“Infinity One, Emergency Combat Mode, authorization Delgado, level nine . . . activate.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A soft light ripples across the cracked surface of my pendant, and as Captain Delgado releases his thumb from it, I suddenly feel completely at ease.
My fear, anger, and anxiety vanish as if they never existed at all, and I immediately stop struggling.
I feel good but also quite strange. My mind is clear but simultaneously preoccupied. It’s like I’m beginning to remember the hidden meaning of a forgotten song sung to a specific melody that I’ve never heard until this very moment.
“You can let her go now,” Captain Delgado orders, and the soldiers release me. Holding his hand to his ribs, he groans as he leans forward and looks me in the eyes. “The Combat Drones in the courtyard are your targets. Your mission is to deactivate those Drones. If you survive, you’ll report back to me for further instruction. Do you understand?”
I stare back at him and feel hate streak through me. I shout,
“Screw you!”
but my lips say, “Sir, yes, sir.”
“Good,” replies a smug-looking Captain Delgado. “Go get ’em, Infinity One.”
Without another word, I turn and push the soldiers out of my way. I can hear Otto calling out to me, but I don’t look back. Ryan and Brody are still being restrained. As I pass them, Ryan struggles to get free, but his throat is wedged tightly in the crook of a soldier’s elbow. “Infinity?” he hisses though his teeth. “Infinity! What has he done to you?”
I don’t reply. There are far more pressing issues to deal with than chitchat with civilians. I march on, fully aware of what I’m doing, while a separate me is watching the world through the windows of my own eyes. I feel in control, but my body seems to be moving on its own, and all I can think about is fulfilling my mission.
I want it badly, more than I’ve wanted anything in my life. In fact, I more than want it . . . I
need
it.
I stride over to the weapon crates, and a soldier holds up a hand to stop me. I glower at him as Captain Delgado shouts from the other side of the room. “Let her take whatever she wants!”
The soldier looks extremely confused, but he obediently stands aside. I push past him and start popping latches. There isn’t much left inside the crates—most of the guns are lying next to dead bodies out there in the courtyard—so it’s little more than a jumble of a few hastily strewn short-range weapons, ammo, and combat clothing. I pick through the mess and choose a Hellion 90 shotgun with a fully loaded explosive scatter-shell magazine. I attach a strap, sling the weapon onto my back, and make sure it’s secured tightly to my body. I also find two fully loaded Talons, twenty-shot automatic pistols, and their holsters. As I buckle one to each leg, something surprising catches my eye at the bottom of a crate. It’s a magna-band.
Anyone outside Covert Operations would probably think it was nothing more than a sturdy, army-green wristwatch, but a magna-band is actually a powerful, specific frequency magnetic emitter, and half of a very specialized assassin’s weapon. I immediately grab for it, hoping that its accompanying component is somewhere nearby. I latch the band around my right wrist and splay my fingers as wide as I can. A dim blue light illuminates on the side, and a rectangular object shaped like a king-size candy bar suddenly comes flying out of an ammo bag and slaps firmly into the palm of my hand.
A smile creeps onto my lips. It’s a Jack-knife, an assassin’s slang for an extendable, synthetic-diamond-edged, close-combat weapon. I test it by flicking its switch to the first setting. With barely a sound, rigid sections snap-fold out from the handle into a twenty-centimeter-long, matte-black throwing knife. I flick it to its second setting, and the blade snaps into a one-meter sword. If you swing it hard enough, this thing can cut through titanium. Satisfied, I retract the blade and tuck the Jack-knife handle into the waistband of my skirt.
“Do you need body armor?” a nearby soldier asks. My silence is the answer to his question. The clumsy gear the soldiers are wearing would just hinder my movements, but I do pick up a combat mask and press it to my face. It snugly covers my ears and the bridge of my nose down to my chin. The black visor covering my eyes activates and flickers on with distracting readouts of my vital signs and other useless combat information. I raise it and, with a quick yank, snap it off entirely and toss it in a weapon crate. I press my fingertips into the two notches on the front of the mask, and as the metamorphic adhesive molds to my skin, I feel the cool mix of oxygenated stimulants releasing from the microjets inside. I inhale the vapor, and my already-excellent vision suddenly sharpens even further as every edge and color of every object I look at is chemically honed into detailed clarity.
