Gen held her breath without realizing it, poised outside of Lydecker's door with her hand on the .38 in her pocket. She hadn't counted on Lydecker having company. Voices rang through the door clearly to her sensitive ears.
"...About enough of your foolish obsession with this project. It's costing us more money to track these kids down than it's worth. Add two to five years of re-indoctrination before we can get anything out of the lost sheep, and your results are still shaky at best. Donald, you're going to need more than a few friends in high places to keep your rank; consider yourself lucky that you can keep what you've got. The other X-5s will not be reassigned to you. Don't ask again."
Fists slamming against desk echoed through the hollow metal door. "My kids deserve better than to be shuffled around by money-grubbing bureaucrats, Colonel. They're soldiers, they don't deserve these pansy-assed babysitting jobs in foreign countries..."
The first voice burst in on what would obviously have been a long tirade. "Don't get all pissy with me, Colonel. In case you haven't noticed, it's not 2008 any more. You screwed up and cost the whole project a lot of embarrassment when the first successful batch escaped. Don't expect funding or favors to fall in your lap when the country's already in financial ruin. We've got better things to spend the money on that than pandering to your stale dreams..."
Lydecker's voice rose over the first voice. Gen wouldn't have needed any augmentation to her hearing to catch the words now. "It wasn't my fault the security system I was promised was manned by flipping imbeciles and only half-installed 6 months late. I seem to recall telling you that..."
"Don't make this sound like it was anyone else's fault! If you hadn't..."
Gen looked at her watch. It was only a few minutes before five, and she didn't have time to wait this conversation out. She toyed with the idea of killing both of them, but dismissed it, against her instincts, moving past Lydecker's door to the hall where she had discovered Max's cell.
At five, having neutralized the guards on the floor where Max was being held, Gen waited. The lights flickered, stuttered and went out, just after the second hand on Gen's watch swept past upright. "Go Logan," she said quietly, with a grin. She moved to the door, heard the magnetic lock power down, and picked the deadbolt. The door swung inward with ponderous precision, and Gen waited a moment, to see what action Max would take.
It was hard to recognize Max; she was curled into a ball, her newly-shaved head luminescent to Gen's night vision, her blue hospital gown a shapeless, stiff shroud. She looked up slowly, with eyes that were red-rimmed and haunted. The look changed at once to a burning anger, and Max leapt to her feet and charged at Gen.
She was fast, but Gen was faster, and she ducked out of the way at once. Disoriented by the drugs that were still in her system, Max couldn't recover fast enough to change her direction and pursue. She slammed heavily into the corridor wall, and Gen faced her without fear. Two caplets lay in her outstretched hand. "Max," she said sharply. "Lydecker will be here any moment. This is my break for freedom, and I'm not going to get all guilt-ridden about leaving you behind because you're bent on kicking my ass."
Max, leaning against the wall with her head down, gazed at Gen's hand. "What is it?"
"A beefed up tryptophan supplement and a double-dose of adrenaline to get the drugs out of your system. Shots would have been faster, but safe needles aren't easy to find." Gen stepped closer. "Don't take too long to consider."
Max snapped her hand out and grabbed Gen's wrist. The blonde girl didn't struggle or flinch, just waited for Max to act. Max held the wrist for a moment, obviously weighing her choices, then released it, scooping the pills from Gen's palm and dropping them down her throat in one smooth movement.
"Good girl," Gen said. She swung her leather bag off her shoulder and, crouching, pulled out a set of fatigues. "I don't have shoes, but no one should be looking at your feet."
Gen took off her coat and skirt to reveal her own pair of fatigues rolled up underneath. The coat was rolled into a surprisingly tight ball and packed into the bag, the skirt was thrown into Max's holding cell.
Max pulled on the clothing as quickly as she could, wadded the gown and threw it back into the room she came from. Gen pulled the door closed and picked the lock shut. "You're pretty good at that," Max said with bitterness.
Gen looked back at her with a Manticore-standard un-readable expression. "I had a lot of motivation to learn."
