The Valkyrie Project (26 page)

"You'll be right down the hall from Etienne. Since you worked so well together, we're making you
official partners. You'll train together and go on missions together whenever possible."

Ana still didn't like
the shadowy bird woman, but she supposed that was the point. Hard-earned trust lasted longer and always proved stronger than superficial agreeability. If the hard-ass woman gained their approval despite her implacable, unflinching exterior, it would be easier to ask them to do things that crossed moral or ethical boundaries. Perhaps not Psych 101, but it didn't take a doctorate in human psychology to see the mind games woven through the fabric of the Continuum. Julia could fall for it, but Ana would snip the thread without a second thought. She provided no safe harbor for any such illusions.

Ana found her closet already filled with designer label outfits, a dressing table laden with impressive pieces of jewelry, a kitchenette stocked with high
-quality health foods, and a bed from which she feared she might never get up once she'd sunk into its luxurious sheets and pillows. She reminded herself not to get used to it. The material possessions were just another hook the Continuum wanted to pull through her skin.

As she examined her new surroundings and belongings, Ana casually searched for the camera that had to be keeping an eye on
her from somewhere. She wanted to find a blind spot not to take a break from being Julia, but simply because she wanted to change her clothes without thinking that someone was watching, if not recording, her. The sets of swimsuits in one of the drawers of her new dresser gave her an idea: the locker room was a public space in the building. The Continuum could not own all hundred and fifty floors of lakefront property, and while they probably had taps on the security cameras around the pool, the locker room would provide privacy. Or at least a better chance of it than the condo outfitted by the Continuum.

So Ana went for a swim. She kicked and pulled through memories of floating in the Agency pool
, which in turn reminded her of the Continuum agent who had turned her mind against her in creating his escape hatch. Maybe now she would find an opportunity to investigate those men now that she was on the inside. Ana wondered if her new best friend Etienne knew anything about the pale-skinned mind-controller. It wasn't as important as her brother, but it would probably be an easier topic to broach.

The water in the pool churned around her, but it was perfectly balanced, and
Ana glided through it feeling better than she’d thought she would. The new double agent tried to clear her mind, to free herself momentarily from the maze of thoughts that kept her twisting and turning. As she drifted, her mind and body thanked her for the break and Ana realized the rapid succession of missions, along with her personal investigative work and now turning double agent, had given her almost no time to unwind, relax, and recover. She kept up with the frantic pace, though, and left the pool still tired, but ready to face whatever came next.

Holding back
her fatigue, Ana felt strong standing in the warm spray of a shower. Then a wet hand struck her in the chest, driving her back against the tiled wall of the communal area. Ana's eyes flew open to see the dark eyes of the Raven. She was clad in a black one-piece swimsuit that matched her hair and eyes, her pale arms and legs extending like the skeletal limbs of the grim reaper. Ana wondered if that comparison might be too close to home. Her mind stretched in a hundred different directions, deciding if fighting back would blow her cover or save her life while also trying to figure out an explanation for the unprovoked attack.

The
raven reaper pressed a bony forearm across Ana's collar bones and gave her the answer she was looking for.

"If it had been my decision, I would have thrown the little guppy back into the lake. But it was not my decision. I didn't want to deliver this message to you, either, but I am going to follow the plan until the decision
-makers realize that it was a bad idea to let a United States government agent in here. They can control you. Don't doubt that. I know they can, and I know they will. I still think it's foolish, but they think there's something to be gained by sending you back to the Agency to spy for us. We're too far ahead of your little government group for it to bring any advantage, but they'll arrive at that conclusion soon enough, and I'm going along so I can have the pleasure of terminating you and your smart little mouth myself."

Valkyrie Project missions required quick thinking, fast reflexes, instincts so ingrained you didn't realize when they kicked in, and, last on the list, the ability to adapt to any situation. Ana knew that the Agency provided training for double agents, but they never viewed it as necessary for the Valkyries because for them going undercover meant playing dress-up for a few hours or days. So Ana worked out the logic of the situation herself while the engine of the transport thrummed in her ear.

The Continuum
had told her to rest up while they planned her next excursion. The Agency said if she wasn't gathering info on the capabilities of the Continuum, she was needed for a rescue operation. No promise of time-and-a-half, but it wasn't like she had a choice.

On the way to a small town just across the border between the Greater States and Mexico, Ana came to the conclusion that if she told Malcolm that her cover had been blown, the Agency woul
d not let her anywhere near the Continuum again. She'd be firewalled off from any Continuum work and her chance to learn about the organization's connection to her brother would evaporate.

S
trong winds shook the transport and sent a sprawling cloud of dust through the tiny town below. The dust formed up into the ghosts of people lost in dozens of battles smaller than the city itself, waged before the emigrants decided their only real way required a boat and a willingness to risk a route past the Greater States. The less poor went for the shorter ride off the West coast, while the others took their chances off the East. Some chance was better than no chance.

