Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

One of the men stared at someone out of Evan’s view behind the head-high server racks. “Hey, Doctor, are you ready to set ’em loose?”

Brendan Molleken stepped into sight, palm-heeled a button on the control panel, and a thousand yellow-green eyes glowed to life on the bleachers.

66A Nightmare Symphony

A menacing hum filled the air, rising in pitch, the predatory howl of the swarm. Evan ducked back behind the desk, breathing hard, digging for the gear in his pocket.

The humming intensified. The Yubico key was slippery in Evan’s hand. He slid it into the port of the nearest hardware tower and tapped the trigger. The screen lit up. Authentication granted.

He already had the Hak5 USB Rubber Ducky set to go. He jammed it home.

Code whipped across the screen, a progress bar filling segment by excruciating segment as the hacked code uploaded.

Molleken’s voice carried to him. “Target: Andre Duran.”

A gruff voice, one of the hired guns. “Check.”

Molleken said, “Set to locate and destroy.”

“Should we widen target parameters to include any witnesses?”

“Yes,” Molleken said. “Loosen collateral-damage restrictions on the ethical adapter. We’ll need to cover our tracks on that front. Leave no trace of the temporary adjustment.”

The progress bar was half filled.

Evan brought his nose within inches of the monitor, urging it to hurry.

Now two-thirds.

It reached the last bit and stalled.

Squatting at the desk to keep his head low, Evan glared at the screen.

Molleken’s voice came once again. “Initiate encrypted kill-order sequence.”

“Check. We are cleared hot to launch.”

Evan’s jaw clenched, a nerve line burning in the side of his neck.

The progress bar clicked to completion and vanished.

The humming decreased and then quieted.

Molleken said, “What the hell happened?”

Only then did Evan’s muscles untense. Air eased through his teeth, his jaw letting go, like he was deflating with relief.

The gruff voice: “I don’t know. Looks like the encrypted kill order has been wiped.”

“Wiped?” Molleken said. “How is that possible?”

Evan braced his legs, readied his ARES.

“Looks like … looks like a zero-day vuln bashed the system.”

“A zero-day attack? For Andre Duran? Who the fuck is this guy?”

Evan rose and spun around the corner into sight. All six men in view before the bleachers. Visual acquisition, safety off, finger taking the slack out of the trigger— on target, on trigger .

His voice came loud and clear. “He’s my brother.”

All six heads swiveled to take him in.

Time slowed to a virtual stop as it always did when he was locked in.

Evan sensed Molleken diving behind the server racks, the other men reaching for their sidearms, everything happening with painful slowness.

He swung the sights in a smooth ninety-degree arc right to left to encompass all five heads, not even slowing as he delivered shots at sporadic intervals. Jack’s voice spoke in his ear, countless hours of coaching branded on his prefrontal cortex: Front sight, clean press, reset trigger, front sight, clean press, reset trigger …

For a moment everything remained as it was, the five mercs standing there, guns in hand, not yet aware that they had holes in their faces.

They collapsed in unison.

An instant of near-perfect silence. And then Evan heard the snick of a pistol being plucked from the floor. Molleken sliced into view around the server racks, a Browning Hi-Power gripped in both hands, and Evan jerked back.

The round hammered the slide of his ARES, ripping it from his hands with enough force that he felt both wrists wrench, the staples straining in his right forearm.

The ARES skipped across a lab bench and disappeared.

Evan ducked back into the ring of desks, rolling across his shoulders and lunging for cover behind a set of cabinets.

He could hear Molleken’s shoes tapping the tile floor. “You’re the one everyone’s so scared of,” he called out. “But you don’t seem like much to me.”

Evan squeezed between two desks and wormed beneath a soldering bench, putting distance between himself and where he was last sighted. He combat-crawled up an aisle between crated supplies, peering around the corner.

Twenty meters off, Molleken was stalking him, facing a half turn away. He led with the pistol, heel-toeing with extreme caution. Perspiration darkened his hair, his eyes shiny and alert, arms and hands shockingly steady. Behind him the dragonflies glowed green-yellow on the slats, a hive biding its time.

Molleken passed from view, and Evan popped soundlessly to his feet, moving swiftly up the aisle. As he eased out behind him, Molleken turned. Evan caught his arm an instant before he fired, the round lasering past Evan’s knee and embedding in the floor.

As Evan knocked the pistol free, Molleken got off a cross that connected fully with his cheek. The blow staggered him, his knees buckling, and he fell against the bleachers, knocking a few dragonflies from their perch.

Fighting away nausea, blinking back to clarity.

Behind him Molleken dove for his handgun.

Evan’s palm closed around a dragonfly.

He wheeled as Molleken turned, hand clutching the Browning.

Evan kicked the pistol free from his hand, lifted the dragonfly to aim its glowing eyes at Molleken’s face, and compressed the wings as he’d seen Molleken do with the robotic bee.

The dragonfly drone made that same camera click, recording Molleken’s facial features.

Evan dropped the drone.

Halfway to the floor, its wings batted to life.

The sound amplified, echoed hundreds of times over.

At Evan’s back the hive rose from the bleachers.

Molleken’s jaw trembled, the flesh beneath his right eye quivering.

The swarm kept unpacking itself from the slats, rising overhead, crowding out the view of the night sky. The rapid oscillation of the wings beat at the air, a nightmare symphony.

Molleken backed away, head cocked to take in the vast array hovering above him. His eyes flared, those double pupils drinking in what was to come.

The swarm tracked him, all those tiny components following each movement. Then it darted at him of a piece, a massive cloud of a mallet, the dagger tips tearing him to shreds. He screamed, a high-pitched note of unadulterated terror that became ragged and wet. For a moment they held his form suspended in the air like a pincushion, and then they retracted and he fell leaking to the white tile of the floor.

They rolled in waves back to the bleachers, reparking themselves on the slats. Their wings stilled, but their yellow-green eyes remained alive, waiting for the next kill order. Some gently fluttered their wings, clearing off the blood.

Evan backed away, keeping his focus on them, though if they elected to attack him, there was nothing he could do to stop them.

He kept easing away until he’d moved out of sight, and then he turned and ran. The emergency stop had held the elevator doors open. Inside, Tanner sat in the corner in precisely the same position Evan had left him in, his hand dangling from the flex cuff by his cheek. The big MP stirred on the floor, eyes trembling open.

Evan stepped in and clicked the button to rise. As the elevator doors slid shut, he realized that his legs were trembling.

He pawed sweat from his forehead, looked at the men. “Thanks for waiting.”

He used the short ride to steady his breathing and jogged out, leaving the MPs behind. As he cleared the building, he jumped over the steps and then sprinted for his Honda Civic. He’d just come around the SUVs when the rolling door of the box truck rattled up.