Who Hunts the Hunter (37 page)
Dr. Phalen chuckles, seeming pleased."My dear sir,” he says, “you must forgive my humility if I say you flatter me over-much. I’ve had the good fortune to make a few small contributions to the metasciences, but please make no more of it than that. If you’ll forgive the analogy, I am merely one bee in a hive of workers, nothing more. Shall we go on to my office?”
“I would be pleased to do so.”
Naturally, in a facility such as this, security procedures must be observed. Kurushima presents his KFK identification to the guards behind the counter at the rear of the lobby. This is quite routine; however, a problem arises. The IDs of his aide and the security operative do not “check.”
“There must be some mistake,” Dr. Phalen says.
“These two gentlemen aren’t in the computer,” says one of the guards in a rather flat monotone. Blunt enough to seem somewhat less than polite."We can’t admit anyone unless they check out, Dr. Phalen.”
“Why,” Dr. Phalen replies, “that’s absurd, surely.”
“Can’t be helped,” the guard says."That’s procedure."
"My good fellow, you can see for yourself that these gentlemen have their cards.”
“Can’t admit anyone without verification. That’s procedure.”
Dr. Phalen hesitates.
Kurushima feels forced to intervene, rather than let this go any further and risk a man of Dr. Phalen’s stature becoming embarrassed."I am sure this is merely a computer error of some kind,” Kurushima says."It is of no consequence, however. My escorts can await me here.”
Dr. Phalen smiles as if relieved."I’m quite bewildered by all of this, this security business. You’re quite sure you don’t mind leaving your friends behind?”
“I am certain that I will be quite safe without them,” Kurushima replies."They are merely security escorts.”
“Oh, I see,” Dr. Phalen says."Well, then ... shall we proceed?”
“Most certainly.”
They take the lift to the second floor and enter Dr. Phalen’s small office, eccentrically furnished, much as one might expect, Kurushima supposes, of a mage and scientist. Such people are often a bit eccentric.
"Our good Ms. Berman will join us shortly,” Dr. Phalen explains. "She had to contact her office. In the meantime, may I interest you in some tea?”
“A most hospitable offer,” Kurushima says. ‘Thank you. I would be most pleased to accept.”
It’s eleven a.m. when Shaver sits up, slides her legs over the side of her cot, and rises to her feet.
Whistle whistles inquiringly.
“Where are you going?” asks Tang.
Shaver turns her glare across the room at the lone male. She does not like this elf’s constant close scrutiny, but she’ll take it this one last time. She resists a sneer, and says, “Gotta take a wizz. Wanna help?”
“No, thank you,” Tang replies."I’m sure you’re quite capable.”
Arrogant shick.
Shaver walks on: through the open doorway, the prep room, the corridor to the lav. Walking without limping takes a deliberate effort. The pain starts in her thighs and runs up through her groin and into her back. She has those fragging trolls of the Kong Destroyers to thank for that, and she’s going to thank them, just as soon as this job is finished. Her friends with Sisters Sinister will help. It’s gonna be a bang-bang day. Like today.
Inside a booth in the lav, she pulls the Ingram SMG from her hip holster and pops the clip. That clip goes into a pocket. The new clip she fits to the gun is loaded with thirty-two special slugs. Half are explosive. The other half are pure silver. They are packed into the clip in alternating fashion.
She has Striper to thank for the trolls, and she’s going to thank the slitch right now. The scientists have had the Were-shick for long enough. Now it’s her turn.
Frag Tang, frag the money.
She returns to the corridor. That ork biff Germaine who’s always hanging around passes by without a word. Just a nervous glance aside. Shaver sneers a smile and walks on to the prep room door. She has the code to open it and walks right on through, then straight across the room to the door of the Were-slitch’s room. She isn’t supposed to have the code to that door, but getting it was no problem. Not for her.
“Shaver!” Tang calls.
She ignores that, taps in the code, draws the smartgun, and steps through the doorway.
The tea does its work. The man slumps. The burning red of power on the astral plane is soon swelling to the limits of the room, gathering, swirling, concentrating, focusing down into an intense pinpoint of power hanging before the man’s forehead.
Influencing this man from Tokyo, this
Kurushima
, is not so much a matter of controlling his mind or thoughts, but rather the relatively simple matter of planting an idea, insinuating it into the mind, lodging it there, making it permanent. It is a sort of magic that Liron has practiced many times before, primarily to prevent others from disrupting his work. The cost to him in fatigue is negligible. He has grown strong since his metamorphosis, his transmutation into one of the Changed of the Roggoth’shoth. He has also advanced in the skills of the initiate. He has come quite far, all told. He yet has far to go.
Once the idea is securely lodged, Liron returns to his mundane perceptions, takes a datachip from his desk, and hands it to Kurushima."This chip contains the verifications you require, my dear sir. You may introduce it to your computers, if you wish, so as to better relate matters to your superiors.”
Kurushima rises from his chair like a man rising from sleep. He rubs at his forehead, his eyes. He shakes his head as if to clear it of the cobwebs of lingering dreams."Yes,” he says."I understand ... what you mean. I will do this. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Liron replies.
“A most enlightening conference, Dr. Phalen,” Kurushima adds."I’m sure that appropriate measures will be taken ... so that... that in the future your researches need not be disrupted by administrative matters.”
“It was my pleasure, dear sir.” Liron touches the intercom on his desk, which brings Germaine within moments. She is most helpful. Particularly in dealing with such matters as involve computers."My dear, would you be so kind as to show Mr. Kurushima to his car? Forgive me, sir, if I do not show you out personally. A rather pressing matter already in progress demands my attention.”
“Certainly,” Kurushima replies. They shake hands."Goodbye, Dr. Phalen. Thank you for your time.”
