Metal Fatigue (16 page)

He took the corner in a crouch all the same, ready for anything. Although he felt safe to assume that the Mole was on the roof and not actually in the building, he wasn't prepared to discount any possibility — even that of the Mole being in two places at once.

"The stairwell's clear too, Phil."

He opened the door and closed it gently behind him, then forced himself to take the stairs one at a time. The last thing he needed at that moment was to fall in the gloom and break a leg.

"Where is he now?"

"Still on the roof. He's stopped moving."

"Where?"

"Next to the skylight. Looks like he's waiting for something."

"The ground floor?"

"Clear."

The stairwell opened into a cul-de-sac stretching a short distance before ending in a T-junction. Roads tiptoed along it, gun in hand, and turned left. On his right, a row of locked doors marched into the distance; on his left, windows.

"Any change?"

"None."

Another corridor gaped ahead of him. The entrance to the reading room was third on his left. The door was closed. He shouldered the gun when he reached it and paused to take a breath.

"Reading room's clear," said Barney, and he stifled an exclamation of surprise.

"Jesus — don't do that!"

"Sorry. I just thought of something."

"What?"

"If the Mole was here all along, watching us and waiting, then who broke into Emergency Services?"

He hadn't thought of that. "Fuck. That means — "

His earplug rang with the sound of distant alarms, making him start violently. A computerised voice announced in the background:

"Data-retrieval systems activated! Data-retrieval systems activated!"

"Phil!" It was Goss, superimposed over a babble of voices.

"I can hear it. Is it remote, or — ?"

"No — it's local. Christ! He's in there —
he's in there
!"

Roads took a position facing the doors. "Can you see him? Where is he in the room?"

"We can't see him!" Goss' voice was shrill. "For God's sake, Phil, get in there before he gets away!"

Roads raised one leg and kicked in the door.

Monday, 17 September, 12:55 a.m.

Roads swept into the room and scanned the endless ranks of bookcases and cabinets. He took three steps to his left, holding the gun like a crucifix. He could see no-one. Taking care to keep an eye on the door, he slowly circled the tanks, checking every shadow for movement.

When he reached the point at which he had started, he stopped.

The room was empty.

"Which terminal, David?" he subvocalised silently through the throat-mike. "I can't see anyone in here."

"Number four. Third on your right."

"It's still running?"

"Shit, yes. The Mole has to be there somewhere, Phil."

"Can
you
see him yet?"

"We've got everything focused in there, but all the screens are empty, apart from you."

"Great." He stepped forward, still alert. "I'm going to try and shut down the terminal. Keep an eye on my back."

In the command centre, Barney watched anxiously as Roads crossed the floor of the reading room. Goss, O'Dell, DeKurzak and three technicians did likewise. The sound of held breath filled the silence around her.

"Come
on
, Phil," she muttered.

On a screen to one side, relatively unnoticed, the shadow on the roof still crouched beside the skylight, unmoving. It was visible only in profile, and then not clearly.

"Another decoy?" asked DeKurzak, indicating the image. His voice was loud in the hushed stillness.

"Probably." Goss did not look up from the screen showing Roads. "I'd say he's broken into the system and frozen the picture somehow."

"How?" asked Barney.

"The same way he gained access to the data-retrieval routines, I'd guess."

"Is it possible," put in O'Dell, "to do this from the outside?"

"No," said DeKurzak. "The modem lines are down."

"You sure?"

DeKurzak looked up sharply. "Are you questioning my competence?"

"Just asking." O'Dell shook his head and turned back to the screen.

Roads had finally reached the terminal. Barney watched nervously as he searched every corner for a sign of the Mole.

"Kill it, Phil," she whispered to herself. "Just kill it."

"The screens are clear," said Goss into the microphone. "But the image on the roof looks like another decoy, so he has to be down there somewhere."

"Any idea how he got in, David?" Roads' voice was faint.

"Through the skylight, I guess."

"Impossible. It's still closed."

"It is? Shit."

