Splinters edge, p.24
Splinter's Edge, page 24
“If Maddox,” Lahn said, completing his thought, “is trying to stop the explosion, would he be in some dark, secret corner of the basement?” Lahn came up to the barricade. They were holding the onlookers two blocks back, but the view of the emergency activity and the building itself was unobstructed.
“Oh no,” said Lucia. “That’s an—”
“That’s a what?” asked Lahn, as he stared at Welkin Tower. He couldn’t help but imagine the building in ruins. If a chunk of the bottom imploded, the weight from above could bring down the entire building, or topple it into nearby neighbors. A projection of one thousand casualties was probably low.
“Excuse me, Lahn?”
Lahn turned to find a woman slightly taller than him, considering him intently. She wore a simple blue suit. He assumed she was an office worker in one of the buildings and wondered how she knew his name. But something about the blank-intensity of her expression made him pause. She reached into her jacket and pulled out a small wallet.
“I’m Agent Kenderson,” she said, opening the wallet and showing him an ID and badge. The badge seemed to expand and take over his entire vision. She was a DTS agent. “Would you come with me?”
Lahn’s brain freaked out and told his body to run. His body didn’t listen, instead it obediently stepped forward as the agent directed.
Their walk was a fuzzy blur, past the barricades, through the emergency personnel and evacuees. She slowed as they came to a black van with darkened windows in a cordoned off area among ambulances and military vehicles. The agent opened the sliding side door of the van and ushered him inside to a seat at the back. His body continued to comply, even as Lahn’s mind screamed at him. She stepped in and sat facing him on a backwards bench behind the driver seat.
“Please empty your pockets,” she said.
For a moment, Lahn didn’t understand the words, and struggled with simply breathing. When the meaning finally permeated his brain, he remembered what was in his pockets. Stolen cash, illegal tech he’d purchased from a sketchy site, and two pages that gave him unusual knowledge about the attack. And being caught with contraband wasn’t even his biggest worry. If the DTS was involved in the attacks, any evidence that he’d somehow caught wind of their nefarious plan would be very, very bad.
“Please,” Agent Kenderson repeated, a little slower, “empty your pockets.” It was clear from her tone the polite phrase was not a request.
Fighting the pain in his hand, Lahn reached into his pocket. His fingers found the cool glass and smooth metal edges of the handheld terminal. He mentally scrambled for anything he could do to avoid bringing it out. His mind delivered a huge pile of nothing.
As the agent’s stare became more intense, Lahn slowly removed the handheld from his pocket, and handed it over.
Agent Kenderson examined the device for a moment, attempted to turn it on, then placed it in a basket next to the seat. “Other pocket,” she said, turning back to Lahn.
There had to be options for avoiding incriminating himself, but he couldn’t think of a single thing. Reaching into his other pocket, he pulled out the cash he took from Maddox’s apartment and the papers from the warehouse and handed them to the agent.
With no visible reaction, she counted the cash and placed it in the basket. The two pages—the small obelisk drawing and the timeline—held her attention for several long seconds before she added them to the rest of the collection.
“And the cuff,” she said, pointing to his ear.
Lahn glanced at the agent’s own cuff before looking away and reaching up to take his off. Lucia had been confident in the security of the new cuff, sure that it would appear completely normal, even to government AI. If she was wrong, there was nothing he could do to protect her. Trying to appear as if he couldn’t care less, he handed over the cuff and it went in the basket.
And then they sat, quietly, facing each other with nowhere else to look. How can someone go so long without blinking? he wondered absurdly. As time stretched, Lahn tucked his cramping hand under his other arm, and examined his shoes.
A noise startled him out of his important evaluation of footwear, and the side door of the van slid open, revealing Agent Prakash with another agent in a matching DTS anorak. Agent Kenderson grabbed the basket and stepped outside with the two other agents, closing the door behind them.
“. . . handheld . . . encrypted . . .” Individual words bled through the metal door. “. . . AI couldn’t unlock . . . on these papers . . .”
