Chapter 31: Barbs
Lexa and Shalimar now tread carefully through the house. Shalimar frowned. As they secured the four fallen men and searched the rest of the building, her sixth sense seemed to be trying to tell her something. There was something off. Katie said that there was one person left in the house, and Shalimar was trying to use her heightened and extra senses to get a feel for exactly who they were dealing with. But nothing doing. She couldn't sense the other person at all. It may have been the thick cloud of gun smoke still hanging in the air playing havoc with her senses… but she didn't think so. Something was off and Shalimar felt her whole body reacting to the potential danger. As they made their way through the rest of the house, her unease only intensified, reaching the point where Lexa noticed. But she said nothing, needing to focus on the task at hand.
Brennan was the first to reach a door at the end of the back hallway, Jesse not far behind. He looked over his shoulder at Lexa and Shalimar, who had just finished searching the last corner of the house. Shalimar nodded. This was the only place the last person could be, despite the fact that she couldn't detect anything.
He gripped the door handle, attempting to give it a slow twist. It was locked. Fine, the hard way, he thought. Taking a couple steps back, he charged forward, ramming his shoulder into the door. The latch cracked open, and the door swung inward, only to stop two inches in, coming to a sudden, wood splintering halt. Brennan found himself standing between Jesse and Shalimar, having been bounced off the door.
"What the hell was that?" he asked, rubbing his shoulder.
Lexa stepped forward. Sticking her hand through the small opening created by the now cracked door, she felt around and encountered a familiar tingle.
"Well damn," she whispered pulling her hand back. Turning back to the others, she then said, "What we have here is a good old fashioned mutant power proof force field."
Jesse raised an eyebrow. "To keep something in? Or to keep us out?"
"Let's find out." Shalimar stepped around Lexa and grasped the door handle. Giving it a succinct yank, she managed to pull the already damaged door right off its hinges. A flick of the wrist, and she tossed the future kindling into the hall behind them.
Brennan slung and arm around her shoulders. "Nice call," he said appreciatively, as they all stepped up to the doorway. Inside, they saw a slight woman, brown hair caught up in a simple ponytail, hunched over a keyboard.
"Fuck!" she shouted. Reaching into the pocket of her slacks, she withdrew a slim cell phone, and with one hand, based on the sound, activated the walkie-talkie feature. "John! John, get in here, I need you!"
Brennan tapped against the force field, sending a colorful shimmer through its borders. "If John is one of the guys out here, he's taking a little nap."
The woman turned to look at them for the first time. Her icy glare sent a chill down Shalimar's back. Her instincts virtually shouted, 'this woman was dangerous.' Had it been possible, Shalimar would have raised her senses even more.
Lexa crossed her arms and said in an equally icy tone, "Well, if it isn't little Miss Holly herself. Who let you out of your cage?"
Holly fumed. Her eyes narrowed. "If it isn't Lexa "the Bitch" Pierce. Thought you'd be dead by now, going all soft like you did. What? Did you get tired of screwing all the guys in the Dominion and decide to branch out a little?"
Lexa took a step forward, livid at the accusation. Jesse put an arm out to stop her. "Hey. Let it go. You can't get through the field right now anyway."
Holly smirked.
Shalimar put a hand on Lexa's other shoulder. "I'd save some of that energy, though, Lex. Look at her. The way she acted when we bust open the door? She's scared about something. Something's going wrong, and she knows it. If this field was down, I'd be able to smell it." Shalimar's features and tone smirked; inside she was still on the lookout for the other shoe.
"It is a handy tool, isn't it?" Holly said, indicating the shield which protected her. "Stole the design from right under Adam's nose. Would have gotten more, but your security system managed to find my worm before it could do its work. I have to give you guys credit there. You've made some changes since you turned on the Dominion."
Jesse scoffed in disbelief. "Turned on the Dominion? Now I know where your daughter gets her insanity, if you think the Dominion is the good guy in all of this. You… wait; it was you that crashed our systems last week."
Holly did a mock curtsey.