Barney watched as Roads took one last look around, then reached down with his free hand to grab the terminal's power cord. "Here goes nothing ..."

As his hand closed around the cable, Roads felt air brush his face. The movement was subtle, no more than an exhaled breath, but unexpected.

"Lookout!"

In the same instant that Barney shouted, he dropped and rolled, bringing the gun up on —

— the Mole. His doppelganger stood not two metres away, staring expressionlessly at him from the middle of the room, with the nearest hiding place metres away.

"Where the fuck did he come from?"

The whispers in his ear were confused and sharp with panic. Strongest was that of Goss:

"From nowhere, Phil — he just appeared out of thin air!"

"He can't have."

"He did — I saw it with my own eyes!"

The Mole stepped forward, and Roads backed away, rising slowly from his crouch without moving the gun from its target.

"Don't move," he said, feeling like an idiot. "Put your hands behind your head and turn around."

The Mole kept coming until he was between Roads and the terminal. There was something about his face that kept Roads at bay — a terrible emptiness, a void of life that made him appear all the more dangerous. Like a reflection in a mirror about to shatter.

Roads shifted the gun to aim at the drive's power cable. The shot deafened him after the long silence, but the Mole didn't even flinch. The whirr of the drive ceased.

"I
said
, put your hands above your head and turn around."

The Mole didn't look at him, but did as he was told. Roads walked up behind him and cautiously reached out to pat for weapons.

"Be careful, Phil," said Goss. "He's smiling."

"He is? Well — "

He stopped in mid-sentence, puzzled, and stared at his hand. It lay on the Mole's side, apparently touching the fabric of a nylon coat. But it
felt
like cold stone.

"What the — ?"

At his side, the terminal's VDU exploded.

Roads ducked down, a hand shielding his eyes as glass shards filled the air. The Mole pushed him off-balance and into the desk. He scrambled uselessly to regain his footing.

Ignoring the shouting in his ear, he rolled onto his back. The Mole loomed over him, arms outstretched. He fired twice, once above the left eye, once into the heart.

But the Mole kept coming, the bullets leaving no mark at all. Roads scrambled desperately away. The Mole pursued him, vicious canines sparkling moistly in the grey darkness, hands reaching out with fingers ending in inch-long claws.

Roads fired again, still to no avail. The Mole towered above him, poised to attack.

Suddenly, a noise from above startled them both. Roads looked up past the Mole's shoulder, at the skylight. It had swung back to hit the ceiling.

Roads kicked upward with both feet. The Mole staggered backward, becoming human again, and Roads stumbled to his feet, pointing the useless pistol at his dark half.

"Thank Christ," Roads muttered, not taking his eyes off the Mole. "But you took your goddamn time ..."

The babbling voices coalesced, began to make sense.

"That's not us!" Barney was shouting. "It's not us!" He risked another glance upward — into the eyes of a man he had never seen before in his life.

"Phil!"

Barney wanted to throw herself at the screen as Roads gaped up at the skylight. The entry alarm blared in her ears, Goss shouted instructions to the squad, the command centre filled with motion — but all she had eyes for was the screen in front of her.

The angle did not reveal what it was that Roads saw. His eyes widened, seemed to bulge slightly in the indistinct picture. She saw his gun-hand start to come up.

Before he could do anything, however, there was a flash of blinding, white light. The Mole vanished into it, disappearing as though he had never existed. Roads staggered backward with an arm over his eyes, his mouth open in an exclamation of pain and surprise.

Then an invisible force struck him on the chest and threw him across the room. He fell to the ground under an avalanche of books and didn't move.

Barney screamed her frustration at the screen.

Then the view unexpectedly shifted to the roof. The shadow — forgotten momentarily — had moved, triggering the security systems. Trading stealth for speed, it ran unbelievably fast away from the skylight toward the camera, crossing trip-wires as it came. Still too indistinct to be seen clearly, except as a silhouette, it ducked behind a wall and vanished from view.

