Mechanical (22 page)

As interesting as this was, this had no bearing on their mission. Tom tried concentrating on his job, but he was getting more and more frustrated. From his high vantage point, he had an excellent view of a great deal of the traffic that passed through Lower Manhattan, and Tom's visual sensors had excellent zooming capability. All the vehicles and people moving through the streets had that same quiet, relaxed quality that indicated the enemy controlled them. No honking, no speeding and no flooring of the gas pedal. The city that never sleeps certainly went to sleep at night and seemed to behave unnaturally sedately and orderly during the day. People walking on the streets moved in straight lines, never stopping to gaze, talk, or anything else.

Tom saw trucks stopping at regular intervals outside every tower he could see. People— young and elderly, black and white, rich-looking and poor—would come to unload crates and packages of foodstuffs, clothes, instruments and all manner of things that Tom did not really care about. He only cared about patterns, but he found nothing that could indicate the enemy's location. Trucks unloaded or loaded cargo, moving it between buildings and locations. People entered and alighted from vans and buses, moving between buildings.

Tom tried to understand what he was seeing. No particular building had more than its share of traffic; no building received more than its share of cargo or people. No building received noticeably less as well. Tom did his rounds, moving from window to window, recording everything his sensors picked up, zooming in on several buildings at a time or a street section or a major junction.

Tom saw refrigerators and washing machines being moved around. He saw broken microwave ovens and air conditioners being loaded on trucks and taken away. He saw repaired household appliances being returned to buildings, though these days it was very difficult obtaining parts. Foreign devices were hellishly difficult to obtain, and now, locally made appliances usually broke down less than a year after being bought. The American economy and manufacturing base was going downhill fast.

In a fit of frustration, Tom's fist went through the steel-reinforced wall with a small explosion of dust and tiny concrete chunks. Ramirez would have approved, but Tom couldn’t have cared less about him or the American economic state.

Where was the enemy? How was he hiding from Tom?

"Contact," sent Ramirez. His icy tone and the meaning of this one word made Tom freeze, but an instant later, Tom felt a surge of red anger filling him. The other Serpents should let him do his job!

"Report," sent Captain Emerson.

"Door number two, one man, flashlight and work overalls."

Tom stood at the far side of the service floor and activated his low-light sensors to penetrate the partial darkness that had been created by Ramirez when he closed all the window shutters and took out all the illumination on the floor when they broke in.

A single light now lit the gloom, its source advancing slowly while the circle of light methodically travelled the floor. Then, the light moved up, and Tom had one instant to see something large, black and spiky descend from the ceiling, one dagger like finger extended.

The light died.

"Enemy dispatched. Entrance secured," Ramirez reported calmly.

Tom went back to work. Half the day had already passed, and Tom was acutely aware of the time: forty-three hours before the enemy would expand his area of control. Tom now tried zooming in on the humans traveling the streets. Traveling was not a good word, perhaps. The people moving along the Manhattan streets all seemed to have a purpose in mind. They were all moving calmly and sedately; no one talked into his cell phone, no one carried a newspaper, no one conversed with any other, no one greeted each other, no one stopped to admire the gardens or the flower beds that now seemed to line every sidewalk.

Tom also noticed that the pedestrian crossings had all had their traffic lights removed, but people calmly crossed the streets and busy avenues without stopping and without a care in the world. They never looked at the cars as they crossed the streets and the cars never stopped or slowed down but no one hit. Everything was synchronized to alien perfection.

Everyone was a small cog in some great machine that was New York City. 

The motorcycle groups were the only things that moved quickly in the streets, making all other commuters get out of their way. Tom saw that every building now had a motorcycle group at its main entrance, the bikers congregating and seemingly checking everyone who entered and left the buildings. Tom also saw that a sizeable number of bikes were parked near buildings.

"Contact," Ramirez sent yet again, and his unmistakable tone of anticipation chilled Tom.

"Report."

"Multiple contacts, door two."

"Lieutenant Riley, report."

Tom found his speakers were clogged.
Too much red anger inside. Let me do my job!

"I need more time Sir," Tom sent slowly.

Ramirez's scoff burned in Tom's earphones.

"Lieutenant Ramirez, engage the enemy after they enter."

The Serpents hid again. Tom tried to pull away his sensors from the group of people entering the floor, but he couldn't. There were six men and two women, two of them holding flashlights. They entered the place slowly, moving their light methodically.

Tom had expected Ramirez to descend from the ceiling again, but the group had already passed the spot where the first man had been killed.
They are not looking at the machines
, Tom thought.
They are looking for us.

Just as they passed a large water pump, Ramirez rose up right into their midst. Tom couldn’t see where the ten-foot-tall Serpent had been hiding. Suddenly he was there, ten dagger fingers extending and flashing in the dark. The Serpent made just two spinning turns and then rose from its crouched posture. Nothing remained of the group of people except one flashlight that rolled on the floor before being summarily crushed by one of Ramirez's clawed feet. Ramirez returned to his post, and Tom noticed his aerials all stiffened and extended.

Tom saw another thing roll on the floor and make a small lonesome ringing noise when it came to rest against an electrical service panel. It was a motorcycle helmet.

"The motorcycle groups are looking for us," Tom sent.

"Return to work, Lieutenant Riley. Find the enemy," was all Captain Emerson sent back.

Tom returned to a window and glanced outside, but now he started tracking the motorcycle groups. Perhaps following them would reveal something new, since their movements were different.  They were hunting. More than an hour of tracing their movements had not revealed anything that might suggest where the enemy was.

