Chapter 14: Hunting Hounds
"Omega Mall: the last place you'll ever need to shop!"
Zeno read the slogan written underneath the giant greek letter marking the mall's facade. He was perched prone on the edge of a hibachi restaraunt's rooftop across the sprawling parking lot. Taking full advantage of the zoom function on his glasses, Zeno surveyed the area.
The Omega Mall was the largest shopping center in the city. A gargantuan three-story building, the mall was full of nearly every type of store imaginable, and looking through the broken glass of the front doors, Zeno could tell that each outlet was decked in macabre holiday fare.
Scattered zombies roamed the parking lot but seemed to stay clear of the building itself. As busy as the mall usually was, Zeno had expected a much denser horde; he wondered if their undead master had directed them elsewhere. Lifting his gaze, Zeno spotted a pair of Eden sentries watching from the roof corners. A large skylight spanned the roof behind them.
"Got our entry point," Zeno said. "The skylight's our best chance to survey the interior before we bust up in there. Getting up there might be a bit tricky."
"We should maintain surprise as long as we can," Copen said. "If I take one of them out, can you get the other in time?"
Zeno considered his approach options. To the mall's right, an overpass ran nearly level with the roof. The distance was iffy, but it was his best chance.
A few minutes later, one of the rooftop snipers caught a suspicious light in the corner of his eye. Turning his scope toward it, he ended up transfixed by the EX Gear's Gorgon Gaze.
The sniper on the other side, who had just noticed a sound like fishing line retracting, startled at the heavy thwack of Copen's shield against his ally's helmet. He turned and, seeing the other sniper sliding across the roof, drew his sidearm in one hand. Zeno, however, clambered onto the ledge behind him with a throwing knife in hand and flicked it into the gunman's shoulder. Both Copen and Zeno pounced on their stunned targets and held blades to their throats.
"The hostages," Zeno said. "Where are they, and what do you want with them?"
The Eden soldiers maintained a stony silence. Zeno glanced at Copen who, with a look of annoyance, immediately slashed his prisoner's throat and crushed his neck to the side when he began to transform. He stomped over to Zeno's catch and stuck his bayonet against the man's side.
"I'll take longer with you," Copen said.
The Eden soldier's chest heaved up and down a few times before he answered.
"My life…for the cause."
To Zeno's surprise, the soldier pressed his throat harder against the blade and snatched his head to the side, slitting his own throat. Just as soon as his head flopped down, he rose back up, flailing, but Zeno kept him down with another precise thrust. And so, both of the potential informants were reduced to ash.
"So much for that," Zeno said.
"We'll just have to eyeball it, then," Copen said.
The pair knelt down by the wide windows of the skylight and peered through. Most of the store shutters were closed, but many of the neon signs still blazed over the monochrome skeletal patterns. Among the commercial glare, Eden soldiers patrolled all three of the escalator-connected levels. They were about to kick the hornets' nest.
Much like QUILL, most of Eden's rank and file was composed of adepts with relatively minor septima: enhanced senses or reflexes, unnatural strength or endurance, healing factors and various oddball abilities. These were the very evolutionary mutations Summeragi had long fought to manage and monopolize. The irony was not lost on Zeno that those born with advantages of nature were so often forced to a societal disadvantage.
He glanced over to Copen who was still focusing intently on the scene below. Funnily enough, Copen wasn't that different. Though not an adept, he had held many advantages of birth when it came to wealth, education, and stability. And yet, his father's genius, the source of those very advantages, had been exactly the factor that caused him the most grief. Zeno just hoped that Copen would realize they did have something in common.
"There," Copen said.
Zeno followed Copen's finger just past the large fountain at ground level. A party of Eden soldiers was coming up from the bottom floor with prisoners in tow. The hostages, a small group of civilian stragglers who had holed up somewhere outside the safe zones, were led by a brass-armored Eden officer while his lackeys pushed the group along with their muzzles. Rather than proceeding to the third-floor stairs, the procession turned and headed toward the opposite side of the second floor.
