Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) (7 page)

All was still beneath us, no lights on in offices or houses lit up to welcome people home. But I could see, far to the north, pinpoints of lights marking out streets. Where life carried on as usual.

The copter buzzed through the grey skies, heading west into a low-wattage sun. It dropped low, and I could make out the reflection of the whirring blades in the rippling water.

“We got company,” Ladoux said, yanking the controls to the left.

“Rocket!” Zac shouted.

I clung on as a trail of fire came from a rooftop and headed straight for us.

Ladoux pulled back on the stick, easing the copter into a vertical climb. The rocket soared beneath us, heading straight for a building on the other side of the river. The shockwave from the explosion hit us a few seconds later, making the copter shake. But Ladoux was in total control. She righted the bird and guided it closer to the riverbank.

“Nice flying, Ladoux,” Zac said.

She simply smiled in response.

“Since when has the Red Hand had SAMs?” Unwin said, looking back out of the window at where the rocket had struck.

SAMs. Surface-to-air missiles. I didn’t know if I knew that from this reality or from playing too much
Duty Calls
.

“When they hit a supply truck last week,” Zac said.

Unwin sucked his teeth. “Man, hitting us with our own weapons is cheating.”

“I guess their god is all out of lightning bolts,” Williamson said, which got a chuckle from everyone in the copter. All except, I noticed, Ladoux. Perhaps the mention of lightning while flying wasn’t amusing.

“I won’t be able to set down here,” she said sternly. “So you’ll need to jump.”

I pulled back the doors and looked down. It was a ten-foot drop to the pavement below. Which might not be so bad if the copter didn’t keep lurching left and right.

Zac clambered towards me, and without a moment’s hesitation, he stepped out onto the skid of the copter and leapt off. He landed in a crouch on the pavement below, then straightened up and smiled at me.

Well, if he was going to show off…

I took a deep breath and stepped out into the air. The shock of landing passed all the way up my shins, my spine and even into my teeth. On my injured leg, I hadn’t made such a graceful job of it as Zac, and it took me a moment before I could stand up.

The rest of Thirteen squad followed, dropping out of the helicopter like conkers falling from a tree. Cooper and Turner came last, leaping out at the same time. The copter peeled away, leaving us standing in front of the huge tower block.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I’ll put down somewhere and then come find you,” Ladoux said over the radio. “Break some balls.”

This was the S3’s way of saying good luck, I knew somehow. The words “good luck” themselves had become a bad omen, although I couldn’t remember why.

We moved silently in crouched runs, keeping to the shadows, coming to a stop behind a cluster of bushes.

The Red Hand’s base was a deserted council block, eighteen floors high. It had once been painted a pale blue, as if that would somehow make it blend into the sky.

“Looks like they have Hedges on the tenth floor,” Zac whispered, pointing up at the windows.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

Zac pushed down the visor on my helmet and pressed a button on the side, turning everything a pale blue. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out Zac in front of me, his body marked out by a red glow.

“Heat vision,” he said.

I could see the red of the outlines of the members of the squad around me and, when I turned to look at the building, fuzzy orange figures moving around behind the glass. Without me needing to do anything, the image zoomed in, reacting to my irises focusing, maybe. Zac was right; I could see two figures carrying the cold, black outlines of weapons, pacing in front of a man huddled on the floor, his back pressed up against the windows, purple strips around his wrists. Handcuffs, I guessed.

I scanned the rest of the building: five men on the bottom floor. Two on the roof with RPGs, if I guessed the shapes of the things slung across their backs correctly, and double sentries on the sixth, eighth and twelfth floors. Fifteen men in total. Hardly the small army Cain had told us to expect.

I pushed the visor up. “Right. Unwin, Williamson and Ward, I want you to stay here and provide cover. Turner, Cooper and Black,” I said, turning to Zac, “you’re with me.”

