The Covert Academy (15 page)

A single ramp ran down from the landing pad to the entrance of an impenetrable looking concrete bunker. The guards streamed up from there. Was this the lab where Brock and Prewett worked or the place
Ryan had meant to meet Meyrick? He couldn’t very well just ask one of the guards.

Joshua made to leap up to the air vents to find Sarah. He fired his ninja rope up and snagged a pipe. One of the
guards saw the rope and opened fire with his Two-Shot.

The double blasts of energy missed Joshua cleanly, the guards unable to see him with his suit camouflaged. But one shot burned through his rope. He wouldn’t be using
that again today. Now the guards had confirmation there was at least one intruder in the area. It wouldn’t be long until he and Sarah were overrun with reinforcements. They had to move faster.

Joshua stood at the top of the landing pad, frozen. He didn’t know what to do. There was no room to manoeuvre down here. The guards ran up the ramp, they were almost on top of
him now. He could use a smoke pellet to gain a few seconds on them, but he couldn’t go back up the tunnel. There was no way but through them.

Joshua caught
a flash of movement from out of his peripheral vision, and a pair of sexy eyes dropped down into the guards’ midst.

Sarah.

She was a blur of motion, the reflective cells of her suit struggling to keep up with her. She landed on all fours, and swept the leg of the nearest guard. She pounced on him, holding him down with a knee. The seven other guards turned to look, and a couple of them actually laughed.

To them it looked as though their buddy had slipped and broken a rib on the damp slope.

Sarah whipped out her blowgun and popped o
ff a round at the guard furthest away. He dropped without so much as a squeak. His jaw had locked up as his body spasmed from sudden low blood pressure, and he lost consciousness. He would be in a world of pain if he ever woke up.

The others still had their attention on the man pinned to the ground by an unseen force. He was thrashing around under Sarah, her suit cru
shing him with the weight of its hardened strength mode. She’d managed to reload her blowgun and aim at another guard, before the pinned man struck at her with a flailing arm. Her head spun for a moment and he used the relief to wiggle out from under her.

Joshua came to his senses then, and entered the fray. He switched his suit to strength, grabbed a smoke pellet from his hip and threw it amongst the men. They had become panicked now and fired their
Two-Shots in every direction, the tunnel’s echo doubling the noise. Joshua dashed in and thumped the nearest guard like a street brawler.

With the blinding smoke and Joshua’s amplified strength, they didn’t stand a chance. He knocked heads and snapped limbs in equal measure.

Sarah gave up on subtlety and drew her sword. While Joshua focussed on incapacitation, Sarah lopped off heads. Blood gushed through the smoke in torrents. Joshua received a splatter in the face and realised what she was doing. The smoke slowly cleared, and Joshua saw the devastation she had created.

Sarah stood over one of Joshua’s
victims; his arm and one leg had been snapped. The guard lay there whimpering, unable to move. Before Joshua could open his mouth, Sarah hacked downward, taking a mighty bite out of his skull.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?!’ Joshua wanted to tear at her. He wanted throw up.

She had killed at least four men, one of whom had clearly been no threat. She was visible now, being covered in blood. It seemed to hover there and drip off her, like a ghostly red spectre.

Sarah shrugged, and wiped at the blood. It didn’t come off. She wouldn’t be invisible again any time soon.

‘There will be more on the way,’ she said.

She didn’t explain herself any further, just hurried off towards the bunker
, sword in hand, leaving Joshua to follow in her bloody wake.

The bunker looked like something out of a history book from an earlier war. It was a low, flat building - but huge, the size of a stadium. It had slits in the thick concrete walls to allow guards to shoot out. They were empty
now; Joshua guessed they had just slaughtered the men that were posted there. The bunker looked incredibly out of place, as though it came from another world, and dropped down into this hole. The buildings on the surface of the Colonnade were all sleek glass, not very defensible but intimidating nonetheless. The bunker looked as though it could withstand a bomb. Maybe that was the point.

They reached the door, a solid metal barrier. Joshua couldn’t see any seams in it. How did it open?

