Ruthless (18 page)

The extra weight made the rifle kinda heavy, especially without my meta strength, but I didn’t feel able to walk at the moment, so I wasn’t tremendously concerned yet. One insurmountable problem at a time.

I was trying to figure out what pistol I should carry when my eyes traced the ceiling. I saw the security camera, one of a million stationed all over the campus. A little light clicked on in my head, and I went from zero to shit-a-brick in 1.8 seconds. They could have been watching me. They could have been watching my every move, playing with me like Kat used to play with her hair.

Damn, damn, damn.

If they had access to the network, I was fried. They’d have to be closing in on me right this very moment, because I’d been parading—also known as crawling—around in front of the camera for at least five minutes.

On the other hand, I was deeply impaired and needed at least first aid, not to mention a change of clothes. Which, fortunately, we had on hand, in the form of the sort of tactical clothing a SWAT team would wear. Oh, how I wished we had a SWAT team at that moment. We even had winter camo, kind of an army surplus thing.

I grabbed a smaller Glock 19, the type of gun Kat used to carry, with her effeminate little hands, and I cursed these bastards for stealing my power. I hoped like hell it was temporary. It had to be temporary. It had to.

Right?

Later.

With my pistol picked out and a few spare mags ready, I dragged everything I had so far over to a space in the far corner where the surplus crates sat. I dug and dug before I finally found a package of emergency signaling mirrors. With the mirror at hand, I sat on the cold metal floor and inspected both legs, up and down, then tore open a cleansing wipe from the first aid kit and gave them a quick clean. The flesh was dirty, was scuffed, nearly-blue in a few places like my knees, but there were no wounds there. As bad as they looked, my legs were not the source of the bleeding. Neither were my arms, I determined after a thorough inspection. I did this all hurriedly and pulled on some thick, white-digital camouflage pants as soon as I was done. Because I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down. (Har har.)

Next were my feet. I had never been particularly enamored with how my feet looked; they were kind rough and misshapen, though thankfully not huge or anything. My second toe jutted out above the big toe, which I always thought was kind of weird, and it made me self-conscious enough that I didn’t wear sandals. Were everyone’s feet like that? I dunno, but I still felt weird about it.

The soles were bluish but not black, giving me a quick sense of relief. I poked at myself and realized I could feel the touch, although it seemed muted somehow. I sighed and dried my feet off, then hurried to pull on socks. One less thing to worry about, because while I had certainly gotten cold as hell, I wasn’t suffering from frostbite thanks to my five-minute journey between buildings.

I had my dress pulled up over my camo pants and finally just pulled it over my head so I could get the rest of my camo outfit on. It was here that I discovered where the blood was coming from. The back of my dress was shredded, and as I pulled it off I felt something tug loose, then hit the floor with the tinkle of broken glass.

I had broken glass in my back. Sonofagun. It must have come from my tumble out the window with Volkov, that drunken idiot.

That drunken idiot who saved my life. If I hadn’t gone out the window, I would have been stuck in the reception, powerless against all those people who wanted to kill me. I felt a moment of grateful thanks to the bearded jackass, but not an ounce of remorse for putting a bullet through his head. Cold, I know. I didn’t care. Clearly, I was a product of my environment.

This was rapidly becoming a time sink that could cost me my life. I used the mirror to look at my back, and it was messy. The good news was that it was one laceration that appeared superficial, not a deep and penetrating wound that hit bone or anything. The bad news was that I was not exactly a trauma surgeon, and the thought of trying to stitch myself up with weak and shaking fingers while looking into a mirror over my shoulder was unappealing, at best.

Fortunately, I had butterfly bandages in the first aid kit, and if I ended up with a scar, so be it. I was more worried about survival than having an immaculate, scar-free back. Besides, I was never going to wear an effing dress again.

I haphazardly placed the butterflies, about six or so along a four-inch laceration, and then ran tape around a big ol’ gauze bandage and slapped it on. Then I reflected on how much it hurt to slap a gauze bandage on an open wound, and decided—while screaming a bevy of curses into the armory’s cool, dry air—that I would try to make better choices in the future. If I ended up having one.

