Lady Superior (30 page)

Kristen shrugged and looked toward the Seidel building again. They’d pass it soon. “So are we just walking past this place or what?”

“I figure we—”

Cole’s voice came over their earpieces. “My stone’s got something. Pointing south.”

Gabby pulled the stone from his pocket. Kristen, seeing that, retrieved her own. Gabby touched a finger to his earpiece. “I’ve got west.”

Kristen looked at hers. East. She looked to Gabby. “West? You sure?”

He held it where she could see it. He was right: west. Kristen checked hers again. East. She touched her earpiece. “Mine says east. That doesn’t make sense. Gabby’s right next to me.”

Jane spoke up. “Todd, do you have a direction?”

“West.”

“Exactly west?”

“Yeah.”

Kristen stared at the stone in her hand and tried to remember their locations in her head. She didn’t need to, because Jane jumped back in. “Cole, you’re in the northeast quadrant, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“And yours says south. Gabby, you’re southeast. You’re getting west?”

“Right now I’m mostly in the middle. But like Kristen said, we’re standing next to each other and we have two different directions.”

Kristen grabbed Gabby’s arm and pulled him aside, trading places with him. She watched the needle of her compass stone snap the opposite direction—west. Gabby’s stone flipped east. She switched places so hers pointed east again and touched her earpiece. “We just tried switching places. We’re still pointing in opposite directions. So much for your magical MacGuffins.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Jane’s frustration came through the comm loud and clear. “These came straight from the czarownica. They should work. They’re sending you in completely opposite directions?”

Kristen winced as she asked, “Could she have gone bad?”

Cole. “The czarownica doesn’t play that game. She picks a side in everything and stays there. Jane, you said there’s more than one ring. Could we be dealing with four of them?”

“I really hope not.”

“What’s the plan?” Gabby asked. “If these rocks point to the closest Mu-thing, Kristen and I are right between two of them.”

“I—” Jane stuttered for a second. In that instant, her sleep deprivation became clear. “Cole, Gabby, you’re the boots on the ground. What do you want to do?”

Cole jumped in. “This might be a trap, but if the four-ring theory is legitimate, we don’t have time to sweep as a unit. Everyone, follow your stones and report their final location. Get visuals of your target if possible, but do not engage without my explicit permission. Todd, Kristen, you’ll be receiving drop-point coordinates right now. I don’t want the two of you to get cocky and think you can take whatever you find. The two of you can get to me and Gabby faster than we can get to you. We might need that.”

Kristen looked to Gabby. “Isn’t yours pointing right at Seidel? We could go together.”

Gabby swept his stone back and forth through the air. “Unfortunately not. Pointing right past it. Let’s split. And remember what Cole said: don’t get cocky.”

“I won’t.”

I probably will.

Kristen’s Temple phone alerted her to a new message. She checked it and was presented with a map, locations marked in each quadrant. Referencing her stone, she set a course and jogged off, dropping her latte in a roadside trash can after a final sip. Cole’s map directed her to a back alley dumpster. She threw open the lid and pulled herself up onto the ridge to be struck by the stench of rotting trash. Her grip on the dumpster faltered and she slipped, falling to the concrete, gagging.

“Fuck that.” She spat and clambered to her feet. Looking up and down the alley and finding no one, she tore off her wig and stripped her outer layer of clothes, leaving her in her Under Armour. Wrapping her wig and purse in her shed clothes, she dropped the pile further down the alley. Stone in hand, she followed the needle at a run.

She relished the feeling of the run. The wind felt wonderful on her skin, cool and refreshing without her extra layers. When she broke back out onto the city streets, she weaved through pedestrians even as they fell back at the sudden sight of her—a blur of a woman—and was exhilarated by the demands of agility. She leapt benches and cars with effortless ease, spinning and pivoting to avoid near-collisions like a running back escaping tackles. Citizens left in her wake screamed in equal parts terror and recognition. In one ear she heard alarm and in the other, excitement.
That’s Maiden Milwaukee!

Kristen’s eyes flitted like a hummingbird in flight, trying to take in everything at once while ensuring she followed the compass needle. She changed directions twice before skidding to a stop, tapping her earpiece, finding it was too hard to simultaneously talk and run at those. “Mine is on the move. Can’t tell how fast—can’t even tell how fast I’m moving. I went east; I hit Juneau and Water, and it just swung south.”

