Brainrush 05 - Everlast 02: Ephemeral (15 page)

A
N
ALARM PIERCED THE SILENCE
, triggering a jolt of panic that squeezed the
breath from Francesca’s lungs. She braced herself against Tony crouched beside
her. He and the others had swiveled their heads to the rear, where the shouts
they’d heard had been replaced by the sound of pounding footfalls.

 “Five seconds,” Pete said, staring at the sky. He was crouched
in front of them at the end of the alley. The wide street ahead was still bathed
in moonlight. They huddled in the shadows, shifting uneasily as the large cloud
finally drifted in front of the moon. Darkness descended. “Sixth house on the
left,” Pete said. He checked the corner. “Clear. Let’s go.”

He sprinted forward, and Francesca and the others stayed close
behind him. They were halfway across the road when a group of men rounded the
corner at the end of the block and skidded to a stop at the sight of Francesca
and the others. Even in the darkness, she could see their raised weapons.

“Stop where you are,” the lead guard shouted. She recognized
his voice as the murderer with the gouged cheek. Pete and Tony stepped forward
to create a barricade for their unarmed friends. Pete’s submachine gun was
pressed into his shoulder, while Tony held his pistol in a two-handed grip. Becker
and Jonesy grabbed either of Francesca’s arms and swept her across the street
to take cover behind an empty vendor’s cart.

There was a moment of stunned silence as the two groups of
armed men faced each other—six against two, separated by less than thirty
paces. 

“Lower your weapons,” the lead guard said.

Pete and Tony didn’t budge.

“The good news is that they must want us alive,” Pete said
to Tony, just loud enough for Francesca to hear. He sighted down his weapon.

“Otherwise we’d be dead already, right?” Tony said. “You any
good with that thing?”

“Fair to middling. You?”

“I can drop the three on the right before they know what
happened.”

Another shout from down the street. “One false move and you’re
both dead men. I’ll give you until the count of five.”

“Kind of reminds me of the Old West,” Tony said. “Know what
I mean?”

“One... ”

Pete sniffed. “Ye don’t know the half of it.” Using one hand
to keep the weapon aimed at the guards, he eased the other to slip his cell
phone from his vest pocket. He dropped it onto the cobbled street and crushed
it under the heel of his boot. Francesca realized he was preparing to be taken.

“Two... ” the lead guard yelled.

“Bloody hell,” Jonesy whispered. “I’m circling around,
weapon or not.”

Becker grabbed his arm, motioning up at the sky. “You’ll
never make it.”

Francesca followed his gaze. The cloud had drifted and
moonlight was already pushing back the shadows.

“Three... ”

“Once the shooting starts,” Pete said, “you three hightail
it up to the ridge. Help’s waiting.”

The Irishman and Tony braced themselves. This wasn’t a ruse.
They weren’t planning on backing down.

“Four... ”

“Don’t,” Francesca cried out, struggling unsuccessfully to
free herself from Becker’s grasp.  “Please!” Moonlight illuminated the guards’ faces
and she noticed the lead guard wearing glasses. He also wore an unwavering expression,
and she realized he and his men weren’t going to back down, either. “
Dio mio
,”
she whispered.

A Chinese woman wearing a dark cloak and coolie hat stepped
from an alley between the two groups. She walked casually into the street and turned
her back on the guards as she faced Tony and Pete.

Pete shifted uneasily. “Jaysus, girl,” he muttered. “What
are ye thinkin’?”

 “You there. Step aside immediately!” the lead guard
shouted. He repeated himself in Chinese.

“You know her?” Tony asked.

“This is going to happen fast,” Pete said to Tony. “No time
to explain. But by God, man, don’t fire your weapon.”

“But—” Tony stopped when another group of guards ran into
the street behind Francesca’s position. They were surrounded.

 “Damn,” Jonesy whispered. Becker sighed. Tony lowered his
weapon.

Pete didn’t.

 The Asian woman stared him down, and the surreal scene
reminded Francesca of a showdown in a Western.

The woman screamed something in Chinese, sweeping her cloak
aside and raising a snub-nosed machine pistol in a two-handed grip. Before
Francesca could gasp, the woman let loose a three-round burst that stitched Pete
across his chest. Blood exploded from the entry wounds, two of the rounds
passing clean through to blow flesh and guts out his back. Pete flew backward and
his body thumped onto the street, his legs twitching.

