Kate (Part 2)
Even if she was exhausted with the early stages of fear and exhaustion, and panic starting to nip at the edge of her mind, there was something oddly soothing about the climb up the atrium.
Maybe it was the ease of the Flow, or how the network of scaffolds and half-built frames let her pick almost any way to move upwards, or maybe it was just the lack of someone chasing her – for the moment, at least. Faith could have almost closed her eyes and just let herself move anywhere, as long as it didn't stop.
But as relaxing as it might have sounded, painful reality kept reminding her that this wasn't a casual weekend afternoon with no jobs to do. Each rung of the scaffolding she vaulted, every platform she mantled was an effort against gravity, and her energy was quickly reaching its limit. Every foot she gained was an extra foot to fall if she slipped. Still, she pushed herself to keep moving. She wasn't just climbing to get to Kreeg she told herself; she was climbing to get to Kate. She kept telling herself that Kate was at the top, that all she had to do was reach her to save her. It gave her the drive to push on.
She reached the top of another scaffold. This was the second one, and she wasn't even halfway up the atrium yet. Moving was easy, but she had to constantly zigzag back and forth across the constructs to get altitude, like a road winding up a mountain. Fortunately, she didn't need to get to the very top. Just above a pair of concrete supports that stretched horizontally across the atrium was the eighth floor balcony, which led to Kreeg on the floor below via the ventilation system.
Faith leaped across the atrium, pushing off a section of wall that had a Callaghan Construction tarp draped over it. The subtle irony that the mayor's construction projects were helping her was not lost in the back of her mind. She didn't know him personally, only that his policies pushed the city to where it was today, and she found herself asking if he really was behind everything. Celeste had made it out to be a political struggle, but had that even been true? She'd had her at cold at gunpoint; what would be the point of telling her the truth?
Celeste. She had slipped her mind for a bit, but came back in a flood of emotion. Dammit, focus, Faith warned herself as she nearly carried herself over the edge after landing on one of the concrete supports. A few stories stretched dizzily beneath her as she pinwheeled her arms backward to rebalance her weight. She needed to be focusing on Kate, not some charred corpse that used to call itself her friend, or the city's corrupt mayor.
She swallowed hard after the lapse in concentration, then made the last jump to the eighth floor balcony with ease. The ventilation shaft was just ahead of her, partially hidden by a stack of crates left over from the construction that continued to move vertically. She cleared the way, kicked the grating in, then chucked the bag of ammo in first before following after it.
The crawl through the cool dark vents was thankfully kept short with Merc pointing her in the right direction. Faith only had to take a few twists and turns and one drop, pushing the bag ahead of her all the while. It led to an office in the middle of some renovations, which, despite the plastic tarps and construction supplies, looked to belong to some middle to higher executive. Kreeg was setting up a large rifle when she kicked through the grate and dropped into the room. He had dragged one of the sawhorses to the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the streets below. One of them had been propped open, letting in a fresh breeze.
He was just mounting a large telescopic scope on it when he noticed her, then wiped his hands and straightened from his crouch. "Hey, you got the ammo?"
"Yeah." She unslung the bag from her shoulder and tossed it to him. "Any trouble?"
"No. No sighting of those Icarus guys on my end. You shake 'em?"
"More or less, but I don't think we should stick around longer than we have to." Faith caught her breath while he opened the bag, pulled one of the boxes out and then started feeding individual rounds into the rifle's clip. Faith eyed it again. It looked like she had made an accurate guess based on the ammunition. It wasn't just an ordinary rifle; it looked like it could stop a tank. "So, could you maybe fill me in on what exactly we're doing here?" she asked warily, not taking her eyes off the gun. "Merc really didn't have the time to explain."
Kreeg continued to fill the clip, but it didn't take him long to finish. The rounds were so big that only a handful could fit in. "Standard CPF protocol indicates that they'll move Kate by convoy. That means one armored van and an escort, at least. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought more in this case, though. If they do, that will complicate things." He moved to the window and pointed across the street, the clip still in his hand. Down below, a few pedestrians moved up and down the sidewalks, some light traffic waiting at the intersection for the lights to change. "Drake and Merc were able to ping the route down Fifth Avenue a few minutes ago."
Which is where they were right now, Faith realized. So they were going to ambush it. She glanced first at Kreeg, then the rifle again. "Uh…this isn't going to hurt Kate, is it?"
He grinned a bit darkly, then fed the clip into the gun and chambered a round. "This is an anti-material rifle. I got some experience with them while I was in the Corps. Van's going to be armored, so I need something that will punch through it, otherwise we'd be better off chucking rocks. One of these rounds should be able to take out the engine, easy."
