Psyphire watched the screen as Scarab and Malady converged on the apartment. She wasn’t going to stop it now. For anything. Let her prisoner watch his friends die. She had him. If need be, they could always take him to Alpha Site and torture the Prophet’s location out of him.
She turned to taunt the man. But his mind was gone. His eyes were open, but he was far, far away. Psyphire scanned the room. Everyone’s quantum scatter device was active. She scowled. Where could he have gone?
Roger the cat went crazy. The animal hissed and shrieked and swatted at everyone and leapt out of Wisper’s arms and scratched at the soldier nearby before falling to the floor and running into the junkyard.
“What the fuck!” The soldier touched his forehead and looked at his hand. Blood. Tiny droplets had formed at the tips of three parallel scratches.
But no one was looking at him. Everyone was looking at the coinlike device on the floor.
Psyphire stared at it. “Shit.” She ran forward as the bleeding man reached down.
But John had a lot of practice lately, and after a moment’s pause, he jumped.
He drew the soldier’s side arm and got off one shot—killing the next guard, the only other person with a weapon at the ready—before Psyphire threw her hand forward and ignited the rounds in the clip. The gun’s casing exploded, distorted by the force of the exploding cartridges.
The gun shattered into twenty pieces, breaking two of John’s fingers. “Shit!” He nearly took a stray bullet.
He pivoted.
Psyphire shut her eyes and after a second, the cloth lining of John’s electric chair burst into blue flame. Then it flickered yellow and started to grow. He would burn.
Again.
But the veteran had anticipated the attack. His defenseless body was the obvious target. When the old man brought the cat between the two guards, he had given John a choice, and the soldier went for the man closest to the old tow truck.
He had pulled the fire extinguisher just as the firestarter had shut her eyes. As the flames caught, he sprayed up and down his body, and kept spraying, more and more, as Psyphire cursed and dove for the dead guard’s side arm on the ground.
Resting on her hip, she spun around to shoot, but paused. All she could see were shadows in the billowing white fog. She had to hit the guard. Scarab and her team had orders to kill the others. If Psyphire killed the body in the chair, she would lose her only link to the Prophet.
She needed him alive.
The red canister flew and struck her arm. She fired out of reflex, but the shot went wide.
And John had retrieved one of his swords.
He spun from the rapidly dissipating cloud, squatted, and sliced through the pistol, which clattered to the ground in two pieces.
Psyphire jumped to her feet but John was already on her. He deflected her blow and popped her hard in the jaw—which whiplashed her head backward—before flipping her over his back to the ground. As he turned for MODUS, he hoped the blows to her head would keep her disoriented.
The brothers had gone for the semi-automatics on the table. Standing in the middle of the garage, John had nowhere to hide. Regardless of which man shot, he would be riddled with bullets. And there wasn’t time to get both attackers.
But then, he figured he didn’t need to.
By flipping Psyphire over himself, he had interrupted MODUS’s line of fire just long enough for him to launch his sword before her body hit the floor. The black blade flipped end-over-end and severed the wires that connected Heinrich and Tobias Sorensen to each other, before embedding itself in the wall. With weapons pointed directly at him, fingers on their triggers, the pair froze and stood motionless like rebooting computers.
John took just a moment to catch his breath and inspect his bleeding hand. Two fingers were bent outward at unnatural angles.
“Fuck.” It hurt.
He walked to the blinking men and pulled the rifles from their hands. Then he turned back to the coughing firestarter.
Sirens. Ian was glad to hear them. He raised his arms. “Woo-hoo!” The loose end of his sleeve fell over Stubs.
It was a full squad with SWAT leading the way. They were approaching from the rear. The collapsed cell tower had blocked the first wave, and the police took the chance to help with evacuation and regroup in numbers before making another advance on the melee.
The cyborg took a step back.
“Cavalry,” Ian said, motioning proudly behind him.
But his adversaries weren’t looking at the road, he realized. They were looking up.
He turned.
There was a big, muscular man on the top of the Mast. He had sunglasses and dark clothes and no neck. His features looked almost reptilian—dragonish even. And he wasn’t alone.
Ian took one step back, closer to his attackers.
