Going Dark (37 page)

If I had more personnel, I would leave at least two soldiers outside to hold the door, but Tran’s not going to be able to do that on his own, and our priority is to get to the lab. So Tran comes with us.

Logan crosses the lobby, tries the next door, and again the damn thing just opens. He scans the other side with his muzzle cams. The feed shows a corridor that runs the width of the building. We are at one end. It’s hard to see any detail because it’s dark, even for night vision. I can make out two side doors, one on the right and one on the left, about a third of the way down. I can’t see anything beyond that. So I get a tiny LED light out of one of the pockets on my vest. As Logan pushes the door open, I switch on the light and pitch it.

It spins end over end, its light flashing in my visor and bouncing off the floor, the ceiling, the walls. For a fraction of a second I can see all the way to the corridor’s end. Two-thirds of the way down, there’s a second set of side doors. Both are open, with a rigged soldier emplaced in each. All I can see of each soldier is an arm strut, and the HITRs they’re holding, aimed up the corridor at us.

Grenades launch from both weapons with a
whump
amplified by my helmet. I try to duck back into the lobby. Too late. The flash-bangs go off in my face. My visor blazes red—and the battle AI takes me out of the game. The joints of my dead sister lock up and I go down hard on the floor. My helmet audio shifts to white noise, my visor goes
black, my overlay’s display blinks out, and I am dumped from gen-com.

My hands are strapped to my frozen rig, but I still manage to clutch my HITR with a finger curled over the first trigger—not that it matters. The weapon will have been deactivated too.

Panic stirs and tries to make an escape. I feel like I’ve been transported back to Black Cross after the EMP knocked out all my electronic systems.

And my skullnet is down to 60 percent of baseline support.

I listen to my own harsh breathing. It’s up to me to keep a grip on a rational state of mind. No outside assists. I work at it. I push back against the fear.
It’s just an exercise. No one is going to hurt me.

Logan is probably as dead as I am, but the flashes of light seeping around the edge of my visor hint that Tran is still fighting. Then the flashes stop. After that, there’s nothing.

I envision being trapped like this for hours, for days, forever. I listen to my breathing. Fast. Way too fast. I don’t want to wind up screaming hysterically. Then it comes to me: I’m not on my own. I still have the skullnet. No outside input allowed, but I can still communicate with it. It’s still part of me. And I think,
Calm. Be calm. Lock it all down.

It works, just like it did yesterday. But this time, I don’t even need the graph of my neurological status. My breathing slows; my fingers ease their grip on my HITR. It still feels like I’ve been lying dead for fucking forever, but I can handle it on my own.

I start counting out loud just so I can measure the passing of time, and at what I estimate to be three minutes and twenty-one seconds the white noise in my helmet shuts off. Captain Montrose speaks over the audio. “The exercise is
over. All participants are restored. Rendezvous at the command center in ten minutes.”

My overlay and my visor both wake up. Night vision kicks in. My dead sister unlocks and I can move my limbs again.

I look up to see two rigged soldiers standing over me. Not Tran, not Logan. The proportions are wrong. The enemy, then. Hired guns. My squad map affirms their anonymity, noting their positions with nameless orange dots.

The one closest, the shorter one, offers me a gloved hand half enclosed in a frame of struts. A symbolic gesture, given the assist available to me from my dead sister. A gesture of trust. I clasp the hand and, using the power of my own suit, I kick myself to my feet.

The enemy soldier speaks off-com. “Sorry about taking you down like that, Shelley. I didn’t know you were playing in this game.”

It’s Jayne Vasquez.

Fuck me.

•  •  •  •

From day one of LCS training, the emphasis is on coordination. Our challenge is learning to work together as a fluid, adaptable unit, with each soldier utilized to his or her best capabilities within the framework of the squad and of the mission. In a high-stress combat environment, that only works if we trust each other’s abilities and loyalties. We don’t risk that trust by training against each other. Ever. It’s not always harmony in the barracks, but in the field, we are always on the same side.

But Jaynie is not on my side anymore.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her. I’m speaking off-com, because we don’t have shared communications.

She answers cautiously, “You didn’t know I’d be here?”

Someone moves behind me. A reverse helmet cam shows me Logan getting up off the floor. “No. I thought you were busy with your Mars project.”

