Ceaseless (19 page)

“We aren't going through the terminal?” Allan asked quietly.

“Fuck no,” Poet replied. “Getting enough looks as it is.”

And he was right, Allan realized. On an adjacent landing pad, a handful of tired maintenance men were working on a little cargo freighter had ceased their work and were staring curiously at the pair of armed and armored men. At the floor-to-ceiling windows in the second story of the terminal, a few tired travelers had taken note of them and were staring now. Allan picked up the pace, feeling not only uncomfortable but very guilty.

He might be killing them all.

They reached the gate and passed through it, then progressed across another two landing pads, both empty, and finally hit the perimeter fence for the entire starport. They passed through it, Poet briefly flashing his security clearance.

“So what do we need to do? Who do we need to talk to?” Allan asked as they stepped out onto a main street and began walking down the sidewalk.

“Nobody, thankfully,” Poet replied. “I know the location and I have the code for it as well. Just follow me.”

He stopped at a small, single-story structure tucked away in between a pair of apartment buildings. It was a gray, windowless shed that bore warnings against breaking and entering. Poet swiped his clearance again at the door and it slid open, revealing a stark interior that held a small repair station and a handful of crates.

“What's this?” Allan murmured as they stepped inside.

Poet secured the door behind them, the moved over to a hatch in the ground, opened it and began climbing down into it. “Government maintenance entrance to the sub-systems beneath the city. The power grid, sewage...utilities basically. That's how we're going to gain entrance to the elevator. It's not too far, thankfully.”

Allan followed. Briefly, he found himself nearly encased in a narrow metal tunnel lit by stark white light. A moment later they were admitted to a lengthy tunnel or more white light and clean metal. Allan followed Poet through the soft hush of the vacant tunnel network, his mind drifting constantly to the surface. He'd watched the people, the early-morning risers walking the streets or driving along, heading to work, to school, to their lives. The guilt was beginning to become a real problem. He could feel it crushing him.

There was a small part of him, however, a small but extremely powerful component that hid in the darker recesses of his soul, that was just completely out of fucks to give. He watched these people with their happy and normal lives, their jobs and their friends and family. Favorite restaurants and habits and hobbies. The life he'd never found, or perhaps would never be
able
to find. All he could remember was pressure.

He'd been cooked in for a long time now. Pressure in school, from bullies and bad grades and having to fight for
everything
. Pressure from the shit jobs he'd taken. Pressure from Security-Investigations, running all-nighter patrols in the most dangerous city streets of Frontier. The way your skin crawled, muscles bunched as you expected an attack from out of nowhere from some fucking kid with a knife or a gun...

How long had he been under pressure?

Perhaps since birth.

And maybe he was just done with it. And he wanted a way out. And this was it.

“This is probably a shitty time to ask, but do you got a girlfriend or anything?” Poet asked suddenly.

Allan was snapped back to the cold reality of the tunnels and the light. “No.”

“Friends?”

“They're all dead.”

He couldn't help but feel that there was some alternative motive to Poet's line of inquiry. “How about before?” he asked.

“I guess you could say I was friends with my team. And I had a girlfriend, up until some months ago,” Allan replied.

“What happened?”

“What's this about?” Allan asked suddenly. “Why are you asking?”

Poet was silent for a moment. Finally, he spoke up. “We had a...psych-eval on you. Based on your own psychological evaluations, as well as...notes, your commanding officer had been keeping on you,” he admitted.

“What...
why
?”

“Once we realized that it would make the most sense to bring you into the fold of this operation, because of your personal experience with the target, it seemed logical.”

“So what did it say?”

“That you were mentally unstable and they were getting ready to pull you from duty. After you girlfriend broke up with you, you began to withdraw. But there were arguments, I guess. Your commanding officer didn't want to pull you from duty. You were doing your job just too damned good, man...so is it bullshit? Are you unstable? They said you were beginning to show signs of severe depression, PTSD and possibly bi-polar disorder.”

Allan was quiet for a long time, considering the facts. He was silent for so long that Poet spoke up again, maybe out of guilt. “What was her name?”

“Lindsay,” he murmured, almost automatically. “Her name was Lindsay. She was a tech for the base. More of a mechanic, really. She made repairs and ran basic maintenance on the vehicles we used.”

“Jesus, man. Don't give me a report, tell me what she was like.”

“She was short and skinny. She was so into her work, absolutely loved fixing shit, taking it apart and putting it back together. When she wasn't working, she was reading or walking around the city. We went on a lot of walks together. She loved being on top. We had a really good thing going,” Allan replied after some consideration.

“So what happened?”

“Things got difficult. We became distant. I...found the change difficult to deal with, coming to a place like Lindholm after spending my whole life in a place like Frontier. I started taking more dangerous jobs, I was really restless, but I've never been the best in talking about my problems. You know, that old cliché, communication is the foundation of any good relationship. And we weren't just fuck buddies, we had moved in together, shared quarters, I wanted it to work. But she...didn't understand. She'd grown up in Lansing. Had a peaceful, easy life. At least compared to mine. That's what I felt, anyway. She had it easy. Didn't know what it was like getting shot at every other fucking week, worrying about some jerkoff breaking into your house in the middle of the night, car bombs and shooters and...” he trailed off.