"That's where they're keeping them, then," Copen said.
In response, Zeno got on his radio.
"Sheeps 3," he said, "can you pull me a map of the Omega Mall?"
"Sending it now," Moniqua answered.
Zeno checked the map on his communicator.
"Looks like they process inventory on the back side," Zeno said. "Whaddya say we make it a fire sale?"
[Go Get 'Em, Tiger- Sonic Omens ost]
"We can't have them pincering us in," Copen said. "I'll clear the first floor, you hit the third, and we'll meet in the middle."
"Sound's like a plan, chief," Zeno said.
"Try not to burn the place down," Moniqua said. "I kind of liked that mall."
"No promises," Zeno answered.
Zeno grinned at Copen who was flicking back his hammer.
"Ready when you are," he said.
"Right," Copen said. "Let's go, Lo–"
A look of embarrassment flashed over Copen's face. Zeno couldn't hide his smirk.
"Shut up," Copen said.
Copen leapt into the air and power stomped through the skylight, startling the terrorists from their illusion of safety. His gun was blazing bright before the broken glass finished hitting the floor.
"Crazy bastard," Zeno said.
The shooters on the top floor leaned over the railing to aim at Copen, but Zeno raised his own rifle and domed each of them like a line of targets at a speed shooting competition. One of them fell over the railing and splashed into the fountain like a coin into a wishing well. Copen killchecked him and dashed out of Zeno's view to further his assault.
Zeno wasted no time swinging down from his grapple, but he felt the heat of energy shots whizzing by him as soon as his boots hit the floor. He scrambled to cover behind a metal pillar and returned fire. The hostiles were firing from other pillars, decorative plant enclosures, drink machines, and heavy trash cans they were using as cover. Zeno's precise bursts picked three of them off, but their corpses reanimated and charged as bodyshields for their living comrades.
"Though we fall, again we rise!" one of them shouted.
When the zombies had nearly converged on him, Zeno let his rifle fall to his hip and drew knives in each hand. Activating his mag boots, Zeno ran three steps up the pillar while the zombies' screeching nails scratched it beneath him. Zeno backflipped from his perch and drove both blades into the shoulders of the zombie beneath him.
He rose up swinging and thrust one knife through the palm of a zombie that was reaching for him before swiping its throat with the other. Leaving the one knife stuck in the corpse's hand, Zeno sidestepped the remaining zombies' attack. He used his septima to snatch the knife out of the corpse into the back of the other zombie's neck before stabbing it from the front and reclaiming both blades in a splash of blood.
Three Eden soldiers rushed his flanks, two left, one right. Zeno crossed his arms and challenged the two on the left. He slung both knives into each opponent's foot, throwing off their flashing shots, and popped one round from his sidearm into each of their heads near-instantly. Immediately, he pivoted, snatched up his rifle, and perforated the other soldier's chest with a burst of lead.
The trio rose like inflatable tube men for their second round. Zeno killchecked the enemy he already had his sights on and pivoted to the other two. A quick burst blew the front zombie's face off just in time for it to fall limp onto Zeno. He pushed it off and fired on the other, but his magazine ran dry before it dropped. Zeno whacked it across the jaw with his stock, and the blood loss took care of the rest.
With the dexterity of a casino card dealer, Zeno knocked the dry mag out of his rifle and inserted a fresh one. Another terrorist screamed from his side. Zeno cycled the receiver as he turned, but his eyes shot wide at the sight of the new challenger. The soldier was charging headlong with a live grenade in his hand and a vest of several more strapped to his chest.
"Avenge me brothers!" he screamed.
Zeno put a shot in the maniac's leg and bolted toward the escalator. The grenade in the soldier's hand rattled across the floor.
"Brothers, avenge me!"
The bombs detonated just as Zeno vaulted onto the escalator rail. The earsplitting blast shattered his hearing, as the hot gust eclipsed him.
. . . . . . . . . .
