A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (19 page)

Not if you don’t know it.
“Fagles is doing something with Felix’s memory! You’re working with him; I want to know what it is!”

“I will not divulge that information at this time.”

A thought broadsided him. “Did Felix bring you my medical records?”

“Be confident that it is congruent with the Planners’ goals.”

“
What
goals?”

A pause. “You do not know of the Planners’ goals?”

“No!”

“You will explain why this is.”

“Because you haven’t—” He stopped himself, poised on the edge of an unformulated bluff that might work to learn more. Adrenaline pounded in his ears; his body was tensed to move, but he couldn’t think straight.

It was then that Jade burst in the door. “Time to go,” she shot. “Holes is about to lose it.”

Shit.
“How much longer?” he asked.

“Says we’ve got a minute, tops.”

“You must remain safe, Michael Ian Flynn,” Suuthrian spoke. “The Planners’ goals must be accomplished. You
will
play your part.”

“
What
part?” Michael shouted.

“You will play your part.”

One minute left. Less than that, even. “Have you been copied anywhere else?” Michael’s eyes darted over the workstation hardware. “Have you spread anywhere else?” He demanded.

Jade grabbed his shoulder. “Ace, we’ve gotta jet!”

He shook her off. “Are you
really
isolated?”

“You will play your part.”

“What’s in
Paragon
? What’s on the Moon? If I’m an ally, answer me now!” The workstation’s central processor sat beneath the desk. Michael grabbed a bottle of brandy off of the rear shelf.

“You must remain safe.”

“You want to deal with building security?” Jade shot. “We have got to
go
!”

Michael pointed to the workstation. “Zap that thing. Now!”

Violet flared in her eyes; nevertheless, she rushed to the desk, slammed her hand against the workstation, and jolted it with a burst of ozone and a wisp of smoke. Michael up-ended the brandy on it. The alcohol ignited, and he had to jump back to keep from getting caught up in it himself.

Jade tugged Michael back further, and this time he let her. He hurled the bottle at the burning workstation as he went. Glass shattered with a burst of flame. It enveloped the desk, immolated the ficus plants. The carpet was burning up.

They fled into Fagles’s bedroom and down the hall toward the living room as alarms erupted. Michael couldn’t be sure if they were for fire or security. It didn’t matter; they needed to get out. If only he’d had more time! An opportunity, wasted! So much he didn’t know! Now he’d set the building on fire, endangering everyone in it, and it might take a miracle just to get them outside unharmed.

As Michael and Jade crossed the living room, fire sprinklers exploded to life above them. They bolted through the dirty water for the front door. Shouts were already coming from outside.

FULLY ASSEMBLED, THE GATE
emitted a hum that seemed to resonate from the center of Adrian’s nose to the tiny bones in his ears. It tickled his soft palette and irritated the back of his tongue with the feeling that he was on the edge of both a sneeze and a cough that never quite came. Backing away from it to stand against the wall of the engineering bay had muted the effect, but only to a degree. He swallowed in another fruitless attempt to chase it away.

Why was the gate humming? The engineers had made a few guesses but could offer no real answers. Though completely assembled, the gate remained without power until some master switch was thrown. They would not throw that switch until they had finished whatever diagnostics they’d devised.

Adrian had considered watching the gate’s first activation from the safety of the bay’s observation room window, yet something inside him would not let him leave the bay. So close to him stood the gate whose activation would instantaneously bridge the distance from the Earth to the Moon. While Suuthrien had designed it, and RavenTech’s engineers had made it a reality, he had been the one to bring them together.
He
had made it all possible. Was it pride that required his presence in the same room for the inaugural moments? Or did he fear that his absence would weaken his claim to what RavenTech would hail as one of the most important technological leaps in not only the company’s history, but also the world’s?

Perhaps both.

Across the room the gate loomed, teasing him with risk and reward, like a flush in a high-stakes poker game when an opponent had gone all-in. No game could be won without risk, and winning this game was more than worth it.

“Third cross-check,” called one of the engineers from beside the broad, squat rectangular hulk that was the gate’s control module. “Arc-quadrant two.”

