Nex were melted in a glowing instant, merging with their guns where they stood. A harsh chemical stink drifted through the streets.
Mongrel stumbled to a halt at the end of the alleyway with The Priest beside him. They were soon joined by another eight grim-looking Spiral operatives. Their detonation mission had been successful. Now all they had to do was get to the next EP for the GRID ... alive.
‘Anybody tag signs of pursuit?’
The ops shook their heads, clasping their sub-machine guns. A woman rounded the corner and opened her mouth in sudden shock at the startling vision of guns and balaclavas. Then she turned and ran. Her heels clacked off down the rubble-strewn pavement as The Priest peered after her.
‘We’re clear.’
Distantly, sirens echoed. They could all smell smoke.
The Priest, glancing left and right, led the small fighting unit, the DemolSquad, across the now-deserted road and into another narrow street. Rain lay like a veil across the tarmac, the rubble and the dusty grime-smeared windows of shops. Some were still open and operating, some long closed and sporting smashed windows or boarded-up fronts, the graffiti-smeared planks nailed at different angles and daubed with the command NO ENTRY mantra.
The team moved, halted, checked their surroundings.
Mongrel inspected his gun’s magazine, and suddenly something seemed out of place. He turned, opening his mouth as he lifted his Sterling—
Bullets screamed from the darkened hole behind him, passing over his shoulder and thumping into the throat and head of a tall woman who was gazing off to her right, caving in her facial features and dropping her in an instant.
Mongrel and The Priest were already moving, whirling low with their weapons ready. The guns roared, emptying a stream of flying metal into an open shopfront as the two men dived in opposite directions. Two more Spiral operatives went down in the hail of exchanged fire and Mongrel felt a bullet carve a narrow groove across his shin, slicing through combats and flesh and chipping the bone. He hit the ground hard and rolled, the Sterling still bucking angrily in his gloved hands. He stopped shooting, breathing hard on dust and cordite, and glanced over at The Priest, who gave a nod. Mongrel pulled out a grenade, yanked free the pin with his few remaining teeth and allowed the cylinder to sail into the darkened depths of the shop.
And then they were running, the seven remaining Spiral agents pounding down the street, dodging behind the burned-out shell of a car—still hot from the previous night’s entertainment—then sprinting right into another alley as more bullets kicked up splinters of concrete at their heels
Mongrel slammed against a wall, panting. He dragged his balaclava off and changed magazines in his Sterling.
‘What flavour?’
‘White phos,’ muttered Mongrel.
‘Nasty.’ The Priest nodded.
‘Well, we not playing games here.’ Mongrel levelled his gun and fired off a full magazine blindly. Then he poked his head tentatively around the corner. What he saw made him frown.
She was standing in the centre of the street, legs slightly apart, arms hanging limp at her sides. Unlike other Nex, her pale oval face was uncovered, revealing a gentle pale beauty. Her hair was dark, spiked by the light fall of filthy rain. Her eyes glowed copper and were staring at him.
Mongrel shivered, for a moment locked to that penetrating gaze.
Swiftly, he reloaded and fired another burst. The female Nex looked down, almost in disgust, as the bullets did nothing but rattle the gravel at her feet. And then Mongrel watched the tide of heavily armed dark-clad Nex warriors silently fill the street behind her, moving with athletic grace in a perfect economy of action. He watched the columns of military Pigs and FukTruks creep forward, rumbling.
‘An army! A whole fucking army!’
‘I think we should leave. Now!’ hissed The Priest.
They set off, cutting first left, then right through a maze of narrow streets that were strangely free from damage. Archaic stone carvings stared down from steep vertical walls. The Priest called a sudden halt as he checked the ECube in his fist.
Gunshots rang out, bullets ricocheting off the corner of a building, and the Spiral operatives sprinted for cover. Then they crawled on their bellies to the corner of a street which The Priest indicated with a fist clasping his battered rosary beads.
‘They trying cut us off.’ hissed Mongrel.