There were shouts from the end of the hall beyond the door that Gen had padlocked from the inside. Gen wondered if they'd found the body of the first guard yet. She'd had to kill him; he'd been ready to call in her position and the knock-out she had wasn't fast enough to put him under before he could get the call out. With the hands on her watch nearly at noon, she hadn't had time to do more than fold him up and stuff him into a nearby room.
There was a flicker in the lights and then a wash of brightness as they came on with a hum, and Gen cursed inwardly. They had been faster finding the closed valve on the generators than she'd hoped. "Come on," she said briskly. She pulled the bag onto her shoulder and trotted towards the opposite end of the hall.
She opened the door that ended the hallway, but when Max would have gone through, pulled her back and shook her head. There were tall storage cabinets lining the end of the hall, and she pointed, and then leapt, to the top of one of them. There wasn't much room between the top of the storage cabinet and it was a tight squeeze to shimmy into the space. Max hesitated a moment, listening to the sounds of guards at the other end of the hall, and then leapt up after Gen. She misjudged by an inch or two, and scrabbled ungracefully to pull herself up. Gen grabbed her by the wrist and helped pull her up, but once up, Max pulled away angrily and glared at her. She opened her mouth to say something, but a crash at the end of the hall heralded the destruction of the door, and she just pulled herself back into the space and snapped her mouth shut.
Guards spilled into the corridor. At once, the hall was a chaos of noise: footsteps, orders being barked, the crackle of radios. The open door was spotted at once, and the majority of the soldiers were at once dispatched towards it. Gen smiled to herself as their footsteps faded. The remaining soldiers, led by Lydecker himself, unlocked the door to Max's recently vacated room. Gen's smiled faded. This would have been a much easier mission if she'd been able to take out Lydecker as she'd planned.
"Damn!" Lydecker held up the skirt and the gown. "She had help. I want them found!"
He turned and marched back the way he'd come, and the remaining four guards scattered, posted to either end of the hall, radioing the information to the guards who were already gone.
In a matter of moments, the hall was silent again, broken only by the shuffle of the guards remaining, facing outward. Gen silently removed a blow-gun from her fatigue pocket and slid in two tiny darts. She slithered out into the hall a hairsbreath, just enough to get a good aim at the guards. She waited until she had the perfect shot and fired them, one after another, to land exactly where she'd aimed, in the arteries of each guard. They both scratched the spot idly, feeling no worse than a sudden itch, until they suddenly began to sway in place and fell over in their tracks.
Gen slipped out of her hiding spot and lowered herself over the edge, letting her body stretch all the way down the cabinet before dropping to the ground. Max, behind her, simply jumped, landing in a silent crouch. The guards at the other end of the hall were still looking attentively in the other direction, and the two girls stepped carefully over the unconscious guards and out the door. Gen led them to a stairwell, and then up. She paused at the first landing and pulled Max's face close to hers. Max jerked away, but not before Gen could see that her pupils were a normal size again. "The adrenaline is working," she said quietly, "You should feel back up to par."
Max didn't respond, and Gen didn't really expect her to. She padded carefully up to the next landing. As they moved to the next level, the door to the floor opened, and a guard at the head of three others shouted a warning. Max went into action, kicking the gun from his hands and slamming a fist into the side of his head. Gen hung back, waiting for a clear shot at any of the others. Max didn't give it to her, though, and in a blur of motion swept the feet out from under the second man. As he went to stand up, she snapped the heel of her foot at his temple, and his eyes rolled into his head.
Shots rang out, and Max jigged. Gen darted to the side, and the bullets impacted harmlessly into the concrete walls of the stairwell.
Max was grinning wickedly. She threw an unexpected elbow into the face of the shooter and kicked and rolled at the fourth guard, who was fumbling ineffectively with his gun. The fourth guard went down with a cry, cracking his head on the door and collapsing to the floor. The third guard fired wildly, and Max brought her fist up under his chin with a crack. He fell backwards over the fourth man and lay still.
