Those bushy eyebrows drew together until they merged into one, looking like a
small animal taking an afternoon nap on Henry’s forehead. Winking, Gabriel jabbed a pistol into his nose to let him know he meant business.
“I just shot a little girl in the head. Why wouldn’t I shoot you?”
“Lower your weapons,” Henry ordered, sounding more than a little harassed.
“He’s serious!”
When all of the weapons were lowered, Gabriel pulled back on the hammers of
his pistols until they unlocked and slowly set them back to the resting position, dropping his arms to his sides.
“How in the hell did you get out of your cell,” Henry asked.
“A talking cat let me out. Let me guess. A crazy chick in a black cloak just stormed past here waving a sword with twenty or so of your men, heading for the containment area. Right?”
“Friend of yours?”
“Enemy, actually.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Who cares what you believe? Look. She followed me here from the future. I
have little doubt that she’s trying to destroy the facility, and I really need to get into the containment area before her.”
“She’s doing exactly what you claimed you were going to do! Why would you want to stop her?”
“You’re really an idiot, aren’t you,” Gabriel growled. “Do you really think I’d come all the way from the future to destroy this place and save your world if I didn’t have some way of ensuring that the paradox I created would be balanced and dissipated? I’m trying to help. She just wants to destroy the universe. I need to get into the containment area before she does. I can contain my paradox, but I have little doubt that if she creates one, she’ll take steps to make sure such a thing is impossible.”
“You want to destroy this facility,” Henry asked flatly. “To save the future by creating a somehow balanced paradox? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?
Without the Spires of Infinity we have no future at all. This facility will save us all from the dwindling fossil fuels and carbon emissions that are strangling us to death.”
“Trust me, you’re months away from nuclear war over shutting things down when
you realize you screwed up. You’re protecting the greatest threat your world has ever seen. There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave,” Gabriel shouted, mentally thanking Barry McGuire for a truly profound song lyric. “We’re on the eve of
destruction! You think it was easy to come back here to set things right? You think I can just buy a ticket online? Why would I bother, if things weren’t bad enough to warrant it?”
“Can you stop her,” Henry asked after a long pause.
“Hell if I know. Honestly, I don’t think so. Dude, she cut a bullet out of the air with a freaking sword. A bullet,” he paused for dramatic effect, “out of the air,” another pause, “with a sword! That was the craziest samurai move I’ve ever seen. She’s beyond human. If it comes to an even fight, I’m a dead man.”
“Then why bother?”
“I have to try. I was sent here for a reason. Maybe because I have what it takes to defeat that crazy bitch, maybe not. So you’re going to help me? I’m not completely certain what I have planned will work. But it has a chance of working, and that is more chance than she will give you.”
“It does sound like the lesser of two evils, sir,” one of the soldiers said.
Henry shot him an annoyed look.
“I need to get to the containment area,” Gabriel said. “I assume that’s what
they’ve got blockaded down the hall, right?”
Henry nodded. “There’s an underground tunnel into the containment area from
each of the eight outer towers. Those eight tunnels are the only way to get in or out of the containment area, or the Central Spire.”
“Great,” Gabriel wondered how long it would take to get to the next tower over.
The hologram of Allie appeared by Gabriel’s side, causing Henry to bite off a
curse and step back in alarm.
“Meet Allie,” Gabriel said. “She’s the little girl whose mind you ripped out of her body and shoved into a computer. I installed her over your current OS. In short, this facility is now under my control. And you are at the mercy of someone you tortured and murdered. Allie, is there any other way into the containment area?”
“The containment field is cooled by condensed humidity that flows through a
series of coolant ducts,” the hologram replied. She waved her hand and a holographic schematic appeared in the air between Gabriel and Henry. A glowing red triangle marked “you are here” floated in one of the rooms. “There are ducts here and here.”
Two glowing red dots appeared on the map. One was just outside the door. The second was on the other side of the tower.
“There is fighting reported in all eight outer towers,” Allie said. “It appears as though the Apostle has blocked off all access into the containment area except for the coolant ducts. These ducts follow a more direct route. If you hurry it may be possible to cut ahead of her.”
“Where is she now,” Gabriel asked.
“I am unsure. I seem to have lost her. She is hard to follow. Her armor appears to have some sort of sensor jamming capability to it.”
“Great, all right, where is this coolant duct?”
The hologram waved her hand at the schematic and it changed to a high angled
camera of the firefight just outside. There was a trapdoor in the floor with a latch and handle on it twenty feet beyond the barricade. The little hatch began flashing red on the image.
“Oh, that’s just wonderful! I’ll get shot to pieces before I even get close!”
Surprise flashed across the hologram’s face a split second before she flickered and vanished, along with the image of the maintenance duct outside. All of the holographic displays that soldiers were using in the room winked out as well. A moment later the lights flickered and died, plunging the room into complete blackness for a split second before dim emergency lights came on. The gunfire outside momentarily faltered, replaced by shouted curses before it began again. Bright flashes from the shots in the semi-dark of the emergency lighting flickered through the door.
“What the hell,” Gabriel said. “Allie, what’s going on? Allie?”
The hologram did not reappear, but Allie walked into his vision and gave him a shrug and a shake of her head. “I’m unable to remotely contact the mainframe. It appears as though it has either been shut down, reset, or destroyed.”
“The squad that was headed for the control room,” Gabriel muttered. “So you
mean we went to the trouble of uploading you into the computer for nothing?”
“Not entirely,” Allie replied. “I still have some minimal access to security
systems, and I was able to change all of the passcodes for the containment system before they destroyed the mainframe. Plus I added security profiles for you and your friends so that I’ll let you in when you all arrive in the future. I guess you were right about that part.”
“What’s going on,” Henry asked. “What squad? What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got a copy of Allie loaded onto this and linked directly to my brain,” Gabriel raised his left hand to show the jewel implanted into it. “She says that she lost all remote access to the mainframe and thinks it’s been shut down or destroyed. The Apostle sent a squad to disable your computers.”