Daniel Suarez - Daemon

Grimacing from the pain in his eyes, the other team leader glanced around blindly and shouted, “Who’s shooting!”

“That’s not shooting!”

“Hooks!” A pause. “Where’s Hooks!”

“Get to cover and sound off! Sound off!”

Gragg moved toward the fallen men. He pointed and let loose with several seconds of deafening thunderclaps. Men crawled away screaming, only to be immobilized the moment the first bolt hit them.

In a few seconds they were all motionless or convulsing.

The sickening smell of burnt hair came to Gragg’s nostrils.

“What the hell just happened?” Philips stared at a bank of security monitors. The security command center was packed with Korr Security folks pointing at monitors and barking into radios.

The Major snapped his fingers at the control board operator. “Get on the horn to Weyburn Labs. Tell them we might be facing an illicit LIP-C weapon. I need countermeasures and tactics.”

Merritt watched the intruder on the monitor. “What’s an LIP-C weapon?”

“Laser-Induced Plasma Channel. Uses laser light as a virtual wire for electricity.”

“Where did he get it?”

“The Daemon appears to be dipping into our research pipeline.”

Philips turned on him. “Just how many sections of the intelligence apparatus have been compromised, Major?”

“Not now, Doctor. We’ve got men down.”

Ross, Merritt, and Philips stared at the large central monitor. There, the intruder was stepping among the fallen strike team members, sprawled on the floor of the gaming pit.

The Major barked at the board operator. “Seal zones three through six. Let’s contain this asshole.”

Another Korr officer spoke up. “I’ve got an identity on User 25: Michael Radcliffe. Grad student, MIT—”

The Major waved it aside. “That’s bullshit. Radcliffe’s probably dead.”

“Should we pump tear gas through the ventilation ducts, sir?”

“Use your brain. There’s a dozen gas masks in there with him.” The Major checked his watch. “Call in an electronic warfare team and a demolitions team. We need to jam this fucker’s uplink, then kill him.” He turned to nearby Korr officers. “I want commercially marked choppers over our twenty. Scramble the perimeter defense teams. Lethal force authorized. No one enters or leaves this facility until I say otherwise.”

“Understood, Major.”

Philips pushed up to him. “Major, we should try to take this man alive.”

“We’re not capturing anyone, Doctor. This situation is going to end right now, and whatever’s left is all yours.”

Ross pointed at the monitor. “He’s doing something.”

They all looked up.

The intruder was standing, moving his arms as though controlling invisible objects, his mouth moving in a rhythmic chant.

Gragg concentrated on the plane of D-Space. The entire floor plan of Building Twenty-Nine was replicated there, spread out around him as a life-sized wire-frame model overlaid on the GPS grid. It aligned precisely with the corners of each wall in the real world. This allowed Gragg to see the geometry of adjoining rooms. More importantly, images from the building’s dense network of security cameras were wrapped around the wire-frame model’s geometry, showing a patchwork of live video from those neighboring rooms—giving Gragg an almost X-ray vision through the dense concrete.

Korr personnel sprinted through the hallways, loading weapons and sealing doorways. They were ants in his ant colony. He had seen the strike teams getting ready all the way back in their locker room.

The garrison was in disarray.

Gragg turned to look far beyond the concrete walls of Building Twenty-Nine, to distant, glowing call-outs in D-Space. He selected dozens of virtual objects he’d stored there, then launched his prearranged summoning sequence, making somatic gestures and speaking the unlock code to the VOIP module. “ Andos ethran Kohlra Bethru . Lord of a million eyes, Loki summons you….”

Gragg looked through the sealed blast doors leading into the lab. The guards there had been pulled inside, but Gragg looked into the artificial dimension beyond them. He aimed his gloved finger at a virtual object in the lab, an object he had insinuated into the equipment collection some time ago. Gragg closed his fist on the object in D-Space.

Somewhere beyond those thick concrete walls a compressed air tank sprayed powdered aluminum across the lab space—then ignited it with an electrical spark. Suddenly the building shuddered, followed by a dull roar and the muted shrieks of twisting metal. A deafening klaxon sounded the alarm throughout the facility. Blue strobes flickered near the exits.

The Major scanned the security monitors as a dozen red lights blinked on a floor plan map. There. The lab was consumed in flames. The camera image rippled with interference, vertical hold skipping. One of the scientists ran through the picture, burning alive beneath white-hot flames. Sprinklers deployed to little effect.

“Goddamnit…”

“The science team. Get medics to the lab! And the equipment collection—”

“It’s too late….” Ross pointed to the monitor.

On-screen an acetylene tank was spinning in a pinwheel of flame near the lab table, then exploded, shaking the building again. The monitor image went dead.

Philips slumped and covered her eyes. “We just lost some of our best people, not to mention the Daemon equipment collection.”

Merritt grabbed The Major’s shoulder. “Where do you need me?”

“Sit tight, Merritt.” The Major looked back at Philips. “Are you still glad you conducted your little test, Doctor?”

“Without this test we never would have discovered we’d been infiltrated.”

Ross nodded. “ That’s why we weren’t able to join Daemon Factions. He was tracking our every move.”

The Major turned to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have been playing games with the Daemon in the first place.”

The board operator looked up again. “He’s not going anywhere, Major. The gaming pit is locked down.”

Gragg stood before the sealed bulletproof glass doors barring his exit. The camera-lined corridor beyond led to the building entry vestibule.

Gragg turned to face another D-Space object hovering just to the right of the glass doors. It was a surreal blue button, floating impossibly there as seen through his HUD glasses. It was labeled in large glowing letters: OPEN. Gragg tapped the virtual button with his gloved hand. It flashed.

The real-world ballistic glass doors slid open, and he stepped through the opening and entered the anteroom beyond.

Philips threw up her hands. “He’s out of the gaming pit.”

Ross gestured to the monitors. “The security system’s been compromised.”

“Who subcontracted that, I wonder?”

The Major gave her a look. “Stow that shit right now.” He turned to the board operator. “Physically cut the power to the north perimeter doors.”

The board operator rolled back in his chair. He opened an electrical panel on the back wall and started tripping breaker switches.

Philips leaned over the board and clicked from camera to camera. “Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, Doctor. He’s trapped.”

“That’s what you said last time. Show me.”

“We just tripped the breakers. The perimeter doors are frozen in a locked position. He’s not getting through inch-thick steel plating.”

She studied the bank of black-and-white monitors. The large one in the center now showed the intruder standing in a dead-end hallway some distance from the exterior steel doors. He stood above three newly fallen guards, their bodies smoking. The intruder was just staring up at the camera. Unnervingly calm. He was only a kid—early twenties at most.