The door opened again, and Agent Prakash stepped inside alone, holding the two papers from Lahn’s pocket. She slid the door shut and sat opposite Lahn, the morning light through tinted windows casting harsh shadows on one side of her face. All traces of her feigned kindness from their other interactions were gone, and her large eyes bored into his.
“I’m pressed for time,” she said flatly. “Right now I have one question. Where is the device?”
“It’s not in the basement?” His surprise at her question tricked the words out of his mouth.
Agent Prakash continued to stare at him, the energy of her eyes threatening to crush his soul. She didn’t answer, but he didn’t need her to. Her question said everything. If she was asking, the DTS was not involved in the attacks. And they had no idea where the device was.
His heart took off like a speeding horse. No one was disarming explosive devices. Everyone was still in extreme danger. Including Tia and Maddox.
She held up the timeline. “I know you’re involved, Lahn. This has the same date and time as the anonymous message on the Mesh. Where is the device?”
“I . . . I don’t know where it is,” he struggled out, trying to avoid her dangerous eyes.
“Lahn, look at me. What is this?” she asked, holding up the drawing of the obelisk.
If Maddox had figured out where the device really was, he could be anywhere. And Maddox was on his own, no one to find him and get him safely away.
“Lahn!” Agent Prakash snapped.
The van door slid open. “They need your help on the north side,” said Agent Kenderson.
“Fine. Cuff him and keep him here. See if you can get anything else from him.” She stepped out of the van, dropped the pages into the basket in Agent Kenderson’s hands, and stormed off, leaving the other two agents behind.
Agent Kenderson pulled a set of handcuffs from her jacket and climbed back into the van, taking Agent Prakash’s place. She placed the basket next to her seat and turned to Lahn. “Hold out your hands.”
Without really realizing it, Lahn held out his hands and Agent Kenderson snapped the handcuffs in place with a click of the electromagnetic lock.
Tia and Maddox might both be on a bus right now, whisked away to safety. Lahn wanted to believe it. His whole body ached with a desire to make the wish true.
“Tell me about your ear cuff,” said Agent Kenderson, holding it up.
Lahn looked up at her. Lucia could help him figure out where they were, but there was no way to get the cuff or talk to Lucia without revealing her existence. Hopefully she was hiding anyway.
“It looks expensive,” said the agent. “You don’t make that much money. Why spend so much on a cuff?”
If Maddox had figured out the drawing, that’s where he was. It was just that stubborn word under that didn’t make any sense. If it was supposed to mean the device was under the building, it was a lie. The device wasn’t there, or the DTS would have found it.
“And it seems you got a new, expensive proxy, too. Better than the basic AI you had before. Felice? Is that what you named her?”
Unless . . . the drawing didn’t mean under the building. Maybe there was a space directly under the obelisk, under the sidewalk in front of the building.
“Let’s talk to her.” Agent Kenderson slipped the cuff onto her ear. “Felice?”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the cuff started blinking, the agent got a puzzled look on her face, and she reached up. Suddenly, before her hand could touch it, a pop and tiny electrical sparks flashed from the cuff with a puff of ozone. Agent Kenderson’s body shook once, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she slumped sideways across the chair.
Lahn hunched down in his seat, staring at Agent Kenderson. Her limbs spasmed, vibrating her whole body, and white foam leaked from her mouth and ran down her chin. After a full minute, her body stopped moving, but he could see her breathing slowly and his own held breath fell into synchronized rhythm with hers.
“Agent Kenderson?” Lahn queried quietly. She didn’t respond. “Agent Kenderson?” he said a little louder with no result.
“Wow, Lucia,” he whispered in awe, full-well knowing she could no longer hear him. “Sometimes, you are kinda scary.” Lahn leaned forward, carefully removed the cuff from Agent Kenderson’s ear and examined it. Cracked with scorch marks, and still warm, the cuff was destroyed by the self-destruct mode that stunned the agent.
