Prodigal (14 page)

Lea crouched to help him up. “Are you all right?”

Tiernan shook his head clear.

“I’m sorry, Lea,” he said. “I should have known she was there. I just didn’t—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lea said, abruptly cutting him off. She pulled Tiernan to his feet, steadying him until he could stand on his own. “Can you get around?”

“Yeah.”

“I need you to evacuate survivors. As fast as you can.”

“Survivors?”
Tiernan asked, the reality still dawning on him. “Oh, Jesus…”

Lea tightened her grip on his arm, the stern tone of command in her voice.

“Save it for later, Lieutenant,” she ordered. “Right now, I need you to do your job. Are you with me?”

Tiernan stiffened, swallowing his own shock.

“I got it,” he said, his voice and expression vacant.

Lea gave him half a smile. “Good,” she told him. “Vital sensors aren’t working for shit, so check
everyone.
Get some distance as fast as you can and call for transport as soon as you clear interference. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Where the hell are
you
going?”

Lea slung the rifle over her shoulder. “To make sure this wasn’t a waste of time.”

She bounded up the stairway, almost at a sprint, not even bothering to take precautions. Lea knew that Avalon could be around any corner, waiting in ambush, but she had since detached herself from the possibility. Her own hubris had already gotten people killed. Another casualty, more or less, wouldn’t make any difference.

Lea concentrated on the labor of her breathing and the narrow stairwell above her. Charging ahead, she burst through the heavy door at the top of the stairs and hurled herself into the foyer. It was exactly as her team had left it—except for the two prone figures that lay in front of the open elevator shaft. Lea knew they were dead even before she went over to check them, their blood cooling in thickened pools that mixed with the filth of this decaying place.

The image of Avalon escaping into the night blossomed into a feral loathing. Lea made a start for the front door, stopping when she realized that chasing the
Inru
agent through the streets was futile at best—suicidal at worst. She would gladly trade her life to watch Avalon die, but she wasn’t about to throw it away.

Lea ran back to the stairs. She looked up, into the twists and turns that led to the roof.

Up there, she might have a chance—but only if she had help.

She popped the speedtecs without hesitation.

Time became liquid when you were using, but nothing was quite like this. The tecs flooded Lea’s bloodstream in a power load, stretching her muscles taut and filling her mind with an intense euphoria. Step after step, flight after flight, Lea kept accelerating, the consumption of her body fueling a kamikaze need. The more she broke down, the more invincible she felt.

Lea didn’t know how many minutes ticked off. She ignored the mission clock in her visor, measuring progress only in how much closer she got to the roof. When she shot past the seventeenth floor, she kept going at full tilt even when she saw the access door looming in front of her. Without slowing down, she flipped the rifle from her shoulder and put two quick blasts at center mass. Dangling feebly from its hinges, the door split in two as Lea ran right through it.

Night enveloped her when she stepped outside.

Bitter cold seeped through the seams of her armor, recoiling against her white-hot skin. Lea felt the undulation of her musculature beneath—a precursor to meltdown, slowly abating as the tecs reverted to dormancy. The crash left her with a terrible case of the shakes, made even worse by the overload of chemical transmitters still pumping through her nervous system. It also catapulted her mind into a hyperactive state, her eyes darting wildly through shadows, seeing Avalon in every shape and profile.

Easy does it, girl.

That thought seemed increasingly remote, a tin echo of sanity. Lea’s finger itched on the trigger, demanding action as she jerked in one direction, then the other, the edge of the rooftop giving way to the dead city crowding the horizon.

She’s not here. You know she’s not here.

The infrared was dark, forcing reality into Lea’s narrow sliver of perception. She came down by degrees, a painful balancing act of highs and lows. Control was tentative, but within her grasp.

The streets. Out there. That’s where she’ll be.

Now go.

Lea tore across the roof, stopping at the edge. Leaning over the parapet, she stared into the murky channels that cut through town, maxing the res on her visor and searching out heat signatures. Avalon wouldn’t be waiting around for Lea to call in reinforcements, which meant she would be on the move, getting out of the city as fast as she could. If that was the case, her body would stand out on the infrared—and make a perfect target in Lea’s sniper scope.

Come on, bitch. Where are you?

Lea circled around the roof, traversing each side. Nothing turned up on the most obvious points of exit, so Lea walked the path again. Her pace took on the fever of frustration, each pass pushing her deeper into a tec-induced, paranoid hole. Her enemy was slipping away. Lea was all but certain.

Think, Lea—THINK. Avalon would never set foot anywhere unless she had already planned a way out. She knows you’re watching. What’s the best place to hide?

She stopped cold.

The old reactor glowed off in the distance, bleeding energy. The streets ran like rivers from that island of heat, so bright that Lea had to pull away with her visor to keep from being blinded. Pockets of radiation turned the whole area into a minefield, so Lea hadn’t thought of looking—but Avalon, with her physiology and sensuit, could easily navigate there.

Son of a bitch.

Lea almost threw herself off the roof as she leaned over the side. She switched the mode on her visor, going to motion sensors and scanning each avenue for any hint of movement. Windblown debris instantly cluttered her field of vision, forcing her to reduce the trip threshold. Then, gradually, a regular pattern started to emerge. Something broke away from the east side of the reactor complex, into the cratered remains of a parking lot.