Approaching on the pavement ahead of the police onslaught was a . . . thing. It walked like a man, but Ian couldn’t see any eyes or other normal features on its head. Its entire body was covered in a hard, knotted material, a cross between tree bark and a crab’s shell. At the creature’s joints the armor erupted in irregularly shaped hornlike spikes. The narrow gaps and cracks that ran through and around it glowed fluorescent aquamarine.
Next to the spike-thing, a tall, pale, hairless woman approached, also in sunglasses and dark clothes. She had pins threaded through her skin—her neck, her arms, everything—that seemed to keep it from falling off. Violet light peeked from the cracks and folds. She held the leash of a large animal that seemed a cross between a hyena and an armadillo. It was the size of a tiger, but pale and with thick claws for burrowing. Its eyes were recessed deep into its leathery, whitish plates.
Both groups of marauders braced for a fight.
Ian stood in between.
He whipped his head back and forth. “What the fuck . . .” He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know what to do.
The dragon-man hissed a strange language from above, then turned to accented English. “Did you think we would not find you?”
“Vorgýrim,” the cyborg exclaimed. “Shit.”
The police were coming in fast with sirens blaring. The dragon-man turned. His chest began to glow—bright enough to be seen even under his dark clothes. White-orange light peeked from between his ribs and traveled up to his throat.
Fire.
The hood of the black SWAT van exploded. The vehicle flipped in the air and crashed as the trailing patrol cars crashed into it from behind. Two of them turned on their sides.
The pale woman released the beast, who bounded on all fours right toward Ian.
He held up his hand as the rest of the intruders attacked the trio behind him. “No no no, I’m not with—”
The beast leapt at him. Ian held up Stubs, but the animal was too fast and too strong, and he fell on his back from the force of its charge.
The charcoal-bandaged plague-woman stepped away from her teammates and spat green mist at the armored thing, just as she’d done at the Mast.
But nothing happened. The droplets simply bubbled and ran over the chemically-inert organic armor.
The woman’s bloodshot eyes went wide. She was too close. There was nothing she could do as the hulking spike-thing speared her clean through with one of the horns on its right arm. She gasped and fell to the street, mouth frothing green foam.
And then she was dead.
The dragon-man was on fire now. His entire body was burning orange. He leapt down and engaged.
“Malady!” The cyborg laid down a suppressive fire and dropped three flash grenades.
The light-sensitive attackers squinted and turned away. Then they gave pursuit.
The woman in the mask screamed at her cowardly companion and released a blast of heat at the armored spike-thing, which swatted the air and covered its face.
The clawed creature gnawed and bit at Ian’s invisible appendage as a police helicopter passed overhead. He could feel the bite, but it didn’t hurt. Frustrated, the beady-eyed beast gave up on the arm it couldn’t see and snapped at Ian’s face with jagged teeth.
Even with his heart and lungs pounding, Ian could hold his breath, at least for a moment, and phase through the street. But he had no idea what was underneath. If it was solid earth all the way down, he’d suffocate and die. And even if he got lucky and somehow escaped, he’d leave Xana trapped and defenseless.
The monster’s pale master stood over him. She drew a long curved blade as the light shone through the gaps in her pinned skin.
Well, shit, he thought. It was worth it.
He had been part of something. Something important. And he had done his best. And if God really was out there, Ian would want Him to save Xana. Even if that meant he had to die. Because a child needs his mother.
The bald woman looked down at him and smiled. “Time to die, heathen.” She raised her weapon—
And was smashed across the street. Her body made a crater in a stone block wall before peeling off and falling to the ground in a splatter of fluorescent violet.
Xana grabbed the armadillo-creature by its leathery scruff and whipped it over her head. She smashed it back and forth on the pavement, leaving cracks. The beast yelped amid a loud snap.
Xana collapsed.
“I . . .” She gasped. She was taking short, shallow breaths. “Ian, I—I can’t breathe.”
He ran to her. “Dude. You should’ve stayed down!”
“And you should’ve saved yourself.” She went up on her hands and knees. Her limbs were shaking. “But we’re a team.”
She held out her hand.
Ian slapped it. “Let’s get you out of here.” He noticed her chest. She hadn’t been idle. She’d restapled her incision. Probably hit herself up with painkillers as well.
Xana shook her head. “Can’t,” she panted. Everything hurt. Every breath was a stabbing pain. Xana held it as long as she could, then gasped in short, quick draws.
