The Next Chronicle (Book 1): Next (6 page)

A lanky woman with large glasses and sharp eyes darted toward Kit as everyone else dispersed. The tall woman stuck a hand out, and Kit shook it.

“Agent Tipton, ma'am. I'm our quartermaster. What can I do for you?” Tipton didn't wear makeup, her hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore a suit like most of the others. But Kit couldn't help smiling; the woman's voice was like music. Clear and melodic.

“
Nice to meet you, Agent Tipton. It's a laundry list, I'm afraid.”

Tipton's eyes lit up. “I do enjoy a challenge.”

Kit smiled. “That's good. Because I need a tac vest, several flash-bangs, a heavy nylon harness if you have it, and a good look at your non-lethal weaponry.”

“
No problem,” Tipton said. “Come with me.”

This is probably a bad idea
, Kit thought,
but look at that view
.

She watched carefully as agents moved into position five hundred feet below. There were two sharpshooters on the roof of the bakery. Two more moved into position across the river to cover the rear exit. Kit watched the unmarked cars carrying her backup and support personnel park at nearby businesses. Archer gave her a steady flow of updates via the headset wrapped around her ear.

“All units in place,” Archer said, his voice tinny and slightly distorted. “Give me a checkoff.”

The agents in place around the warehouse sounded off one by one, each giving a green light. Kit was last, waiting a few seconds after the last agent chimed in.

“This is Singh. Jacobs and I are ready. Give us a verbal countdown from thirty on my mark and we'll make our descent if we've got a green board.”

“
There are no signs the target is aware of us,” Archer said. “We're good to go all across the board.”

“
Okay, people,” Kit said. “This is it. Mark.”

As the countdown sounded in her ear, Kit put a hand on the mute button. She looked up at the darkening sky. The first stars were shining through the dusk, and up where she was—dangling from a few yards of nylon webbing twisted into a harness, held aloft by a man who could soar the skies—the air was clear and crisp. Up here, people and their problems seemed small and everything out there so much more grand.

“God, that's pretty,” Kit said as she stared upward.

Jacobs had been enjoying the view himself, but looked down at her. He winked.

“...three, two, one. Drop!”

Kit let her hand drop from the microphone's mute button. She and Jacobs didn't move toward the ground at breakneck speed, but it was fast. Suddenly all those problems were getting bigger. A hundred feet above the warehouse roof, Kit muttered without thinking.

“Here we go,” she said.

Her mic was live, and the agents had been instructed to maintain radio silence with her except for emergencies. Archer was the only one who would communicate with her directly. When he replied, it barely sounded like his voice. The bluster, the confidence, were gone from it.

“Be careful, Kit,” he said.

Thirty feet from the roof, Jacobs slowed. He landed lightly several steps back from the front awning. Kit unhooked her harness and painstakingly made her way to the edge. Back to the street, she motioned for Jacobs to leave, watching him dash into the sky before pulling a flash-bang from the Velcro of her tactical vest with her left hand and a Taser with her right.

“Now,” she said into her mic and jumped backward over the edge.

Kit flipped in the air and landed facing the front of the warehouse. The glass was already shattering around her, silenced rifle shots giving her an easy entrance. The glass didn't fall, however; two telekinetic agents stationed a block away snatched the falling pieces and pulled them away through the air.

Kit yanked the pin from her grenade but didn't throw. She streaked forward at full speed just as the first guard began to realize something was wrong. The man stepped out from behind a rusting shelf, dull shock on his face. The barrel of his shotgun rose quickly, but Kit was pushing her speed as hard as she could. Having a physical ranking of total-plus was useful in situations like this.

With effort, she could push past the limits of her abilities for short periods of time. It hurt like hell, but came in handy for things like combat and not getting shot in the face. To a normal person, the guard's shotgun would have almost blurred as it swung toward her.

But she had all the time in the world. Kit pulled one of the two triggers on her weapon as she swept by, a tiny dart exploding toward him. There was a small pop, the glint of the wire trailing behind it.