“Keep on it!” Cole barked.

She turned south and ran down Water Street—straight down the middle of the street—and was greeted with more screams and a cacophony of honking cars. The needle swung southeast. She turned west onto State, then south on Broadway onto Kilbourn. The needle focused on the Plaza East offices, twin fourteen-story buildings of glass trimmed in red. Kristen pushed herself faster, sprinting around the block to be sure. The needle remaining on Plaza East. When she completed her circle, the scene had already changed: people flooded out of the office doors despite office security screaming for them to remain orderly. A second later, the flood boiled up the ramp from underground parking. Kristen touched her earpiece, jogging toward security. “Something’s happening on Kilbourn and Broadway. Evacuation maybe. Looks bad.”

Jane said something in her ear, but she didn’t hear it as she worked her way through the evacuees. A woman recognized her, grabbed her, but Kristen pulled away. She, in turn, grabbed the arm of a security guard in a brown uniform. “What’s happening?” she demanded. He whirled on her, a bark of orders on her lips. Kristen hushed him. “I’m Maiden Milwaukee. What’s happening and how can I help?”

The guard’s eyes widened at the realization. “Someone just announced a bomb threat over our PA and gave us five minutes to get out. Sounded like a robot, creepiest shit I’ve ever heard. We need to get these people out of here.”

Kristen turned a circle to observe the chaos. Running. Screaming. She looked at her compass stone. The needle pointed down. Straight down. Kristen turned back to the security guard. “I don’t know anything about crowd control. Frankly, I don’t know anything about bombs. But maybe I can get this person and stop it. Just…do what you do. Okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

She cut a straight line for the ramp down, a finger on her earpiece. “Bomb threat on Kilbourn and Broadway. Compass pointing underground. I’m on it. Cole, don’t tell me not to engage because fuck you, I’m engaging.”

“Engage like you’ve never engaged before, Maiden.”

Chatter continued on the comm—Todd and Gabby providing updates—but she paid no mind to the details, descending into the garage. Wailing horns echoed through the complex, cars lined up behind the flow of evacuees on foot. Drivers revved their engines, fists pounding their wheels in a fury, eager to escape the depths. Bright headlights blinded Kristen as she pushed through.

A driver lost his patience and slammed on the gas of his SUV. Kristen gasped, her body suddenly frozen. The scene played out in her mind faster than reality: that man and his truck mowing people down to escape and pushing through the evacuees above. She forced herself to move. In a fraction of a second, she was there. Slamming both fists down on the hood of the truck, she collapsed the metal and drove the vehicle's front end into the concrete. The driver jerked with whiplash, and the engine cut out. She whipped around to the driver's side in time to see horror wash over his young face. Kristen threw his door open and dragged him out by the collar. Tossing him away onto the concrete, her fingers cut into the metal of the truck like spears and she pulled, turning it sideways to block the lane to all but foot traffic. Rushing to the second vehicle, she extracted the driver, and did the same to the third. When she reached the fourth, the driver jumped out on her own—the rest followed suit down the line. “Go!” Kristen ordered. “Don't be assholes!”

In moments, the chaos diminished. Kristen remained still for a moment, listening to the relative silence. Noise still filtered down the ramp, distant sirens along with the sea of voices, but the garage was empty. She looked at her stone. The needle still pointed straight down. She shivered.

Kristen followed the signs to the next ramp down. With every step, doubts about her position grew stronger: who was she to be dealing with something like this? If the bomb was real, she knew she couldn't do anything about it. She wasn't even sure she could survive it. Maybe there wasn't even a person down there, just the ring to bait her into suicide. And if she couldn't stop it, what was the point of going down there?

The lights in the complex flickered. They went out, buzzed into dimness, then went out again with the crack of a circuit breaker. Kristen froze in place, blind and smothered in darkness. She listened and heard nothing. Not even the sirens outside penetrated the lower depths of the garage. Kristen shuffled forward one step at a time. “Whoever is in here, I know who you work for. I know what she wants to do. You don't need to hurt all of these people.”