The pale woman on the ground lifted her torso up on her arms. She couldn’t stand, but she was healing rapidly. Ian could see her flesh reforming amid fluorescent violet dribbles.
“Come on. You gotta get up. We’re not gonna die here.”
Xana tried. “I can’t.” Her shaking arms collapsed and she fell on her side. She rolled onto her back and looked up at the sky. It was so pretty. There were helicopters and sirens and men on bullhorns in the distance. Everything hurt. Her chest felt like she’d punched herself the same way she’d punched Boraro the Disemboweler. Her leg was on fire, even through the painkillers. She was sweating profusely and her hands were shaking.
Down the road, the burning dragon-man returned. And the hulking spike-thing. They were coming back. They must have lost their prey.
“Xan!” Ian tugged.
“I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t run. Just go. Ian. Go.” She pushed weakly.
Ian looked around. They were surrounded. There was nowhere to go even if he wanted to. The ambulance rested on its side, its undercarriage exposed.
Wait a minute . . .
Ian did a double-take.
That was it!
Why didn’t he think of it before? “Get in the back!”
The violet woman got up on one knee. She bared fangs.
Xana scowled. What were these things? Demons?
“Get in the Mast!” Ian repeated. “I have an idea.”
He pulled on Xana’s arm uselessly. The big woman was too heavy.
She pushed herself up, shaking. She clutched her abdomen. It was bleeding again. And her leg had seized. She half-tripped three steps into the back of the ambulance and fell in the sideways doors. Ian slammed them shut and ran to the front as the spike-thing charged.
The burning dragon-man’s chest and neck started glowing. Orangish light traveled up, peeking out from between his ribs.
Ian climbed to the top of the cab. “Aw, come on!” He yelled. “We’re not even with those guys!”
He lifted the door like a hatch and fell inside as a blast of fire rolled over the cab.
Ian propped himself awkwardly against the sideways chair and tapped the computer screen as Xana groaned from the back.
“We won’t last long in here,” Xana panted. “Not against those things.”
As if on cue, a spike pierced the Mast and poked between Ian’s legs. If he had been sitting, he would have been dead. His eyes went wide. He turned. “Hold on to something!”
He looked at the screen: 17% fuel left. It would have to do.
“What?”
“I said hold on for dear life!”
He hit the start sequence.
A noise rumbled from the Mast’s exposed undercarriage. As it grew steadily louder, the dragon-man watched three vents, like the points of a triangle, roll free of their mounts.
“You’re not the only one who can breathe fire, asshole.” Ian hit the ignition.
The jump jets ignited and propelled the marauders backward. Amid the roar of rocket exhaust, two tons launched immediately into the air. The Mast scraped along the asphalt before bouncing up off the police-car barricade in the street. It flew wild, smashing a mailbox and snapping a light post and changing trajectories each time. It flew along the street over cars and people at an altitude of twenty feet.
With the jets on maximum burn, the vehicle covered seven miles in mere seconds, careening through the air just above the straight road and right toward the flashing lights of a railroad crossing.
“SHIT! HOLD ON!”
The oncoming train clipped the ambulance and sent it spiraling into the air. The fuel gave out. The vehicle broke a telephone pole and landed in an open park. It steamrolled a parked car, turned grassy knoll into a shower of dirt, and turned end-over-end across manicured green turf. The digital exterior flickered and failed. The siren lights shattered. The bull bars flew off. The windshield cracked.
The heavy ambulance landed upright with a jolt and rocked back and forth in left field of a Little League game.
Players froze. Parents stood in the stands. It was the bottom of the fifth and the home team was winning 4-2.
Ian looked to Xana. She looked back. Their hearts were pounding.
They started laughing hysterically.
The on-board computer mumbled gibberish and failed completely. The train had smashed one of the headlights and crumbled the hood upward, armor and all. The gasoline engine was cracked and inoperable. Smoke drifted upward from both the front and rear of the vehicle.
Ding. The dashboard emitted a cheery tone, like the chime of a toaster.
Ian looked up and saw the blue button near the ignition click on. The recalibration sequence had completed.
“Oh sure. Now.”
A deep blue glow emanated from under the hood. The Mast limped away on two flat tires amid a hundred blank stares.
