to her advantage. Her rifle
was on the far side of the room, but she still had her sidearm. Would it be of any
use at all? Partial soldiers had vision enhancements, and better night vision in particular;
it also stood to reason, given that they’d started the attack by cutting the lights,
that they had some additional way to see in the dark, perhaps light amplification
goggles. That would put Kira at a distinct disadvantage, but if she could turn it
around, blinding them with the beam of her flashlight, she might be able to get off
a shot before the target recovered. She drew her pistol in her right hand and her
flashlight with her left, holding it across her body, aimed straight ahead with her
finger on the switch.

A boot crunched down on something, echoing through the silence. One of the attackers
had stepped on something, probably the shattered glass from Afa’s screen. Was Afa
okay? She shook her head.
Focus, Kira.
If someone had stepped on Afa’s glass, then she knew where he was, and she could
find him. She slipped from one tower to the next, crouching below the sight line as
she moved from cover to cover. A moment later she felt a delayed link response:
OVER THERE
. This was definitely a Partial, and probably two, using the link to coordinate silently.
Two against one, and both of them Partials. They would surround her and trap her,
fill her with tranquilizer, and carry her back to Dr. Morgan.

Unless . . .

Kira remembered what Samm and Heron had said after their raid on Afa’s building: She
could feel them on the link, but they couldn’t feel her. She was only beginning to
learn how to use her link, but it was possible that she only had receptors for link
data, didn’t transmit any herself. This weakness was now her greatest advantage. She
could link everything, and they couldn’t link her at all.

Except for movement,
Kira thought, cursing her lack of stealth training.
Heron couldn’t link with me, but she could hear my movements.
She decided the best course of action was to move as little as possible. Instead,
she reached for a spare ammo clip attached to her belt and slowly, carefully, making
as little noise as possible, pulled a bullet from it. The bullets beneath were spring-loaded,
designed to snap up and into place each time a bullet was fired, so she kept her finger
in the way, letting the spring ease up instead of clicking. She dropped the bullet
in her pocket and did it again, slowly, listening for any sign of the intruders. A
third bullet. A fourth. She kept each one in a different pocket so they wouldn’t clink
against each other. Slowly she raised the first one in her hand, cocking it back,
and threw it, arcing it high over the computer towers and into the far wall. It clattered
against the plaster, bouncing back and into a computer tower before rolling to a stop
on the floor. Through the link she felt her attackers snap to attention, alerted by
the sound, followed a split second later by a tactical warning:
IT’S A TRICK
. Kira shook her head, angry at herself for thinking it would work, but an idea struck
her. She pulled the second bullet from a pocket and threw it lightly at the tower
nearest her, listening to it smack into the side and bounce across the concrete floor.
The link lit up again, sending the same coordinating message:
I HEARD A SOUND. IT’S A TRICK.

The next footstep she heard was moving away from her. Her double fake-out had worked.

She twisted to the side, peeking past the tower she was using for cover. One of the
towers, maybe ten rows down, was misshapen in the darkness, lumpy and round. One of
the attackers, she guessed, his knee or elbow disrupting the silhouette. She hugged
the floor, readying her flashlight again, watching the malformed tower. It moved,
expanded, separated into a vaguely human shape as the Partial stepped out from behind
it. He was moving away from her, a thin pistol raised in front of him—the tranq gun.
Kira rose to her feet and slipped after him, stepping slowly to keep her bare feet
as silent as she could. He moved two rows and she moved two; if she could keep this
up, she’d be in effective range to shoot him. There was still one other, though, and
she didn’t know where he was. Every time she crossed an open aisle, she ran the risk
of exposing herself.

On her next step her foot came down on something and she froze, not wanting to put
her weight on it. She looked down and saw faint lines in the dark, curves and twists
like tiny snakes, and she cursed silently.
This is one of the rows we unplugged,
she thought.
The floor’s covered with cords.
She moved her foot to the side, finding a safe place to put it down. The floor was
a maze of looping cables, and she placed each foot strategically to avoid them: here,
twisted this way, oriented just so. Each step seemed to take an hour.

