John heard a voice.
“Hello there, my traveling friend.”
Female. Russian accent.
He opened his eyes. He wasn’t restrained, but the joystick that controlled his chair was on the floor. He was restricted to arm power. He was still in the garage. His swords were out of reach, on the floor under the old pickup. Two soldiers in front. Beyond them to the right, a freakish pair of men with a bundle of heavy wires connecting the backs of their heads, sitting before a freshly-assembled computer array. And then there was the redhead. The tips of her short auburn hair were blue. She was wearing some kind of flame-retardant military-style jumpsuit. And too much makeup. She had something on her forehead. They all did, in fact—a coin-sized device with a tiny green light.
“Ah, yes. Our little toy. We use these to prevent quantum entanglement. After your antics in New York, we were able to piece a few things together. Do you recognize these men?” She pointed to the two standing guard a good twenty feet from him.
Both had side arms. The only other weapons at the ready were a pair of snub semi-automatic rifles on the tables near the conjoined men. John’s swords had been tossed under the truck. The redhead was unarmed.
This would be tough.
He grimaced. The blow to his head hadn’t caused him any more pain than he was used to, but he didn’t want them to know that. He’d never win an Oscar, but he could play a convincing helpless paraplegic.
He shook his head in the negative, but that was a lie.
“You should have killed them. At the building fire.”
“Some kids almost died.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was halfway around the world at the time, tracking down my friend here.” She motioned to an old man in the corner.
John had missed him. But then he was hanging back pretty good.
Frosted eyes. Probably blind. Not a threat.
But then there was something odd. John glanced again. He didn’t have a device on his forehead, but John couldn’t feel his mind. There was nothing to grab onto. It was like the man’s mind wasn’t there.
John had never experienced that before.
The redhead continued. “But you let these men live, and so we were able to piece together your special secret. You can inhabit other people’s minds.” She tapped the round device on her forehead. “So this time we brought a special precaution. We use these to make sure no one group in our organization can entangle the other, get too much power.”
“What do you want?”
“The man called Prophet.”
“You and me both.”
The redhead looked to the blind man in the corner. He shook his head. Her face let loose the slightest admission of frustration.
The conjoined pair stood up from their workstation—the same table Wink had been using—and began to assemble a freestanding projector screen.
“You have a name?” John asked.
The redhead smiled. “No. I have an Asset Code. Psyphire. This is MODUS. And Wisper. And the two men behind me are—”
“Jackson and Shane.”
Psyphire seemed impressed.
“I can read a name tag.”
“Your previous caretakers were very thorough.” She motioned to his burns.
“You have no idea.” John reached with his right hand and pressed his fingers to the far corner of his left eye. The skin was lighter there, and smooth with crisscrossing ridges. Burns. Just like that whole side of his face. A fold hung over the far corner of his left eye, and it would often itch, or twitch with a tingling, scratchy pain. He rubbed it.
“What did he promise you? The man Prophet.” Psyphire looked at John’s atrophied legs. “A chance to walk again?”
John didn’t answer.
“How touching. It’s a lie, you know. There is nothing that can repair so much damage. You should get yourself fitted for a robotic walking cradle.”
“Not the same. Can’t run.”
“But what am I saying? How silly of me. A man with your abilities can take any body he chooses.”
“Not that simple.”
“Ohhh . . .” Psyphire nodded in mock epiphany. “I see. You don’t want to take what isn’t yours.”
“Something like that.”
“Very noble.” She ran a finger over the bumps and burns of John’s face. “Has anyone told you you have a beautiful face?”
“Not lately.”
“It is, you know. Your skin. Such a lovely, lovely burn. Gasoline?”
John locked eyes with the woman.
“I can tell by the scarring. It’s the pattern. I know all about burns, you see.”
“Is that so?” John lowered his voice.
Psyphire bent over and retrieved a colorful slip of paper, the coupon from the top of a pizza box, and held it up. She shut her eyes and concentrated.
