The Terminals Read online

  “I get it, fine. A secret.” He looked away and down as he spoke. He hadn’t released my hand, and I was growing annoyed. “But I want to know who holds my daughter’s life in their hands.”

  “The children are my first responsibility, Governor,” I said. “Which is why I’d appreciate it if you would let go and let me do my job.” I kept my eyes steady, and his hold relaxed.

  “Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, and I could now see the strain he fought to mask behind his neat attire.

  Volt brought his radio to his mouth.

  “We move in sixty seconds,” he stated. “Rear units, maintain a perimeter. Do not enter.” He removed the radio. “I don’t want shots fired at our own shadows.”

  Doors slammed, and I caught the sound of safeties flicking off; lights screwed onto the bottom of gun barrels flared and trained on the building.

  “Sure you don’t want any armor, Colonel?” Volt asked.

  “Intel suggests that a bad case of tetanus is in there, Agent. Along with some sick kids.” I cast a look in Handso’s direction. “Last I heard, the target was prematurely terminated.”

  Volt snorted and started forward as dawn bled over the horizon. A team of agents stormed the office door, the ram breaking the lock. Others held ground at three truck bays. Lights zigzagged across the inside of grime-filmed windows as they searched the offices, and then shouted clear.

  I stepped through the threshold, not bothering to draw my weapon. Handso’s eyes widened, and he was quiet. Volt muttered hushed commands into his radio as they bypassed an office filled with desks, drafting tables, and scattered Styrofoam cups. Rusted rectangles on carpet left traces of where filing cabinets had once rested.

  I felt light and carefree, like I had stepped off the cliff, and although I still had to hit bottom, the decision was made and nothing I could do would change the outcome. Going into battle was being part of something larger. Truth be told, it was its own religious experience.

  No one tried the lights; instead the group funneled onto the factory floor. Antique behemoth machines hunched in three rows. The alleys between were crowded with massive steel shavings curled like a child’s hair ribbon. Gobs of shiny grease drooled from joints onto the concrete. Big Bertha was stenciled across the side of one extruder. A giant pipe, half-made, jutted from one end, a hollow, steel blank the other. How could a machine shape a hunk of metal? Volt nudged my elbow, pointing with the light attached to his gun barrel at the cow-patty of grease before my boot.

  “What?” I whispered, “You going to throw your cloak across it, too?” There was a twinkle in his eye that made me like him despite the retirement-track thinking. Come to think of it, I was on a retirement track as well, and just as eager to arrive.

  I acknowledged Volt’s wry grin and lifted my flashlight to trace the length of the chains. Overhead gantries ran across the warehouse ceiling, from which the heavy-link chains drooped down. Above the cranes, light struggled through a line of vents, but did little to illuminate the vast chamber. Beams flashed between the machines as the police scanned the area. Finally, a group of twenty gathered at a set of sliding aluminum doors. The older warehouse had been placed right next to the newer one, whose shiny siding reflected their flashlight beams. Volt ordered two men to take each door and slide it open. The other officers stood weapons drawn and tense, forming a half circle. My heart thumped in my throat, fingers dipping to my holster.

  The left-hand door slid with a high screech and opened a black hole into the warehouse. My nose hairs curled and several of the officers stepped back at the acrid smell billowing out. I breathed the fumes and covered my mouth with my sleeve. The lack of children’s cries was disheartening. I grew heavier, as though my boots were mired in globs of grease.

  My burn began to itch and then smolder. The pain flared, forcing me to turn away and grip my face. I gave a small, inadvertent cry. Handso cocked his head at me, but Volt was too focused on the mission to notice.

  Lights crosshatched the entry, and Volt gave the order to enter, following quickly after. The two men tasked with opening the right-hand door still shoved and jostled it back and forth, either intent on completing their orders, or happy to have the excuse not to enter.

  I took several steps to follow Volt but agony raced across my injury. The pain of my burn was overwhelming, and I couldn’t move deeper.

  “Stuck,” one officer said, and the other man bunched his shoulders, cracked his neck, and looked at the door as if it were a tackle dummy and he were trying out for a pro football team.

