Thirst No. 2: Phantom, Evil Thirst, and Creatures of Forever

  “Gotcha,” the pilot says, and I can tell he wishes I was in charge instead of Brutran.

  “Bravo Two, this is Bravo One, what’s your status?” Brutran asks.

  I speak up. “We’re keeping our heads down, Bravo One. Suggest you do likewise if you don’t want to join the Telar’s next target-practice session.”

  Brutran doesn’t answer but her helicopter suddenly veers low and away. They are no longer heading for the building. Brutran’s life can’t be that much of a nightmare. She sure as hell doesn’t want to die.

  Lark informs us that the three Telar we are pursuing have entered one of the towers. He sounds confused and is unable to specify whether it’s the north or south tower. Brutran calls to people she has assembling on the ground for an update. This is one advantage in having the IIC as an ally, even if it is temporary. They have lots of people you can call for help.

  From studying the buildings when we were high up, I noticed there were more men and machines on the roof of the north tower. Yet there was a single helicopter on top of the south tower, and the buildings do connect underground. I wonder if it’s a trick. . . .

  Brutran interrupts my thoughts.

  “Bravo Two, the Telar have entered the north tower. Over.”

  “Bravo One, copy that. Telar are in north tower,” I say.

  From everything I’ve seen of the Telar, I know their technology is far superior to anything mankind has, and that includes the IIC. There’s an excellent chance the Telar are listening to us now, and are going to try to take off from the south tower. I share my thoughts with our pilot. He frowns.

  “They’re running scared. Do you think they’ve had enough time to come up with such a clever plan?”

  “I’ve learned never to underestimate them,” I say.

  “But if your guess is wrong . . .”

  “If it’s wrong, I’ll know soon enough and you can come back for me. Which brings me to another point. I don’t want you to land on the south tower. You’ll come under heavy fire from the other tower. Just fly over and I’ll jump out.”

  He looks at me like I’m crazy. “We’ll be moving too fast. I’ll at least have to stop and hover.”

  I don’t have time to get in an argument. I touch his arm and let the power enter my voice. “I appreciate your concern but I’ll be fine. Just give me a rifle, plenty of ammo, a dozen grenades, and I’ll be on my way.”

  The pilot instructs his men to fill my order and pretty soon I’m jamming my pockets with everything I can carry. The pilot is skillful, he swoops low around the Fox building before suddenly crossing the street and climbing.

  We’re almost to the south tower when the lasers hit. They dance over our hull and pierce our armored glass. The internal temperature jumps twenty degrees. The lasers make my eyes ache and virtually blind the pilot. I briefly grab his controls.

  “I’m steering us, don’t worry!” I shout. “I’ll turn our back on them just before I leap out. When you hear my door slam shut, you have to take back the helm.”

  “It’s getting hot in here,” he says, sweating, afraid.

  “Their lasers have a limited range. Duck below the south tower as I leave and use it as a shield. Trust me, you’ll be all right.”

  The leap out of the helicopter reminds me of the last time I jumped from a helicopter to escape the Telar. Then I had Shanti in my hands, and Seymour was with Teri. It was that night, high in the Rockies, on top of a half-frozen lake, that Teri hit an ice patch in the water and shattered her leg. In that instant her death became inevitable, although I refused to accept that fact for a long time.

  Now I leap alone, into a red corona of laser fire, and land rolling on top of the south tower. I watch with relief as my copter makes a quick dip, after passing the building, and escapes the Telar’s bombardment.

  I’m not given a chance to relax. The lasers converge in my direction and I run as fast as I can to the edge of the building and duck down behind a two-foot-high concrete lip. The north tower is a hundred yards away, its roof crowded with three copters and a dozen armed men and women.

  They don’t immediately open fire and that helps confirm my guess. The soldiers are worried about hitting the parked helicopter behind me. It’s the one that counts because it’s the one the three members of the Source are hurrying toward.

  However, even if the three high-ranking Telar are presently in my building, they can always switch to the north tower. To discourage such a move, I rush toward the corner of the building and prepare to open fire on the north-tower roof. But since I’m no longer in the line of sight with their precious helicopter, they immediately start shooting at me, effectively pinning me down.

  They switch from lasers to conventional weapons. It might be that the lasers don’t work against concrete or else the Telar are skittish about melting the side of a well-known building. In either case a barrage of machine-gun fire erupts less than a foot above my head.

