Robert Crane - Soulless

The gate hung off the front about four feet on either side, but it had bent badly upon impact and mangled it further. One of the guards was barking orders at another, but my hearing had suffered from the explosion and my ears were ringing enough that I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I watched three of them point in our direction, and I heard the whistle of gunshots over my head.

I reached down and drew my pistol, firing two quick shots, more to discourage them than anything; I wasn’t likely to hit them at this range. Something big moved to my left and I realized with a shock it was Scott, running across the road. He jumped, sliding down the embankment next to me and I was following him a second later, running away from the road, Reed just behind me.

By unspoken agreement, we cut a ninety degree path away from the road for a couple hundred yards before halting. None of us were breathing heavy, and I stopped to listen. Behind us, I could hear the shouts of guards; with our superior speed, we had left them behind. Also, I could have sworn there were some coming from our right, toward the perimeter fencing. “We need to head this way,” I said, pointing away from the fence.

“You don’t think maybe we should get out of here for now?” Reed’s head was swiveling around and suddenly his eyes widened. “Never mind, I hear it now. Guard squad coming from that direction.”

“Yeah,” I said. “If we’re gonna escape we’ll need to run parallel to the fence for a while. But I don’t want to try and get out of here until we know a little more about this place.”

“This place has some stiff security,” Reed said, pointing back the way we came. “That’s not just a sweep team; they don’t get armed with rocket launchers. This is a serious installation, and they clearly mean to keep whatever’s here protected. We may want to retreat and come back with more forces because with just the three of us, this could get really ugly.”

I heard the logic behind his words, knew he had a good point, but I heard Ariadne’s words echo in my head, about Omega and fighting blind, and as I thought about it, something occurred to me. “If M-Squad is stuck down in Kansas, our only backup will be human agents. Not good enough to assault this place without a lot of casualties.”

“Yeah,” Reed said, “but it would be us plus them. Right now, it’s just us.”

I thought hard about what he said. “But it’s our responsibility.”

He let out a long sigh. “I get the feeling you’ll be the death of me, Nealon.”

“There are worse reasons to go,” I said to him with a wink. He grimaced and I shrugged; guess I can’t pull it off like Charlie can.

“You got your gun?” I asked Scott, who stood behind me, looking dazed. He nodded, reaching under his jacket to pull out his Beretta. “You might be able to take them out at range with your powers; I can’t.”

“Gun’s gonna be more effective than a blast of water at the range we’re dealing with,” Scott said. “But they look like they’re carrying submachine guns and rifles, so they’ve got the advantage over us.”

“Yes, let’s all not get shot,” Reed said. “That sounds like a winning strategy.”

“I have a backup gun.” I looked at Reed. “Do you want it?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve never used one; I’d probably end up shooting one of you. Besides, I’m gonna see if I can make things a little more hostile in here for gunplay, maybe level the playing field.” He closed his eyes for a moment and the wind picked up around us, howling through the trees. I heard the branches stir and bend, and a strong gale nearly knocked me over. Reed’s eyes opened. “Sorry about that,” he said to me. “I can control it well enough if I’m paying full attention, but since we’re gonna be running, you might get hit by a few unintended breezes.”

The wind was roaring now, I heard branches cracking and falling through the forest, and the shouts of the guards were inaudible under the rushing of the tempest. “This way,” I said, struggling to be heard as we headed away from the fence. The rattling of the trees and force of the winds blowing past us was an absolute contradiction to the blue, sunny skies above us and the sweltering heat that pressed in as tightly as the countless turtleneck sweaters I’d worn since discovering my powers. It was almost otherworldly, being in the midst of a veritable hurricane in the middle of a hot summer’s day.

I could feel the sweat running down to the tip of my nose and rubbed it against my shoulder, trying to dry it. The heat was intense, the humidity drowning me. The beads of salty liquid were springing out on my forehead more from the weather than the exertion. The winds that Reed had stirred were hot, like the breath of hell itself was chasing us through the woods.

The smell of the greenery was carried on the wind. I could taste the salt from the sweat that was dripping onto my lips as we tore through the woods, three metas outpacing the humans that were pursuing us. I hoped that there weren’t any of our own kind hunting us; that would suck. A break in the trees ahead of me gave way to a view of a concrete wall. As we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wall was part of a sprawling building in front of us. It was two or three stories tall, though it was hard to tell because there were no windows. There was a loading dock to our left, pavement running all the way around it. To our right, a smooth, empty wall was unbroken by anything but a small, square vent cover.

“There,” I said, pointing to the vent cover. “Entry point.”

“So in we go?” Scott asked as the wind howled around us. “Maybe we should contact HQ and wait for reinforcements.”

“Whatever this Andromeda project is,” Reed said, “it’s sensitive. Omega will either evacuate it from here or destroy it by the time we get back. Hell, they may already have started to do so.” He wore the look of a man doing something he desperately didn’t want to. “This is it. We do it now or it’ll be gone.”

“I guess it’s now, then,” I said. “But we do this as a team and stick together, coordinating our attacks.”

Before they could respond, I heard the squeal of tires and a Jeep came to a halt about a hundred feet away from us, not far from the loading docks. I counted four guys that jumped out, every one of them carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The winds around us started to whip harder and I looked over at Reed, who was deep in concentration. Rather than powerful, straight line winds, I watched the dust on the pavement begin to swirl in circles, gathering power as it made its way toward the Jeep.

The twisting currents of wind formed a funnel cloud just in front of the Jeep, catching it and swirling it around within. I watched the vehicle buck and twist, hitting two of the men taking cover behind it, hard. One pitched over, blood splattering on the ground next to him. The other went flying, landing on his neck. The other two seemed to be holding onto the sides of the Jeep as it spun into the air, higher and higher, cresting at almost a hundred and fifty feet before the tornado dissipated and the car came crashing to the ground with joint screams from the men holding onto it. I didn’t watch.

I looked back to where it had landed and saw red on the pavement, then turned away and started toward the vent. I heard tires squealing in the distance and hesitated.

“Go!” Reed gave me a gentle push. “We’re committed now, we can’t go back!”

“At some point we have to deal with all this security,” I said, my feet pounding against the asphalt. “They’re not just gonna assume we left, they’re gonna keep looking until they find us.”

“Or until we kill every single one of them,” Scott said, exchanging a look with Reed. “And it seems like you don’t have much problem with that option.”