Behind it, before the angle could change to another camera, the skylight exploded. Glass blew upward as though struck by an incomprehensible fist, followed by twisted pieces of metal flung free by the impact.

Barney stared in amazement, struggling to see what had caused the explosion. She had a glimpse of something indistinct turning in the air above the library's roof. Among the shards of the skylight, five shining points of light arrayed in a wide-spaced pentagon hung in the air, falling slowly like a ghostly snowflake. The array rotated, collapsing in upon itself as it fell. What it was, Barney couldn't guess: not fragments of glass, flung from the explosion of the skylight, or fireballs; the array's motion was independent of the rest of the rubble in the air, and far too ordered to be random ...

Floodlights on the roof abruptly blazed into life, and the array vanished from sight.

Barney leapt to her feet and ran from the room, brushing past DeKurzak and O'Dell. Both stared at the screens with almost identical looks of astonishment on their faces.

1:15 a.m.

He ran, not caring where he was going at first as long as it was
away
...

He leapt from the roof of the library onto a nearby building, past the bodies of the guards he had knocked unconscious. Behind him, floodlights came on and something shattered, but he didn't stop to investigate. He kept to shelter where he could, relied on speed when he couldn't. The police issued from their nests like ants, but none of them saw him. If they did, he was gone before they could react.

Once he reached the wooded grounds, the going became easier. His long stride lengthened further, carrying him swiftly to the fence. Without worrying about triggering alarms this time, he climbed over it and sprinted for cover in the dark corners of the parklands.

The night enfolded him; the sharp adrenalin peak faded slightly. He allowed himself to slow his relentless pace for a moment. Not to rest, but to take stock and to decide where to go.

Only then did he realise that he was being followed.

He cursed his indecision and wove deeper into the undergrowth. If he hadn't followed Roads, hadn't felt compelled to watch instead of act, none of this would have happened. He should have approached the police officer, one way or another — he should have found out by more direct means whether or not it was him the police had been looking for two nights before. If he had known for sure, he could have taken action; he could have fled the city with Sanctuary while he had the chance. But instead he had watched them set their trap, waited for it to spring, and moved in to see what it was they had caught.

From his perch above the marble room, he had seen Roads confronting
himself
. The glimpse he'd had was enough to convince him that he wanted no part of it. He did not understand, and did not want to be given the opportunity to understand. It was beyond him.

Behind him, soft feet padded relentlessly, never gaining but never falling behind. He changed direction. The park-lands petered out as he passed the innermost ring of the city's transportation network. He headed rapidly southward, the alleys and roads becoming narrower and darker as he entered a little-used quarter of the city. Brick buildings built after the War pressed in on all sides; his path wound at random through the gaps between them. As his desperation increased, his path become more tortuous. Even he would have been unable to retrace his steps.

But still the soft feet followed.

He had to do something.

He headed deeper into the darkness, toward the river and the maze of warehouses. The ways grew straighter and the distances between corners longer. At times he was able to glimpse the creature that followed him.

It looked like a wolf — the same wolf he had watched pacing the street outside Roads' house the previous night. Its cold, grey eyes were glazed, like marbles, but he could tell that it was watching him closely regardless.

Its gait was smooth and unhurried, as though it could overtake him whenever it wanted to. Why it didn't, he wasn't certain, but he knew he would rather die than lead it home, to Sanctuary, if that was what it wanted.

The harbour was full of dead-ends and intersections. He ran along the streets, seeking something suitable for what he had in mind, passing an endless succession of inviting doorways and jagged-tooth windows. He paused only once to grab a solid iron bar from a pile of refuse. Hefting it over his shoulder, he adjusted his balance to compensate for the extra weight and ran on.

A building of the sort he required eventually appeared: built before the War, an unstable mass of brick with a high, corrugated iron roof. He ducked inside and gripped the iron bar in both hands.

The warehouse was empty; endless rows of wooden posts no wider than one of his forearms supported the distant roof. He sprinted along its length, waiting for the wolf to enter the building behind him. When it did, he swung the iron bar with all his strength at every wooden post as he passed.