Free Radical (5 page)

He thumbed the detonator on the end of the EMP grenade as he placed his hands on his head.

There was a pop in his hand, and muffled cries of confusion from both officers. Deck counted himself lucky that neither of them pulled the trigger in panic. They stumbled back as their helmet displays died, leaving them completely blind. The screen on the desk winked out for good, and Deck cursed as he realized he had just toasted his rig.

In one graceful motion, Deck scooped up the burned-out rig and slid across the desk. The cop in front of the desk was the first to realize what was wrong and struggled to remove his helmet. Deck smashed him in the back of the knee with the corner of his rig - one part of the body where he wouldn't have any armor.

Without the built-in helmet speaker, his scream was severely muffled. By the time the he hit the floor Deck was in the hallway and running.

Deck pulled the memory core from the side of the rig and slipped it into a pocket as he ran. He tossed the rig aside. He rushed forward to the doorway capping the end of the hallway. If his floor plans were correct - and they had been correct so far - this would be a fire exit. The elevators would probably be either locked down or full of cops.

The fire door slammed open as his momentum carried him through. A second later the tight springs of the door snapped it shut behind him. The stairwell was the same as every other emergency stairwell ever built. It was a narrow cement box filled with a crude set of metal steps that spiraled all the way down the side of the building. The stark concrete walls reflected the slightest sound and turned the entire shaft into an echo chamber. The railing was a hollow metal pipe covered in peeling white paint.

As he reached the first landing the the door was again hammered open with a sharp explosion of sound and energy, as if someone had nailed it with a sledgehammer. Deck glanced back to see a 4-inch exit wound in the center of the steel surface.

He leapt down each short flight of narrow metal stairs. After two floors he heard the door slam open yet again and the stairway above was filled with the sounds of footsteps. Deck began opening random doorways as he ran downward, hoping to throw off or confuse his pursuers. They would never be able to hear his relatively silent steps over their own hard-soled boot stampede. They would hear the doors opening for each floor, and be faced with the choice of stopping to examine each floor to look for him or risk blundering by him if he left the stairwell.

He was probably gaining ground and widening the gap between them. They would not be as swift as he was under the best of circumstances, and right now they were burdened with body armor and some heavy-duty weapons hardware. Also, one of them was probably dealing with a severe limp. But Deck knew he couldn't hope to simply escape this way. There would be more units on their way up the stairs to meet him, and if he stayed on this route too long he would get sandwiched. He stopped opening doors and just concentrated on getting more distance between himself and his pursuers above.

The pounding from above stopped and Deck slowed down. They were probably standing still, listening for his footsteps. He returned to the graceful, smooth walk he had used earlier. He heard voices from above as the cops whispered between labored breaths. Deck wondered how many levels he had between them. The footsteps began again from above, but more steady this time. They were pacing themselves, trying to keep the noise level down so they could hear him opening doors.

Most of the doors in the building were of the modern, sliding variety. However, law required that emergency doors be equipped with breaker bars, and be operable without power. Thus the emergency doors were massive, hollow steel beasts that thundered when they were thrown open. Deck wondered if they could be opened quietly. He slowed as he reached the next landing and gently pulled the door. If it made an audible sound, he would throw it open the rest of the way and continue downward.

It was almost silent, just a small creak. Deck hesitated, then slipped through and eased it gently closed. It made a soft thud as it sealed shut. He hesitated again. Would they have heard that?

He still seemed to be in the upper echelons of the company. The walls were a lower grade of wood paneling than he had witnessed on the sixty-fourth, but the carpet was still deep.

Deck frowned as he spotted video cameras tucked away in various corners. He knew there was nothing he could do about that. The only comfort he had was that they couldn't possibly watch all the cameras at once, so there was still a chance they might miss him, particularly if they didn't know what floor he was on.

His current floor seemed to be combined with the one above. Even though the lights were dim, he could see that the ceilings were two levels high, and there was a balcony running along the wall above him. To his right was a restaurant style dining area, with a long table in front that was presumably to hold the catering. To his left was a large conference / meeting room. On one of the tables inside, Deck could see a scale model of Citadel Station. Its three meter frame dominated the room as its many arms reached out from beneath its immense upper dome, like a great steel jellyfish.

He proceeded down the corridor and made an arbitrary left. He didn't know where he was going, but he at least wanted some distance between himself and the stairway. On his left he saw conference rooms of varying sizes and styles, while on the right was a small-sized auditorium that might seat a couple hundred.

Most of the level seemed to be made of open areas, or areas walled in glass. There did seem to be a few rooms that might offer hiding places, but they were behind closed, featureless doors with a black panel set beside them, much like the doors on the executive level. His counterfeit card would probably grant him access, but if the police were worth anything they would certainly be watching for things like executive cards being used. He would just be advertising his position.

He arrived at an intersection and went right. He was aiming for the opposite side of the level where he could access the other set of stairs.

He had no way of knowing what floor he was on - he had neglected to count on the way down. His best guess was that he was somewhere in the high forties. It wouldn't matter much if he did know - he hadn't bothered to study much of the layout between the first and sixty-fourth floor.

At the next intersection he made a right and spotted two open, darkened rooms.

Bathrooms.

It was hardly a creative hiding place, but it was relatively dark and it didn't have any video cameras.

The absence of urinals suggested he had chosen the women's restroom. Not that it mattered. The whole bathroom was decorated in tasteful black and white ceramic tile, with all of the plumbing fixtures in brass.

He leaned up against the pristine marble counter top, breathing heavily. He hadn't stopped moving since he fired the EMP and he needed a rest. Deck looked around and sneered, wondering for a moment if more money was spent decorating this one bathroom than was spent decorating the entire office area on the first floor.

