The Society - Hunter Healer Part 17

"Jilssen?" A hard, old voice, smooth as silk over a steel table, slightly rasping. "Henrik?"

She shuddered, crouching behind the counter. She heard a tapping-a cane, a footstep, a cane.

Oh, my G.o.d. The image of the blind man's cane tapping, sweeping the floor, rose. No. Not again. Not again!

She absolutely could not endure another rape of her mind.

Rowan came up into an easy crouch, her head still well below the top of the counter. Her breathing evened out and she closed her eyes, seeking the stillness inside herself. She felt the static of another psion approaching.

Her breathing calmed, her pupils dilated, her hands stilled a little. She now knew what a trapped animal felt like when the hunter approaches the snare. She clutched the gla.s.s beaker so tightly her fingers ached.

It was the only weapon she had.

That and her mind. The freakish talent they wanted to breed her for.

Silence. The tapping footsteps stopped. Could he see the wreck of the chair and Jilssen's body? If he could...

"Why don't you come out, Miss Price?" The voice tugged gently at her, whispered comfort. "I don't blame you. Jilssen was a pervert. Why don't you come out and talk to me? I can make everything right."

Breed me like an animal, hunt me like an animal, and now you want to make everything right?There is no way this could ever be right, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, whoever you are. The borders of her mind were clear and strong, bolstered by the anger that even now filled her blood with a siren song of vengeance.

One more tapping step. She could almost hear the creaking of the cane. Then she heard another sound-the definite click of a hammer pulled back.

Come out so you can shoot me? How stupid do you think I am? On the other hand, here she was, captured by Sigma through her own stupidity. Her own weakness. Nevermind that it had been a compulsion. She should have been strong enough to resist it.

"Come out, Miss Price. We can discuss this like civilized beings. I know you are at heart a very calm, rational person." He sounded so sure of himself, so certain she could come creeping out like a stray dog to a food dish.

Oh, I'm calm and rational all right. But not now. You've pushed me too G.o.dd.a.m.n far. And all this time I thought it was Justin who was the dangerous one.

"Your psych profile indicates a high degree of compa.s.sion and empathy, probably a by-product of your rather unique gifts. We can offer you a chance to serve your country and be a legal citizen, as well as help others, Miss Price. Daniel Henderson and his ragtag little group can't offer you that." The voice pulled, tugged, sang, cajoled, enticed. It was easy to see what this man's psionic talent was. Rowan shut her eyes, leaning her forehead against the slick, cold plastic of a cabinet door. "They are, after all, only criminals. Offenders with warrants and prices on their heads."

Cath. Brew. Zeke. Henderson. Yoshi. She thought of them desperately-of Cath's fierce loyalty and irrepressible optimism, of Zeke's phlegmatic good sense and plain, unadorned love for Cath, of Brewster's quiet efficiency, and Yoshi's calm, practical endurance. And Henderson, who worried about them all, and for whom perfection wasn't good enough when the life of an operative was on the line. She thought of them in the dark tunnel beneath the wreck of the old Headquarters, thought of Brew pressing a bandage over her bleeding gunshot wound and hustling her to safety, of Cath driving with the windows down and her cigarette fuming, of Eleanor and her clutch of newbies, of Boomer's crusty exterior covering a heart softer than Rowan's own. And the children-little Bobby, little Elena, a whole collage of young-old faces. The kids Eleanor and Tamara had taken up north to get them away from Sigma, each one marked with a difference like Rowan's. Each one at risk of being bred like an animal or mindwiped by Zed.

"Come out, Miss Price." Another tapping step with the cane.

Last of all, she thought of Justin, of his eyes now awake and alive and hungry. Nothing I couldn't handle. They just slapped me around and strung me out on Zed. He'd said it so casually, as if he wasn't broken and bleeding inside, as if he wasn't afraid of opening himself up even for a moment because of the danger of someone hurting him again. That was what was so different about him this time, she realized. He held himself so tightly closed even she couldn't get in.

She opened her eyes wide, the world snapping into place, and took a deep, soft breath. Just as the man with the cane rounded the corner, pointing the 9mm at her, she rose to her feet smoothly and flung the gla.s.s beaker, striking at his mind as hard as she could at the same time.

The bullet zinged wide, his aim thrown off by the beaker flying at his head. Rowan followed, smacking into him hard enough to knock her own breath out, driving him back. Move in, get going, do it faster, faster, precise, put your weight behind it, sweetheart! Move! Her sock feet slid on the slick linoleum as she flung herself forward. He flinched, the beaker shattering somewhere behind him, and then he wentdown.