The three soldiers lowered their visors and raised their weapons. I did the same, pressing the button on the side of my helmet to cycle through the vision options – thermo, night vision, x-ray – till it was clear to see and I set off. We moved in silence, communicating in hand signals, which I was surprised to realise I knew. A jab of a hand to indicate move forward, a clenched fist by the side of the head to tell the others to stop. I guess I must have picked them up from watching too many war movies.

I thought about every step I was taking, each time I ducked rather than dodged, holding all the moments in my mind in case I needed to Shift. And I knew the rest of the team around me were doing exactly the same thing.

I held my fist up and we all stopped behind a small metal building. On the third floor, there was a large, arched window. The only thing in the entire building not made out of hard, sharp edges.

I pointed it out to Zac. “Can we get up there?”

“Sure thing.” Zac shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a grappling hook attached to a long rope. He slotted it into the barrel of a gun.

I crept out from behind the cover of the wall, Zac, Turner and Cooper behind me, and headed for the building. Zac took aim and with a click, the grapple soared into the air and over the top of the building. Zac tugged twice on the rope and nodded for Cooper to go up. The boy pulled a gold medallion out from under his collar, kissed it, and then grabbed hold of the rope. He braced his feet against the glass surface of the building and started to walk up.

Turner watched him, chewing on the side of her finger, gasping for air every time he slipped or made a wrong move. After a minute, he was at the third floor, next to the large window. He wrapped his foot around the rope and hung there, one hand free.

He pulled out a small blue hammer and laid his head and a hand against the glass, like a safe cracker listening for the telltale clicks, moved a few times till he found a place he was happy with, then hit the spot above his fingers with the hammer. At first, he only succeeded in smashing a hole in the glass. Cooper sighed into his helmet. Then there was that strange, jolting sensation when someone makes a Shift. The glass shattered, falling like rain around us in a shower of diamonds. It was kind of beautiful to watch.

Cooper stood on the window ledge and waved Turner up. She clambered up the rope after him, and Zac and I quickly followed.

We were in an empty flat. It reeked of dead animals, and a stained mattress lay on the floor. All the interior walls had been knocked through, creating one large, unliveable space. Graffiti covered every surface, including that word I’d seen earlier. “Shine.”

Cooper had his head out of the window, gathering up the rope, when an explosion shook the building. I watched him fall, his hands clawing at the air. Then suddenly, he was hanging half in, half out of the window. Turner had Shifted and grabbed him by his flak jacket.

“Thanks,” he said as she pulled him through.

“You owe me,” she said, dusting her hand on her leg.

“Consider it payback from when I warned you about Matt.”

“You didn’t warn me,” Turner said. “You set me up with him!”

“Oh, yeah. But only because I was hoping he’d make me look–”

Their banter was cut off by the cracking of gunfire.

“I guess the Red Hand know we’re here,” I said. “We’d better move fast.”

Without needing direction, my team spread out to cover both the window we’d come in and the door I was about to exit through. I was poised to open the door when I felt a hand on my arm. Cooper held up a thin, black tube, about eight inches long – a fibre-optic camera. He attached one end of the tube to his tablet and slid the other end through the small gap under the door. A moment later, a grey image appeared on his screen. The corridor outside. The camera moved to the left, revealing the way was clear. To the right, two large figures stood with their backs to the camera. Behind them, I was pretty sure despite the grainy image, was a sentry gun.

I patted my pockets and found what I knew would be there. A quantum grenade.

“A cat?” Zac said. “Good thinking.”

We called the grenades the “cat in the box”, after our lessons about Schrödinger. It was designed to go off in a variety of ways. Sometimes it would explode like a normal grenade, other times it gave off a flash of blinding light, depending on which button on the clip we pressed. The random nature gave Shifters the advantage, as we were able to Shift through the various options till the one most advantageous to us worked. I clicked the dial on the clip with my thumb, thinking about all the options open to me. And then settled on flash.

The door creaked open so loudly, I expected the men to turn around to investigate. But looking at them in the screen, they were still facing the opposite way. I’d have to get their attention for the flash grenade to work.

I threw open the door and stepped out. “Oi!” I shouted, at the same time throwing the grenade in a small arc so it came bouncing to a stop next to their feet.