Feeling instantly more alert, I fish an ammo belt out of another crate and sling it across my chest. I hook one smoke canister and four high-explosive grenades to the belt and walk toward the central desk, snatching an automatic rifle from another soldier’s hands as I go. I pull it to my shoulder, and Corporal Avary hastily leaps out of the way as I scan the holoscreens through the gun sights.
The displays show the smoke outside is clearing; the Drones’ cover is dissipating. It’s useless now, and the robots seem to know it. Three of the androids make a sudden dash for the building where Private Sekula is positioned, and he impressively manages to rupture one of their heads as the other two leap at the side of the structure and begin to climb. When they reach the top, he’ll be dead. But that’s the least of my concerns as I watch the five remaining Drones on the ground barreling out of the haze at full speed, heading straight for the command post. They are my first priority. I pull the trigger.
With a string of loud bangs, the rifle kicks repeatedly in my arms as I shoot straight through the holoscreens, shattering the courtyard-facing windows into a fine lattice of cracks. I throw the smoking rifle aside. It clatters on the floor as I vault onto the central desk and jump, tucking my knees toward my chest as I cannonball at the glass and bust through the window in a shower of glittering fragments. My clothes ruffle against my body as I drop three full stories. As the ground speeds up to meet me, I quickly thrust a hand out, catch a lamppost, and spiral two full revolutions around it before my shoes tap lightly on the paving stones and I’m off, arms blading through the air as I sprint across the courtyard and out into the open. With a quick glance to my right, I see the Drones approaching. They’re about thirty meters away, but swerving quickly toward the stairwell door that leads up to the command post. I need to draw them toward
me
.
Midstride, I whip a pistol from its thigh holster, spear my arm in their direction, and drum my finger on the trigger. The gun flares and jolts in my palm as I sprint in a wide, curving arc. Even though I’m tearing across the courtyard at full speed, firing one-handed at moving targets, my adrenalized mind is processing everything at quadruple the normal rate.
My heartbeat is steady and strong, my breathing is measured and controlled, my limbs feel like tightly coiled ropes of pumping muscle, and my senses are sharp and crystal clear as my gun-holding hand rises and falls in time with my footsteps to maintain an unwavering line. I instinctively know how much lead to give my shots to compensate for my forward momentum. It pays off as I hear fifteen of my twenty bullets hit their marks. One even spacks an android square in the face, but the ballistic glass easily deflects the small-caliber-pistol round. I knew a handgun wouldn’t do any damage to the androids, but my little attention-getting barrage serves its intended purpose as all five Drones skid to a halt, turn their rifles in my direction, and open fire.
I throw the empty pistol away, pull the smoke canister from the ammo belt, and hurl it toward the five robots as I bound into the air, tucking into a side flip as bullets whizz past me. I straighten my body, then roll in midair. When I hit the ground, I pump my limbs against the paving stones like pistons, springing like a cat into a two-meter-high sideways arc. I land in a low crouch right where I wanted to be, obscured from the Drones’ line of fire by the trunk of a large oak tree fifteen meters in front of me. The smoke grenade begins spewing thick gray clouds, and I listen carefully to the thuds of the Drones’ footsteps as they advance on my position, trudging right into the center of the dense fog. The Drones will round that tree in no time, but this will only work if I wait for the perfect moment. I keep my head down and wait, tuning my ears to the sound of their steps.
Thud . . . thud . . . thud . . . thud . . . NOW!
I quickly hold down all four safety levers on the high-explosive grenades with one hand, thread my fingers through the pins with the other, and pull them all at the same time. The pins clink on the ground as all four timed fuses begin hissing on the ammo belt.
I have seven seconds.
