SLAM (11 page)

A strange rumbling noise abruptly fills the
room, interrupting her, and the girls react like the soldiers they
are, immediately ducking and covering, hands up and looking for the
source. Leaf balances, crouched on the crates, and when the sound
comes again, louder this time, he leaps, catlike, to a less exposed
position.

Serena flicks a thought form to
Abial, adrenaline pumping through her veins, calling her to
combat.
Explosions? Close! We need to get
eyes on. Can you check the camera streams?

On it,
Abial responds tersely, tapping her fingers together without
looking at her datapad, still scanning the room. All is quiet now,
and Leaf slinks along the wall, pressing his eye to a crack in the
metal-shuttered window. A strange pattering sound permeates the
heavy silence, gradually getting louder, and then Leaf laughs, his
whole body visibly relaxing.

“It’s just a storm!” he crows over the noise,
voice pitched perfectly to carry to them.

Serena blinks stupidly for a
moment, and then her mouth drops open in surprise.
What? A storm? There hasn’t been a rainstorm in
over a decade!

“No way!” She races over to Leaf,
almost shoving him out the way so she can plaster her own eye to
the crack.
An actual storm! Nuke us all,
now? That’s either the world’s best or worst timing. It’s gotta
make it harder for cameras to pick anything out, and help to erase
our trails ... But it’s also going to make the trip a lot more
unpleasant.

“Oh, Google! This is incredible!” She can hear
the awe in her voice, and feel the huge grin on her face. For a
moment, she forgets about the mission as she gazes into the
streaming rain.

Outside, the City is suddenly bustling. The
sunshields over the road are retracting automatically, sheets
sliding over each other and sinking down into waiting pods on the
sidewalk. People are hauling covers from long-unused reservoirs on
their roofs, and kids are already splashing in the rapidly forming
puddles. The rain is heavy, and the roads starting to flood,
shining silver water slicking the solar panels.

Abial pads over. “For real, a waterstorm?” She
sounds equally excited, and Serena reluctantly moves to let her
take a look.

They stand for a few minutes, trading places
to look through the gap in the shutters, and then Leaf clears his
throat. “Should we, ya know, take advantage of the storm and get ta
rescuin’ yer damsel in distress? Might not have rained in eleven
years, but I’m sure the bad guys ain’t gonna stop blowin’ stuff up
so as they can splash in the puddles ... probably.”

Serena sighs and nods, tucking her unruly hair
behind her ear, and already regretting her slip into childish
excitement. She’s on a mission here, and if she messes it up she
could die. Along with the rest of the team, and possibly everyone
back at home, if they really nuke it up.

Finally, satisfied she has her professional
face back on, she clears her throat. “Yeah, you’re right. So what
did you score for us?”

He slopes across the room and
hauls a large duffle bag out from behind the stair railing; she
assumes that he managed to put it down before they even heard him
enter the room, and puffs air from her nose in unspoken
admiration.
Man, he’s like a
ghost.

Now in possession of the bag, he
sits on the bottom stair with it between his legs and delves into
it haphazardly. The girls catch each other’s eyes for a moment and
share a smile, but then Abial clearly remembers whatever has her so
angry and looks away, eyes slanting downward. Serena clenches her
jaw and squashes the urge to physically shake the other girl until
she gives up and just tells her what the nuke is going on. Instead,
she throws a thought at the sullen girl:
Whatever it is, you need to get over it. We don’t have time
to hash it out, but we will ... After this mission I’m gonna pin
you to a wall until you spill.

But Abial keeps her face studiously blank,
ignoring the message.

Leaf, oblivious to the interplay, is still
rummaging. “’Nuff food for two days, ‘nuff water for one, but we’ll
get ya set up somewhere ya can find fluid,‘s too heavy ta carry any
more. Ya can always drink the rain, anyhow.” There’s a laugh in his
voice as he finishes, and sets a few packages on the
floor.

