Forever Until Tomorrow (War Eternal Book 5) (17 page)

The Hyperloop was relatively quiet, the weekday and late night combining to make it that way. Katherine wound up as one of only three people in the pod, joining a couple in business casual that was getting a little too amorous with one another on the short hop to the Chinatown station.

Katherine hadn't spent much time in the capital, having come and gone on different occasions for various military functions and duties. Those never afforded her time to explore, and so every place and experience were new. She wasn't nervous about being alone in the underground late at night. Hardly anything made her nervous, and while crime in the area was still above the national average, that average had been getting lower and lower for decades.
 

Plus, she knew how to take care of herself.

The Chinatown stop came quickly enough. Katherine was only a little surprised when the amorous couple stood with her, and the three of them departed the pod together. She stepped out into the brightly lit station and scanned the platform. A police officer was walking along the recently polished floor, his eyes flickering behind AR goggles. They stopped dancing when he noticed her. Then he readjusted his course and headed her way.

Katherine froze. Had Trevor tipped the police that she was looking to buy a gun? That son of a bitch. She was going to break his arm the next time she saw him.

"Major Asher?" the officer said, drawing closer.

Katherine glanced past him to the station's exit. She could escape if she needed to.

"Yes," she replied.

"My name is Sergeant Jackson. We have a mutual friend."

Katherine let herself relax. "Sergeant. A pleasure."

"If you follow me, we can get this taken care of. The less we speak, the better it is for both of us."

"Understood."

"I'm not in the habit of helping criminals get their hands on weapons," Jackson said, turning and heading toward the exit while he immediately went against his own advice. "Unlike our government, I do believe that citizens should always have the right to self-defense."

"Of course."

"I just don't want you to think I'm crooked. Or a bad cop. I'm not. Someone like you, you need to be able to protect yourself, and I think it's bullshit that you aren't given any recourse but to meet me in a deserted Loop Station to do that."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me, Sergeant."

He stopped walking and turned to face her. "I do. The people I'm taking you to meet, their scruples are a little less defined. For me, it's a marriage of convenience."

Katherine nodded. She didn't care about his conscience or the obvious guilt he was feeling about his side job. "I only want to protect myself," she said. "You're doing me a service by coordinating that."

"Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. My squad car is just outside. I'll have to give you blinders so you can't see where we're going and, oh shit."

He grabbed her with one hand, pushing her down while his other hand went for his sidearm. Katherine didn't see the shooters, but she heard the reports as they fired.

The bullets hit Sergeant Jackson in the chest, sending a spray of cloth fibers away as they punched into his protective vest. He fell backward, his firearm falling from his grip and onto the ground beside him.

Katherine reached for it at the same time she gathered her legs and broke for cover, scooping the weapon up on her way past. More gunshots echoed in the enclosed space, the bullets missing her as she tried not to move in a straight line.

She hit the steps and started climbing, away from the station and up to the surface. She dared a single glance back as she ascended, unable to get a clear view of her assailants. Who were they, and how did they know where to find her?

She reached the street. It was late enough that there weren't many people around, and all of the storefronts along the avenue were closed. That didn't prevent their signs and advertisements from lighting up the area in reds and greens and golds, giving Chinatown a distinctly colorful flair.

Sergeant Jackson's car was there. She hurried to it, trying to open the door. It didn't give, and she wasn't going back for the key. She kept moving, quickly crossing a deserted street and heading toward a small alley. She had always been a fast runner, a track star in High School. She reached the break in the buildings as her attackers cleared the steps down to the loop.

She recognized them immediately. The amorous couple from the pod. She had intentionally ignored them on the way over. Now she saw that the woman had dark hair and an exotic face and that the man's appearance was similar. Eerily similar. They were close enough in looks that they could have been siblings.

As disgusting as that thought was, she was more disgusted by the bloody knife the woman was holding in her hand. Sergeant Jackson might have survived the gunshots thanks to his vest. He hadn't survived that.

They looked up and down the street in search of her. They must have figured out there was only one place she could have gone to avoid them and started heading her way.

She cursed herself for lingering when she should have been escaping. Then she cursed herself for thinking she should run. The alley was almost clean, but it did have a few larger composters resting on either side, breaking down garbage into liquids to pass through the sewers. She ducked behind one and checked Jackson's gun. She didn't recognize the model, but it had good weight and balance in her grip.

She waited, listening carefully for her attackers to approach. A minute passed. Then another. She didn't hear anything. Had they decided to leave her alone?
 

She was going to wait a little longer, but she began to question her strategy. What if they were calling for backup? The alley didn't exit out the other side. Was she trapping herself in it?

She crouched low, ready to swing around the corner and shoot at whatever was there.
 

A whooshing sound behind her distracted her. She turned as the male fell from the sky, landing on the ground behind her, knees bending only slightly to break a thirty-foot fall.
 

"Katherine," he said. "You should have left things alone. Accepted your honorable discharge with honor, and stayed discharged."

"Who are you?" Katherine asked. And how had he survived that fall? She knew there were bio-enhancements that could improve the human body's performance, but she had never heard of or seen anything like that.

She felt the presence of the woman right before the gun was knocked out of her hand, and she was taken in a tight hold with her arms behind her back and the knife to her throat.
 