“Didn’t Karin tell you? We’ve been grounded.”

“That’s right. She did tell me that.” One piece of good news. I eye the soldier behind Jaynie. “Roman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You came out against me?”

“We didn’t know it was you, sir. We were expecting irregulars. No one else.”

“Who else is here? Fadul?”

“She’s outside. Escamilla and Dunahee weren’t part of the exercise. They’re still waiting on a medical clearance.”

I am wired on the dregs of adrenaline and panic. That’s not helping my temper. Neither is the growing awareness that we’ve all been set up.

I hit gen-com. “Kanoa.”

No answer.

“Kanoa, I need you to confirm who—”

Montrose speaks again, cutting me off. “Captain Shelley, you are to report to the command center
now
by order of Colonel Abajian.”

That’s the confirmation I need.

“Colonel Abajian can go fuck himself, Captain. I don’t play games like this. I’m done.”

I turn to go. Logan steps out of my way as I head outside.

•  •  •  •

There’s enough moonlight that I can see without night vision. So as I start up the stairs, I take off my helmet. That’s a violation of regulations, but like I said, I’m fucking done. I’m not playing Abajian’s games anymore.

Tran is waiting at the top of the stairs. “Come on, Shelley. We’re ETM. You can’t—”

“We’re not ETM anymore,” I tell him. “Not with Abajian holding the strings.”

I step around him, only to be blocked by another soldier, one who’s more than a foot shorter than I am. I know of only one LCS soldier of such tiny size. “
Shit
,” I whisper. “Flynn?”

I don’t know what I was expecting from her. Definitely not her arm hook darting out to catch my shoulder strut. Flynn is in a worse mood than I am. She uses her entire body and every bit of amplified force from her dead sister to yank me off balance. I’m about to go down when she body-slams me onto the hood of a junked car parked against the curb. I drop my helmet, but I somehow keep my head from hitting. I think my back struts leave an imprint, but I don’t look. I roll away, landing on my feet. Then I backpedal into the street, still holding onto my HITR.

“Goddamn it, Flynn! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“It’s
you!
” she shouts, her voice shrill as a teenager’s, though she must be twenty by now. “You fuckin’ betrayed us all when you left us, LT. You let us think you were dead. Gone with all the others! You’re such a piece of shit! You’re just a fuckin’ piece of shit.”

This is not the best night I’ve ever had.

By this time, Jaynie is at the top of the stairs. “Flynn, stand down!”

Flynn ignores her. She starts after me again, but Tran at least is still on my side. He intercepts her, using the same technique on her that she used on me. Grabbing her arm strut, he hurls her against the building. Then Jaynie’s between them, pushing Tran aside. “Flynn! You want to do this job or not?”

If Flynn answers, I don’t hear it. But Jaynie lets her go.
Flynn straightens up, takes her helmet off, glares at me. She’s not wearing a skullcap. Jaynie must have made her give it up. Her hair is white in the moonlight, grown out to a short cut, soaked with sweat. “You should have fuckin’ taken me with you, LT.”

“I did what I had to do, Flynn.”

I flinch as Fadul’s low voice speaks unexpectedly from just behind my ear. “She’s a kid, for Christ’s sake. You could at least tell her you’re fucking sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.” Flynn might be dead now if I’d brought her into ETM.

Fadul walks past me, picks up my helmet, turns around, and shoves it in my gut. I grab it, of course. I’ve got no choice. “Gen-com just updated. Kanoa checked in. He says to put your helmet back on and get your ass over to the command center, wherever the fuck that is. He thinks you’ve got a problem with your wiring. Ask me, it runs deeper than that.”

•  •  •  •

I think Fadul is probably right, but I don’t put my helmet on, and I lock down my overlay to keep Kanoa out, because I am done.

I start back through the ruins, carrying my helmet in one hand, my HITR in the other. The night is clear and cold, with the countryside washed in moonlight. It’s beautiful. And it’s only a kilometer and half by road to the command center, with the residence just a few hundred meters beyond. That’s nothing for infantry.

After a block, Logan catches up with me. He startles me by pulling his helmet off too. It’s rare to see him break the rules. “We’re walking back.”

I glance behind us to see everyone on the move, dark shapes in the silvery light. Tran is conferring with Roman
and Fadul. Jaynie is walking with Flynn. All of them have their helmets on, but now that I know who they are, it’s easy for me to identify them.