She liked the idea of Kreeg shooting anywhere near Kate even less, but she would just have to trust him. After Celeste, that notion was harder to swallow than usual. "Alright, so let's say you manage to stop the convoy, then what? CPF just going to let Kate walk away from the wreck?" That was assuming Kate was able to walk afterwards…
He indicated across the street again, only this time higher, somewhere in the buildings that lined the intersection they were overlooking. "Jace and Trance just arrived. The hope is to get the CPF convoy right underneath them. They're packing some smoke, teargas, some non-lethal riot stuff that Drake had laying around. If we can cause a commotion and keep the escorting officers disoriented, it should be enough for you to slip in and break Kate free."
At least she knew how she fit into the plan now. If Jace and Trance ran interference, she might be able to slip into the mess, grab Kate, and slip back out and get away. It comforted her a little that she was going to be the one to get to Kate, but it was a small comfort among a myriad of 'what ifs' that started to run through her head.
Kreeg suddenly tipped his head, then touched his earpiece and listened. He adjusted the rifle, deploying a bipod at the end of the forearm and peered down the scope, working a dial on it. "That was Merc. Convoy's getting close. Listen, take the skywalk down the hall and get across the street, down to street level. I'll give you the signal to move in." When she bit her lip and grimaced, he glanced at her. Kreeg might have been one of the tougher Runners, but it didn't mean he couldn't pick up human emotion. "Worried about Kate?"
Faith sighed and nodded. "I don't want to say 'don't screw this up', but…"
"I'd say the same if I was in your situation," he replied. "We're going to be working on a lot of luck, the element of surprise, and not a lot of skill or planning. I won't take it personally."
She could either stand there and say something she would later regret and possibly even distract him, or just let him try to help. Faith decided on the latter, since the former wouldn't do anything for her sister. With just a request that he tell Merc to patch her into the CPF channel he was tapped into, she left Kreeg to tweak the sights on his gun and moved into the adjoining hall.
Skywalks were a common design in the city, but they were almost always too low to the ground to be of any use to a Runner. Faith figured that had it been a weekday, it might have been full of people using it to navigate from building to building. Today, however, it was completely empty. Like Kreeg had said, they were working on luck; any extra civilian foot traffic would have made things impossible.
The building next door was also full of offices, not quite as tall as the CCC building, but it still had a sprawling atrium that rose high above the street. To rest her muscles for what came next, Faith opted to take the stairs down to the first floor to a small inner balcony above the foyer. The front of the foyer had a large set of glass windows and doors that gave her a perfect view to the street. That put Kreeg to her right in the CCC building, and Jace and Trance either directly above her or across the street. Or both; hopefully not knowing that wouldn't come back to bite her in the ass.
She didn't have much time to rest. As soon as she hunkered down, her earpiece sizzled. "Convoy one-three, dispatch. Still no problems, over?"
"Dispatch, this is convoy one-three. Traffic's light, and we're moving. Connor's still secure. Things are smooth, over."
"Copy that."
Faith listened intently to the exchange. It sounded like CPF wasn't aware that she had been spotted in the area, which meant that the PK Runner's hadn't relayed it to them, and that seemed odd. If they suspected anything, they wouldn't stick to the same convoy route. She felt a cold trickle down her spine; was this whole thing a trap just to draw her and the other Runners out?
"Guys, stand by." It was Kreeg. "I see the convoy. They just turned the corner and are coming right for you."
Her aching muscles tightened in anticipation. No turning back from this point on. It was either everything, or nothing.
From her vantage point, she could see everything shake down as it unfolded, and her heart began to pick up speed. Knowing that the ambush was coming, but not exactly was almost like a form of torture. She silently prayed that Kreeg hadn't lost any of his marksmanship from his days in the Marines.
The CPF armored van came into view through the windows. Traffic was light, and it was moving the speed limit, but it seemed to be going by in the blink of an eye. There was just enough time to see the following squad car behind it before she heard Kreeg fire.
The shot seemed far louder than what she had been shot at with the past few days, and rightly so. It all happened so fast, she didn't even see any damage on the van, and feared that he had missed. But then the van suddenly accelerated wildly and jerked hard towards the curb. There was a roar of noise as it bumped up onto the side walk. The heavy vehicle, probably not designed for any kind of tight angles, careened and tipped over hard in a shower of sparks. Momentum turned it over onto its roof before it skid to a halt, knocking over a traffic light.
"Jesus, Kreeg!" she heard herself shriek, even though there was no way he could have controlled how the van crashed after he shot it. All she could think about was her sister being bounced and beaten around into a pulp as it came to rest.
The squad car following the van had swerved hard to avoid crashing into the rear of it, but the driver had been too slow to react. It clipped the van as it overturned and spun out before crumpling into a streetlamp, blocking the intersection. Traffic immediately began to pile up behind and ahead of the scene with angry honks, onlookers gathering on the sidewalks.
