In the silence that followed, Aiden could only hear a faint ringing in his ears, like a bell being struck very far away.
His body felt unnaturally heavy, like he was lying underneath a giant, weighted blanket. He sat up slowly, forcefully, his back grinding against rock. As he levered himself up, chunks of masonry slid off him. When his vision cleared, Aiden almost couldn’t believe his eyes.
There was a gigantic hole where the corridor wall had been. Cold breeze whistled through in a low, continuous wail. Luckily, the detonation had only thrown Aiden to the side, farther down the hallway.
Aiden coughed in the dusty air. Something warm and wet dribbled down his face. He put a hand to the side of his head, and it came away bloody. A cut, he surmised, but upon feeling around the wound it wasn’t very deep. Nothing in him seemed broken, at least.
He looked around. The body of the Javison imposter was sprawled on a pile of rubble in the middle of the hole. The young, round-faced bodyguard was gone, and in his place was a dark-haired man with leathery skin. His clothes were seared away by the explosion that had killed him. His head was crooked in Aiden’s direction, his black-lipped mouth ajar.
A shiver went through Aiden as he gazed upon the dead man. He had never seen anything like him, not even in the bum-filled streets in downtown. This man’s milky eyes stared back at him, glassy and unseeing. Was he blind? If so, he must have been tracking Aiden by smell and hearing alone, a feat that was even more unsettling.
Auxy interrupted his daze. You have to get out of the building. It is entirely possible the roof might collapse on top of —
“Ouch!” A sharp pain lanced through Aiden’s skull, pulsing underneath the titanium-urion plate in his forehead.
What’s wrong, are you —
Again, pain arrowed from one side of his head to the other. “Auxy, shut up! Your functions are fucking with me here.” Maybe his cyberware was damaged after all. “Take the backseat for now. Automate what you can and give me control over everything. No conscious feedback.”
Auxy didn’t reply; it understood. “Temporary RA deactivate,” commanded Aiden heavily through the aching of his skull. “Reactivate upon…upon manual instruction.”
Orange light was flickering delicately over the walls. One hand crossed gingerly over his bruised ribs, Aiden hobbled over to one of the few unbroken windows that were now clear and untinted.
What he saw nearly caused his heart to stop.
The walls surrounding Huang Mansion were ablaze, fire dancing hypnotically in the cold night air. Craters were punched through the reinforced titanium-and-ziv-crete walls in random internals like holes in Swiss cheese, exposing the empty sockets of defunct laser-locks.
The guard towers were blackened stumps on either side of the gate, which was busted completely, the wrought-iron metal twisted and wrenched aside.
Aiden quickly deduced what had flattened it. Several colossal, armored assault trucks were arranged in a diamond formation on the wide-spaced driveway. People in black tactical armor poured out from the carriers and crouched down at a safe distance, guns aimed right at the front of the mansion.
Aiden involuntarily ducked below the window, his heart beating fast. All at once, it hit him. If someone had the right protocols, they could trigger a system reboot as per usual, with one major difference: instead of unsealing the mansion, they could shut everything down. Whoever had hacked the system had put the mansion in a lockdown state for a fake emergency — a missile strike, for instance — and then in an instant, took all the house’s fortifications away. Just in time to blow it up.
That’s why the windows had been blocked, and why he hadn’t been able to see or hear anything before the explosion.
But if they had lowered all the house defenses, why weren’t they shooting now?
Aiden peeked through the window again. Off to the side, a squad of soldiers was frog-marching a group of unarmored people, forcing them to the ground. Aiden squinted. The people kneeling were…
His breath caught in his throat. It was impossible to mistake the tall height of McCourt. Next to him was a plump, womanly figure and several other people in machine-uniforms. It couldn’t be…?
One of the men in tactical armor strode over to the kneeling house staff, holstered his pistol, and bent down until his face was close to McCourt’s.
Aiden needed to hear what they were saying. He frantically scanned the large circular driveway. The fire had spread to the front lawn so that now the entire front side of the compound was limned in flame. It swallowed up the grass, the blaze cutting a swathe across the greenery before stopping at the wide, rectangular, cement walkways.
That was it. There were statues on those walkways made of stone and metal, each one containing security cameras with sound and video. They operated separately from the house’s internal mainframe, and if they hadn’t been deactivated in the initial assault, maybe he could use them to listen in.
“Auxy,” whispered Aiden. “Access the security camera in the cherub statue closest to McCourt. Give me audio. Video too, if you can.”
