Walking Ghost Phase (33 page)

Reconnecting. Please Stand By…

O-kay…

The orange glow of the simulated sun returned in a brief flash. As Emily
's eyes regained focus, a hazy black figure raced in front of her. The girl, an A3 floating above her helmet, shoved aside Damon's arm, and a single gunshot echoed through the tiny control room, the bullet sailing wide of Matt's head. Cinderblock ash drizzled from a hole in the wall.

Damon jabbed his finger into her sternum.
“Do you want to join him, too? I have plenty of bullets.”

“
No,” A3 said. “I want to sleep. I'd like to wake up without more bruises. He's won before. You haven't. If he says your plan is stupid, it probably is.”

A6 moved to Matt
's side. “I'm with him.”

“
Five minutes,” Matt said.

Damon pointed at Emily.
“What about you?”

“
Please, listen to him,” she said, and revealed her identity.

For a moment Damon stood
in silence as the remaining three soldiers gathered behind Matt. “What's your
brilliant
plan? Maybe I'll follow it. Maybe I won't.”

“
If the Sim is accurate,” Matt said, “those pipes in the courtyard are built to withstand a bullet.” He slammed the butt of his rifle against the window. Shards of glass clinked on the floor, and about a second later, more pieces crackled in the courtyard dirt. “Two of you take positions up here. Don't hold your fire. Buy us an extra minute.”

“
Got it,” A3 said, and grabbed A6's arm.

“
The rest of you, move out,” Matt ordered.

They sprinted down the steel mesh stairs, through the maze of dimpled pipelines and into the front courtyard of more pipes. A razor-wire fence surrounded the complex at a distance of about fifty yards from the main building. Straight ahead, a single entrance led out to the vast desert landscape. Heat swells blurre
d everything else, including the wavy black forms of the approaching defenders.

Matt crept along the pipes and tapped his knuckles against each section. The dull vibration died out in the stagnant air.
“Emily, do you think these pipes can withstand a fire?”

“
Three minutes,” Damon said.

The distant figures doubled in size.
“I'd assume so,” she said.
Why are you asking me?

“
Will they or won't they?” Matt asked.

You already think they will.
“Yes.”

Matt motioned to the other squad members.
“Open the valves. Flood the courtyard.”

“
Hey, moron,” Damon said. “An oil flame won't spread that fast, and even if you manage to dump a thin layer before they arrive, you'll be lucky to catch their boots on fire.”

Matt spun open the first valve, which turned with a shrill squeal.
“Just do it. Get back inside when they're all open.”

Squad members, even Damon, followed Matt
's lead and opened the spigots. Pitch-black oil spurted out of the taps and bubbled across the dirt. “One minute,” Matt shouted. By then, the puddle of sludge had oozed to the entrance gate and control-building door.

A crackle of gunfire erupted from the upstairs window.
“They're here, they're here,” A3 shouted.

“
Take cover,” Matt said.

As Emily backpedaled to the refinery entrance, the two lead defenders, still a hundred yards or so
outside the entrance, slumped forward and rolled across the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust. Three more defenders tripped over the bodies.

She planted her back against the inside wall, adjacent to the door. Matt positioned himself on the opposite side.
“How close are they?” he asked.

“
Maybe thirty yards away.”

“
Did they slow down?”

“
Not by much.”

Matt pulled out a grenade and twisted the timer.
“Seven seconds ought to do it.” He yanked out the pin and, without looking, slung the explosive through the door. It rolled across the oil slick, wrapping itself in the sticky muck. “It's about to get hot.”

Even with her eyes closed and the visor shielding her face, a flash of orange burned Emily
's pupils. Sweat droplets trickled down her cheeks. The fatigues molded to her skin. She felt a sudden urge to look at her non-existent hair—to see if it was burning.

When the heat began to dissipate, she spun into the doorway and aimed out on the courtyard. But she didn
't fire. Instead, she caught herself in a fit of quiet laughter. No more than thirty or forty feet away, defenders danced in the ankle-high flames; they kicked up their legs and slapped at their boots. Whoops and shouts from her squad now filled the control center.

Then gunfire.

Emily collected herself and squeezed the trigger. Two defenders, who were trying to smother their flame-covered boots in the sand, crumpled when the bullets tore through their bodies. A3 and A6 picked off three more who had managed to escape behind the fence. The air now rattled with the sound of gunfire, of ricocheting bullets, of defenders screaming.

A lone defender ducked
below a mesh of pipes, out of the fire's reach. Emily placed the rifle butt against her shoulder and dropped to one knee. Peeking beneath a stretch of pipes, his boots glowed in the orange flame, and Emily's three rapid shots mangled the leather in a jagged mess of black and red. The defender flopped to the ground, shrieking, clutching his boots. Now in full view of every attacker's gun sight, he entered the darkness a moment later.

As Emily
's squad whittled away at the defenders' ranks, the oil, still spewing from the spigots, submerged the lifeless bodies. An amused smile crossed her lips. Her side was not just winning but humiliating the defenders.

Somewhere, an Army g
eneral probably screamed at his peons, demanded someone's job, threatened someone's head. He wanted a better cheater. Emily gritted her teeth at the thought of the general finding that person.
You can't win them all
would soon become
You can't win.

“
Get out of the doorway,” Matt shouted.