As the guard fell, she released the trigger, detaching the spent cartridge from the weapon. Moving toward the back of the room, Kit dropped to the floor and threw herself into a spin. It had only been a gleam in the darkness, but instinct honed from dealing with many shooters in darkened areas took over. The second cartridge spewed its contents into the shadows, followed by another heavy thump.

Archer's voice filled her head. “Carlton says it was just those two on the ground floor. But they know you're there, now. Oh, and the back entrance is now blocked. Our people are in position around it.”

Kit stood, moving toward the rear of the building. If Carlton was right, there would be a staircase just behind a door on the left.

“There you are,” Kit muttered as she spotted it. There was a commotion below. Lights and shadows danced across the base of the steps as she looked down. According to Carlton, there were seven of them on the second floor. Hardly fair.

So she threw the grenade.

Before it hit the ground, Kit leaped up and over, throwing her legs wide and wedging them against the sides of the stairwell. She was in the dark, perched above the landing at the bottom of the stairwell. She looked up and slapped her hands tight against her ears.

Even so, the sound was so loud it was almost a physical blow. Kit lowered her hands and waited two seconds before dropping straight down. It was risky—stupid, almost—and if Archer had seen her do it he would have screamed at her for being a reckless idiot.

Except she wasn't. She was an
experienced
idiot.

The Hooper tests measured a lot of capabilities, but things could (and often did) slip past them, such as heightened senses.

Kit heard nothing indicating her opponents were about to open fire. The grenade had done its work, and every instinct urged her to move forward. To not waste the few precious seconds the overwhelming light and sound bought her.

Landing on the concrete pad, those instincts were proved right. A tight group of seven men were shaking their heads and blinking rapidly, trying to clear their eyes. Two in the front had dropped their weapons in surprise, hands clapped to ears.

Kit put everything she had into a forward leap, even bracing one foot on the wall behind her. She crashed into them like a guided missile, hands striking out in a blur.

Bouncing back to her feet, Kit struck the two unarmed men. One hard chop with each hand, and in a fraction of a second each had a broken arm. The dry crack of bones breaking in harmony filled the room, followed by screams.

She moved fluidly, dancing forward to yank the shotguns from the hands of two more men, swinging them like clubs. The confusion, ringing in their ears, and temporary blindness provided all the cover she needed.

In seconds, four more men were down. Probably with concussions, but alive.

The last shooter standing was the one farthest back from the grenade. Though only a handful of seconds had passed, he seemed to be nearly recovered. Kit tossed the broken guns aside, spatters of blood spraying from them, and made another powerful jump forward just as the shooter raised a worn double-barreled shotgun.

She wasn't fast enough. What felt like the fist of God slammed into her stomach, throwing her momentum off and sending her into a slight spin. An involuntary scream escaped her lips, followed by a grunt as she crashed to the floor with the shooter.

The man glanced at her with dull, empty eyes as he lay on his back trying to reload. In pain and trying to establish some measure of control, Kit was still able to grab a small cylinder from her tac vest. The sound of Velcro separating made the man glance in her direction.

She gave him a face full of pepper spray.

The man screeched, weapon falling from his hands as he clawed mindlessly at his own face. Kit let him stew for a few seconds as she stood, then took his gun and gave it a solid swing. The screams cut off as a meaty crunch filled the room. She shoved him into the pile of attackers. 

Shouting rose from the stairwell at the far end of the building, coming closer. She eyed the unconscious men around her, weighing the time it would take to bind them. Support teams should already be moving in, but she couldn't risk leaving the men loose. One of them waking up and grabbing a hidden weapon could be disastrous.

She lobbed a flash-bang at the stairs leading to the bottom floor to buy a little time. Another advantage to her abilities was the blessing of nearly perfect reflexes and aim. The grenade slid over the edge and went off just below the lip of the stairwell, eliciting shouts from below.

