44 – Action

After a few minutes, Addie's voice came through comms, "It's clear to the elevator and stairs. There's a camera cluster there, but Glitch caught its signal. All good to go in, Alpha."

Tony glanced at Beef, clear as day in the enhanced light reception of his new helmet visor, and the big man nodded. Together, they darted across the junker-littered parking lot toward the front doors. Despite Addie's assurances, Tony panned his vision across the windows on the upper stories a few times while they moved, hoping Nora would pick up any micro-changes that might signify a lurking sniper or even just an automated camera.

Nothing seemed to alert his PAI, though, and when they reached the door, Beef barreled through, popping the shrink-cord that had been tied around the handles like it wasn't there. Inside the trash-strewn lobby, Tony saw what Addie had meant by scavs—half a dozen slumped forms lined the far wall, some wrapped in blankets, some under mounds of paper and plastic garbage, and some sprawled out with no protection against the elements, their eyes glazed over or covered by rust-tech visors.

"What a life," Beef muttered, starting up the steps to the main corridor where a big metallic sign still read, "ELEVATORS, STAIRS, RESTROOMS."

Tony kept pace, his shotgun held ready. He'd definitely come packing for trouble; he just wished Beef hadn't made that crack about him wanting to kill the squint to save some bits. At least, not in front of Addie. He glanced at him as they passed into the long corridor. "Man, you sure were sensitive to Addie in the van back there. Gonna help pay for the wipeware, huh?"

Beef shrugged, grunting. Then he pointed the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun at the graffiti-covered wall, indicating a two-tone red and gray portrait of a woman with improbably sized breasts. "Not bad."

"Yeah, pretty sensitive until you see a chance to bust my balls, that is."

Beef turned his black visor his way. "What're you crying about?"

"I'm not trying to save the bits, I just think shit's gonna go sideways. I got a feeling. I didn't want to say that back there, though."

Beef shrugged. "Hey, man, I am who I am. Anyway, I hope it does go sideways. I been itching to break something ever since you told me I gotta play nice with Gomez."

Tony saw a line of static on his team comms HUD, and for a second, he thought Beef wasn't isolating their conversation, but he figured it was just an artifact. "You mad I helped you?"

"Nah, T. I mean it. Thanks. I act like an asshole sometimes, but I can see you've been trying to be cool. A'right?" he held out a meaty fist, and Tony nodded, clacking his plasteel fist against it.

"Cool."

By then, Tony could see Humpty hovering ahead, doing little loops by the elevator. He readied his gun and picked up the pace. When he got there, Addie said through comms. "Elevators aren't responding to Glitch. She thinks the wiring's been taken."

Tony glanced at the walls and saw the grooves where more than just wires had been cut out. "Yeah, the place is pretty stripped." He walked over to the metal door to the stairwell and glanced at Beef. "Ready?"

Beef hurried forward and knelt before the door, shotgun aimed. "Go."

Tony grabbed the metal handle, depressed the lever, and pulled, bracing himself for Beef to start shooting. Nothing happened, though, and, peering through the open door, he could see a concrete landing and concrete stairs, and not much else. There were plenty of strange, disturbing stains, but no people—no guards. "Come on." He went through and motioned for Beef and Humpty to follow.

"Stay put, Alpha," Addie said, clearly loving the team designations. "I'm scouting the stairwell." Humpty burbled over the guardrail and descended.

Tony peered over, following the drone's egg-shaped chassis as it got smaller and smaller. The lab was eighteen floors down, but it looked like that stairwell went a lot deeper than that. "How many floors down are there?"

Glitchwitch replied, "Fifty."

"Deep," Beef grunted.

Addie's voice came through comms again: "I'm at sublevel fifteen, and I'm picking up some conversation. Getting a little closer. Okay, piping it through comms."

"…another damn room."

"Seriously? What level?"

"Twenty. You gotta add it to the route, and it's like, spotty fucking power down there. Anyway, it's just a glance-and-prance. Two weirdo wire-heads in there, and you gotta make sure they ain't done any self-harm. Give 'em a good once-over and then head out."