‘Let’s ask one the guards back there how to get in.’ Joshua jerked a thumb back at the pile of bodies. ‘Oh wait...’

His voice dripped sarcasm.

He was covering for his mixed convictions. Sarah was beautiful and deadly and it frightened him. He didn’t know how he felt about her any more. Would
he
be able to kill if he had no other choice? Certainly those men would have brought in reinforcements if left alive, and they had no time to be gentle. He shook himself. No, they should have made time. It wasn’t worth it. He looked at Sarah, bits of gore still hung from her lithe frame, the beauty and barbarity displayed in stark contrast. Joshua wasn’t sure if he was horrified or turned on.

Sarah ignored him and ran a hand over the door.
But there was nothing to find. ‘The entire door must somehow slide into the wall...’ she said.

Joshua wasn’t listening. He
’d heard a swishing sound. It wasn’t the wind.

A figure tucked and rolled onto the top of the landing platform. Had some reckless Confederate guard followed them down?

Joshua ran up to the man, determined not to let Sarah take care of him first. He’d never seen a Confederate use a wingsuit before, unless...

‘Ichiro!’ Joshua recognised him, and lifted the shorter man off his feet in a bear hug.

‘Ha ha okay, big guy, put me down,’ Ichiro said.

‘Oops- I guess I’m st
ill not used to my own strength.’ Joshua set him down. ‘Why are you here? How did you find us?’

‘Jayson gave me ride. We had to dig
his ship out of the rubble you had left it in back at the Academy, but everyone pitched in, even Casey,’ Ichiro explained. ‘He is pissed with you. But he knows how much we need Brock to be able to use the bio-ID. Everyone is on the look out for him since Casey showed the General’s iPC to the entire school. He would have approved this mission.’

Joshua felt a weight fall off his shoulders. He hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath, or even that the Academy meant that much to him. It had become his home, and it was a relief to know he would be welcomed back. Hopefully he could bring his sister with him one day too.

Ichiro looked over Joshua’s shoulder at Sarah. She was still feeling up the door.

‘I can help with that,’ he said. Sarah stepped away, and Ichiro fished out a pen-shaped device from his jumpsuit’s belt pocket. He aimed it at the door and clicked the end. A bright red laser beam shot out, slicing through the thick door like butter. When there was a hole big enough for them to squeeze through, Ichiro shut his pen-laser off and holstered it.

‘I need to spend more time down in R&D,’ said Sarah, impressed.

Ichiro grinned. ‘Just do no
t point it in anyone’s eye.’ Sarah rolled hers. The three of them ducked through the hole in the door, into the bunker.

Joshua wondered if he was the only one who thought this had been way too easy so far.

The interior of the bunker was not what Joshua had imagined. He had expected tight, claustrophobic concrete passages, bunks for soldiers, maybe an ops centre with communications equipment. Instead they entered through a brightly lit, plush lobby, complete with potted ferns, a fountain, and a secretary’s desk.

As they walked down the hall, the lady at the desk looked up from her work and gasped. Sarah raised her bloodied sword. Joshua dashed ahead of her and grabbed the receptionist in a headlock. He held her until she passed out, then dropped her softly to the ground. Sarah shrugged and pointed at the air duct above the desk.

‘Oh no, it’s your turn to go in the tight crawlspace,’ Joshua said.

‘Fine, give me a minute to get the lights in the next room.’ Sarah scrambled up to the vent, ripped the grate off using her suit’s strength and wiggled into the duct.

‘And then what?’ Joshua called after her. ‘You have a plan, I assume?’

‘...Always,’ came her reply, echoing off the air duct.

Joshua watched her shapely behind fade away, half wishing to follow. Ichiro snapped his fingers in his face.

‘Hey, wake up lover boy. You have confused feelings? Now is not the time,’ Ichiro tutted.

Joshua couldn’t argue. He kept his eyes on the light from the bottom of the door to the next room. ‘Do you thi
nk... you know, she and I...?’ he started.

