Chapter 35
We entered the stairs to find three office workers cowering in the corner. I nearly shot one before I stopped myself. We then left them and started running up the stairs. Two levels above, an enforcer was looking down and spotted us.
“Two targets!” he yelled and then fired.
One of the office workers shrieked, and they cowered together. Talon and I were safe under the stairs, so the shots went wide.
Talon eyed me. “Well, we can either go down or up.”
Down might’ve been clear, but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way more than a few seconds. “Up it is.”
We climbed the stairs, hugging the outside wall, as quietly as we could to approach the squad. They knew we were coming, but they couldn’t see exactly where we were. We stopped directly below them.
After a few more seconds, they quit firing.
“Come out and put your weapons down,” someone ordered.
Talon glanced at me and made a shooting gesture toward the enforcers with his free hand. Then he did a countdown with his fingers.
Three… two… one.
We both jumped forward into the line of sight of the enforcers and fired.
With Talon’s skill and my Byte-enhanced skill, we hit two enforcers through their faceplates.
They’d been peering down. Others lunged forward to fire, and we jumped back.
With their body armor and numbers, we were at a disadvantage.
But we had one thing they didn’t have: desperation.
We entered the door next to us and sprinted across the floor to the other stairs.
The enforcers in there had been a level lower, and they knew we’d been on the floor where we’d left Andra and Tommy.
So when we entered that stairwell again, we did it as quietly as possible.
There were voices and bootsteps below, but they were a way down, so we started climbing the last twenty-three flights as quietly as possible.
I was glad to see no drones, and I realized that since Garris knew we could hack them, he probably didn’t bother with wasting resources.
My legs started to burn more at every floor we climbed after the first ten or so.
With five flights to go, Talon was panting as much as I was.
I couldn’t tell if Byte was blocking my pain receptors or not because my legs were feeling like dead weights after climbing twenty-three flights.
Finally, we reached the end of the stairs.
Talon and I looked at one another, then he opened the door.
Only it wouldn’t open. The screen to the left of the door read, Level One Authorization required.
Talon grumbled, took a step back, and began firing at the door handle… which did nothing.
“Well, shit. Kinda anticlimactic to come all this way and not get to finish,” he said in between breaths. He then bent over, placing his hands on his knees, and tried to slow his breathing.
I’d leaned against the wall.
Byte appeared before me, and I jumped. I want to try something. Place your right hand on the ID pad.
“Okay.” My fingertips tingled. The pad beeped and flashed red twice before flashing green. “Welcome, Dr. Katz.”
I raised a brow. “How’d you do that?”
I manipulated your fingertips based on the doctor’s biological data she had stored in her lab.
“Neat trick,” Talon said.
Being able to manipulate your body is just a side effect of our reconfiguration.
“Side effect? What was the main effect?” I asked.
So we can do what needs done.
“That’s not an answer.”
Yes, it is, and we don’t have time. We need to hurry. Reinforcements are on the way.
I muttered under my breath. Talon and I each drew our blasters, and I opened the door.
We stepped into a huge atrium that stood at least two stories high with a domed glass roof.
Offices lined the outer wall, and in the center of the atrium stood the huge computer system that linked every network on TerraSoft-11.
The control center was a massive white cylinder with a desktop and series of screens that wrapped around it.
There was a chair for every screen so a dozen people could work directly at the control center at any time.
Right now, there was just one man there, and he hadn’t noticed us yet.
The younger man was completely engrossed in his work.
Byte stood next to me and whispered, Use the keypad to lock all the doors.
To Talon, I nodded in the direction of the man, and he dipped his chin and started walking quietly toward him.
I placed my hand on the wall pad, but this time I didn’t feel my fingertips tingle. I casually wondered if I was always going to bear Dr. Katz’s fingerprints on my right hand now. The pad beeped, and I glanced back to see the man startle.
Talon smiled, raised his blaster, and tsked. “Move those hands away from the keyboard, and if I see even a twinkle in your eye that you’re accessing your amp, there’s going to be a shot that splits that unibrow of yours in half.”
The man whimpered, then yanked his hands back and tucked them under his armpits.
Seeing him secure, I turned back to see a menu, and I went through it and secured the atrium. I walked over to Talon and the tech.
The tech eyed me. “How’d you access the atrium’s system?” His jaw loosened. “You’re the one with my amp, aren’t you?”
“I don’t believe it was ever intended to be your amp,” I said. “Which is a good thing since you people seem to have no humanity whatsoever.”
The man snorted. “Humanity? What do you think we’re doing here? We’re advancing humanity to levels we could never achieve otherwise.”
Talon laughed. “Yep, there’s the good ole corporate speak I know and hate. Can I kill him now?”
The man’s eyes shot wide. “Wait! You don’t understand. I’m Roman Voss. I can get you out of here safely. Commander Garris will be here any second, and without me, you’ll both be dead.”
“Well, he’s probably right about one of those things.” Talon glanced at me. “We need to speed this up.”
Voss frowned. “What are you doing here?”
Byte took a seat at a screen a few down from Voss’s and gestured to the screen next to her.
There’s a direct input terminal at this station.
It’s designed to accept multiple input formats, but we just need to be able to connect with metal.
It’ll be far more efficient and less torturous than watching you type.
“That’s not nice,” I said without thinking.
“What’s not—you’re talking to your amp right now? Why aren’t your eyes changing color?” Voss asked.
I ignored him as I walked by and took a seat.
“What are you doing here?” Voss asked more fervently. He started to look itchy.
“We are going to burn Softbiotics’ stock to the ground, my friend,” Talon said in a way that made Voss sound like anything but his friend.
Voss looked terrified now. “What? No, you can’t do that! Softbiotics owns this planet. We employ millions.”
“And you imprison and kill thousands,” I said as I looked for the pad.
“We don’t—” Voss began, but Talon raised his blaster, and Voss gulped. “I mean, we use criminals for testing new products, but that’s just a part of doing business. Every corporation does it. If we’re not constantly improving our products, we’re stagnating.”
“That’s not very humane,” I said dryly.
“Humane? That’s business!” he said. “Everything’s about the bottom line. Whatever you need, I can help you. My mother?—”
Talon shot him.
I jerked, surprised. “What the hell, Talon? Why’d you kill him? He was just a tech—he wasn’t armed.”
Talon shook his head. “Because that tech was TerraSoft-11’s chief engineer. He’s numero uno in the corporation in this system.”
I leaned back in my chair and gaped at the younger man staring at nothing. He looked like any tech—nothing particularly evil or even special about him. Yet, this man was responsible for torturing Nolan. Images of the last time I saw my friend blinded me for a moment. “The projects…”
“Yeah, they were all his pet projects.”
I glanced at Talon. “He deserved worse than a shot to the head.”
“That he did, but we’re too short on time to deliver what he really deserved.”
I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have shot him. We could’ve questioned him,” I said.
“Could’ve, but torturing is a path I don’t want you to go down, my friend.”
I clenched my jaw, refocused, and found the panel below the keyboard. I opened the cover to reveal a series of ports, all outlined in silver. I was about to touch it when the glass above our heads shattered and forty enforcers, in full body armor, dropped down.