Point Apocalypse (30 page)

I stood up
and did a couple of toe-touches and arm circles, then a few squats to get my blood going. The stapled scar on my chest didn't trouble me that much. I was about to pick the staples out but reconsidered. Let it heal a bit more.

I was alone in the room with rough stone walls
, a floor but no doors. Instead, a guard hovered on the threshold.

"
You gonna feed me?" I asked him.

He didn't answer but waved to another soldier in the corridor. They exchanged a few quiet
words and the guard came back alone.

"Apparently, you are," I mumbled and sat on the floor listening to the dying
footsteps in the hallway.

Five minutes later, they brought me a pack of field rations without a spoon or a fork or even a can opener.
The soldier used his bayonet to rip open a can of beans, freed up a plastic container from some candy, hardtack crackers and what-not, and poured the beans into it. He filled my mug from his flask and left.

They seemed to be seriously thinking that I'd want to escape.
They were right. The top of a can in skilled hands like Wong's, for instance, could become a very effective weapon. I shook my head, took a pinch of cold beans, threw it into my mouth and started slurping slowly. Then I reached for the mug and froze.

Apparently, the remains of my slumber were finally swept away
- or maybe the food helped as it's well known that one thinks better on a full stomach. In any case, what was worrying me was the fact that the general didn't just chance on mentioning the cargo or McLean. He never did anything off the cuff. I didn't think he'd lied to me. More likely, he'd said it to distract me and make me concentrate on a way of stopping the ferry, thus overlooking other important details.

Mecha
nically, I sent another handful of beans flying into my mouth and washed it down. I'd never make it out of here alone. Without a car, I couldn't get to the city. Besides, I had to take Mira with me and I had no idea where my daughter was.

P
hew. I listened to my stomach rumbling. Wong, Kathy and Wladas had to be somewhere nearby. If I freed them and explained to each what to do next, my chances of success would improve greatly. Kathy and Wladas could be trusted to guard Mira and her daughter while Wong and myself could deal with the general's men.

I nodded and decided to leave only
Kathy with Mira and the baby, adding Wladas to Wong and myself. To stop the cybers, we needed a neurotech and Wladas' qualifications allowed him to do just that. There was little left to accomplish: leave the room, acquire some guns, kill most of the guards on my way upstairs, find my friends, Mira and her daughter, split up, find a safe place for the latter and win.

Easier said than done. I glanced up to where the guard stood
in the doorway, took a large gulp and attacked my food. There was no knowing when I'd be fed again but my body would need fuel. I finished off the beans, wiped my fingers on my pants and shoved the crackers into my hip pocket. I might need them later.

Varlamov was sure I'd start the machine. I had no choice: I had to do so for Mira and the baby unless I
managed to free them earlier and fuck off out of the old city. But: I still had to intercept the cargo, stop and ferry and let the Fort know about the possibility of the virus reaching Earth.

I still couldn't believe tha
t the general would embark on mass murder. It wasn't like him. Otherwise he wouldn't have tried to lead the Feds up the garden path luring me out to Pangea.

The sentry in the doorway
adjusted the rifle strap on his shoulder and jumped to attention, chest out. Hurried steps issued from behind the wall, followed by a loud snap and the sizzling of an electric current. Something popped like a blowpipe. A breech clacked shut. Surprise on the guard's face gave way to a grimace of pain when the needles of the taser sank into his cheek, a spasm doubling him up. The once-sagging spiral leads of the taser grew taut, the needles ripping skin from their entry points. The soldier fell face down, his head thudding on the stone floor. He convulsed a few times and fell silent.

I spra
ng to the door and recoiled. I was looking down the barrel of a silenced handgun. In his other hand, Captain Blank held the taser.

Freeze!
I heard in my head.

Blank stepped out into the corridor,
lowered his hand and shot the guard in the neck. Then he trained his gun back on me.

What does that mean?
I asked.

I
'm letting you go.

You killed the soldiers. Why?

No
, a predatory grin appeared on Blank's face.
You killed them both. You shot them. Mira brought you a gun and you decided to leg it. Hands up.

He motioned me with the barrel to follow him out of the room.
His gun still trained on me, he stepped over the body and walked backward along the hallway.

What
do you want?
I bent my elbows keeping my palms up.

The second sentry lay
by the wall with a shot wound to the head next to a pool of blood.

I want to
finish what we started
, Blank stopped by the fork in the hallway letting me onto the stairs. The passage behind his back was covered in darkness.
The general thought himself so smart that he'd outsmarted himself.
He glanced back.
Now run. You might still have just enough time to say good-bye to him.

He spoke in riddles. What was happening?

Blank ejected his clip and the round up the barrel and threw me the gun on its last round catch. Then he pointed the taser at me, the flashing red light on its side signaling maximal charge.

Now run
, he repeated.
I'll give you a minute's headstart. Then I'll raise the alarm.

I bolted up the stairs two steps at a time
trying to remember the detailed plan of the gasometer's layout. Five stairwells converged on a central wheel that housed utility rooms and the central hall with the Forecomers' machine. From there, there was only one way out, the one we'd been brought in through. Where could they keep the prisoners, Mira and her daughter? What had Blank meant speaking about the general?

I took the safety catch off the gun. Just in time.
A soldier stepped toward me from above. He didn't have time to raise his rifle: I slapped his cheek with the butt of the handgun and pushed him up against the wall pressing my elbow into his neck. I shoved the barrel into his cheek and hissed, "Move and you're a dead man."

