The Machine Awakes (24 page)

Kodiak peered at the screen. There were screeds of tiny text, but First Sergeant Epstein tapped the display at a single line of numbers. They were real coordinates, unlike the garbled sequence the cadets had spoken.

Braben finished copying the text down on his datapad, then held it next to the console display to double check it. He looked at Kodiak.

“You know where that is?” he asked, angling the datapad so Kodiak could see.

Kodiak shook his head. “We need to map it, but I recognize the first part: Salt City.” He looked up at Epstein. “Which target did you locate?”

Epstein's fingers moved over the console display. “Psychospore trail is for … Smith, Caitlin.”

Kodiak frowned. So, she
was
alive, having survived the removal of her manifest tag. But she was still the
second
priority.

“What about Tyler Smith?”

Epstein continued to work. She was silent for several moments; Kodiak looked down at the console but couldn't make any sense of the readout himself.

Then the op shook her head. “Negative.”

Kodiak sighed.
Shit.
Well, okay, they had one, at least.

Braben waved the datapad in the air. “I'll get back to the bullpen, run the coordinates, get another Tac team together.”

Avalon nodded her assent, and the agent strode over to the training room's door and left.

Kodiak frowned, then went over to where Avalon was helping Moustafa. The psi-commander still looked groggy and was leaning back against one of the consoles.

He smiled at Kodiak. “I'll be fine, don't worry. We'll get the cadets down to the medical center and have them checked out.”

Kodiak nodded.

“What about those other coordinates?” asked Avalon, but Moustafa could only manage a shrug and a shake of the head in reply.

“Well, let's add that to the list of unanswered questions,” said Kodiak. “But in the meantime we need to grab Caitlin Smith before she moves. We can figure the rest out later.”

“Agreed,” said Avalon.

With one last look at Moustafa, who held up his hand and nodded, Kodiak stood and headed for the door.

They were going to have to move quick if they didn't want to lose Caitlin again.

 

24

Cait's eyes flickered open.
She jerked awake, then winced as pain shot across the back of her neck. Gingerly feeling for the bandage, she sat up and looked around.

She was behind a stairwell that stunk of dusty damp concrete and other things. It was morning, light pouring in through the huge open squares in the wall opposite.

She was in her old building, at the bottom of one of the stairwells on the north side.

She sat up, then stood, leaning on the wall for support. She felt better, having dragged herself under cover before passing out again. Whatever crap had been in her system felt like it was clearing. She took a deep breath, pleased at how her entire body didn't ache. Her neck was stiff, but that was to be expected. She needed to get someone to take a look at that, somehow. To find out what her captors had done to her in the warehouse.

There was movement nearby, someone or something shuffling on the rough concrete of the building's floor, heading in her direction. She needed to move, now, find a new position so she could consider her options.

Cait ducked out from under the stairs, heading toward the main entrance, but then quickly moved behind a pillar as a group of four large men, dressed in ragged, mismatched clothing, walked into the doorway and stopped. Cait watched them from her cover, willing them to move on. They were scavengers, lowlifes who went from building to building, pulling out people, looking for money, drugs, anything. This building had been hit before—the man Cait had sent tumbling from her twelfth floor window had been a scavenger—but it was impossible to tell whether it was the same group or not. And it didn't matter. They were dangerous. They were thieves and killers, and worse besides.

She couldn't stay here. She waited, listening with her mind, but Glass was quiet. Not for the first time, she wondered if he really had spoken to her, or whether it was just her own mind breaking down under the stress.

Her brother's voice was silent, as well.

The only way out of the building was past the scavengers. But she was near the stairs, which meant she could go up. Her old nest was burnt out, but she'd scouted the rest of the building. Plenty of places to hide out temporarily until the coast was clear. She knew the scavengers would scour the building, but they were unlikely to head too high up. That was what had made her old hideout ideal—apart from that single visitor, she had been undisturbed by scavengers, their attention spans fried by the crap they smoked or sniffed or injected, so they rarely made it past the first half dozen or so floors of what tall buildings Salt City had. She could pick a spot and wait until the group got bored and left.