Gen checked the pulses on them all, and decided to save the knock-out drugs for later needs. Max stretched. "Not that I needed it or anything," she said sharply, "but a little help could have been nice."
"I wasn't trained in combat situations," Gen answered evenly.
Max cocked her head in disbelief. "Why not?"
"I kept breaking bones in even the most basic of training. And besides, I'm expendable." None of the bitterness she felt trickled into her voice.
They didn't meet anyone else on the trek up to the roof. Max walked at once to the edge and looked down at the swarms of troops scurrying around. "Now what?" she asked. Lights were sweeping the compound. She ducked back as one arc of light passed the edge of the roof.
Gen didn't approach the edge, but walked swiftly to a large inverted-L air-handling vent. She pulled off the cover and snugged her bag on her shoulders. She pointed inside, and Max hesitated only a moment before obeying. Gen knew that she had proved it was tactically sound to follow her plans, and that Max would do so until it proved advantageous to do otherwise.
Max hefted herself into the opening and crawled inside. Gen levered herself right behind, after a careful scan of the area, but put herself in backwards, and lifted the grate into place behind her. She crawled backwards with care, making sure that she didn't hit Max with a misplace boot, and dropped herself into the tiny space that opened off of the pipe after it passed the level of the roof. She had discovered this place by chance when she'd happened across the as-built drawings for the Boeing plant. She'd been working undercover at an architecture and engineering company, and while pursuing other items for Lydecker, she took the opportunity that presented itself to delve into their archives, which included the upgrades to the Boeing plant when the military took over. They were a mess, dating from the rough transition to getting computers back on line, but they were clear in the fact that there was a discrepancy in the mechanical shaft where it met the roof. On her own time, she made a point of checking it out. She didn't know what she would do with the knowledge then, but she was grateful of it now.
She settled into a tight position opposite Max, and they both froze as footsteps approached on the roof. The footsteps dwindled, and they relaxed.
"Now what?" Max mouthed at her.
"We wait," Gen said softly.
Max waited patiently for a moment, then squirmed to a more comfortable position. "How long?" She asked, equally quietly.
Gen looked at her watch. "Three hours."
"...About enough of your foolish obsession with this project. It's costing us more money to track these kids down than it's worth. Add two to five years of re-indoctrination before we can get anything out of the lost sheep, and your results are still shaky at best. Donald, you're going to need more than a few friends in high places to keep your rank; consider yourself lucky that you can keep what you've got. The other X-5s will not be reassigned to you. Don't ask again."
Fists slamming against desk echoed through the hollow metal door. "My kids deserve better than to be shuffled around by money-grubbing bureaucrats, Colonel. They're soldiers, they don't deserve these pansy-assed babysitting jobs in foreign countries..."
The first voice burst in on what would obviously have been a long tirade. "Don't get all pissy with me, Colonel. In case you haven't noticed, it's not 2008 any more. You screwed up and cost the whole project a lot of embarrassment when the first successful batch escaped. Don't expect funding or favors to fall in your lap when the country's already in financial ruin. We've got better things to spend the money on that than pandering to your stale dreams..."
Lydecker's voice rose over the first voice. Gen wouldn't have needed any augmentation to her hearing to catch the words now. "It wasn't my fault the security system I was promised was manned by flipping imbeciles and only half-installed 6 months late. I seem to recall telling you that..."
"Don't make this sound like it was anyone else's fault! If you hadn't..."
Gen looked at her watch. It was only a few minutes before five, and she didn't have time to wait this conversation out. She toyed with the idea of killing both of them, but dismissed it, against her instincts, moving past Lydecker's door to the hall where she had discovered Max's cell.
At five, having neutralized the guards on the floor where Max was being held, Gen waited. The lights flickered, stuttered and went out, just after the second hand on Gen's watch swept past upright. "Go Logan," she said quietly, with a grin. She moved to the door, heard the magnetic lock power down, and picked the deadbolt. The door swung inward with ponderous precision, and Gen waited a moment, to see what action Max would take.
