The Far Shores (The Central Series) (18 page)

The last Mafioso took
his time unlocking the door, so Mitsuru had finished reloading by the time he
stepped inside. She only needed one of them, and the ballistics protocol
assured her that he was not wearing a vest, so she put four hollow-points in
his chest. He toppled over into the wall beside the open door. Mitsuru placed
her pistols back in the briefcase and took inventory of her injuries.

One of the gunmen had
died before he managed to get his gun out, but the other two had been faster.
One of them had done nothing but fire wildly, punching holes in the wall behind
her. Gotsha, on the other hand, had been pretty good – good enough that Mitsuru
regretted not shooting him first. He must have had a thing for antique
weaponry, too, because the pistol he pulled was a variant on the Tokarev, a Soviet-era
vintage handgun famed for armor penetration and deadliness in the hands of a
skilled shooter. The gun had lived up to its reputation, and Gotsha had the
requisite degree of skill, because Mitsuru was bleeding from a pair of wounds
in her midsection above her left hip. The bullets had gone clean through,
leaving neat wounds that damaged her intestine and nicked two other internal
organs. It wasn’t particularly painful, but probably would have been
life-threatening for a normal human.

Mitsuru removed a first
aid kit from the briefcase and applied antiseptic and a gauze pad, then wrapped
her midsection in a length of bandage. She had just finished taping herself up,
and was about to move on to stabilizing her prisoner, when she noticed one of
the gunmen moving. She dropped the first aid kit and scrambled for her
firearms, only now realizing that his movements were hardly those of a mortal
wounded man.

He transformed as he
lunged, leaping across the table that separated them, claws extruding from his
fingers, jaw distorting wildly while silver fur burst from his skin in patches.
Mitsuru snatched one of the guns before ducking beneath the table and rolling
forward, leaving them on opposite sides of the table. There was no time to turn
– his reactions were fast, even for a silver Weir – but the ballistics protocol
gave her enough advance warning that she was able to roll with the blow, and
his strike merely tore strips of flesh from her back, rather than wounding her
fatally.

The pain lit the circuits
in her brain, bringing a sharp awareness of the situation; the smell of
gunpowder and shit leaking from a dead man’s intestines, the sensation of blood
dripping down her back, hard flat light that illuminated the room from the
half-open door. The Weir cried out, still in the midst of transformation, a
combination of a scream and a howl, as it charged after her, tossing the table
aside with one massive forepaw, giving her no time to collect herself. Mitsuru narrowly
evaded the wide arms of the Weir as it rushed her, close enough to see droplets
of her blood on the yellowed talons. She opened fire as it passed, firing all
seven bullets in the magazine into its back and then tossing the gun aside and grabbing
the knife she had strapped to her ankle.

Mitsuru activated her
implant, querying Central and requesting options, backup, tactical support –
knowing full well that it wouldn’t arrive in time. Fighting a Weir in close
quarters was tantamount to suicide. They were faster and stronger than Operators,
and even if she had time to download the appropriate combat protocols, there
was no time to employ them. A barrier was out of the question – at this
distance, the Weir probably would have been inside with her.

Of course, that didn’t
mean she was quite out of options. After all, Mitsuru was bleeding.

Her pain and anxiety were
the driving forces that pried the Black Door open, restraints fracturing with
the weakness of metal that has cracked and then been mended, snapping with a
brittleness that surprised and, on some level, disappointed her. The Weir
charged, and Mitsuru’s protocol went Black.

The Weir embedded claws
in her shoulder, and she let it happen, exulting in the violation of her flesh,
the agony, black blood flowing freely from the wound. It cried out again, this
time almost totally feral, and lifted her with an enormous paw wrapped around
her throat, claws digging into the back of her neck and below her jaw. Mitsuru
choked and laughed as her blood flowed down the Weir’s arms, wrapping and
intertwining around its torso, moving with a volition that defied gravity and
fluid dynamics. The Weir strangled her while her blood crawled across the
length of its body like a shroud.