She checked the doorway again. The gang of four were still there, talking, smoking something sweet and sickly, but they were all facing away from her.

Taking care to be silent, Cait slipped out from behind the column and headed up the stairwell.

*   *   *

It was a long
haul up the stairs and soon enough Cait realized she wasn't in as good shape as she tried to tell herself she was when she'd been on the ground level. After the first floor, she'd been forced to pull herself up the stairwell with the rail one-handed, and when there wasn't a rail, she crawled up like an injured animal, her good hand pulling on the dusty concrete stairs ahead of her as she pushed herself up with her legs. But she could do it. The voices of the men down in the lobby faded the higher she climbed, and she managed to find a rhythm, one that was slow but regular. One that allowed her to keep going, no matter what. She was a marine, after all—well, not quite a marine, but being Alpha One had to count for something. Before she'd left, she'd completed all her training with flying colors. Including physical training. Out there on the Warworlds there were worse situations than having a bandaged neck and a head echoing with the aftereffects of the cocktail of painkillers and anesthetics and fuck knows what else they had pumped into her.

She didn't need the Academy to tell her she could do it. She could survive this. Because she knew she could. And not only would she survive this, she would rest, and heal, and then she would find her brother. She'd come up with a plan. And if that plan meant taking out that bitch Flood and the rest of her gang of crazies, then all the better.

She flopped chest-first onto the next landing of the stairwell and braced to push herself up to the standing position to turn and take the next section of stairs. Ten floors. Twelve was where she had lived before. Eleven was something of a warren, she remembered, and a good level to find a hiding spot. Just one more flight of stairs to go. And this one, thankfully, had a rail again.

“Hey there, my little chickadee.”

Cait looked up as she was grabbed under both armpits by thick hands. She yelped in pain and surprise as the two men behind her pulled her roughly up. Then her attention was firmly on the man in front of her.

He was standing on the second stair, one hand on the railing, the other holding a long, thin blade, more like a razor than a knife. He wore a sleeveless tunic that exposed not just his arms but his bare chest, the skin of both covered in a hypnotic, concentric pattern of dark tattoos. He had hair shorn into a mullet, with a thick moustache on his face. He grinned, and his teeth shone as bright in the dim stairwell as the blade in his hand.

The men holding Cait up stank like nothing else—not just of sweat and muck, but something high, sweet, chemical. Whether they were anything to do with the scavengers down in the lobby, it was impossible to tell. Perhaps the whole building had been overrun, and Cait had just got lucky when she collapsed, out of sight, under the stairwell.

The leader of the group trotted down the last two stairs and stepped closer to Cait, so close she could feel his hot breath wafting over her face, the stink of it mixing with the other organic aromas of the gang. He grinned, his mouth moving wetly, as he touched his blade to her cheek. With his other hand he grabbed her right breast and squeezed hard.

Cait tried to turn her body away from him, but that only made the two men behind her tighten their grip. The leader licked his lips and said something to his friends in a language Cait didn't recognize. Whatever it was, they all laughed—hard enough for the hands on her to loosen, just a little. Just enough.

Cait's eyelids fluttered and her head was filled with a humming, electric and dangerous.

Cait screamed and rammed her knee up, catching the man in front of her square in his stomach. He huffed as the air left him, and as he curled down over her, Cait followed her knee with a jab from her good hand into his jaw. The man staggered backwards until his ass touched the wall by the stairs.

The other two were taken by surprise; one squeezed his hand harder on her arm, but Cait was already twisting free. She put a handful of steps between her and her captor, then, turning on her heel, she swung her hand up. The lowlife was out of range, but it didn't matter, not now. Cait gritted her teeth and the man staggered backwards, clutching his chest like he'd been hit. The other snarled and lunged forward. Now Cait's Academy training kicked in and she swiped one leg out, planting her boot in the man's stomach, sending him reeling backwards. Cait's world spun as her consciousness threatened to abandon her, but she sucked in a tight breath of air over her teeth and concentrated on survival above all else.