  I caught the gasps and swearing of the men inside, but the cause eluded me. I could only approach on an angle outside the doorway, my view impeded by the narrow opening and the darkness beyond it.

  A light ran across a tank. Sulfuric Acid. The beam played over pipes leading from the tank into a concrete basin.

  “Jesus, Mary, Peter and Paul,” Handso said. He stood halfway between the doors and the basin, which I couldn’t see into and he turned to me. “It’s too late.”

  The police officer continued to rattle and shake the door, trying to free it and I cast him a look of annoyance, about to give an order when I froze.

  A single skeletal hand reached out over the rim of the pool, like a drowning swimmer, hoping for help. In that brief moment, I had my first real proof that Attila had somehow gleaned information from a dead man.

  “No, look at the hand,” Volt replied, coughing between words. “That was an adult.”

  “It’s safe to come in now, Lieutenant Colonel,” Handso said.

  My mind whirled and I was back in the sands paralyzed by the same indecision that had struck then. Something was wrong and it was at the edge of my consciousness. If the children were not here, why had Hillar sent us?

  The officer tasked with opening the door charged it and collided with a great crack. For a moment, the door appeared to hold, but then it bumped over whatever stone or blockage had jammed it and ran smoothly on its rail.

  “No!” I gasped, realization of the trap dawning an instant too late.

  “There!” The officer grinned, dusting off his gloved hands. The door reached the end of the rail.

  A flash of light erupted from the centre of the basin, sending a wave of acid and bones over those surrounding it.

  Even at a distance, the heat sent clouds of vapor over me, and I took a single singeing breath as I dove. I landed blind and hard, rolling against the metal wall so hard it rattled with the impact. Training kicked in and I bounced to my hands and knees. With my eyes clenched shut and unable or unwilling to try for another breath, I could only crawl toward the boiling screams of the men. Acid sloshed and ran in rivulets across the concrete floor. My mouth puckered involuntarily at the sour taste.

  Officers and agents shouted about their eyes or to their gods. I braved opening mine. They ran blurry with tears. With the sting of the vapor on my face and the itching on my hands and knees where the acid had soaked through, panic for water surged in me so powerfully that it was impossible to think of anything else.

  Another lesser explosion cracked the concrete tank, and its contents streamed around my boots. The shrieking reached ever-higher pitches. My face burned aflame. I felt my contact lenses begin to adhere to my corneas. Cries for help and desperate radio calls propelled me to action.

  Every facility with acid would have a shower facility, and through my distorted vision I scanned the interior of the warehouse, my boots splashing through puddles, barely able to draw even short breaths in the fumes. My nose hairs curled and I doubted I’d ever smell again. The spray and cloud had even penetrated my clothes and everywhere itched.

  Just when panic took firm root in my mind, I caught sight of a calcium-encrusted showerhead beyond a stack of blue barrels. I shambled to it, the screams and moans of the officers were white noise. If I listened to them, I’d succumb to a memory of a day one month prior
, when the sun was high and the air unmoving and laden with pain. To listen would drive me mad.

  “Shower,” I called. “There’s a shower here!”

  The shower chugged when I pulled the release, counting several interminable seconds before producing water. I buried my face in the gush, the rattle of the pipes and insulating water as much a balm as the cleansing spray.

  After flushing my face in the cold water, and removing my contact lenses, I pulled off my soaked jacket, stripped to my undershirt, and held my gear over my mouth as I sought out the injured. Thrashing in a puddle of acid, a female officer arched her spine impossibly backward. Her face reddened as it blistered, her hands spreading acid even as she tried to wipe it away.

  “I’m going to help you,” I said and knelt. But when I touched her wrist she recoiled and rolled further into the acid over top of a ribcage that cracked beneath her weight.

  “Don’t touch me!” She fought, and I swatted at her helplessly, attempting to pacify her. Finally, I gave up, wrenched her arm behind her back and lifted her from the puddle. My hands and knees once again seared with acid, but there was nothing to be done. I ran her headlong into the shower. Once under the spray, the woman calmed, and I eased off on my grip. The officer sank to her knees and threaded her fingers behind her head as she sobbed.