Aiden felt his cyberware humming as Auxy worked in the background, establishing a direct neural-link between Aiden’s mind and the statue-camera he had pointed out. The Ether wasn’t required to connect, a fact for which Aiden was grateful. The year before, he had obtained the security access codes from a paper list left out by one of the more Luddite mechanics that had upgraded the cameras. They had never really come in handy, until now.
Another brief ache in Aiden’s head, and then a twangy, Southern-accented voice popped into earshot
“— so what’ll it be, buddy?”
One man in tactical armor was standing with his arms folded in front of the line of kneeling security staff. The audio was muffled somewhat by the crackling of flames, but otherwise it was clear. Aiden sidled up to the window so only one sliver of his head was visible.
“Who are you?” said McCourt, his voice raspy.
“I’m the guy that will kill every last one of your precious staff until you disable the rest of the defense systems on the property.” The man placed his hands on his hips, eyeing McCourt like a disappointed schoolmaster chastising his pupil. “I know you have the authority, and I’d prefer spending no more of my men’s lives before the hard part of the night is over.”
For the first time, Aiden noticed the carnage strewn across the area of lawn closest to the house. He’d been distracted by the fire, but now he saw the bloodied remains of more black-clad soldiers, chewed up by the machine guns nested within the mansion walls.
“I have authority, but not control,” said McCourt slowly, his head bowed. “Only the head of security has that.”
“Saffran, huh?” The man whistled. “Ahh well, my guess is he would be indisposed at the moment — which means you’re the next batter-up, boy.”
“I just told you —”
“Emergency services have been told first responders are already on-site,” the man said. “And this entire property is cloaked by an imago-sphere. You’re all the way up in these hills, cut off from the main city. Whatever stalling tactic you’re tryin’ to pull, it ain’t worth my time.”
McCourt stared back at the man, stiff-backed. “Whoever you are, whoever is paying you, it won’t be enough to protect you from the family you’re attacking.”
“Oh, we’ve already taken good care of Mr. and Mrs. Huang. A shame, really — they seemed like good folks. But a job’s a job, and I’m doing mine.”
“I don’t believe you understand me,” said McCourt coldly. “They will retaliate with every resource at their disposal. Every surveillance sphere they can buy, every hired gun — and that’s only if I don’t kill you myself.”
“Oh, my word,” said the man in mock astonishment. “That hurts. I’m a fan, you know. When they said I’d be going up against you — I mean, you! First Lieutenant Franklin McCourt! The Bull of the 57th Borough, who single-handedly brought down the Four Horsemen Mafia. ‘He’s just private security now,’ they said, but you bet I still made preparations. Yet what do I see when I arrive? Y’all kicking back with a pot of red soup, too dumb to understand why the force-field was gone, and too slow to realize that most of your security systems were compromised.”
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The man turned to the plump figure beside McCourt, and with a jolt of surprise Aiden recognized her to be Miriam, the head cook. She was crying softly.
“Still, your reputation precedes you, old man. I don’t know you, personally, but I know you’re loyal to your men and women. Now, there are specifications to my mission I need to abide by, and shooting rockets at this beautiful house ain’t one of ‘em. Help me out here, willya? Help your staff. Turn off those guns in the house walls.”
McCourt looked the man square in the eye. “I cannot help you, sir.”
The man stared at him, then snorted. “So be it.” He gestured to the other soldiers. “Hold the woman down.”
Miriam began to scream. The soldiers grabbed her roughly and threw her onto her back, stretching out her limbs in all four directions.
“What was your name again, sweetheart?” said the man loudly. “Miriam Shen? Well, Miriam, you can thank Franklin McCourt for this.”
In one swift movement, he lifted a boot and stomped hard on Miriam’s outstretched knee. Her leg snapped backwards, the tip of her foot levering up at an unnatural angle. Miriam shrieked, writhing in agony, but the soldiers kept her down with iron grips.
McCourt roared in anger and attempted to stand, but a soldier clubbed him with the butt of his rifle. One of the captive security guards was bowing her head, weeping uncontrollably. The others looked on in silent horror.
Over Miriam’s wails, the man continued, “She’s got a leg and two more arms, Franklin McCourt. Count ‘em up.”
“You son of a bitch!” shouted McCourt. “Leave her alone!”
“One more time! Turn off the turrets, Franklin McCourt.”
“I can’t,” said McCourt hoarsely. “I won’t.”
