Dog Warrior (35 page)

“I can hear you. No need to shout.”

“What part of this is the most critical to it working?”

“Let me see.”

Rennie pushed into his mind. Atticus resisted automatically, and then, gritting his teeth, let the Pack leader in. Rennie leaned against the cold cement wall of the central room, panting in the gunsmoke, ribs bruised from shots taken by the body armor. He ached in his heart and soul as those he loved died around him—they were losing. If they had to pull out, anyone left behind would be at the mercy of the Ontongard.

Rennie closed his eyes, shutting out distractions, focusing on Atticus.

“Turn your head, Boy.”

Atticus carefully scanned the room, and Rennie gazed out over the equipment, recognizing it, knowing how it was built and how to take it apart. Knowledge transferred to Atticus. The three-story cylinder housed the dimensional containment field for the exotic matter. The faraday cage, waveguides, and EM pumps extracted exotic matter as Earth moved through space. The long corridor lined with waveguides was used to puncture a pinhole in the M-brane, the exotic matter bleeding into the hole to keep it open long enough for interstellar communications.

Rennie focused on the tall cylinder.
“Hex must have salvaged most of the exotic matter from the sled's drive. Crack the housing open and not only will you destroy this setup, but there won't be any rebuilding.”

“Okay.”

“First take the barrier down.”
Rennie picked out the field generator, and knowledge of how to turn it off filled
Atticus.
“You'll have, like, a minute, maybe, to get out of this rat maze, and then the fireworks will start.”

“A minute?”
Atticus shut down the barrier.

“If you're lucky.”

The tide of the battle turned for the worse. Rennie dropped the mental link to fight. Atticus felt strangely alone and hated it.

An acetylene torch sat in one corner of the room; he wheeled it to the containment housing.

Backing up to the door, he took careful aim with his left hand. He had only three shots to get it right, and then he'd have to get closer to set the stupid thing off. He wasn't sure what the dark matter would do once the containment field went down.

“Atty?” Ru whispered. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” And then, because it was dawning on Atticus how desperate their situation was, he added, “I love you, Ru. You've kept me sane.”

“Oh. Oh, Atty, no.”

The first bullet ricocheted off the cement floor.

The second shot hit and the acetylene exploded in a hot white flash. He was flung backward on a wave of flame into the stairwell, and an instant later everything went pitch-black and the grave-cold air of the maze rushed back over him. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled up the stairs.

There was a great howl of white noise, and it felt as though he were moving through heavy surf, invisible water trying to drag him backward. A deep, ominous rumble grew louder as the staircase quaked underfoot. The rumble changed to a roar of rushing water, and the smell of the ocean raced before the floodwaters. The first wave slammed him off his feet, and he tumbled into the black water. It swept him into a corner, smashing his broken arm against a cement wall, jolting agony through him. He flailed, disoriented.

Suddenly someone had a hold on him, dragging him against the current.

“This way, Boy.”
Rennie guided him through the raging seawater.

Wild, dark minutes later, they heaved up onto the steel stairway to the street. Hands pulled them upward as Atticus coughed up all the silt-filled water he'd swallowed.

The Pack waited on the street outside, guns aimed at the door, ready to shoot anything that crawled out of the water that wasn't one of their own. Most of them were battered, bleeding, and bruised, but only the dead weren't armed.

Atticus lay on the cold asphalt, panting.

“You okay, Boy?”

“Yeah. You came back for me?”

“You're our Boy. We wouldn't leave you behind.”

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts
Friday, September 24, 2004

In all the confusion, Atticus managed to forget his brother until they'd dragged themselves back to the hotel and slept for a few hours.

A knock at the door woke him. “Housekeeping.”

“Need towels,” Ru grunted.

So he got up, padded to the door, and after verifying that it was indeed the maid, opened the door. “We just need fresh towels.”

The maid handed him a stack and he bolted the door. It felt very wrong to return to normalcy after so much madness. He put the towels on the shelf, feeling numb, and used the toilet. Ru came into the bathroom for a glass of water.

“What's with the rock?” Ru indicated a small pebble that had been sitting under his toiletry bag.