Everyone Nori could see had grown tired of sitting straight. Instead, stress and fatigue had moved people to lounge and lean in unceremonious manners throughout the sanctuary. Mytyl, too, was lying flat on her back with her hair hanging off the pew as she stared at the high rafters above. Nori herself was standing against one of the pillars while she watched over Mytyl. At an earlier point in her life, Nori might have reached for a cigarette during such a wait, but it was a habit she had long since cut.
In time, the event Nori had awaited came to transpire. The priest and a Summeragi officer came walking together down the opposite side of the sanctuary. Though they were both moving toward the confessional, the officer's face was much harder than Nori would have expected from a penitent. They passed behind the curtains, and Nori listened through the receiver she had planted.
"Lieutenant Morningstar, was it?" the priest said. "What is it that burdens your soul today?"
"Allow me to start with a question," the lieutenant said. "Do you believe that history repeats itself?"
Perhaps it was merely Nori's bias or the muffled nature of the audio receiver, but Nori thought she perceived something dark in the lieutenant's voice, some tone as might have echoed from the black bowels of a deep cavern.
"For the most part," the priest answered. "The human heart has changed little since the days of Adam and Eve."
"What do you think, then?" Morningstar said. "Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes?"
"I can't speak for mankind as a whole," Father Michael answered, "but individual change is a different story. That, I've seen many times over."
"Then I'll ask one more question," the lieutenant said. "Could one person's change ever change the world?"
"Technically, there is one precedent," the priest answered, "but that man was also God. Granted, history is filled with individuals who altered its course in their day."
Nori picked up on the rustle of cloth; the lieutenant had shifted his posture.
"Some thirty years ago," Morningstar said, "a superior of mine had a dream to change the world, and he had a plan to go with it. The plan only fell through because he was killed. I always felt that I failed him."
The priest was quiet for a moment.
"I understand that the nature of your work may be… sensitive," Father Michael said, "but I'll need a bit more information to give you a constructive answer."
"It wasn't what happened back then that troubled me so much," the lieutenant said. "I've accepted there was nothing more I could have done then; it was what came after that stayed on my mind. You see, not everyone believed in the dream like I did. Where I wanted to move forward with our plans, they favored moving on from it. After a while, I let them shut me up…, but now, I'm thinking it's time to break the silence."
"I'm still not certain I follow," the priest said, "but you sound as if you know what to do. Only, I'd advise to refer to the Word of–"
"I'm looking for a different kind of guidance, Father," Morningstar said. "Information, the kind people have been giving you all day, especially that white-haired woman, her maid, and her brother."
"You may not be familiar with our traditions," the priest said, "but I'm not at liberty to reveal anyone else's words to you."
"Your liberty is of no concern to me," the lieutenant said. "You may not have noticed, but this is a crisis situation; I've been granted emergency powers to do anything I deem necessary for the public safety. Anything."
"Are you threatening me, Lieutenant?" Father Michael said.
Nori's eyes widened at the sound of the lieutenant's answer. He responded not with words but with the metallic crunch of a chambered round.
. . . . . . . . . .
Both of Zeno's palms were pressed against his ears as tightly as his teeth were gnashed together. The last few moments had been a blur. Despite being struck in the back by a piece of shrapnel, Zeno had remained steady enough to gun down another shooter while he was sliding down the escalator rail. He had then dropped into a combat roll and thumped a round from his grenade launcher, blowing another soldier from cover into the nearest store's shutter. He only felt the impacts; no sound reached him.
After finishing off the remnant of the soldier behind him, Zeno had ducked behind an enclosure of palm trees to catch his breath. His back plate had kept the shrapnel from doing any more than bruising him, but his head felt like it was inside a ringing alarm bell. While Zeno tried to gather himself, Copen, blasting away with his expansive arsenal, whooshed up from the floor below. Amid the deafening pressure on his ears, Zeno heard the echo of a voice he had long wanted to forget.
"GV isn't the only one who needs to recharge," Asimov had said. "When you lose focus under strain, you'll only scatter your energy. Find a means to ground yourself: a mantra, a motion, something to channel your septima back to its center."