Psyphire panted on the floor. Her collarbone was fractured. Her lips were streaming blood and saliva. And she’d have one helluva black eye in the morning.
John walked back to her, breathing hard, as Wisper started chuckling from the corner.
John turned. “What’s so funny?” He hadn’t figured the old man for a threat, not after he had so obviously helped John escape.
Psyphire glowered. “Guess he knows something you don’t.” Her chest heaved in pain with each breath. “Like what’s going to happen to your fr—”
John hit her in the head with the butt of MODUS’s gun and knocked her out.
The gray man in the corner shuffled into the middle of the hall. He was still smiling. Beaming. But his frosted gray eyes didn’t look at John. They danced over the ceiling. “ ‘My team doesn’t need saving,’ ” he parroted. He chuckled again. “Maybe not. Not from the people in this room. But then, they’re hardly your worst enemy.” Wisper motioned to the back door. “You’ll want to come with me then.”
“I don’t think so.” John scanned the room for a radio or transmitter of some kind. “But if you want to leave, be my guest.”
John lifted one of MODUS’s keyboards. Nothing. And he didn’t recognize any of the software. He needed Wink.
He looked at the machine-men. They were idle terminals, waiting for instructions. They didn’t even know how to be individuals anymore.
Wisper shuffled closer. “You want to get word to your friends. It’s very noble. But it won’t do them any good unless you hear what I have to say. If you want to save them, if you want to know the truth about the entity you know as Prophet, then you’ll come with me.”
John stopped his search. “Entity?”
“We both know we can’t stay here, Captain. And you’re going to have difficulty moving your body by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No. You’ll be captured. Again. Unlike your friend Prophet, I actually am clairvoyant. And I’ve wisped your mind, John. You’re a master tactician. And no fool. Your gut is telling you to listen, but you’re skeptical of my talent. And of me. You’re not sure I can really do what I claim, and if I can, then that suggests I got myself captured on purpose.” He paused. “But that would mean I have my own plans and aims and so can’t be trusted.”
John pressed his teeth together. “Don’t you?”
“Let’s just say I presently have a monopoly on the future.” He tapped his bulging forehead with two fingers. “And on the human mind. And I’d like to keep it that way. So yes, I let myself be captured. I know what’s coming, but I didn’t see a future without it. Until recently. A couple months ago, there was a glimmer. The most unlikely glimmer. The last outside chance.
“What did you tell your friend the doctor? ‘Wink imagines things no well-adjusted adult ever would. Not even another genius.’ You’re right, of course. And that’s why you’re the only ones left. The only ones who can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Stop them. They’ve accounted for everything else, everything but the unaccountable wonder of a child, the tiny remainder variable in their grand equation. But you’re not ready. There is an even bigger enemy you have to face first, one I’m not sure even your formidable skills can overcome.”
John waited for an explanation.
“Yourselves.” Wisper smiled. “So . . . Here I am. Out of hiding. Come to give you a push. Isn’t that the word you used with Mr. Gonzales? Push?
“But, alas, even after my revelation, you and your team were only a glimmer, a dream. I didn’t even know your names, let alone what you looked like or where to find you. And I didn’t have the skills to track you down. The world is a very big place after all. And I’m no hunter.” He motioned to Psyphire. “But she is. Relentless, that one. And just as cunning as you. You should probably kill her. You may not get another chance.” Wisper waited.
John looked at the unconscious woman on the floor. “No, thanks.” He checked the clip to MODUS’s weapon, reloaded, and cocked it.
Wisper shrugged. “As you wish. But then we’d better be going.”
“Go right ahead.” John nodded to the door as he leveled the gun at the old man nonchalantly. He wasn’t taking any chances. Not after that display.
Wisper bent over. He clutched his head. He clawed at it. His breath increased. He let out a yell.
John heard a heavy slump behind him. He spun around. One half of MODUS had woken and gone for the last semiautomatic rifle. Wisper had done something to him. He was breathing. His eyes were open under his goggles. But there didn’t seem to be anyone home.
John squinted at the man. “What did you do?”
Wisper coughed. He stood straight and tried to compose himself. He was still breathing hard. “A moment please,” he panted. “That is quite difficult.”