They turned around and looked from me to the grenade, just as it erupted in white light.

Only then did I realise the men were wearing helmets, stolen from the army by the looks of things, which included visors that protected against flash grenades. Before they had a chance to run at me, I Shifted, this time going for the sleeping gas.

With that weird flipping in the stomach I’d missed so much, I was standing in front of two men who were slowly sinking to the ground, the Morphothane gas taking them down before they even had a chance to turn around. I waited for the gas to dissipate, then gestured for the team to come out.

We stepped over the sleeping guards, Cooper and Turner stripping them of their stolen helmets and armour before I even had to say a word. I pointed at Zac and then to the sentry gun. He was to stay here and cover this corridor. He nodded, a little too enthusiastically, I thought. I could hardly blame him. Even I was starting to have fun.

I didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. I was getting the kick of all kicks out of this. I could never remember having felt so calm and in control in my life. I guess it was adrenaline taking over. Whatever it was, I liked it.

Cooper, Turner and I pressed on, through a door marked “In Case of Emergencies” and up the staircase. Only seven flights to go.

The sounds of gunfire hadn’t abated from outside, and every now and then, there was another explosion. We ran up the staircase, taking two steps at a time, till we came to the tenth floor. I nodded at Cooper, watching as he pulled the same trick with the camera. His eager smile reminded me of Jake. I wondered again where he was now his life wasn’t being controlled by a government agency. I’d track him down as soon as I was back at base.

The tenth-floor corridor was empty. This door opened with a creak and I slid out, holding a hand up to the other two, telling them to wait.

Voices came from up ahead, loud and angry. I crept closer, till I could hear what they were saying. From what I could gather, it was two members of the Red Hand arguing.

“Why don’t we kill him and get out of here?”

“Slate said we were to keep him alive.”

“Then leave him here. I didn’t sign up to get bloody bombed!”

Bombed? I thought. Did they know about the air strike?

“What did you sign up for, then? All that stuff we said at our initiation about trusting in God? Don’t you believe anymore, brother?”

“What good will God do me if I get my bloody head blown off?”

I took a few steps closer to the open doorway. I risked the tiniest of glances around the door. It was another flat that had been converted into an open space. Exposed wooden frames were all that was left of the walls. Two large men stood with their noses an inch apart; a man was bound and gagged on the floor behind them. Hedges. Jackpot.

I strode forward and pulled out my gun.

“You should have listened to your brother,” I said and fired, sending two bullets into the chest of the man on the left.

The second man dove for cover while letting off a spray of bullets. I ducked back around the doorway, as the frame next to me exploded in a shower of plaster and wood splinters. Eventually, the gunfire stopped and a clicking noise filled the space. The man was empty.

I straightened up and raced through the door before he had a chance to reload. It was a risky move. But hey, if it didn’t work out, I’d Shift and take the more sensible option.

It did work out. As the man tried to replace the magazine of his machine gun, I jumped up, grabbing hold of an exposed heating pipe overhead, and swung, hitting him in the face with the heavy soles of both of my boots. He let out a loud
oof
and toppled over. I landed on his chest, with a knee on his throat. I leant forward till I heard a wet crunching sound. The man went still.

I clambered off him and looked around to see if there was anyone else here. Only Hedges and me.

“Clear,” I shouted. A moment later, Turner and Cooper crept into the room.

I walked over to Hedges. He stared at the man on the floor, and I couldn’t tell if it was disgust or relief on his face. I pulled the gag out of his mouth.

He coughed, gasping for air. “Thank you,” he said, through puffed lips. It looked like he was missing a few teeth, and his left eye was swollen completely closed. It seems Cain had been right about the torture.

“You’re safe now,” I said, pulling out my knife and slicing through his bindings.

The sounds of gunfire outside lessened. But it wasn’t over. “You know the drill. You follow me closely. You don’t take your eyes off me, you hear? So, stay sharp. Stay focused and you will get out of here.” I helped Hedges to his feet.