Hybrid (29 page)

“We’ll go.” Sai pulls herself out of the vest. “Thirty-One, with us.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” The others fall into step behind her.

She moves swiftly, leading the way. Time to see if another domino can do what’s needed.

The canister of Ebony fits neatly against Dom’s wrist and forearm, the end cupped in the palm of his hand. It’s the only way he can adapt his camouflage to surround it, and he makes a note to thank Kayde for the foresight. The filtration hubs sit well below street-level, in the remnants of what was, buzzing with the effort of circulating air through the entire city.

Central systems and fans run in a complex design of air chutes, ultimately pushing out through huge concrete passageways with large propellers based on an outdated centrifugal design. Air rushes out through vents and into the dome of the city. There’s a constant whoosh of noise as the stale, used air is sucked back into the massive system, purified, and shot back out again. The filtration agent is housed in the main body of the machine. It shoots out the purifier in puffs of faint dust, so the air that reaches the city is perfect, if a little thick with low-grade combustibility.

The chamber housing the system is cavernous.

And guarded.

The Damascus patrol is split—two soldiers inside and two outside. Their lieutenant patrols a loop of both. No Hound, though, which makes sense. More fragile than their counterparts, the Hounds haven’t weathered the test of time quite as well.

Dom moves slowly around the initial two, only passing through the door when they change guard. One of the soldiers swivels in his direction, orange beads of light focusing but seemingly passing through him. It takes half a step forward, and Dom exerts all his will to camouflage, desperately wishing he could sink through the rock. Darkness hovers gleefully at the edge of his vision, but he tempers it with the sureness of loss against five Damascus. Even the parasite wants to survive, and it retreats almost like a sulky child.

The soldier withdraws, stepping back in line with its partner, and they venture through the door. Dom slithers through with inches to spare and waits until they are well on their patrol before moving farther inside, glad that apparently being able to see adrium netting doesn’t extend to a fully adrium being. The lieutenant should be another ten minutes, easily enough time for Dom to work his way into the heart of the filtration room and add the Ebony agent to the mix.

He moves slowly, past suctioning machines, swirling waters, and strange steam elements. Reaching the middle, he pauses at the huge filtration system. The massive steel machine has several inserts for the purifying agent, and as he’d hoped, some of the slots are empty. Which was always part of the plan. Can’t take away the air purification just to put the resistance agent into the air.

The side panel requires codes and simultaneous insertion of the canister. He frowns at the distance between them, irritated. While he may be capable of morphing within constraints, stretching himself that far isn’t an option. He has no time to waste. There’s no way for him to insert the Ebony without setting off alarms. Not only would that cause the canister to be ejected, rendering the whole trip completely futile, but it would also warn the GNW of possible tampering.

Anger seeps in quickly, and clamping down on the parasite’s whisperings takes precious minutes. Once it passes, he has to blend against the system and hope the lieutenant doesn’t notice him on its rounds. Each second that passes is cutting it closer to the deadline Bastian set for the needed distraction.

But the lieutenant stands at the door, quite some distance from the center, and scans the area. Dom stays perfectly still while the patrols exchange, while the strange whirs and slightly off-key beeps that pass for their language are exchanged. Until, finally, the lieutenant lets the others through and reverses, going back to the windy corridors.

Dom waits as patiently as possible before moving back through security, swearing that next time he’d find another way in and bring someone with him to do the job right.

Dom inches his way down the halls, past the surveillance cameras, and through the corridors down to the elevators. Just past those are the frequently used fire escape stairwells, sitting in relative obscurity. He waits until the door opens.

Once in the stairwell, it’s easier to navigate the way down. There’s less of a chance of encountering people and less of a chance of being recorded. It’s also not one of the camera hotspots in the building, although security has increased since the initial infiltration a few months ago. Then again, a lot has changed in him since then, too.

There’s a feeling in the pit of his stomach, probably akin to what people call fear, but Dom isn’t used to it. It’s annoying. The plan is seemingly foolproof if all the intel they have is correct. He wonders if it’s his trip down to the filtration system that has him on edge. But something else keeps tugging at Dom, cautioning him, making him aware that not all may be as it seems.

Dom pushes it to the back of his mind and continues on his way down, checking his internal clock as he goes. He’s early, luckily. There’s about five minutes before he needs to create the promised diversion.

Just get in and out, Bastian
, he thinks to himself over and over. It’s all Bastian has to do—just dive into it and out of it as soon as possible. If needed, Dom will fight their way out. It’s currently late afternoon, and the corridors are far emptier than he remembers. Most people are still in their offices.

He glances up and down, frowning. There’s one guard stationed at each point of contact. Each point he needs to drag them away from. The unused fire escape is down the left hand corridor, two guard points from where Bastian will need to go in order to get into the laboratory.

If everything goes according to plan, it’ll be fine. Dom keeps telling himself so as he waits.

He tries desperately not to think about the glee he feels every time he squeezes the last drop of life out of someone, tries not to think about how it’d just be so much easier to eliminate every single human in the GNW building. After all, would that really be such a loss?

Somewhere, someone told him that killing innocents is what they aim to avoid in this conflict. Perhaps it was Sai.