“Suit yourself.” The man brought his boot down on Miriam’s other leg. The snap was louder this time, like the crack of dry wood. Miriam’s screams reached a higher pitch.
Crouched at the window, Aiden watched in horrified shock. One of his hands was gripping his thigh in an attempt to keep it from shaking, the other stuffed into his mouth to keep himself from crying out.
“Two for two!” The man stepped over Miriam’s writhing body and nudged one of her arms with his boot. “Shall we go for another?”
McCourt was shouting curses at him, his voice carrying over the whip and crackle of flames. One of the soldiers struck him across the face with an armored fist, silencing him.
“You’re probably thinking: ‘Why should I tell him anything?’” said the man philosophically. “‘He’ll kill us all.’ And you’re absolutely right, Franklin McCourt. You’re all gonna die soon. The choice you have to make is whether it will be quick, or whether it’ll be painful…”
He lifted his boot once again, aiming for Miriam’s locked-out elbow.
Suddenly, a crack of a rifle echoed across the courtyard, and the air around the man sizzled blue. Aiden spotted a flicker of motion as the bullet clinked harmlessly to the ground, blocked by an energy shield.
The man looked up towards the mansion roof. “Really? That’s what you were holding out for?” He pressed a finger to his temple. “Identify.”
A flash of gunfire came from the rear of one of the armored trucks. Something thumped overhead, and then a body in a machine-uniform plummeted down to Aiden’s left. There was a sickening thud as it landed somewhere in the foyer.
The man glanced at McCourt. “Last chance, mister.”
McCourt’s head was bowed, one side of his face swelling from the blow he’d received.
Past bloodied lips, he said feebly, “Go to hell.”
The man sighed, looking down at Miriam, who was sobbing quietly. “Doggone it, Franklin McCourt, I wish you’d done better than that. Makes me sad to see what you’ve become, y’know? Guess it’s true what they say — never meet your heroes.”
He drew his pistol and shot Miriam in the head. Then before McCourt could react, the man shot him in the throat.
Transfixed by horror, Aiden could only watch as one of the soldiers used his boot to topple McCourt onto his side, gurgling, as blood pumped out his neck and pooled beneath him.
The man with the Southern accent stepped over Miriam’s motionless corpse and addressed his assembled soldiers. In the glow of the fire, Aiden could see that his hair was a light shade of brown, but it was too far away to see what he looked like.
“The night’s getting old!” declared the man. “Burn ‘em all.”
At this, the rest of the subdued wall guards moaned in terror. Some began shouting in desperation, pleading with the soldiers to wait, just wait, they didn’t want to do this…
The soldiers that had been holding them marched away, joining the offensive line facing the mansion. Several more soldiers approached the kneeling captives wielding compact, rod-like guns with cables winding up and down their length.
“Oh my God!” wailed one of the mansion wall guards, her voice going in and out with fear. “Oh my God — oh my God — oh my Goooood…!”
One man staggered to his feet, his arms still bound behind him, and began to run.
By unspoken signal, the soldiers unleashed jet-like streams of fire, engulfing the people whole. Their dying screams laced under the thunderous roar of the flames.
Aiden squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. “Turn it off!” he said, gritting his teeth. “Auxy, turn it off!”
The audio was cut, but the guards’ screams were loud enough to carry across the courtyard. In minutes, their cries petered out, and the flames receded, smoldering down to reveal charred corpses strewn across the blackened lawn.
Aiden struggled to control his breathing; he was feeling so light-headed that it was superseding his nausea. He peeked out the window again. The man in tactical armor was relaying commands to his men. More and more of them spread out, their guns up.
At another unspoken signal, a trio of soldiers hurried forward, hefting sleek-looking rocket launchers over their shoulders.
Aiming directly at the center of the mansion.
Aiden was hurtling down the corridor for his room just as they fired, diving for the open doorway of his room. The walls behind him were obliterated in a hailstorm of force and fire. The floor beneath him let out a terrifying groan and tilted crazily. He leapt to his window, scrabbling for purchase, but a hole opened up beneath him, and then he fell with the rest of his crumbling room, landing heavily on something flat and hard.
He looked up just in time to see his bed dropping towards him, and he rolled to the side, hearing the bedframe burst apart with an ear-splitting crack.
Somewhere outside, gunfire erupted from the automated turrets as the soldiers advanced within firing range. Indistinct yells came in muffled spurts. There were screams of pain.
