John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

“Can you fire an assault weapon?” he asked.

She gave him a look of irritation. “I’m a Marine.”

He tossed her the AK47. She caught it neatly. “Try to shoot down those drones. Or at least slow ’em down…”

He was already working on the PearcePhone, trying to break into the drone’s GPS.

Seline fired a short burst from the AK47 down the tunnel. “I think I disabled one of them,” she said. “The other’s pulling back a little…”

No luck with the GPS hack. Then he heard a voice, coming from his phone…

“You’re trying to break into the drone’s GPS control, right, Wolfe?”

He knew that voice, from the SmartHouse. It was Starling. He was talking in a snotty tech smugness way that had always irritated Wolfe. Starling was so proud of himself he said more than he should’ve:

“Yeah, I’ve pulled back for a little minute but the GPS hack won’t work down here anyway. Most GPS doesn’t work underground. There are systems that try but they’re too spotty.” A moment’s pause and then Starling added boastfully, “We use a combination of geomagnetics, downloaded information about infrastructure, and, of course, the camera on the drone. You see what does work down here is the transmitter we’ve dropped into one of the tunnels. And that transmitter is completely insulated from any possible hack. It’s bouncing signals from me to the drones, and back. So I can see what it sees. And tell it what to do.”

“That’s nice,” Wolfe said. “You’re a very impressive little boy. You’re not going to ‘sir yes sir’ me?”

There was a moment’s crackling hesitation. Then, “ No. You don’t deserve it. You’re not in authority over me.”

“We’ll see about that. If I can kill you, that’s authority enough for me. And that’s what I plan to do, Starling. You’re a traitor to this country.”

“I’m not a traitor! I’m going to help liberate this country. From people like you, Wolfe. You’re going down first…”

Seline was looking down the tunnel. “The drone’s coming back… the other one’s bumbling around like a bee in a jar.”

“Wait till it’s close and open up on the aggressive one,” Wolfe said. He was trying to find some way to hack into the camera on the drones… screw with what Starling was seeing.

But it turned out there wasn’t time for that.

Seline fired a long burst down the tunnel. Then the AK47 gave out an empty clicking sound. “You got another clip for this?”

“Nope,” Wolfe said.

“It’s still coming.” She threw the AK47 itself down the tunnel, to try to confuse the drone.

The drone fired at her, and she sucked air between her teeth. “Ouch.”

He looked at her. “You hit?”

“Just a small chunk of my shoulder. Flesh wound stuff. Didn’t think I was that exposed. Stupid.”

“There’re bandages in that backpack that…” He broke off, listening. A humming had drawn his attention to the other tunnel, running the opposite way.

“Seline—that tunnel…” He saw them then. “Two drones from that direction now.”

“We’re getting boxed in.”

Wolfe pulled out his .45, emptied the clip at a drone—it drew back a little but he could still see its small red running lights in the tunnel.

He ejected the clip from the .45, pulled another from his pocket, quickly slapped it in the gun and handed the weapon to her. “Use this one. We’re going to have to head in another direction.”

He swarmed up the manhole’s rungs as she opened fire at the drones.

“They’re slowing,” she called. “Doing some kind of evasive maneuver…”

The UAV’s returned fire.

“You hit?” Wolfe asked as he got to the manhole cover.

“No! But they’re moving in! We’re caught between them, Wolfe!”

Wolfe pushed up, hard, on the steel disk. The manhole cover just didn’t want to open. Probably it was rusted into place. He pressed harder yet, using his back and shoulders. He grunted with effort. The cover creaked.

“Oh Wolfe!” she yelled. “You got any ideas? They’re coming!”

He pressed with all his strength—and suddenly the manhole popped upward.

No time to see if the coast was clear. He shoved the steel cover out of the way, climbed up, clambered onto the street, immediately reaching down to Seline. “Come on, Seline! Up!”

She jumped to the rungs and climbed them—fast. Wolfe braced himself and caught her coat collar, lifting her up almost by the scruff of her neck.

The drones were coming into the manhole space below, tilting up to aim…

She scuttled clear of the manhole, just as the bullets cracked upward. Another split second and they’d have nailed her.

Wolfe and Seline got to their feet, Wolfe taking the .45 from her and reloading it. “Weather’s cleared up,” Wolfe remarked, as he reloaded the gun. Seline busied herself putting a bandage from the backpack over her shoulder wound. The wound was fairly bloody but not serious. She took the .44 out and put the pack back on, wincing.

Wolfe looked around. They were on a block of moderately small houses, some of them boarded over; some of the street’s houses were like insistent survivors, refusing to give up. There’d be a house that was badly deteriorated, even boarded over; then a house that was in good shape, with a neat lawn enclosed by a fence. He saw no Chunkies—not yet. In places along the gutter, thin deposits of snow gleamed…

Just across the street, an elderly black lady in a shapeless black coat stumped by on her walker. She looked suspiciously at Wolfe and Seline. Possibly it was the gun Seline had in her hand…

Wolfe smiled and waved to the elderly lady. She didn’t wave back.

More bullets, fired by a UAV, sang up out of the manhole. The elderly lady said, “Oh!” and tossed the walker aside, hurried off down the avenue, almost running. Wolfe used the tip of his boot to shove the cover back over the manhole. It clanged with another bullet, and spun like a coin about to fall flat—and then fell neatly back in place.

“They going to fly up out of there?” Seline asked.

“No. They can’t fit through. By now Starling is figuring that out and looking for another egress for the damn things. They’ll come after us again from some other direction. Come on!”

Wolfe took the gun back and reloaded it; she took out her own.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in our calling the police?” she asked, as they hurried down the road.

“Somebody’s probably calling the police right now. That old lady, I bet. But I heard on the phone hack—Tranter’s got some of his dirty cop pals posted around the area. They’re blocking it off. So they’ll probably tell dispatch that something’s going on here that isn’t going on here… and we wouldn’t get any help, anyway.”

“Okay but… you said yourself that not all Chicago PD is corrupt. Maybe we should try working with some of the stand-up cops.”

“Most of them are probably stand-up guys. But how do we decide which is which, Seline? Police records don’t prove anything. And if I try to call the cops here, Tranter’ll set me up to be arrested for some bullshit or other. They’ll take the phone Pearce gave me.” He shook his head. “When we get this file uploaded, NSA, Homeland Security, people like that will see it. We’ll look into getting in touch with them—when the moment is right. Maybe give them a clue about Purity. But even with that… I don’t know how far Purity’s tentacles extend. Or how many friends Van Ness has in homeland security… Who to trust there—that’s a hard call to make anywhere.”

He was studying the addresses as he spoke. One more block…