The creature tore its claws
free of the wound in its shoulder, and brought both paws to bear on her neck,
attempting to snap her spine. Her vision swam and bile rose in her throat. Then
Mitsuru gave the command, and the net of black blood pulled taut, slicing
through fur and tissue, nanometric tendrils cutting like blades. The Weir halted
and made a querulous, inquisitive sound, and Mitsuru almost felt sorry for it.
Then the Weir’s body lost cohesion, separated into horribly smooth sections, and
tumbled to the ground in a thousand discrete and bleeding pieces.

Alex ran as fast as he possibly could
.
He never would have admitted it
aloud – certainly not to Michael, who had trained him – but he was still
secretly thrilled at his ability to sprint flat out for a couple hundred meters.
He was pleased to return to the Academy, to the familiarity of the simulated
training sessions of the Program, even if he would have rather been doing
something that didn’t involve violence. It was good to see familiar faces, even
if he was trying to pretend-kill them.

Then again, being killed
in a simulation still hurt like hell. And not every face was completely
familiar.

Nam-sun was new to the
Program, and only fifteen years old, so Alex didn’t blame him for defending
himself the way that felt the most natural.

The Beretta on Nam-sun’s
hip looked a little too big for his delicate hands. He had plenty of time to draw,
sight on the gangly boy charging around the corner as if something was chasing
him, and drop Alex before he ever had a chance to close.

New recruits to the
combat track tended to overemphasize their protocols. They had, after all,
spent the better part of the last few years refining and perfecting them, and
most were eager for the chance to show off the skills they had acquired. This
was doubly true for energy manipulators, who operated under a tacit
understanding that their protocols made firearms redundant.

Alex, on the other hand,
was just starting to understand how to use his protocol, thanks to a late start
and an orphan background. If Katya hadn’t devoted most of the summer to
drilling him in its various forms and effects, he probably wouldn’t have known
how to use it at all. This was usually a disadvantage – but it had a positive
side effect. Namely, when he wanted to hurt someone, Alex tended to try to hit
them.

Technically, Alex had a
firearm as well, as did every student in the exercise, but much to Miss Aoki’s
shame and frustration, Alex remained stubbornly at the bottom of his class in
marksmanship. He honestly never even gave the gun a thought.

Truth be told, Nam-sun’s
protocol was nothing to sneeze at. The kid was already an E-Class energy
manipulator. His protocol manifested as a five-meter-radius bioelectrical field
of variable voltage and amperage – meaning he could do anything from stun to
electrocute anyone that got close to him. Nam-sun must have intended to do to exactly
that to Alex. He hardly bothered to assume a defensive posture, grimacing as he
activated the post-hypnotic trigger for his protocol.

Nam-sun had enough time
to look surprised before Alex landed a leaping punch to the side of his jaw.

It almost felt natural.
Alex shunted the electrical energy that Nam-sun radiated, enough to fry him
where he stood and then some, directly into the Ether, incidentally dropping
the ambient temperature in the immediate area by a few degrees as radiant
energy fled. The more effort Nam-sun put into his protocol, the freer he left Alex
to batter him. Alex did so avidly, trying to end the fight before the kid
figured out what was going on and attempted some sort of coherent defense.

Nam-sun’s knees were
wobbly. Alex helped the process along by grinding his heel into Nam-sun’s
instep while driving his right hand into the boy’s exposed side. His knuckles
sank into the soft spot right below the ribs, and the Korean moaned and doubled
over. Alex brought both hands down on the back of his neck, bruising his
fingers on Nam-sun’s skull. Then, it was as simple as stomping on him with
steel-toed boots until he was sure that Nam-sun wouldn’t be getting back up.

Alex briefly wondered
when this sort of thing had stopped bothering him.

That wasn’t bad,
Alex. But get your head back in the game, before someone takes it off. I still
show five active signatures.

The worst part of the
Program was having Miss Gallow in his head; his instructor riding shotgun, so
to speak, like a cartoon devil on his shoulder.

