19
Gus shoved down the luxury of his emotions. He knew, even as he waited and tried not to breathe, that if he gave into them distraction might kill him. There was nothing to fight for; there was no lovely sweet daughter; there was no past or future, or fear. Only choking dust swirling around the room, only the knowledge that safety was a clock counting back to zero.
On Odin's instruction Gus had hid in one of the rooms, one of the eight housing rooms in the complex—one of the three that neither the Kingstons, brothers, or refugees had ever used. It was dark, he imagined, completely, but the contacts that Odin had given to him made everything clear as day. A decrepit bunk frame, devoid of mattress, crouched in the other end opposite him. A massive skeleton. There was nothing else.
No plan. A fact which Gus hated. There was no plan. Only the anarchy of action and reaction. They were in reaction, on the defense. How They attacked would decide their course. Gus awaited his instructions, trying to think as little as possible.
As Gaspode and Gene entered the complex, the reaction was instantaneous. Sprinklers. Gene had been expecting a violent onslaught of some sort, not something so trite. Water poured down over them, over the entire complex around them, but . . . it wasn’t quite water. Gene caught a nebulous smell of something else, something sweet, a little like sugar candy, and glanced over to Gaspode. The little man frowned for a second; his face wrinkled madly, then relaxed, placid again. He looked back at Gene and tapped his nose with his forefinger.
No nose.
Gene tried to verify this via the skullcom but found their wires crossed, communications jammed. He tapped his temple and Sniffer nodded, he already knew.
Guns loaded and at the ready, they pushed into the belly of the beast.
Hurn was once again the father of two murdered children, a beast slouching toward Bethlehem, machine organs and flesh and blood, self-generating and sustained stormcloud of fury. A lucid berserker. The water droplets falling from the ceiling soaked his clothes and he remained stationary with eyes closed exploring the security countermeasures of the wizard's lair. He sent out a wireless virus, a dummy, digital crash tester, meant to judge the strength of the Old Man's security. He was only a little surprised when nothing happened; his inner vision noted the presence of high technology in several rooms within the place—the Old Man, apparently, was no fool.
He shot a communiqué to Gaspode and Gene, and waited but received no response. Wireless indicated their presence sweeping the first hallway, and, what's this, another something very similar to them, high tech, but not the same, a blip on the map. He witnessed it only for a moment, then it was gone, vanished, a hint or a trap? A trap, a trap. That meant he was being invaded, a niggling feeling only, he looked at his code for flaws in the architecture and saw one small decay, so minuscule, he almost missed it. He quickly searched his software, determining the point where the entropy began, crushed it with his antivirus and set another application to repair.
He traced the source of the flaw and found it emanating from a room just down the hallway, to the right. Opening his eyes, all defenses and ports on high alert, he strode forward, toward its source.
Gene was constantly checking his wiring. The memories of last time, of his mate's death and of the feeling of losing it, of barely holding onto his freewill, is something had stayed with him. Checking and re-checking. First on their left, through the hallway, was a set of precarious stairs looking upward. Their orders were to sweep the place with extreme caution, while their commander hunted in the shadows. If everything went according to plan, they would not set eyes on the Old Man until Hurn had disabled him.
They went up the stairs, footsteps artificially muffled on the steel grates, and Gene pushed his way in silently. His augmented eyes sought out heat signatures but only found a cold blue permeating the room.
Far back to the left, a single row of monitors shown like a uniform cityscape. Gene examined each of them in turn while Gaspode stood opposite, gun trained viciously on the door leading back to the stairs. He did not recognize any of the places in the monitors but took pictures and saved them in his internal memory for analysis later. He looked at Gaspode. The man's eyebrows furrowed in a visage of complete focus. Nodding at one another. Nothing here. They retreated to the stairs and continued their sweep.
They entered the corridor again and looked left. Still dripping with fluid, the place was obviously prepared for such an invasion as theirs. They saw two thirds of the way down the hall their was another flight of stairs heading into what looked like the living quarters. A nightmare to sweep, he thought. Along the corridor twelve doors, all ajar, faced each other six against six. He blinked on his infra-red and saw the first eleven blue as an icebox, but through one doorway, the last on the left, shone a faint orangish eminence, signifying life.
He turned to Gaspode, motioned silently and nodded. They couldn't call the Colonel, still no skullcoms, the only thing to do was go on alone.