The woman tossed her weapon aside and dropped to her knees,
her face buried in her hands.

***

“Did you see that?” Pak blurted out.

Jiaolong forgave the outburst. The camera view from the
glasses his lead guard, Bingwen, wore had captured it all, and he’d been just
as startled as everyone else in the room. He watched in dismay as his other men
rushed forward and gathered up the prisoners. The view shifted downward as Bingwen
kicked at the fallen man to confirm he was dead. Another guard searched the
body and secured the fallen weapon and spare magazines.

“Serves him right,” Min said. “The woman shouted that he’d
killed her husband. He must have done it during his infiltration.”

“She shall be rewarded,” Jiaolong said, watching as the
guards cuffed the prisoners with zip ties and ushered them away. “Finish
rounding up the others,” he said. “Have them all brought to the barracks
facility, including Bronson. We’ll meet them there. The time for games is over.”

Pak issued the order, and Jiaolong watched as Bingwen helped
the Chinese woman to her feet. She allowed herself to be escorted away. Bingwen
took one last glance at the dead body before he—and the camera view—turned to
follow the others.

“And the body?” Pak asked.

“Send a gurney to gather it in the morning. We have other
priorities at the moment.” He turned and left the room.

The triplets followed.

***

“Someone’s with him!” Lacey said,
her breath quickening. She and Marshall were on the ridgeline watching Pete’s
movements through night-vision scopes. He’d disappeared down an alley a few
minutes ago and they’d been waiting anxiously for him to reappear.

“That’s Tony,” Marshall said.

Lacey’s hands shook from a rush of excitement, and the
magnified green-scale image jiggled as Pete and four others raced across the
street and ducked into another alley. “And Francesca, too. Was that Becker and
Jonesy with them?”

“I think so.”

“I didn’t see the kids—”

Alarms pierced the silence, followed by an exchange of
gunfire from behind their position.

They spun around. “That came from our trucks!” Marshall
said, pulling her back from the ridge. They grabbed their packs and weapons and
scuttled behind the massive tree. “Quick, give me your phone.”

“What’s happening?” she asked, handing it over.

 “They’re on to us,” he said. He opened the phone and yanked
out the battery and SIM chip. He snapped the chip in half and tossed it in the
brush. The alarms still trumpeted from below but the gunfire behind them had
ceased, replaced by distant shouts. “They must’ve got Feng and the driver. It
sounds like they’re headed this way.”

“Aren’t we supposed to evacuate down the hill to the kid’s
house if that happens?”

“Not if alarms are going off all over the place.”

“Should we use the sat phone to call in the reinforcements?”

Marshall hesitated. “Jake was clear that we shouldn’t do that
until he has the kids in hand. We gotta stick to that.”

“So we fight,” she said, flipping off the safety on her MP5.
She aimed it down the trail.

Marshall lowered the muzzle of her gun. “You got a death
wish or something?”

She brushed him off, her eyes searching for movement. “You
have a better plan?”

He pulled out his own phone and studied the flashing green
icons on the display. “Jake’s still in the main building. Dolphin and Shamer
are at BlackFlag’s house, and it looks like Skylar’s circling around to meet
Pete and the others. If all hell breaks loose down there and they get taken,
then it’s going to be on us to figure out how to get them out.” He disabled the
phone and tossed the chip away. “So we need to stay out of sight and avoid
capture.
That’s
our plan.”

“
That’s
not going to work.” She pointed to the
flattened foliage along the ridgeline. “When those suckers behind us get here,
they’re going to see that. They’ll know we’re here somewhere and they won’t
stop searching until they find us.”

Marshall stared at the disturbed vegetation. He swiveled
around and seemed to study the thick jungle behind her, then nodded. He took Lacey’s
hand and pulled her to her feet.

 “Follow my footsteps exactly,” he said. He let go of her
hand and headed off, taking care to walk on the hard pack between the foliage.
She shouldered her MP5 and followed, at one point leaping from one downed log
to another to avoid crushing any plants underfoot. When they reached the thick
tangle, he used his assault rifle to lift the bottom of the brush. “Crawl in.
Feet first.”

The space he’d created was barely eighteen inches wide. “
This
is your plan?”  

“We don’t have time to argue.” As if to emphasize the point,
a distant burst of gunfire echoed from down in the village. Shouts rang out
from the direction of the trucks, and Lacey cringed when she realized the men
coming down the trail were much closer. She could imagine them running in
response to the gunfire.

