Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) (29 page)

Maurier burst open the door to the
reception area, guns drawn.

The ceiling vibrated as if they
were standing under a waterfall. With a thump, a VTOL landed on the roof
helipad. The kill team had arrived.

Stu talked on the phone for an eternity before he
disconnected and summarized for Laura. “The weather is potentially bad in
Antarctica tomorrow. Three organizations tried to warn us away, but I told them
we’d come in from orbit if necessary. There’s no way I’d make your brother wait
even one more day.”

Damn. How can I be mad at him
for that?

His hair still damp and ruffled,
Stu looked down at his towel. “Oops. I forgot to squeegee the shower. Be right
back.”

“Sit. Down,” she ordered, pointing
to the oversized pillows.

“It won’t … I should …”

As her breath heaved, the gold
bangles attracted his attention. He sat. She resisted the urge to pat him on
the head. “Tonight, I wanted to give you a special gift. I’ve performed parts
of this dance routine twice for others.”

“I … heard. Cayman Islands.”

She lowered her voice. “I’ve never
performed
all
of the dance. I was saving the finale for the man I wanted
to marry.”

“Oh.”

She strode back to the door and
clicked on the media player. Arabian strings and finger cymbals played around
the suite. “You may not speak, move, or touch me until I give permission.
Understand?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

Her veiled body began to move
sensuously to the reed instrument on the speakers. Each verse, she circled him
and left a single piece of her covering behind. He violated the rules when he
kissed the bruise on her arm.

He responded first to her exposed
navel. She could sense his arousal building.

Once all the veils from the back of
her belt were gone, she helped him appreciate observing other parts of her
anatomy as well. She thrilled as his breathing caught in anticipation.

He whispered, “God, I’m so lucky.”

Smiling, she placed a finger over
his lips and replaced one of the veils. “No speaking. Now we’ll have to do that
verse over again.”

He groaned, and she responded with
a throaty laugh.

When she revealed her left breast,
he slipped again. “Better than I imagined.”

“That’s two veils I put back,” she
scolded.

He cried out in anguish.

She began dragging the perfumed
scarves over him as she removed each.

His breathing reminded her of a
horse after several minutes of full gallop.

“So close.” She teased both of them
by brushing her warm skin against his shoulder and back. The music built in
speed and volume as it approached the crescendo.

The moment Laura touched her last
veil, the security badge in her pile of clothes beeped.
Someone is going to
die for this.

Stu dove for the badge to answer it
for her. As he stood, his towel fell off, revealing that he was still wearing
his underwear. He picked up the sword. “Suit up. We’ll fall back to the
defensive perimeter around the pharmacy.”

“You’re joking,” she said, livid.
“This room can withstand heavy artillery.”

“My people are in danger because of
the blood I left in the infirmary.” He was already in the bedroom pulling on
his flight suit.

What was he, a volunteer fireman?
Laura’s mother came over her earbud. “Incoming. Stairs are compromised. Use the
trash chute. I’ll meet you in—”

Feedback jammed the rest—on the
Mori family channel.
The old man is coming for us, and he isn’t playing fair.
“Comms are out.”

“We don’t need comms. Joan will
tell us anything important.”

Laura said, “We need a plan.”

He flipped over the mattress,
revealing Oleander’s sneak suit in a padded, hidden compartment. “Suit up.
While they’re battering down the doors, we’ll head out the back.”

As she squeezed into the neoprene
outfit, Stu popped a solid panel of insulation out of the exposed closet wall.
She found boot covers but no boots.
I can move quieter with bare feet.

Automatic weapons fire filled the
hall. Their two guards with handguns wouldn’t last long. Stu used the
ultra-sharp, antique family sword to stealthily etch a rectangle in the
drywall.
Grandfather
would shit if he saw that. Nana would understand
survival.
“How do I fasten this?” She was wearing a suit of medieval scale
mail made of lightweight ceramics. It felt like a full-body version of her
belly-dancing bangles.

His pupils dilated as he saw her in
the curve-hugging gear, but he stayed a professional, cinching and tightening
as if he had practiced it a hundred times. “Ceramic stops most weapons, but the
design favored ease of movement.”

