Ex-Patriots (29 page)

Hancock had her leg. The kick had winded him
but he’d grabbed hold. She could free herself, but it disrupted her
timing. Just for an instant.

The third soldier was back on his feet. She
freed her leg and snapped two kicks into Hancock’s face.

Pierce’s fist struck just under her armpit
and she felt the jolt travel down her arm. It was like being hit
with a baseball bat. She knew that from experience.

He pulled back his good hand and punched the
same arm square in the bicep. Her hand went numb but she forced her
fingers to stay closed on the baton. She brought her other arm
around, struck the third man, and Pierce’s knuckles hit her in the
side of the head. She heard the ASP hit the floor.

* * *

It was a little after thirteen-hundred when
Freedom entered Shelly’s office. “Is it true, sir?”

Smith stood at the desk, looking at the dark
puddle. “Yeah,” he said. “I just talked to Sorensen. He walked in
on the woman, Stealth, beating Colonel Shelly to a pulp. He was
lucky there were three of your men nearby who heard them.”

Freedom stood ramrod straight. “What’s the
colonel’s condition, sir?”

“I haven’t seen him, but Sorensen says it’s
critical. There may be...” Smith took a slow breath. “There may be
brain damage. She beat his skull with those metal batons of
hers.”

Freedom said nothing, but his jaw got tight
and his knuckles whitened around his patrol cap.

“There’s a good chance he won’t make it,”
said Smith. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, captain, but either
way this means you’re in charge.”

“I’m aware of that, sir.” Freedom took in a
slow breath of his own. “Do we have any idea why she did it?”

“If I had to guess... I don’t know, maybe she
was angry we were going to be keeping Doctor Morris and the
Cerberus suit here at Krypton. Maybe she thought she could kill him
and they could all slip away in the confusion.” He shrugged. “I
don’t know, does that even sound plausible to you?”

“More than plausible,” said the huge officer.
His face twisted into a scowl. “She’s in custody?”

“Pierce and Hancock delivered her to the
stockade five minutes ago.”

“Excellent,” said Freedom. “Then let’s get
the rest of them.”

* * *

“Damn,” said St. George as the sirens started
up. “I think those are for us. I guess Stealth’s talk with Colonel
Shelly didn’t go too well.”

“Well, she’s such a fantastic diplomat,”
muttered Danielle.

They ran between the buildings. He’d offered
to fly them, but she pointed out they’d be exposed. So they were on
foot and trying to stay out of sight.

They came to a wider intersection where the
roads were paved. “This is it,” Danielle said, pointing left. “From
what they told me, Sorensen’s lab is that way. Building nineteen,
on the fourth floor. The building’s got the same layout as mine,
his lab is right above where mine would be. Think you can find
it?”

“I’ll manage. You sure you can make it to the
workshop on your own?”

She fingered the collar of her camo jacket.
“Doesn’t look like there are many soldiers out yet. I’ll blend in
enough with my hair under the cap. Cerberus will be ready to go by
the time you get there with Barry.”

“It better be,” he said. “I think we’re
running out of time.”

“Have I ever been slow about getting back in
the suit?”

“I’ll see you in an hour or sooner,
then.”

She tugged her cap down, gave him a ragged
salute, and marched down the road with her arms tight to her sides.
St. George kept an eye on her until she’d passed two buildings,
then headed in the opposite direction.

He could move faster on his own. If he
focused on the spot between his shoulder blades he could feel
gravity get weak. It let him move in quick, long strides. He
crouched behind a parked truck as a Humvee sped down the road.

Building nineteen had a security keypad. St.
George kicked himself for not asking if he’d need a code or
something. He was sure he could force the door open, and just as
sure it would set off an alarm if he did. Then he kicked himself
again for being dumb.

The lock popped off as he pried the window
open. As he suspected, the Army contractors hadn’t bothered to put
alarms on the fourth floor windows. He slid it open the rest of the
way, spun in the air, and slipped into the building.

