DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (3 page)

Well.

Whatever he’d done, it made me glad that I wasn’t in the armor at the time.

“Evac,” I whispered, and the gyroscopic harness released around me, letting me slide to the ground unhindered. I slipped the VR goggles from my eyes, and tossed them aside, to fall on the cluttered floor of the basement.

“Burn,” I whispered once more, and the self-destruct devices in my gadgets beeped, started their countdown. I didn’t stick around to see it, time was nearly up, and I wasn’t in position yet.

I hit the stairway door at a run, catching it with my shoulder. A dusty hall stretched before me. It was the older section of the courthouse, under renovations for the last few month. It had been child’s play, and the work of a few careful weeks, to infiltrate the contractors and smuggle my tech in bit by bit. Interfacing it with the armor in the orbital drop pod above had been the tricky part. Doing that without anyone catching my signal had been a trial of patience. Once the synch had been established, my harness and goggles let me pilot the suit remotely, act as though I was in it from the start.

But that part of this deception was over. Now I was depending on the FBI to follow their procedures. While I thought about it, I snagged a blue jacket off its hook, and pulled it on. Simplicity itself to swipe one from last night’s laundry crew, replace it with a cheap knockoff. The name on the back was ‘Wilson’. I knew she wouldn’t be in the team on duty today, and my hair was roughly the same shade. Thanks to a little prepwork, I now matched her style.

I slid through the emergency exit, ignored the fleeing crowd, and looked around for my targets. If they followed the plans that their chief had detailed in the gridmails I’d hacked, the van would be pulling up right about...

There. The two FBI agents I’d let escape the courtroom stood at the curb, with Martin between them. I ran to join them. “What’s the situation?” I barked, as the older one turned to look at me.

“Villain attack! We need to—”

The stungun concealed in my grip took him in the solar plexus, and he collapsed in a whisper of cloth.

“SNIPER!” I bellowed, seizing Martin’s arm with my free hand, and hustling him toward the van as it screeched to a halt. The younger one jumped, let go of Martin, and grabbed his partner.

“Matty? Matty? Oh god!”

“Call an ambulance!” I howled at him. “Gonna secure Jackson!”

I ripped the side door open, shoved Martin forward into the van, and climbed in behind him, surveying the interior. One driver, one agent in back, crouched low with an assault rifle. Metal mesh between the driver and the back compartment.

“Go go go!” I yelled, and the gunner pulled the door shut, as we braced ourselves and the van peeled out.

“What’s the situation?” The guard asked.

I stungunned him in the face. He jerked, started to fall, and I grabbed him, pulled him in close as if I was talking into his ear.

“Oh shit,” Martin said. He started laughing hysterically.

“Hey! Shut up back there!” The driver yelled.

I kept nodding my head next to the unconscious agent’s, like I was whispering to him. We made it about five blocks before the driver got suspicious.

“Hey, Wilson, what happened back there?”

I turned, face etched into a frown. “Villain attack.” But he was looking past me, and his eyes widened, as he took in the gunner’s slack face and closed eyes.

I sighed, then let my mouth open into a wide, clenched grin. “And you’re next. Stop the van.”

“You killed Higgins? Bad mistake.” He reached for the dashboard, and hit the button that would fill the back compartment with teargas.

My smile got wider. “You guys really should have used more than one van to transport the prisoner.”

He pushed the button a few more times, swore. But he wasn’t stopping. I shook my head, and pulled out my universal remote, clicked through until I got the right menu. “After all, it was easy to disable your security.”

He grabbed for the CB radio, and that I couldn’t allow. “Brace yourself,” I told Martin, and followed my own advice as I hit the button on the universal remote.

The van screeched to a halt, the airbag fired up in the driver’s face, and all the doors clicked open at once. I was moving the second it stopped, whipping around the side of the van, jerking the passenger door open, and jamming my stungun into the visible thigh of the driver as he thrashed and tried to get free. People on the street stared as I punctured the airbag, jerked the driver free, and rolled his unconscious body out of the vehicle. I slid into the now vacated seat, and resumed driving. But not along the planned evacuation route.

