The Lightcap (24 page)

Despite his skinny frame, Adam struggled to get up the rope, his muscles complaining loudly to his mind.  Eventually he met Pavel’s forearm with a grip.  Pavel reciprocated, hoisting Adam up the rest of the way, then pointed at the rear of the chopper to their right.  The older man waved his hand in the air, a silent command to proceed to that area.  As they moved, Adam cautiously checked for indications the pilot had seen them, but they were outside his periphery.  After a dozen paces, Pavel and Adam regarded the door to the rear cargo hold and opened it easily.  The rain, already stinging them, began to turn to hail and rattled off the helicopter’s skin with a metallic
ping.

Pavel and Adam ducked inside the cargo bay and closed the door behind them.  The hold’s interior was pitch black, and the vibration of the rotors above replaced the sounds of the hail in Adam’s consciousness.  Pavel leaned in toward Adam, raising his voice to be heard, and said, “The ride takes about thirty minutes.  These birds can fly fast, and have a top speed of over three-hundred kilometers an hour.  It’s going to be bumpy in here, so you should try to find something solid for support.  We should be leaving soon.”  Adam groped in the darkness until he found a vertical piece of metal secured to the wall.

Several minutes later, true to Pavel’s word, Adam felt his stomach lurch against the back of his throat as the machinery and cargo surrounding him shuddered, groaned, and lifted off the platform.

Adam’s shoeless, throbbing foot felt almost a part of the metal floor beneath him.  Pavel hadn’t lied about the bumpy ride.  Most of Adam’s body hurt.  It was then that he realized just how fragile he was, and that their chance of survival was so small as to effectively be zero.  Though he was afraid of dying, he did not wish to continue living in a world where someone like LaMont would go unchallenged.  Even if they failed in their attempt to rescue Dej and Sera, they had to try. His heart pounded nervously in his chest.  He felt lightheaded for a moment, then a slow sense of downward movement. 

As they dropped, Adam clenched and unclenched his left fist in an attempt to calm himself.  They landed with a jolt.  Adam’s knees bent from the force of impact, his right hand tightening around the I-beam aiding his balance.  He felt Pavel’s hand on his shoulder as the old man leaned in to say, “Now we wait.  They’ll close the roof and unload from the main compartment.  Once they’ve finished, we’ll go.”

Pavel once again proved to be clairvoyant.  Adam heard the
swoop
of the rotor blades slow, along with a far-off noise of grinding metal.  The sounds of hail against the outer hull of the vessel slowed and stopped.  A final groan came from above as two alloy jaws locked together and the Metra Corp building roof slid closed above the landing pad.  Adam could hear muffled voices and the rumbles of crates being moved out of the main cargo hold.  After a few minutes the voices and rumbles ceased.

They waited until it had been silent for several more minutes.  Pavel said, “I think it’s clear.  Let’s go.”  Pavel and Adam found the door’s handles and swung it open, a sliver of light appearing then widening to reveal an empty hangar.  They stepped out, small bits of hail cracking under their feet as they walked.  “This way,” said Pavel, with a motion toward a nearby open hallway.

Adam took off the glove covering his electrodusters, dropped his jacket, unwrapped Aria’s katana, then replaced the sword against his back.  The short hallway ended with three doors.  Pavel took the one on the left. Adam followed, trusting that the old man had some idea where they were going.  The door opened into a stairwell.  As he followed Pavel, the door behind Adam opened.  He whipped about to see a guard emerging.  Their eyes met.  Adam charged without thinking, driving both his fists squarely into the man’s stomach, causing the man to let out an involuntary cry, surprised by the impact.

Adam had intended to incapacitate the man with his electrodusters.  As he watched the man struggle back to his feet, Adam realized they had not discharged.  The man was wearing a Lightcap, and he would no doubt sound the alarm as soon as he had a split second to collect his thoughts.  Not knowing what else to do, Adam remembered the blade across his back and drew it in one long movement.  Adam brought the grip of the katana down with a crash against the front arm of the man’s Lightcap, right where plastic met the bubble.  The man appeared stunned for a moment, then slumped to the ground.