Tom now followed a large group of motorcycles as they stopped and dismounted right outside the tower the Serpents occupied. Tom saw this group was different. They moved even faster than the other bikers, leaving their motorcycles on the street, even letting some fall down on the concrete, motors still working. All of them ran and disappeared inside the tower. Tom could not ignore the fact that their tower was the only one that received such treatment.

"Sir, a large group of motorcycle riders just entered the—" Tom's voice was filled with barely suppressed anger. This was another plot created to prevent him from getting to the answers he was seeking.

"Roger that. Be advised, less than forty hours remain."

Tom made an effort to draw his attention elsewhere. He started tracking the military vehicles parked in the streets. Groups of Hummer light-armored vehicles, accompanied by Bradley armored personnel carriers and the occasional Abrams M1 tank, were parked in several places, including around City Hall Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park and New York Plaza. The army vehicles were mostly on the sides of the roads.  Tom tensed when, on two occasions, he saw the groups move. But they were not coming their way, they were just changing locations: one of the groups headed towards Central Park and another took position near Hannover Square, uncomfortably close to them.

But Tom could not deduce anything about the enemy's location from the movements and the positions of the military vehicle groups. They did not even seem overly alert, just moving around the city as protection against an air attack that might destroy them.

Tom cringed but was not surprised to hear heavy knocking coming from both doors leading into the service story.

"They'll need time to breach the doors," Ramirez said, a little disappointingly.

"The enemy knows there's something here. We must change positions. Lieutenant Riley?"

Tom considered. Even if there was something more to be gained by staying here, he really doubted he could calmly look outside while the enemy knocked at their door.

"Sir, I won’t gain new intel by staying here. But it's still daylight outside. How are we going to—"

The knocking on the doors increased in intensity, and Tom looked at the doors. While he had conducted his observations of the city, the three other Serpents had torn off equipment and barred the doors. It would hold, but for how long?

The knocking became sporadic, but every blow now seemed more powerful and pronounced, shaking the door and the pieces of torn equipment blocking it. They would break in before too long.

"Can we go outside, Lieutenant Riley?"

Tom turned to look outside again. It was about a quarter past four, the sun was still up and the streets were teaming with people. Even the windows of the other nearby buildings teemed with life. Tom's sensors had caught, now and then, a man or woman looking out.

"It's too dangerous, Sir."

"All right, Lieutenant Riley. Serpents, we move out."

Tom saw the captain's Serpent grab one of the huge elevator engines, his huge hands taking a good hold and the sharp black talons sinking into the elevator engine. The Serpent was motionless for a moment, and Tom started to hear the captain's power core starting to pulse rhythmically with a strength that seemed overwhelming. A moment later, an anguished cry of metal being torn asunder reverberated through the service floor as the elevator engine started moving. It spluttered and spewed sparks and smoke while a small fire started somewhere inside it. But the engine budged.

The captain moved the engine enough to expose the elevator shaft, one of the fifty-eight elevators that served the tower. beneath it.

"Move."

Ramirez moved first, diving into the elevator shaft.  Sergeant Jebadiah was second. Tom paused before he entered the shaft and looked inside. It was incredibly deep, going down the length of the building. The multiple numbers of cables going down the shaft all moved and trembled as the elevator itself, somewhere below them, performed an emergency brake. Tom saw that Ramirez and Jebadiah did not grab the cables but were using their sharp talons to grab hold of the shaft's walls.

Tom saw a Serpent look up from where it was descending into the shaft and make a thumbs-up sign at him. Somehow, the sergeant's absurd gesture made Tom feel better, and he started climbing down the shaft himself.

Tom didn't even cringe when he heard gun shots exploding from the service floor above, shortly followed by a whoosh and an incredible explosion that flooded the elevator shaft with a short-lived light and rolling thunder that was deafening even to the Serpents' audio sensors.

Captain Emerson entered the shaft quickly and pulled the elevator's huge engine after him, blocking the elevator shaft from the red flames raging above them.

A sharp, continuous grating sound suddenly rose in the quiet shaft, and Tom looked down to see Ramirez skidding down the shaft like a kid sliding down a water slide. Tom had no intention of going so fast himself, and when a crashing noise reverberated up the shaft, Tom glanced down again to see the elevator itself. Apparently, Ramirez had slid right through it, a black razor-sharp machine of death tearing through the large boxy elevator like a steak knife tearing through a milk carton.

Tom himself went down through the elevator a moment later, noting, without much interest, the large stains of blood that dripped on the walls of the elevator and what remained of its floor.

Down and down Tom went, his sharp fingers digging deep into the shaft’s concrete walls, the metal cables occasionally slapping him and producing a dull, ringing clamor from his armored bulk. Tom lost count of the number of dimly lighted elevator doors he passed as he went down the shaft. Tom's sensors could pick up the clamor of humans outside, running and moving equipment.

"Serpents, hold your positions."

When the command finally came, Tom glanced up. He saw almost a thousand feet of shaft above him, at its very end, a tiny flickering fire from the burning elevator engine. Metallic noises from outside the shaft indicated that the enemy-controlled people in the building were probably arming themselves.

Tom glanced down, seeing Ramirez and Jebadiah below him, covered with a thin layer of white dust, probably created by Tom's claws digging into the shaft’s wall.

            Tom felt red hot anger bubbling inside him. They had reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, but with the enemy's people outside, they had nowhere to go. They were trapped!.

Tom's anger was being fast replace by the black fear rising up.