With his thin old wrist in her hand, she squeezed and twisted as his leg buckled, her knee sinking into his leg as they landed with a jolt. She tore at the gun, wrenching it free, and then she backhanded him and his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses flew off. He wore a white linen suit, and dead dark eyes glared at her from under a white buzz-cut. He fought her, but she got a knee in his ribs and the breath slammed out of him with a groaning huff. The gun reversed in her hand, and she suddenly remembered Brewster training her to use a firearm in the dim, long-ago time when she'd first joined the Society.

Squeeze, don't pull, love. His English accent made every word crisp. Squeeze nice and easy, and don't flinch. Good show.

Oh, G.o.d, her brain was imploding, memories colliding with each other, smashing and burning.

She had him on his belly, gun jammed against his temple, knee firmly in his back, his left arm twisted savagely behind him. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?" she whispered, through a throat gone raw and dead.

"Anton," he choked. "Richard Anton." He heaved and struggled. She dug her knee in and pushed forward, smacking his head into the linoleum. "Head of ... Operations ... f.u.c.k..."

"Colonel Anton." Her voice sounded strange even to herself. Strange, flat, uninflected. Just like Justin's.

Kill him, Rowan. Do it. Kill him.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. Eight pounds of pull on the trigger, Justin's voice said, from his own long-ago training of her. When you get to about six and a half, you better mean business. Don't go that far unless you're ready to kill, Ro.

The man below her was a psion. He struggled, his talent caught in her own sure grip, and she saw, suddenly, the twisted thing that lived in his flesh. He had also used his talent to hurt people, to torture them. Sigma was made in his image, and he was proud of his access to the corridors of power, proud as well of the extralegal status he enjoyed. Kidnapping and torturing psions was only the first step.

She also tasted the same mind that had built the defenses inside Jilssen's head, and sent him to the Society like a poisonous gift. If Jilssen was the traitor who had made the rape of Headquarters possible, here was the hand behind the traitor, the finger on each trigger that had killed and on each hypo of Zed.

Kill him, Rowan. He won't stop. He won't ever stop.

She choked on bile and rising rage, a fury so intense the world shaded with red in front of her staring eyes. Her finger tightened, tightened.

"Get it over with," he snarled. "There's a whole complex of armed guards and psions on alert out there.

You'll never get out. They'll catch you and pair you with a handler anyway, it's inevitable. Go ahead, Price. Pull the trigger."

Daddy. Her father's face, the chilling little gurgle as he died on the kitchen floor, in her arms, choking on his own blood. Shot by Sigs.

She gathered herself and reached.

The man under her bucked and screamed as she poured her rage into him, a twisting, barbed flood of agony and grief. She tore at the root of his talent, clawed at it, and yanked it up by the roots, burning it, cauterizing the open, festering sore of his psionic ability. He screamed again, the sound of a rabbit in atrap, and Rowan let him go, rising up on her knees. Her hand flashed down, the b.u.t.t of the pistol becoming a club. There was a solid chunk and he lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

"I'm better than you," she rasped. "I'm one of Henderson's Brigade, you sack of s.h.i.t."

She sagged over his slumping, unconscious body, her breath coming harsh and loud. Then she pushed herself up to her feet. Sock feet, no kitbag, and a whole installation to get through.

But at least she now had a gun.

She rifled his pockets, coming up with a wallet, seventy-three dollars in cash, a white plastic card with a magnetic strip-door card, she thought, just like in a Vegas hotel, let's hope they don't use retinal scans in here-and another clip of ammo for the gun. It was a good thing she had pockets in her jeans.

Her head throbbed with acid pain, and white-hot needles were bursting into her skull. She wiped at the wetness on her face-tears on her cheeks, and a hot thread of blood coming from her nose.

I'm a mess, she thought, and it was such a practical, despairing, everyday thought that she laughed until she cried, hunched over the unconscious, bleeding Colonel.

In the middle of her laughter, she got up and headed for the door. She was going to see if the magnetic card in her hand would open it.

If not, she would figure out something else .

Chapter Twenty-Six.

I cannot believe I am doing this. Del nodded, the gun pointed up, and Henderson slid around the corner and covered. The sage-brushed chill of a desert night touched Del's cheeks. They were just about to penetrate the second ring of buildings on the east side. Sigma Zero-Fifteen was being infiltrated successfully. So far.