Adam turned back to Pavel, who wore an amused expression.  The old man said, “Good job.  Let’s go,” before starting down the stairs. 

“Why didn’t he get shocked when I hit him?” Adam asked, following.

“Has to be skin, as I told you.  Otherwise the damned thing would go off all the time,” Pavel responded.  “Details are important.”  They reached the bottom of the stairs, where they found a locked door, a keypad mounted in the wall next to it.  Pavel turned to Adam and said, “There wasn’t any mention of this in LaMont’s datafile.  There were a few numbers in there, but no notation to suggest their purpose.”  Pavel punched in six digits.  The glass pad emitted a minor tritone and the red light near the top flashed three times.  He tried another code with the same result.

“There may be an alarm set to go off if there are too many failed attempts,” Adam warned.  Pavel turned back, an annoyed look on his face, but his expression softened as he realized Adam was right.

“We’ll need to find some other way to get in,” the doctor said.  “Some way to take the system offline or interrupt it.”  He looked Adam up and down and commanded, “Give me that sword.”

Adam had no idea why Pavel wanted the sword, but obeyed, lifting the blade over his head and handing to the elder man, who grabbed it from him and raced back up the stairs.  After a few moments of silence, Adam heard the door above swing back open and Pavel called down, “This is going to be a bit messy.”

When Pavel reached the bottom of the stairs, Adam was aghast at what he saw.  A six centimeter square of skin with blood dripping from one side and smeared on the other.  Pavel’s face was blank.  His hand extended to return the sword.  “Here, you can have this back,” he said.  Adam put the sword in place against his back as Pavel took the piece of skin and slammed its bloody underside against the glass keypad, where it stuck in place with a wet slap.  “Use the electrodusters on this.  Don’t even have to hit it hard, just make contact.”  Pavel moved around Adam, grabbed the door handle, and applied downward pressure.

Adam wasn’t sure why he did what he did, but he coiled his arm back and punched the square of skin with all the strength he could muster.  The dusters smashed against the skin, producing a bright arc of electricity.  The glass underneath cracked and popped.  Pavel’s hand moved as the handle gave way, the door opening along its path.

The room beyond the door was familiar.  Rows of cubicles, each like the last, their bubbled tops giving the appearance of a room full of eggs in a large, open carton.  Adam felt a chill of recognition as he realized this was the room from his dream of Damen’s death.

Unlike the cubicle farms to which Adam was accustomed, in which there was a near-constant din of conversation, chairs moving, and phones ringing, this room was deathly quiet.  Pavel and Adam ducked down one of the aisles, and Adam opened the milk-white door to the first cubicle in that row, sliding it along its track to find a man inside he had never seen before.  The man wore a Lightcap and stared intently at the screen, where lines of code appeared at regular intervals.

A sudden sound of movement came from down the hall where they had just emerged, which caused Pavel to push Adam into the cubicle and follow behind him.  The door could not softly slide back into place quickly enough to suit Adam.  They heard rushed footsteps and muffled voices one or two rows away.  Adam couldn’t make out what they were saying but thought he heard the words “she” and “restraints”.

The man in the cubicle did not stir or acknowledge Adam and Pavel’s presence in any way, as if they weren’t even there.  Adam leaned over the man’s shoulder in an attempt to read the lines of code on the screen, but Pavel grabbed his shoulder and said, “We should go.  It seems as if they were headed deeper into the building, not where we came from.  We need to find Aria.”

Pavel nudged Adam out of the cubicle and exited closely behind, putting the door back in place.  The motionless man remained, his eyes focused on his computer screen as he added more lines of code.  They went to their left, in the same direction the voices had retreated.  Reaching the end of the row and emerging into a perpendicular hallway, a commotion on their right caught their attention.  With their heads turned to their right, neither Pavel nor Adam saw the men who approached from their left until they ran past.  Adam and Pavel both reflexively flinched as these two Blues entered their side view and continued beyond. 