There was little reason to stay
in such a place, which made it a pretty decent location to hide out. Everyone recognized an outsider, but no one really cared.

The dust coated Ana's tongue with a gritty bitterness as soon as she exited the transport. None of the three Valkyries who dug in against the wind had brought
anything to cover their mouths. The sunglasses did a decent job of keeping the angled sheets of dust out of their eyes, so they'd just have to deal with the bad taste and the dry mouth.

Rani crept ahead of Ana,
bent forward, leaning into the wind, bracing herself as much as trying to be covert. Freya followed Ana with much the same posture, the three of them hugging the crumbling buildings, ensconcing themselves in whatever leeway they could get. The pilot—not Jrue—delivered them and remained behind to guard the transport, as was the pilot's duty.

After a few minutes of slow progress by the Valkyries, the bluster subsided to a faint breeze, the kind that might blow a tumbleweed across one of the
town's empty streets, but allowed the trio of Valkyries to progress in an efficient manner to their destination. The target had taken up residence in an apartment above one of the bars in town. Hopeless towns tended to have more bars than they should realistically be able to support, but many residents resigned themselves to their situations, comforted by a glass of something alcoholic and a person pretending to care.

As they approached the bar, Ana spotted a dark figure ducking around the side of the building. The person's height dropped sharply as they went and Ana realized
they had reached the end of the raised durowood walkway that stretched the length of the front. By modern standards, the unpaved paths that lined the rest of the streets were more of an oddity than the artificial raised walkway. Technically, the skywalk outside Ana's apartment was a raised walkway, but it was ten stories higher than the one they were about to mount. This one made the building stand out, though, and Ana noticed it was also the only building on the street that didn't look ready to collapse. Not that it was a sterling monument to modern building materials, but it bore signs of preservation and restoration that the other structures lacked.

Ana began to wonder who else m
ight be hiding out there. It was a place where intelligence agencies would only come looking if they could track down a particular subject and no one had the resources anymore to pop in on random locations to see what turned up. Money was flowing in from somewhere and Ana doubted that it was from someone who'd struck it rich and wanted to preserve a memory of the life they'd left behind.

Rani tapped her shoulder,
bringing her back to the mission. "You see that?"

"Movement at the end of the walkway," Ana said.

Freya had been watching their backs and could not confirm, but Rani's question was all Ana needed to know it hadn't been her imagination.

Rani signaled them
to duck into the small gap between the target building and the one before it. The drop in temperature that should have resulted from the shade between the two was canceled out by the absolute stillness of the air. Ana didn't want to have to walk through another dust storm, but she immediately began to miss the breeze that had kept her cooler than she'd realized.

She thought of the figure they'd seen.
Maybe it was just the bartender or a patron popping out for a smoke break. But what if it wasn't? Better safe than dead, right?

"Freya," Rani said, "I want you to go to the back. There's only one emergency exit from the main floor and the fire escape from the upper floors."

Ana put aside her rationalization of the person outside. She considered the possibility that the money keeping the building together meant it played host to a variety of threats. "What if there are others in there?" she said. "The building is well maintained, so unless our target has been funding that himself, there's got to be others who use this as a hideout."

"Okay, so, weapons at the ready then?"

"Well, yeah, that too, but what if Freya gets caught out back?"

"I'm right here
! I can hear you!"

"Also, what if we need more firepower up front?" Ana said, trying to ignore Freya's comment and appease her at the same time. She managed to hold off from saying "What if they
already know where we're going to be and they've come back from the future to take us out?" She was the only Valkyrie in the employ of the Project who knew one of the biggest secrets in the intelligence community, to say nothing of the scientific world. And, when it came down to it, the whole world.

But she, and the Agency, had no actual knowledge of the capabilities of the Continuum when it came to time travel. Hence her infiltration of the Continuum as a double agent, for all the good that had done. She stood with her back to the wall of
the ramshackle building, doing the exact same mission she could have been doing for the Agency if she traveled back in time three, five, or seven years. What would the Agency have her do if they could send agents back in time? Would their imagination extend past the shallow waters of backing herself up on previous missions, or giving herself advice on something she knew would go wrong? Maybe the bigwigs who'd kept the information classified would send their assistants back in time to make sure they always got the coffee to the office on time.

While Ana imagined the red tape that would eliminate the utility of anything as transformational as time travel, Rani fired questions at her. "You think the two of us can't handle a few simpletons? How many people can possibly be in this little place? You think Freya can
't handle someone because they're smart enough to head for the emergency exit?"

"No, you're right. Let's get in there before anyone spots us hanging around out here."

