Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel Page 41

“You have your mother’s eyes …”

  Trembling fingers found hers, perhaps sensing her shock.

  “I tried to protect you, to hide you … to keep you from them.” His eyes never left her face. “But after your mother was taken … it took so long to find you. When I did, I couldn’t let you go … selfish … but to acknowledge you would have been your death. So I hid you in plain sight within the Guild, close but forever apart. I was blind, naïve to the cruelties that would be inflicted on you, would be asked of you later … I’m sorry …”

  Seichan did not know how to respond, drawn into the past, remembering that night, hiding under the bed, terror-stricken, as her mother was dragged away.

  Fingers squeezed one last time, trying to hold on.

  Seichan stared down at him, at the impossibility of her father.

  “Your mother …” he said, his eyes wide with the urgency of those last words, the last gasp of meaning all sought during that final breath. “Escaped … still alive after … don’t know where …”

  With his message sent, he sagged, hollowed out by his escaping life, relaxing into death. His eyes drifted closed. His last words were oddly clear and sad.

  “No father should lose a daughter …”

  With that, he was gone.

  Gray pulled Seichan to him, holding her as she held her father.

  Then the world quaked, booming with the thunder of gods.

  41

  July 4, 3:00 P.M. EST

  Blue Ridge Mountains

  Painter hovered high as the world exploded below.

  Seconds earlier, his parachute canopy had burst wide, becoming a wing of fabric overhead, jolting him in his harness—then the entire plateau bulged upward, reaching toward him with the heavy bass note of buried warheads.

  His teammates hung in the air to either side. Monk and Kowalski headed toward Kat’s position at the cliff’s edge. Tucker was several yards lower, skimming toward Lisa’s ledge beside the waterfall. He carried Kane strapped to his chest in a tandem harness.

  Between Painter’s legs, the entire landscape fell away, shattering apart, vanishing down into a growling pit of churning rock, fire, and steam. Entire sections of forest dropped into the hellish gorge. Smoke and rock dust blasted upward, swallowing his group. Twisting thermals wreaked havoc. Painter’s chute swung wildly and sailed higher on a column of superheated air.

  Choking, Painter held his breath and covered his face with an arm, protecting his eyes.

  He fought his chute’s toggles to stabilize his spin, losing sight of the others. He had experienced this level of destruction once before. He recognized the superheated signature of thermobaric weapons—only never on a scale strong enough to raise a significant chunk of the earth’s crust.

  The initial plume whirled higher, dragging the worst of the smoke and superheated air away, clearing a glimpse to the ongoing destruction. Below, a gateway to hell opened: a gaping, steaming hole, breathing fire and stinking of brimstone.

  At its edges, more of the landscape succumbed. Hillsides slid, dragging trees and boulders. Rivers and creeks poured down that black throat, only to belch back out as clouds of steam. Down deeper, a heavy flow flooded the giant pit, boiling and stirring everything into a toxic soup.

  Painter stabilized his chute, sweeping out, catching a glimpse of twisted steel beams and honeycombed sections of concrete, fossilized hallmarks of man-made construction.

  The remains of a massive subterranean base.

  Even these structures slowly vanished into the roiling mire at the bottom. Painter tore his gaze away, searching around him. The three other parachutes floated lower, managing the thermals better than he did. The curve of the cliff that was their destination remained intact, taller now, looming over that steaming sinkhole.

  “Going for Kat,” Monk reported.

  “Crapping my pants.” That was Kowalski.

  The pair dropped fast toward Kat’s position, angling into as much of a glide as possible, still fighting the unpredictable thermals. If they missed the cliff’s edge, they would go plummeting into the churning maw below.

  Painter twisted in his harness, spotted Tucker and Kane soaring toward Lisa.

  Her ledge remained intact—little else.

  The waterfall still fell alongside it, but there was no river below to catch it. The thirty-foot falls had become a three-hundred-foot plunge into smoky darkness. Farther away, a massive section of the cliff face broke away and slid, like a calving glacier, into the depths of the sinkhole.