At that moment, an object fell into the intersection from above her field of vision. A billowing line of smoke began to trail from it. Then another fell, and then another. The smoke, or gas, or whatever Jace and Trance were lobbing to the street below quickly spread everywhere. It worked just like Kreeg said. People immediately began to push and shove their way out of the area, abandoning their cars and clogging the streets.
The squad car doors opened. The driver was in a CPF uniform, but the passenger was wearing the black PK threads. Both had guns drawn, but there was another loud shot from above, and the cruiser's lights exploded into fragments. The last thing Faith saw as the smoke and gas thickened was both of them hunkering down for cover behind the wrecked car, siren blaring.
"Faith, now or never!" snapped Kreeg. Faith snapped out of her stupor, vaulting to the foyer floor and pushed through the building's front doors.
As soon as she was outside, the acrid scent of smoke and something else hit her nostrils. It burned to breathe, and her eyes and nose watered. She threw her arm up over her nose to at least siphon the teargas as she sprinted to the van. The back door opened up, and the tip of an assault rifle nosed out, followed by the PK enforcer carrying it. She was on him long before he realized what was happening. She grabbed for his gun, tugged it down, then shoved hit back up, thrusting the butt into his chin, then swung her elbow hard across his face, sending him to the ground.
She held onto the weapon long enough to make sure that no one else was coming out of the van, then peered inside. Her blood ran cold when she saw a limp form lying on the floor in a CPF uniform, which was actually the van's ceiling.
"Shit, Kate," Faith crawled into the van and shook her sister's shoulder. For a painful moment, there was no response from her, but then she stirred and groaned. "Hey, c'mon, wake up." The wail of sirens had begun to drift through the commotion outside.
Kate rolled over, her eyes wandering but slowly starting to track. A small cut dribbled a line of blood from her forehead. "Faith…what?"
"Easy, I'm getting you out," she said as gently as she could, but all the while tugging insistently on her upper arm, "but we need to go, now." Knowing she was alive, and simply for the sake of seeing her again, Faith wanted to hold her close, but they were working on less time than they needed.
First she tried to help Kate get to her feet, then realized that her wrists and ankles were both cuffed and shackled. "Escort has keys," Kate murmured, putting a hand to her head to feel the cut. "Ugh, my head…"
Faith moved back to the unconscious enforcer outside, breathing in the noxious combination of smoke and gas and checked his belt for a key. It took her a minute, but she found a small ring of them, and then it took another minute to find which one opened Kate's restraints. New sirens were already audible from up the street, but she was more worried about the van's driver and if he had a passenger. They hadn't been accounted for yet, and she could only hope that they were out cold from the crash.
"Can't believe you're doing all this," Kate muttered as she finished releasing the last cuff around her ankle.
"Hey, you're my sister. I don't think you want to know what I would do if I had to." And she meant it.
She hooked her arm over her shoulder, her other arm wrapped around her waist, then helped pull her from the back of the van. Kate coughed as the gas hit her, but she managed to stand on her own two feet. The street was almost completely deserted by now, save for a thick fog of smoke. The squad car's siren was still wailing, and she heard the crackle of a radio. From the CCC building, there was another loud bang, and the car's siren fizzled out completely with a faint shower of sparks barely visible through the fog.
The sirens grew louder exponentially. Faith thought it was the smoke and her tearing eyes, but then she realized she was seeing blue lights reflecting off the buildings from around the corner.
"Shit, they're already here." She pressed her earpiece, "Kreeg!"
"Had to bug out!" It sounded like he was running, and fast. "Two of them just showed up."
Faith whirled to face Kate. She was coughing into the back of her hand, still favoring the cut on her head. In that instant, she made a decision she knew Merc would kill her for. She slipped her earpiece off and pushed it into Kate's hand. "Take this." Kate stared at it for a second. "His name is Merc," she explained, "He's a friend. He can guide you away from here."
"But, what about you?" she asked.
"I'm going to lead them away from here." It was a stupid idea, but with Kate's condition, there was no way both of them were going to escape together.
"Effie, are you nuts?" Kate cried.
"Kate, I'm not going to argue with you," Faith snapped. The sirens were almost on top of them now, and blue lights reflecting off the building windows were abundant. "Just go, please."
Kate held her ground, clutching the earpiece in her fist. To Faith's surprise, she stepped forward and threw her arms around her in a tight hug.
"Thank you," she whispered. Faith felt the tremor in her breath on her neck.
"I'll see you soon," she said tenderly, hoping she could keep the promise. "Just go."
Kat broke off and ran down a side alley in a medium jog. As she did, she stuffed the earpiece in, then disappeared around the corner. Faith coughed and looked down the street, waiting for that moment for the CPF and PK cruisers to come peeling around the corner. She had to make sure they saw her. Then they arrived. First one, then two, three, four squad cars, lights and sirens blaring. And more continued to come.
Faith waited a few more precious seconds, standing there next to the wrecked van, then turned and sprinted as fast as she could. In the opposite direction of Kate.