But now I was armed, with my M-16 and my pistol. I strapped on boots, lacing them tightly around my still-numb feet. I tried to take it easy on my back by not making sudden movements. I slipped the first aid kit in a backpack with extra mags (so thankful I didn’t have to load them myself with numb fingers), along with a bandolier with a half-dozen grenades for the underslung M209. The M-16 felt heavy, but manageable. I put the stock against my shoulder, hoping the recoil wouldn’t be too much for my newly weakened self to handle.

I tried to ignore the nagging doubts inherent in going from the most well-known, superpowered person on the plane to just another ordinary human.

I was John McClane in
Die Hard
. I was Steven Seagal in
Under Siege
. I was Shia LeBoeuf in every day of his delusional life.

Crap. Didn’t Reed accuse me of doing affirmations earlier? Well, whatever, I was doing affirmations because I needed them. My everything hurt, and people were trying to kill me. I was a long way from the top of my game, and I needed all the help I could get. I adjusted my pack and realized just how heavy everything felt. Then I took off the pack and put on a heavy jacket, because I’d need it if I was going to be out in the cold. A ski cap and balaclava went on after that, and I tucked my hair up, suddenly glad I hadn’t wasted time or money on the professional styling that Phillips had suggested. I finished the ensemble off with a holster for the Glock and a Gerber knife on the other hip, just in front of the spare mags for the M-16. Then I put the backpack back on and stood there for a minute, just feeling the weight of it all. It was heavy.

Crap. This was going to suck. But still, I was dressed a lot more comfortably than I had been for the reception.

I stowed a couple extra surprises as I prepared to exit the room, and stopped at the door when I heard a strange buzzing sound. I frowned, trying to figure out where it was coming from. It sounded like it was in the ceiling, and then I traced it back to the camera in the corner, the little black dome that was watching over me. It was making a frantic noise, like something inside it was moving constantly, back and forth.

I wanted to stand on something and reach up to touch it, take the dome off, maybe see what it was doing under there, but I realized in a second that the lens had to be shifting back and forth rapidly enough to make noise. Someone was clearly controlling it. Someone was watching me.

But why would someone watching me give away the fact they were doing so? It made no sense at all, unless they wanted me to know it and come to the conclusion that I was being watched—

Aw, hell squared.

I felt a cold worry shiver my whole body as I came to two possible conclusions. Either one of the bad guys was working the camera in order to make me question my decision to walk out the armory door, which was—well, a flimsy possibility compared to the other, which was …

… that someone—some fellow member of the agency—was watching me through the security camera. Watching me, and warning me not to go out the door because something—
someone
—was waiting for me on the other side.

When backed into an impossible situation, most people tend to despair. They think about what’s happened, how it could have been prevented, what they’d do if they had a chance to try again, to make different decisions. It’s the paralysis of analysis, and we’ve all done at various points in our lives. Being in a life-or-death situation is a shitty time to re-examine prior decisions and reflect, though. And the worst time to get in a feedback loop of “Should I have done this?” or “Should I have done that?” is when armed and superpowered enemies are standing right outside the door of your military armory, waiting to ambush you the moment you set foot outside.

But it was me in that armory and not most people, and that door was locked with biometrics and had zero glass for someone to break their way through. I was vaulted in, and it’d take an army to drag my ass out of that safety zone. They may have had fifty or a hundred mercenaries (I doubted it was that many, my guess was on twenty to thirty—minus six), but …

I was locked in an armory.

Me.

In an armory.

Teehee.

I opened the door long enough to see faces, surprised at my sudden exodus. I didn’t actually do much more than peek out, though. Well, that and throw eight grenades out in a scatter before slamming the door shut again. They were a mixture of pineapples—that’s fragmentary grenades—as well as a flash, and two WP. WP stands for “Willie Pete,” which is what soldiers in Vietnam called white phosphorus. It’s a really nasty bit of business.