  Lisa’s ridge looked like it might fall at any time. Pieces were already chipping and cracking under it.

  But at the moment, that wasn’t her biggest danger.

  The shifting waterfall had driven her out of hiding—and into the view of the monster sharing her perch. The two crouched on opposite ends of the plateau.

  “Heading down to her!” Tucker radioed.

  “Captain Wayne, go topside. Set a rope.”

  “Negative. I’m past the point of no return. Too low, not enough lift to carry me to that edge. The only drop zone for me is that ledge of rock.”

  He might be lying, playing hero, but Painter was indeed higher. He had a better chance of reaching the top of the cliff, and someone had to secure the lines to reach the ledge below.

  “Understood,” Painter radioed back, though it killed him to head away from Lisa. “Going topside.”

  He pulled his toggle with a sweaty hand and swept to the right—angling for the edge, knowing time was running short. As he turned, he caught a glimpse of the Lodge, cloaked in smoke, its heart glowing with hellfire.

  The crack of a pistol drew his attention down.

  Tucker dove toward the ledge, going in fast, firing his pistol at the beast—then Painter was over the cliff’s edge and he lost sight of the battle, pitting man against machine.

  3:03 P.M.

  Tucker needed room.

  The ledge was the size of a basketball court, with Lisa on one end and the bear-size beast on the other. Drawn by his approach, the creature dashed into his path, knuckling on its curved claws. It skidded sideways, its large, obsidian-glass eyes staring up at him.

  He fired, but the round pinged harmlessly off of its hardened armor.

  Still, the shots drove the beast back to its side, long enough for Tucker to haul on both of his toggles, flare his chute, and brake his plummet to a smooth but heavy landing. His heels hit first, then toes, and he rolled to his knees. He pulled two releases at the same time.

  The first unhooked his chute, which went wafting against the cliff, then skimming away, dragging lines and harness.

  The second freed Kane. His partner dropped to his paws, a ridge of hackles raised like a Mohawk down his back.

  Tucker pulled out a second pistol. He held it flat toward Lisa, warning her to stay back. The beast crouched low, perfectly motionless, studying and assessing its new prey—but that wouldn’t last long.

  Lisa whispered to him, her eyes wide with fear, but not for her safety. “Baby’s going into shock.”

  He crept back to her, signaling Kane to stand guard.

  Dog and machine faced each other, mirroring each other’s wary stance.

  Lisa was soaked from the waterfall, the baby hung in wet swaddling, not making a sound, tinged bluish.

  Tucker swore to himself.

  I’m not losing this baby again.

  A scrabble of steel on rock sounded as the monster charged. Sparks lit each step as steel clashed with rock. It barreled straight at them. Tucker raised his pistol, recognizing how useless it had been before, knowing that nothing could stop it, but he was ready to defend with his life.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Kane watches it come, not moving. It smells of oil, grease, and lightning, but he recognizes a hunter. Because he is one, too. It sees the world as he does.

  It shifts to the wind, scenting …

  It turns to the rasp of voice and step …

  Its black eyes twitch to
the flutter of fabric and tangled line …

  It also thinks, only moving when ready, judging the weakest.

  Like now.

  It comes for him—because it is still young, new to the world, a pup.

  Kane meets its charge with a bark and a feint, dodging to the side of its steel flank. He makes it spin and come after him. It is fast, powerful, but in the end, it is young.

  He is not.

  He races on pads that have run across hot sands, hard tarmac, powdery snow, gravel roads—and slippery ice.

  He had studied the hunter, watched it skid on bright sparks.

  “Kane!” his partner shouts.

  He hears the timbre of fear, not command.

  So Kane runs straight for the edge, for the long fall to sharp rock. The enemy thunders after him, hulking, legs crashing steel into stone. He reaches the edge and stops fast, pads grinding to pain on the coarse path—then twists. Because he knows he can.

  He is not young.

  This is stone.