She was answered by one of her fellows at the gate itself. “Arc-quadrant two, in the green.” Both made notes on their screens and moved on.

Had the hum’s intensity grown stronger?

Adrian spotted Camela Thomson’s rigid figure in the observation window above. He caught her eye and gave her a nod of acknowledgement but remained where he was. The gate held his attention and continued to resonate.

Since Adrian’s visit yesterday, they’d connected the gate’s four half-arch pieces together to form a wide oval, the interior of which formed an open triangular space ten feet tall and nearly twice that wide. A smooth gold-molybdenum alloy encased all but a thin band along the triangle’s inside edge, giving the entire structure a look reminiscent of a piece of unpolished jewelry.

Adrian hardly understood the intricacies of the gate’s workings, but in form and concept, it was undeniably beautiful. A broad rectangular platform held the gate upright, such that the gate’s lower portions were embedded in the platform, with the triangular opening flush with the top of the platform itself for a smooth transition through it. The whole thing looked like some bizarre oval ring for a triangular finger sitting upright in the mold of its box.

Adrian rubbed the bridge of his nose in a futile effort to alleviate the resonating within his skull. Joining Thomson in the observation room might be prudent. Who knew what might happen when they powered up the gate? He could still be present behind a protective wall of safety glass, after all. Nonetheless, his leather Oxfords remained rooted to the bay floor.

The MEDARs mirrored his stance against another wall. Nearby, above the otherwise isolated MEDAR control station, a hefty breaker switch for the circuit between it and Suuthrien’s nearby terminal showed as closed, and therefore active. The engineers used the switch to grant—and deny—her control of the robots for times when they needed the A.I.’s expertise for construction. For now, though still under Suuthrien’s control, the robots waited, ready to assist if needed, while the engineers finished their checks.

Thomson still planned to disconnect Suuthrien’s access for the gate’s initial activation. Adrian had yet to tell the A.I. this. He would made one more effort to persuade Thomson before then, but he wasn’t hopeful.
Ah, well. If she wants to send people through to run afoul of an alien security system, that’s her mistake to make.

Such a setback would only prove Adrian’s advice worthy of being followed more in the future.

A flick of movement at the corner of his eye snatched his attention from the gate back to the MEDARs. They’d sunken deeper into their stand-by stance—gone limp as if they’d shut down entirely. Adrian blinked. The breaker light remained green. Conserving power, or—

—Alert: Home alarm has been triggered. Probable break-in. Fire detected.—

The alert sounded through his aural implants, a calm, servile voice audible only to him. His condo! Suuthrien’s computer! Everything! Adrian thrust his sleeve away from his forearm screen and jabbed a thumb against its flashing alarm indicator.

The screen showed entry alarms tripped at the front door, kitchen, bedroom, and—worse—his private office. Fire detected in the office, the bedroom, the hallway, the living room! All at once?
Why didn’t the alarm go off sooner?
He punched up the cameras for his living room and bedroom; he’d allowed none in his private office.

—CAMERA IMAGES UNAVAILABLE—

Blazes!

He burst out of the engineering bay and broke into a run. He had Thomson on the line moments later.

“I’ve an emergency to deal with!” he hissed. “Do
not
open the gate without me!”

Jade flung open the front door. Michael followed her out, pulse racing. Though Holes had jammed the hallway cameras again, the ski masks they’d brought now covered their faces, just to be safe. They had holstered weapons before opening the door, aiming for a speedy dash to the stairwell and out, rather than risk provoking—

“Hold it!”

“Freeze!”

The near-simultaneous shouts came from their left, toward the elevator. Two men—building security by the badges on the lapels of their blue suit jackets—stood with auto-pistols drawn just thirty feet away, beside a lone pilaster in the hallway wall. Wherever the
Azure
stationed security for Fagles’s floor, it was close by.

Jade cursed and interposed herself between the guards and Michael. Michael glanced over his shoulder as fire alarms flashed. The hallway was otherwise empty. The stairwell door was at least forty good paces back. Through the door to Fagles’s unit he could still hear sprinklers as they continued to douse it.