The scene inside the tavern resembled something that Ana had only seen in portrayals of an American frontier from a few hundred years past. She hadn't realized that such a place might still exist, and the dark cloud of a thought hung in the back of her mind that agents of the Continuum might have seen this sort of establishment when it had been the norm and not a relic of the past.

A dark-skinned man leaned on a wooden bar to the left of the entrance, eyeing up the pair of Valkyries as they walked across the worn wooden floorboards like regulars returning from a day at the factory. Three more pairs of eyes locked on them, bouncing back and forth between Ana, who looked like she could be from a neighboring town, to Rani, whose complexion and arrangement of features was unusual enough to raise three sets of eyebrows. Odd looks didn't stop the Valkyries from sidling up to the stairs at the back of the bar and headin
g straight for the second floor. They were up before the trio huddled around the first-floor table could get over their shock at the nonchalance with which the two women gusted through the bar.

As the
y ascended, though, Ana heard the scrape of chairs across on the floor. The sound of boots clomping slowly followed not far behind. Maybe she and Rani would be the ones rushing out the back to meet Freya.

T
he short hallway held a mere three doors to either side of the stairs, and the Valkyries reached the room in which their target had been living since showing up in the backwater town. Rani readied herself to kick down the door, but Ana pointed at the shaft of light coming through the crack of the open door. Rani kicked it in anyway, but with less force that she would have otherwise used. It swung open onto a scene that turned Ana's stomach into an encyclopedia of knots.

A large bed took up
most of the space in the room. The window to the East allowed the sun to shower the bed in light, with enough left to illuminate a few small pieces of furniture draped in clothes as though the occupant preferred that to the closet. The sheets lay twisted and corkscrewed, blood seeping slowly through like someone was dyeing a design into them. The white retreated to the edges, forming a rose with ivory-tipped petals that faded to deep crimson in the center. Wrapped up like the stem of the flower, the man Ana and Rani had come to find leaked the blood that colored the sheets.

On the bright side, they wouldn't have to bring back anything bigger than the local storage drive from his terminal.

Tremulous creaks from the stairs fell into the room from the hall as men heavier than the Valkyries started up. The blood drying on the sheets bit into the air with a salty tang.

"Where's his terminal?" Ana said.

Rani didn't move right away, didn't speak. Now was a very inopportune time for the most experienced of the Valkyries to be stuck in a rare—for her, at least—state of shock.

Ana turned and saw that
Rani was surveying the scene, and by the time she realized that, the other Valkyrie had located the little black box. She crossed the room, snatched it up from the antique roll-top desk, tossed it to Ana, drew her pistol, and stepped over to cover the door. The sequence of motions flowed so well that Ana could barely place commas between one action and the next. But there she was, holding the local storage drive, and Rani stood ready to gun down their pursuers.

Ana ran
around the bed to the window facing South. The fire escape seemed specifically designed to be inaccessible from the room the Valkyries occupied. How had the assassin entered and withdrawn? The blood was still quite fresh, but they'd seen no one. Except the person in front who'd dropped off the walkway out front. So close.

Rani fired several quick shots from the doorway. T
hey would be fighting their way out. Hopefully there were just the three slow brutes from downstairs.

"Three on the stairs! Two down the hall!" Rani yelled back into the
sudden claustrophobia of the room. Ana avoided looking at the corpse once she had confirmed it was indeed their target. She didn't have time to think, but her instincts carried her to Rani's side even as her mind fired off questions as though the punctuation marks were bullets that could take down the men coming after them.

Had the Continuum known wh
ere they would be? Ana wondered as she held the black duroplast box in one hand, her gun in the other. Had they known exactly when the Valkyries would arrive and sent someone to bleed dry the man who lay contorted in the middle of the bed?

W
ood around the door splintered from the impact of slugs and Rani returned fire. Ana thought again of the dark figure running around the side of the building. It seemed
poor timing
for someone with knowledge of past events and the ability to travel through time to
not have enough time
or forethought to grab the terminal storage. Perhaps it wasn't as exact a science as Ana had assumed. Or else the man whose blood had found its way down to drip on the floor had not recorded anything of value on the local storage. Ana didn't know what information he was supposed to have possessed, but it certainly seemed plausible that it was already lost within the exquisite anguish of death that etched his tortured face and convoluted limbs.

"The fire escape is too far from the window," she said
. "I don't know who designed it, but we have to get to the next room if we're going to get out that way."

"I don't know if I can provide cover fire down the hall if you're trying to get in right there. It might be easier to rush the three on the stairs and get out the front."

"The guys up here will have a clear shot, probably several clear shots, once they realize what we're doing."

"We can get down. I'll cover you from the bottom. I can hold them off."

Ana trusted Rani's aim, whether it came from behind down the hall or from an eighty-degree angle from the base of a stairwell, and that aim would be more steady and deadly if Ana went along with Rani's plan.