  He whips to the side with a surge of his legs.

  The other is young. Stone is its ice.

  Something it has not learned.

  Kane spins on his hind legs and watches the creature skid past him, leaving a trail of sparks—and goes over the edge.

  Because it had not learned.

  And now never will.

  Tucker dropped to a knee as Kane came running back. He hugged the dog proudly, knowing he had saved their lives. Bullets would not have stopped that charge of purposeful steel. Not in time to keep it from reaching them, slaughtering them. And neither Tucker nor Lisa was wily enough to use the creature’s rudimentary instincts against it, nor agile enough to lure it to its death.

  Still, Kane shoved his head between Tucker’s legs, a familiar request for reassurance.

  “It’s okay, boy. You did good.”

  But his tail stayed down.

  Tucker knew dogs lived emotional lives as rich as most people’s, different, alien in many ways, but still they experienced their world deeply.

  Tucker sensed what Kane was feeling. They knew each other beyond hand signals and commands.

  Remorse and regret.

  Kane was not happy to send that creature to its death.

  “You had to do it,” Tucker said.

  Kane knew that, too.

  But his tail stayed down.

  3:06 P.M.

  Edward Blake hated the train service here.

  Buried in a dark tunnel, lit only by the stray battery-powered emergency lamp, he sat on a bench seat in the enclosed, single-car tram with a dozen other members of the lab complex staff and guards. The distant boom of the explosion had long faded away.

  But not the damage.

  The electricity had gone out at the same time, and the train had slowed to a stop. One of the passengers wearing a guard uniform checked the odometer. They had traveled nine miles, a mile short of the depot at the Lodge.

  Edward closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

  “We should just walk,” someone suggested.

  “What if the electricity comes back on?”

  “Then don’t step on the rails.”

  “We’re safer here.”

  Oh, shut the bloody hell up!

  “Quiet!” another shouted from the back of the car, echoing his sentiment.

  Finally, someone with sense.

  “Listen!” the same man said.

  Then Edward heard it, too. A low rumble, getting steadily louder, like another train was hurtling down the tunnel intended to rear-end them. But as it got louder, he heard a telltale gurgle.

  Water.

  He stood, along with everyone in the tram, and moved to the back of the car. The tunnel stretched out into darkness, measured by the small red emergency lamps every fifty yards.

  Then they all saw the monster eating one light after the other, far down the passage. A flood surged toward them. Most started screaming. One man dashed out of the door, intending to outrun the flood.

  Fool.

  Edward held a hand to his throat and sank back to his seat. He didn’t want to watch. After years of working at an underwater lab in Dubai, he would drown here in the middle of the bloody mountains, thousands of feet above sea level.

  Though he didn’t watch the surge swallowing light after light, counting down the last seconds of his life, he still heard Death coming for him. A couple of people were on the floor, praying.

  Even bloodier fools.

  After all that went on at that lab, God was surely deaf to their pleas for salvation.

  The rumble grew to a thunderous crescendo—then the wall of water struck the back of the tram. The impact threw them all to the rear of the car—and sent the tram rolling down the track, bobbling hard but moving!

  People gained their feet, clutching for handholds.

  Water sprayed through cracks and seams at the back, but the sealed car was like a bullet in a gun barrel, being shot down the tunnel.

  No one spoke, all fearing to express hope.

  Even the prayers had stopped, the supplicants already forsaking their God.

  Someone at the front called back, yelling to be heard above the roaring beast that propelled them forward. “Cellar’s ahead! I see lights!”

  The secret depot.

  They were going too fast.

  “Is there a manual brake?” Edward called out.

  The guard rushed forward. “Yes!”

  Edward joined him as the end of the tunnel hurtled toward them. He saw there were indeed lights ahead: a fiery, blazing conflagration.

  The guard abandoned the brake and sat down.

  Edward did, too.

  Moments later, the car shot into the heart of the inferno. Water spread outward through the labyrinthine cellar complex, blasting into steam. Fires blazed all around. Their little pocket of air was only useful to fill their lungs for screaming—which they did as they slowly burned.

