The kick smashed Hunt across the cheek, snapping his head sideways and eliciting a cheer from the other mercs. Hayden rolled with the momentum, three hundred and sixty degrees, and then kicked again. This time Hunt was ready, catching her ankle in mid-air. Dahl and Kinimaka moved toward her, but the sudden appearance of handguns stopped them in their tracks. The mercs were okay for a tied woman to fight back, it seemed, but unhappy with her tied male colleagues trying to help her. Hunt jerked Hayden’s ankle, dragging her body toward him, then twisted it so that she flipped onto her stomach. Helpless now, she could only stare into Kinimaka’s eyes.
Hunt sat heavily on the backs of her knees. The leader told him to hurry up. The seconds were ticking by. Hayden faced the office wall with the wider facility behind her, listening to the jeers of men. Hunt ignored it all and punched into the back of her right thigh.
“Tell me what you know. Tell me about SPEAR. Tell me who you answer to.”
The pain was excruciating but if that was the worse Hunt could do in the next minute or two then Hayden could easily take it. Concentrating on Mano and Dahl, she shut the pain away and concentrated on the best of what was to come.
It was a truly surreal moment that caused her more disquiet than Hunt’s continual punching. A voice floated out of nowhere. A voice she knew couldn’t possibly be here. A voice she would now love forever.
“You’d get a lot more out of her if you tanned that ass real slow, not punched so frantically below it.”
Instantly Hunt drew away and Hayden rolled, just in time to see a blond blur, dressed in black, leap from a gantry above to land among the hooting, dissatisfied mercs. Two chops and two were disarmed. An arm around a throat and she had a shield. Her left hand held a compact machine pistol which she fired without mercy or pause into the group to her left. They screamed and pinwheeled, and bled and died. Once her shield was thoroughly ventilated she spun and grabbed another, still shooting. Those mercs who were close found their knees broken, their ankles twisted, and their groins jabbed. Some barely blinked before they hit the floor, gut-shot.
Seconds had passed and Alicia Myles had decimated half the mercenary force.
Hayden shuffled closer, as did Kinimaka and Dahl. The merc leader was roaring orders.
“Protect the package and get her!”
Alicia hurled her second shield straight at two more opponents, shouting “Strike!” as might anyone playing human ten-pin bowling. Her pistol took out two more. The leader ran past his dwindling men, wrenched open the office door, and screamed at both laptop carriers.
“Are you done? Then get the fuck outta there!”
Spinning, he fired, hitting his own man as Alicia employed a third shield. Then he sent a boot smashing across Dahl’s face as the Swede tried to entangle him. The two men carrying laptops charged through. Alicia ignored them, intent only on saving her friends. Four more mercs now faced her.
Only four.
Alicia ran hard at them, propelling her four-limbed shield at breakneck pace. Two of the mercs peeled off and chased their leader, clearly having had enough. Alicia poked her pistol under the arm of her shield and fired, taking one remaining merc down. The other bounded aside, but Alicia dropped the shield and dived right into him, striking him hard on the breastbone with her shoulder. As they landed she punched and thrust and dug hard. The man was unconscious before he could even move.
She whirled to face Hunt, who had just watched the decimation.
“I know, I know,” she said. “You wanna date me. You wanna love me. Kiss me all over. Let’s both check our diaries first, huh?”
Faster than a turbocharged viper she struck with stiffened fingers. Blows to the sternum, cheekbone and pit of the stomach brought an even more abhorrent smile to Hunt’s face. He moved in whilst grunting in pain, landing a blow on Alicia’s ribcage. A knife then appeared in his left hand. Alicia, visibly tired after taking out so many men, backed off.
“So now you respect me?” Hunt sneered. “Wait till I jab you with this.”
“Dude, that’s not even six inches. Don’t make me laugh.”
Hunt looked enraged and then lunged, Alicia’s words having had their effect on his pumped-up machismo. It was an easy task to sidestep and then break Hunt’s wrist. The blade rattled to the floor.
“What the—”
Alicia incapacitated him with a crunching kick to the knee. The sound of the bone breaking made even Hayden wince and the man’s scream brought both laptop men to a halt.
“Keep going!” the leader wailed. “Out!”
Alicia made sure Hunt was relieved of all weapons before bouncing over to Hayden. With a sassy smile she eyed the American’s bonds. “Ah, a dream come true.”
“Stop showboating and cut me the hell free.”
“Bitch, at least give me a kiss. I just saved your ass.”
Alicia drew a superfluous knife and quickly sawed through all three of her comrades’ bonds. After much credit was accrued to the blonde, Dahl ventured the question all of them were dying to ask.
“How on earth did you get here?”
“Drake called and suggested I use your GPS. Whilst en route I caught up on events, and then heard about the third and last facility being hit and your dilemma seemed to be worse than his. Once I arrived I saw the standard assault team being formed outside and decided to handle it myself.”
“Guys,” Kinimaka cut in and gestured to the rear exit door. “Shall we?”
“They’re long gone,” Hayden said. “Beat us here. Arranged the exit before we even showed up, I’ll warrant. But be my guest.”
The team jogged to the door, wary of booby traps, and opened it. Outside, dark was falling and nothing stirred, not even the branches or leaves on the stunted trees.
“Y’see?” Hayden drawled. “Long gone. Question is — what the hell comes next? And I mean hell in a literal sense.”
“They have everything they need,” Dahl said quietly. “To do as they promised and take America back to the dark ages.”
“The leader spoke about Path 26,” Kinimaka remembered.
“Their plan was laid long ago,” Dahl went on. “So… if they have everything they need, what are they waiting for?”
Alicia squinted through the descending dark. “Actually, I do see something beyond the fence there. A… a van? See the shape? It’s—”
And then it happened. Something terrible, something ruinous. The low hum that accompanied all the equipment around them and the facility itself suddenly died away. Lights flickered. Hayden was in a position to see downhill to where the lights of a distant town glowed softly.
And then the night went totally pitch black.
“Oh no,” Hayden whispered. “They’ve done it.”
“Blackout.” Dahl’s voice was intensely soft. “Those mad tyrannical bastards.”
“They’ve taken out California,” Hayden guessed as she began to receive and flick through her cellphone’s messages. “As a statement. Remember? To prove to the government what they could do. At the expense of all those people. The risk of all those lives.”
“Riots,” Kinimaka said. “Robberies. Murder. Kidnapping. The list is terrifying.”
Hayden knew only the innocent would truly suffer. She tapped at her Android, seeking any new leaked information and quieter sources of her own as Alicia brought Dahl’s attention back full circle to the van.
“Shall we?”
“Do you think they’re in that van?”
“I think there’s a very good chance, my fine Swedish hunk of manliness. The only question is — do you wanna crush them as much as I do? Do you wanna teach them that it is really, really wrong to mess with good people’s lives?”