He’d lost Lucia again, just after he got her back. But he didn’t have time to wallow. He needed to find Tia and Maddox and make sure they were safe, or find the tech and stop it for good.
“She’s going to be so mad when she wakes up,” said Lahn, looking at the agent again. With extreme care, he pinched the lapel of the agent’s jacket and pulled it back. Slowly, he reached inside her pocket, and pulled out a ring of keys. Laying the edge of the jacket back into place reverently, he settled back in his seat.
Now, what’s the right key? he wondered. The ring held a mix of traditional, magnetic, and circuit security keys. The handcuffs didn’t have a slot for a traditional or security key, so Lahn pressed each magnetic key against the handcuffs until he heard a snap and they popped open.
Dropping both the handcuffs and keys on the floor, he leaned forward and grabbed the basket, putting everything back into his pockets. The van sliding door did not include a window, and he tipped his head to look through the passenger side window and mirror.
Standing with his back to the sliding door, the brawny man that came with Agent Prakash stood watch. The suit he wore would probably hold two Lahns—Past and Future—but there wasn’t a gram of fat on the hulking beast.
Lahn carefully slid into the driver’s seat. For a moment he daydreamed of driving the van away, leaving the agent behind cursing his name. Not that he could actually go anywhere. The van was blocked in by the vehicles around it. Instead, he slowly opened the driver side door, stepped out, and quietly closed it.
Ignoring the official personnel rushing around him and the violent beating of his heart, Lahn moved purposefully through the surrounding emergency vehicles, toward his work building and the crowds of thousands of evacuees. The obelisk was on the sidewalk, ten meters in front of Welkin Tower, a block in front of him. But he needed to find an entrance to the underground space below it—maybe angled doors, or a grate in the sidewalk.
“Hey!”
Lahn glanced back. Coming around an ambulance he’d passed was the mountain of an agent that had been standing watch outside the van. Lahn turned to the right and sprinted for the crowd exiting a nearby building, dodging through emergency personnel.
“Hey! Stop!” Heavy steps pounded behind him.
Nearing the stanchions that corralled the crowds, Lahn took a deep breath, jumped the rope, and plunged in. Using his smaller frame, he wove and dodged smoothly between lines moving toward the evacuation buses. If the noise of startled and upset people behind him was any sign, the burly agent had a harder time getting through the crowd.
After quick navigation through a gaggle of people, Lahn ducked down as he ran, pulled off his red jacket, and dropped it, leaving the white T-shirt underneath. A quick shift to the side and he slipped into a stream of people moving toward a bus. He knew he shouldn’t look back, but after a stressful minute, he risked a glance.
The tall agent held his red jacket and looked around to find his lost quarry. Lahn took a deep breath and ducked his head, turning forward with the rest of his group. He just needed to stay lost among the others for a bit, and then step out of line and make his way back toward the building. Without the pounding of his heart giving him away.
After another minute, he risked a look back toward his work building. With each step, he was being moved farther away from it. As his line passed the end of the building on his left—an older skyscraper less than half the height of Welkin Tower—he noticed in the alley a large grate set in the pavement. Lahn stopped, looking closer. A few meters from the grate, a broken padlock lay on the ground.
A woman bumped into Lahn from behind.
“Hey, why did you stop?” she said.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, moving out of her way. He quickly ducked into the alley.
The lock on the grate had been cut and removed. Leaving unlocked exactly what he was looking for: an entrance to an underground space. And someone had gone through it recently.
Someone . . . like Maddox?
It felt like he was too far away, almost two blocks from the obelisk. But what were the chances of finding another unlocked entrance? With a flex of his aching hand, Lahn reached down and pulled open the grate.
The hole into the earth opened before him, a dark mouth to a cavern. Probably swarming with goblins or orcs, and he’d left his Elven sword at home. A set of metal steps led down into the darkness, and Lahn hesitated at the top. He’d fought his way free from the dark less than an hour earlier and he wasn’t anxious to enter the oppressive black maw before him without his flashlight. Or the cuff Lucia gave him with its meager light. At this point he’d take a stick wrapped in oil-soaked rags. Not that he had a way to light it. Fuzziness pressed at the edges of his vision, but he thought of Maddox’s stupid face somewhere in the dark, and took a deep breath to calm his thundering heart.