With one eye on MODUS’s other half, John strode to his own unconscious body and made sure his chair still worked. “This is how it’s gonna be, old man. You have exactly as long as it takes to get out of this building. I don’t know why you helped me, and frankly, at the moment I don’t really care.”
“Yes, yes. Your friends.” Wisper smirked. “It’s admirable. But you’re going to come with me all the same. And you’re going to listen attentively to everything I have to say.”
John ignored the gray man and checked his body for damage. The cushion on the chair was burned, but everything else was good. Or as good as ever, anyway.
“I told you, Captain, I wisped your mind. It’s easier, actually, when you’re outside your own head. Exposed. I experienced you almost fully. In an instant. I just might know more about John Regent now than anyone else on the planet. That’s how I know you’re not going to shoot me. Or whatever it is you intended to imply by cocking your weapon. A man who would put a bullet in his only friend’s brain—the husband of the woman he loved, no less—in order to save the lives of people he’d never met, that man has—What did Agent Burke call it? A highly developed moral aptitude.”
John watched the old man shuffle closer, blind eyes dancing over the ceiling.
“That was a long time ago.”
“You never told Kathleen how you felt about her. Why?”
John blinked several times. If he had been in his own body, he knew, his eyes might have welled. But he was in control when he hitched. Of everything. “Something tells me you already know the answer to that.”
The sightless man smiled broadly. “Because you refused to be a burden on their marriage. Or create any trouble for your unit, of which your friend was a part.” Wisper stepped closer. “But you and Danny went through hell together. He quite literally saved your life, pushed you out of the way of that bullet on the roof. What you didn’t know then was that while you were lying there nursing a wound to your arm instead of a fatal shot to your heart, Danny killed the fleeing scientist and took the bioweapon in the briefcase. Then reported it missing and the mission a failure.
“That’s when you had your first suspicions. About your best and only friend, your true love’s true love. You pride yourself on being a good judge of character. You knew that that scientist was—what did you call him? Squirrelly? He was terrified. You saw it. He wouldn’t have shot at you unless he had reason to be afraid. He had the weapon. There was no question. So where did it go?
“Your orders were to track it down. No matter what. And you did. Danny was going to sell it. On the black market. In Suriname. And retire from the life you both had built. His oldest was racking up the medical bills. Autism, respiratory disorders, self-harm. And then there was the marital therapy. Expensive. Warned you never to get married, didn’t he?
“He saw a way out. A way to save his family. So he took it. It wasn’t the first time either of you had done something . . . shall we say, morally ambiguous. Only this ambiguous act didn’t have the tacit approval of your government, which meant the only people he could sell the bioweapon to wouldn’t be too particular about how they used it.
“But Danny knew you. There were no secrets there. He knew you were on to him. So he tried to cover his tracks. Even killed an innocent man. And when you found him in the jungle, you fought, and he tried to kill you as well. But he couldn’t. Not you. Not John Regent, living weapon.
“You knew what a court martial meant. Treason. Prison. Disgrace. Not just for him, but for Kathleen and the kids as well. She wouldn’t just lose her husband, or his good memory, or all her friends. The boys wouldn’t just grow up being told their father was a traitor. They’d lose their financial support, their insurance, Danny’s pension. So you gave your only friend the honorable way out.” Wisper tapped the space between his own frosted eyes. “Right here. You shot him and recovered the bioweapon, as you were ordered, and so saved countless lives.
“But you destroyed any evidence of Danny’s involvement. Despite your commander’s suspicions, the official Army story was that Danny died on a covert mission in-country, serving his country, and so Kathleen and her children got to keep the cherished memory of their fallen hero. And they got medical care. And a check in the mail every month.”
Wisper’s voice was soft now. “Tell me, Captain. Did I miss anything?”
John clipped his gun to the soldier’s belt. He looked at the old man’s frosted, dancing eyes. “No.” What did he see that no one else could?
Wisper turned and hobbled back toward the back door. “As I said, we can’t stay here. Others will come before long.”
John watched him walk.
“Your neighbors here are quite the shady characters. I’ve wisped the location of an unused safe house on the other side of town. There’s money there. You can tend to your body and repair your chair while you listen to what I have to say. Starting with the truth of your team’s origin. Things are worse even than you imagine.”
He stopped and turned. “I only hope it’s not too late.”