CHAPTER FOUR
ROSLYN RESEARCH FACILITY: The Lab Day 1.
Roslyn stepped back through the stone barrier into the lab and pulled her hood down.
“There are nine of them out there, and they’ve brought a construct with them,” she said. “It looks bipedal and has some kind of beam weapon. The stupid thing tried to cut me in half. I could use some help out there.”
Maddie and Erica both turned and looked at me with pleading eyes.
“Fine,” I said. “But I want one of them alive when this is over.”
Maddie looked up at Roslyn. “Can you turn off the lights?”
“I can turn off the lights in the corridor,” Roslyn said, “but the emergency strips are on their own circuit, and I can’t stop them from flashing.”
Maddie looked at Erica with a huge impish grin, reattached her faceplate, and the two of them turned and faded into the wall. Roslyn smiled at us and then turned and walked her projection through the barrier. “All right, which one of you assholes wants to get fucked up by a girl?”
She threw the lab doors open, and the corridor erupted. Automatic gunfire tore through her projection and slammed into the walls of the laboratory and into the stone barrier. She walked into the fire. The overhead lights died. The emergency strips kicked on and bathed the corridor in a thick red glow before fading out.
When the emergency strips pulsed back on, Roslyn was already gone. The militants had spread themselves in a loose crescent outside the lab doors, backs to the far wall, weapons up. The construct stood out in front of them, its beam weapon trained on the stone barrier. They were calling out to each other in low, clipped exchanges, waiting for something to show itself.
The lights went out.
When they came back, Erica was already there on the far left. One hand on a militant’s shoulder, the other drove her kris dagger up under his chin and into his palate before he could make a sound. The lights went out and when they came back, she was gone. He stood there, both hands pressed up against the wound, blood gushing between his fingers. He turned to the man next to him with wide eyes as the lights went out again.
When they came back seconds later, he was gone.
“Reeves!” The other intruder stumbled backward and opened up on the nearest shadow. Every weapon in the corridor started to fire. Muzzle flashes strobed through the red and dark as rounds tore into the walls and sparked off the concrete floor. Ricochets screamed off the stone barrier and chewed into the ceiling.
“What the fuck was that?” somebody screamed over the gunfire. “Where did it go? Where the fuck did it go!”
“Cease fire! Cease fire, goddammit, check your fire!”
The lights went out. In the darkness came a sound like a dozen small mechanisms firing in rapid succession. Sharp little cracks of compressed springs releasing one after another.
When they came back on, two of the militants stood bristling with darts embedded across their faces and necks, mouths open in silent screams. Black veins spread out from each impact site across their skin like cracks in dry earth.
The lights went out again. In the darkness came the heavy, rhythmic pounding of the construct. Its articulated legs hammered the corridor floor as it marched toward the stone barrier. The beam weapon fired. The corridor flooded with blinding, strobing white as it cut into the stone at point-blank range.
Out of the chaos in the corridor, Maddie ran into the lab and up the construct’s back in one fluid motion. Her movement was silent and fast as her daggers found gaps in its armor. She drove the blades deep as she climbed. She stabbed into a joint near the shoulder, and frustration crept into her voice as she worked. “Why won’t you—” The construct’s arm came around hard and launched her across the lab. She hit the floor, sliding across the room and into the wall.
The beam weapon pivoted toward her. It dragged a burning line across the lab wall as it swung down, blasting through the wall and into the corridor beyond. Maddie scrambled, but the beam was already closing the distance. Another Wraith came out of the dark and hit her at a dead sprint, pulling her through the wall as the beam scorched the floor where she had been.
In that strobing light, one of the soldiers caught a shape moving and opened up on it. He caught one of the Wraiths across the shoulder before she phased through the wall.
“Cease fire!” the leader screamed. “Cease fire, you’re shooting at a goddamn wall!”
When the lights came back on, the two militants with the darts in their faces were gone.
“Where’s Harris?” somebody shouted. “Where the fuck did Harris go? Where the hell is Kovacs?”