"Right, my PAI's updating my schedule. I got this."

"Cool, and if you get too freaked, just grab one of the synths or, if you must, the security guys. They're lazy assholes, though."

"Nah, I got this. Pop a red and the dark don't bother me much."

Both voices broke into laughter, and Addie dialed back the feed. "I don't think I should expose Humpty to those guys. You're up, Alpha."

Tony started down the steps. "Right, just keep listening in case they mention Kwon."

"Roger."

Tony smiled. Addie was having fun with the comms. Beef was behind him, trying to keep from making too much noise as he descended, but it was a losing battle. Even Tony's armored boots and body armor made it hard not to make the steel-suspended concrete steps resonate with his passage. Still, the guys sounded like idiots, and Tony didn't think they'd raise an alarm just at the sound of someone coming down; he'd find out soon enough. "Wish we'd gotten Addie an armed drone."

"Why didn't you?" Beef asked in a husky, breathless whisper.

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the guy, noting his red face. He wasn't exactly heaving for breath, though. Beef was big, but he had considerable stamina. Subvocalizing into a private channel between the two of them, he replied, "Nothing good in town, and Glitch thinks she can rig up a modification to one of Humpty's arms."

Beef grunted in a way that said he got the message, but he didn't reply.

Tony shifted his shotgun on its sling, letting it settle behind his hip, then brought up a new AUI overlay. His armor's left gauntlet—fitted with a micro-capacitor grid and pulse-node knuckles—showed a ready status. The static discharge system was online, fully charged, and capable of delivering a high-voltage stun burst on contact. "Nora, go live with the knuckles if I hit either of these guys coming up."

Just as Nora replied, saying she was ready, Addie said into comms, "Alpha! One of the talkers is coming up. I think his shift is over."

Tony glanced at the nearby stairwell door: B12. "We're still a few floors up. I guess we'll wait for him."

"Roger."

Tony looked at Beef and gestured to the corner. Beef nodded and moved over there to lurk in the shadows. Tony, meanwhile, moved closer to the stairs coming up from below and squatted behind the cement railing. His armor had actuated joints, and when he squatted like that, they tightened. He could feel the potential in them, almost like a spring. Honestly, it was very comfortable—almost like sitting down. Better yet, he'd be able to launch himself up and jump a good meter further than he usually could—if he wanted to.

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It didn't take long for his augmented hearing to pick up the shuffle-scuff of the guy's footsteps on the stairs. What was he, anyway? An orderly? It sounded like something like that to Tony. The guy wasn't security, but he was in charge of making some kind of rounds. Maybe he was a lab tech or a junior squint.

He waited there until the steps were just down the next flight, then Tony tensed, and when the guy came up to the top of the stairs, he sprang up, grabbing his white lab coat and driving him against the concrete wall.

As the poor bastard yelped, scrabbling at Tony's unyielding metal arm, Tony growled—his voice augmented by his helmet's speaker—"Don't resist and don't make any noise and you won't die here."

"Uh—uh…"

"Shep," Glitch said into comms, "his PAI is calling for help. I'm keeping it busy with a fake response loop."

"What's your name, kid?" Tony asked after observing the fact that the guy looked like he was in his late teens.

"A-adrian, sir."

"Okay, calm down. Breathe. I'm gonna ask you a few questions, then you're on your way, no sweat."

Adrian's eyes darted past Tony to the hulking black-clad shape of Beef, and his breathing rapidly deteriorated into hyperventilation.

"Damn it, kid. Seriously. Calm down and you're gonna be fine." Tony shook him a little and moved to block his view of Beef. "Listen. Tell me about the lab down there. Don't think about anything else. What's going on? Where's Kwon, the uh, main scientist?"

"Um, the lab?" His eyes darted toward the stairs. "Well, there's about three levels of it, but most of it's on eighteen. Uh, that's where Doctor K is. The other levels just have rooms housing the subjects for the trials."

"Trials?"

