Archon's Queen (61 page)

“You will access the system logs and remove all traces of your supervisor’s account logging in today. Do you understand?”

The young man nodded, and hurried off to another terminal.

The static faded back to brown eyes. “My dears, it would be a most excellent idea if you no longer remained in the room when I am done working with these people.”

larms rang through every hallway in the building. Anna shuffled against the tide of employees headed for the exits. In their panic, they all mistook her for one of the security team. Her running in the opposite direction only seemed to reinforce their belief. She hit the stairwell, following Aurora’s suggestion to make her way to the executive parking deck.

Drab grey walls of unpainted concrete passed one after the next as she climbed a dozen flights. The air stank of dust, and the helmet’s visor fogged to a blurry obstruction. Comm chatter buzzed with the search for the white-haired woman who had, according to them, tried and failed to kidnap one of the VPs. They also searched for the source of inbound weapons fire from an office building across the street.

At the doorway to the seventy-fourth floor, she collapsed on the stairs to catch her breath. After two gasps, her back arched stiff as a freezing mass of heavy air settled on her. Clamping her hands over her mouth to stifle the shriek, Anna twitched and let Aurora in.

Her teeth chattered.
Little bloody warning, please.

Sorry, luv. I had to drop the suit somewhere other than the data room to keep the illusion up.

Content to be little more than a presence in the back of Anna’s mind, Aurora rode as a passenger while they continued. At the end of the stairs, she emerged from a door adjacent to a silver elevator and jogged into a lavish corridor of white marble, gold trim, and black carpeting. Glass comprised much of the right wall, beyond which the executive’s café teased her with the smell of food and coffee.

You’re not seriously considering stopping for a munch are you?

Anna kept going.
I should, I’d be eating for two.

Thirty meters later, the hall descended at a mild grade to a pair of double doors, which opened at the approach of people. Outside, beyond a small cadre of umbrella-bearing orb bots, a handful of high-end hovercars sat arranged in named spaces. Anna went for the nearest one.

The last two paces to the car went by in a flash as a severe impact caught her between the shoulder blades, driving her into the fender. Stunned with no air in her lungs, she slumped to the ground, wheezing.

Good thing you’ve got that armor, eh?

Whatever had hit her hurt too much to reply, even with a thought.

Aurora took over, dragging her under the car out of sight.

You all right, Anna?

A sniper just nailed me tits-first into a bloody car. How do you think I feel?
She curled on her side trying to breathe.
Thanks for telling me to take the vest.

The strange sensation of Aurora winking crept through her mind.
Be glad they got the good ones. Most vests can’t stop rifle slugs.

Again in control, Anna rolled out from under the far side and sat up.

You’ve any idea how to steal one of these?

Her left arm moved on its own, offering a shrug.
Imagine it’s got some manner of biometrics, fingerprint reader most likely. Didn’t you nick a few cars when you were little?

Bloody hell. I’ve never even sat in a hover much less nicked one.

The shivering chill of Aurora’s departure ran down her back, followed by a ghostly voice. “Stay still then, I’ve an idea.”

Anna figured if she could see the man shooting at her, she could force him not to see her. She crept to the end of the car to peek. The taillight exploded from another shot, spraying her with tiny fragments and making her grateful to have taken the helmet. Without a clue where the sniper was, Anna waited. Nerves got the better of her, and some of the nearby cars sparked.

Flashing lights came over the edge of the roof atop a white and black hovercar bearing Timmons-Orben security markings. It glided to a landing a few meters away, bumper to bumper against the car she used for cover. Rather than point a gun at her, the driver waved her over.

Anna tilted her head. “Aurora?”

He offered a hat-tipping gesture at her. “Good guess. It’s easier to steal one that’s already moving.”

“Yeah sure, if you can fly and just possess people willy-nilly I suppose it is.”

The guard feigned shock. “What, you mean you can’t?”

Aurora slid the car sideways off the edge of the roof deck. Several shots clanked in from the unseen gunman, one of which blew out the rear window. Aurora jammed the throttle forward, but the car tumbled end over end as a detonation hit it like a kick in the trunk. The possessed man lost his British accent for a few minutes of shouted obscenities as he brought their plummet into a careening dive a few degrees away from actual control. He shot Anna a glance as if he wanted to punch her, but was too petrified to let go of the sticks.

“What the fuck is going on? Why was there some woman in my head?”

