I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) (21 page)

And as Scarlett watched, she realized she had not fallen unconscious during the explosion. She had been
driven
into unconsciousness, trapped in the bubble of negative energy and forced away from her body as Lana, knowing
exactly
what she was doing, burned away the tentacles around her without the slightest care for the people in the building.

Chapter 13

T
he hallway’s carpet was made of threadbare, rubber-backed squares. Akllana’chikni’pai felt the thrum of electricity underfoot, carrying both power and information. The current gave her a sense of excitement and nausea, which was appropriate: she was putting the tools in place to destroy a species.

Akllana’chikni’pai passed several flimsy wood doorways that framed storage rooms, a stale kitchen, mildewed tile, and toilets. The humble working conditions of the primary species.

She withdrew her swords from her thighs but kept them dampened and invisible. Unlike the others, the door at the end of the hallway was made of steel. Her sword slid easily into the heavy steel covering the alarm panel, shorting out the wiring with a hiss. The small hallway filled with the smell of burning paint and plastic. She melted the bolts with her other blade, using steady pressure and taking care that the now-burning tip did not emerge from the other side of the door frame. If she had let her swords burn, she could have done it with a single sweep, but discretion was called for.

She pulled on the handle.

A few large, flat monitors hung on the white walls, flickering with news or showing operational statuses via lists and graphics. Rows of old, chipped, gray plastic desks lined the rest of the room, facing the larger screens. Each had several monitors of its own. The desks were arranged in two arcs with an aisle down the center, following the downhill slope in the floor as though the room were a theater—or a temple.

Only three people were in the room, dressed in nearly identical pressed, white, cotton uniform shirts and dark pants. A printer at the end of the row nearest her extruded sheet after sheet of paper. To her right was another secured door made of steel, which led to a room full of hot, buzzing computer hardware.

Two of the humans were standing up, leaving a young female with short blond hair bending over her keyboard, typing intently. All three of their pulses were racing. The female murmured into a headset that wrapped across her head and protruded in a stalk in front of her face.

The two who were standing were staring at the video feed from the front room, where the fat woman now sat, slumped over her computer.

“It’s happening, isn’t it?” the softer looking of the two males said.

“I don’t know, sir, but I’ll go look,” said the other. Underneath his uniform, he had a fighter’s physique, broad through the shoulders and narrow at the hips. He grabbed a chair and shoved it out of his way, knocking it loudly against the desk, and strode into the narrow aisle between the desks toward the door.

As he approached, Akllana’chikni’pai’s sword flickered, a thin wisp of bent light that passed through the man’s stubble-haired skull without cutting it, although he would bear a nasty bruise for some time afterward. The fighter’s green eyes bulged and rolled upward, turning into thin, waning crescent moons. His momentum carried him forward, and she stepped to the side, giving him a kick on the shoulder to shove him sideways and prevent him from hitting a desk. He tumbled into the aisle, head downward.

“Mickelson!” The softer male’s voice went high as his head swiveled on its neck, desperately searching for the attacker. A moment later he barked, “Mendez! Report!”

“No answer from Cadigan, sir,” she said, still bending over her keyboard and typing furiously at her keys. “The base is mobilizing. Two trucks are on their way with backup.”

The soft male looked around the room with rounded, wet, fearful eyes. “Tell them to shut us down. Shut the power down.”

“Sir? Won’t that keep us from seeing if any missiles approach?”

“This isn’t the Koreans or the Pakis, Mendez. Shut us down!”

“Yes, sir.” The woman’s hands darted over the keys on her keyboard.

Akllana’chikni’pai threw her sword at the woman. Just as her slim fingers touched the keys, the sword passed through the woman’s chest. Her mouth opened in shock, almost as if she had been able to see the sword, and she slumped over, falling out of her wheeled chair and onto the carpet.

The man’s eyes seemed to fix on Akllana’chikni’pai, and she paused briefly to reassure herself that she was not visible. She recalled her sword with a wave. From under the desk, the woman panted and coughed but did not get up.