‘Come on.’ They ran, heaving their exhausted bodies across the rubble-strewn thoroughfare, pounding past a group of tramps who were dressed in rags and sharing a bottle of clear liquid—obviously alcoholic—and staring around with vacant expressions on their ravaged faces. They stumbled along by a huge building and The Priest darted right, squeezing through a fallen archway and into a derelict hall with an uneven tile floor and a softly swaying chandelier—strangely intact and glowing in the weak grime-light spilling through the shadows.
Seconds later, tyres ground against stone as brakes locked in savage skids. Heavy-calibre rounds scythed through the tramps, ending their lives in a sudden hot hail of death. Their lone bottle, sole salvation from the misery of their lives, rolled across the ground and shattered into glinting shards.
‘The buggers,’ growled Mongrel. ‘They’ve fucking cut us off!’
The Priest put his hands together. ‘It is at times like this that we need to pray, my brothers.’
‘Pray?’ screamed Mongrel. ‘What, for a fucking miracle? The only fucking miracle here is I don’t put bullet in your dumb religious-maniac skull!’
The Priest’s eyes suddenly glinted, and he hoisted his weapon. He took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Have faith, my son,’ he said. ‘For I have prayed for deliverance ... to the Lord! Yea, also to Simmo and his TankSquads. They have seen the light of my ECube—and should be here shortly.’
‘That
svoloch
jailbird had better hurry,’ muttered Mongrel. ‘Or we forget battle with Nex and I fucking kill you myself!’
‘Be calm, my son,’ The Priest soothed. ‘The Lord will protect us. The Lord will guide us. The Lord will find us sanctuary and deliver us, yea, even from utmost evil.’
Outside, the whole world seemed to rumble suddenly as something squeezed down the streets with squeals of steel torturing stone. The walls of the building vibrated, sending chunks of plaster toppling from far above, along with a shower of dust. The chandelier began to jiggle, making tiny tinkling sounds.
The Spiral ops looked nervously at one another.
‘What... fuck ... is
that?’
hissed Mongrel.
But before anybody could speak, his question was answered—more abruptly and violently than the grizzled soldier had anticipated. The front wall of the building disintegrated as a mammoth twin-barrelled tank thundered through the ancient stonework, sending a shower of broken stone blocks into the chamber. With tracks squealing, the tank heaved itself forward in stop-start surges, grinding stone to powder, and broke free to spin in an arc through the room, its massive guns pointing at the Spiral operatives—who through instinct and pure reflex had opened fire with automatic weapons ...
Through the hole in the wall sprinted a squad of Nex, Steyr TMPs in gloved hands, cold copper-eyed stares sweeping the shattered area for their enemy. Sub-machine guns yammered in their steady grips.
Mongrel and The Priest scrambled frantically back towards the stairs. Bullets cut chunks from the tiles and plaster ahead of them. Yelling, they ran for the rotten, crumbling staircase as the tank, with a whirr of motors and clouds of LVA fumes belching into the confined interior, rotated its huge twin-gun turret.
There came a tremendous, deafening explosion as the tank fired twin shells in the direction of the trapped Spiral operatives ...
Sonia J walked with an easy, measured stride down the rain-swept street, wearing a long dark coat which glistened with the damp. She waited for a break in the stream of traffic and then crossed under the archway of the Nex Garrison post built to one side of the Sentinel Tower.
She stopped for a moment, huddling in a doorway, and lit a cigarette. Her long eyelashes blinked rapidly and she shivered.
God, I hate this place, she thought.
She watched warily four Nex across the street. They moved smoothly, athletically. Their copper-eyed gazes swept the street, the buildings, constantly searching for trouble. Their stares locked on her for a long moment... Sonia J felt her heart rise slowly to fill her throat. Then the cold insect-like glares passed away from her once they’d rated her as a simple zero threat.
She breathed again and waited, thinking that when the freezing ice-filled rain let up she would make a break for it and head for the HIVE Media Studio [London Division]. Then she’d burrow her way through the labyrinthine complex until she reached her own little niche of Quazatron Productions—which had exploded in recent months with three of the most popular shows to grace any TV network, ever ... thus propelling Sonia J into the dazzling spotlight of global celebrity.