Fighting the need to leave his post and go to her side is difficult, but he should have time to do both. It was easy to help her and be there for her when she was originally undertaking assignments as a member of the GNW. Bouncing between Central and Alpha has made being there for Sai so much more difficult.

The knowledge that she’s about to be in danger tugs at him, willing him to go and help.

An internal alarm goes off, reminding him he has exactly one minute before he needs to begin the diversion. Noise and flittering sensor readings should create enough of an uproar. It’s an unpredictable plan, but it’s the best they’ve got.

Dom is fully aware of how fast he can be and how lethal he is.

He closes his eyes and concentrates, feels the darkness tugging, and allows it but a sliver of intrusion before bringing all of his abilities into line. Then he waits for the alarm to sound in his head.

The second it goes off, he jumps from his hiding spot to the other side of the corridor, allowing his camouflage to drop briefly and reveling in the sound of sensors going off all around him. The guards’ stances change, on alert. Now, it’s going to be dangerous, with the aftershock of surprise still floating in the air.

He can sense Bastian behind the door, waiting, and obliges, this time allowing his camouflage to drop for a split second longer. Even if a crossbow hits him, it’s not like it’ll do any damage. It’s not the first time Dom’s enjoyed a feeling of superiority due to the structure of his body. One more thing he has to remember to thank Mathur for.

As the screeching sounds blare, he senses Bastian begin his dead run for the rear laboratory door. Dom launches himself into speed mode, flashing his camouflage on and off so fast he hears some of the sensors overload.

The old saying “now you see me now you don’t” flashes through his mind, almost making him laugh. But the situation is dire, and he manages to control himself.

The door closes behind Bastian and Dom stops, invisible again as he moves down the corridor, skillfully avoiding all of the Damascus guards and humans who’ve come tumbling out of their offices with terrified expressions.

Dom waits for it to calm down, just that little bit, knowing Bastian needs one more full-fledged attempt at a distraction.
So far, so good
, he thinks. And then he launches himself into a final onslaught to confuse sensors to the best of his abilities. There is nothing in this world that is capable of finding him if he doesn’t want to be found. The scattered sensory alarms scream.

He stops and walks twenty feet under full protection while the sensors finish their panic. Satisfied, he focuses inward and begins to take down his defenses.

The yowl of a different alarm fills his ears, startling him so much he almost releases his camo. He glances back through the laboratory door behind him, narrowly getting out of the way of the swarm of military who make their way through it, and barely has the presence of mind to follow them before it closes.

Lights flash and finally drop to red, the color of alert. Dom dims his eyes to better compensate for the red tint to everything in the laboratory.

He can make out the cells where the Damascus are being reengineered. He can make out the test tubes pushed to the back of the room that were used in the creation of himself and the other dominos.

But the thing that catches his eyes the most is Bastian, held between two very burly guards with a knife at his throat, while Zach circles him and laughs.

“I knew it would be you.”

Bastian doesn’t respond. There’s nothing he can say to make his situation better, only worse. Dom watches, knowing there is no way for him to take on the mass of guards in the room, as well as Damascus stationed in an open cube. He itches to help, the parasite nibbling away at his reserve. Maybe it’s not that aware of self-preservation after all.

“Deign was confident you wouldn’t do this, and so she eagerly agreed to plant the codes with you. You and Owen, actually, but it seems he was just too eager to play god with the Damascus. Really, Bastian, did you think you could fool me? I’ve always been stronger than you.”

At least they don’t know that. At least doping down with Shine will have served two purposes. They won’t have realized how truly strong Bastian is, and he may have developed a slight immunity to the drug as well.

It’s hard for Dom to watch the hopeless situation. To know that, in the end, it was never a question of how good the diversion was, just that the code Bastian would enter in order to disable the Damascus was going to give him away.

Zach appears to be annoyed by Bastian’s lack of cooperation, of his refusal to rise to the bait. “We know it’s been you.” He leans forward, a knife in his hand, balancing it under Bastian’s perfect chin. “We know that at heart you’re an Exiled, and we’ll find out what you know.”

“I don’t know anything.” Bastian’s words are flat, even flatter than Dom remembers him being while trying to bottle everything up. It’s like he’s already gone where no one can get at his mind. “I’m taking care of the Damascus before they kill us all, you idiot.”

“We’re taking care of the girl at this very moment. Both the girl and the source.”

At this moment.
The words ring in Dom’s head, like a tolling bell. So much that he barely notices Bastian’s complete lack of response. They have Sai already? Or they’re about to catch her? Why won’t Zach say more? Why isn’t he telling them everything? There’d been no information that the GNW even knew where the main Mobile was located.

Panic starts to rise, feeding the parasite, but Dom is almost beyond caring that he barely keeps it at bay. There’s no time to wait. He can’t help Bastian, but there might be a chance for Sai. Dom flits forward and appears directly in front of Bastian for an instant, dropping his camo while still moving, not even enough to set off the sensors. He hopes it’s enough.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he thinks he sees Bastian’s lips curl into a slight smile before the frozen mask slips back into place. For now, that’ll have to do. Bastian isn’t the only one at stake. Right now he has to push
Mele’s
limits and hope to hell he gets to Sai in time.