“I'm not here to hurt them.” A mechanical voice like an artificial voice box echoed through the garage. “There's no bomb. It's just me and you, Templar.”

Kristen scrambled for her phone and held it aloft. She swung it through the air, trying to cast light on the garage with the screen's glow. It managed to light only a few feet around her. Fumbling with the phone, she tried to turn on its flashlight function. Something struck from the darkness and knocked the phone from her hands. It hit the concrete and went skidding away. For only seconds, the screen remained lit, and in its light, Kristen saw an arrow. The screen went dark.

“An archer?” Kristen asked as she ducked for cover behind a car. “You can't be serious. That's the worst comic book trope ever. You know we have guns now, right?”

The robotic voice began anew. “Select US Special Forces units were once taught the bow. They were given the skills to survive in the wild. If they had to live undetected in a jungle for months, they could. Sometimes silence is worth more than a bullet.”

Kristen kept her head down and listened even as she spoke. “Number one, we aren't in a jungle. Number two, you said all of that in past tense. Sorry, pal. Guns are where it's at.”

“You're right. It's a lost art. Modern military doctrine is to do nothing until you're prepared to bomb the jungle to bedrock. As I told you, there's no bomb here. That isn't my style.”

“What a load of—” An arrow bit into Kristen's shoulder. She reached for it, but it fell away. Exploring the wound with her fingers, she discovered it was shallow—more like a cut than a penetrating shot. Recalling the bullets she'd taken, she supposed an arrow couldn't be as bad as that. Confident, she stood up. “Nice try, asshole. You know what's happening here, right? How can you say bombs aren't your style? Delphi's here to do worse.”

“What Delphi does has purpose. A building condemned must be destroyed before something new can take its place.”

Cognitive dissonance much?

“Make a move, Templar.”

Kristen slapped her hand against the car beside her. The car’s alarm screamed to life, horn shattering the eerie quiet, headlights piercing the darkness in rhythm. She saw him in the headlights one flash at a time, tall and shrouded in darkness—a cloak or a trench coat, maybe—all in black. His arms snapped up, bowstring drawn, and he loosed an arrow. Kristen dove forward. The arrow soared over her and she came up to her feet in a roll. He shuffled back, but she stayed on him, driving forward with a fist. He leaned aside to avoid the crushing strike and she felt his bow at her back. Using it for leverage, he pivoted both of them around. She hadn’t expected it—hadn’t set her feet—and stumbled with the motion. He drove a boot square into her stomach and pushed off. Already off-balance, Kristen fell back and hit the concrete. She was only down for a second, but it was enough. She heard the sound of breaking glass. Though the car alarm still wailed, the headlights stopped flashing, broken.

Rolling onto her stomach, Kristen pushed herself back to her feet. The darkness was worse now—the headlights had killed her night vision, and her eyes were forced to readjust.
Thwip
.
Thwip
. A pair of arrows struck her: one in the chest, one in the stomach. She felt the bite, and a second later, a dampness where they'd struck. She moved at a dead run in the direction from which they'd come, but without sight, it was useless. Another arrow, this time to the chest. She cut to the right, toward the parking spaces, and groped blindly until the felt metal. She slapped it. Another alarm sprang to life.

There.

She moved like lightning and swung again. He danced away. Her other hand grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in. He tried to jerk away, but accomplished nothing. She heaved him off the ground with both hands—a difficult task, as he was much taller than her—and he writhed, delivering solid strikes to her head with his bow. Kristen ignored the blows. With a thought, she dismissed the pain and felt nothing. She tightened her grip on his collar and spun with him, driving forward toward the car’s flashing lights. His free hand flicked to his quiver. An arrow fell into his palm. He stabbed down and Kristen felt the arrow sink in behind her clavicle. Kristen slammed him down onto the car's hood. The windshield shattered under the impact in a cloud of glass. A robotic groan sounded from his artificial voice. She fell back, grabbing hold of the arrow stuck above her arm. That one had taken hold; he'd found a vulnerability. Kristen pushed down the pain as the arrow came free. She looked at where the man’s face should have been, but it was a blank black mask. Though she couldn't see his eyes, she was sure she felt them stare back at her for a nanosecond before he jerked away—a moment of fear or recognition?