Our-World
The heels of Breslin’s shoes clicked against the granite floors of the spacious suite as he approached Chris Ingersoll. The FBI agent had his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cityscape beyond. The late afternoon sun had just dipped behind the high-rises to the west, casting the room into shadow. A light seemed to blaze in Breslin’s eyes, and Ingersoll wondered for perhaps the hundredth time if the rumors about the man’s animal savagery could be true. Although they had only met face-to-face a handful of times, there were whispers. Talk circulated about how Breslin could shift from calmness to unprovoked acts of savagery without a moment’s notice. Breslin was clearly already agitated, and Ingersoll was certain he was about to witness a new side of the man in charge.
“Agents are still conducting interviews,” Ingersoll said, trying not to cringe at the sight of Breslin stalking toward him. “The local PD is continuing the search. Ledger can’t get far.”
Stopping just beyond arm’s reach, Breslin’s gaze bore into him. The flesh rippling at Breslin’s smooth-shaven jawline suggested he was grinding his teeth. “He’s gone, and you know it. He travels throughout this country, and you can’t find him even with your so-called resources.” The popping of knuckles was unmistakable. Breslin’s hands were at his sides, though they were balled into bloodless fists. When he spoke, it was through a clamped jaw. “Tell me about the Kansas facility.”
Ingersoll gave a half-shrug in response but said nothing.
Breslin stepped forward slightly, his face contorting and his mouth beginning to open with a demand that was sure to follow.
“The forensic report came back,” Ingersoll said quickly. “But it contained nothing we didn’t expect.” Avoiding Breslin’s gaze, Ingersoll focused on a spot on the floor between them. From the corner of his eye, he noticed a slight tremor in his hands and quickly shoved them into his pockets. “A single-man assault on the installation. He parachuted in. We found the rig at the edge of a cornfield a little over three miles from the fence line. The techs believe it caught the wind and was dragged away. There’s no doubt it was Ledger’s, even though they have nothing to connect it to him.
“Evidence? I won’t be prosecuting him,” Breslin said. “You know better than that.”
Nodding slowly, Ingersoll said, “Sure—but you want to know if he has help.” He tried not to shrug again. That only seemed to infuriate the boss. “He was by himself.”
“He’s always alone,” Breslin snapped. He glared at Ingersoll for several seconds, then turned slowly and began to pace the bare room again. “Update me on Miranda Norton.”
Ingersoll’s knees became weak. He swallowed hard against a dry throat and attempted to infuse confidence and authority into his tone. “All-points bulletins have been issued statewide in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and both Virginias. Not a single sighting. It’s as if she vanished from the face of the earth.”
“You’re federal,” Breslin snapped. “Issue the bulletin nationwide.”
Ingersoll nodded aggressively. “Absolutely.”
Stopping his wall-to-wall pacing, Breslin glared at the agent once more, this time from twenty feet away. “Maybe I should have approached your partner. You’re not proving to be as resourceful as I’d hoped.”
Swallowing hard once more, Ingersoll was sure he’d seen a flash of light behind the man’s eyes. It had lasted only a blink, but it was there. He was convinced of it.
“Doctor Norton isn’t as crucial as what Ledger stole,” Breslin began. “But if we can’t capture him, we’ll need her. The Kansas experiment was the most promising so far. If we can’t recover what was taken, Norton must reconstruct the apparatus.”
“A team has recovered Kramer Fulbright’s body. If Ledger isn’t aware of that, one of our teams will be present the next time he shows up.”
Breslin waved a dismissive hand. “He’s running circles around you and every other resource on the hunt. If you know Fulbright has been found, Ledger will, too. Having more than a skeleton crew is a waste of resources.”
“We have Fulbright’s formula,” Ingersoll said, his tone laced with a hint of triumph. The cracking of knuckles came from one of Breslin’s fists. The other followed suit a moment later. His gaze fixed on Ingersoll, even from a distance.
“The formula that left its creator brain dead? Are you joking?” After a few moments, he continued, “The Alison Springs experiment can be dismissed. How much does Fulbright’s team know about ATG’s involvement?”
“Only what the university has publicly presented. ATG was noted to have funded the effort. Only ATG’s philanthropic grant is known. Like the other experiments, nothing points back to you.”