“Hands up!” one of the guards shouted. “Up against the walls!”

“We’re Mr. Fagles’s guests!” Michael tried. “His unit is on
fire
!” He stepped out from behind Jade in an effort to put the guards at ease and somehow buy time for . . . what? Jade moved with him, still fighting to shield his body with hers.

“Against the walls!
Now!
” the guard returned.

Jade’s whisper barely made it back to Michael’s ears: “Guests don’t wear ski masks, ace. We need to get closer.” She took a step toward the guards, angling slightly toward the wall. Michael did his best to follow suit, but they had too far to go. And while the lone pilaster beside the guards was wide enough to provide cover, by the time he or Jade could reach it they’d be right on top of the guards anyway.

Jade took another step forward and shouted, “Didn’t you hear him? The place is on fire!”

“One more step and we’ll shoot!”

Michael and Jade froze. They could move against the walls, wait for the guards to approach, and then try to disarm them. “Okay!” Michael shouted back. “Just hold on!”

He turned toward the wall and put his hands against the textured plaster, still watching the men. Jade began to do the same. Her taser-hand had only two charges, didn’t it? That meant it was spent. Yet there were only two guards: an even match for her and Michael. One would probably hold a weapon on them while the other bound their hands, but if they could take that one hostage, then—

The elevator opened and out of it rushed two more guards, both female. Their suits matched the men’s, but they held shotguns and wore helmets. Michael’s hopes sunk even further as he spotted the armor vests beneath the jackets of all four. He cursed under his breath, at a loss for ideas.

They were caught. Even with the chaos of the fire alarm, once they were in custody their chances of escape looked grim at best. The grimace on Jade’s face told him she was thinking the same thing. The newcomers trotted toward them, each slinging their shotguns and pulling out handcuffs. The first two guards held position beside the pilaster as they approached, their weapons still trained on Michael and Jade.

And then the pilaster vanished, its place in the hallway now occupied by another presence. Michael registered the outline of a man with one hand extended toward the two women before a brilliant light burst in their faces, and Michael’s eyes shut on reflex.

He forced them open again in time to see the two female guards crumple to the floor. A stun flash!

And one he’d seen in action before.
Gideon?
Though a solid black helmet hid his face, given the hologram, the stun-flash, and the way he moved, for Michael there was no mistaking him.

With his hologram-pilaster gone and the remaining two guards struggling against their own surprise, Gideon wasted no time. He dropped the nearest guard with an elbow to the head and whirled on the other one who turned, trying to bring his auto-pistol to bear. Gideon took hold of it with both hands and shoved the guard into the wall. The weapon fell to the ground as the two grappled, and the guard fought to reach for a holdout.

Behind their melee, the two blinded guards struggled to get their bearings.

Michael started forward to help. Jade grabbed his arm even as Gideon shouted to them both, “Run!”

The guard Gideon had elbowed was getting up. Before Michael could shout a warning, Gideon spun in the grappling guard’s grip to knock the first down again with a kick to the shoulder.

“Go!” Gideon yelled.

Jade tugged Michael’s arm, trying to drag him back. “You heard the man!”

Michael hesitated only a moment, and then turned and ran for the stairs with Jade at his heels. He’d seen Gideon overcome more opponents than these, and that was
before
Marquand Cybernetics and Gideon’s sister had turned him into a full-borg infiltration unit and Swiss Army knife.

Michael and Jade burst through the stairwell door and nearly collided with a middle-aged couple—both hurriedly dressed, with wet hair and carrying an attaché case—who were rushing their own way down the stairs. The couple froze at the sight of their ski masks.

“Uh,” Michael stammered, and then pushed ahead of them.

“Tried to prevent smoke inhalation!” Jade called back with a point at her mask and a fake cough. “Didn’t work too well!”

Michael bolted further down the stairs, taking them two at a time, with Jade on his heels until, two floors down, they caught up to more
Azure
tenants evacuating. His mask vanished with a yank that burned the front of his nose; Jade had tugged it off from behind him, having removed her own.