"Yeah, Doctor K's experiments. I'm just a lab tech. I collect samples and deliver injections—just with an autoinjector! I don't know what all he's doing. The patients are pretty weird, though. It's got to do with Dust, and there are a few rooms we're not allowed in."

"Okay, tell me about the security. How many are in there?"

"Like, um, six guys. They, like, live here, man. Sometimes I think they're watching Kwon and his assistants more than they're guarding the place. They never give us techs any trouble when we're coming and going. I mean, we already got our clearance at FreeLife, so, you know how that goes."

"What's FreeLife? A corp?"

"Uh, yeah. That's the pharmaceutical we work for."

"You said, 'like' six guys. Be certain. Think it over."

The kid licked his lips, nodding. "There's definitely six. They're assholes, too. They have a gym set up in the old cafeteria, and they mostly hang out in there, but one of 'em is always with Doctor Kwon, and he never leaves, either." His eyes darted up and down Tony's black, reflectionless visor. "You're not, like, gonna get me fired, are you?"

"Nah, we'll make sure you don't look bad." Tony peeled open the self-sealing membrane on his belt pack, reaching in with his left hand while he pressed his mechanical arm against Adrian's chest, holding him pinned. "Anything else I need to know? Door codes? Safe rooms? Automated security?"

"Synths! S-synths, sir. They have ten or so synthetics down there. They do lab work, but I've seen combat synths on vids, and these look like those. They have, like, guns in their arms."

"Ten or so?"

"T-ten."

Tony smiled grimly, though the kid couldn't see it. This was getting more and more lovely. "Alright, and how many guys like you? And the lab assistants?"

"Just one tech. He just came on shift. LaShawn, and he, well, he's a tweaker, so…" He shrugged, then added, "Doc K has three assistants. I think two are working right now."

Tony nodded. "Good Job," he said, then reached up and pressed an autoinjector against the side of Adrian's neck. He instantly slumped, unconscious. Tony lowered him to the ground, then bent his head forward so he could pull his PAI. That done, he snapped it with his mechanical fingers and tucked the autoinjector back into his belt pack.

"That was interesting," Glitch said through comms.

"Yeah. I think resistance is going to be heavy. You ready for this, Beef?"

The big guy had already approached, and his nod was immediate. "Hell, yes."

"Glitchwitch, check out that pharmaceutical corp while we're at it."

"Already doing some digging."

Tony lifted his shotgun. "Down we go, Beef. Try not to kill any of the squints or that, uh, LaShawn guy."

"Who? Me?" Beef snorted, leading the way down the steps. Tony groaned inwardly, but, in a way, he was glad to have a violent bastard like Beef with him on a job like this. If those synths were really combat models, they were going to have their work cut out for them.

"You got your cleaver under that jacket?"

"Always."

In their team comms, Tony asked, "How's it looking up top, Bravo? Glitch, you getting any signals from the security down here?"

"Oddly, no cams. No outgoing feeds at all. But I'm picking up data transmissions coming in, presumably to the people down there. Nothing but entertainment feeds. Serials and socials—things I'd imagine bored security guys would be watching."

"No activity up there?"

"Not that we can see from the van," Addie replied. "T-Shepherd, will you carry Humpty down the last flight. I have a feeling—"

"That they might have another interference field like the last lab. We should have thought of that, huh?"

Addie sounded more than a little irritated. "I mean, we knew he was working with Dust-afflicted, so yeah."

When they got to level seventeen, Tony found Humpty waiting, and he tucked him under one arm while he followed Beef down the last flight. Tentatively, he released the drone, and it continued to hover. "Seems like you're still connected."

"I am! Maybe they couldn't afford a field like that—this isn't a Boxer facility, after all."

Beef was standing beside the stairwell door, one giant boot against it, just in case someone tried to open it while they were standing there. He gave Tony a look, and he didn't have to speak—Tony knew what he wanted to ask.

"Yeah, Beef, we're going in hard. We can't play around with sixteen hostiles. Just try to be quiet for as long as you can."