Peering out, Sonia nixed any idea of running through the rain. The Nex and JT8 police squads were out in force, patrolling like the natural predators they were. Sonia, like most other citizens, had caught the news between sips of coffee and spoonfuls of SugarBran; the previous day’s bomb attack on the most advanced Nex Enhancement Programme centre, or Production Plant, which had cost $22.8 million (US) to build had been costly not only in terms of lost lives, Nex-conversions pulped and actual structural and financial damage. It had also carried a cost in terms of negative publicity. Something the HIVE Media Empire—supporters of the NEP cause—were keen to address by running Anti-Spiral, Anti-REB and Anti-GD-terrorist adverts in near-constant rotation on ChainTV, blending and merging images of death and war and torture.
The Nex were operating on hair triggers.
To run through the rain would be foolish.
‘Stuff it. A girl can only get so bloody wet.’ Sonia finished her cigarette, dropped the still-smoking butt and stepped out into the downpour. She walked, her boots clacking against the pavements. She kept a lookout for any Nex. Not only did they give her the creeps, making her shiver and occasionally filling her nightmares with their masked faces and copper eyes. There was also something she could not quite place. Something inherently ...
evil,
whispered the voice in her mind.
Sonia J walked, head down. She reached the first set of gates in front of the huge HIVE Media Building, a tower block almost as large as the Sentinel HQ but built post-strike and sporting impressive defensive features.
Sonia flashed her pass and was laser-read by HIVE security technology. Just as she was about to step forward, she heard a commotion through the rain behind her. She didn’t want to turn but felt she had to.
In the distance she could distinguish a small group of women, perhaps twenty of them, bearing banners. They were moving down the road, arms linked, with a few children at their feet scampering along through the rubble. To one side, on the pavement, stood four Nex, guns half raised, their stares scanning not just the group but the surroundings.
Sonia’s lips pressed together in a tight line. There was something wrong with the Nex movements, something out of synch.
Her sharp eyes read the slogans on the banners and placards; they concerned the imprisonment of the women’s husbands, without trial, for alleged crimes against the State. This small group had appeared out of nowhere and was heading slowly towards HIVE Media . . . and the hope of a slice of instant global coverage.
Sonia stood, rooted to the spot. The Nex on the pavement were twitchy—and slowly one lifted a gloved hand to a hidden earpiece. Its copper-eyed gaze met Sonia J’s and she instantly froze—caught in the act of witness. She could not read the Nex’s expression behind the mask, but it held her gaze for a moment. Then it turned and said something to its three comrades. They levelled their Steyr TMPs at the crowd of women and children—and opened fire. The group of women was mown down, felled in an instant; they flung up their arms, tried to protect their children, but all in vain.
In an instant it was over. Sonia heard the distant sirens as a K-truck slid around a corner, its bulk hiding the carnage: the dead eyes of the women, and the children’s corpses, mouths open and tongues lolling.
Sonia finally managed to swallow, and then it was there—
A Nex.
It stood casually in front of her, its gun levelled at Sonia J’s face. Sonia found that she could hardly breathe.
The Steyr TMP’s muzzle was steaming softly as raindrops fizzed against the hot barrel. The Nex nodded towards her. ‘You are the lady, Sonia J, from HIVE Media?’
She stared down the dark eye of the Austrian submachine gun’s barrel, reliving the horror of the women and children flopping to the road. Shock pounded in her chest.
‘Yes,’ she managed to gasp.
‘Well, you live today.’ The Nex seemed to be smiling behind the mask.
‘I ... I won’t say anything.’ Sonia’s hand fell to the small 8mm pistol in her pocket. It pressed hard against her skin as if willing her to draw and fire; to use it the way it was meant to be used: to shoot the dirty murdering Nex bastard in the face . . .
The Nex nodded, receiving some instruction through its earpiece. ‘We
know
you will remain silent. Now. Go inside, little lady—go and record your TV programme and entertain the people.’ The soft asexual voice made Sonia shiver: she fancied that she could detect mockery in its tone. She turned her back on the Nex and felt the itching of fear across her unprotected spine.