Breslin didn’t seem pleased with the response.
“You want the rest of Fulbright’s team to disappear? That will attract scrutiny I can’t manage.”
After a brief silence, marked only by Breslin’s heels clicking against the stone floor as he paced, he spoke. “Leave them for now. But if they cause any trouble later, they will disappear—and you along with them.”
As Breslin paced the room again, he was ready to speak when he suddenly froze mid-stride. He slapped a hand sharply against his head and rocked back on his heels. Tilting his gaze toward the ceiling, a primal, savage scream of something wild and wounded erupted.
Ingersoll’s eyes widened. He jumped backward and felt the back of his head hit the surface of the panoramic window. Struggling to maintain control, he could only stare as Breslin bellowed, slapped at the sides of his head, and dropped to his knees.
Ingersoll felt the momentary urge to help, but the primal howl from Breslin was anything but human. Instead, he could only watch as Breslin knelt and rocked back and forth.
Pike leaned away from the lens at the end of the scope and shook his head. He glanced at Piper. “That guy looks like a dick.”
Piper grinned. “That’s an understatement. He’s killed more people than you can imagine.”
Dressed in black tactical gear, Pike sat at the head of a long rectangular dining table. His was the only chair that remained. The table’s surface was cleared to accommodate the .50 caliber Barrett rifle resting on a bipod and aimed at the expansive windows overlooking the city high-rises beyond. Leaning back to the scope, he said, “He’s pacing like it’s the solution to all his problems. I feel bad for the guy he’s berating.”
Piper sat down at a small wheeled cart a few yards away and looked at the laptop screen. It reflected everything Pike could see through the rifle’s scope. “That’s one of the two FBI agents—Ingersoll, since Vincente is laid up in the hospital.”
Shooting her a glance, Pike arched a single brow. “You’re sure? We’ve only seen his back.” They had been setting up the equipment and arranging the makeshift shooting bench for Pike when the now motionless figure with his back to them first entered Breslin’s office. The high-rise apartment building offered an excellent line of sight into Breslin’s office. Twenty-four acres of green parkland separated the two buildings. Given the powerful optics of Pike’s rifle, the distance made little difference.
“You know that old question, who watches the watchers?” Piper said. “That’s us. Gray knows his enemies even better than his allies. We’ve been keeping an eye on both agents for a while. Until recently, we couldn’t rule Vincente out—now it seems clear he’s not corrupt like his partner.”
“You sound confident.”
Piper nodded. “Gray recently spent some quality time with Al Vincente. It let him to confirm what we already suspected—Ingersoll is Breslin’s inside man.”
“Where there’s one, there will be more.”
Piper nodded. “It won’t matter soon. If today goes as planned, we’re almost at the finish line.”
A long silence followed as Pike considered his new relationship with Grady Ledger and the woman beside him, who was their latest acquaintance. He held tremendous respect for Grady, earned in a short amount of time. This was unusual for Pike; one didn’t last long in freelance security without keeping outsiders at arm’s length. Ledger had bested not only Pike but his entire team. In this line of work, mistakes were made only once, usually because the stakes were life and death. Gray could have killed them all; instead, he put them to work.
Trust had to be earned, and Grady Ledger had gained the trust of Pike’s entire team.
This was the only reason Pike’s people were positioned around this Seattle high-rise, which had enough ordinance to invade a small country.
Pike tapped the stem of the tiny comms device in his ear. “Two, are you in position?”
“Ready in thirty seconds,” Billy Unger said as he slammed the belt of 7.62-millimeter ammo into the receiver of the M134 minigun. He followed the ammo feed back to the massive steel can that held dozens of belts waiting to be fed into the gun. Shaking the pair of vertical grips, he checked the turret for any unusual wobble, then rotated the six-barreled beast left and right across the limited forty-five degrees of travel. The sliding side door of the delivery van remained closed, its vertical surface only two inches from the muzzle of the six-barreled Gatling gun.
Glancing at the display mounted on the van wall to the right of the door, Unger could see the street stretching out beyond the van’s entrance. A wide, two-lane road separated him from the six extra-wide, swinging glass doors that served as the main entrance and exit to the expansive atrium beyond. Six-inch-high letters frosted into the glass marked the street address, while foot-high letters above the doors declared the high-rise to be ATG Corp. Facility 01.