She worked quickly, unloading the guns around her and breaking them down. Not as thorough a job as she would have done given more time, but the bundles of zip cuffs at her waist would help. Once the weapons were scattered around the room she dashed from person to person, cuffing them together ankle to wrist.

“Second floor clear,” she murmured into her headset. “Be advised, attackers have injuries.” After a moment's thought, she added, “You might want to tell someone to bring a knife. They're restrained.”

Archer's chuckle echoed in her ear.

She stood, facing the last set of stairs. The pain in her gut was fading, so she quickly checked the vest. The outer layer of Kevlar was shredded. Whatever had been in those shotgun rounds wasn't standard, that much was sure. Low-velocity rounds shouldn't have been able to go through the top layer.

Her fingers found the edges of the overlapping ceramic plates below the Kevlar. There didn't seem to be any damage to them. They'd stop anything short of armor-piercing rounds, even rifle bullets. Not that it would matter if she were hit in the head.

Kit was about to toss a smoke grenade down the stairwell when Archer's voice cut in loudly. “Wait, Agent Singh. Ben says the guards at the bottom are lined up behind a row of tables. They're waiting for you to come down to fire. They know they're trapped. They have to have heard us park the truck against the back door. You're standing in front of their only way out.
His
only way out, anyway.”

A brief silence, then, “I'm going to give you a distraction. Give me a mark. Ten seconds from then.”

With a sigh, Kit pulled her sidearm, holding it in her right hand, the smoke grenade in her left.

“
I really wish I wore a helmet,” she muttered.

“
Why didn't you?” Archer asked. “Didn't want to limit your visibility?”

“
Fuck, no,” Kit replied. “I didn't want to screw up my hair for this big date.” She took a deep breath.

“
Mark.”

Ten seconds later, a reverberating crash sounded from the end of the bottom floor, somewhere in the vicinity of the back door. Kit had already dropped her smoke bomb and pulled another at top speed, both clattering down the stairs. Instead of going down after them, she waited.

Gunfire erupted in a wall of sound. Bullets bit into the stairs and wall below her, though she could hear rounds slapping into metal elsewhere. Kit stomped hard, the sound lost in the din, and broke the top three steps in half with three sharp thrusts of her boot. The hole they left behind was small, but big enough for her to fit through.

Probably
, she thought.

She took aim and fired at the second smoke bomb just before stepping forward. She hadn't pulled the pin. That was deliberate.

The hollow-point made short work of the grenade, sending a burst of smoke behind the first as well as giving her opponents a new target to reflexively fire at.

She dropped. Luckily, she fit through the hole without getting hung, and as soon as her feet hit concrete she ducked and ran sideways. Automatic fire followed her, raking the floor behind as she desperately dove for cover.

She risked a glance back. The hail of bullets trended upward on the wall. Whoever this Charmer was, he wasn't a professional. Full-auto was almost impossible to control. Had they been firing bursts, she wouldn't have made it to cover. Whoever the goons under his mental compulsion were, they probably didn't have experience fighting this way.

Kit flattened to the ground, looking under the table she was hiding behind. She could see an array of knees in front of her. Five sets.

Perfect aim, perfect reflexes.

The will to use them.

Five shots spit from her pistol in one long concussive blast. She fired so quickly there wasn't time for the sound of one shot to fade at all, and in less than two seconds five knees had their geography indelicately rearranged.

Screams filled the room and chaos erupted as some of those five men reflexively fired their weapons as they fell. Kit wasted no time, springing to a crouch and darting toward the back of the room. She caught sight of her victims as she passed between the narrow rows of tables. None of them were threats for the moment.

Sliding to her knees midway down the rows and rows of tables stacked with complex equipment—surely used to produce the methamphetamine—Kit's head popped up for a fraction of a second, then back down.

In her headset, Archer's voice was all controlled panic. “Agent Singh, respond if you can. We have agents closing in on the rear entrance. Do you need assistance?”

Kit focused on keeping her voice low, pushing the headset close to her mouth with her shoulder.

“
Distraction. Rear door. Now.”