Aiden staggered upright, getting his bearings. He’d landed on the crystal-topped dining table where he, McCourt, Miriam, and the other house staff had shared red bean soup just hours before…
Gorge rose up in his throat as the images of McCourt and Miriam’s corpses flashed in his mind’s-eye. The smell of burning flesh seemed to swirl about him in a suffocating cloud, and Aiden had to suppress the urge to vomit.
Don’t think about them, he told himself. Get out of here. Find Tancy.
The remnants of his room were cluttered about: smashed monitors, his broken desk, the splintered bookshelf. In the wreckage, he spotted the dully gleaming exterior of ziv-metal composite. Tancy’s survival pack! He grabbed it and slung it over his shoulders.
He tried his net-messaging again, but came up against the same error code. Stumbling out into another hallway, Aiden made a beeline for the main stairwell. The walls bowed and shook, dust cascading from the ceilings. He hurried through the marble entrance hall and began climbing the main stairwell as fast as he could. He had no idea if the rest of the stairway would be intact at the upper levels, but he had to try and reach Tancy’s room before the killers outside did.
Just as he reached another landing on the staircase, somebody grabbed his shoulder.
Aiden yelled, lashing out instinctively with his electric wrist gauntlet, but he was pinned violently to the wall.
“Quiet!” the man hissed. It was Burt. Relief flooded through Aiden, and he felt like crying.
“Thank God, Burt, you scared the shit out of —”
“Are you hurt? Where’s Tancy?” Not waiting for a reply, Burt briefly examined Aiden’s head wound before grabbing him by the arm. “We need to move. The turrets won’t hold out. It sounds like they’re using some heavy-duty ordinance.”
“Burt, they killed everyone out there! McCourt, Miriam, and the rest of them — burned alive!”
“What?” said Burt, but he didn’t stop, steering Aiden up the stairs. “How do you know?”
“I saw it from my room! The third floor! They killed them all and then shot missiles. And there was somebody disguising themselves as Javison that tried to kill me, too. I have no idea who he was, I think he was blind, but it was like he could see perfectly anyway, and —”
Burt came to a halt and grabbed Aiden by the shoulders. “Hey, hey — calm down, we’ll debrief later. Priority one is getting you and Tancy off the X. We need to get her and get one of the cars from the underground garage. Whoever these guys are, they’re jamming comms, stopping us from calling borough police.”
“But what about McCourt and Miriam? You can’t just leave them out there. Where’s the rest of security?””
“They’re consolidating our defenses. We should have had roof coverage, too, but if the turrets are activated, that means there’s more of them than can be handled by the snipers.”
As Aiden’s relief faded, suspicion rose. “And where were you?”
“After the house systems went back online, the door to the in-house guard quarters were unresponsive,” said Burt flatly, his tone betraying note of frustration. “We had to torch our way out.”
Aiden came to a sudden halt.
Burt stopped as well. “What are you doing?”
“Where’s Susan?”
“We got separated in an ambush on the southern perimeter. She’s marshalling our remaining forces there and will meet us at Tancy’s room when she can.”
“You still haven’t explained why it took you so long to find me.” The image of Javison’s imposter was fresh in his memory; he wasn’t about to be taken by surprise again.
“Aiden, this is not the time.”
“How do I know it’s really you? How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“Clearly I’m not. Come on.” Burt reached for him.
Aiden backed away, breathing heavily. “Touch me again and I manually activate my anti-bio field.”
“How do you want me to prove myself?” said Burt hotly. “A detailed analysis of sample DNA? Photo ID? Both can be forged. I’m your babysitter, you said it yourself. What exactly do you need me to prove that I have to keep you alive?”
Another detonation rocked the house. One of Aiden’s hands was still trembling, and he grabbed his pants leg again to keep it still.
“Tell me...tell me what I was doing in my room before I went to sleep tonight.”
Burt stared at him. In an almost deliriously sarcastic tone, he said, “Assuming you don’t mean anything too personal…”
“Just tell me!”
Burt sighed angrily. “Tancy said something about you watching TV. If I had to bet, it would be ziv-ball. Probably the internationals match. Are you satisfied?”
Aiden warily lowered his hand. The wrist gauntlet retracted, the skin panel resealing. He suddenly felt exhausted, listless — even as gunfire chattered outside and explosions boomed.
“Okay. Yeah.”
Burt’s face softened. He knelt in front of him. “I need you to stick close to me now, so I’ll ask you again: will you do everything I tell you to do?”
Aiden looked into Burt’s keen, dark brown eyes. He took a deep breath.
“I will,” he said.