Beef grinned, stuffing his sawed-off shotgun into a big thigh-holster and then reaching under his coat to draw out his enormous cleaver. Tony followed suit—to a degree. He let his shotgun hang by his side and then drew his .40 caliber pistol. It was two inches longer at the end of the barrel, now sporting a brand-new suppressor. It was Dust-tech, and it had cost him nearly ten K, but Addie had agreed it was worthwhile.

It was short and practically indestructible—none of the wear issues you got with conventional suppressors. The only catch was the Dust cost: a unit or two per shot. Tony didn't mind. In return, his high-pressure semi-auto rounds came out nearly silent. The internals were lined with micro-vibration dampeners and Dust-weave baffling, tuning each shot into little more than a hard exhale. He hadn't tested it yet, but he'd used something similar back in the day. He knew what to expect.

"Shep, hold up," Glitch's voice came through comms. "I'm hunting their local net for those synths. I'm hoping I might be able to get some of them on your side, but I'm not seeing anything. You might need to get Humpty close; I can use his array to deliver a packet. I mean, Ember can…"

"I'm ready, just say when."

"Okay, Bravo, keep the comms clear unless you gotta say something," Tony said, nodding to Beef. "We're going in."

The big man moved his foot and pulled the door open, revealing a corridor in the state of repair you might imagine for a long-abandoned lab that had been brought back to life on short notice. Ceiling tiles were missing, and overhead lights more often than not had missing bulbs. Graffiti covered several sections of the walls, and you could see where new electrical wiring had been run, outside the plastic paneling, to connect significant gaps.

Tony crept forward, gun ready. He could see that, straight ahead, the corridor would run into a closed, red metal door. Before that, though, another corridor intersected it. When he got to the corner, he nodded to Humpty, and Addie got his meaning. The drone whirred into the junction, spun, and then hummed away to the left.

"Immediate area is clear. I'm checking some windows in the wall… I think it's like a recreation room. There's a VR setup and some vending machines. There's one guy in there. He's on a couch, eating something. He looks muscular, and he's armed, but his face is sideways to the windows. I don't know if you can sneak up on him."

Tony subvocalized, though he didn't need to—his helmet would mask his voice if he wanted it to—into comms, "Thanks, we'll handle him. Keep scouting, but take it slow."

"Roger."

Tony looked around the corner, then watched as Humpty drifted away down the hall, turning to the right at another junction. Beef looked at him and arched an eyebrow over his visor. Tony sighed, nodding, then lifted his gun. He took four quick steps, eyes on the glass that would reveal the rec room Addie had described. As soon as he spotted the guy on the couch, he zeroed in his aim and pulled the trigger twice.

His Dust-tech suppressor redirected some of the gases in such a way that they reduced recoil, so the high-pressure ammo felt almost like an old-school 9mm, as it coughed twice. The bullets smashing the glass made more noise, but Tony's aim had been true, and the guard on the couch didn't have a chance to react before he caught hot polymer-coated lead in the side of his head.

Tony felt a little guilty. He'd told Addie he wouldn't kill if he didn't have to, but with the numbers he and Beef were up against, any attempt to wrestle this guy down and inject him would put them at risk. Besides, from the sound of what was going on at this lab, Tony didn't think these security personnel could be considered anything but "bad guys."

"Smooth," Beef said, moving toward the door. "Gonna pull his chip."

"Don't loot him. We'll do that afterward if there's time."

"There better be."

"Alpha," Addie said through comms, "three coming your way, and they're moving fast."

"Shit." Tony stabbed his pistol into his holster and reached for his shotgun.

"They must've had a link," Beef grunted, slipping through the door. Tony fell back to the junction; might as well try to get Beef on their flank.

Humpty came buzzing down the hall, moving much faster than Tony thought was safe indoors, and Addie said in comms, "They're about twenty meters behind. I'm gonna get Humpty out of the line of fire!"

Tony put his shoulder to the corridor wall, peering around the corner with his helmeted face, ready to take some shots to draw their attention and hoping Beef would be smart enough to capitalize. "Well, you big bastard, you wanted some action…"

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