  3:08 P.M.

  Kat clutched her husband’s neck, carried in his arms.

  Blood flowed from scores of tiny lacerations, shallow and deep, wounds from her battle with the helmeted pod’s flying horde.

  She had beaten them back as Monk and Kowalski swept in, shedding their chutes and rolling to her aid. She half-fell out of the tree into Monk’s arms. He had grabbed the last few flyers out of the air with his prosthetic hand. The tough synthetic skin and crushing grip made short work of them.

  She could have used one of those, and told him so.

  His answer: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

  Now they fled together through the woods, chased by scores of the pods, creatures of every ilk. The loss of blood, along with the exhaustion of her battle, turned the world into a hazy, fluttering view, shadowed at the corners.

  Kowalski fired behind them, keeping the worst at bay, but there were too many. Like ants boiling out of a flooded nest, the legion came crawling, leaping, spinning, burrowing, flying away from the destruction behind them.

  “There!” Monk called to Kowalski as they broke into a wide meadow.

  A steep-sided outcropping of granite offered a vantage from which to make a stand. They fled toward it.

  From her perch in her husband’s arms, she watched the hunters break out of the woods on all sides, converging and sweeping toward them across the grasses, hundreds of them.

  Monk sped faster, Kowalski at his side.

  They reached the outcropping and manhandled her to the top, then joined her.

  As they huddled, the hunters came surging up to the rocky island, scrambling over one another to reach them, climbing higher, using their living brethren to form a growing bridge.

  The attack also came from the air. Clouds of flyers burst high out of the grasses, like a startled flock of crows. They swept in an organized, beautiful spiral, gathering others to them, swelling their ranks before the final assault.

  They’re learning fast.

  A spinner buzzed from below, hitting the rock at Kowals
ki’s toe. He danced back, coming close to toppling over the far side into that churning mass of deadly steel.

  “Now would be a good time,” Kowalski said.

  Time for what?

  “Can you stand?” Monk asked her.

  “Yes,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

  He swung her to her feet.

  “Keep holding on to me,” he ordered.

  Always.

  Monk worked at the wrist of his prosthetic and popped the hand free. One finger still wiggled.

  Kat frowned. “What’re you—?”

  He threw the hand high into the air. She followed its trajectory, but Monk pulled her chin down, wagged his finger—and drew her into a kiss. His lips melted into hers.

  Overhead, a loud bang clapped the air, sharp enough to sting.

  Monk drifted back, smiling at her. “Hand of God, babe.”

  She stared out at the fields.

  Nothing moved below.

  The flyers fell heavily out of the sky, like steel rain.

  “Mini-EMP,” her husband explained. “One-hundred-yard-effective radius.”

  Electromagnetic pulse … used for incapacitating electronics.

  “Painter had me equip it after the countermeasures described in Dubai. Figured there might be some defense like that at the Lodge and wanted to be prepared.”

  Kowalski scowled, patting his pockets for a cigar, pulling one out. “Don’t think he was counting on a robot apocalypse, though.”

  She slipped her hand around her husband’s neck, partly because she needed to, but mostly because she wanted to. “What now?”

  Monk checked his watch. “Well, I do have the babysitter for the whole night. What did you have in mind?”

  “Sutures.”

  He raised an eyebrow lasciviously. “So you want to play doctor, do you?”

  Kowalski dropped heavily to the rock. “Go get a room.”

  Monk held up a hand, then cupped his ear, apparently getting a radio call; clearly, the earpiece must have been insulated against the EMP device he carried. His smile widened. “Company’s coming.”

  3:25 P.M.

  Gray lifted the helicopter from the meadow with a roar of the rotors. The blades stirred the grasses, revealing the glint of dead steel below.

  He had already helped Painter’s group off the ledge. Lisa was tending to Kat’s wounds, while Amanda’s child, dried and tucked into a warm blanket, was crying for his next meal.