Combat hide and seek. What a
weird childhood. Like I have room to talk with Nana’s training sessions.
A
ram pounded on the front door as he clipped together the suit’s control belt.
She defocused her physical senses and expanded her mental ones. Six surviving
enemies stood between them and the building exit. She gripped the explosive
pistol in her hands.
This can work: two sure kills, and I’ve trained against
four opponents.

He snapped the suit’s helmet in
place as power tools whirred to life in the hall to bypass the vault-like door.
“I’ll carry the insulation panel as cover in case someone notices us on our way
to the elevator.”

She focused on her arm as he
flipped a switch on her belt. An image of the floor appeared on the armor,
becoming more detailed until her arm vanished.
Invisibility. I can see them
through walls, but they can’t see me.
“I like.”

“You have ten minutes of battery
left to get you to the infirmary. I’ll—”

Laura reached for her problem-solving
talent, tapping Stu to find a way out of this trap. The plan leapt into her
head full-blown. Just being near him sharpened her senses. She shoved Stu into
the cushioned hidey hole under the box spring. Putting every ounce of Empathic
control she had into her voice, she said, “Trust me. Stay there no matter what
you hear.” She tossed the insulation on top of him and pulled the mattress back
in place.

The living room wall exploded
inward. During the chaos, she kicked the etched rectangle of closet drywall
into the hall.

Leaning through the hole, she aimed
her launcher at the back of the rifleman closest to her. All six were dressed
in identical black assault armor. She would save the officer with the pistol
for last, in case she could capture him for questioning. As a grenade clattered
onto the living room floor, she pulled the trigger on her own launcher. Her
helmet filtered out most of the flash-bang, but her chameleon armor flickered
white for an instant.

Five opponents left.

Leaning into the hall, she watched
as four men stormed the breach into the embassy. Puzzled, the last man turned
to look in her direction. She shot him in the ammo belt before he could raise
the alarm. Fragments went everywhere.

Dropping the visible launcher, she
backed into the corner of the bedroom atop the dresser and held perfectly
still. With her Empathy and Collective awareness, she sensed the agent creeping
into the bedroom through the smoke-filled living area. He found the hole in the
closet almost immediately. In Chinese the soldier reported, “They escaped out
the back. Quick.”

Misdirection achieved, Laura kicked
him in the throat to silence him. He didn’t die immediately. She couldn’t use
his gun because it was smart, keyed to the owner’s handprint. Instead, she had
to draw his dagger to help the process along.

Laura felt a pang as the intruder
twitched in her arms. Shooting someone with a gun could have been laser tag.
This close, there was no avoiding the guilt. For this to work, her moves had to
be as flawless as a finesse in a Bridge tournament.
If I fail, Stu dies and
Monty rots in prison.
I’m only halfway through. I’ll have to hurry if I
want to take the next one from behind.
She dropped the knife and wiped the
blood from her gloves on the bedspread.

She sprinted through the fog of the
living room. The carpeting and drapes blazed with fire, but no smoke alarm
sounded. She catapulted off the sofa and onto the back of target number four,
just like gymnastics class.

The man squeezed off a burst of
automatic fire as she snapped his neck. Spiderwebs appeared in the acrylic picture
window to the left of the door, and the downward arc of bullets hit the shin of
one of his companions.

She dove behind a palette of wall
panels.

The injured number five sprayed the
room in retaliation while number six ducked into the kitchen. When five stopped
to reload, she threw him to the floor and beat the crap out of him
hand-to-hand. She could afford to do this because the smoke hid her from six.

Then she couldn’t find number six
anymore.
He’s wearing mushield so I can’t sense him. Thanks Nana, you bitch.

With no choice, she finished five
off with a stomp to the neck. When she tried to run back to the bedroom, she
discovered that the man’s shattered microphone had imbedded itself in the arch
of her bare foot. The pain was out of proportion to the severity of the wound,
causing her to cry out as she crumpled to the floor. Because the heat in the
room was oppressive now, she decided to crawl toward the bedroom. Her sneak
suit struggled to mimic the swirling smoke patterns. On the bright side, she
found a copper pipe on the floor long enough to use as a cane.

