Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA (10 page)

Bryn sat next to Mia in frozen silence as Fournier and Dundee burst into action. Dundee ran out the front door while Fournier jumped up and crossed the living room. He opened a drawer in the bureau under his holovision unit and removed a pistol, which he tucked into the back of his waistband. Then he reached up to his ear, attempting to call out with the holopiece over his ear. Bryn saw the blue glow turn to red each time the other party didn’t answer. As Fournier tried another number, the sound of gunfire stopped.

Whoever he called this time picked up, and again Bryn heard his side of the conversation. “How did they get past security?” He scratched the side of his face, looking disconcerted. “Could be the ARA.”

The ARA, or Animal Rights Army, was defunct as far as Bryn knew, ever since its leader had been sent to prison. Why Fournier thought they might be responsible for the gunfire, she had no idea.

“No! Catch the dangerous ones first,” Fournier snapped. He blinked to end the call, shaking his head. He didn’t explain anything to them, but as if he was talking to himself, said, “Why would they do that?”

“I did it,” a voice from the front door drawled, “to create a diversion. Should be a familiar tactic to you.”

Fournier spun on his heel and reached for the small of his back, but Maddy made a sharp ‘
tch
’ sound and he stopped. She wore dark sunglasses and her long, white-blonde hair was hanging in a thick braid over one shoulder. She was dressed in a crisp black wool coat and slim jeans. Standing next to her were Dillo and two xenos Bryn hadn’t seen before, a bald man holding a sawed-off shotgun, and a thick-necked female xeno with short dyed-red hair. Dillo’s left arm was in a sling, but in his right he held a gun she suspected was the same one that used to belong to Scott. She doubted it was still loaded with plastic bullets.

Fournier’s face went florid with anger, but his eyes remained strangely blank. He was a man used to having the upper hand with his enemies, not the other way around. “How did you find me?”

“A little birdie,” Maddy said.

His lips thinned and his jaw clenched in enraged comprehension. “Padme.”

Maddy smiled and removed her sunglasses, revealing her one brown eye and one red. “A very lucky discovery on my part. Her head is simply bursting with interesting facts about you and your business dealings. For instance, she mentioned most of your men would be out storming a certain castle this afternoon, and you’d be particularly vulnerable.”

As an apparent afterthought, she tilted her head and said, “Hello Bryn. Dr. Padilla. Having tea, are we? The two of you do get around.”

Mia stood. “We were just leaving.”

Maddy rolled her strange eyes. “Sit down. I already know you aren’t here willingly.” She glanced up at the ceiling, at a domed security camera, and shook her head at Fournier. “You thought changing the passwords would keep Padme out? She
designed
your security system. We’ve eavesdropped on every boring thing you’ve said and done today.”

Bryn turned to look out the picture window and saw Maddy’s yacht anchored just offshore. Was Padme on deck right now, waiting for Maddy to bring Fournier’s head to her mounted on a pike? Bryn didn’t doubt Maddy intended to kill him, since he was indirectly responsible for the death of her brother, but what was she waiting for?

Fournier must have been thinking along the same lines, because he asked, “What do you want from me? You would have killed me by now if there wasn’t something.”

Maddy pointed at him and then touched her nose, like he’d won at charades. “I’d like the nanoneuron program, please. Apparently, it’s the one thing Padme can’t access remotely.”

“I don’t have it,” Fournier said.

Maddy didn’t give an order, merely glanced at Dillo, who raised his gun and nonchalantly shot Fournier in the upper arm. Fournier let out an agonized cry and dropped to his knees right in front of Bryn. Blood bloomed on his sleeve.

Definitely not plastic bullets
, she thought. As horrified as she was, she still found she had to resist the urge to take advantage of his weakness and smash him over the head with the teapot.

Maddy waited until Fournier’s moans subsided enough for him to hear her. “That was just a teaser. I assure you my friend is capable of much worse. Now take me to the control room and give me the program.”

Fournier produced a series of sounds that Bryn thought at first was sobbing, but turned out to be laughter. “I honestly don’t have it.” When Dillo raised the gun again, Fournier added hastily, “But I know where it is.”

“Fine. I’ll bite,” Maddy said. “Where is it?”

“The XIA has it.”

Scott didn’t have time to search for Savvy. He didn’t think the little weasel would risk going down to the lobby, so he was either hiding on the floor or had taken the stairs to hide on another floor. If he’d attempted the latter, he was in for a disappointment, since the only door in the stairwell that wasn’t secure was the one leading to the lobby. Even getting into the parking garage from the stairwell required a holoscan of an employee’s palm.

Scott looked at Bob and asked, “You got access to the weapons room?”

Bob jerked his head to one side, producing an audible crack from his neck. “Heck, yeah.”

Scott doubted Bob had ever held a real gun in his life, but if hologaming had given him enough self-confidence to at least attempt to protect himself, it was better than adding to Scott’s burden.

“Let’s go.”

Inside the weapons room, he helped Bob into a vest and gave him a loaded handgun. “Safety’s off. Only use it if you absolutely have to.”