“Hurry,” Marshall whispered.

She dropped to her belly and shimmied into the space.
Brambles caught on her clothes and something scurried through the brush behind
her, sending a shiver up her spine. When she was all the way in, he pulled his assault
rifle back and the brush dropped in front of her face.

“Hey, what about you?” she asked.

He crouched in front of her. “I’ve got other plans.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, trying to push to her knees.

“Listen, dammit,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “I
know you like to take charge and most of the time that’s fine with me. But
not
now.
Not
this time. I’m your husband and it’s my turn to take care of
you. You need to stay here and not make a sound. Got it?”

She’d never seen this side of him and it scared her. It also
made her feel safe. She nodded. “I got it,” she said. She wriggled deeper into
the brush and watched between the branches as he leaped from log to log toward the
ridgeline. He turned and blew her a kiss before finally tucking himself into
the sparse underbrush where any fool could see him.

I
RACED
DOWN THE TUNNEL
behind Little Star, with Ahmed and Sarafina right behind
me. We were headed to the Center, where Dad’s thoughts had originated before
the alarms cut him off. There had been another man’s presence there, too, and
he had seemed just as startled by the alarm as my dad. The man had reached out
to me over the Net but I’d ignored him. Dad was in trouble and I wanted to find
him. I’d shot up, grabbed my backpack, and pulled Little Star toward the trapdoor
leading to the tunnels. I begged him to lead the way. He hadn’t hesitated.

“So Dad and Lacey are okay?” Sarafina asked, her voice
bouncing breathlessly behind me. I could hear her fear. She was trying hard not
to panic in the dark confines of the tunnel, and the beam of her flashlight
kept jerking this way and that.

“They were when they checked in from Italy,” I said. Before
yanking the Spider off my head, I’d remembered to check the emergency protocol
site. Dad and Lacey were out there looking for us. “But that was two days ago.”

“What about Mom?” Ahmed asked.

“Dunno.” She hadn’t checked in. Neither had anyone else.

A couple minutes later, Little Star pulled to a stop beneath
an iron ladder. “The tunnel continues for a couple hundred meters farther on.
There are two exits near the ruins of the ancient wall. One opens near the
airport and the other empties in the cellar of the barracks. This one here
opens under the bell shrine that was preserved within the Center. It should be
empty at this hour but I will go first to be certain.” When he reached the top
of the stairs, he placed an index finger to his lips to remind us to stay
quiet. He flicked off his flashlight. We did the same and the space was plunged
into darkness. My sister gasped.

There was movement up above, then a creaking noise, and then
Little Star’s silhouette was backdropped by the pale moonlight. He slipped
outside and disappeared, and all I could see was the trace outline of the
opening. A breeze drifted downward and I smelled vegetation. Then I heard a
muffled grunt up above and Sarafina’s hand snapped closed around my arm. I
suspected my brother and sister were holding their breath just like me.

A head popped into view. “All clear,” Little Star whispered.
“Come on up.” The three of us scrambled up the ladder to find ourselves in a
gazebo pretty much like the one we’d seen in the jungle. Except this one housed
a huge bell instead of a Buddha statue. A thick log was suspended horizontally
in front of it by two iron chains. The structure could have been a thousand
years old. It was surrounded by a beautiful garden of colorful flowers and
leafy trees, which was in turn surrounded by the windowed walls of the four-story
building that had been built around it. It appeared as if none of the rooms were
occupied, though the blinds were drawn on a long string of windows on the top
floor.

“No guards?” Ahmed asked.

“Just one,” Little Star said, pointing to the shadows
beneath the foliage. I squinted and saw the outline of a body. “He was kind
enough to give me this.” He held up a key card.

“Is he dead?” Ahmed asked in a tone that suggested he’d be
okay with that. I couldn’t embrace his indifference, but reminded myself that
the people who had kidnapped my family and friends had brought this upon
themselves, just like the boss man on the bridge.

“No,” Little Star said, “but he’s going to wake up with a
bad headache. Follow me.”

We stuck to the shadows, our feet crunching on the pebbled
path leading through the garden. Little Star used the keycard to open a glass
door, and we found ourselves at the intersection of two corridors.

Little Star hesitated. “Which way?” he asked, looking down
at me. Ahmed and Sarafina stared at me too.