“I had a similar problem,” Poet said softly. “Exact same thing, actually. I was married, before I picked up the gun and put on the armor. I did a tour, came back...everything was different. I made it work for a while, but your life does change after you've been out there and people are shooting at you, at for your blood. More and more, I found she just didn't get it, but the guys and girls I served with...
they
got it, because
they
were there.”

“Yeah...exactly.”

“We divorced about two years after that little change occurred. She was part of my old life, and I couldn't go back to it. I gave myself full time to this clusterfuck of a job. Hey, if, somehow, you get out of this alive, you should sign up for Spec Ops,” Poet said.

“You think they'd take me?”

“Well, you're a little nuts...but they say you've gotta be nuts to do this job, so maybe. Ah, look, here we are.”

Poet led Allan down a side tunnel that seemed to end in nothing. After a bit of searching, they released a hidden panel and opened up a secret door. After another bit of navigation, they found the elevator and rode it down. They made the trip in silence, having run out of things to say. Allan felt a little better. It felt good to talk about Lindsay. After they'd broken up, she'd transferred to another base, just left him behind.

It had been for the best.

Poet went through the procedure once they got down there. He activated the Destabilizer and they began to head back up.

“Once we get to the surface, we can contact Montgomery and make sure everything's gone well on her end...then we see about saving as many as we can,” Poet said grimly.

Allan nodded, saying nothing.

Chapter 15

–
On the Run
–

“Come on, Montgomery, don't do this to me,” Poet muttered.

They were hanging out in the topside shed, waiting for the apocalypse to begin. Allan hovered by the door, not yet opening it, wishing he had a window to look out of. He kept waiting for something to happen, an earthquake maybe,
anything
to indicate that they had done their job and that Montgomery had held up her end of the bargain.

But there was radio silence from her and anyone on the Special Operations frequency. It was filling the cramped interior of the shed with tension.

“Well, shit,” Poet said finally. “I think we might be on our own. Either something's interfering with the radio or...I don't know, maybe our secret is out. Either way, there should have been a noticeable reaction by now. Come on, we need to get moving. She told me the final code, just in case something went wrong.”

“I'm ready,” Allan replied.

They opened the door and stepped back out into the sunlight, which was now considerably brighter. The city street was much more populated now and for a second, Allan froze, unable to stop staring at the dozens of people coming and going. Even if, somehow, they managed to get some kind of warning out, how many would be left behind? Allan shook his head, making himself focus, forget the horror of what they were doing.

No choice. There was no choice in the matter.

That's what he kept telling himself.

“What's happened to Montgomery?” he asked quietly as they began retracing their steps back to the starport.

“I don't know,” Poet muttered. “Maybe bad weather where she is or something in the city is interfering.” It sounded like bullshit, but Allan didn't say anything. He just kept walking through the awful sunshine.

They'd made it about a dozen feet when Allan felt something, almost like someone had jabbed an icy needle into the back of his neck and he stopped, turned around and scanned the area. Almost like a Jungian image, what he saw immediately registered to his mind, probably faster than his conscious brain could even realize.

The killer was right here, right now, just across the street.

“Oh
fuck me
,” Allan moaned sickly, his stomach twinging in fear, his entire body going through a shudder like someone had walked over his grave.

Probably because he was staring at his grave right now.

It was eight feet tall and wore black armor.

“Run.
Run
,” Poet snapped.

They ran. Allan didn't look back, he simply started pounding pavement. In his frenzied terror, somehow he remembered the way back to the starport. They'd made it a block when something immense flew directly in front of them. Allan stared in stark disbelief as a car smashed into the building to the right.

“Did he just
throw
a fucking car at us?!” Allan cried.

“Shit, this isn't working, come on!” Poet snapped.

Allan began to question him, then saw that he was getting into a nearby car still on the road. He tossed one worried glance at the killer, who was now advancing across the street, and almost tore the passenger side door off trying to get in.

“You know these things are hard as a shit to get going if you don't have the ignition sequence, right?” Allan asked.

Poet was working at the control panel built into the dash. “I didn't get into Spec Ops for nothing,” he replied. Suddenly, the car kicked to he life and he sat up.

“Teach me how to do that,” Allan said.

Poet laughed, threw the car into drive and sped off. “I'm a little surprised you haven't picked it up by now, considering all your SI time-
oh shit
!”

Both of them grunted in surprise as the entire frame of the vehicle shuddered. Allan looked back and saw that the killer was climbing up the back, armored hands tearing holes in the frame of the vehicle.

“You have
got
to be shitting me,” Allan groaned.

“Hold on,” Poet replied.

The car suddenly veered to the right, smashing through a few posts that were displaying holographic messages, ads or valuable information, Allan had never paid enough attention in his life to know which, then shot back to the left. The back of the vehicle swung out from behind them, due to the additional however many hundreds of pounds the killer weighed, and they did a complete three sixty before continuing to rush down the road.

“Shit,” Allan said through clenched teeth, hands digging into whatever he could find, “is there any way you could not do that again?” His stomach felt like it was trying to escape via his throat.

Poet laughed. “No promises.” He glanced back. “Fuck, he's still there.”

Abruptly, there was the sound of rending metal and sunlight poured into the interior. Fresh air blew past them as Allan realized all at once that the killer had torn the entire roof of the vehicle off. He began feeling for some kind of weapon,
anything
, as he glanced back and saw that the killer was now reaching for him.