Zeno barely heard Copen call out to him. He turned and read the words from Copen's lips.
"Are you OK?"
In response, Zeno drew a smoke grenade from his kit and curled his fingers around it as if around a ball. Breathing in, he closed his eyes tightly, and pressed his fingers against his left palm.
He remembered the feel of the baseball's leather gripped tight in his hand. He shifted his fingertips onto the stitches and felt the mesh of his glove brush against his fingers. He breathed out. The diamond was where he had discovered his septima; as soon as he got a good grip on that ball, he knew exactly where it was going. On every weapon he had owned since, he customized the grip to feel like baseball stitches.
Zeno turned back to Copen and nodded resolutely. As soon as Copen had nodded back, he raised his gun and dropped a zombie that had wandered too close. Zeno pulled the pin and slung the grenade which quickly erupted into a smoke screen. Copen activated the Crystal Ball to shield himself from stray energy shots and pushed toward the smoke while Zeno slid in from the other side. A few moments later, a series of muzzle flashes and energy strobes erupted from the smokescreen. Only Copen and Zeno emerged.
As the duo dropped back into cover next to a merry-go-round in the center aisle, another squad of terrorists opened fire from in front of the main store. As Zeno returned fire, a group of zombies banged on the opposite side of the store shutter next to him. Ignoring them, Zeno switched to his sidearm to keep up the assault. The soldiers dropped one by one, but another Eden officer took aim with a plasma grenade launcher. Rather than targeting Copen or Zeno directly, he turned and blasted out the store shutters near them.
Both Copen and Zeno dove behind the merry-go-round for cover, but with the shutters busted, the zombies trapped within came pouring out. Zeno emptied the remainder of his sidearm's magazine, but it only provided enough lead to take down the first zombie. Swapping the empty gun to his off hand, Zeno drew the Border from under his arm and dropped four zombies with four rapid shots. The last zombie pushed into melee range and reached to grab Zeno, but he spun around its grasp and pistol whipped it in the back of the head before hammering it to the ground with the butts of both guns and delivering the finishing shot.
Within the same span of time, Copen froze three pouncing zombies within the Glacier Wall and sliced them all with a single swipe of his extended bayonet. With bone-shattering velocity, he shield tackled another zombie and blasted three more from the floor. He sprung back up and turned to Zeno who was reloading frantically.
As a larger horde advanced from the sides and front, Zeno backed into the merry-go-round's control panel; the key was still in it. Without a second thought, Zeno pushed the acceleration lever and hopped on.
"Give it a boost!" he called.
Catching his meaning, Copen grabbed one of the outside poles and fired his jets, sending the carnival contraption into a high-speed twirl. From the rotating platform, the two mowed down the wave of zombies and neutralized the remaining soldiers. Zeno staggered dizzily when he stepped off, but the two pressed on to their target.
"If Lola were here, she would have approved of that plan," Copen said.
"Great minds think alike," Zeno answered.
"Great… minds?"
. . . . . . . . . .
With the threat of the loaded gun hanging in the air, Nori was unsure whether she was listening to the priest's stunned breaths or own. She stood ready to run to Mytyl at a moment's notice, but she quieted herself and continued to listen.
"I'm ordering you," Morningstar said, "according to my authority, to tell me what you know."
The priest was silent for a moment. His answer came as a harsh whisper.
"I obey a higher authority than you," Father Michael said.
"You think I'm bluffing?" Morningstar said. "Then why don't I confess something else: I've killed a lot of people, Father. Not just because I was defending myself. Not just because I was ordered to. I've killed people because their lives were a greater inconvenience to me than their deaths, so I advise you to reconsider before you waste another moment of my time."
"If you intend to martyr me, by all means," the priest said, "but promise me this one thing. In my library, on the right end of the third shelf, you will find an updated book of Christian martyrs. Once you have pulled that trigger, open that book to the last page and pen my name in it, because my name will be written in the book of life. Your's will not."