Guns at the ready, they made a slow careful march to the door.
Gus waited, straining his ears for any sound, still as a statue in the corner of the room, when Odin’s green text scrolled across his vision.
>>>Two have found you. Don't move, wait for signal, then attack. Knock them out. Hit hard. Don’t kill.
He breathed quietly and closed his eyes and lay in wait.
Gaspode passed the fourth pair of doors when he realized something was wrong. A small fraction of his sense of smell had returned and behind them, not far, something metallic and stale had waited for them to pass. He could smell it.
"Gene," he whispered, and whirled around, gun up and ready to fire.
The image was forever scarred into his mind. Atop the short stair, between the first pair of doors, Odin stood motionless, eyes focused in an engrossed concentration. Gaspode tried to fire, but found his hands paralyzed, tried to turn to Gene, but found his head fixed. He tried to scream but found his vocal chords taut and useless. There was nothing he could do to save himself. The Old Man had breached his firewall. He could only stare at the man who'd taken control of his body. Odin did not move, his faded brown boots fixed, his torn jacket hanging raggedly. His fingers twitched slightly within his cracking leather gloves, face completely expressionless beneath his matted grey beard. His eyes were so cold and calculating, machine-like in their apathy. Gaspode could not believe he was human.
Three figures in a dark hallway, none moving. Gaspode knew without seeing that Gene was behind him, locked in the same bodily prison. Finally, Odin turned his back and walked down the stairs.
Gus rushed from the room and, with two gargantuan blows, sent Gaspode and Gene into limp, black unconsciousness.
He paused to pick up their guns and quietly followed Odin down the stairs.
Hurn made his way under cover of thermal camouflage upstairs into the room where he expected to find the Old Man. The door opened with a solemn creak and revealed a bright interior full of screens, hard metal surfaces and different interfaces. It was empty of movement. Suddenly wary of a trap, he backed away from the entrance. The Old Man had clearly been ready for them, and Hurn felt little need to search the room before the other was safely under lock and key. As he backtracked down the stairs he heard the wet thud of a body hitting the ground, and again, that of a smaller, lighter weight. He checked his wireless. Gene and Gaspode’s systems were down.
He raced down the stairs and toward the sound with the incredible speed afforded by supplemented muscles and tendons. Logic had told him they would fall first. Very expensive bait, to be sure, and not to be wasted.
He rounded the corner in time to catch sight of the big Pollock on the opposite end of the hall. The other's eyes widened in fear as he saw Hurn and he fled. Just turning the corner before Hurn could take a shot. Hurn followed and reached the other end of the corridor as the big man reached the downstairs mess hall.
"He's here!" Gus's voice trumpeted. It seemed loud enough to shake the ground above their heads.
The pursuer did not wait for the Old Man's arrival. He was downstairs in a flash, into the room, and leapt onto the big man. A river of electricity drained Gus of his strength. He sunk to his knees trying in desperation to quell his own pain but only succeeded in muttering to himself, "Please not my daugh . . ."
Hurn shot him once, in the head, and all of the big man's weight fell ponderously to the floor.
All within the mess was silent after the struggle until Odin arrived. A raven perched on his right shoulder.
"You've done it now haven't you, Colonel." Odin's icy voice said softly. "You've become your own monster, the maker of a fatherless child, and the destroyer of innocent lives. Protector turned angel of death. When will it end? When will you realize your own folly?"
Hurn saw the Old Man in the doorway to his right. An ebony machine raven perched on his shoulder. He straightened.
"A fine pronouncement for an outlaw and a terrorist. Submit, open your firewall to me or die like him."
Odin was silent.
Hurn shot a probe deep into the Old Man's leg, injecting a virus into him, one designed especially to disrupt a cyborgs communications with his own body. Odin's face remained placid. There was no blood.
"Next time we meet, perhaps you will be victor. Today you are ill equipped to deal with me."
Odin took a step backwards through the door. As the raven dove from his shoulder into the air, the door slid shut behind it, and Hurn realized his mistake. With a fluidity that saved his life he shot the bird to the floor and threw himself up the stairs, just before the bird morphed into a crystalline ball and let loose a tremendous explosion that tore through the mess.
Hurn stood up, knowing that Odin was gone, that he would not find him easily, and knowing, with all certainty, that the Old Man wasn't human.