It was hard to recognize Max; she was curled into a ball, her newly-shaved head luminescent to Gen's night vision, her blue hospital gown a shapeless, stiff shroud. She looked up slowly, with eyes that were red-rimmed and haunted. The look changed at once to a burning anger, and Max leapt to her feet and charged at Gen.
She was fast, but Gen was faster, and she ducked out of the way at once. Disoriented by the drugs that were still in her system, Max couldn't recover fast enough to change her direction and pursue. She slammed heavily into the corridor wall, and Gen faced her without fear. Two caplets lay in her outstretched hand. "Max," she said sharply. "Lydecker will be here any moment. This is my break for freedom, and I'm not going to get all guilt-ridden about leaving you behind because you're bent on kicking my ass."
Max, leaning against the wall with her head down, gazed at Gen's hand. "What is it?"
"A beefed up tryptophan supplement and a double-dose of adrenaline to get the drugs out of your system. Shots would have been faster, but safe needles aren't easy to find." Gen stepped closer. "Don't take too long to consider."
Max snapped her hand out and grabbed Gen's wrist. The blonde girl didn't struggle or flinch, just waited for Max to act. Max held the wrist for a moment, obviously weighing her choices, then released it, scooping the pills from Gen's palm and dropping them down her throat in one smooth movement.
"Good girl," Gen said. She swung her leather bag off her shoulder and, crouching, pulled out a set of fatigues. "I don't have shoes, but no one should be looking at your feet."
Gen took off her coat and skirt to reveal her own pair of fatigues rolled up underneath. The coat was rolled into a surprisingly tight ball and packed into the bag, the skirt was thrown into Max's holding cell.
Max pulled on the clothing as quickly as she could, wadded the gown and threw it back into the room she came from. Gen pulled the door closed and picked the lock shut. "You're pretty good at that," Max said with bitterness.
Gen looked back at her with a Manticore-standard un-readable expression. "I had a lot of motivation to learn."
There were shouts from the end of the hall beyond the door that Gen had padlocked from the inside. Gen wondered if they'd found the body of the first guard yet. She'd had to kill him; he'd been ready to call in her position and the knock-out she had wasn't fast enough to put him under before he could get the call out. With the hands on her watch nearly at noon, she hadn't had time to do more than fold him up and stuff him into a nearby room.
There was a flicker in the lights and then a wash of brightness as they came on with a hum, and Gen cursed inwardly. They had been faster finding the closed valve on the generators than she'd hoped. "Come on," she said briskly. She pulled the bag onto her shoulder and trotted towards the opposite end of the hall.
She opened the door that ended the hallway, but when Max would have gone through, pulled her back and shook her head. There were tall storage cabinets lining the end of the hall, and she pointed, and then leapt, to the top of one of them. There wasn't much room between the top of the storage cabinet and it was a tight squeeze to shimmy into the space. Max hesitated a moment, listening to the sounds of guards at the other end of the hall, and then leapt up after Gen. She misjudged by an inch or two, and scrabbled ungracefully to pull herself up. Gen grabbed her by the wrist and helped pull her up, but once up, Max pulled away angrily and glared at her. She opened her mouth to say something, but a crash at the end of the hall heralded the destruction of the door, and she just pulled herself back into the space and snapped her mouth shut.
Guards spilled into the corridor. At once, the hall was a chaos of noise: footsteps, orders being barked, the crackle of radios. The open door was spotted at once, and the majority of the soldiers were at once dispatched towards it. Gen smiled to herself as their footsteps faded. The remaining soldiers, led by Lydecker himself, unlocked the door to Max's recently vacated room. Gen's smiled faded. This would have been a much easier mission if she'd been able to take out Lydecker as she'd planned.
"Damn!" Lydecker held up the skirt and the gown. "She had help. I want them found!"
He turned and marched back the way he'd come, and the remaining four guards scattered, posted to either end of the hall, radioing the information to the guards who were already gone.
