Chapter 41

McCreed staggered as Sam pulled the trigger.

A gout of red flame preceded the heavy round that impacted into the rear of his right shoulder. I stared, dumbstruck, as he quickly ducked out of view. Without hesitation, he'd used the forward momentum from the hit. The sudden lurch melted into a smooth roll with all the grace and urgency of a predatory cat startled by a hunter.

Sam's rifle barked. Additional rounds slammed into the scaffolds, and the adjacent goons scattered as the chaos unfolded. The attention of the eyes below were diverted, some toward Rob and most now onto ourselves as I jerked in surprise from a sudden sting.

The warmth of blood, drawn from my cheek, soaked my collar as bullets fell around us like hail in a storm. Most had fallen too short or too wide to be of any danger, but a few of the more accurate shots, like the one that had chipped shards of plastcreet into my face, hissed and vibrated like vindictive hornets as they zipped by.

Sam shouted as she shifted her aim, "Hillside!"

Her barrel swiveled mechanically and punched echoes through the hazy maintenance yard at guards at different levels. Those who'd fired at us abandoned their attempts to aim as they ducked, dove, or weaved to avoid her sudden counterattack.

I could empathize.

My mind screamed I'd be hit any second now. It made me want to hide. To not want to stand. A "Chicken Little" feel, like the sky itself might collapse without a moment's notice.

"Reloading!" Sam shouted as her gun steamed in the cold air and dug for more ammo.

The guards resumed the bullet rain, and I raised my rifle with the full intention to join the fray, determined not to be useless.

It went off prematurely with a jolt so hard I almost dropped it. In the distance, a lone figure tumbled down the hillside with a clutched leg. The language he used was colorful and expressive. I could hear him, even from all the way over here, but the return fire from that direction immediately became sporadic and uncoordinated. The guards had redoubled their efforts to hide, so I spared a quick glance in Sam's direction.

Her side profile was toward me; she'd turned to aim toward Rob's side of the maintenance yard, which I'd lost track of when I'd focused on the hillside. I did a slight readjustment of my grip, confident at least I was able to hold the rifle properly this time as Sam's rifle report brushed past my face like a pillow's whisper. Her shots were out of sync with my own as I continued to keep the hillside too busy to take aim at either of us.

Each shot had the impact of a mortar in a war zone. I discovered I only needed to send a stray round whenever a head or barrel seemed pointed in our direction. I was reminded again of ants on a lightning-struck hill as the tiny figures dove for cover or scrambled to remain hidden.

The blare of a second klaxon signaled another Lock gate release.

Mid-aim, a guard was twisted violently by a round from Sam. She'd snap-shifted her aim to protect Rob's back and caused the disrupted shot to fly wildly off course, where it struck another victim of "wrong place at the wrong moment" syndrome.

You and me both, buddy...

The mob-like cloud of bodies within the yard erupted into a madhouse as Rob's hulky form charged into their midst and disappeared. It all unraveled like a warped round of Marco Polo. In between moments, I could detect Rob's location simply by the screams. Gaps began to appear deeper within the pile. Bodies flew. Limbs and equipment were shattered or broken. The guards were tossed aside like ragdolls upon the pitted and scarred plastcrete as heads appeared at the top of the stairwell: reinforcements.

Like a shark, Rob surfaced.

He was positioned near the edge of the stairwell when he yanked one of the guards into the air. Metal handles scattered in random directions from the tops of cylindrical objects strapped to the front of the guard's chest. Like an overturned turtle, the guard flailed. He frantically clawed at his vest just before Rob threw him into the first wave of the reinforcements that'd reached the top. The group fell like a line of dominos into the hidden opening of the stairwell as Rob shoved more of the confused crowd into the pile.

No one came back up or chased after him as he rocketed away. A deep, gut-twisting "whump" sent a plume of dark black smoke into the air as my rifle clicked dry.

Sam continued to fire beside me, a relentless stream of rounds to cover Rob's wild dash across the yard.

A near miss slammed into the grate in front of me, and I pressed against it. My mind screamed to take cover. To find a place to hide.

"I'm low!" Sam yelled, and it shook me back to the moment. My hands flew to my jacket as they began a frantic search for the ammo Rob had stashed, but memory failed me. I couldn't recall where he'd stowed...well, anything. Bullets pinged around us as I tore through pockets filled with objects useless for the situation. My palm finally brushed the edge of a boxy magazine along the side of my waist, tucked into the pockets Rob had stuffed them into.

I felt a surge of relief as I struggled to extract them. An impossible task half crouched. Fun fact: Pockets apparently aren't always the best place for magazines in a firefight. I think I finally got why all the games had characters bristling with pouches.