  “It’s okay,” I told her and knew I was lying.

  Agent Volt struggled with a man who writhed on the ground, feet kicking out and head whipsawing against Volt’s hold. I ran to him.

  “Volt,” I called and snatched at the man’s flailing boot, feeling the skin of my palm tear beneath the leather.

  “He blocked it,” Volt said and coughed. “Blocked it from me.”

  Volt appeared to have missed the worst of the blast, but he fumbled dazedly with the man who was drenched.

  I grabbed Volt by the arm. “We have to get him to the shower.”

  Volt’s face remained blank and then suddenly roused. “The shower!”

  He caught the man’s wrist and held firm as the man hollered. I fell across the injured officer’s knees, landing upon him so that I could at last clutch an ankle, and together, we hauled him to the shower.

  Others had found it now, and they grudgingly made room for the new casualty.

  At some point the lights had flickered on and others in white masks rushed to help the injured. In the yellow glow, Volt’s cheeks had begun to pit and blister, but he stood by until every one of his people had had their chance and only then did he plunge his head under the shower’s cooling jet. I’d seen the look on his face before, on the faces of my own injured soldiers; it held the sting of betrayal, and it lingered over me, smoldering like the acid.

  Like the blood already on my hands.

  Chapter 16

  Charlie didn’t see Hillar move until it was too late.

  After Charlie sent the message through the crystal doorknob, he’d waited, hoping that he’d somehow receive word from Attila that the mission was accomplished. He couldn’t even be certain that time passed here in the same way it did in the lowest deep of Earth, but saw no reason why it wouldn’t. To mark the time, Charlie picked off approaching bone-bats. It became a game, fun even, and he’d wait until the last minute to blow them away. When the twentieth cloud of bone-bats disintegrated from Charlie’s shotgun blast, Hillar pounced.

  At first Charlie thought he was after the gun and turned to grip it in his armpit. But Hillar didn’t want the gun; Hillar snagged the leather strap that held the crystal doorknob about Charlie’s neck. With a jerk of Hillar’s wrist, the thong snapped. Charlie gave a strangled cry and lunged forward, but Hillar skated away, dancing back until his shoulders pressed up against the Archon’s teeth.

  “No!” Charlie called out, realizing what Hillar had done. Charlie had been a fool—if he could sense Hillar, then surely Hillar could have sensed Charlie following him. Hillar had set a trap, and Charlie had blundered into it. “Hillar has the crystal!”

  But Hillar loosed a great scream, which he held like a soprano holding a note, drowning out all else. As Charlie sprinted toward him, the lion that graced Hillar’s chest sprang against the skin, engulfed the crystal in its jaws and pulled it into himself. Hillar’s scream ended abruptly. He drew a deep breath, and shouted the very name of the Archon he’d bargained with Charlie to obtain.

  “ABRASAX!” As if losing his balance, Hillar mock-windmilled his arms.

  Charlie brought the shotgun around and fired into the lion-headed tattoo. A flash of blue at Charlie’s chest was quickly followed by blood at Hillar’s, and he toppled into the darkness beyond the mouth.

  The teeth were shut when Charlie slammed into them, and a bone-bat needled his shoulder. Almost unthinking, Charlie cocked the gun over his shoulder and blew the bat into non-existence. He plucked the barbed beak out and tossed it to the ground in disgust.

  If Hillar knew the name of the Archon, there could be only one reason why to trick Charlie. To add more bodies to his name, those of the kids, or whoever went on his wild goose chase. Charlie stopped and stared at his hands and forearms. They had thinned. Somehow, in the last several minutes, he’d shed pounds of muscle. The runes smudged. He recalled Attila’s warning about his sense of self reflecting here. It went both ways. Failure diminished him.

  “Attila!” Charlie’s enfeebled cry dwindled into silence. The crystal was an aid, but perhaps not a requirement. Maybe if he tried hard enough he could still warn the psychic. He thought of coffee and soul patches. “Attila, Hillar has the crystal, don’t listen to him!”