“Not very imaginative,” Unger muttered from his spot on the bench seat behind the minigun. He flipped the transparent protective cap away from a pair of oversized buttons beneath it. Slapping his palm on the green switch, he heard the electrical unit on the floor just behind the driver’s seat in the van ramp up. The gimbal at the base of the gun vibrated as power became ready to send the spinning barrels of the weapon to life.
“Ready to rock,” Unger said after tapping the small stem of the comms device in his ear.
Kyle Seger sat in a rented panel van on the shipping and receiving sub-level beneath Arlington Technologies Global. A FedEx logo was magnetically attached to the side of the vehicle, which was common for such vans during a time when package carriers were struggling to expand their corporate fleets. The interior was configured similarly to Unger’s, but in this case, the M134 minigun was mounted in a rear-facing position, ready to fire through a pair of swinging doors at the back of the delivery truck. Seger’s challenge had been finding a parking spot close enough to the elevator lobby. Time was also a pressing issue since deliveries weren’t allowed to use the executive parking level. It was only a matter of time before building security noticed him.
“Three is in position,” Seger said into the comm channel, sliding a pair of goggles over his eyes. They were designed to detect human body temperatures even through up to three feet of concrete.
Alley Lauer crouched in the back of a late-model Chevy Suburban parked in the garage beneath ATG. She had an M134 bolted to the floor of the load bed, facing the tailgate. Due to the tight confines of the sport utility vehicle, no complicated articulated mount was necessary. The chain gun could shift left and right within a thirty-degree range of fire, but the barrel could not be raised or lowered to achieve more precise targeting. Considering the relatively small space and the mission objective, it was a reasonable trade.
Swinging the gun gently from left to right once more, she snatched up a pair of goggles that matched Seger’s. “Four is good to go,” she said, doing her best to get comfortable sitting on the floor at the rear of the SUV with the minigun grips in hand between her knees.
Piper saw her laptop’s second screen flash to life, initially displaying two feeds from outside. One camera was low-profile and mounted to the roof of Unger’s van on the street, while the other was a feed from the micro camera attached to his protective eyewear. Entering a short command into the computer, Piper swiped a finger across the trackpad to adjust the roof camera and center it on the ATG entrance beyond the street. The second camera needed tuning. Through it, she could see what Unger was doing—an unobstructed view from behind the grips of his Gatling gun and inside the van door just beyond the barrels.
Gray had a two-part plan for ending the Elend threat to Wild-Side, and Pike’s team was integral to stage one.
“This is the tricky part,” Pike said, shifting into position behind the rifle. He focused on the optics and let out a deep breath. “If this Breslin fool is as bad as Gray says, why not let me take him out right here and now? I don’t see what all this additional drama is supposed to accomplish.”
“That’s need to know,” Piper said, her tone plaintive. “Gray’s plan…” Her voice trailed off briefly. “It’s solid. But trust me, you don’t want to know the rest.”
More video feeds started to tile across Piper’s second screen. The thermal goggle feeds from Seger and Alley came to life. Moments later, the last feed filled the remaining tile, mirroring Pike’s view through the scope of the Barrett.
Pike’s feed shifted and then stabilized. The autofocus kicked in immediately, and Piper could see the massive panes of glass at the end of Breslin’s office suite. Blurry figures were visible beyond the glass, though the image quality wasn’t good enough to discern any faces.
“Esker,” Piper said. “It’s your turn.”
The voice of the AI emerged from the phone lying face up on the table at Piper’s elbow. “Activating enhancement filters.”
The feed reflecting the scope of the Barrett blurred wildly before refocusing with a crystal-clear view of Breslin’s office. “Fucking hell,” Pike grumbled as he turned to look at Piper. “Those windows are a top-of-the-line privacy system. We were lucky to catch glimpses beyond the glass.” He put his eye back to the scope. “This isn’t supposed to be possible.”
“The glass employs fluctuating polarization to obscure anything within the building,” Esker explained. “With sufficient time to analyze the fluctuations, I was able to identify the pattern used for the alterations and replicate them in real time through your optics.”