“A pleasure, I assure you.”
While Germaine is showing the Tokyo man out, Liron goes through the side door into the small conference room adjacent. Amy Berman waits there, slumped in a chair, completely pacified.
Liron says the words to gather the power of the etheric and brandishes the ring that serves to focus the magic. His objective now is to unveil the secrets of the mind, rather than plant secret thoughts into it. He surrounds Amy in the spell and begins with his questions. Again, he finds her remarkably willful for a mundane.
It is some minutes before she admits to any knowledge of a shaman and some minutes more before she admits to involving one in Liron’s affairs. At length, she admits to bringing the shaman here to the Metascience lab, yet denies sending the shaman to Liron’s house. Odd. Liron had thought the two events must certainly be linked. Could he be mistaken? First things first: what is the shaman’s name? Where can he be found? Amy shakes her head, will not speak. Liron insists. He gathers more power and turns up the pressure on her mind. At long last, she gives in.
“Bandit,” she whispers.
“It is.”
How curious. Surely, this must be some type of nickname. Yet, try as he might, Liron cannot compel Amy to admit to anything of the sort. Her aura is turbulent enough to suggest a lie, but her will is like a wall of stone, as if she speaks absolute truth. Bandit. She says that over and over. Bandit is his name. Bandit. Bandit. Bandit.
Liron sighs."Oh, very well.” Where can this Bandit be found?
“I don’t know.”
Another wall of stone.
Tikki is lying with her flank to the wall and her nose about ten centimeters short of the doorway. She’s been waiting for hours, maybe even days.
When the door gushes open, Tikki looks and springs, hurling herself up at the doorway. She knows who’s coming before she can see more than just the edge of the doorframe. It’s the female elf that stinks of metal. The slitch she left with trolls from the Kong Destroyers. One of the two-legs who took her cub. Shaver.
A male shouts—Tikki recognizes the voice.
Perfect.
As she springs, forelegs lifting to strike, hindlegs thrusting, propelling her forward, a slender hand appears before her eyes, pointing a submachine gun into the room. Tikki bats the gun down and away and in the next instant she’s slamming bodily into the figure coming through the doorway. She sees that it’s Shaver and Shaver opens her mouth as if to shout or scream, but the ambush is sprung, the trap is closed. Tikki seizes the elf with her forelegs, slams her into one side of the doorway, and flings her down to the floor.
The SMG skitters away.
Tikki straddles the elf, her jaws spread wide. With one lunge of her head she could put this slitch to death. Then she sees the elf’s frenzy, smells the elf’s desperate fury, and hesitates.
What if her mother was wrong? What if two-legs are not just insidious betrayers and murderers? What if they are more like her and her kind than she’s ever imagined?
And what if the door slides shut?
Roaring, Tikki pounds the elf’s shoulders into the floor, then turns and flings herself at the doorway.
The elf shrieks."SLITCH!
I’LL
KILL
YOU
!"
The door is sliding shut. Tikki thrusts a paw between door and doorframe and, incredibly, the door bounces back, like the door to an elevator. Slipping, stumbling, banging off the doorway, Tikki shoves at the floor and lurches ahead.
The room beyond is lined with carts and cabinets and high-tech equipment. Tikki spots three doors. The ones ahead and to her left are closed. The one to her right is open. Her nose turns her to her right before she has time to consider which way might offer escape. Through the open door comes the elf O’Keefe and the other female, Whistle. O’Keefe’s eyes grow enormous and the air suddenly stinks of fear as Tikki flattens her ears to her skull and charges.
"
Whistle
!"
O’Keefe tugs a machine pistol free of his belt. Tikki meets him nose-to-nose—fangs bared and roaring—using her chest like a battering ram and driving O’Keefe back three or four meters, right through the open door and into another room. Whistle cries out shrilly, driven back off her feet. O’Keefe’s gun rattles on full automatic, but Tikki slaps the hand that holds it, like the elf connected to that hand, flat to the floor.
“FRAGGER!”
Tikki roars and tears at his chest. Here is a two-leg who deserves to be blooded if not destroyed. And she might have done that, too, only chills rush up her back. Her ears snap up. The air is suddenly electric. She jerks her head left and right. She’s in another room like the room she was confined in—gray walls, no windows—just the one door.
What
kind
of
place
is
this?
What’s
happening?
She sees Whistle on her feet and making signs with her fingers like a magician might make. Tikki turns and lunges and batters the slitch to the floor.
How
does
she
get
out
of
this
place!
A gun stammers from behind. Tikki whirls. Gun in hand, Shaver’s limping toward her from the room with the high-tech equipment. Tikki lunges aside, out of the line of fire. O’Keefe is rolling onto his side and reaching for his machine pistol. With a paw like a hand, Tikki grabs it, then spins toward the door and points the gun at Shaver’s face.
Whistle screams, “
NOOOOO
!”
And then the world explodes.
“My ID checks.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. You can go on ahead.”
The guard behind the counter at the rear of the Metascience main lobby barely finishes saying that when the dull roar of an explosion rumbles through the building walls.
Bandit feels it vibrate through the lobby floor.
Has someone mixed the wrong chemicals together? or is there some more sinister explanation?
Alarm bells begin clanging. Amber strobes descend from the ceiling of the lobby and begin flaring rapidly. The guard blinks, shakes his head, rubs a hand down over his mouth, then grabs a telecom handset from the console behind the counter."Sergeant on patrol,” he says into the handset."My board shows an incident at... at Lab Six. It sounded like an explosion. Yes, sir. Initiating security lockdown.”
A klaxon blasts. Bandit turns to see heavy metal shutters descending over the front lobby doors. That could be a problem, but it could also work in his favor. The person he is here to see might be dissuaded from attempting to leave for a little while.