  The only sounds were the claps of thunderous explosions, the flapping of bone-bats, and languid breathing of the mouth at Charlie’s back. The longer he waited, the greater Hillar’s lead.

  “ABRASAX,” Charlie said. And the mouth rumbled. This close, he heard the fangs rasp over one another as they retracted. Gingerly, Charlie swung a withered leg over the lip, spared a look up at the looming stalactite-teeth and then entered the next deep.

  The pain was immediate. Like nothing he’d ever borne.

  Chapter 17

  I lay on my cot, staring at the ceiling and listening to my breath whistling from my nostrils. In my right hand was a four-inch Benchmade utility knife. I pressed the button on the grip, and the blade flicked open. My wrists gave a little twinge, as if responding to the memory of a similar edge parting their skin. In my left hand, I held a Beretta. My mouth and nose were raw from the acid.

  So tired. I wasn’t sure I could muster the effort to kill myself. My body kept wanting to sigh, but each time it tried, I broke into a fit of coughing. The acid vapor had seared my lungs. I lay still and let quiet tears slide past my temples. The burn ached, but it was a graze when compared to the suffering of the dozen men and women who had entered the pickling area. Handso had screamed, stripped nearly naked, and sprinted the length of the plant floor wearing only his body armor. Pulling and tearing off his clothes had spread the acid further over his body, causing skin to slough off as he removed his shirt and then his pants. In his desperate flight for water, metal shavings gouged crescents from his shins and thighs where he struck them. This man I’d mocked, I watched screaming, burning, bleeding …

  Knuckles rapped on the door to my cell, jarring me from my thoughts. The doorknob jostled and turned. Attila stuck his head through the crack, eyes roving over the knife and gun, and then he licked his lip.

  “Charlie?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “The general.”

  I looked away.

  “Those kids are still out there, even if Charlie isn’t.” He didn’t cross the threshold into the room.

  “This ever happen to you before?” I asked. “An agent just disappearing, AWOL?”

  “Usually it’s more gradual, a fading of the presence. I still feel the crystal, I just can’t reach him—or he can’t reach me. Listen, Christine. Sometimes … sometimes w
e fail.”

  “What do you think we should do?” I sat up and fingered the edge of the black blade.

  He stared at the knife as he entered.

  I tucked the gun into its holster and then closed the blade.

  “That’s what the general wants to talk about. What to do next.” Attila pointed at the picture on the table. “Your dog?”

  Julian was my German Shepherd. It was Fall in Vermont, the yellow of the leaves matching the yellow in his coat. I knew what the picture said about me, that I had no family, no lover, no one, not even Julian. My tears burned as they tracked down my face, seeming to hold residual acid.

  Attila sat on the bed and wrapped an arm about my shoulders. His thigh was warm against mine, and I smelled the coffee that clung to him. I relaxed as I once had while breathing the pungent pipe smoke of my grandfather. This close, Attila’s lips were full.

  “Julian,” I said. “His name was Julian.”

  “Nice.”

  “He was my boy.” I sighed and tried pulling back, but Attila didn’t and I was too tired to lever myself out of the depression I’d created in the mattress. “I … I gave him up when I received my deployment orders.”

  “I don’t have kids or anyone, either,” Attila said.

  “No family at all?” I coughed, but speaking seemed to help a little, my tongue a stiff muscle requiring exercise.

  “My mom,” he amended. “This is a tough business for getting close to people.”

  His arm tensed, but it only drew me tighter to him.

  “So you’ve said. How did you get here anyway?”

  He grimaced, still not ready to share.

  I pursed my lips and tried a new tact. “When I first joined the Army, I loved that I was accepted. I was more accepted in my first month at West Point than my entire life at home. It sounds unfair but it’s true. It makes it so much worse that I’m here. Worse still, I feel like I’m the general now. No outside life, secrets and service, increasing estrangement from civilians. It has become us and them, but there’s no us anymore.” I looked up at Attila, knowing that I was trying to push him to share by revealing myself, but still surprised at my disclosure. I held up my palm to him. “Your turn,” I said. “What’s the big secret?”