The team had fortunately been right behind him, following the same signs to Rowan he had and monitoring him through the tracker Yosh had secreted in his kitbag. They were a little less than half an hour away when Del dialed in. After a short, crisp scolding from the old man, Del had gotten rid of the bodies and made the rendezvous, picking up the team in the Sig van and hitting the road. The information gleaned from the driver's broken mind told him that 511 was a cleanup team sent to wipe down the hotel room and head back to Zero-Fifteen in six to eight hours. It was a long drive that wasn't made any shorter by Del's inability to think of anything but Rowan. The mindwiped psion had been turned over to Eleanor, who would take him back to Headquarters and get him started on rehab. If there was anything salvageable in his broken, Zed-stained mind, they would try their d.a.m.ndest to save it.

Rowan could do it, if she gets out of here. Christ. Please be safe, angel. Please still be alive.

Everything had gone smooth as silk, the transponder on the Sig van getting them into the underground garage. Yoshi accessing the Sig intranet from the console in the van. Brew staying behind to help support Yosh and keep a weather eye on the parking lot. The complex was several concrete cubes and hangers tucked into the side of a mountain, a collage of underground labs and facilities burrowed into the rock that were virtually impenetrable. The back of Del's neck p.r.i.c.kled. It felt like a trap.

Cath followed them, Zeke lumbering silently in her wake. Boomer, carrying the plastic explosive, would peel away from them to visit the core, if they could infiltrate that deep. Blowing the power and security grid might give them enough time to get the h.e.l.l out of here. For a seat-of-the-pants plan to infiltrate the most secure Sig installation in the country, it wasn't half bad.

If they could pull it off.

Adrenaline lay copper against his tongue. They might even get in and out of here unseen.

Yeah. And next pigs will fly. Stay focused, Del.

"Stop," Yoshi's voice suddenly breathed in his ear through a comm-link held in with spirit gum. Everyone froze. "There's a sweep heading your way. Stay where you are."

Del heard them pa.s.s-footsteps and the snuffling of a tracker-psion. Zeke exhaled a slow, soft breath.

His imperviousness to psionic attack also generated a useful bit of psychic "static." It was that static footprint that allowed them to move without detection. Once Zeke went with the other half of the team to take out the grids, it was up to Del and Henderson not to trip any psychic alarms.

"Safe," Yoshi said. "Boomer, Cath, Zeke, your turn coming up. Move to your right at the next intersection, hug the left wall. Del, Henderson, straight ahead."

They moved out in waves, the team functioning precisely, like a well-oiled machine. If we pull this off ...

Christ, if we pull this off I might just start believing in miracles instead of percentages.

Cath, Zeke and Boomer peeled off and vanished at the next intersection. Del's gaze met Henderson's.

The old man nodded, his mouth pulled tight in a straight line. It hadn't even occurred to him to disbelieveDel's report. If Del had been Sigma they would have been trussed in a trap by now. It was an odd feeling, realizing how much Henderson implicitly trusted him. He never thought he'd be so grateful for such an unspoken a.s.sumption.

I owe him big. I owe him, and I'm not even nervous about owing him.

They slid into the building Yoshi had marked, a ma.s.sive concrete pile in four stories, ugly as sin but secure enough, Del supposed, inside the outer defenses. It took him forty-five seconds to get the maglock on the door to chuck open, and then they were swallowed by the building's maw. If Yoshi was right, Rowan was in here somewhere. Del just hoped she wasn't on an IV of Zed. He was fairly sure it wouldn't work on her, but with something like that you could never be sure enough. There were other procedures to break a psion, especially a female one. Rape, drugs, sleep deprivation, torture. Now there was an idea. Her capacity to heal would make her an ideal candidate for torture.

Stop thinking like that. Concentrate. Just be safe, Ro. Please, angel, just be safe.

"Stairs at your nine, Del. Zeke, tighten it up."

Delgado blinked and eased around another corner. Clear. Of course, all the mindwiped psions that weren't on chatscan, codestringing, or intra-security patrols with handlers would be locked securely in their cages, and the handlers would be catching some rest. Mission Control was on the other side of the complex, and that was where any activity was likely to be. Over here were the labs and training rooms, deserted at night except for the patrols Del and Henderson were eluding. If anyone in Control found their comm channel, things would get real ugly really quickly.

"Standby, Zeke. I'm initiating the code for the doors. Del, you're going to go down to the end of the hall, turn right, four doors on your left. That's the best pinpoint I have on her according to the listing here."

Yoshi's voice crackled. He sounded just as calm as ever. You couldn't tell he was navigating two teams at once through an unfamiliar complex on a console that might trip him up at any moment, working with an enemy computer system and stringing code by the seat of his pants.

