He picked up the paintball gun from the table and shot it in the direction of the dart, which appeared to Miller to be floating in midair. Unfortunately, it was no longer in the imp’s back. The creature had reached behind itself and tugged the thing out, and it was now holding the tracker in front of it, staring at it curiously. The first two paintballs sailed between the imp’s face and the tracking device, causing the creature to screech and drop it to the ground.
Assuming the imp had fallen, Miller aimed the next two paintballs at the tracker on the floor, the first round hitting just in front of it, and the second landing just to its right, both of them exploding to shower the floor with neon paint—first yellow and then pink, as it happened.
Glancing back and forth between Miller and the tracker, the imp picked up the device and held it out in front of itself at about chest height, watching as Miller fired another two rounds at the tracker and then dancing about gleefully. It launched into an impressive series of acrobatics, holding the dart away from itself all the while, letting Miller try to hit the device as it bobbed and weaved through the air, the staff sergeant obviously getting more frustrated by the moment.
“It’s just holding the tracker in its hand, Miller,” Mackenzie called out—giggling, to be sure, but trying nonetheless to be helpful.
“I figured,” he growled back.
“It’s to the left… no, right… no, left…”
But the imp was too quick for her directions, and the observation room finally dissolved into laughter as it started tossing the tracker into the air, throwing and catching it twice until Miller finally shot it away, failing to hit the imp entirely but at least ruining its game by sending the tracker spinning into the window, where it hit and fell to the ground.
“ICIC Experiment 6B, attempting rubber rounds,” Miller growled, returning the paintball gun to the table and pulling a pistol out of a holster he wore on his right leg. “Tell me when it’s going for the tracker.”
“Now!” Mackenzie shouted.
Miller took aim in the general direction of the dart and sprayed a barrage of rubber bullets from left to right at about calf level. The imp let out an enraged scream that dissolved into an angry sort of chattering, waving a fist in Miller’s direction and then running away into the far corner below the window.
“What’s it doing?” Sketch wanted to know, the imp having moved out of view by ducking against the wall of the observation room.
“How the hell should I know?” Miller answered testily. “I hit it, though. I can see one in… damn.”
“What?” Mackenzie asked.
“The round disappeared.”
“It must have absorbed it, like the paint,” Kaitlyn suggested.
“So the bad things eat bullets for breakfast,” Sam commented. “Outstanding.”
“That wasn’t a bullet,” Miller interjected. “ICIC Experiment 6C, live ammo exercise. Repeat, this is a live ammo exercise.”
“Tell me this is bullet-proof glass,” Mackenzie said to Ammu.
“Affirmative,” Miller replied, not realizing she wasn’t talking to him.
“It is,” Ammu confirmed. “And the walls and ceiling have been constructed to firing range backstop specifications, designed to trap bullets without ricochet, for Staff Sergeant Miller’s safety as well as our own.”
Miller walked over to the abandoned tracking device, picking it up in his hand and turning his back to the observation window, tossing the device across the room so that it slid into the far wall.
“Tell me when it goes for it,” Miller said, removing the clip from his gun, making sure the chamber was empty, and then replacing the clip with a fresh one from a different pocket.
“Roger that,” Mackenzie acknowledged.
Miller took aim at the tracking device and waited. The imp, seeing that Miller wasn’t paying it any direct attention, started sneaking toward him along the observation room wall, but Sketch caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, having pressed his face right up to the glass, trying to see what it was up to.
“It’s under the window! Coming toward your right leg!” he shouted.
Miller whipped to his right and fired rapidly along the floor, starting near his own leg and swinging his arms up, sending a steady stream of bullets in a tight, controlled pattern along the floor and then up the wall, again stopping at about calf level, but as soon as Miller had begin to fire, the imp had scampered away across the room, moving back toward the far wall.
“Where is it?” Miller asked, his words clipped and urgent.
“Across from the window,” Sam said. “You missed, by the way.”
“Where, exactly, across from the window?” Miller wanted to know, switching out the clip on his pistol and then pulling something large and tubular out of the calf pocket on his left leg.
“All the way back at the wall,” Mackenzie answered him. “At your one o’clock.”
“Roger that.” Miller tossed whatever it was in that direction, aiming it to hit the floor in front of the position Mackenzie had indicated. On impact, a wave of green paint exploded toward the imp, hitting it full on.
“Paint grenade!” Sketch shouted happily, but before the words were even out of his mouth, Miller unleashed another barrage of bullets toward the small creature.
“No!” Sketch yelled, but the imp had already dropped to the floor, squishing itself impossibly thin, absorbing the paint, and slithering away beneath Miller’s gunfire.
Apparently deciding that things were getting a bit too serious, the imp chattered at Miller angrily again—this time waving both fists in the air and puffing its little chest out belligerently—and then ran across the floor to leap gracefully back into the portal, looking none the worse for wear over their encounter.
48
Bad, Bad Things
“The news is boring,” Sketch complained. He was sitting on the couch between Mackenzie and Sam, with Daniel and Kaitlyn on the floor in front of them, the coffee table having been moved behind the couch entirely.
“Just for a while, OK?” Mackenzie answered him. “I want to see… just for a while, I promise.”
Mackenzie hadn’t been able to talk to her father since she had arrived at the lodge. She had spoken with her mother after his weekly Skype call home, so at least she had gotten an update, but it wasn’t the same. She wished she could hear his voice, telling her some crazy story about how many potatoes he had peeled that day or about going on rat patrol, as if his job were really that mundane. Her time at the ICIC was bringing home to her just how not true that was.
So far, the news segments had been relatively low key—a minor flood in Louisiana and some bill proposal in the Senate—and Mackenzie was relieved not to find what she was looking for. It didn’t mean her father was safe, but knowing there wasn’t any news out of Afghanistan made her feel better all the same.
“I don’t like summoning bad things,” Sketch said, looking down at his art pad. He knew the imp was technically bad, but it had made him laugh, and everyone else had seen it too—so he had decided to put it in the light book instead of the dark one. In his drawing, the imp was tossing the tracking device high into the air, and Staff Sergeant Miller was shooting at the tracker, well over the imp’s head, while it danced with glee.
“I didn’t think it was so bad,” Kaitlyn said.