It caught fire—first a blue flame that seemed to do no damage. Then it turned orange and the paper started to blacken and curl. She held it for a moment and watched. Then she let it fall and burn out.
John’s eyes narrowed. Fuck. Shit just kept getting harder.
“It started when I was a little girl. At first I wasn’t very good at it. But there were people to show me how. I wasn’t the first, you see. My grandfather had it, in fact. From what I understand, he was considerably more powerful than anyone. I can only set alight what is already flammable. But I’m told he could set anything on fire.” Her eyes flashed. “That of course made him very valuable to the Soviets, who had dreams of building a great psychic army. And that was his undoing. He died. In a gulag in Siberia.”
“Is that why you’re here? Working for these people? Looking to burn the political order that killed dear old Grandpa?”
Psyphire laughed. “Don’t be stupid. I never even knew the man. Besides, he was a fool. He thought he was tough. He thought growing up starving on the streets, running with the criminals in Leningrad had made him unbreakable. He thought he could withstand the pain and the torture.
“My organization doesn’t like such things. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary, usually with stupid men—little broken boys who think they have already survived all the pain the world can give. Like my grandfather.
“But smart people know the truth. There is only so much pain anyone can take. And everyone has a breaking point.
“So which one are you, my traveling friend? Smart? Or stupid?”
John didn’t answer.
Psyphire stood back and pointed to the screen. It switched on. There was a tactical plot. “Do you recognize these shapes in the center?” She could tell from his face that he did. She smiled. “Good.”
On the screen were human shapes in a thermograph, one next to the other. One was huge. One had half an arm.
Ian and Xan.
They were in an apartment of some kind. They were surrounded by three dots. John read the labels. Someone called Scarab coming from one side. Someone called Malady from the other. Farther away, in another building maybe, someone labeled Barricade was standing still. Maybe a sniper.
The timer at the bottom was counting down from forty seconds.
“Your friends should have chosen a less conspicuous hideout. I’d say it was bad luck, but then that’s why my organization goes to such efforts to have eyeballs everywhere.” She walked closer to John and pulled the picture he found under the fridge from a pocket on her chest. “And of course, it helps to know what you’re looking for.”
She held it in front of his eyes. There they were. Ian and Xana arguing over a stack of pizza boxes.
He glanced at the timer on the screen. Their enemies were converging. Surprise attack. Xana just about useless.
Seconds. It would be over in seconds.
“Well?” Psyphire asked.
A mattress fell. Everyone turned.
The old man was bent over near the stack in the corner.
“Sorry.” He stood straight holding a cat in one hand. “I heard a noise. But it was just—” He rubbed his thumb over the animal’s tag. “Roger.” He rubbed the animal’s head. “Good boy.”
“It’s a girl.” John was flat.
The old man looked down with frosted eyes. “Strange name for a female.” He stood between the silent soldiers stroking the cat’s back as it purred.
“You’re running out of time.”
John looked at the satellite feed on the big screen. Malady and Scarab were about to breach. The thermal scan showed the pair inside had barely moved. Ian and Xana were completely unaware of the danger. They were relaxing. Exposed.
And they had seconds. Mere seconds.
Psyphire raised her voice. “Tell us where to find the Prophet or they will die. Right now. Tell me and I’ll stop it.”
“Well, shit.” John lowered his head. He took a deep breath and let it out, like he was preparing for guided meditation. “You did a class-A job here. No messy torture or idle threats. Just took away all my options. And not even any time to come up with a plan.”
The firestarter looked at the countdown. Eight seconds and ticking fast. She stepped closer. “This is your last chance. Speak now and you can still save your team.”
John looked at the screen. Then he lifted his eyes to his captor’s. “You only missed one thing.”
Alarms sounded as the dots breached the house. The attack had begun.
John leaned closer. “My team doesn’t need saving.”
Ian felt like a million bucks. He’d had multiple hot showers and a good night’s sleep and even got a new hoodie—dark gray with a blue tiger that stretched across the zipper in the front.