Atticus grunted his ignorance and picked it up. For a moment he thought it innocent of all human traces, and then realized Ukiah had dropped it there. Why? There was nothing special about the stone except that he found it pleasing. A child's treasure.

“Atty?”

Atticus blinked to clear his eyes. “I need to go find my brother.”

 

The address listed in the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles for Ukiah led them to a huge house in an affluent city neighborhood.

“This can't be the right place.” Atticus eyed the stone house, all gables and ivy.

“Bennett Detective Agency,” Ru read from the bronze plaque by the hand-carved front door. “Business must be good.”

Pressing the doorbell sounded eight muffled tones inside, an impressive door chime to go with the impressive house. After three tries with the doorbell, Atticus walked around the house, peering into the windows. The décor matched the outward appearance of the house—cherry-wood desks, silk drapes, chestnut burl paneling, granite countertops in the kitchen with stainless steel appliances, and a security system keeping all of the above safe.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Atticus growled when he rejoined the other two. “This is a fucking mansion.”

“I'm just getting an answering machine.” Ru paused to wait for a tone and said, “Yes, this is Hikaru Takahashi; can you give me a call?”

Kyle sat on the porch step, Web surfing on his PDA. “Max Bennett's driver's license lists this address too. It says he's thirty-eight to Ukiah's twenty-one. Maybe he's Ukiah's father?”

Father or not, they'd last seen Ukiah with the Pack. There was no reason to think he wasn't still with them.

As Ru left his number on the answering machine, Atticus reached into that empty place he'd been avoiding. No whisper of his brother pressed against his senses.

He closed his eyes and focused. He should be able to feel the Dog Warriors protecting Ukiah.

“Atty?”

Atticus lifted his hand and pointed in the direction of a faint
something.
“Let's head that direction.”

 

Going in a straight line proved to be impossible. There were rivers, gorges, hills, valleys, and one-way streets to contend with. They climbed an impossibly steep hill with a street pretending to be two lanes, but it was actually just one lane with haphazard parking. Downtown Pittsburgh lay across the river and far below, providing a view that was stunning but, judging by the dogged appearance of the houses around them, too common to raise property values. The Jaguar drew stares; it was out of place in this blue-collar neighborhood.

The Pack presence led him to a house on the overlook, seemingly abandoned and boarded up. He followed local custom and parked by mostly blocking the right side of the street. The boards on the front door had been pried up and then pulled back into place, to give the appearance that the house was still unoccupied. The house had been built with its back to the street to take advantage of the view, so the front door actually opened to the kitchen. Someone had been renovating recently, and plaster dust scented the air and covered the floor. The vinyl flooring matched that of his adopted parents' playroom, a pattern of random terra-cotta-colored squares. The street-side windows were boarded shut, the kitchen and the hall were night dark, the living room off the hallway was a distant rectangle of light. No one came to greet him, so he stood in the darkness, reexperiencing the night of his adopted parents' death.

He'd never gotten completely over that loss. He braced himself and walked into the darkness.

The living room been remodeled and painted before the house had been closed up. The wall overlooking the city was mostly glass, drenching the room with sunlight. The floor had been swept clean, and a gypsy camp of futons, quilts, and bright-colored pillows had been set up. By the floor-to-ceiling window, wrapped in blankets and propped in a battered leather chaise longue, Ukiah slept.

Relief punched through Atticus, making him breathe out
a surprised laugh, which he instantly regretted. He didn't want to wake Ukiah. Quietly, he crouched beside the chaise to watch his brother sleep, hoarding this last perfect moment.

What juxtaposition: the mansion and this abandoned house. Atticus wasn't sure what he would have thought if he'd seen only this ruin without the manicured luxury of the mansion, but witnessing both, he realized that from the moment Kyle pulled up the FBI database on the Dog Warriors, he'd assumed the worst for his brother. He'd let suspicion poison every word between them. He recalled all that he'd said—what he now wished he could take back. Ukiah opened his eyes to peer at him in mild confusion. “Atticus?”

What should he say? Could he even breach the gap he'd created between them?

“Don't be stupid.”
Ukiah reached out to pull him into a hug. The sense of “this is right, this is good” resounded through his soul.
“Between us, we don't need words.”