[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (47 page)

He reviewed the feed from the AIs overhead. He could not contact them directly while he was in the house, but he could receive information from them anywhere, and among the steady flow of data coming through subspace, the AIs were providing him a running update on Neal’s whereabouts. Seeing that his quarry’s bus was still en route to the Pentagon, he thought about his options. He had plenty of time, and he still needed an explanation to take back to the ever-pleasant Princess Lamati. So he decided to return to the basement to examine it once more before calling the search off.

Coming back down the thin wooden stairs, he started to review each box that was stacked in the big room in detail. They had all appeared innocuous on his first review, and he found nothing on a second pass to change that evaluation. He scanned the walls as he had in every room already and found, as he had before, that they were riddled with the same holes and pipes that wove under most houses.

But there was one particularly large hole behind the washing machine, too big to be explained by the piping that attached to the back of the washer and dryer. He went over to the washing machine in the corner and scanned it. It contained nothing of interest, not even clothing, which was not surprising as it appeared to be broken: it had a shaft going through the base of the tumbler inside that would clearly render it useless. He adjusted the power and wavelength of the X-ray coming from his eyes to change how far it penetrated into the machine, following the shaft into the base and seeing through its casing to where the metal bar came to an abrupt stop. His infrared showed signs of recent stress, some kind of fracture, heat still emanating from the pressure of whatever had broken the shaft. He scanned behind the washing machine again. The large hole in the brick seemed to be blocked by a sheet of some metallic material.

Shahim stepped up to the machine and pulled. It appeared to be bolted to the floor, but under pressure something in its base gave, and suddenly it hinged outward. He saw now that the shaft he had seen earlier had been blocking its movement. He became even more curious when he surveyed the sheet covering the hole behind it. He could see the heat emanating from the screws around its edge. It had been put there within the last few hours, there was no doubt about that.

Reaching down, Shahim pressed his fingers into the gap between the plate and the wall and pulled. The screws’ hold on the mortar put up some small measure of a battle but soon they were wrenching free one by one, the metal, an aluminium sheet about a quarter of an inch thick, bending and rippling under the stress until he had wrenched it free.

He saw the hole behind it. He knelt and looked into the basement on the other side, then he began to climb through.

* * *

The previous afternoon, Madeline was busy with a complex schematic rendering in the resonance chamber management system when her phone beeped.

She looked down at the small device, which rarely made any noise save for her frequent alarms and very infrequent calls. Apparently she had received a response to her profile on a dating site. Knowing what this meant, she checked the site immediately. They all had false profiles there, allowing any other member of the team to ping them whenever they wanted, while remaining relatively anonymous in the process. It was one of many covert methods they used, somewhat at random, to blur their lines of communication to the eyes of those that were watching. The site’s servers added a layer of complexity to the task of tracking their sources, and combining this with the innocuous code words and phrases Ayala had provided them with, and they had a relatively safe method of sending the occasional message to each other when something could not wait for the next of Ayala’s regular visits.

“Loved your ad. You look cute. I am from the South as well. I am hoping to go back very soon. Maybe we can meet up. -Mr. Little”

Madeline recognized the meaning of the message as soon as she read it: that her cover in Florida was in jeopardy and that she had to return there immediately. Madeline stared at the monitor for a moment, then checked her other dummy e-mail accounts and even looked at the various classifieds where they also posted information. Nothing. No more information.

She had to act, she knew that. She had to move. Now. But she was frozen with, she did not know what.

She stared, a sense of numbness settling over her. A small part of the back of her mind began thinking about flights. She realized this and watched it, almost remotely, as this part of her stepped up and went through the schedule of flights back to her hometown, one of the many things Ayala had made her memorize for just such an occasion. She knew what she had to do. As if by default, she eventually stood, went to a drawer, gathered one of her fake persona packages with its complement of credit cards and matching driver’s license, and slipped her real ID and credit cards into a purpose made slit in the lining of her purse. Thus prepared, she turned for the door. There was nothing else for it. She walked out as if impelled. She had just over three hours before the last flight to Tampa. She had to go.

* * *

John could not risk sending such a message to Neal with the increased attention that was now being paid to him. If a phone pinged while he was being watched so closely it might alert the AI to the fact that he was getting messages from a source other than the ones it was monitoring. It would then only be a matter of some targeted tracing, something the AI was disturbingly good at when it had cause, for it to find John holding the cup at the end of the string.

So John’s second note went to Ayala instead. It had been quick, and it had been the first time any of the team had used the code in question.

Ayala reacted instantly, she was out the door in less than a minute, and was on a plane not two hours later. She had to get to their headquarters, save what she could, and then burn the rest. Then they had to move. Where, she did not know. How, she did not know. They had created the code as a worst-case scenario, an all-else-has-failed option. In truth, they had never thought they would survive very much longer if it was ever used.

Her only solace was that John had not said they were definitely discovered, but that it was imminent and probable. She hoped they were relying on more than just blind luck to avoid it, but didn’t hope very hard.

* * *

Shahim’s bent frame knelt at the hole that linked the basement he was in with what must be the neighbor’s. He looked through. He could see clothes on two racks, the underside of a row of tables with a host of computers on them. He could make out the back of a corkboard. It had been turned to face the opposite wall.

He scanned the room for signs of life. None. He scanned for alarms, electronic or otherwise. No sensors, heat or movement. The computers were all off, though heat signatures showed they had been on recently, and had been working quite hard. He saw the corner of a readout from an Array scan in the trashcan, and signs it was not alone in there.

This was a hidden entrance to a secret room. It was, almost certainly, where Neal had been spending so much of his time, the place he had gone to when he went to the basement. It was not conclusive, but Shahim could think of no reason why the man would have this room other than to hide a secret, a secret he felt could not reasonably be hidden even in his own home.