He set his utility belt near the door with the last of the groceries and turned to Xana. “Almost ready?”
She walked in from the kitchen holding a pizza sandwich—two slices facing each other with a third in between. She took a giant bite. That was a good sign. She had her appetite back.
Ian’s nose curled. “Does—” He looked around the room. “Does it smell like it’s about to snow in here?”
Xana looked confused. “Wadoo mean?” she asked with her mouth full.
“You know, like how it smells outside right before it’s about to snow? Like that cold, crisp smell?”
She swallowed. “It never snows in Guyana.”
“So you don’t smell anything?”
Xana sniffed the air. She went to take another bite but stopped. She stiffened and pointed to the frost forming above the door in the foyer. “I don’t think that’s right.”
Ian could see her breath. His scalp tingled. Something was about to happen. Something bad. He could feel it.
His phone dinged with an incoming text message.
SNIPER!
“Shit!” Ian charged three steps, turned his shoulder, and knocked his unsuspecting friend over the back of the couch as the walls erupted in glass and a shower of sparks.
Something long and thin and white-hot tore at an angle through the room. It flashed across the open space where the pair had been standing and burst through the kitchen ceiling without stopping. Sparks and glass and plaster flew.
Ian rolled off his friend as his phone, now on the floor, lit with messages.
TAKE OUT RAILGUN FIRST
Railgun? “Aw, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!”
THEN GET XAN TO SAFETY
“No shit, asshole.” Apparently Prophet hadn’t abandoned them after all.
The front door began to dissolve. A splatter of tiny holes grew larger as the frost moved down the wall to the floor. Xana shivered.
Bullets erupted from the window.
“SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” Ian ducked and made for Xana’s bedroom.
A stout, hulking woman with charcoal bandages over her skin raked the door with dark metal fingernails, like claws, and the wood splintered.
Xana kicked the couch as glass and rifle-shot ricocheted around her. Cushions flew as the bulky furniture smashed completely through the foyer walls, passed into the hall, and lodged itself in a neighboring unit. The clawed woman had to dodge.
Xana turned to follow Ian, stopping for a moment to rip the oven from the wall and launch it one-handed behind her. It turned through the air, smashed through the far wall of the living room, and landed on the bed Ian had slept in. She ran for her bathroom, but tripped when a bullet hit her thigh.
“AH!”
Ian lay in the tile as bullets broke the bedroom glass between him and Xana, who was belly-down and half-protected by the frame of the bedroom door.
Whoever was in the hall was smashing their way through the debris she had left in her wake. Ian felt a wave of heat and the sprinkler system drenched them in water.
The intruders would be on them in seconds.
Xana looked at him as the water matted her wild hair into limp, dark strands. Ian knew that face. Clenched jaw. Fingers already curling into fists.
Xana was in mother-bear mode.
“Get the shooter,” she growled. “I’ll hold them.”
Ian looked through the broken windows. The sniper was across the street on the roof of a fifteen-story gargoyle-covered building, one block over.
Xana had kicked his utility belt into the next apartment. Ian took a deep breath. He’d have to go au natural.
But it was a loooooong way down.
He sprang forward and jumped. He saw the distant street. He fell. He had no footing. No balance. Wind whipped around him. He had images of cracking his skull on the pavement.
This was either really stupid or really smart.
Ian felt the electric surge of natural adrenaline. He planted his Converse on the side of the building and sped down the side of the glass-and-steel condo building at twice the speed of sound. With the world frozen around him, he zigzagged around the cars in the street and the pedestrians pointing up in fear and ran straight up the side of the shooter’s stone-faced tower.
There was some kind of cyborg on the roof. He had no face, just an angled metal faceplate, scuffed and gouged at the tip. He wore a bandolier filled with rounded grenades. He was taking aim with a long, strobing rifle attached to his shoulder. On the ledge next to him was a conventional rifle with a grenade launcher slung under the barrel.