My mentor, Glen Parks, once showed me what one did. He took a fifty-five gallon drum, filled it to the top with water, pulled the grenade pin, and dropped it in. Then he took a whole lot of steps back and we watched the magic. It evaporated every drop of the water and melted the drum to slag, leaving a rather large, black scar on the ground.

Ah, memories. Things like that are why I thought of that time of my life as the best.

I hit the deck out of habit, even though none of the grenades were likely to penetrate the armory walls. I pulled up a gas mask and secured it on my face as I heard screams from the other side of the door. No sounds of shots fired at random, though, so that was a positive sign. For me, not them.

I opened the door again, this time in a squat, peering out through the literal fog of war. Men were screaming, fire was blazing, I was pretty sure someone was in the middle of the flames, and I cared about none of it. The smoke was thick, heavy, and a perfect cover for someone who knew this building like it was her own home. Hell, it pretty much was.

I crept along the corridor, thankful that my aim with the grenades had worked out like I planned it. I’d chucked the Willie Pete to the right, intending to go left in the chaotic aftermath. I stayed close to the wall as a guy ran by, billowing flames. He flapped his arms like a chicken. Like a big, roasting chicken. I think he was screaming, but it was hard to tell. He collapsed after a few feet, and I didn’t take the time to mourn him.

However many men they sent after me, I’d blinded them, but I was under no illusions that it was anything other than temporary. I kept my hands firmly on my M-16, which I had attached to me via sling, in case of emergency. I had lost one gun tonight already, and I aimed to not lose any more. If I made it out of this alive, it was going to be due to my grit and daring, and while those were very fine things, they wouldn’t stop a bullet from splattering my brain into a nearby snow bank. Ask Leonid Volkov if you don’t believe me. Take his silence for the answer.

I kept as quiet as I could, even in spite of the screaming still coming from behind me. I had to assume that not all the enemies were down, and whoever was left could end me with a stray, blind-fired bullet just as easily as a carefully aimed one. The smoke may have been my friend and ally, but it was hardly a protective blanket from everything my pursuers could throw at me.

Plus, there very well could have been an active meta back there. Vitalik, Natasya or Miksa. I had no idea what any of their powers were, so they were just giant question marks for me at this point.

I dodged into a training room quietly, slipping behind the metal doorframe and using it as cover while I peered out into the smoke-filled hall. The air was choking, a heavy cloud hanging on the ceiling and thinning closer to the ground. I had a suspicion that the force of the grenades exploding had probably blown out some windows somewhere in the building. I wondered why the fire sprinklers hadn’t activated, but an explanation occurred to me. Whoever had “warned” me about the mercs waiting in ambush outside the armory clearly had system access. It was entirely possible they were keeping my smokescreen intact. The fires were already dying down in any case; the WP wasn’t left with a ton to work with in the bare, tile hallways.

I watched the clouds thin, and finally heard voices that weren’t screams. I heard someone pounding on the door to the armory, which I had quietly shut behind me in my exodus during the commotion. Hushed voices broke through the air, behind the faint crackle of dying flames. I saw shadows in the darkness, lit by the orange glow of the remaining fire. One. Two. A third brought up the rear, hobbling slightly. Two of the three were carrying weapons that looked like submachine guns, maybe something in the HK family.

With meta speed, a split shot on three people would be cake. Preferably Funfetti Cake with white frosting.

As Sienna Nealon, slightly injured and de-powered malcontent, I wasn’t so sure. I’d practiced quite a bit with this specific type of gun. With my powers, I could field strip one pretty damned quick. Fast enough for an Army record, at least. Without that additional strength to control the recoil, to keep the weapon centered and on-target? I was definitely hesitant.

Hesitation makes corpses of us all, though, so I leaned slightly out of my doorframe, took aim, and fired at the first guy.

The shots rent the air, thunderously loud without hearing protection on my ears. I aimed for center mass and I saw the target drop after three shots. My barrel climbed with the burst, the blast of the muzzle dying after the third round. The M-16 isn’t a fully automatic weapon; it fires in three shot bursts because—surprise, surprise—it turns out that most people can’t really control a weapon spraying bullets wildly at the rate of lots per second. I certainly couldn’t, not now.