The soft man said, “I know you’re there. Whoever you are.” His voice was thready and frail.

Akllana’chikni’pai walked down the aisle toward him. The woman on the floor was in her way, retching a rancid mixture of coffee and some kind of partially digested orange starch onto the carpet, so she stepped onto the surface of the desk to avoid the filth.

The man’s eyes followed her. His hands hung limply at his sides, shaking against his urine-soaked pants.

“We will stop you. I promise you. You might have come here from another world. You might have powers beyond our imagination. But we
will
stop you.”

She stepped over the woman’s keyboard, careful not to jostle the keys or the small control unit beside it.

“Brave words for a man who’s pissed himself,” she said and flicked the tip of her sword through his head. He fell backward over his chair and came to rest tangled around the chair and the legs of his desk.

She viewed the tableau with satisfaction, walked back along the desk, hopped down into the aisle, and sat at one of the desks, away from the smell of piss. If she had been Terkun’shuks’pai, she could have done this from anywhere in the world. She could have walked through the walls; she could have felled everyone in the room with a thought.

She put one of the swords away, changed the other into a long needle, and plunged it into the monitor. She spent a few moments ensuring the systems in the building could send data as well as receive it and released the seeds of life into its local programming.

She withdrew the needle, tucked it away by her thigh, and stood.

Her seeds had infiltrated the secure network easily, bypassing fragile human security methods and jumping from wire to wire using electromagnetic radiation.

It was done.

Now to find out what Terkun’shuks’pai is really doing here.

Ron ambled along the blindingly white beach, barefoot. The white sand burned the soles of his feet, but it could have been worse. He’d grown up dancing over asphalt just to get a chance at a fire hydrant. His feet still remembered what it felt like trying to scrub that shit off his soles with big blisters underneath. This smooth white sand was nothing.

A long line of palm-leaf shade shelters stretched down the beach like a trail leading him back toward the bars under the trees, up next to the hotel. Pretty girls roasted in the sun on lounge chairs and little kids played in the waves with parents lounging nearby, stunned into drowsy apathy by the heat and the sun and the shining waves.

He’d lost his dress shoes at one of the tiki-hut bars and left his last good Hawaiian shirt caressing the shoulders of a sunburnt Japanese bathing beauty at the far end of the beach. St. Lucia was packed with bathing beauties, as was his cruise ship,
Jewel of the Caribbean
. But bathing beauties were cheap.

What Ron was looking for right now was a jam session with someone who could really
play
. His axes were back at the ship, but it wouldn’t take him more than an hour in the rental car to get at them. He’d had this image of jamming on the beach, wandering up to a bunch of guys in dreadlocks smoking ganja and playing ukuleles. But it wasn’t happening. All he was doing was turning alcohol into a full bladder and staring out at bronzed skin and shimmering waves. Either of which he could stare out at from any deck over the next six weeks until his contract with the cruise ship band ran out.

The Pitons, two dead volcanoes, rose up from the shore like a couple of overgrown pyramids. The smells of coconut oil and fried fish rolled down the beach, making his stomach growl. The water jumped and popped at the edge of the shore. Must be a minor quake somewhere. No one else seemed to notice. It was a sign—Ron was going to
take
it as a sign—that it was time to head back up to the hotel parking lot and drive the hell away from the strip of pure white sandy tourism before it snapped him up like a Venus fly trap.

He had passed the last of the palm-leaf shade shelters, ignored the bars, and started the long climb back up to the hotel and the public parking lot when he heard a long, low rumble. He glanced back over his shoulder.

It looked like a tiny island was floating toward the shore. Seaweed trailed off its wet sides. The top looked rusty, like it was made out of broken-up metal plates. Mammas and papas were hollering at their kids to come back in to shore, but it was as if everyone were frozen. The bathing beauties were only half-sitting up, barely starting to swing their long, brown legs off their lounge chairs. It seemed like it was going to take about a week for his right foot to hit the ground.