Ian sped up and knocked the railgun to the sky as the cyborg fired another shot. The shell flew straight up and pierced two opposing supports of a narrow, cross-hatched cell tower on the roof of a nearby building. The tower groaned and bent. The remaining supports snapped and the whole thing fell, scraping concrete and glass on its way down.
After hearing the gunfire, the pedestrians were all taking cover. Drivers were abandoning their cars. All except a family cowering together inside an idling SUV. They had pulled to the side of the road and were directly under the falling tower. And with the vehicle’s roof over their heads, they had no way of seeing they were about to be crushed.
The commercial stainless steel refrigerator from the condo—frosted and frozen solid—broke through the side of the building and struck the falling tower with such force that it disintegrated and rained salad and condiments on the street.
But it moved the falling tower several meters backward, avoiding the SUV. As it hit the ground, it nearly pancaked an approaching police car.
As he finished his run, Ian knew he had to clear an exit for Xan. He rolled across the tar-covered roof with his heart pounding in his ears, breathing hard, as the tower hit the ground and barricaded the street. His legs were Jell-O. The cyborg spun around and drew a semi-automatic from under his hooded cloak and sprayed Ian with bullets.
But they passed through as he held his breath.
The cyborg emptied the clip and threw the weapon down. He popped the pin on a canister-shaped grenade. “Can’t hold your breath forever. Not after a run like that.”
He was right. Ian’s heart and lungs were screaming.
He drew breath. The cyborg tossed the grenade.
Ian saw it coming and in one fraction of a second squinted and turned away, raising his severed arm out of sheer reflex, as if deflecting an incoming basketball. As soon as he did it, he knew it was stupid. But it was too late.
At the height of its path, the grenade bounced off thin air and rolled across the ground back to the cyborg, who stared down in shock.
“Shit.”
It exploded and knocked the metal-covered man over the left side of the building and through a billboard on the adjoining roof, several floors below.
Ian felt the concussion wave hit him like a shove in the chest. He rolled. When the bits of debris stopped falling, he heard nothing but ringing in his ears.
He looked down at Stubs.
He had felt the grenade. In the air. He had felt the cool metal bounce off a hand that wasn’t there, and he felt it a good four meters from his body.
It was a phantom hand. An extendable phantom hand. His severed nerves still registered the phantom limb, so the Oric did what it always did—it interpreted his nervous system literally. It gave him a true phantom arm, a ghost appendage of invisible force. And it had just saved his life.
Ian raised Stubs triumphantly into the air. “Fuck, yeah!”
Xana landed on the roof and left a crater. With the shooter down, she was free to jump, and her powerful legs had propelled her across the street. But with a bullet in her leg, she collapsed on impact and let out a shriek. She doubled over, clutching her abdomen.
“Xan!” Ian jumped to his feet and ran to her. “Jesus, are you okay?”
“I keep asking you not to curse like that around me,” she panted.
“Can you make it to the Mast?” It was covered in a tarp and parked in an adjacent garage.
She nodded. But she didn’t seem very certain.
Ian heard a noise. He trotted to the edge of the building. “Shit!”
The cyborg on the next roof had lifted the billboard off himself and produced an angled metal grappling hook. He clicked a button and the blades extended like the arms of a tiny umbrella. He pressed the opposite end into the rifle on the wall and fired it across the street. It trailed a thin, braided steel wire and impacted above the hole Xana had left. The metal man used his legs to brace as the pair from the condo attached hooks and slid down effortlessly.
“Fuuuuck . . .” Ian breathed as he watched. He couldn’t believe it. “These guys are good.”
Barricade leapt across the four-foot gaps between buildings and grabbed the bars of the fire escape. He followed Scarab up as Malady used her acid-claws to scamper right up the side. The trio stopped when they got to the roof. No sign of their quarry.
“Damn,” Barricade cursed under his breath. “These fuckers are good.”