“We’re not going to survive this, are we?” Bob’s upper lip had beads of sweat on it, but his voice seemed calm enough.

“We will if I can help it.” Scott shrugged into his own vest, quickly fastened it, and then strapped a utility belt around his waist. He tucked four grenades into the belt before slinging a semi-automatic rifle over his shoulder.

“How are we supposed to get out of the building?” Bob asked.

“Shasta said to meet her in the parking garage.”

“When I was coming up, I heard her say the garage has been compromised.”

“They we’ll have to fight our way out. You up for it?”

Bob squared his jaw. “Alright.”

Scott nodded approvingly before grabbing some extra clips. He and Bob shoved them into every available pocket.

Nicola was waiting for them, arms wrapped protectively around the birdcage. After Bob secured the weapons room, Scott began striding towards the stairwell, the black case with the 3D printer in his left hand and a weapon in his right.

“Where are we going?” Nicola asked.

“Your father sent some of his friends,” he replied. “We’re the welcoming party.”

He made a quick detour past his cubicle to grab his leather jacket, putting it on over his vest. When he opened the door to the stairwell, he was greeted by darkness. He switched on the flashlight clipped to his utility belt to illuminate the steps and began to take them rapidly. Halfway down, he heard panicked voices echoing up the stairwell. When he reached the second floor, he saw why no one had come up – the first flight was gone. The moving-type truck he’d seen in the background of Shasta’s holocall had smashed through the wall and torn the lightweight biopolycrete steps completely away from the second floor platform.

Scott knelt on the unsteady platform and peered over the edge. The cab of the truck was directly below him and the back of it was blocking the hole it had created in the wall except for a chunk of missing along the right side. Through that opening, he could see water from the fire sprinklers raining down in the lobby.

In the corner across from the truck, near the closed door to the parking garage, a cluster of people were hunkered down behind a hastily constructed barrier composed of the remains of the staircase. The low light coming in from the lobby made it hard to see exactly who was had taken refuge there, but he assumed it was people from the building.

Someone from the lobby fired a shot into the stairwell that ricocheted off something. The bullet thudded into the wall not far from Scott’s head. He unslung his rifle and aimed, but from this angle, he could only see a patch of the lobby flooring beyond the hole.

To his relief, he heard Shasta’s voice. “Is that you, Agent Harding?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You got any ammo for a standard-issue weapon?” It was Alton.

“Plenty.” Scott set the printer down, took four clips out of a pocket and called out, “Heads up!” before lobbing them one by one into the group of people.

Just then, Nicola and Bob arrived, hesitating on the lowest step above the platform.

“Doesn’t look safe,” Bob said at the same time Nicola asked, “How are we supposed to get down?”

Scott didn’t answer. The cab of the truck was only maybe a five-foot drop, but at least one of the xenos in the lobby had a gun. Someone, Scott thought it sounded like Chief Joe, shouted, “We got you surrounded! All we want is Lupus and you can go.”

“Yeah right,” Scott muttered. He looked down as something occurred to him. He’d worked with Chief Joe on the job to recover the panda from the ARA. They’d used a ten-foot decommissioned U-Haul truck, and unless he was mistaken, that same truck was right below him. It was armored and had honeycomb bullet-proof tires. Chief Joe had been an ex-NASCAR mechanic, so Scott knew the truck would have been running fine before the crash. Whether it was running now was the question.

For the driver to have gotten the truck to its present location, he would have had to drive it up the wide, shallow cement steps in front of the building in order to crash through the aluminum-framed glass doors. The fact that he’d also curved to the left and smashed into the far wall indicated one of three things: he’d panicked and lost control, overestimated the speed required to get the job done, or the truck had been damaged.

Scott leaned over the far side of the platform. It creaked ominously, but from that vantage point, he could see the front of the truck, which looked banged up, but didn’t appear to be totaled. The driver’s side door was open and the keys dangled from the ignition.

He turned to Bob and Nicola, who’d stepped out onto the platform but were hovering near the door leading to the second floor. “Wait here, but be prepared to jump when I say.”

Bob looked terrified, but nodded.

Nicola said, “I’m not jumping.”

“Oh, really?” Scott strode across the platform and before she realized what he was doing, yanked the birdcage out of her hands.

“Hey!” she exclaimed.

He ignored her, walking back to the edge of the platform. With his free hand, he held up a concussion grenade. “Shasta?”

“I see it. We’re ready,” she replied.

He pulled the pin, bent down, and with his best high school baseball sidearm throw, sent the grenade flying through the hole in the wall. As soon as the blast went off, he stepped into thin air, one hand holding the birdcage and the other the printer.

Maddy looked down her nose at Fournier, her lips twisted in a grim approximation of a smile. “Padme told me you would move the program, but even I didn’t think you’d be so foolish as to let it fall into XIA hands.”

“I’d rather they had it than you,” Fournier replied. “Or your father.”

Maddy frowned. “My father? How is he relevant? No, don’t answer. I’m quite sick of everyone bringing him up.” She paced to the kitchen and back, hands folded in the small of her back.