Pike turned his stare back to Piper. “Your friend’s sharp. He just transformed about a million bucks’ worth of high-tech window treatment into…” he paused and scratched his jaw, buying time to find the right analogy. “Well, regular glass, actually.”
Piper laughed and glanced at the array of video feeds suspended in AR above and behind the two screens in front of her. This AR display was visible only to her. Microdot cameras had been installed in the lobby of the building she and Pike occupied, as well as at every entrance and exit point needed to close in on her position. Esker would monitor these feeds along with similar ones showing the approaches that could be used to assault her teammates’ entrenched positions.
No one else on the team was aware of the extra cameras, nor did they know who or what Esker truly was. Gray had developed the attack plan. Therefore, he chose to utilize all available resources to safeguard the team and secure the mission.
Pike adjusted the focus of his scope, now able to increase magnification for a clearer view of Breslin’s office. Piper saw Breslin’s narrow shoulders packing the space. She watched his lips move and wished she could make out the words.
“I can provide an improvised audio feed,” Esker said. “As long as Breslin is facing the windows, I can rapidly map his mouth movements to words.”
“Lip reading?” Piper asked.
When Pike shot her a confused glance, she realized Esker had spoken to her over a private channel. With a cringe, she covered as best she could. “I was just wishing I had learned to read lips,” she said.
Pike grinned and said, “I was just thinking the same thing.”
Piper typed quickly on her laptop, directing the conversation to Esker since she couldn’t speak to him directly.
“Just let me know if there’s anything we need to know,” she typed. “I don’t want Pike asking questions I can’t easily improvise plausible answers for.”
Esker typed back, “Understood,” on her screen in response.
On the tiled computer screen, Piper saw a pair of ghostly silhouettes pause at the center of Alley’s feed. The two figures squared off against each other, then began to rise out of frame. Although the elevator was invisible beyond the doors of Alley’s van, the movements of anything with a human body temperature were visible, albeit out of context.
A second later, Piper saw the two motionless figures rise up from the bottom of Seger’s frame and then pass vertically out of view.
“This is creepy,” Seger remarked over the comm channel. “It’s like seeing through walls, but only partially.”
Esker’s voice trailed closely behind Seger’s. “Something is wrong,” he said urgently.
“Tracking,” Pike said.
Piper focused on the view through Pike’s scope. She noticed that Breslin had paused halfway through his next step. He slapped an open palm against the side of his head, tilted his gaze skyward, and seemed to be screaming. A few yards away, Ingersoll appeared to be backpedaling. The view of the office blurred as Ingersoll seemed to step backward into the glass.
“Compensating,” Esker said, and the view returned to focus again.
Piper had no idea what was happening, but the timing seemed perfect. “All gunners, on my mark,” she commanded with authority. She quickly scanned the thermal feeds from Seger and Alley’s positions. The view from the top of Unger’s van revealed a pedestrian in the far right corner of the screen. “Unger, concentrate fire to the left until your bogey clears the field of fire,” she instructed.
“Roger,” Unger responded.
Piper switched off the communication channel to ensure her next command would be clear. She glanced at Pike, the rifle stock pressed tightly against his shoulder, his eye aligned with the scope. “Now,” she said.
Pike squeezed the trigger, and light flashed from the end of the long rifle. The tiny buds in Piper’s ears adjusted automatically to protect her from the deafening blast in the small space. The ear protection could do nothing to insulate her from the concussive slap that seemed to shake her entire body. She stumbled backward and choked on her own exhale.
Glancing at the computer screen, she witnessed Pike’s actions through his rifle. The silhouette identified on the screen as Breslin appeared to tip, sprawl on the floor, then scramble to his knees.
“Again,” Piper ordered.
The rifle boomed.
On-screen, she watched the shadowy figures in the distance shuffle in clumsy lockstep before they seemed to disappear through what could only have been a faraway door.
“I lost them,” Pike said, his voice raised, suggesting to Piper that she wasn’t the only one with ringing ears.
Esker’s voice sounded in Piper’s ear, likely reaching Pike’s as well. “Compensating,” the voice intoned.