“Look out!” shouted Anna.

He swerved past a support beam, howling as he wrangled the car into something close to normal flight.

Anna held onto the roof handles, staring out the window at the sloped wall of plastisteel and glass that circled the lower half of the building. The car rocketed around in a downward spiral, swaying left to right, chased by its reflection in the surface below.

The console became a blinking mass of red and orange as it erupted with lights and warnings. They bumped and scraped over the edge of the thirtieth floor parking deck, the top level of a detached section of building where the non-executive employees parked.

Anna’s weight crushed into the seat until a collision from below bounced her into the roof. Grinding scrapes shuddered through the frame as it bottomed out with the ground wheels still retracted, and went into a skidding spin. When motion ceased, she ventured a look. They had come to a halt three inches away from the far edge, having slid between two rows of parked cars without touching a single one.

Anna glanced at the man next to her. “Fine bit of flying, that.”

He glared at her, reaching for his sidearm, but his eyes fluttered with Aurora’s presence.

Fragments of acrylic showered the interior as a hail of bullets riddled the driver. He slumped dead over the console. Aurora’s voice moaned from the back seat, grumbling about how much it hurt to be killed. A plain grey hover-van swooped out in front of them, gliding with the side door open. Three men inside continued to fire full-size assault rifles at the car.

Anna ducked under the glove box, arms crossed over her head to shield from the rain of debris. When the firing stopped, her fear morphed into anger. She sprang up in the seat and reached out through the broken windshield. Dazzling sparks shot back and forth between her hands before leaping through the air into the van. The riflemen bailed, sliding down ropes to the parking deck as the interior lights faltered and died. She growled, drawing power out of the car around her to make the arc thicker.

The back end of the hover van erupted into a fireball as the ion drives overloaded. Streamers of lightning crawled along the undercarriage, sporadic blue flashes against the black metal, and it lurched over the edge. Silver windows across the street lit red-orange an instant before the deep rumble of a crash at ground level reached the roof.

Amid the fading growl of the explosion, a metallic
clank
rang out from the railing where it had gone down. The three men scattered among the cars to take cover as a fourth came up over the side on a grapple hook. Anna crawled out of the wreck, eyes narrowing into a hateful squint when she saw the long shape of a sniper rifle across the back of the muscular figure pulling himself up and over the wall.

One of them popped over a car and fired at her. She dove to the ground, crawling away from a spray of broken glass. Another plinked at the deck behind her in a series of near misses that sent her scurrying up to a full sprint. She stayed low, using parked cars for cover as she headed for the stairwell. A man slid out from under a car, sweeping her feet out. She hit the ground. He was on top of her in an instant. A hand around the visor pulled her head back, and the glint of a combat knife flashed in the corner of her eye. She drove her helmet into his face, buying enough of a distraction to get an arm on his hand and redirect the knife into her shoulder. The point slipped between armor panels and drew blood.

Anna screamed. He rolled over on his back, twisting the knife. She shocked his arm, barely able to concentrate on her power through the agony. It had no effect. Anna kicked as he brought his other arm around and hooked his wrist, scraping the blade out of the wound in an attempt to get it past the vest into her throat.

Insulated suits.
She snarled and bit him on the hand, grinding her teeth into the thin material of his glove. As soon as she tasted blood, she let her fear take over. The electric discharge knocked him epileptic, and hit her like a punch direct to the teeth. Boots tromped closer. Disoriented, Anna grabbed at the nearest car trying to figure out which way was up. He roared, shaking off the stun and had a pistol in her face while she was still on all fours.

His grin evaporated to an emotionless line. “Hang on, luv. I got him. Kindly don’t zap the shite out of me.”

The possessed man clicked off a few shots over the roof at someone Anna couldn’t see, and whirled a second before another rounded the row of cars, as if she sensed him coming. The man fired in haste; one slug hit Anna in the face at an oblique angle that glanced away from the visor without penetrating. The protective material splintered into an opaque spiderweb. Anna bounced away from the car, bleeding from the nose and dazed.

Aurora opened fire, walking a line of bullets from chest to head. The soldier staggered back, a spray of red burst from the back of his skull. Anna fumbled to get the helmet off so she could see, and dropped it between her knees. After focusing away the dizziness, she peeked up.

A glint caught her eye; the man with the rifle aimed from the edge of the roof. She screamed and dove for cover.