"An old friend you've never met," the woman said. "At least, not in this recursion."

"Recursion?"

"She doesn't know us," the man said. "How could she? Origin hasn't found her yet."

"Origin?"

"If this doesn't bring her out of hiding, I don't think anything will," the man said.

"Why would it? She didn't show the first two times. Not that it matters."

"What do you want with me?" Katherine asked.

The man's eyes flicked to his AR glasses. Katherine noticed they were an identical pair to Trevor's.
 

"You have about thirty seconds," he said. "And then you're going to die."

"You're AIT, aren't you? Why do you need to kill me? I'm already out of the program."

"A step in the right direction, but not good enough," the woman said. She lowered her voice. "Are the others in place?"
 

The man nodded.
 

Others?

This was a trap of some kind. Except she wasn't the target.
 

She was the bait.

Who were they expecting?

"How did you know where to find me?" Katherine asked.

"You're supposed to save humankind?" the woman replied. "You can't even solve a simple problem."

Save humankind? Every word they said raised her fear level a little more. Michael was right. This did have to do with the XENO-1. Were aliens real? Was she being held by two of them? Had Paul Frelmund been right?

She wished she had let Michael finish telling her what he was so excited about.

"I guess that's it," the man said. "She isn't going to save her."

"This response is illogical," the woman replied. "It is over if she dies."

"Then let it be over," the man said.

"What if she has prepared for that eventuality? What if the Mesh is strained?"

"Impossible. So much has happened just like before."

"Not this."

The man raised his gun. "Let us see."

Katherine wasn't going to die without a fight. She yanked herself forward, trying to pull the woman off-balance, rewarded with intense pain in her arm and a cut on her neck instead. She cried out, straining against her captor as the man took aim.

"Be still," the woman hissed, pressing so hard Katherine was sure her arms would break.

"Go to hell," she replied, still writhing. What good were arms if she were dead?

A loud pop sounded from a few meters away. Katherine stopped moving, expecting she was hit.
 

One second passed.

Then another.

Then a third.

She could still see, still stand, still feel, and wasn't experiencing any pain.
 

The woman crumpled to the ground behind her.

"Run," the man said, shifting his position and firing up at the rooftop across from them. He squeezed off three rounds before a dozen bullets tore into and through him, so powerful he was almost torn in half.
 

Katherine ran, sprinting back toward the mouth of the alley. She could hear the sound of an engine as she approached, and saw Sergeant Jackson's police car coming toward her.
 

He was still alive?

It slid to a stop, and the door swung open. Bullets began hitting it, one of them grazing Katherine's arm. She cried out as she threw herself into the car, pulling the door closed behind her.

They sped away, the ping of rounds off the armored car slowing to a stop as they escaped the area.

Katherine pushed herself up to a sitting position and checked her arm. A flesh wound. She put her hand to her neck. There was a little blood, but it wasn't bad. She was lucky.
 

"You couldn't have timed that better, Sergeant," she said.

Sergeant Jackson turned his head to look back at her.
 

It was only then that she realized the driver wasn't Sergeant Jackson at all.

It was herself.

Katherine stared at the woman driving the car. The woman turned her attention forward again without speaking.

"What the hell is going on here?" she whispered almost inaudibly.
 

Her heart was pounding so hard it was hurting her chest. The cut flesh on her neck and arm were beginning to sting as well, now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

The car glided smoothly above the surface of the road, turning left at a traffic beacon and accelerating quickly.

"We haven't lost them just yet," the woman said, in Katherine's voice. It wasn't an exact replica. It had a harder edge to it.

"Lost who?" Katherine said, shifting her position and looking out the window. She didn't see anything.

"There are many things for us to discuss, Major," her doppelgänger said. "And we will as soon as we lose our tail."

The car jerked suddenly, taking a hard right at a cross street. The repulsors whined loudly, working hard to keep the car under control. The car jerked again, the driver making quick motions to steer them in seemingly random directions.

A few minutes passed like this. Katherine continued to look out the windows, to scan the ground and sky. She didn't see anything or anyone. Was the woman paranoid? Had she gone insane?

The car slipped into a garage, descending into it. They finally came to a stop four levels down - the first level that didn't have any other cars parked on it.

The woman turned to face her then, and they looked one another over. Katherine saw that even their clothing was nearly the same.

"Who? What?" Katherine struggled to catch her breath and center her mind. "Who are you? What the hell happened back there?"

"My name is Kathleen Amway," the woman said. "I work for a man named Colonel Mitchell Williams." She smiled. "Even if he doesn't know it yet."

"Did you say, Mitchell?" Katherine asked.

"Yes."

"I keep hearing voices," she said, not sure why she was telling this woman she didn't know about her psychosis. "They tell me to-"

"Find Mitchell," Kathleen finished. "I know."

The response drove Katherine to silence again.
 

"I know because I put it there," Kathleen said, looking a little impatient at her shock. "Fifteen years ago, the day you had the skiing accident."

Katherine was growing more confused with every word the woman said. She remembered the accident. She had gotten too aggressive on the course and had wound up falling and hitting her head against a tree. She had been rushed to the hospital and later treated for a concussion.