Feathery tufts rose out of the seaweed and folded smoothly upward.

The breeze shifted. The smell of fried fish and coconut oil was replaced with the smell of a garbage scow, the kind he remembered from New York City.

His foot landed with a sudden thud, making him bite his tongue.

The waves splashed, and the kids still in the water dropped, as if their legs had been cut out from under them, and flew backward through the water. Shallow vees spread out behind them, pointing directly to the floating island.

The sound of it caught up to him. A groaning like twisted metal. The crash of waves. Screaming. A couple of gunshots. The sound of his feet beating like a drum roll up the sidewalk, toward the parking lot. His heartbeat crashing like cymbals in his ears. Wood splintering. A bullhorn shouting something that echoed across the bay and bounced back twisted up on itself. The only word he picked out was
Stop!

He didn’t.

The trees closed over the sidewalk and the sudden shade almost blinded him. He kept running. An old fogy like him still knew how to run when he had to. The sudden coolness of the sidewalk made him shiver. Or maybe it was the way the bullhorn cut out all of a sudden.

The sound of wind, of leaves brushing against each other. Breaking twigs. The sound like a storm rolling up the bay, a hurricane maybe.

Two security guards stood at the end of the parking lot behind a swinging steel gate, white shirts, ties, black berets, open mouths. They stared past him as he hopped the gate. Their walkie-talkies squawked at them to pick up, but they were frozen where they stood. Clearly not guys who had ever been in the military. They had revolvers at their sides but hadn’t even loosened the snaps on their holsters.

Ron had an image of grabbing one of their guns, whirling around, and shooting the shit out of whatever was coming up the hill behind him. Instead he kept running.

People were spilling out of the hotel now onto the sidewalks, employees in white polo tops as well as tourists. He only had a few seconds to get out before the parking lot jammed up with everybody trying to push ahead of everybody else. Luckily for him, his rental was out at the far end of the public lot, farthest to walk, fastest to exit. Same way he parked for gigs. Didn’t matter that he had to carry the equipment farther. Only mattered that he wasn’t boxed in.

Ron reached the ugly green Volvo he’d rented and jammed his hands in his pockets. Keys still there, thank God.

He forced his fingers to take out the right key and slide it smoothly into the keyhole. He popped the lock and opened the door, feeling the wave of heat blast at him from the car’s interior. He glanced back. Tourists were running for their cars. The locals were just running. They’d come in on busses, probably, and now had no way to get out. He slid onto the blistering hot seat, put his key into the ignition, and started it up. He nearly yelled in pain when his hands locked around the boiling steering wheel.

He backed out of his parking spot without looking in the rearview mirror. He accelerated too hard and hit another car with a crunch. Its alarm started going off. Not that anybody gave a shit at the moment.

The town’s emergency alarm starting howling. It was muffled by the car windows and the sound of the other alarm and the distance, but he could still pick out the deep, rushing howl that was sliding up the scale like a monstrous orchestra the size of Manhattan.

He hit the lock with his hand and put the car in first gear but didn’t pop the clutch. A guy waving both hands was running toward the front of his car. A big guy, trailing a couple of women. He had on a white polo with a name written on it. Other people were running toward the car, but they were tangled up in the tourists, who were milling around like sheep, demanding help, their cars lost.

Ron swore and hit the button to unlock the rental’s doors. The guy pulled open the back door, shoved the two women in, and got in the front. The man smelled like hot sweat. The women smelled like laundry soap.

More car alarms went off. A chorus of about a hundred voices screamed.

He glanced back in his rearview mirror.

The thing had already climbed up the hill and knocked down the steel gate. Correction, the
things
had rolled up the hill. Six metal islands that bulldozed trees, power lines, light poles, cars. Feathery palm trees whipped around, snatching up sunburnt white tourists and their kids. The security guards were gone, long gone.