A knock from the back compartment, and I slid it open, keeping eyes forward.

“Holy shit,” Martin said.

“Hello to you too, Martin.”

“Nearly didn’t recognize you, Dire.”

“That was the point of the disguise.”

“So, uh, thanks. What now?”

“Ditch the van at the planned location, switch to a different vehicle, and drive to the safehouse.”

“And then?”

I stopped at a red light, turned to grin at him. “Then the
real
work begins.”

CHAPTER 2: THE LAIR

“It's easier than you'd think to move around in public, even after your secret identity's been outed. Most people are bad at matching faces to photos. If you act normal and maybe wear some sunglasses or a hat or something to draw attention away from your face, you've got good odds of grabbing a pizza or whatever without people calling nine one one. Well, unless you're ten feet tall and green. Which is why my life sucks.”

--Crocagator, during an in-prison interview with Channel Five News.

Whaler’s Wharf was an older part of the city, back when shipping and fishing had been its major industries. Both ended up falling by the wayside after World War Two, and the infrastructure had suffered as a result. They had never completely gone away, however, and the open air stalls of Fishmarket were still the best place for fresh seafood in the city. A few long-established factories in Cannery Row still worked night and day to compress tuna and cod into transportable packages, and the great cranes of Dockside unloaded the big ships that found their way past Baltimore and Boston Harbor. On a darker note, though the Tongs of Dragon Street were long gone, eradicated by the Phantasm in the thirties, drugs were still an epidemic. No longer was the district host to the opium dens and speakeasies of a bygone age. Now the junkies chased cheap and dangerous thrills of betameth, and heroin.

The overall impression was one of surly, stoic decay. Though not as bad as the slums where I’d first achieved consciousness, it was definitely a neighborhood where the money had fled years ago. Many baroque, older buildings were left boarded up, crumbling as time and tide wore upon them, exposed to the sea on the peninsula that jutted out from the southeast of Icon like a sturdy chin. The newer structures were all stainless steel and treated concrete, stained by oil and heavy use. A few nice houses on the southern shore, old colonials with widow’s walks and turrets, and tightly maintained little gardens in their postage stamp yards.

The lair wasn’t in the residential sections, though. I’d rented a small warehouse through a false identity. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny for more than a few months, but I wouldn’t need it for more than a few weeks, if all went to plan. All I truly needed from it was a place to lie low and store my equipment, and it performed that job admirably. It was close enough to one of the wharves that the noise of the cranes muffled the industrial noises my welding and manufacturing gear produced, during the daytime, at least.

Martin wasn’t impressed. “Shee-it, what a dump. Roaches or rats?”

“Probably some vermin running around the lower level. Dire doesn’t particularly care, so long as they stay out of the living quarters above.” I slowed the Fjord Nina to a stop, ignoring the rattling from the suspension. It had been one of the cheapest cars I could find from a seller who asked no questions, and ugly enough that I didn’t fear potential theft when I left it out in the small lot behind the facility. Once parked, I hopped out, closed the rusty gate, and shut the padlock behind us. I measured the distance to the docks, nodded. Unlikely to be anyone watching who cared about us.

“Safe to come out, but get inside quick,” I instructed Martin. I’d left a change of clothes in roughly his size in the backseat before I launched this operation, and he tugged on his faded flannel shirt and too-large jeans as he got out of the car and stretched.

“Man, I feel like a damn lumberjack. You got a belt for these? I don’t do the pulldown pants thing.”

“They’re better than the prison jumpsuit. Come on.” I tapped the keycode into the number pad I’d installed on the door, and led the way inside. “Lights,” I said, stopping a few feet into the darkness, and with a soft hum the hanging tubes flickered to life.

He whistled. “Okay, this is more like what I expected.”

The inside was a mechanic’s wet dream. Bits of salvaged scrap and machinery coated every horizontal surface that wasn’t the ground. Tables and crates and shipping containers had been turned into workbenches for various projects. Mechanical arms crafted from smaller cranes whirred along tracks set in the rafters, spot-welding a project out of sight in the center of four shipping containers, while old computer monitors flickered and charted through the Computer Assisted Drafting programs I’d used to set the construction bots to task.