Avalon.

Lea switched over to pure visual, augmenting the area. Avalon beat a path across the old blacktop, leaving herself vulnerable in the wide-open space. Lea couldn’t believe her luck, but didn’t have time to question it. Tecs resurging, she assumed a sniper stance and sighted her rifle on the target. The scope bobbed up and down, jostled by the wind and her own trembling hands, while sweat dampened Lea’s vision in spite of the cold.

Take the shot.

Avalon fell in and out of the center eye, eluding Lea without even trying. Lea blinked, her pupils dilating from drugs and stress, her focus blurring and snapping back. She shook her head, trying to clear her line of sight as Avalon slowed.

What are you waiting for? Take the goddamned shot.

Avalon stopped. She turned toward the building, searching the skies expectantly. Her head now rested squarely in the cross hairs, inviting Lea to shoot.

Lea flexed her finger, knuckle popping as it put pressure on the trigger.

No coming back from the dead this time.

She fired.

Engine wash exploded in Lea’s face in a white fury, knocking her back with a blizzard of ice particles and turbine fumes. She landed flat on her back, knocking the breath out of her lungs and the rifle from her hands. She gulped toxic air, trying to stand as a frozen hurricane pummeled her from above, dirty sleet plastering her visor and blinding her. Forced to retreat, Lea hunched over and ran for the rooftop door. There, in the shelter of the doorway, she yanked the helmet off her head and looked skyward.

Over the building, a scant few meters above Lea, an unmarked hovercraft floated. It had swooped down on her while she wasn’t looking, turbofans blasting the rooftop so hard that entire strips of ossified sheeting peeled away and blew into the night. As it banked around, Lea got a look into the cockpit window. The pilot stared back at her, his attention darting between Lea and his altitude. He descended even farther, the scream of his engines whipping up a gale. Lea held on to the doorway with both hands, but it was just no use. The stairwell behind her was now a howling wind tunnel and sucked her in like a tornado.

Lea rolled down the concrete steps, cracking her head against the railing before catching herself. With speedtecs boiling, she barely felt any pain—only a debilitating disorientation, which took an eternity to fight off. By the time Lea could get up again, the hovercraft had withdrawn, the potent echo of its wake trailing off toward the reactor complex.

Lea lurched back onto the roof. She remembered the rifle, almost tripping over the weapon when she reached down to grab it. Shuffling toward the edge, she felt like a zombie. The tecs had narrowed her world, leaving her with only one purpose.

She fell to her knees at the parapet, peering through glassy eyes at the hovercraft. It had already touched down in the parking lot, its engines still running at full rev. Avalon climbed into the open cockpit, slamming the canopy shut as the ship rose into the air. Wearily, Lea hauled the rifle up to her shoulder and took aim.

“No,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “You’re not leaving.”

Lea clicked the weapon’s aperture to widest dispersal. Tantalizingly, the hovercraft crossed her sights in an almost leisurely maneuver. At that range, she would be lucky to score a single hit—but that was more than enough to bring such a fragile ship down. Even a glancing blow would spin the hovercraft into oblivion, splattering it into a flaming mass as it plummeted into—

Oh, Jesus…

The hovercraft nudged itself over, assuming a position directly over the power plant. The pilot turned so that the nose of the ship faced the apartment building, the cockpit glass neatly centered in Lea’s scope.

The pilot didn’t budge. He just hovered there, within bumping distance of the cooling tower, his jets rattling the rusted sheet metal covering the old reactor. Beneath that, only the brittle sarcophagus that entombed the melted core held back a radiological disaster. There was no way it could survive even a mild impact.

Go on, do it. What the hell do you have to lose?

It was the speedtecs talking, urging her to take action—
any
action, so long as it satisfied her thirst. It would be so satisfying to watch Avalon fall, dying in a light the entire world would see. The price, her own life, was cheap in comparison.

Think of it, Lea.

She did. For seconds that jumped a relative curve into hours, she played the scenario over and over again. Each episode ended in her own death, which was fine by her. But then she thought of her team, their loyalty, their sacrifice—and of those who had died, and those who had yet to live.
Nobody gets left behind,
she had promised them.

It would have been easier to sever a limb—but slowly, painfully, she lowered her rifle.

The hovercraft remained where it was. Lea stood and raised her hands into the air, making plain to Avalon the terms of her surrender:
Leave now, fight another day.
After a few moments, the pilot acknowledged by flashing his landing lights, then pulled straight up into the night. He went slowly, staying above the power plant the whole time, waiting until the hovercraft was out of firing range before kicking in the main engines. With a slingshot roar, the ship disappeared into the low cloud cover. Its dying echo settled over the city, soon carried off at the behest of a relentless wind.

“Another day,” Lea said, and lost herself in the dark.

Lauren Farina climbed into
Almacantar
’s flight ops booth, joining the two officers on duty there. The flight boss was the first to see her and snapped to attention as soon as she entered. “Captain’s on deck,” he announced, grabbing the attention of the landing signals officer. Both of them stood rigid, until Farina put them at ease with a smile and a wave of her hand. She loved the old-timers, and their strict observation of mariner protocol. They were a dying breed in the service—a relic of those salty days when exploration was a top priority at the Directorate. With this mission, Farina hoped to give a little of that back to them.