She gave him a long look, puzzled by his attitude. “It’s like you want me to go.”
“All I’m doing is explaining the options to you, Louise. We agreed before that I know most of the ground rules in this arena, didn’t we. This kind of mission is well inside my expertise.”
Maybe it was his sheer presence, or just his intimidating size, but Louise certainly felt a lot safer with the detective around. And everything he said did sound plausible.
She propped her forehead up against a hand, surprised to find she was perspiring. “If we go, and I don’t like what we find at Banneth’s home, then I’m not going in to meet her.”
Ivanov smiled gently. “If it’s so bad that even you can see it’s wrong, I won’t let you go in.”
Louise nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll go and fetch Gen. Can you book us some tickets?”
“Sure. There’s a vac-train in thirty minutes. We can be at Kings Cross by then.”
She climbed to her feet, dismayed at how tired she’d become.
“Oh, and Louise? Appropriate clothing please.”
The AI picked up the deluge of telltale glitches a few seconds before frantic citizens started to bombard Edmonton’s police with emergency datavises about the army of the dead that had risen to march through the centre of the dome. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun shone down brightly from an admirable storm-free sky, illuminating the scene perfectly. Cars and metro buses performed emergency braking manoeuvres as their motors jammed and power cells failed. Their occupants spilled out, sprinting away from the advancing possessed and sect acolytes. Pedestrians hammered against closed doors, desperate for admission.
Quinn had spent most of the afternoon carefully positioning his minions along the four main roads leading to the sect’s headquarters. Ordinary acolytes were easy: dividing them into pairs or threes, designating cafes and shops where they should wait, keeping their weapons out of sight in bags or backpacks. The possessed were more difficult; he had to identify deserted offices or empty ground-floor apartments for them. A couple of non-possessed acolytes who’d been given basic didactic electronics courses would break in and deactivate any processors they found, leaving it safe for the possessed to wait inside. It had taken two hours to get everyone into position. None of them complained, at least not to his face. They all accepted that it was part of some grand strategy to bring about his Night. The only thing standing in their way, he told them, was the sect headquarters and the traitors inside.
With every possessed in Edmonton assembled (except one, Quinn thought glumly), Quinn had given the order to advance. If the supercops were as good as he suspected, then the response would be swift and effective. None of the possessed, and few acolytes, would survive.
Quinn walked the first few paces with his small doomed army as they flooded out into the streets, pulling out their weapons and taking on a variety of gruesome appearances. Once everyone was committed, he discreetly slipped away into the ghost realm.
Those civilians lucky enough to be behind the possessed when they emerged slowed their retreat and glanced nervously over their shoulders. The more commercially minded among them contacted local media offices and began to relay sensevises. Anyone receiving the show was presented with an astonishing display of defiance; the deliberate flaunting of a prowess which even the possessed could never truly own. A magnificent final charade, blowing their cover in a single grand fuck you gesture. Entire offices of editorial staff froze in slack-jawed amazement at what they were witnessing.
The marchers closed swiftly on the unexceptional fifty-storey skyscraper. There were over a hundred in each of the groups, spearheaded by the possessed. Elaborate, archaic warrior costumes sparked and flashed, ripe with energistic power. Whenever they passed the pillars which supported elevated roads, the air would seethe with wrestling coils of miniature lightning bolts, grounding out through the metal amid jittering spumes of molten droplets. Following close behind their silent deadly leaders, the bulk of each group was made up by the non-possessed acolytes; striding along blithely, weighed down by the largest pieces of weapons hardware the covens had stashed away in their secret armouries.
None of them paid any attention to the whimpering civilians scampering out of their way, they were focused on the skyscraper alone. Vehicles littering the street ahead of them flared electric-blue before bursting apart into a sleet of black granules. The army of the damned walked through the smouldering wreckage. Again, it was all panache. Showtime.
To the majority of Edmonton’s citizens, the skyscraper that was the centre of their wrath was just a modest, ordinary building divided into standard commercial and residential sections. The police knew different, as did most of the locals. Rumours of the sect presence inside began to filter back to the media anchors. But by then professional rover reporters were on the scene, watching the police seal off the area and armed squads take up position.
Sixty per cent of Earth’s population was now on-line, waiting for the shoot out. The greatest audience in history.
Inside the sect headquarters, the senior acolytes broke open the armoury and began handing out heavy-calibre chemical projectile rifles and machine guns to the acolytes. There was little panic; the beleaguered sect members were almost glad they had a tangible enemy at last. Banneth herself supervised setting up their defences. First she established a ring of snipers peeking through the skyscraper’s windows, then consolidated their heavier firepower around the convoluted barriers inside.
She hurried round all of them, issuing orders and offering encouragement—never threats, not now. Quinn and the possessed had become the new fear-figures. It was interesting that they had now returned to her. After all Quinn had done to fill them with doubt and mistrust, the random tortures and deaths he had silently enacted throughout the headquarters had come to nothing in the end. They still believed that she was the stronger of the two.
You realize this is probably a diversion, don’t you?she asked. He’s most likely planning to snatch me or kill me in the battle.
Possibly,western europe replied equitably. Personally, I believe this pathetic conflict he’s staging is purely a case of collateral slaughter while he achieves his real goaclass="underline" escaping from our grasp.
Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better.
Frightened? You?
Wouldn’t you be?
If I was physically in your position, no doubt I would, yes. But I’m not, am I?
Don’t give me that natural superiority crap.
I apologise.
Very magnanimous. Does that mean you’ve got the SD platforms zeroed in on me?
I’m afraid so, yes. Again, I doubt if we’ll have to use them. Quinn won’t reveal himself, not today.
Banneth took a look along the familiar darkened corridors of the headquarters as she made her way back to her own rooms. On her orders, they were lit with candles and crude chemical batteries powering low-voltage halogen bulbs—technology the possessed would be unable to glitch without considerable effort. Not that it particularly mattered, she thought, we’re not protecting anything we can salvage. After this, the headquarters would be no more. All her acolytes were doing was fighting a delaying action until the police and B7 eliminated Quinn’s ersatz invasion. But then, the sect was nothing more than a B7 creation anyway. A convenient umbrella for them and her.
She walked through the temple giving it a nostalgic look. The first rocket hit the skyscraper; a light EE tipped anti-armour missile. Duffy fired it; Quinn had given him the honour of opening the fighting as a reward for unswerving loyalty to the cause of Night. The explosion sent shockwaves yammering through the skyscraper’s structure, blowing out a huge crater on the northern corner and shattering hundreds of surrounding windows. Huge lumps of rubble cascaded down onto the street to smash apart in front of the possessed. The surviving snipers inside picked themselves up and opened fire.