He tosses the next item out of the
bag at Serena, quickly followed by one to Abial. They both field
them easily, reflexes honed by hours of training, and Serena looks
down.
Zaps! Nice.

“Pinched those from a Watch patrol ‘cross
town. They’re registered, so ya’ll have ta tinker with ‘em, but I
figured ya knew that when ya asked for ‘em.”

She grins in appreciation, holding the zapgun
up to get a good look at it. The handgrips are moulded black
plastic lined with strips of metal, gleaming dully in the gloom. On
the side, a fingerprint reader is clearly visible in the
depressions where a hand would curl around it. Abial beckons for
Serena to pass hers over, and then sets them both down on the
table. She starts fiddling with them, attaching wires to the
sensors, and clearly not paying any more attention to Leaf and
Serena as she works.

Serena’s happy to leave her to it, since she
never excelled in the tech classes. Abial used to be a solar
monkey, wriggling through the narrow passages under the roads to
replace broken wires. She grew up with technology, and Serena knows
she can take care of it.

Meanwhile, Leaf continues going through the
bag, and Serena pads over so they can talk without disturbing Abial
as she concentrates. She turns her attention to the ever-growing
pile at Leaf’s feet, hoping to see weapons and armour, in that
order. They’ll need them if they’re going to succeed on this
mission.

Ten minutes later she’s encased in the
high-quality shock pad armour he’d brought. It’s heavy and
gelatinous, sculpted to her body shape and attached with a strange
adhesive. It’s also unfamiliar, enough that she needs his help
attaching the back piece and trimming down the over-large edges.
When he’s done, her whole torso is coated in a faintly gleaming,
ominous-looking substance that blends with the shadows behind her.
She looks down at herself, twisting to and fro to check her
flexibility.

She’s practically invisible.

She looks amazing. Er,
professional.
She clears her throat,
wiping the happiness from her expression.

“Pretty good. This is a half-inch, right?
Which means it’ll stop penetration from anything more than
twenty-four inches away, and decrease impact forces by .5 percent
for each metre travelled prior to contact. Should be able to shrug
off anything more than fifteen metres!” She’s basically muttering
to herself as she walks her fingers over the coating, but Leaf
cocks his eyebrow at her anyway.

“I’d have just said ‘this’ll stop my insides
from becomin’ my outsides!’ But I’m sure what ya said makes sense
too.”

She shrugs at him, refusing to be embarrassed,
and then pulls her civilian long-sleeved brown shirt over the top.
This time, she does the clips up all the way to her neck to hide
the black body armour underneath, then sighs, looking down at
herself.

“Well, I look like a lumpy prude, which I
suppose is as good a disguise as any.” She can’t believe how thin
the armour is – thinner than anything she’s every worn – and
presses her hands against her belly, feeling the weird give of the
flexible armour. It will harden instantaneously with impact,
dispersing force across her torso instead of localizing the hit.
It’s pretty brilliant.

Abial chooses this moment to snap the power
cell back into the zap and flick it on, grabbing Serena’s
attention. She literally feels her eyes widen as the grip turns red
– usually a precursor to a localized explosion, which would rend
anyone stupid enough to try and use a registered zap handless. She
relaxes a second later, though, as no explosion follows, and the
grip turns green. Abial flips it in the air and catches it with a
solid thunk, grinning happily.

Serena’s relief translates into a bit of
silliness; for a moment she genuinely thought Abial was about to
lose a hand. She jerks a thumb at her and smirks at Leaf. “She’s
the tech guy, I’m tactics.”

He grins in response. “And I’m the tour guide,
I get it. So, Tactics, what’s the genius plan once ya find the
feller in question?”

Genius plan ... not much of one.
But it’s the best we can do right now.
She
finger combs her hair back and straightens her clothing over the
armour, making sure it’s unobtrusive. She starts to put some of the
gear Leaf brought into the small satchel that had held her
‘citizen’ gear, which now sits abandoned on the table.