I turned toward Sam as one of the boxy magazines finally freed itself with a sharp tug.

"HERE!" I shouted and threw it in a beautiful arc, straight toward her head.

I winced.

Chapter 40

Rob's voice was cryptic.

"See the drain gulch behind my left shoulder?"

I was thrown off as his head gave a subtle twitch and gesture eastward. The angle cut it to somewhere behind his back, toward the shoreline. It was a direction almost, but not quite entirely opposite of where Sam and I had been the entire time.

I blinked in confusion.

McCreed didn't give obvious reactions as he turned to stare off and into the distance. "I see no one," he said flatly.

Sam's laughter, sharp, sudden, and far too loud for the enclosed room, caused me to flinch as the sound ricocheted off the walls like a stray bullet squarely in my ear. Her head dipped as she was overcome by a sudden fit of surprisingly girlish giggles as a delicately curled finger swept the corner of her eye.

"Rob, you sly bastard!" she said when she could finally speak. "You actually had me fooled for a second!"

My head spun. "What is happening right now?"

She turned to me; the remnant of her smile lingered in her eyes. She let out a single huff, partially in relief and partially to recalibrate to the seriousness of the situation.

"Everything he just said to McCreed?" she said. "Totally fabricated."

I narrowed my eyes and scanned her face. "How do you know that?"

Her eyes snapped onto me, a brief flicker of annoyance, as if I'd missed something obvious.

But I stood my ground. Trust wasn't something I was ready to instantly jump into again. The last few hits were...too fast, too close.

Her irritation faded, replaced with comprehension. Rob's possible betrayal had shaken me, probably more deeply than I'd realized. She'd recognized that, so didn't push as hard as she likely would've.

"Owen." She said quietly, "Let's look at the context. Rob and I have been running together for a while. I can tell you, for a fact, one of the dumbest things we ever tried was pretending to be IIB agents on a sting. At best, it's a stall tactic. The cover crumbles the moment someone does something as simple as a cross-check of names. IIB is pretty secretive, and that's kind of why it works."

She straightened, arms folded across her chest. Her tone sharpened with a fierce, convictive protectiveness. "With Rob's history, it's very...VERY unlikely they'd ever recruit him for an IIB operation; that alone should add weight to it all being a bluff. But," She glanced back at the screen. "McCreed doesn't know that."

On the feeds, the underground became a flurry of movement and activity. Goons dressed in security uniforms ran within tunnels to pick their way toward stairwells scattered around the facility. I wasn't sure how it all laid out, but the outer feeds displayed their shadowed figures as they quietly made their way toward the hillside nearest the drain gulch.

Had McCreed relayed the information, or was it just someone who paid attention like we were?

I wasn't sure, but the teams in view had reacted VERY quickly. That made them dangerous.

"There, see?" Sam said. Rob's maneuvers made it so McCreed faced away from the Lock side. "As far as we all know, nobody on McCreed's short list has any direct ties to IIB; he's too greedy and itching at the chance to get his hands around some Black-Level Tech."

"Black-Level?" I asked, "You mean like your transposal suite?"

"Among others," she said with a tilt of her head, "and Rob's banking on it. He knows McCreed is aware IIB agents have a bypass to keep unlicensed mods running even with lockouts. I'd bet chits over scrit; it's why he kept his eyes normal. Anyway, the point is, he could've given us up but instead led most of the goon force away. That should be proof in itself."

Logical. I had to admit.

My thoughts drifted to the unlicensed status of Rob's Amplified Physique Mods. Clearly there was more going on than I was aware, but all that mattered in the moment was Rob hadn't betrayed us.

I cast a glance to where McCreed and Rob stood silently. McCreed's voice flowed steadily, a continuation of a conversation I'd mostly missed. "And what would you expect me to give in return?" he said.

"Nothing." Rob replied. "Those two will be a freebie, provided you can get them off my tail. I'm tired of the constant need to dodge them. They've raised uncomfortable questions from upstairs."

"The storm is...convenient, then." McCreed said in a murmur. Thunder rumbled above as Rob gave him a dry, humorless smile.

I shivered at a sudden chill down my spine.

How many people have disappeared while we were all "directed" not to realize it?

The memory of my mother's death notice surfaced and stopped me cold.

Wait. Hold on...

Suddenly, every monitor lit up with a new icon in the top right corner. An alert notification scrolled across the upper section of my optic feed in a harsh red.

[WARNING: PURGE OPERATIONS IMMINENT. THRESHOLD LIMIT EXCEEDED!]

"Uh..." I said, and relayed the message aloud to Sam. "Should we be worried about that?"