Ichiro
sighed. ‘You Americans...
Naze kurushimanakereba naranai
...’ he rambled off into Japanese.

Joshua couldn’t help but crack a smile.

The lights in the next room went out without warning. Hopefully that was Sarah’s work. They could hear yelps of fear from inside.

‘What’s the plan?’ Joshua whispered, unnecessarily.

‘I was just chasing after you,’ Ichiro shot back. ‘Do you not know where Brock is? We could be searching for hours!’

‘There will be a battalion of goons here by then,’ Joshua said, thinking hard. ‘If you had created the bio-ID
’s interface, where would the Confederates keep you?’

Ichiro caught on. ‘Ah! In isolation, to keep everything in a controlled environment. Easy for the boss to keep tabs on.’

‘Right, Prewett said he’d never even met Brock, they both worked on separate components of the bio-ID,’ said Joshua, running with the idea now. He pointed at the door, tightly sealed with a retinal scanner off to the side. ‘Brock wouldn’t be allowed to work in a team. He’d be locked in his office.’

‘And how exactly do we find his office?’ Ichiro asked. ‘There a
re no visitor pamphlets handy,’ he said, looking around the lobby as if a tour group might wander through any second. Joshua picked up the unconscious receptionist and held her up to the retinal scanner.

‘Simple,’ Joshua smiled.
‘We ask for directions.’

The doors slid apart with a swish. Joshua and Ichiro rushed through into the darkness beyond, their suits’ camo easily hiding them. They weren’t taking any more chances however. Sarah may have killed the lights for them, but she wasn’t exactly subtle when it came to killing anything else. Being in a hurry was no excuse. Joshua made a mental note to talk to her about it later. He didn’t like how robotic she seemed to behave. What had happened to make her this way?

He and Ichiro had entered into a wide room filled with
low, carpeted cubicles.

So this is where their conscripts work
, thought Joshua.
Looks almost ordinary.

Each cubicle had an old fashioned desktop computer, with cables snaking all over the floor.

Clever
. Joshua huffed in admiration. It would be easier for the Confederacy to keep an eye on what their scientists were up to, without letting them use any wireless networks that the iPCs required. Keeps everything isolated.

The
juice was out, but in the dim light cast by the computers’ power backups, Joshua could see hundreds of people panicking. Some huddled in groups while others clawed at one of the other exits. Sarah must have gained control of the doors, as the way back to the lobby behind Joshua had now sealed itself. The underground bunker would have been claustrophobic at the best of times, now it was positively oppressing. Joshua felt a pang of remorse for these people. Most had never wanted to be here, torn from their familys’ arms when the Confederacy came knocking with some newly invented law.

He stayed low, indicating for Ichiro to do the same. They scrambled around the office cubicles in a crouch run. It wouldn’t have mattered. With the lights out, everyone was cast in silhouette. They hugged the outside wall, and Joshua finally ran into a map of the area. It was a simple not-to-scale diagram intended for new recruits, showing which rooms adjoined each other.

‘Here,’ said Ichiro, pausing. He tapped a small room on the map with a finger. ‘Experimental technology. That is where they would have Brock. It is a secure wing.’ He traced a line with his finger down to a larger room, labelled “Observation”. ‘This is us here,’ he said. Ichiro pointed across the room. They couldn’t see the other side through the gloom. ‘That way.’

‘Are you crazy
, man?’ Joshua whispered fiercely. He glanced around, but no one had heard the sound from the seemingly empty area.

‘
Come on, do not be a baby,’ Ichiro whispered back, then hustled away into the depths of the room.

Joshua hesitated, and someone darted in front of him, nearly toppling over his invisible form, before hurrying of
f to beat on another exit. Ichiro had vanished. Sarah was long gone. Joshua was rooted to the spot, panic rising in him, the room’s mood becoming infectious. He couldn’t go back the way he had come. He thought he had gone mad when he saw a head bobbing towards him, low to the ground. It got closer and Joshua recognised Ichiro, the hood of his jumpsuit thrown back to reveal his face.