He ran some cold water in the sink and splashed it on his face. He knew he needed to think of something, to form some sort of a plan of escape. He had several ideas, but they all had being on level ten or lower as a prerequisite. He was going to need to somehow reach the lower levels without using any of the elevators. That meant using one of two known sets of emergency stairs or finding another route that wasn't mentioned in the floor plans he bought.

In an older building he might consider using the elevator shafts, but the TriOp building was new enough to have defenses for dealing with that sort of nonsense.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what they would be doing to search for him. They had almost certainly set up shop in the security station on the third floor. What would he do in their position? If he was searching a 64-story building for a single individual, he would lock down all of the elevators but one, and use it to send two teams to the top. From there, they would move down the staircases while another pair of teams would begin from the bottom. The main floors then would be watched with video cameras.

He knew they were determined to use deadly force. This made things easier for him, since he didn't have to worry about committing further crimes in the process of escaping. He was either going to escape or die. He had only been in this situation once before, and he found it both terrifying and liberating. From now on, there were no crimes he could commit that could make his situation more dire.

Fear. That was his enemy now. Fear would cause him to choke if he was cornered, and that would get him killed. He had choked back in the office when they surprised him, and it was only by luck that he had even been holding the EMP.

How many were there? Where were they looking?

He realized he might be able to eavesdrop on their chatter using the vox he had lifted from the guard in the lobby. He retrieved it from his pocket and lowered the volume so that it would be just barely audible.

After a couple minutes of silence he began searching other channels. Most were blank or uninteresting to him. Many of the channels featured the standard emergency / rescue chatter that was simply part of the background noise of a city. He continued to cycle though the channels until he found one that seemed to be a series of short garbled bursts that could only be encrypted transmissions. The TriOp security communicator obviously didn't have the key needed to decrypt police transmissions. Deck probably could have cracked it himself if he still had his rig. He put the vox away.

He had no way of knowing where they were or what they were doing. Waiting around was only going to give them time to close in on him. Attempting to use the elevator would advertise his position, so he decided to try the stairs again.

He dropped into his familiar rhythm of movement, gliding along the corridors, slowing for just an instant at each intersection to make sure the way was clear.

He passed a pair of elevators and checked the display. He was on the fifty - third floor. Deck frowned. It had felt like he descended a lot more than eleven levels. One elevator was sitting at the bottom, the other was just a few floors down and on its way up. Somebody had obviously figured out where he was and they were coming to pick him up.

He thought of the gun he was carrying, but that was out of the question. He couldn't hope to win a firefight if there were more than one or two of them.

His hand dove into a pocket and got a flash ready. He had a grenade, which would also do the job, but he needed it to get out of the building, and he really didn't want to blow up an elevator full of cops.

He stood beside the elevator with his back to the wall. The elevator reached his floor and chimed. He popped the flash, chucking it in the doorway as it slid open. With the other hand, Deck covered his eyes as he looked away.

The flash went off and brilliant light engulfed the corridor. The world turned pink for Deck as the intense burst of light passed through his hand and stung his eyes.

He removed his hand and found that his eyes were a bit dazzled, but working. He peeked into the elevator and saw that it was empty. The doors slid silently closed.

Crap. Who had just sent him an empty elevator? Deck realized he had just wasted a lot of time and a very expensive flash, and all he had managed to do was mess up his eyes for a few minutes.

As he moved away, the elevator chimed and opened its doors again. The down arrow blinked repeatedly.

Deck took off running and headed for the nearby stairwell. Halfway down to the next level he began to think that someone obviously knew where he was. He determined to cross over on the next level to the opposite set of stairs in hopes of throwing them off.

He swept down the stairs and opened the door in a single swift movement. As the door swung open he found himself facing a pair of equally surprised cops. The pair was a mere three meters away from him. There was a subtle pause where both parties seemed to wonder what was going to happen next. Deck acted first this time.

He stepped back into the stairwell, bringing another flash out of his pocket. He popped it and dropped it on the landing as he tossed himself down the stairs. The cop in front had just drawn his weapon when the flash went off.

The pop was punctuated by cries of pain and dismay. These cops had either decided not to wear helmets, or had learned of the EMP Deck had used earlier and had elected to remove them. In either case, their eyes were completely unshielded when the intense explosion of light filled the doorway.

Deck had done his best to shield his eyes, but this time he was facing the flash, and only a couple of meters away. The dingy white walls of the stairwell reflected the light more efficiently than the dark wood paneling of the floor above, so Deck absorbed a much bigger dose this time around.

The shock of the flash threw him off balance, and he slammed into the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The air was knocked out of his lungs and he slumped to the floor. He pulled his hand from his eyes and saw that his vision had taken a nasty hit, but he could still see. Everything looked dim and pale, and his vision was flickering like some cheap display screen. He groaned as he picked himself up. His right hip and shoulder had absorbed most of the impact and they were numb and tingling.

He forced himself onto his feet and back up the stairs. He needed to deal with the cops before he moved on.

One cop was on his hands and knees, his eyes opened wide and darting around but unable to see. His weapon was still in his hand. His blindness would last for hours or perhaps days. The other one was laying on his side, vomiting.

Deck unhooked the keychain stunner from his ring of keys, so that he just had the plastic handle and metal prong. He jabbed it into the spine of the first cop and zapped him.

His victim flopped forward with a grunt. Deck then jabbed the other cop and zapped him too, but the stunner had run out of charge. The cop just convulsed a bit and went back to throwing up. Deck shrugged. That was close enough for him. He lifted their vox units and pocketed them. He left them with their weapons since they would both be too blind to make use of them, and he didn't want to carry any more hardware. Without a vox or the ability to see, they wouldn't be able to tell anyone where they were or what had happened.