None of it looked particularly illegal. I’d made sure to hide the defenses from casual view. If someone snuck a look in through one of the high, open window slots on the walls, they’d see nothing worth calling the cops over.

Maybe a few things worth stealing. In which case, once they stepped foot inside, they’d have to deal with pop-up turrets, directional screamers, taser grids, and— depending on the timing— me.

The lair drew a bit more power than would be expected from the low-tier industrial shop it was registered as, but I was supplementing the draw with a couple of homemade generators hidden in the shipping containers. Generators are a lost art, I’d found. With broadcast power so reliable for so long, the technology hasn’t been significantly developed over the last few decades.

That was changing now, in the aftermath of the Y2K incident.

“The living quarters are upstairs,” I said, gesturing to a flight of metal stairs up, and a short catwalk that led to an enclosed area, with shuttered windows. He followed me, staying well clear of the moving armatures, and the tables full of junk.

I flipped a light switch on. Upstairs, it wasn’t much. A couple of offices, a few cots tucked in them, some stores of meals-ready-to-eat that I’d located at military surplus shop, a laptop computer running Portals ninety-five, and a few guns. Standard types that fired bullets and not particle beams. I had no real plans to use them unless things went very wrong, but in my short time that I could remember, well, things had gone very wrong.

Fake ID that withstood the background checks for the guns had been easier to acquire then the fake ID that allowed me to set up the computer’s Gridnet connection. That said a lot about this nation, right there.

One wall was filled with nothing but televisions, screens open to different channels. One screen was talking about the current troubles in the Middle East. Another screen detailed the rising cost of gang warfare in Icon City. Twelve others showed everything from soap operas to sports games to children’s shows. Martin cracked a smile when he saw it. “Okay, this is stereotypical evil genius shit, right here. You seriously watch TV this way?”

I nodded. “Turns out her powers are useful for paying attention to and comprehending multiple feeds at once. Which is good, because she’s got decades of popular culture to catch up on, in order to blend in well with this society.”

“Wait, is that Mister Roberts?”

I looked at the screen. A middle-aged, fatherly looking man played with puppets and told me how special I was.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re watching Mr. Roberts?” He snickered.

“Every morning,” I confirmed. “Dire enjoys the trips to the land of Made Belief.”

“Dude. I— I don’t even know what to say there that ain’t bad.”

“Mock not Mr. Roberts,” I waggled a finger at him. “He’s a common cornerstone for this entire culture. And he’s a positive role-model. If more of his lessons were taken to heart, the world would not need so much fixing.”

“Okay. It’s just... that shit’s for toddlers.”

“Well, looking at it in one way, Dire’s less than a year old. Memory wipe, remember?”

“Hm.” Martin studied me for a second, eyes unreadable.

“Hm what?”

“Had a lot of time to think in my cell. There were a few times over the last few months, where I thought maybe it was an act. That you’d been faking that amnesia, using us to hide from old enemies. But it wasn’t, was it?”

“No.” I’d awakened after the eve of Y2K, my memories carved out by surgery... which had been initiated by my own hand, as I’d come to find. I was still angry at old me for doing that. She’d left some common sense stuff, and a hell of a lot of technological data, but popular culture? That had gotten the axe. I sighed. “The worst part is that her old self might have had a point.”

“How so?”

“Well, on her tape, she said that this was the only way to protect her past self from time travelers. And guess who showed up to stop Dire?”

“Ballista and Freeway? What, they’re time travelers now?”

“No. Another hero claiming to be such showed up after you left. Actually managed to stop Dire. Well, Dire’s drone set of armor, anyway.”

“Drone? Ha!” He sat down in a swivel chair, grinned as he put his feet up on a desk. “That’s how you did it! One big distraction.”

I grinned back, and settled in the room’s lone easy chair. “Oh, there were other components. But yes, the suborbital drop, and the armor’s battle, that was all a distraction.”

“Wait. Sub-orbital drop?”