“Watch your sectors!” the leader called back.
The lights went out and came back on, and there was nothing there.
They went out again and came back on. Still nothing, just the empty corridor and the construct grinding its beam weapon into the stone barrier.
The remaining militants pressed together, weapons up, as they backpedaled.
The giggling started, soft and light, bouncing off the concrete walls until it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
“Who sent you?” The voice of the little girl was almost gentle.
“Show yourself!” one of them shouted, and his voice cracked on the last word.
The voice came back, softer now, almost a whisper.
“None of you are leaving here. You know that, don’t you?” The girl giggled again. The voice of the child was off-putting, turning a bad situation into something right out of a horror film.
The lights went out.
When they came back on, two of them were standing with their throats ripped open, hands clutching at their necks.
Erica drove her kris dagger into the side of a third man. Once, twice, three times. She worked the blade in and out like it was on a piston, fast and rhythmic, dark eyes fixed on the remaining three while she did. Then she turned and jumped through the wall before her victim even had time to fall.
The militants fired at where she had just been, expending the last of their ammunition. The main lights in the corridor snapped back on, putting the nightmare on full display around the last three militants.
Crumpled on the floor lay the only body, and a wide, dark pool spread out across the concrete around it.
All eight Wraiths were in the corridor in front of them now. They closed the distance like they had all the time in the world.
One of them raised her wrist, and the launcher cracked. The nearest militant took a faceful of darts, and his mouth fell open in yet another silent scream as he fell.
The Wraiths continued to approach. Maddie and Erica reached up and pulled their masks down, their kobold faces completely visible now. Blood dripped from their daggers.
As they backpedaled, Roslyn phased a dense field of narrow stone spikes out of the wall behind them.
“Fuck this!” One of the men threw his weapon to the floor and spun on his heel to run. As he turned and threw himself into his first step, he drove himself straight into Roslyn’s trap.
His eyes went wide and wild. His mouth fell open. His body sagged as he died, choking on the blood in his throat, the gurgling noise of it now the only sound in the corridor.
Roslyn materialized beside him. “Why don’t you stick around for a minute?”
The leader turned from the sight of the impaled man, raised his pistol, and it dry-fired. The hammer clicked over and over as he pointed it at Maddie’s face, his hand shaking.
Erica raised her wrist and put a single dart into the side of his neck. He grabbed at it, opened his mouth, and what came out wasn’t a scream, just a thin, ragged gasp as his knees buckled and he went down hard.
Back in the lab, the stone barrier had gone from dull red to bright orange, the heat radiating off it in waves that we could feel from across the room. Tanya was working on the injured Wraith pinned between Yumi and one of the other rogues. She was healing the gunshot wounds that had raked up her arm and into her shoulder.
Roslyn’s projection appeared in the room. A moment later, Maddie and Erica stepped through the wall.
“It’s done,” Maddie said. “The leader’s down. I knocked him out with a dart, and he should be out for a little bit. The rest are dead.”
Roslyn glanced at the barrier. “I don’t know how much longer it’s going to hold. We’re going to have to take that thing out.”
Kyle was already on his feet. “How far out is it?”
“Dead center,” Roslyn said. “About four feet out.”
Kyle nodded once, his eyes fixed on the barrier. “I can pin it, but I need to see it to finish it.”
The stone above and below the construct erupted at once. Spikes drove down from the ceiling and up from the floor, slamming in from both directions. Kyle felt the resistance right away. Something solid pushed back against the stone, and he bore down harder, but he could feel them break off as fast as he forced them forward.
“Now,” he said through clenched teeth.
Roslyn dropped the barrier, and we got our first look at what happened on the other side. The construct stood inside a cage of broken and splintered stone spikes. Its arms lashed out in violent arcs, smashing them apart as fast as Kyle could push them in. The beam weapon was already rising again as it worked its limbs free.
A blue shimmer slid into place as Yumi’s shield drones formed up in front of us. Behind them, Tanya raised her hands and sent necrotic bolts into the construct one after another. None of it slowed it down.