"It doesn't have to happen here," Morningstar said. "We could take our time in a back room. Accidentally throw you to the monsters outside."
"But you chose to interrogate me here for a reason, didn't you?" Father Michael retorted. "So, either you're much less of a strategist than you'd have me believe, or you don't have any real sanction to harm me. In which case, I will retire to pray for you."
Nori heard Father Michael getting up and slyly confirmed the motion in the corner of her vision. The lieutenant, however, came out just behind him and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. They were still just within listening range.
"I'll have to check that book of martyrs you mentioned," Morningstar said. "I have a feeling it will be… inspiring."
The lieutenant clenched the priest's shoulder tightly and maintained cold eye contact for several seconds. Finally, he patted the man on the back and went on his way.
Nori clenched her fist tight enough to make her old bones quiver until the lieutenant's coattails went out of sight. She had always hated that Summeragi uniform. She grabbed her surveillance device from the tissue box. With her suspicions confirmed, she needed to get to work before they made a move on Mytyl. That sure resolve animated her strides after the lieutenant's path.
"Nori?"
Nori halted at the sound of Mytyl's voice. Mytyl had sat up just when Nori passed her. Apparently, she had come to recognize the pattern of Nori's footsteps like the opening notes of a familiar song.
"Where are you going?" she said.
Mytyl's eyes were drooping, and her hair had begun to tangle. Nori thought she looked much like she used to upon getting out of bed at night. Nori knew that she didn't look so fresh herself.
"Let's say I have some trust issues of my own," Nori answered. "I'd rather not trouble you with it."
"Is it the soldiers?" Mytyl asked quietly.
Nori nodded. Mytyl pursed her lips.
"Tell me honestly," Mytyl said, "are we gonna make it out of this?"
Nori looked away but met her eyes once again.
"We will," Nori said. "I'll make sure of it."
Mytyl gave a slight nod and sat up a little straighter.
"Don't talk to any strangers," Nori said.
. . . . . . . . . .
Copen breached the warehouse doors with an armor-powered kick. Zeno tossed in his other smoke grenade and followed behind Copen's shield. On the other side of the smoke, the flashy storefronts and colorful merchandise gave way to utilitarian metal and drab cardboard while the neon flashes of energy weapons illuminated the spacious room such as the dim lights hanging between the shelves could not.
Copen and Zeno returned fire to such great effect that the terrorists retreated around the corner, but just as soon as the pair began to press their advantage, a large mech with a shield and gatling gun burst from a shipping container in the back. The massive firearm rotated and opened fire. In response, Copen raised the Glacier Wall to defend himself, and Zeno dove into cover and crawled.
The screaming torrent of lead tore through the shelved boxes like a swarm of locusts and chipped the frozen shield down bit by bit. Copen, however, dove out of cover with the Pride Lance primed and blasted the laser up the gatling gun's center, blowing apart its rotating barrels.
"Get ready to thread the needle!" he called.
Immediately, Copen launched the lance's secondary drill projectile which began to burrow through the mech's shield. Refusing to leave the attack unanswered, the mech deployed missile launchers from its shoulders and unleashed the salvo at Copen, prompting him to boost into the air and weave through the shelves to shake off the missiles.
While Copen evaded, Zeno took aim at the drill burrowing through the thick shield. The mech's single eye tracked Copen to establish a radar lock while it loaded its next salvo. Zeno's finger was tight on the trigger. The missile launchers popped out just as the drill fell out of the shield.
"Hasta la vista," Zeno said.
Zeno launched the grenade straight through the drill hole right into the robot's eye. On impact, the explosive round shattered the machine's face and blew its metal innards out its back. Sparks flashed from the gaping hole through the mech's body, and it crumpled with a heavy clang.
The pair waded through the scattered and shredded merchandise to press their advantage. They stacked on either side of the open doorway and listened. The sharp breaths of the hostages rang from within the metal space.
"Think carefully before you take your next step!" one of the terrorists called. "Our human shields are at the ready, and we don't value their lives any more than natural selection does! You may be able to destroy us, but we will rise from the ashes! They won't!"