For a moment Emily processed the warning. Matt repeated it. The subsequent sting felt as nothing more than a slight poke in her ribs, a friendly nudge from Sarah maybe.
Move? Why should—Oh no.
She patted her right hip and stared at her hand. A chocolate-colored liquid rolled down her palm. In the courtyard, pipes began to blur and twist. The rifle slipped through her fingers, but it oddly floated in front of her eyes as if gravity didn't exist.

No. Not floating.
She was falling with it.

The instant the rifle clanged on the concrete, her cheeked smacked the floor. Now facing the courtyard, she saw the defender, the hole in the tip of his gun barrel, his finger pulling the trigger.

“No!” Matt jumped in the doorway, between Emily and the defender, and grabbed her arm. Then his shirt puffed out three times. He dropped to his knees and glanced at his chest. Through his tinted visor window, Emily saw his bulging eyes. Three crimson ovals swelled in the center of his shirt. His arms flopped to his sides, and his head drooped like a scarecrow in a cornfield.

Four more thuds shook
him, and he fell atop Emily. “Matt? Matt?”
No. Don't do this to me.

In the courtyard, the defender convulsed
as a slew of bullets entered his body. After he planted in the sludge, dead, the last pop of a gunshot echoed around the complex. “That's all of them,” A3 shouted.

Soon
footsteps clanked on mesh stairs and thumped on the cement floor. They approached the doorway, when the weight lifted from Emily's chest. A4 and A5 dragged Matt's body to the corner, where they leaned him against the wall. Under him grew a pool of red with the all-too-familiar glow of fresh blood. Emily saw her share of it during her time in the Sim: the unforgiving color, the metallic taste, the sticky sensation it left between her fingers.

But the substance on her hand was not familiar.

Damon stood over her. “Damn, Heath, your boyfriend was right. The Sim
is
accurate.”

“
What're you talking about?” she asked through her clenched teeth.

He knelt and dabbed his finger against the brown swell in her shirt.
“You've been shot in the liver. That's why the blood is dark.”

Numbness throbbed across her spine.
“How bad is it?”

“
That much blood loss?” Damon shook his head. “Ten minutes—maybe.”

“
Ten minutes?”

“
Until you're dead.”

“
Freakin' great,” A3 said. “We still got fifteen out there. Matt's dead. She'll be dead soon. Now what are we going to do?”

“
I'll take back command of the mission,” Damon said.

Emily gasped as she stood.
The room lights swirled. “No, I'll do this.” She leaned against the doorway.

“
Heath, you won't make it fifty feet. I'm A1. I'll handle this. Lie down and let go.”

“
Just like you wanted us to lie down with your other plan?”

“
Do you even have one?” Damon asked.

Emily
squeezed the wound, and the surge of pain forced her to bite into her tongue.
Have to stop the bleeding,
she thought.
Need more time.
“Someone help me upstairs?”

A6 knelt, pulled Emily
's arm around his neck and steadied her. As he slowly carried her through the maze of pipes, blood droplets trickled from her side, dotting the concrete in brown patches. Once they reached the control room, she limped to the broken window where Matt had left his binoculars. She picked them up and scanned the horizon.

No black figures in sight. No dust trails. Just a single pipeline that crossed the barren desert and connected the two bases. Circular valves, identical to the spigot controls in the courtyard, sealed shut the pipeline covers. A black sludge moved beneath a square window on top, and yellow arrows displayed the oil
's flow direction—toward the enemy base.

Emily dropped the binoculars, slumped to the floor and propped her back against the wall, under the window.
“Close the spigots outside. Find out how fast the flow in the central pipe is moving. Please, hurry.”

A6 nodded and raced out the door.

The black patches in Emily's vision began to push inward, and a breeze from the window chilled her flesh like the wind of a winter morning. A floor drain near her boots gurgled, collecting her blood. She looked at her hand, moved her fingers even, but couldn't feel them, couldn't feel anything. “This isn't so bad.” Her speech slurred.

About five minutes later, A6 returned with Damon and the res
t of her squad. “Fast,” he said between gasps for air. “Maybe thirty miles an hour.”

“
Damon,” Emily said. Her voice was low. “I know you want to move in for a frontal assault, but please try something else first.”

He shook his head as if he felt disgusted with the idea of listening to her.

“The oil flow is moving almost fifty feet a second. When you move within a hundred yards of their base, open a top seal, set your grenades to maximum fuse and dump them in.”

“
I'll think about it.” He motioned to the remaining squad members. “You five, let's move.” They rushed out of the control room, leaving her alone.

Emily eased her hand off the wound. Her jaw trembled and chest shivered. Brea
th misted across the inside of the visor. Darkness coalesced over her eyes.
Good luck, Damon.

The world faded.

You Are Dead!

Overall time:

Thirty-six minutes, nine seconds.

State of death time remaining:

Six hours, twenty-three minutes, fifty-one seconds.

Emily
's hip burned, and with every pulsating throb of pain, the images in her mind—her escape—shattered before any recognizable memories could form. She thought harder. Then the short, crooked-nosed man, whom she had imagined taking clothing measurements, sauntered in from the dark, but instead of a tape roll, he held a red-hot kindling poker. His maniacal laugh cackled in her brain as he stabbed the poker into her ribs. She wanted to squirm, bite her tongue even. Now her nose itched, and the little man laughed louder. Still, the unwavering timer counted off each second. She mentally tried to blur the numbers, but the little man slapped her. “No, no, no. You aren't leave—”

Squad success!

Ending ACES training.

Thank you, Damon.