“Oh. Yes. The FBI had the courthouse locked up tight. Managed to infiltrate as a construction worker, and smuggle gear to a staging location near it bit by bit. Couldn’t do the armor, though. Had to sneak the drop pod aboard a private shuttle launch up. Near thing, too, almost got nabbed by Tomorrow Force.” I grimaced. The whole caper had been tricky. I’d tipped my hand, and the facility had gone on alert.

Martin stared at me. “Okay. Starting to see why it took you half a year to get to me.”

I shrugged. “Other things had to align. Securing revenue by hacking banks, acquiring materials by looting junkyards, building up false identities by more hacking, arranging this site, the vehicle, and the gear... it wasn’t easy, Martin. But she is Dire, after all.”

“Jesus. Okay. So, uh... why?”

I blinked. My voice was soft, as I answered him. “You have to ask? You’re her friend, Martin, one of the few she can trust. Of those left alive, anyway.” I looked away.

“Shit. Sorry. Poor Roy.”

We were silent for a while. Roy had been gutshot, bled out before anyone could do anything.

“He deserved better,” I finally said. “Now that she knows what World War Two was, he— not right he should survive
that
, only to fall to scum like he did.”

“Seen more people die than I care too, Dire. Here’s a hint, ain’t no one dies with dignity. Pretty much every death's horrible.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Well.” I shifted eyes back to him, offered a smile. “Besides the fact of friendship, there is something she needs.”

He didn’t look surprised, just spread his arms in a ‘go on’ motion.

“It shouldn’t be a hardship. Basically Dire’s trying to track down everyone who survived, make sure they’re accounted for. Got some of them. Sparky’s in the care of the Liberty Brigade right now. Once some of the facts came out, they got him in on a veteran’s program.”

“Mm. They run a retirement home and some veterans stuff, yeah?”

“And the Torchbearers fund. Spied on them a little, they’ve got Sparky working with the junior heroes. It’s a good spot for him, being a mentor to a bunch of precocious children. He looked happy.”

Martin tapped his chin. “Aight. Tryin’ to think what I can tell you you don’t already know... you seen Khalid? Or Last Janissary?”

The two names were one and the same person, a small Turkish man with a big heart and alchemically-induced immortality. Among other things, he was a hunter of vampires, and our last caper had brought him in as an ally.

“No,” I admitted. “Can you fill in the blanks there?”

“A bit. When I came to after the WEB attack, he was shaking me awake. Looked like hell, moving slow. Said that he’d broken enough bones from the fall that his skeleton was having trouble healing, and he’d have to slink off and rest for a bit, mix up some of his bone paste. Said that he’d see us safely back to camp before he bailed. The Locust was too dangerous, and he’d have to find him before he broke free of whatever Barbatos trapped him in. I didn’t see him after that.”

“Mm.” I chewed my lip. “Well. Hate to say it, but Dire’s got no way of contacting him, or he of her. If she runs across him again she’ll help of course, but unless that happens he’s on his own. Have to hope he succeeds.”

“Yeah.” Martin nodded. “Most people in camp made it out okay. Hid in the tunnels during the gunfight. Guzman was out on the boats, crazy bastard, but he was far enough out they didn’t shoot him. So yeah, everyone accounted for. ’Cept Abes and Minna, no one knows where they got to.” He turned his head a bit, an odd look in his eye as he spoke Minna's name.

“Dire knows where Abes got to,” I glowered. “She turned traitor.”

“What? Shit, you serious?”

“As death.”

“Shit. Huh. Thought she was a little off, but I figured that she was just weirded out by the gang stuff and the whole homeless thing.”

“Nope. Anyway, it’s little matter for now.”

“Aight. So, Minna?”

I rubbed my chin. “Hm. Dire had her set off the carbomb trap that slowed the attackers. Before Dire left, Minna said that once she did that, she’d come to help fight.”

Martin shook his head. “I never saw her. And the survivors in the street never saw her. I was afraid she'd...” His voice trailed off.

I stood, paced back and forth in front of the table. “Not good. Minna was running from some rough people.”

“Vory? Yeah. She told me about that.”