“Shelley, you need to put your helmet back on. Gen-com updated. We’re all one squad now.”

“No, we’re done. ETM is done. We cannot operate with Abajian fucking up the system.”

“We’re not done.”

I stop and face him. “You want to stay here? That’s your choice. I’m leaving. I’ve done too much to put up with Abajian’s bullshit, abandoning us in the field, locking us up in fucking protective custody, taking half my squad away from me and running them as the enemy. You want to deal with that, Logan, it’s yours. Take a field promotion. You’re in charge, because I’m done.” By this time the squad has caught up with us, but I ignore them. I turn and start walking again. “I’m just going to change into my civilian clothes, then I’m on my way. Shouldn’t be hard to hitchhike to Berlin. I’ll find the American embassy, make them issue me a passport. Then I’m going home.”

“You’re dreaming.”

Delphi is out there somewhere. I decide I’m going to find her, even if she has moved on.

Logan is shadowing me again. “The war’s not over.”

“I fucking know that! But I can’t operate without trust, and I don’t trust Abajian. He put us up against our own people. What the fuck was that about?”

“I don’t know.”

I stop and look back again to where Jaynie is following just a few meters behind. “And what the fuck are Vasquez and Flynn doing here?”

“They’re linked into 7-1.”

“Jaynie! Does that mean you’re on our side?”

She stops. “I don’t know, Shelley. What side would that be?” The squad gathers behind her. They are an array of silhouettes in the moonlight, the matte-black faces of their visors revealing nothing human, and suddenly I’m not sure I can tell them apart anymore. Not even Flynn. Interchangeable parts moved around the globe by an entity whose interests only partially align with our own.

“Why are you here, Jaynie? Why are you and Flynn part of this? It’s been a long time since you turned civilian.”

Flynn says, “We never turned civilian.”

Jaynie says, “The war got personal.”

Kanoa is right that I’ve got a problem with my wiring. A self-induced problem, it’s true, but it’s a problem all the same. As soon as Jaynie says
personal
, my brain kicks into overdrive and I know, I know, I know she means Delphi, something has happened to Delphi. A flush explodes across my skin, my heart races, and I have to talk around a sucking, empty absence when I ask, “Who?”

“You know who Yana Semakova is?”

Relief washes in. She sees it on my face; she doesn’t have to ask the reason. “Karin is okay. So far.”

“They got Rawlings,” Flynn growls.

Shit.
Colonel Trevor Rawlings was a pompous old fart and we had our differences, but he wanted the best for the country and he was an integral part of missions that made a real difference in the world.

“Rawlings was first,” Jaynie says. “He was killed almost three weeks ago. We didn’t even know it was a hit. An allergic reaction. It happens, right? But after Yana, we knew. It’s a matter of time—”

“I’ve seen a list of victims.”

“It’s a matter of time until we all wind up on that list. I thought it was the Red—”

“Is it?”

She hesitates. Then says, “Don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be here. Abajian’s crew says they know who’s behind it—or they think they know.”

“That’s why you’re here, then? You’re going after the angel of death? That’s the mission’s target?”

“That’s the official target,” Jaynie affirms.

Giving me one more reason to despise Abajian. He hasn’t told me a damned thing about why I’m here, but he’s briefed Jaynie.

Of course he had to, to get her on board.

Jaynie adds, “It’s a mission that needs to be invisible, off-budget, done by nobody.”

“Meaning us,” Fadul says. “Existential Threat Management. Because dirt doesn’t stick to ghosts.”

“You still have the skills?” I ask Jaynie.

“I think Abajian was testing that tonight.”

Maybe.

She goes on. “I took a hint from Carl Vanda. Me and Flynn and Karin, we set up our own security company. We train all the time. Think of it as Cryptic Arrow 2. So, are you in? Or are you going to be hitchhiking to Berlin?”

I shrug. “It’s our mission only if the Red’s behind it—and if Abajian backs off.”

“Put your helmet on.”

I do it. Gen-com links me in. The squad’s icons line up, low in my field of view. Nine of us, because Escamilla and Dunahee are logged in too, though their status shows brown, not cleared for duty. I check the squad map. They’re at the command center.