Neal must know something. Shahim felt more and more certain of it.

With resignation to the fact that he would probably soon be killing again, Shahim leant forward to climb through into the other basement, noting with some curiosity the large, metallic seeming pillar that his sensors told him was just to the right of the entrance, but seeing a moment too late that it was wearing clothes.

* * *

Just inside the door, John Hunt stood above him. He was not using active scanning so as not to alert the other Agent to his presence, but Shahim was pumping out so much IR, X-ray, and microwave pulses, he was like a beacon.

He saw the other Agent’s head start to come through the gap. He had hoped that it would not come to this. He had hoped that Shahim would not look behind the curtain.

* * *

Shahim saw the front of a shoe, he did not see any heat from it so he assumed it could not be on someone’s foot. He saw, overlaid with heat imaging, that it was dead and metallic inside. No, not metallic. What was it made of? He turned his head, looking up. His scans told him with certainty that this was not a person, so what was it, a mannequin?

Fractions of a second passed as his eyes moved up the side of the object just inside the room, while his tactical analysis tried to reconcile the information being returned with known human material science to provide some kind of reasonable conclusion.

As John saw the threat was not going to pass, he knew it was time.

The scene changed with blinding rapidity.

John flexed his hand down in an impossibly fast movement, his fingers aiming for the other Agent’s left eye.

Shahim’s machine brain registered the threat coming at him a moment later, tactical analyses springing to life in the nanosecond before his consciousness could even work out what was happening. The analysis showed the only conclusion it could: he was being attacked by another Agent.

Several automated responses kicked in, and within a tenth of a second Shahim’s weapons array was already starting to deploy, John’s hand flying through the air in front of him, even as Shahim’s fake left pupil started rolling down.

Shahim started to pull away, back through the hole he was coming through, and John reacted. Shahim could not be allowed to escape. Redirecting his hands’ movements, he went instead to grab the other Agent’s head, turning and dropping to the floor as he did so, to try and get the purchase he would need to drag Shahim into the room by force.

As John began dropping into view, Shahim’s head was still coming up, his left eye still receding, his weapons array still emerging. This was only the first tenths of a second, but these moments were vital, as the two combatants made their first moves in the deadly game, getting in position, pawns moving forward to try and establish control.

As Shahim saw John come twisting into view, his face angling toward him, the Agent recognized its features even as it registered the needlepoints already fully deployed from John’s left eye. With fear and astonishment racing through his mind, Shahim’s machine sub-consciousness noted the deployed and powered up weapons array that was targeting his own and automatically began to wrench at every muscle in his neck to try turn his head away from the weapons now zoning in on it.

He knew he must protect his array until it was fully deployed. He needed two-tenths of a second to complete it. But John’s initial gambit was too quick, and the first pieces to fall in this game would go to the Englishman.

As John’s hands grasped either side of Shahim’s head, he had barely a millisecond to lock on and target Shahim’s eye. He knew he only had one shot. Then his advantage of surprise would be mooted by Shahim’s fast responding systems. Finding the target and locking in, he fired everything he had, focusing his entire destructive wrath into the inch-wide aperture of his opponent’s left eye.

Shahim’s entire body registered the blow, alarms flaring as his still vulnerable weapons array superheated almost instantaneously. The sonic wave followed a millisecond later, smashing into his suddenly scorched eye socket. With the complex structures suddenly heated to extremes, the focused sonic punch brutally warped their intricate superstructure and they jammed in mid-deployment, their systems frying under the focused barrage.

It was an initial score for John, but they were already both thinking about their next moves, tactical options filing through their minds with probability analyses and damage potentials. John’s feet were already coming up on either side of the wall as his hands clenched on either side of his enemy’s head, getting ready for his next play.

Shahim sensed that he was about to be pulled bodily into the room by his neck. It was too late to stop it, so instead Shahim went on the offensive, thrusting two of his most powerful pieces on the board forward.

John felt the shift. Shahim’s head was suddenly no longer pulling away, but surging forward, toward John, and Shahim’s fists were now firing ahead like pistons.

John felt the dual blows register throughout his body like an earthquake, a seismic event that shook every structure in him. His vision actually shifted, his eyes momentarily realigning under the duress. He could redirect his hands downward, sweeping Shahim’s flying fists from his midriff, but that might allow Shahim to get away.

So he also changed tacks, opening his ranks, drawing his opponent in. Redirecting his torsion musculature to pull from the very points where Shahim was impacting him, he directed all his strength into closing the gap between his hands and his stomach, every fiber of his being suddenly and entirely pulling inward with herculean power, even as every ounce of Shahim’s strength was focused in the opposite direction, driving his attack forward.

The change in tension was titanic, and because of the way they were both thrusting, that tension was applied, as John had intended, directly to Shahim’s neck. Alarms wailed inside Shahim as the forces shifted, his frame registering the pressure even as his own arms amplified it. John’s move had turned his own strength against him. He was effectively now trying to rip his own head off.

He knew he needed to free himself. He withdrew his attack, his fists stopping their firing progress through John’s torso as suddenly as they had started, and flashing inward, between John’s own forearms, looking to break John’s hold on the center of the board.

John’s body quite literally thanked him for forcing Shahim to relent some measure of the force behind the cannonball fists that had been driven into it. Shahim had delivered the equivalent of an artillery shell fired right into the center of John’s frame. It would have ripped a human clean in two.

The game continued to change millisecond to millisecond. Shahim was a writhing mass of muscle and wrath and John had only marginally damaged him. He was breaking John’s grip. While both Agents shared equal strength, Shahim’s arms’ momentum as they came up gave him the fractional torque advantage he required.