I bolt into a sprint and jump. It’s a huge tree, but I easily go sailing six meters into the air and land dead center on one of the oak’s thick lower limbs. I know that they’re tracking me; I can hear the Drones’ footsteps slowing to a halt beneath the canopy on the opposite side. I deftly jump from limb to limb, and as I circle around the trunk, rifles flare from the gray cloud and bullets begin taking chunks out of the wood all around me. My quick movements through the leaves and branches are making me a hard target to hit, even with the robots scanning my body heat. I can’t see them at all through the billowing fog below, but that’s OK; I know exactly where they are . . . and they’re right where I want them. I hear the rapid clicking of one, then two, then a third rifle as the last of their ammo is spent. The satisfying clatter of empty weapons being cast aside greets my ears as I dance through the massive tree, leaping from side to side, using the thickest limbs to take the brunt of the diminished gunfire. With the grenades fizzing on my chest, I bob and weave through the branches.
Even though I’m evading the bullets the best I can, the warning bells chiming insistently in my head and the warm blood oozing from my side and trickling down my leg tell me that I’ve been shot at least twice. From the chiming, I’m guessing that one wound is pretty bad, but I’m not dead yet, so I keep going, knowing full well that the three unarmed androids of the group might decide to climb this tree and pull me down so the other two can finish me off. I can’t let that happen.
It’s time to end this.
I dart onto a sturdy branch hanging over the smoke, sprint halfway along it, snatch two grenades into the palm of each hand, and dive headfirst as high and far as I can. Time seems to stretch out like a rubber band. I can hear the high-pitched, spiraling turbulence of the bullet trails speeding by as I javelin through the air, my arrow-straight legs drifting skyward as my whole body inverts completely vertically upside down. Floating directly above the Drones, I can’t help but smile. With their sharp robotic eyes and superfast reflexes, they can pluck a grenade from midair and toss it aside, or leap away to safety the instant they see one coming. I saw them do exactly that. But what can they do if
four
grenades, primed to explode and hidden by smoke, are dropped right on their preprogrammed heads? I guess I’m about to find out.
Even though every slice of the last seven seconds was slowed to a crawl by my hyper-racing mind, my timing is still perfect as I thrust both arms toward the swirling fog below and release. The grenades vanish into the gray, and, an instant later, four hazy globes of light erupt like flashes of lightning in a storm cloud. A loud, pounding rhythm shocks the air as I tuck myself into a ball and let momentum take me hurtling through the outer edge of the canopy. I burst from the foliage twelve meters above the ground.
I pull the shotgun up over my head and into my arms as I arc through the air all the way down to the ground below. I hit the paving stones, roll to my feet, and spin back toward the cloud with the wooden stock of the Hellion wedged tightly against my shoulder, quietly snorting quickened breaths as I point all three barrels in the direction of the Drones.
Thanks to the explosions, the hissing smoke canister has skittered clear across the courtyard, and the bulk of the haze has been spread thin. There are no heavy footsteps and no sounds of movement—just my breathing and the leaves overhead rustling in the warm afternoon breeze. As the fog clears further, I’m finally able to see the fruits of my labor. A Drone with its arm blown clean off is sitting with its back against the trunk of the tree, and the other four are lying on the ground in varying contorted positions. All have reverted back to their silver color, and all have been deactivated.
My job here is done, but my mission isn’t over. There are still two more functioning Drones on top of one of these buildings somewhere, and I need to take them down. I turn and jog, one hand holding my shotgun, the other pressed against the hole leaking blood from my side. In my mind, I knit the flesh closed, and a sharp piece of bullet fragment oozes out of the wound between my fingers. The injury on my leg is a meaty slice. It’s deep, but will be relatively easy to heal. I concentrate and feel the gash closing as I scan the building fronts for the climbing gouges left by the other two . . .
THUD, THUD, THUD, THUD, THUD, THUD, STOMP!
I look back over my shoulder, and my eyes go wide as I see the one-armed Drone in midjump, flying straight for me, its glitching skin undulating in mottled waves of silver, green, and brown. It lands with a heavy thump, very nearly right on top of me. I try to bring the Hellion up to the Drone’s face mask, but I’ve been caught off guard, and I’m not nearly fast enough. The Drone’s forearm becomes a swiping blur as it brutally backhand pummels me. My left arm takes the full force of the blow, and I hear the bone crack as it slams into my side, snapping at least three of my ribs in the process. Injury tones clang loudly in my head as I go sailing through the air. I hit the ground hard, and the wind is punched from my lungs as my shotgun clatters away from me, tumbling end over end before coming to rest upright against a stone bench seat two meters away.