“How should I know?” I asked.

“What?” my sister said.

“You’re kidding me,” Ahmed said.

Their disappointment made me feel horrible, but what was I
supposed to do? Sometimes I knew stuff, sometimes I didn’t. I looked in one
direction and then the other, but neither felt any different to me. I only knew
that Dad’s thoughts had originated from here. I’d only felt him for an instant
but I was sure this was the place. I closed my eyes and searched my memory for
some clue I might have missed.

I came up empty.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have no idea where Dad is.”

“No worries, pal,” Ahmed said, patting my shoulder. “We’ll
search. One floor at a time if we have to. Follow me.” He started walking to
the left.

“Wrong way,” a man’s strained voice said from a ceiling
loudspeaker.

Sarafina cringed. Ahmed spun in a crouch, a knife in his
hand. Little Star took up a defensive stance in the opposite direction. But
there was no one there.

“Wait,” I said, recognizing the overhead voice. “It’s the
man who was speaking to Dad on the computer. It’s safe.”

“You’re right. You can trust me,” the man said. His words
were strained. “But we haven’t much time. I can only override the cameras for
so long before someone is sent to investigate. Come quickly and I’ll help you
find your parents.”

One minute later we were standing in a basement research lab
and I was holding a skullcap in my hand. It reminded me of the one I’d worn to
link up with the alien Grid and the memory made me shiver. Little Star and the
others stood to one side. My sister was still uneasy after seeing the old man’s
clone floating in the chamber at the back of the room, but she wanted answers,
too. She’d been immediately drawn to the old man when she first saw his frail
body on the hospital bed. His voice had directed us to a position in the room
that was in a blind spot between the two wall cameras. But even though we
couldn’t be remotely seen, the old man had explained that our voices would
still be picked up once he reactivated the system.

“Quiet,” the man said. “No more talking. Someone in the
control room just noticed the cameras are down. Use the cap. I’m switching the
cameras back on now.”

A red light appeared on top of each camera.

I lowered the cap but it was too large. Only a couple of the
probes connected properly with my forehead and scalp. I could hear the man’s
thoughts in my head but they were distorted and intermittent.

I was considering how to fix it when I remembered the Spider
in my backpack. I pulled it out, pointed at it, and shrugged toward the
computer screen.

The computer beeped twice, and I took that as a signal I
could try using the Spider. I placed it on my head and switched it on. The connection
was instantaneous, and I knew the old man had opened a wireless gateway between
us.

The first thing I felt was pain. Not mine—the old man’s. It
wasn’t a physical pain; he wasn’t connected to his body anymore. No, his was
the worst kind of pain, a hurt that couldn’t be treated with an ice pack or a
Band-Aid. His anguish stemmed from emotions that seemed to be fed from
thousands of randomized thoughts and data that stretched outward from the
computer in this room to other servers in the building and beyond, straining to
snap the frail tether of consciousness that struggled to hold them together.
The man was filled with despair and longed to escape the millions of electronic
claws that grasped at his being.

My brain instantly reached out to soothe him.

Ahhh, that’s nice,
he said in my head.
I
appreciate the effort but it’s far too late for that, child. Only in death will
I find peace.

He’d communicated with thoughts, and the absence of any
reaction from my brother and sister told me they hadn’t heard it.

I looked at the hospital bed. The old man’s skin was slack
and pale and a machine was breathing for him. I noticed where it was plugged
into the wall, and I was again reminded that sometimes taking a life was the
right thing to do.

No,
the man’s voice said.
That won’t help. That
body is lost to me. It’s the death of my mind that I dream about. But my consciousness
isn’t only here. It’s everywhere.

Just as I’d done when I played the video game, I allowed my
mind to extend itself into the network that housed what remained of the man’s
life. One moment I was listening to him as if he were present in the room, and
the next moment my mind had identified the location of every bit of data linked
to his being. A fair amount of it mingled throughout a secondary network
located ten kilometers away, and I was surprised to discover that some of the
data was leaking onto the Internet. My brain embraced every fragment, stemming
the flow. That’s when I realized I could help him.

You honor your father, young man. Like him, your instinct
is to help.

Is he okay?

The old man’s thoughts were hesitant.
He was taken. So
was your mother.

Where are they?

I’ll show you.

A video monitor on the counter beside us flickered on.

I gulped.