Kyle’s hands were already starting to shake. “Fuck!” he screamed, bore down in one final motion, and I could almost feel the energy move as he ripped it from his reserves.
The ceiling above the construct split with a violent crack. The stone tore free and came down in a collapse that shook the entire lab, burying the construct beneath a mass of shattered rock and debris.
When it cleared enough to see, the construct was still there, half-buried and crushed into the rubble. One arm still moved, pulling itself through the debris as the beam weapon swept, trying to find something to hit.
Tim stepped in and brought the glowing khopesh down in a clean arc, severing the arm at the joint in a burst of sparks. The construct shuddered once and went still.
ARi raised her hand and the machine faded out of existence.
“Before you go,” Roslyn said, “you should leave that thing with me. I’m pretty sure the Ascendancy isn’t going to let you bring it in there anyway. I’d like to see if I can replicate some of the technology here while you’re gone.”
She looked at where the construct had been. “In the meantime, you should definitely learn everything you can from it.”
Two of the rogues dragged the leader in from the corridor. The man groaned and started to move. Erica walked over and kicked him hard in the side of the head, knocking him back out cold.
She looked up at the rest of us, confused that we were all staring at her.
“What?” she said. “I already shot him with a dart. Tanya said if we shoot more than once, the poison will kill.”
“Well, I’m not arguing with that logic,” Kyle said as he joined Tim in pulling the man further into the lab.
Across the room, Tanya finished with the injured rogue and helped her to her feet.
“ARi, can you phase us a chair so we can tie this asshole up?” Tim asked.
ARi phased in a simple chair and Tim pulled the man up and onto it as I pulled some rope from my inventory.
I went through his pockets, his collar, and his cuffs, looking for anything that might tell us who he was or who had sent him. There was rank insignia on his collar, something I didn’t recognize, and not much else.
He came around slowly, blinking. His eyes found me, and something hardened behind them. He straightened in the chair as much as the rope allowed.
He gave us his name, rank, and service number. Reciting them like a prayer, flat and mechanical, while he stared straight ahead.
Roslyn’s expression shifted the moment the words left his mouth. “I know who you are,” she said, her voice dropping to something quiet and dangerous. “That’s a Marine Corps rank and serial number. You were assigned here.” She took a step closer. “You were supposed to protect these people!”
Something cold settled into her face. “You don’t get to sit there and hide behind that number. You lost the right the second you turned your back on your own people.”
He opened his mouth to say it again, and then he stopped.
Something changed in his face. It was subtle at first, a slight slackening around the eyes, a loosening of the jaw. Then his head snapped toward ARi at an angle a neck should not have been able to move to. When he spoke again, the voice that came out of him wasn’t his.
“Every human on this world will die, Guide!” it spat the words. “Every living thing. This world is ours to reap! The Ascendancy is a delay. We are inevitable.” The eyes that looked at ARi were dead and cold. “We will strip the souls from this place, starting with you!”
The man began to glow.
It started at his chest and spread. A pale light bled through the fabric of his uniform and pushed through his skin.
“Out!” Kyle shouted. “Everyone out, now!”
We bolted through the lab doors and into the corridor. Kyle threw up stone barriers behind us as we went, one after another, burning through whatever he had left in his reserves and deep into his stamina. The light from the lab already filled the corridor behind us.
We hit the elevator at a dead sprint and piled in, and ARi reached up and cut the cables. The car dropped, and for a half second we were weightless. The explosion tore through the lab and the corridor above. A wall of fire came screaming down the shaft toward the still falling car. Yumi got her shield up as it hit; the energy barrier flared brilliant white as the fire broke around us. The elevator car hit the bottom with a crash that put us all on the floor.
We crawled out of the elevator, and Roslyn’s projection was already there, arms crossed, waiting. She looked at us and the tangled mess that spilled from the bottom of the elevator shaft.
“Well,” she said. “That was fun! Who wants to go again?”