The Partial she was following was getting farther away. Kira pulled out her third
bullet and hurled it at the wall ahead of the Partial. He froze, and she crept forward
while their link conversation cascaded through her mind:
I HEARD A SOUND. IT’S A TRICK. IS IT A TRICK?
He figured it out a second too late, turning to shoot her just as she stepped up
behind him, shoved her semiautomatic pistol into the gap between his helmet and his
chest armor, and fired. He fell to the floor, firing his dart gun harmlessly into
the ceiling, and instantly she felt the pounding link message—
DEATH!
—and heard the sound of footsteps running toward her. She dove to the side, dropping
her flashlight and ripping the ammo clip from her belt, popping the bullets into her
hands as fast as she could, not caring about the noise. She hurled the entire handful
into the air, her back pressed up against a computer tower, and then ran as fast as
she could when the bullets clattered down, masking her movements in a raining metal
cacophony. She felt frustrated snippets of the link from her last pursuer:
SOLDIER DOWN. TARGET LOST. ANGER.

Kira realized she’d lost her flashlight, and with no more bullets to throw, she was
out of tricks. She checked her pockets for something she could use, for anything—

FOUND HER. DEATH.

Kira gnashed her teeth—how could he have found her? She wasn’t on the link; the first
one had been three feet away from her and hadn’t felt a thing!

DEATH.

She felt it again, the overwhelming feeling of death, and cursed silently.
It’s me,
she thought.
The link data is all pheromones—tiny particles—and I was standing right next to him
when he released a cloud of them. The death particles are on me, trailing behind me
like a path, and he can follow them right to me.
She looked at her pistol, too small to make a stand against an alert Partial in a
direct assault. She had nothing else.
If only I had my flashlight.

The Partial’s boot clicked against the floor, closer than before. He was almost on
her.
I have one chance.
She closed her eyes, remembering the layout of the room, hoping she hadn’t gotten
turned around. She opened her eyes and ran.

She heard a soft whoosh of air, and something darted past her in the air, missing
her by inches. She dodged to the side, running in a different row, then dodged back
again. Another whoosh, and another tranq dart slammed into a computer tower right
as she passed it, close enough that she flinched involuntarily. She leapt over a body,
sensing rather than seeing that it was Samm. There were footsteps behind her, pounding
heavily on the floor, charging toward her at top speed.
Almost there.
The Partial knew he had her, that she had nowhere to go. A great round shape loomed
up in the darkness and she slid against it, searching frantically in the dark for
the thick lever handle on the generator. She found it, slammed it down, and stepped
back into the aisle.

The lights came on and the Partial stumbled just two yards away, blinded by the sudden
burst of light overloading his night-vision faceplate. Kira raised her pistol and
shot him three times in the helmet: crack, split, and through into his head. He dropped
like a bag of sand.

DEATH.

A
fa had been shot through the thigh by a bullet from one of the invaders�� guns—the
only shot that had been an actual bullet. The rest of the shots turned out to be tranq
darts, presumably intended to incapacitate their victims. The same bullet had also
shattered Afa’s screen, and Kira wondered which had been the true target: the man,
or the data? Had the Partials followed them here to capture them, or to stop them
from learning what was on the computer? Had it been both?

Kira couldn’t help but wonder if it had been neither. She glanced at Heron, slowly
regaining consciousness on the floor. Had she shot Afa? Had Samm? What motive could
either of them possibly have for doing so, and why now? If they were colluding with
the attackers, why go through the ruse of pretending to get tranqed? That would only
make sense if they knew they were going to lose, and if they knew they were going
to lose, why bother with the attack at all? It didn’t make any sense, and Kira knew
it; the most likely explanation was that the Partial attackers had come to kill Afa
and capture the others. Even so, Kira couldn’t shake the lingering doubts. How could
the Partials have even found them, unless someone had provided them with a location?
She cursed herself for not keeping one alive to interrogate, though she had to admit
that she’d barely made it out alive as it was.

Kira finished binding Afa’s wound while he was still unconscious, and checked each
attacker in turn, pulling out their weapons to count the bullets. One of them, in
fact, had a sidearm that was short one bullet. Kira couldn’t tell how long ago the
weapon had been fired, but it didn’t seem likely that a trained soldier would enter
combat with anything less than a full clip, and so this was likely the one who’d shot
Afa. But “likely,” she knew, wasn’t the same as “true.”