But he did move. Either he'd noticed that there was no clip in
it or he knew it from beforehand. He whacked me in the liver, moved one step below and got a pulse charge in his back from Blank's gun.

The soldier clung to me
with a suppressed cough spattering my face with blood. The charge had passed through the back of his vest. The chest armor expanded but contained the charge. We fell onto the stairs.

Blank's steps came from beneath.
I grabbed the dead man's shoulders and raised myself up slightly. Shielding myself with the body, I took one step up and stumbled. A new shot rang out. This time, the charge hit the soldier's head and blew half his skull away, splattering me with gray matter mixed with blood and shattered bone.

I crawled
into the hallway on my back. There, I turned on my stomach and jerked myself away from the stairwell. One sole thought beat in unison with my pounding heart: What was Blank's goal?

Using an open communications channel, the captain sounded the alert.
I ran along the rounded hallway past the rooms crammed with equipment in boxes on prefabricated stands, all the time hearing behind me the growing tramping of feet and the sound of excited voices. Finally I came to the right exit and turned into it.

Father lay on a
cot between the cabinets. He was already dead. His glazed eyes glistened on his pale face under the ceiling lamps. His lips slightly parted. A silver cord from an army pendant that had been hanging on the wall was drawn taut around his neck.

I leaned towa
rd him, slid my fingers under the garrote and pulled. A silhouetted figure moved in from behind the cabinet. A blow caught me on the temple but as I turned my head at the last moment, it glanced off me. I shielded myself with my elbow from the fist aimed at my cheekbone and chopped at thin air attempting to counter attack. Immediately, I got two swift and painful pokes to my solar plexus and stepped to the wall gasping. I kicked my assailant in the knee and forced him to move aside and pause.

A
pause that lasted only a second, but in that second a barrage of thoughts stormed through my head. In front of me stood Wong. Wong who'd protected me ever since we'd arrived at Pangea; Wang who'd obeyed my orders and helped me all the way. And now...

He
behaved like a machine. With a smile on his face he stepped closer, parried my lunge and smashed his fist into my chin. I'd foreseen the combination and ducked. Sticking my knee out, I stamped on his foot nailing it to the floor and tried to elbow the Chinese to the ground. But I missed. He squatted and pushed my arms up, sliced into my armpits and kept hitting me in the stomach, groin and thighs.

Too late I felt the pain and realized that the Chinese was more experienced and better trained than
myself. With his combat potential of six units against my three, he was a professional killer, a puppet that the FSA had programmed to eliminate General Varlamov. I had led him to my father, and all Blank had to do was to unleash him at the right moment.

My arms dangled lifelessly.
My body was paralyzed: I couldn't move or catch my breath and my legs felt wooden. Wong pressed his hand against my chest and slowly moved the other arm toward his waist preparing a coup de grace. Unclenching his fist, he twisted his hand concentrating and sucked in the air.

My father, like a giant, rose
up behind his back and gave the Chinese a bear hug rendering him unable to move his arms. Struggling, Wong jumped up and backheaded him breaking the general's nose. And again. But father restrained him with all his weight, constricting him.

Circles flashed in front of my eyes. Wong and the general merged into one unproportional figure. Somewhere in the back of
my mind the memory chip signaled an insufficient oxygen level in my blood. The infrared lens kept changing from one spectrum to another trying to calibrate the image when something in the room changed unperceivably.

The air thickened
like a sponge, sticking to my body as a diver's suit. Crimson threads lit up on the walls and reached for me outlining all the objects and people in the room and filling them in with colorful pulsating auras. Among them, I recognized the clear receding signal of the general's memory chip. Having activated the stimulator in his aorta, it started up his heart which was now on the point of stopping again. His combat implants didn't function any more and God only knew what it had cost him to hold Wong in his grip.

I breathed in.
Then out. And in again, gasping for air. My shoulders still hurt but my muscles could contract again obeying the signals from my recovering nervous system. The crimson threads entered my body pumping it up with strength. Another moment, another split second, and I'd crush Wong with a single blow. His aura breathed fire, its nucleus searing with overflowing energy in his head.

I realized that I could extend my father's life for a few
moments by redirecting the flow of force emitted by the crimson threads. But then I wouldn't be able to kill Wong whose blazing energy had already reached its peak. The Chinese whooped and threw my father off raising his hands.

All I did was to put my palms together.
I don't know why. It was as if I was controlled by someone on the outside who was prompting me what to do before I could even think. The crimson threads wound around Wong's neck. His scream turned into a croak as his aura started to fade slowly like the filament in an unplugged electric bulb receiving the last weak voltage.

The room
before me came back to normal. The general lay dying on the floor. Wong stood with an unnaturally twisted neck, the back of his head touching his shoulder. A smile frozen on his dead face.

I pushed him hard,
lost my balance and sank to the floor next to my father. I reached out to him but the room was filling with soldiers. They grabbed my shoulders, threw me toward the wall and kicked the shit out of my ribs winding me.

I shielded myself with my arms and kept looking at my father through my fingers.
Life was leaving his eyes. His lips moved weakly but because of the soldiers' noise and swearing, I couldn't hear what he was saying.

If Blank hadn't appeared in the room,
they would have beaten me to death. He blurted out a command and the soldiers stepped aside. One of them slapped me across the face but was shoved away by cyber troopers. Obeying the captain's order, they grabbed me under my arms and dragged me off along the hallway toward the main hall where the portal machine stood.