Telepaths had a significant
advantage in this sort of exercise. They could identify positions and track
movement, even if mental shielding made combat usage of their protocols
difficult. Alex had spent the better of his summer drilling with Katya,
however, who by her own admission had an evil and devious mind. As a result,
Alex had a few new tricks at his disposal, techniques a bit more refined than
shunting energy into the Ether or freezing people solid.

For example, if he
closed his eyes and concentrated, as he was doing at the moment, he could sense
Etheric energy. This hadn’t seemed particularly useful, until Alex learned
there was only one known large-scale emitter of Etheric energy – namely, the
nanites inside every Operator. Each tiny machine maintained a connection to the
Ether, which was theorized to be a power source. Whatever the reason, Alex
found that his protocol could sense the nanites in the dark behind his eyelids,
human figures traced with the rapid pulsation of a hundred million tiny radiant
points, as if rendered in iridescent dust.

Alex counted to five.

He couldn’t tell one
from the other. They were just glowing blurs. But he knew how many and where.

There were two to his east,
so close that his sense of them intermingled. That meant they were close or
touching, so, barring a spontaneous romantic encounter, the pair were locked in
hand to hand combat, the nanites inside whirling with motion and activity.

Alex watched them for a
moment, but neither seemed to gain any advantage.

Renton and Timor, then.
Renton’s telepathy made him virtually impossible to hit, but Timor’s
precognition gave him foreknowledge of the events in the immediate future, so
he was equally elusive. Their stalemates in combat were notorious. Alex had
actually fallen asleep during one of their sparring sessions.

The other three
signatures were more distant, all to his west. It seemed likely that they would
encounter one another before they bumped into Alex, so he decided to push his
luck and headed east.

I’m stunned, Alex.
Truly, I am speechless at your development. Trying to take out two while they
are occupied with each other? That is a whole awful lot like strategy. They
grow so fast, don’t they, Mitzi? Next you’ll be kissing girls and smoking.

He gritted his teeth,
careful not to think anything obnoxious in return. There was no way that Alex
would ever risk angering Miss Gallow. Even he wasn’t that stupid.

Alex followed an alley,
then hopped a chain-link fence, doing his best to be quiet about it. The
environment they were using today was like the outlines of a city, all of the
buildings and streets but none of the people or the noise. It reminded him a
little bit of the video games that Vivik played,
Grand Theft Auto
and
the like, with endless rows of reflective windows and impenetrable doors. It
would have made a great paintball arena if it actually existed outside of
Gustav’s mind.

He paused at a corner
and risked closing his eyes again. The two figures were still engaged in combat
one block over, which confirmed Alex’s suspicions as to identity. Most fights
were decided in seconds, but both combatants were still standing a minute and a
half later.

Alex trotted across the
street, aiming to flank the pair before either realized he was nearby, hoping
they were too involved with each other to notice. He flinched at a burst of
gunfire, most likely from a submachine gun, judging from the sound. Even after
the better part of a year and thousands of rounds, fired both at targets and in
anger, Alex still jumped every time he heard a gunshot. At this point he had
given up hope of stopping.

The alley he jogged
along was spotless and rather devoid of detail, only the occasional immaculate
dumpster or fire escape ladder to break the monotony of the utterly uniform
brickwork. Alex knew that details like dirt weren’t a functional necessity, but
their absence contributed to the overall sense of wrongness that dogged him in
every simulation.

Not that I’m
criticizing, Gustav
,
he added hastily, in case the old man was listening in on his thoughts.

C’mon, Alex. Get with
it.

More gunfire, very close
now. Probably near the mouth of the alley, but Alex didn’t want to stop to
confirm and risk that Renton would notice his telepathic signature. His entire
plan was based on the hope that Renton would be too busy dealing with Timor’s
precognition to enjoy normal telepathic awareness – and similarly, that the
precognitive would be so focused on Renton’s intentions that he wouldn’t anticipate
Alex’s.

Well, that, and the
grenade. That was a big part of the plan, too.

It was more than a
little bit surreal, reaching into a thigh pocket for high explosives, but that
was life in Central – or it was Alex Warner’s life, at the very least.