He couldn’t hear much in the building. The
faint rumble of air conditioning. A phosphorescent tube crackled
somewhere. As far as he could tell, there were no voices, ringing
phones, or any of the other sounds of life one would expect from a
populated building. St. George slipped into the empty hall.

It took him about ten minutes to find
Sorensen’s lab. It had his name on a small plate, along with three
long words the hero couldn’t pronounce—two
bio
s and a
neuro
. It also had another security keypad. He considered
skimming around the outside of the building until he found a window
into the lab, then realized Danielle was probably already at her
workshop. If her numbers were right, she’d have the suit ready to
assemble in twenty minutes.

He braced his feet, put his palm just above
the latch, and pushed. The metal frame let out a little groan. The
latch leaned in toward his hand and wrinkles appeared in the
painted steel around his fingers. There were four quick pops from
the hinges, a squeal of metal, and the door flew into the lab.

St. George half-expected the room to be
filled with bubbling chemicals and a Tesla coil. It was mostly
computers, including a huge screen he knew Stealth would never
admit to wanting. A few brains floated in small tanks near diagrams
and cross sections of their structure.

Five exes were fastened down on tilted
gurneys, each pushed up against the back wall. The row of
almost-vertical figures reminded him of a carnival ride, one of the
ones that spun people around. Four of them had nylon straps across
their foreheads and were gagged with what looked like pieces of a
broom stick. The fifth’s head was free and it swiveled back and
forth, snapping its teeth at the air.

Sorensen sat in the middle of the lab on a
tall stool. He looked over his shoulder at the hero. “It’s open,”
he said. “I haven’t locked it in months.”

“Where’s Zzzap?”

“Somewhere safe.”

St. George soared across the room and lifted
the doctor by his collar. “No games,” he said. Hot smoke streamed
out of his nostrils and mouth. “You’re going to take me to him now
and you’re going to release him.”

“He’s much safer where he is,” said Sorensen.
“They can’t get to him in there.”

“I said no games.”

“You can put me down,” said the doctor. “I
won’t run. If it’s what you want, I’ll take you to your friend. But
he is safer where he is.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

The doctor tried to shrug, but hanging in St.
George’s hand he just swung in his coat. “I’ll need to get the blue
flash drive from my desk.”

“What for?”

“It’s a code key. Mr. Burke’s held behind an
interwoven trio of Faraday cages. It’s what’s keeps him there. The
key shuts them off.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s a matching key one of the soldiers
on duty will have. In theory we need both. I’m sure you could
destroy all three cages if you needed to, though.”

St. George set the older man down on the
ground. The doctor’s shoes clacked on the linoleum, a softer noise
than the clicking teeth. “You’re awfully helpful all of a
sudden.”

Sorensen shrugged again and adjusted his
glasses. Then he tried to flatten the hundreds of wrinkles in his
clothes. “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s all over now. With Colonel Shelly dead
there’s going to be confusion. They’ve got no reason to keep
pretending. Especially with you here.”

“Wait,” said the hero. “Back up. How did
Shelly die? What happened?”

“Too much pressure on his mind,” said
Sorensen. “That’s one of the bad things out here. These are good
people. Good, brave people. There’s just too much on their
minds.”

“Pressure on their minds? Wait a minute. Is
this... Does this have something to do with the Nest?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, of course
not,” he said with a sigh. “The Nest doesn’t even work.”

St. George looked at the older man and
followed his eyes to the oversized diagram on the big screen. He
recognized it from Stealth’s sketch the day before. The neural
stimulator.

“That was the deal, you see,” Sorensen said.
“I made a deal with the dead. I wouldn’t say anything if any of you
came here. If they found you and you came here, I couldn’t say
anything. Especially to her.”

St. George tilted his head. “Her who?”

“Her. Doctor Morris. That was the deal. The
dead would follow commands, they’d act just like the Nest was
working. But I couldn’t warn the one who’d killed him.”

“What are you talking ab—oh, shit.”