Movement near the bedroom door
caught her attention. She saw Stu’s blue aura climbing out of the hiding space
and creeping toward the door.
That idiot is going to get himself killed! I’m
more bulletproof.

Laura shouted to draw the final
gunman’s fire. Then a gas-powered generator exploded, causing her armor to
flare white again. The officer strode up to her, point blank, and slipped the
pistol against her kidney. “Koku says
sayonara
.”

That’s when Stu cut the man’s gun
hand off with the katana.

You can’t hide from gravity.
While six was distracted, she swept his legs out from under him and shoved the
pipe under his jaw, up into his skull. Coughing hard from her exertion, she
wasn’t able to retrieve the pipe.

Stu swept her up in his arms and
jogged for the hallway, flipping off her invisibility to conserve power.

“Trash chute,” she gasped, lifting
the faceplate of her helmet. Her mind reeled. Now the AI Koku was actively
defending itself. Did her grandparents know or had they delegated kill squads
to its control?

As they approached the exit, Stu
whispered, “You were awesome. We just took out a six-man team together.”

She raised an unseen eyebrow.
Yeah,
we
. Instead of crushing his ego, she said, “Unravel fire hose.” The chute
was too steep and bumpy to slide down unaided.

He understood instinctively and
knotted the fabric hose around her waist. “I’ll lower you first, and then I’ll
climb down afterward.”

She nodded, not trusting her lungs.

“What about Kaguya?”

Laura smiled and patted his face in
the universal “Isn’t he sweet” gesture. “No worries.”

Four stories, being lowered by a
man who treated you like glass, took forever. She stopped a meter above the
dumpster. Untying the knot took longer than expected, as it had tightened with
her weight. Her landing was cushioned by fragments of drywall, but climbing to
the edge was a minefield with all the screws, nails, and drywall scattered
about. Outside the shaft, she could see by the light of the fire pouring out of
the melted windows. “Hurry!”

The hose sounded like a zip line as
Stu slid rapidly down. When he struck bottom, the air filled with gypsum dust
from the drywall, ruining any future camouflage ability from her armor.
Grinning, he showed her the padding on his hands and legs. “Kneepads from the
dead guys.” Then he picked her up and strode across the grass past the nearest
school building.

He likes being the knight. Maybe
I can thank him in the hospital bed.

A tearing sound plowed a furrow of
death through the courtyard, cutting down at least one tree in their path and
blowing out windows near them. Stu dove through one such window to put a layer
of brick between them and the machine gun. “A military helo?”

Laura scanned the sky. “A second
one with another ten shooters.”

“How the hell are we going to fight
that?” Stu asked.

Suddenly, Joan stood beside her,
transparent, traveling Out-of-body like Kaguya did. “Away from the windows,
now.”

“Hallway!” Laura’s arm around Stu,
they hobbled in a three-legged race.

She hugged Stu tight. Thunder
crashed. Glass blew into the hall from every room along the quad.

As the sprinklers hissed water on
them, Stu asked, “What the hell was that?”

Laura smiled. With the jamming
gone, her mother checked in. She relayed the message to Stu. “Mom commandeered
the helo on the roof.”

“How?”

“She trained as a space pilot.”

When Stu carried her back into the
wide, grass-covered quad, they saw the bodies. “They must have been right
behind us. The second ship was firing at them, not us.”

Stu’s uncle Kieran had been running
when the helo guns had stitched his back like a sewing machine. Laura checked
his aura, but he was gone.

Freya and Maurier were both huddled
around CEO Hollis near a corner of the brick façade. “They’re alive!” Laura
exclaimed.

On the outermost layer, Freya’s
midsection was hamburger. Her mind was fading but oddly peaceful.
There’s no
way she can be saved.

Laura had difficulty breathing. She
couldn’t force herself to triage any more casualties. Sirens sounded in the
distance, but the sounds were overpowered by the rush of the helo landing
across the quad.

Stu set Laura to the side, ordering
medical assistance on his comm. As Stu muttered soothing words to their friend
Freya, the light in her eyes faded.