Jak Koke - Stranger souls

Jane felt the rain, smelled the cigarette smoke. Everything was so real. "I'm in the middle of a run," she said. "Please let me return to my friends. They're counting on me."

Alice smiled, the firefly street reflecting in her eyes like an endless reduction of mirrored images. "I have determined how you can repay me," she said. "I will explain, briefly, then I will let you go."

Even if Jane had a choice in the matter, she never let a debt go unpaid. "I'm listening," she said.

"Go, go!" Axler yelled, her voice ripped to hollow tatters under the deafening rush of the helo's rotor.

Ryan let himself fall through the night air, so fast he was pushing the edge of control as he free-rappelled down the nylon rope hanging out of the hovering helicopter. He watched Axler's black-streaked face grow smaller as he slid down, his gloved hands growing hot as he channeled the rope through his harness at a furious pace.

The sky was a splotched charcoal underbelly behind the 'copter, as Ryan caught a glimpse of Axler descending her rope just above him. She wore the same gray and black-spotted camouflage that covered Ryan, with semi-flexible Kevlar body armor underneath. The silhouette of a rucksack bulged on her back, its smooth surface broken by the sharp jutting of her Ares Alpha Combat gun, her favorite weapon-an automatic assault rifle and grenade launcher in one.

Ryan snapped his focus back on himself, using his magically enhanced strength and senses to drop into the arboretum trees below. And in seconds, he was down, unbuckling the harness from the rope. Crouching, blending into the surrounding cover. He made a quick scan of the terrain from down here even though he had done the same from above.

Nothing thermal, nothing visual. And nothing in the astral except bushes and trees and brambles.

Axler landed deftly next to him and scanned the area herself. Her subvocalization sounded like a deep whisper in his ear. "Condition?"

Ryan subvocalized into the pickup taped to his throat. "Green. Let's go."

He caught Axler* s nod in the darkness, and followed her as she led the way through the trees. They sneaked along the river, darting from copse to thicket until they had gone about two kilometers. There were paved paths for bicycles, and foot bridges for pedestrians. There were birds and wildlife and lots of plants. Amazing for the center of a fragging city. Of course, this was Tir Tairngire. The elves were notorious for their adamant protection of nature.

In this case, it worked in Ryan's favor. He and Axler closed to within thirty meters of the outer fence of the Atlantean Foundation building before they had to stop. The physical movement felt great after the long, uneventful ride in the helicopter. The Tir border patrol didn't even hiccup when they'd come across near La Grande earlier that afternoon.

"I don't like it," Axler said. "Jane's been out of touch too long."

"We wait?"

Axler nodded. "Give her five minutes," she said.

Ryan sat on his heels and looked at the building. A three-meter-tall cyclone fence marked the perimeter of the facility. Monowire looped along the top, and inside those loops cameras and electric pulse generators were placed at twenty-meter intervals. A solid inner wall of painted cinderblock ran parallel to the fence. The building itself stood a few meters inside the wall. This was not going to be easy.

Ryan focused himself. Centering. After a minute he looked into the astral. The building's aura glowed in fuzzy reds and greens, like a defocused Christmas tree. The high background energy made it harder for Ryan to locate the watcher spirits, but after a few minutes of concentration, he thought he'd spotted them all. Two tiny spirits that looked like floating eyeballs hovered just above the inner wall, waiting for intruders.

Ryan couldn't see any elementals or nature spirits, but he did catch a glimpse of one of the hell hounds. The paranimal was larger than a normal dog, about twice the size of a wolf, but with red eyes, and acutely aware of both the physical and astral planes at the same time. It ran along a worn path inside the outer fence, trotting past as it burned off nervous energy.

The hound stopped just then, sniffing the air right in front of them. Ryan held his breath and refocused his vision on the

physical. He grabbed Axler's arm, then held a finger to his lips when she looked at him. He pointed toward the fence where the hell hound paced, smelling the air.

"Axler, Ryan," came Jane's voice in his ear just then. And even though she'd whispered, Ryan's heart jumped into his throat. His breath quickened for a second before he used magic to steady himself, to hone his senses down on the here and now. No more fragging surprises.

"Stand by, Jane," Axler subvocalized in a low whisper.

"I had a short delay," Jane said. "But I'm on-line now. Your black window begins in twenty seconds."

The hell hound looked out in the direction of Ryan and Axler as they crouched like part of the foliage, unmoving. Finally, it moved away, continuing on its pacing track.

Jane's voice sounded in Ryan's ear again. "Grind and McFaren are ready to move," she said. "They'll wait until you're through the perimeter. Where's the spirit?"

Ryan looked into the astral but there was no sign of Lethe. Wait a second, he thought. The fuzziness of the building's aura grew clearer as he looked. As if a transparent pane of glass or a heat shimmer stood between him and the fence. "Is that you, Lethe?" he spoke.

"Yes, I am here. You are very perceptive."

"Thank you," Ryan said, but he was wondering how the spirit had made himself nearly invisible in astral space. Ryan hadn't thought it possible. "You'll have to show me how to do that sometime."

"I'm not sure if it is something I can teach," came the reply.

"Ready?" Axler said.

"Yes," said Lethe.

"Ready," said Ryan.

"Their blind spot is between those two cameras." Axler pointed at a space on the perimeter about six or seven meters to their right. "We'll have to move exactly between them to prevent the other cameras from spotting us."

Ryan looked at Lethe. "Can you take care of the watcher spirits?"

"Yes," came the reply. "They will not see us." Axler tensed next to Ryan. "It begins… now," she said. "Let's go."

She led the way, moving in a quick crouch, along the edge of the trees for a few meters, then straight across the clearing to the fence. Ryan moved behind her, a silent, invisible shadow. Axler reached the fence and doused the links with a squirt from her Ares Cascade gun. The liquid inside the reservoir was DMSO-laced water with a modified gamma-scopolamine clip. The stuff would paralyze a human or metahuman on contact. The liquid fell on the metal fence without so much as a sizzle. No electricity here.

Axler glanced around for the hell hounds, then removed wire cutters from her belt, clipped the fence at the base, and scrambled through. Ryan followed. The sprint between the fence and the wall went without a hitch, but just as Axler's grapple caught on the top of the wall, one of the hell hounds trotted around the corner.

Ryan moved, a blur in the night, pulling out a narcotic dart before the big dog even knew he was there. The dart flew, a high-velocity projectile, moving silently in the dark. Another was in Ryan's hand before the first one struck, hard, in the hound's neck.

Ryan had not needed his magically enhanced abilities since the night he'd spoken with Dunkelzahn on his wrist-phone, high on the ladder of the amusement park tower. It felt good to use magic again. He remembered falling that night, remembered fighting the cyberzombie, Burnout. And losing for the first time in his life. That idea hung in his mind for a minute. Had he met his match in combat? He and Dunkelzahn had both lost that night.