“We go and fetch, then we get out
of the City. We’re too easy to find here. If you can find us a
place to go in the outer slums, we’ll go there after we pick up the
runner.”
I hope.
“We’ve gotta be out of the City before dawn.”

He furrows his brow at her, his confused, dark
eyes flashing. “Yeah, I got a place. Here’s the coordinates, and a
knock rhythm. Like this.” He knocks out a pattern on the table, and
Serena obediently copies him. She gets it right the first time, and
he gestures for her to repeat it. Smirking a little she does so,
getting it exactly right. Then he gives them a list of numbers,
which Abial copies down. The coordinates, Serena realizes.
Important.

He snorts. “Very impressive. Shock me again,
tell me how yer gonna get past the checkpoints on
t’Wall.”

She grins slowly at him and jerks
her hand at the altered zap, which flies through the air and slaps
into her waiting palm. A bit showy, sure, but she has the
anticipation of a fight buzzing through her now, and her instincts
are singing. She’s on edge, and it’s making her act before she
really thinks about it.
Gotta stop that.
Chill. At this rate your power’ll be popping out of you.
Determined to get herself under control, she
closes her eyes for a second, then opens them, refocused on their
mission. She tucks the zap into the back of her waistband and pulls
her civs down to cover it.

“Ah, but we’re not going through a
check. We’re going
over
it. And you’re gonna distract the Institute while
we do.”

He blinks at her, thin lips
parting in shock. “Over? Mercy, ya’ve gone plain cracked. How in
the nuke’re ya gonna get
over?
”

Snickering, she fishes the Watch communication
unit he stole out of the pile and attaches it to her wrist. She’s
pleased at his reaction, enjoying unsettling him for some reason.
Probably because he snuck in and made her jump, if she’s being
honest.

“Well, that’s why
I’m
useful.” She throws
his earlier words back at him with a smug grin, and fastens up the
satchel.
Over.
They’ve never tried a telekinetic jump as high as this one
will be, but with the two of them working together, she’s convinced
they can get to the top of the eighty-eight-metre Wall. They’ve
practiced in the Arena, and it’s something that all trainees learn
– to propel yourself higher than should be possible, using your
powers as a boost, shoving it out of the soles of your feet to
launch you into the air.

With the two of them combined, and
the extent of Abial’s power – and Serena’s – they should be
fine.
Hopefully
.

Still, Leaf doesn’t need to know the details.
There’s more than one way to extract information from someone, and
just because he’s a Blank doesn’t mean he’d be able to stand up to
torture. He’s already got a lot of information about them, and the
less he knows about their abilities, the better, all things
considered.

Abial gets to her feet and cracks her neck
from side to side, the sound sharp.

Leaf winces and picks up the remaining shock
pads. “Ya gonna put yer kit on, Lanky?”

She shoots him a withering glance, then
remarks casually to Serena, “How long do we have to put up with
this warp for?” But she grabs the pads from his outstretched
hand.

Excited to be getting underway, Serena just
laughs, and wrangles some previously invisible straps out of the
side of the flat satchel, then hoists it onto her back, where it
lies neatly against her spine, out of the way and high enough that
it won’t block her gun hand if she needs to draw. Then she
pointedly glares at Leaf until he obediently spins on his heel with
a dramatic sigh, leaving her to help Abial put on the sticky-backed
body armour.

She unpeels the coating and waits as Abial
strips down, then gulps. They’ve seen each other nude hundreds of
times, but the huge scar covering Abial’s right upper arm and
shoulder in thick, raised whorls always chills her. The melted
flesh is the result of a direct hit from a zap, during an Institute
raid. The day Damon was taken. She thrusts the memory away,
applying the body armour inch by inch and replying to the question,
even though several moments have passed.

“Well, he’s not coming with us for this bit,
but I expect we’ll keep in touch. Leaf, which part of the Wall is
least heavily guarded?” The second pad, the front, is more
difficult to apply, and she has to concentrate to get it to lie
flat. Abial’s tall enough, of course, that they won’t have to cut
it down the way she did hers.