The irritation on Jesse's face was obvious. "Because of you, I had to reconfigure every nanobyte of the security system." He paused for a moment, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. "No, wait. Actually, I should actually thank you. Because of that, I had the chance to revamp the entire system, add new protocols from scratch. Now our system is better than before. So, yes. Thank you."
Holly's eyes narrowed. "You think you're all so smart. You should just…"
Just then, a sizzle lit the air, and for a half second, Jesse thought that Brennan had formed a tesla coil right next to his head. But then he noticed that the power field surrounding the room was flickering, sending random electrons and bright colors spinning through the room. Two seconds later, there was a dull flash, and then everything was quiet again.
Like the other four in the room, Jesse immediately recognized what happened. He smiled, taking a few steps forward, past the spot where the barrier had shorted out just seconds ago. "Apparently we are that smart. See, if you had taken the time, you would have figured out that any file downloaded from Sanctuary without the proper passwords gets corrupted in the transfer. A little feature that Adam and I added a couple months back." By now, Jesse was only a few yards from Holly. Behind him, the other three had come closer too. Jesse took another step...
And instantly froze. Because one second he was advancing, having the advantage, the next he was frozen in place with a gun pointed in his direction. Upon recognizing that it was a simple 9 mm, he relaxed. A little.
"You know that I'm an impervious molecular. Bullets don't do much good against me."
One corner of Holly's mouth lifted. "Oh, I know you are. But he isn't." Her arm swung right, now directing the gun at Brennan, who had been moving slowly to the side.
Predictably, Jesse reacted, his features and body stiffening.
"I also know that none of you, least of all you, Mr. Kilmartin, have super speed. And there's no way you can get in front of him in the instant it takes a bullet to travel this short of a range. Hell, it's almost point blank. The point is, you try anything, and Mr. Mulwray here gets a bullet in him. And Mr. Mulwray, one spark, and we'll have the same result. Ms. Slut, the same goes for you."
Shalimar growled. "What the hell do you want?"
"Down kitty. You'll be happy to know you were right. Things have gone wrong. But that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over and let you win. I'll just have to move on to plan B. Now, if you two will kindly move over here. Not you, Mulwray. You stay right where you are."
Gently, Shalimar and Lexa moved to stand beside Jesse. Both held their hands out in the universal symbol of submission. At the same time, Holly stepped sideways and back, making sure to keep the gun trained on Brennan. "What exactly is it that you hope to accomplish?" Lexa asked.
Holly looked at Lexa for a moment. "Now Lexa," she said, exasperated. "You don't really expect me answer that, do you? I may not be a genius, but I'm far from stupid. For all I know you're broadcasting this conversation back to Adam. So, no, I'm not going to tell you." By now, Holly was standing in the doorway through which they had entered minutes earlier. "You're all just going to have to die without knowing. Sorry." As she spoke, she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket and withdrew another slim object.
Brennan shifted his weight unhappily. "Great. A remote control. Why do the bad guys always have a remote control? Nothing good ever happens when they have a remote control."
"You really aren't as dumb as you look," Holly said with a smile. She pushed a short sequence of keys, pocketed the device and walked away.
The moment the gun was no longer pointed in their direction, Brennan put down his hands from where he had been holding them out, and set off after her. But before he got halfway to the door, a colorful shimmer pulsed around the room. Brennan immediately stopped short.
"Damn it!" He threw a hand up. "She got the field up. How the hell'd she fix it so fast?"
"I don't know. I thought the program was supposed to shut down if someone outside sanctuary tried to use it." Lexa shot a glance over to Jesse.
"Hey, don't look at me! I know that the corruption program works, I –"
"Shh!" Shalimar's harsh tone immediately silenced the potential bickering.
Brennan watched Shalimar's eyes flash. "Shal? What is it?"
She held out a hand, telling them to be silent. A moment later, she spoke, her voice low. "That's not all she did. We've got another problem. Tick-tick," she said tellingly.
Brennan's eyes relayed his reaction. "I don't suppose that's more water sprinklers?" he asked half sarcastically.
"Sorry Brennan. This tick-tick is the tick-tick-boom variety. When she left, our friend Holly activated a bomb."