Piper glanced at the screen. The focus of the optics appeared to shift as what could only be the room behind the far wall of the office came into murky view.
“How in the hell,” Pike grumbled and glanced quizzically at Piper.
She could only shrug. “Can you do anything with that?”
With the plan flashing back to her mind, Piper opened a channel to the rest of the team. Her eyes scanned the feeds one last time and confirmed that Unger’s was the only position at risk for casualties. Luck was on their side. No one on the street was currently in Unger’s field of fire. “All positions,” Piper said. “Open fire.”
Pike ducked behind the rifle stock and shifted slightly to one side. The reticle moved and settled on the figure marked as Breslin. “I can end this right now…”
“No,” Piper corrected. “Stick to the plan.”
On-screen, she saw both distant figures stumble. One of them fell hard to the floor. In the back of her mind, Piper heard Esker explaining that the elevator had just plummeted to the bottom of the shaft.
After huffing an exasperated sigh, Pike adjusted according to Piper’s instructions. He positioned the reticle at a distance he estimated to be an arm’s length from the figure marked as Ingersoll and squeezed the trigger.
Pike appeared motionless, but on the monitor, Piper noticed the rifle’s reticle shift to a position equidistant between Breslin and the shadow identified as Ingersoll. Another shot thundered from the muzzle of the Barrett.
Piper saw Breslin’s form shift suddenly more erratically, and then it vanished.
A curse escaped Pike’s lips as he swept his scope across the small space where the figures had been just a moment before. The figure identified as Ingersoll remained, but Breslin was gone.
“I’ve lost him!” Pike shouted. He kept sweeping the area with his scope.
Piper leaned close to the monitor, trying to understand what had happened. When she looked closer, she expected to see Breslin’s prone figure, but he was completely missing. “Esker?” she said.
“Breslin is gone,” Esker said, his voice emotionless.
“Gone where?” Pike exclaimed.
Piper slumped. The distant echo of rapid automatic gunfire was fading away in the background. “It can only be one place,” she murmured.
Events unfolded all at once, as planned.
Pike didn’t know how to interpret Breslin’s paused form or the unexpected shout directed at the sky, but none of it mattered at that moment. He adjusted the scope’s targeting reticle by a few degrees to remove Breslin from immediate danger, then squeezed the trigger. The powerful .50 caliber rifle recoiled against his shoulder and the sheet of glass six feet beyond the table he was using as a bench shattered into confetti. The sound of the rifle’s discharge didn’t merely echo in the confines of the apartment—it filled the space. Even with his ear protection, Pike felt his ears pop from the percussive force.
Even though she knew it was coming, Piper nearly tipped over backward in her chair at the first rifle discharge. The nanotech permeating her body reacted instantly, dampening the sound of the blast to just one hundred and twenty-two decibels. She saw the reading appear in the corner of her HUD, though it was hardly a priority. Breath was still returning to her lungs when the rifle boomed a second time, then a third.
Piper’s eyes finally focused on her laptop screens once more, and she saw what appeared to be blazing light flashing from the barrels of Seger’s and Alley’s M134s. Unger had paused long enough to shift his muzzle as far left as possible. The automated system had engaged, and the door on the side of his van was reaching its fully open position. Flames seemed to ignite from the ends of his barrels when the door came to rest. Piper watched as the glass doors and windows in the ATG lobby across the street seemed to vaporize. The camera on top of the van was momentarily distorted by the sudden rocking shudder of the van on its suspension, but when the image adjusted, she noted the civilian at the edge of the frame was already several dozen yards out of danger, moving with inspired purpose.
The moment the order was given, the doors concealing Seger burst open. He opened fire across the three dozen yards of the empty loading dock, with his shots aimed at the freight elevator doors and the fifteen yards of concrete wall on either side of the stainless steel doors. The metal doors seemed to ripple like water during the first second of sustained fire. By the time the following second passed, the doors had simply vanished. Smoke billowed from the elevator shaft, and the nearby concrete walls crumbled as if made of sand.
The moment the command was given, the hatch at the rear of the SUV containing Alley swung open aggressively. Fire erupted from the barrel of her gun, aimed entirely at the bank of elevator doors forty yards away. Just as it was happening for Seger, the thin steel doors rippled and then seemed to vaporize into thin air.