He kept a grenade in the
pocket where he once kept an MP3 player. There was probably some sort of
meaningful symbolism to that, but Alex didn’t bother with that shit. He was
primarily concerned with not blowing himself up or getting shot in the process
of using it.

Or, he had to admit,
remembering to arm the damn thing.

There was a story to
that, involving Steve, Renton, Miss Aoki, and Margot. It had involved a
screaming Alex tossing an unarmed grenade in the center of a melee, only to
watch it roll on the ground in circles while everyone stared at him. At one
point, it had been funny. There had been a great deal of teasing in the
aftermath. Ever since Margot...now that she was gone, it was too painful to
remember. And Steve, too, killed in the attack. He was an asshole, sure, but it
was weird for him disappear when he had been such a regular feature of life in
Central.

Poor Margot. Alex hadn’t
realized how much he enjoyed her company, biting sarcasm, and offhand
consideration, until it was all irretrievably lost.

He shook his head to
clear it, reminding himself not to think about anything other than the
immediate situation. Alex had boxed up those memories, and since no one seemed
to mention her anymore, he assumed everyone else had done the same.

Alex almost screwed
things up the old-fashioned way. He was so involved with arming the grenade
that he didn’t notice that he was in full view of Timor for a few seconds. He
dove behind a conveniently placed dumpster, fiddling with the grenade and
hoping that Katya’s brother hadn’t seen him. He wasn’t an assassin like Katya
or anything, but Timor was part of Anastasia’s personal bodyguard, so he was
plenty dangerous.

Fortunately, Timor
appeared to have his hands full at the moment, at least from what Alex could tell
by peeking around the corner of the dumpster. Renton liked to fight close,
where his telepathy gave him the greatest advantage, and he was pressing Timor
hard, a hatchet in one hand and a Smith & Wesson in the other. Timor’s
suppressed MP5 was useless in such close proximity, so he was using it to block
Renton’s hatchet blade, when he couldn’t sidestep it entirely, dodging and
weaving toward a future where Renton didn’t open new holes in him.

It was a delicate
situation for both. If Timor jumped out of the range of Renton’s hatchet, then
Renton could use the pistol in his other hand before Timor could aim the
submachine gun. If Renton relented even for a moment, however, or took a second
to sight his handgun, then the opposite would happen, and Timor would have the opportunity
to open up at devastatingly short range. They were forced to stay close and
wait for the other to make a mistake.

Of course, neither of
them looked even slightly worried. Renton appeared positively delighted by the
situation, attacking with abandon, while Timor wore an aloof smile, his suit
not even ruffled. Alex envied and hated both of them.

Don’t put all your
eggs in one basket, Alex.

Miss Gallow. Always
there for him with good advice regarding murder. She was right, too. With that
in mind, Alex didn’t limit himself to arming the fuse and throwing the grenade.
He did something else, too.

Of course, it would only
work if he guessed right, but there was no helping that.

He tossed the grenade
with a gentle overhand throw. Timor and Renton both saw and halted momentarily,
craning their necks like spectators at a baseball game tracking a long fly
ball, then their surprise and temporary paralysis was dispelled, and they
turned and ran in opposite directions. Not that it made any difference. The
sixteen hours worth of remedial explosives practice that Miss Aoki had forced
on him paid off, as much as Alex resented the notion. The grenade detonated
while it was still in the air, above and directly overhead of Renton and Timor.

Alex looked away. He
knew that he shouldn’t – both Timor and Renton were more than capable of
putting him down before he realized they had survived – but he couldn’t make
himself watch people that knew – even sort of liked – be torn apart by a spray
of shrapnel.

He opened his eyes just
in time to dive back behind the dumpster and avoid getting riddled with bullets
from Timor’s submachine gun. Timor must have loaded hollow points, because
metal-jacket rounds would have punched right through his cover. Alex slid his semiautomatic
from the holster on his hip and fired blindly around the side of the dumpster, afraid
to even peek. He didn’t even think about aiming. It wouldn’t have made any
difference.