He had no idea how long he’d been detained by the DTS, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. He should have at least sixty minutes to find Maddox. With eyes wide open, he started on the stairs, pulled the grate closed after him, and continued down, letting the darkness swallow him.
The stairs ended in a stone hallway that led away from the buildings above. A light appeared in front of him, and he hurried toward it. Small, yellow, and doing little to reduce the somber tone, the illumination was nonetheless welcome, saving him from a full-on need to panic. The light lived in an industrial sconce at the top of the wall, with more at five meter intervals.
The tunnel was stone, dark with age. Older than the buildings above ground, ancient dust filled his nose. Iron pipes and silver and black conduits ran along the ceilings and walls. Many pipes seemed due for repair, rusted and dripping water, which mixed with the dust on the floor and left a thin, slimy layer.
He moved forward as quickly as he dared, careful of his footing. After he traveled far enough to be under the street, the tunnel ended in a junction, with one path leading left and the other right. From his current location, unless he’d already gotten completely turned around, the obelisk should be somewhere to the right.
As he moved down the new hallway, he fought to ignore the oppressive space and the pain in his hand. After seemingly forever, a nondescript shape appeared on the floor ahead. He moved closer and the shape became clear. A body.
No . . . two bodies.
A man and a woman he didn’t recognize, both in black T-shirts and pants, lay in a crumpled heap on the floor—no obvious wounds. Lahn stepped carefully around them in the small hallway and moved on, fighting to get a solid breath. He couldn’t stop to check on whoever the poor souls might be. If he didn’t hurry, they’d all be dead.
Up ahead, a muffled noise echoed through the hallway. He moved forward, each step eroding his confidence, and the sound became more pronounced. Someone shouting.
It sounded like Maddox.
All thoughts and concerns dissolved in a flash, and Lahn ran for the voice. Suddenly a deep thump followed by a large electric crack echoed through the pathway, the sound bouncing off stone, and he felt his stomach rise in his chest.
Without thinking, Lahn sped toward the danger. A flickering glow shone around a corner, with a hum he could feel in his teeth and an electric crackle that caused the hair to rise on the back of his neck.
As he turned the corner, he found an open room the size of his mother’s suburban garage. Set on either side of the dark area, construction lights highlighted electrical panels on the walls, but did little to offset the gloom. Two cameras on tripods lay on their sides, smashed against the floor. And there, close to the back wall, was the technology he’d been chasing since the beginning of time. The box was suspended off the floor about waist height, mounted in a framework of scaffolding much like the setup at Living Bliss, with other equipment connected and configured around it on folding tables. The device was powered up, and the strange orb at its center glowed and pulsed, casting flickers and flashes of green.
With his back to Lahn—in the dark-blue overcoat, gray hoodie, and leaning over the device—was the person he’d been running from and after.
A third person, closer to Lahn, stood facing away, looking toward the technology. But Lahn would know that shaggy ginger mane anywhere. It was Maddox, and he stood a mere meter from enough destructive power to bring down multiple buildings.
Before Lahn could step toward Maddox, someone screamed, a blinding green flash filled the room, and something fell to the floor with a solid thump.
Lahn stumbled backward. It took several moments of frantic blinking for him to realize he wasn’t dead. As his vision cleared, a giant, pulsing sphere of energy became visible. At five meters across, the sphere filled most of the room, with edges phasing into the floor and walls on either side. It had glowing patterns of emerald plasma that shifted across its surface, and it wasn’t solid but somehow held its shape. Occasionally an arc of energy jumped from the sphere to the metal casings of the electric panels on either side of the room and created a sharp, astringent odor. Undisturbed in the sphere’s center stood Faceless, still facing away from Lahn, and engrossed in some aspect of the equipment.