Ingersoll stared wide-eyed at Breslin, struggling to make sense of the man’s strange reaction when the wall of glass twenty yards to his left shattered. He spun to the right just in time to see fist-sized shards of an inch-and-a-half thick material scatter across the floor fifteen feet inside the room. The gunshot blast struck the exterior of the remaining windows with enough force to flex them. His mind was beginning to register the imminent threat when the floor-to-ceiling pane at the opposite end of the view appeared to turn entirely to powder.
Breslin was on his knees, hands pressed to either side of his head, his mouth still agape. Though whoever was troubling him, Ingersoll understood that the attack from outside the building had yet to break through the force gripping his benefactor.
“Move now, or we’re screwed,” Ingersoll said, gripping Breslin under one arm and then the other. He pulled the man bodily to his feet as Breslin showed the first signs of returning to the moment.
“What?” Breslin groaned, struggling to stay on his feet as Ingersoll dragged him quickly across the room.
“Move your ass,” Ingersoll said as he shouldered through the doors leading farther into the building.
Behind him, Ingersoll heard shot after shot. He was barely aware of the oak-paneled walls at the back of the suite fracturing, breaking apart, and collapsing inward with each gunshot. His focus was primarily on the exit and, to a lesser extent, the fistful of the jacket he used to drag Breslin.
The pair face-planted and slid across the polished granite tile in the small lobby. Ingersoll tried to shuffle to his feet while also moving closer to the stone wall on one side of the space. He pressed the call button on the elevator, only vaguely aware of the metallic clank of the fire door swinging shut behind them.
Breslin was regaining his wits. He saw Ingersoll move to one wall and quickly retreated to the opposite wall, but when he got there, his legs tangled, and he fell awkwardly on his rear end.
“The button,” Ingersoll shouted over the blasting and crashing in the next room. He waved frantically, trying to redirect Breslin’s attention to the button that would summon an elevator to that side of the room.
Twisting, Breslin slapped the call button with the back of his hand. Ingersoll pressed his own call button once, or maybe twice—perhaps even a third time? The moment he did, the building seemed to shudder on its foundations. A concussive blast hammered the stone at his back. The pair of steel doors a few feet away bulged suddenly outward with a rending scream. A seam opened between the sliding doors in response to the warped metal. Smoke and debris shot from the gap, shooting out like shotgun pellets from both sides of the lobby as both sets of elevators were compromised at the same time.
Blinking through the dust, Ingersoll sensed water on his face. When he swiped at it, his finger came away smeared with crimson. A glance at Breslin brought clarity. The man had also been similarly speckled with particulate debris, and more than a half dozen minor abrasions on his face and hands were beginning to well with fresh blood.
Breslin opened his mouth to speak, yet no words came.
“The roof,” Ingersoll ordered, pointing to the unlabeled door in the corner. “We can’t go down. It’s easier to go up.”
Nodding, Breslin started pulling himself to his feet. “The helicopter!” he yelled. “We need to go—now!”
Leaning back from the rifle stock, Pike glanced at Piper’s screens just in time to see the rest of the team stop firing almost simultaneously.
“Exfiltration—now,” Piper commanded over the comm channel.
Pike watched as each of his people moved swiftly. They abandoned their positions and proceeded to their designated egress points without pause. Piper tapped a series of commands on her laptop, and single frames shot from above each weapon’s barrel replaced the camera feeds inside the van.
The visible end of the loading dock was no longer recognizable for what it had been. A cloud of pulverized concrete dust hung suspended in the air. Where there had once been elevator doors, now only a yawning, ragged gap remained in the crumbling wall.
The frame from the parking garage was nearly a duplicate. The only difference was that the deviation was limited to a small wall section due to the chain gun’s much more restricted range of motion. Devastation began about five feet above the floor and ended in a stump of the wall roughly a foot and a half above the ground. Pike was initially confused by this. Then he realized that while the gun couldn’t be adjusted vertically, the torrent of fire had been aimed at a downward angle when the SUV’s suspension or frame gave way to the devastating force of the weapon mounted on it. As the back of the truck sagged, the automatic fire struck the wall lower.