The three men rolled on the floor, blocking the stairwell leading down, their leader already recovering, pushing himself up against the wall. His eyes met Cait's. He snarled. Cait powered toward the stairs as he moved forward, heading up, the only option open to her. Running on adrenaline, she took the steps two at a time, bouncing off the wall on her shoulder as she weaved toward her former base on the twelfth level.

That was no good. As she rounded the top of the stairs at the next landing, she was confronted by blackened, sooty concrete and the acrid smell of fire.

She kept going up, her legs aching, her lungs burning. But she kept moving. Behind her, the three attackers were shouting—whether at her or each other, she didn't know.

Level thirteen. Empty, nothing but an open-sided platform lined with steel beams. Nobody lived on thirteen.

She swung herself onto the next stair section.

Level fourteen.

She ran from the stair block, then skidded to a halt. It was windy, enough for her to have to fight to keep her footing. As the wind whipped around, pulling her hair around her face, she turned, searching for—

There was nothing. Level fourteen was the roof. A flat platform. No walls. Nothing. On one side was a low-lying plain, glowing orange, stretching as far as she could see. Salt City.

On the other, the crystalline wonder of New Orem, the tall skyscrapers lit from within in brilliant white, while lower, toward street level, a multitude of moving light of every other color in the spectrum. The rooftop was wet and reflected the bright city lights in a million different ways.

“Oh, we're going to have some fun tonight, chickadee!”

Cait turned. The leader of the gang of three emerged from the stairwell. He was topless, having lost his open tunic somewhere during their struggle. Behind him came his two friends, one rolling his thick neck, the other still rubbing his stomach from where Cait had connected with her boot.

The leader wiped his mouth with a forearm as thick as Cait's leg and walked toward her. She backed away, toward the edge.

There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but
down.

“Come here, my little chickadee. I'm gonna make you scream so loud you'll wake everybody in the city.”

Cait fell onto one knee. She looked down, saw herself in the reflected pool of water, saw Glass standing behind her. Saw him saying something. Something she thought she'd heard before.

Her vision crowded with black stars and white static and her mind with the hum, the
hum
 …

*   *   *

Kodiak looked out of
the side of the carrier as ahead, two drones raced across the cityscape, completing another orbit of the target area. The HUD inside Kodiak's visor chimed and a green indicator appeared. The cadets had done well. The drones had confirmed the target's position. All they had to do now was go in and get her.

“We sure that's her?”

Kodiak tilted his head as Braben spoke from the Bureau bullpen, where he had elected to stay this time to monitor the pick-up. Kodiak frowned and, with a thought, brought up the surveillance feed from one of the drones as it made another pass over the target area. The playback showed a half-finished building with a flat roof. On top were four figures; three standing, one crouching.

“Affirmative,” said Kodiak. “I have visual confirmation. The drones have been following her since the cadets picked up her location.”

“She has company.”

“Roger that.” Kodiak turned to the team strapped into the carrier compartment with him. “Watch the drone feed. She's in the perfect place for pick-up. We go in, grab her.”

“What about the other three?” asked the team leader. “Kill or capture?”

“Let's see what they do.” Kodiak glanced up in his visor, focusing on the feed. The other three forms were indistinct, flaring badly in the enhanced night vision, their forms melting in a bright mess caused by city light reflecting off the wet roof. “Primary objective is to secure the target.”

“Affirmative.”

Kodiak zoomed in on the feed, then brought up audio. They were just minutes away. He wanted to know if they were saying anything.

There was nothing but the rush of the wind. Then the drone adjusted its directional microphones at the target and began processing the audio. It was hissy, barely understandable, but enough of what Cait was saying came through for Kodiak's stomach to do a flip.