Across the room, the fifth ex had stopped
clicking its teeth together. It stared at St. George. It
grinned.

* * *

Danielle was stuck across the road from her
workshop, hiding by the Tomb. Just as she’d reached the building a
jeep had pulled up. Now two soldiers were searching inside her
shop. Two more waited outside and did a weak job of looking around.
They were some of the new recruit soldiers. One of them was
seventeen, tops. The other looked closer to fifty.

After what felt like ages the searchers
trotted out and shook their heads. They gave a last glance around
the corners of the building and the sergeant typed something into
the keypad. All four of them piled back into the jeep and roared
off to another part of the base.

In the same situation, she figured Stealth
would wait at least three minutes before stepping into the open.
Danielle waited twice that. And then two more minutes just to be
safe, even though she desperately wanted to get inside.

There was no sign of other soldiers. She
couldn’t even hear another jeep.

She scampered across the street, bent low
even though she was in plain sight and she knew it couldn’t hide
her. Her cap slipped and she yanked it off, letting her hair spill
down. Once she was by her workshop she tried to squeeze into one of
the shrinking shadows as the morning sun got higher in the sky.

She waited another minute and then slipped
around to the keypad. As near as she could tell, nothing had
changed. It looked like the soldier had just reset the locks and
security system.

If they’d reset her codes, using the keypad
would alert them to her location. If not, it would get her into the
shop and still alert them to her location. But if they hadn’t
changed her codes, maybe it hadn’t occurred to them yet to track
her with them. Unless they’d left the codes active just for that
reason.

Her fingers danced on the keypad. The door
clicked open. No sirens went off.

She pulled the door shut behind her and
breathed a sigh of relief as it separated her from the outside
world. Then she turned and bit back a scream.

A ring of twenty exes circled the tables
where the Cerberus suit was spread out, lit by the high skylight.
Four more stood at the center by the upright legs and torso
section. All of them were in piecemeal ACUs. Each of them held an
M16 rifle across its chest.

None of them moved.

Danielle took a moment to steady her
breathing and took a step forward. She made a point of setting her
sneaker down hard and scuffing it on the concrete floor. The sound
echoed in the workshop.

They didn’t react.

She took a few more cautious steps forward,
dragging her feet on each one. If they started to move, she was
sure she could beat them to the door. Of course, if they were even
fair shots, they didn’t need to be that fast.

Her laptop was just outside the ring of dead
soldiers. The cables ran between two of them to the helmet and the
armor’s spine. She could see the suit was still hooked up and
charged. No one had touched it. They’d just stationed guards.

She was five feet from the ring when the two
closest exes took a step forward. Their shoulders bumped as they
blocked her path. Danielle hopped back and they stopped
advancing.

Her codes were still active. Shelly had said
the programmed exes could take simple orders. And sometimes they
understood priority.

Danielle took in a breath and looked at the
closest ex. It was a man, shaved bald, in a sand-colored tee-shirt
with a bullet hole in the chest. No blood. She cleared her throat.
“Soldier,” she said, “I order you to let me pass.”

The ex didn’t move. She inched forward and it
took another lumbering step toward her. Its hands shifted on the
rifle.

“I
order
you to let me pass,” she
repeated.

It didn’t move. It also didn’t change its
grip on the M16. The ex stared past her with blank eyes.

“I repeat, this is a direct order from
Cerberus three-zero-three-alpha.”

The dead thing started to move but shuddered
to a halt. The withered head turned and locked eyes with her. It
knotted its brow.

“I said, this is a—”

The M16 clattered to the ground. The dead
thing lashed out with an arm that moved too fast and grabbed her
throat. It glared at the redhead and marched her back, off-balance,
until the work table hit the small of her back. The arm bent her
over and she fell back next to the laptop. Her feet swung inches
above the ground.

Cracked lips pulled away from the teeth.
“Fucking
puta
bitch,” it growled. “Not so tough without your
fucking armor, are you?”

She flailed at the arm, but she was weak.
Just weak skin and bones.