In a matter of moments, the hall was silent again, broken only by the shuffle of the guards remaining, facing outward. Gen silently removed a blow-gun from her fatigue pocket and slid in two tiny darts. She slithered out into the hall a hairsbreath, just enough to get a good aim at the guards. She waited until she had the perfect shot and fired them, one after another, to land exactly where she'd aimed, in the arteries of each guard. They both scratched the spot idly, feeling no worse than a sudden itch, until they suddenly began to sway in place and fell over in their tracks.
Gen slipped out of her hiding spot and lowered herself over the edge, letting her body stretch all the way down the cabinet before dropping to the ground. Max, behind her, simply jumped, landing in a silent crouch. The guards at the other end of the hall were still looking attentively in the other direction, and the two girls stepped carefully over the unconscious guards and out the door. Gen led them to a stairwell, and then up. She paused at the first landing and pulled Max's face close to hers. Max jerked away, but not before Gen could see that her pupils were a normal size again. "The adrenaline is working," she said quietly, "You should feel back up to par."
Max didn't respond, and Gen didn't really expect her to. She padded carefully up to the next landing. As they moved to the next level, the door to the floor opened, and a guard at the head of three others shouted a warning. Max went into action, kicking the gun from his hands and slamming a fist into the side of his head. Gen hung back, waiting for a clear shot at any of the others. Max didn't give it to her, though, and in a blur of motion swept the feet out from under the second man. As he went to stand up, she snapped the heel of her foot at his temple, and his eyes rolled into his head.
Shots rang out, and Max jigged. Gen darted to the side, and the bullets impacted harmlessly into the concrete walls of the stairwell.
Max was grinning wickedly. She threw an unexpected elbow into the face of the shooter and kicked and rolled at the fourth guard, who was fumbling ineffectively with his gun. The fourth guard went down with a cry, cracking his head on the door and collapsing to the floor. The third guard fired wildly, and Max brought her fist up under his chin with a crack. He fell backwards over the fourth man and lay still.
Gen checked the pulses on them all, and decided to save the knock-out drugs for later needs. Max stretched. "Not that I needed it or anything," she said sharply, "but a little help could have been nice."
"I wasn't trained in combat situations," Gen answered evenly.
Max cocked her head in disbelief. "Why not?"
"I kept breaking bones in even the most basic of training. And besides, I'm expendable." None of the bitterness she felt trickled into her voice.
They didn't meet anyone else on the trek up to the roof. Max walked at once to the edge and looked down at the swarms of troops scurrying around. "Now what?" she asked. Lights were sweeping the compound. She ducked back as one arc of light passed the edge of the roof.
Gen didn't approach the edge, but walked swiftly to a large inverted-L air-handling vent. She pulled off the cover and snugged her bag on her shoulders. She pointed inside, and Max hesitated only a moment before obeying. Gen knew that she had proved it was tactically sound to follow her plans, and that Max would do so until it proved advantageous to do otherwise.
Max hefted herself into the opening and crawled inside. Gen levered herself right behind, after a careful scan of the area, but put herself in backwards, and lifted the grate into place behind her. She crawled backwards with care, making sure that she didn't hit Max with a misplace boot, and dropped herself into the tiny space that opened off of the pipe after it passed the level of the roof. She had discovered this place by chance when she'd happened across the as-built drawings for the Boeing plant. She'd been working undercover at an architecture and engineering company, and while pursuing other items for Lydecker, she took the opportunity that presented itself to delve into their archives, which included the upgrades to the Boeing plant when the military took over. They were a mess, dating from the rough transition to getting computers back on line, but they were clear in the fact that there was a discrepancy in the mechanical shaft where it met the roof. On her own time, she made a point of checking it out. She didn't know what she would do with the knowledge then, but she was grateful of it now.
She settled into a tight position opposite Max, and they both froze as footsteps approached on the roof. The footsteps dwindled, and they relaxed.
"Now what?" Max mouthed at her.
"We wait," Gen said softly.
Max waited patiently for a moment, then squirmed to a more comfortable position. "How long?" She asked, equally quietly.
Gen looked at her watch. "Three hours."