Adam and Pavel, stunned not to be confronted but ignored, saw that these two men also wore Lightcaps.  The Blues turned and entered a door on their left, sounds of struggle coming through the gap where they entered.  Pavel and Adam looked at each other, then ran down the hall to where the men had gone and threw open the door.

They found a small room with a lone table centered in the middle.  Aria lay upon the table, struggling ferociously, one of her arms strapped down to it.  Her free arm locked around the neck of a struggling Blue from behind.  Four other Blues circled her, wary of her flying legs.  The free Blues looked up as Adam and Pavel entered the room.  Aria used the distraction as an opportunity to throw her leg into the air, where it connected with the closest man’s neck.  His throat emitted a sickening gurgle as he went down. 

The Blue in front of Adam turned and threw a punch to Adam’s chest.  The glancing blow hurt, but the ballistic vest helped absorb most of the impact.  Adam had reflexively tried to block it and mostly failed, but he found himself in an advantageous position to jab the Blue’s face.  A loud crack and sparks trailing over the man’s skin from the point of impact indicated almost a million volts discharging in an instant.  The man’s head jerked back along the axis of his neck before he sagged to the ground.

Pavel had already handled one of the Blues, who now lay on the ground behind him convulsing, and blocked the attempted strike of another wielding a truncheon.  Adam observed the practiced grace of the elder man, who grabbed the Blue’s wrist with one hand and expertly delivered his other palm to the elbow with a nauseating crunch.  The Blue cried out in pain, the sound of his shock bouncing off the walls of the room.  Pavel slid his hand down to the man’s wrist, grabbed the baton from his hand, then brought it crashing down on his temple.

“Nothing personal,” Pavel said.

Aria still had one Blue from behind, his gasps growing more and more desperate, each attempt to remove her arm more futile than the last.  Adam drew the katana and cut the bonds holding her right arm and leg.  Aria took the katana from him, brought it to the neck of the Blue who struggled against her, and drew her arm quickly, as a cellist controls the bow across strings.  The man sank to the ground, choking on his own blood and carved flesh.

“Thanks,” she said as she turned to face them.  “Let’s go.”  A klaxon sounded as they walked through the door, and hurried footsteps came from every direction.  A dozen Blues emerged from different rows and hallways, all wearing what appeared to be Lightcaps, and surrounded the three of them.  Each Blue had a gun or baton drawn. 

“Hands up!” said the closest one.

Pavel and Aria stood in front of Adam, who didn’t think they had much of a chance to fight their way out of that.  He reached into his right pocket, flipped open the cover of Dej’s device, and drove his thumb against its button.  Adam shuddered as the Blues’ faces changed from dull sternness to wild abandon.  Their hands opened and their weapons dropped to the ground.  They began to run, banging into walls, each other, and any other obstacle they met.  One of the workers broke through a cubicle door from the inside with a crash, its cheap plastic splitting with a crack as he unknowingly threw his body against it.  Adam would have found this amusing under different circumstances, the mayhem reminding him of slapstick comedy.

“The radios are fried,” Pavel said, “so they’ll have to be repaired by hand.  We need to find Dej and Sera.”  They had decided Sera would most likely be near LaMont, and they hoped Dej would be too.  The executive suites were one level down, requiring them to go back to the staircase.  The alarms still blared, but no more guards appeared.  The trio pushed through the crowd of frenetic Blues and workers, the bodies bouncing against them and flying off at odd angles as they went down the cubicle row.  No guard stood at the staircase door.

Aria took the lead with her red-streaked sword like a sharp-tongued guide.  Adam followed behind her, with Pavel in the rear.  After going down a flight of stairs they stood at the stairwell door, where Aria held up her hand.  Adam and Pavel stopped.  She opened the door, pushing it with enough force to make a half circle arc and end against the wall.  They went through.  Because of his height, Adam saw motion to his right a split second before Aria reacted to it.  A Blue was raising his truncheon with the intent to bring it down upon her head.