Del nodded, forgetting Yosh couldn't see him except through the security cameras. Brew was probably doing the security trip-loops, jacked into the cameras and running safe footage through them to keep any other onlookers blind. Henderson covered another ghostly hallway, made sure it was deserted, and moved to the next cover position. It was agonizingly slow. All Del wanted to do was charge in, guns blazing, and drag her out.

As if the thought had summoned it, there was a sudden clattering racket around the corner at the end of the hall. The pops and zings of gunfire echoed suddenly against linoleum and metal doors. Del's heart started to hammer.

"Oh, s.h.i.t." Yoshi sighed. "Guys, Rowan's making a break for it and just ran across some armed guards.

Brew, take over with Zeke and Cath, on my mark, mark. Del, Henderson, get the f.u.c.k down, she's heading your way."

"Get down," Del mouthed, but Henderson was already in a crouch, his own comm-unit glinting in the dimness. Del found himself crouching too. There was no cover in the hall. They had to fall back.

"Ro's making a break for it." He felt compelled to say it, as if speaking made it more real. That means she's ambulatory, and thinking.

"Cheeky girl," Henderson mouthed, and pulled the hammer back on his automatic. "s.h.i.t."Del agreed wholeheartedly. They dropped back to the defensible intersection, Henderson behind a bank of stacked chairs, and Del crouched and melding with the shadows. Running feet, more gunfire, and a high agonized scream of pain. The empty hall, smelling of industrial floor-wax and human pain, echoed and rang eerily in the dark.

"Just hang tight, guys," Yoshi murmured. "She's not hit, not hit, not doing half bad. She just took out two guards, nice shot. Here she comes. Get ready. She's got four more guards after her."

Shouts echoed, and another scream, high and girlish.

G.o.d, I hope that's not her.

Then the cacophony tumbled nearer. "Guys? They're setting the detonators now. Get ready to move like a motherf.u.c.k." Yoshi's voice dropped to a murmur, the only audible sign of strain.

"Lovely," Del murmured.

"Always a pleasure," Henderson murmured back. He raised his gun, and Del's own automatic came up in a weirdly synchronized movement.

"Oh, wonderful." Yoshi sounded disgusted, and Del's pulse kicked up a notch. "The whole complex is starting to wake up. Can we move it along, please?"

And then, skidding around the corner, Rowan appeared. She dropped down, taking advantage of cover and aiming back around the corner, her pale hair glowing in the dim light. He heard her breathing come fast and light. She squeezed off two shots, reached into her pocket as she ejected the empty clip, and reloaded with blurring-fast fingers.

He couldn't have stopped himself if he'd tried. The connection blazed to life between them, his head suddenly thudding with pain and her fear singing between his veins. She hadn't been slammed with Zed or shaved yet. How had she gotten loose? He didn't f.u.c.king care. All he cared about was that she was alive, and he almost rocketed to his feet and ran for her. Rowan! Dammit, move back here. We've come to get you out.

She glanced around wildly, not seeing them. "Rowan!" He had to shout over the sound of running feet and the howling, which had taken on a weird animalistic quality that raised the fine hairs on his nape. She backed up, covering the intersection in front of her, her ribs flaring with deep, rough breaths. Moving too slowly. They would be on her soon. They were right behind her.

Her mind flooded his with pain and urgency. One clip left. Pick your shots, headshots if you can.

Remember, most gunfights end with a lot of noise and n.o.body getting hurt. Pick your shots. Take your time, her voice whispered in the middle of his brain. He could feel her head hurting, her feet bruised from slapping the floor, and the exhaustion weighing her down. She wasn't going to last much longer before making a fatal mistake.

He moved forward, sliding along the side of the hall. "What are you-" Henderson began, shocked at his breaking cover. It was the first time Del had ever heard the old man sound surprised in the middle of a job.

Rowan didn't whirl, but she stiffened and began backing up more quickly, a fast light shuffle.

"Come on!" Justin shouted. "Trust me, Rowan. Let's just get the f.u.c.k out of here!"

That did it. She whirled and ran for them, her hair a pale banner and her sock feet hitting so hard hewinced sympathetically. Then they had no time, because the trackers piled around the corner.

Human, but scrabbling on hands and feet like monkeys, the bald psions drooled and gibbered. Thin as scarecrows, their bodies moved in ways human joints weren't supposed to move. They howled as soon as they saw her, and streaked forward on thickly callused bare feet, their palms slapping the flooring.

Revulsion cramped Del's stomach. Training took over. He picked a target and squeezed the trigger.

There were three of them, Henderson picked off another. The third was rapidly drawing nearer, Del shot and missed.

G.o.ddammit.