Copen deployed a scanner pulse which revealed the truth of the terrorist's threats. Five of them were standing in the center of the room with hostages subdued by guns or knives. Their leader stood behind with a rifle at the ready, and a few others were posted behind flipped tables and other cover.
Copen shared his findings with Zeno and signaled for him to open fire after his shot. Zeno nodded and stood at the ready. Copen primed the EX Gear with Merak's septima and cocked back his gun's hammer. He breathed deep.
Copen pointed the shield muzzle forward and created a spatial tear in front of him. The terrorists turned their heads toward the ripping sound of the portal opening to their right; Copen stared back at them down his gun sights.
The trigger pulled back, the hammer slammed forward, and with a clear line of sight, Copen perforated three of the captors along with their commander. The remaining two in the center shifted their bodyshields between themselves and the portal, but Zeno swiveled around the corner and expertly shot them each through the ear.
The remaining hostiles rained suppressing fire on Zeno's position while the neutralized combatants rose as zombies, but Copen flipped the EX Gear around and swept the paralyzing light of the Gorgon Gaze across the room, freezing the gunners, zombies, and civilians in place like a stop-motion diorama. Both he and Zeno took the opportunity to precisely headshot every threat that remained standing.
Copen and Zeno pressed into the room and checked their corners while the paralyzed prisoners regained their motion. After declaring the room clear, Zeno called for evac. The open room was a shipping and receiving zone with wide doors and loading docks for the delivery trucks to make their dropoffs. Strange capsules vaguely reminiscent of iron maidens stood on the docks and emanated ominous red lights.
"What is all this?" Zeno said.
Copen approached one of the capsules and scanned it closely. His expression fell. Somberly, he laid one hand on the device and clenched the other into a fist.
"It's blood plasma," Copen said. "We were too late for them."
Zeno looked around in horror; the bloody light of the crimson coffins flowed from each of the partly open containers.
"Those-those were people?" one of the civilians said. "Is that what they were gonna do to us?"
"I think I'm gonna be sick," another said.
Zeno turned to the civilians with the intention of saying something to comfort them, but he noticed that the Eden officer lying on the floor hadn't turned like the rest of his squad.
"Get back!" Zeno said.
As soon as the civilians had cleared his line of fire, Zeno punched a rifle round into the body. No response. Cautiously, he nudged it with his foot and pushed the corpse onto its back. Something rattled across the floor; an empty syringe reflected the flickering light. Zeno had played enough video games to know what came next.
The body contorted and writhed amidst a sequence of unsettling snaps. Zeno didn't hesitate to fire off several rounds before the mutating corpse even began to rise, but the body rapidly expanded to double its original height. The terrorist's armor and skin ripped apart to make way for the gangly limbs bursting out from him, and as the monster rose, the Eden helmet fell away to reveal a porcelain white mask grafted into blood red flesh.
Copen joined Zeno's firing line, but even their hail of combined fire couldn't keep the creature from lurching toward them. Though its flesh tore under the gunfire, it seemed to coagulate and regenerate almost immediately. Its sanguine shade grew ominously darker, its pace quickened, and its dead claws reached out.
Simultaneously, Copen primed a Greed Snatcher, and Zeno drew the Border; they both fired at once. Each of the specialized bullets pierced one of the red eyes of the white mask and shattered it. The creature fell at the duo's feet and melted into a pool of blood.
"Monsters," Copen said.
"No arguments from me," Zeno said. "That thing was way tougher than the other zombies. We better find our target before any more of those start popping up."
"Agreed," Copen said. "Did anyone overhear anything about where they were taking these capsules?"
"I think they said something about the docks," one of the civilians said.
"Think they were talking about the port?" Zeno said.
"It's a start," Copen answered, "and with all these blood samples, I should be able to get a better lock on her septimal signature."
The roar of the transport's engines drew closer to the ground. Summeragi would have an outpost established before long.
"Guess you turned out to be something of a bloodhound after all," Zeno remarked.