“Assuming for conversation’s sake I believe you, who exactly in the XIA has it?”

“By now it’s possible my people have gotten it back.”

“Oh, that’s right. Padme filled me in on the details of your little rescue attempt. Quite bold of you, I must say, but unfortunately for Lupus, I arranged to have a few of my people blend in with the mob as a favor to her. She’ll rest easier knowing that sadistic bastard is dead.”

Bryn wasn’t entirely sure what she was saying, but it sounded like Fournier was attempting to rescue Lupus. She didn’t know where he was being held, but assumed it was some place like Rikers. No matter where it was, arranging a prison break seemed ambitious even for Fournier.

Maddy clapped her hands, producing a sudden pop of sound that made Fournier jerk like he’d been shot again. She reached out and snatched the holopiece from his ear, and then removed the gun from his waistband. “I’ll take those. We’re going on a little field trip. That arm looks painful. I much prefer you take us to the control room under your own power, but if you try to run, Dillo will shoot you in the knee next time. Is that clear?”

Fournier nodded.

Maddy tucked the gun into the inside pocket of her jacket and turned her attention to Bryn and Mia. “You two present a bit of a problem, but for the time being, I’m going to take you with us. If what he says is true,” she gestured to Fournier, “you might come in handy.”

Bryn scowled. She knew exactly what Maddy meant: if the XIA did have the nanoneuron program, Bryn would once again be Maddy’s leverage to force Scott into doing what she wanted. A crushing sense of helplessness swept over her. She was sick of being treated like a pawn on a chessboard.

Maddy put her sunglasses back on and said, “Shall we?”

She led the way towards the door, the female xeno a step behind. The bald xeno grasped Fournier’s uninjured arm and jabbed the short barrel of the shotgun into his side before marching him down the hallway. Dillo waited to escort Mia and Bryn. Mia picked up her purse and wrapped her arms around it, daring Dillo with her eyes to take it away from her. He seemed unconcerned, however, and simply waved for them to precede him. Bryn stayed close to Mia’s side as they left Fournier’s quaint little farmhouse.

They traveled on foot, passing the motionless body of Dundee in the driveway. The surgical mask, still attached to one of his ears, fluttered in his face from the cold breeze off the Hudson. Bryn stared in revulsion at a blotch of half-congealed blood in the blonde hair at the back of his head. If he was dead, she certainly wouldn’t mourn him, but despite the amount of violence she’d been exposed to lately, she wasn’t immune to it. Her stomach clenched and she swallowed against a rise of bile.

She glanced over at Dillo’s impassive face as they walked past Dundee’s truck. When she’d met him, he’d seemed almost kind underneath the frightful surface – but since then he’d proven to be completely loyal to his queen. With a little shiver, she remembered what he’d told Maddy in yesterday’s standoff: “I’ve got her in my sights. Just give the word.” He’d been referring to Bryn and the fact that he was willing to kill her at Maddy’s whim.

Near the barn, where earlier it had been quiet, now it seemed as if there were animals everywhere. A goat stood behind the picket fence, a clump of purple and white pansies hanging from its mouth. A pink sow with black spots on her rump suddenly ran squealing across the lane and disappeared into a box hedge.

Fournier walked resolutely along the drive next to the bald xeno, blood dripping from his knuckles into the gravel. His head turned this way and that as if he was looking for someone who wasn’t there.
His soldiers, probably,
Bryn thought. Maddy had arranged for some kind of diversion. Had her men killed them?

They passed the barn, and the white doors that had been closed on their arrival were open and swinging slowly in the wind. The animals must have come from there.

At the top of the hill, Bryn looked around and realized what Maddy’s diversion had been. She’d arranged to have all the animals on the farm released. The cows and sheep Bryn had seen earlier had been joined by several other species, some of them quite exotic, all running loose in the fields. A deer-like animal, she thought it was an impala, bounded along the fence line, chased by what could only be a cheetah. A man on horseback headed the cheetah off and attempted to shoot it.

It occurred to Bryn that Fournier’s men weren’t dead; they were out chasing down his livestock.

“If you’re wondering how I did it,” Maddy said, addressing Fournier, “it was pathetically simple. A few shots fired into the air, and while your brilliant soldiers went running to investigate, Padme remotely unlocked every door on the property.”

“I didn’t know she could do that,” he mumbled.

“You severely underestimated her,” Maddy said, finishing with an upbeat, “to my benefit!”

At the bottom of the hill, the tall chain link gate was wide open. They walked through it unchallenged and continued on down the road towards the abandoned manufacturing plant. Bryn hadn’t seen any vehicles other than Dundee’s truck, so she assumed Maddy and company had arrived on the yacht’s outboard. Mia seemed winded, so Bryn offered to help her, but she shook her head, either from stubbornness or because she didn’t want to be touched.

The men Bryn had seen patrolling the plant were still on the job. When the closest one caught sight of his boss he reached up to his head. A moment later, a tone sounded from Maddy’s coat pocket. She pulled Fournier’s holopiece out and held it up for the man to see.

“I suggest you tell them to stand down,” she said.