On the street outside the building, Unger’s fire was relatively short-lived. The exterior of the glass and brick building was much more delicate than the concrete and rebar used in the lower levels. As a result, Unger pumped just enough ammunition into the facade to vaporize the glass and crumble the nearby exterior walls. Sustaining fire like the rest of the team would only increase the risk of collateral damage, so while the others could open fire freely, Unger’s efforts aimed to immobilize this egress point as much as to contribute to the collective narrative. His position outside also necessitated him being the first team member to exfiltrate.
“Esker?” Piper said in a dull and distant voice to Pike’s troubled ears. “Assessment?”
“No fatalities,” Esker confirmed. “Breslin’s personal helicopter is taking off as we speak.”
Pike slumped in his stool. “Our turn to exfil,” he said, grabbing his bag from the floor. He glanced at her deserted workstation as he guided Piper across the room. “How can your friends be sure we didn’t hurt or kill anyone?”
“He’s been watching feeds from all over the building,” she explained as she pushed through the door and into the hall beyond. “One thousand two hundred and eleven cameras in that building. He can account for every single one of them. He wouldn’t have let us open fire if anyone was at risk.”
Pike was skeptical. The amount of support staff needed to conduct that analysis was beyond his comprehension. “Is Esker the name of a person or a team?” he asked without slowing his brisk walking pace. They were trying to clear the area without attracting undue attention.
Esker’s voice came over the channel. “I have eyes and ears everywhere,” he said simply. “I can say with one hundred percent certainty that only one person had any form of injury resulting from what just transpired.”
Piper faltered at Esker’s words. “Someone was hurt?”
“Only indirectly,” Esker clarified. “Billy Unger turned his ankle while clearing a brick wall seventy-five hundred yards from the ATU tower during his escape. It’s a minor injury and won’t affect his ability to clear the area before the deadline.”
Pike realized he had stopped in the middle of the hall while listening to Esker. “Is he for real?” he asked, glancing at Piper.
Piper waved Pike ahead and nodded. “Freaky, right?”
“Helicopter?” The word sounded foreign to Ingersoll. He blinked, bringing the room into focus. He was staring at a small metal knob sticking out of the wall, but that didn’t make sense. Another slow blink brought the situation into view. The metal protrusion wasn’t a knob; it was a fire suppression sprinkler head, and what he’d thought was the wall was actually the ceiling.
The elevator lobby churned with acrid smoke. Ingersoll glanced at the elevator doors. One was distorted in a convex bulge while the other had been torn back like the lid of a soup can. It was the explosion, he realized. It had knocked him off his feet. His ears rang, and his vision blurred in and out of focus. Blinking as if through glasses, he recalled wiping blood from his face just moments before.
“On your feet,” Breslin called from across the small lobby. He pressed one palm flat against the marble wall for support. “I’ll leave you,” he threatened.
The pinch of terror on Breslin’s face told Ingersoll everything he needed to know about their situation. He had never seen the man in such a state. Swallowing hard and tasting the tang of burning chemicals in the air, Ingersoll rolled onto his back and pushed against the floor as he tried to reach his feet.
At that moment, the door at the end of the lobby appeared to split as a fist-sized hole formed near the center. The faint sound echoed in Ingersoll’s mind as he sensed the impact of the passing ordinance. The marble wall at the far end of the space seemed to explode as if a sledgehammer struck it. A chunk of stone, as wide as Ingersoll was tall, tipped away from the wall, toppled, and shattered into gravel upon impact with the floor.
Breslin hurled himself against the nearest wall, his eyes wide and wild. The heel of his shoe slipped again as he whirled toward the stairway entrance. Ingersoll waved at the smoke and immediately grasped that Breslin would abandon him if he got to the helicopter first.
When Ingersoll blinked, Breslin had disappeared. The door to the roof access had never opened, and Breslin hadn’t made a sound. He was there one second, and a second later, he had simply vanished.
With a cough, Ingersoll fanned the rolling cloud of smoke before him. There was not a trace. Breslin had just vanished. The floor where he had been standing was littered with coin-sized stone fragments. Footprints were visible in the dust. His eyes followed them one step from where Breslin had stood, and then they, too, simply disappeared.