“The ambulance,” Scarab reminded him.
He nodded. He switched his internal sensors to detect the radiation signal from the blackout in New York. He scanned the skyline of the city.
“Got ’em.” He pointed at an angle. “Parking garage. Two buildings over. Fourth floor.”
Ian strapped himself into the driver’s seat. He reached for the ignition and noticed the dark blue button on the dash next to it.
The plutonium engine! Exactly the kind of power they needed.
He hit the button. But it wasn’t lit. He pressed it three times fast. Nothing.
He started tapping on the computer screen in the center console and the computer asked if Ian would like to initialize the plutonium engine.
“Yes!”
A yellow and black hazard sign appeared on the screen “Warning. Containment misaligned. Recalibrating.”
A progress bar appeared.
“Aw, come on!”
He turned the key and started the gasoline engine. He backed up and put the vehicle in drive. He turned back to make sure Xana was strapped down.
Her eyes went wide. “Look out!”
Ian turned back. The trio of attackers were in the driveway in front of him, walking past the parked cars. He reached to put the truck in reverse.
He stopped. Then they’d be trapped on the roof. Forward was the only way out for the big truck. Besides, the ambulance was armored.
And armed.
Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the hood and windshield, striking concrete and nearby cars as Ian tapped the computer screen and found the missiles.
The screen flashed red and displayed a moving instructional diagram.
LOAD MISSILE
LOAD MISSILE
“Shit.” He hit the steering wheel with his palm.
Apparently Wink hadn’t had time to buy any more black market Chinese military surplus.
Fine. Then he’d ram them with the bull bars. He slammed on the gas and the tires squealed as the truck moved forward faster and faster.
The woman in bandages ran straight at them. She spat a cloud of green mist into the air before diving out of the way. Behind her, the cyborg raised the conventional rifle and launched a grenade. It hit the acid-exposed grill, bounced once under the front of the Mast, and exploded, lifting the front of the vehicle as its forward momentum carried it sideways into the air.
The heavy armored truck crashed through the retaining wall, rolled in open air, and crashed to the street, landing hard to its side. The noise echoed off the buildings as Ian hit his head on the steering wheel.
“Ow!”
The vehicle shuddered menacingly.
The engine was dead. Smoke drifted. Not that it mattered. The wheels weren’t even on the road.
“Shitshitshit.” Ian pounded the steering wheel over and over as Xana groaned in the back.
Something landed on the vehicle’s side, which was now the top. It moved over them. After a moment, frost began to creep over the windshield.
Everything got very cold, very quickly. Xana started shivering.
The computer went down. It displayed a fault screen and then a scrolling percent as it rebooted.
Ian dropped his head against the wheel. “Gives new meaning to ‘blue screen of death,’” he muttered.
Xana clutched her abdomen as she lay on the cabinets mounted on the wall above the gurney. They were now the floor.
Ian turned back to the frost that covered the last bit of open glass on the windshield. “We can’t stay here. We’ll freeze.”
“That’s what they w-want.” Xana shook her head. “Y-you can’t f-fight three of them.” Her billowing breath turned white in the frigid air and her shivering turned to shaking. She looked at her friend, terrified.
Ian started shivering as well. “Your heart . . . Wink said it runs on body heat.” He looked down and made a split-second decision. “I have to go,” he mumbled to himself.
Right now.
Ian unlocked his sideways door, unstrapped himself, and climbed up onto the vehicle’s side. He stood half on the fender and half on the wheel.
A woman in a mask had her hands on the bumper. Her irises shone blue-white. She stood straight and pulled a pair of metal pins from her dreadlocked hair. She joined her comrades in a line on the street.
Ian climbed off the wheel and fell on his ass. He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Anybody need a lift?”
The cyborg gave a metallic snort. “You’re brave, kid,” he said in a computerized voice. “I’ll give you that.” He cocked the rifle.
Acid dripped.
Cold air blew.
Ian had absolutely zero plan.