  The bullets are of the armor-piercing variety. They begin to chew away my protective concrete, powdering the air with white dust, and I see I have only a few seconds before I will be exposed. Rolling vigorously to my right, I stand, take aim, and kill half a dozen people on top of the other tower. They drop suddenly, and the sound of silence, as their machine guns die, is just as abrupt. I use the time and the shock to blow out anything that looks like a radio. Then I run to the single waiting helicopter.

  I disable it carefully by unplugging a chip attached to its ignition system. Who knows, I might need the helicopter later. I can always replace the chip. I work out of sight of the remaining Telar on the north tower. They’re still trying to recover from my devastating attack. Fortunately, I don’t see any of them on the radio or even a phone. I can only hope I’ve taken out their communication equipment.

  I have lost the plug to my cell. It must have fallen out at some point.

  Finally, I enter the building, taking a short stairway that leads down from the heliport. It doesn’t take long for me to find a set of elevators. Neither appears to be in use, but I can tell at a glance they’re too small to support the bulk of the building’s traffic.

  Sitting down in a windowless hallway and closing my eyes, I let my hearing expand downward, floor by floor. I’m not just listening for people, I’m trying to detect a specific heart signature. The Telar have a powerful pulse; it separates them from normal people.

  Ten floors below me, I hear a dozen people cleaning—vacuuming, sweeping, washing the toilets—while another two type on their computers. Letting my hearing drop further, I pick up fifteen more. Five are painting and plastering, two are typing while listening to music, six are arguing about future sales, and two are having extremely loud sex.

  I drop lower. There are so many floors, it’s a strain for even my ears to hear what’s happening below the twentieth level. But I’m lucky because I become aware of three people in the stairway, climbing upward, and I only hear them because sounds echo in that vast hollow chamber.

  They climb at a steady jog, taking no breaks, but don’t breathe as hard as they should for such strenuous exercise. Also, their pulses don’t exceed a hundred and twenty beats a minute. These facts alone convince me they’re Telar, but are they the three I’m looking for? That is the question.

  I don’t want to spend the whole night killing foot soldiers. I have to get back to the IIC’s headquarters to greet Umara and the others. Then I have to kill the top members of the Source, although according to Umara these three are crucial to its operation. I’ve already witnessed their amazing ability to link. It worries me how four of them were able to bloody so many of the kids. If Umara can’t boost our power substantially, we’re not going to win this fight.

  The three Telar continue up the stairway. The more I listen, the more confident I become that they’re the ones I’m looking for. They are sticking close together, like people would who have known each other a long time and are used to turning to one another in times of crisis. Also, there are two men and one
woman in their group, just like at the hotel.

  Standing, I push the button on the elevator and call it to the top floor. This is a calculated risk. It will probably warn the Telar where I am. At the same time, I might need the elevator if I’m to trap them in this building.

  I listen closely as the cubicle rises. The system is old, it takes its time. The three Telar also appear to stop and listen. I want the elevator on my floor but I don’t want to use it just yet. Fortunately, there’s a garbage can in a nearby restroom, and when the elevator does finally reach my floor, I’m able to jam it in the doorway and secure the elevator in place.

  The Telar don’t seem to understand what I’ve done. Their desire to reach the helicopter might be overshadowing their reasoning. They continue their upward march.

  I go in search of the stairwell. There are two, I discover, but only one is occupied. I know the Telar are still twenty-five floors beneath me. Yet I open the door as quietly as possible. I do a pretty good job until the lower hinge screeches. At that instant I hear the three stop jogging and go still. I have no choice. Moving forward, softly closing the door, I tiptoe to the edge of the stairwell and peek over. It’s a long way down.

  I can’t see them but I can hear them. Breathing. Listening.

  I have an opportunity here. I have grenades. The guys in the copter told me they have a standard five-second delay after the pin is pulled. I estimate it will take seven seconds for a grenade to reach my enemies if I simply let it go. Of course it will drop faster if I put some muscle behind it. But too hard a throw might cause the grenade to fall too quickly.

  I calculate as best I can how much extra speed I need to add to my grenade. It is really no more than an educated guess. Pulling the pin, I step to the handrail and throw the grenade straight down.

  I listen as it falls and note that those below me also seem to be listening. No one rushes for the door, at least not at first. But then there’s a sudden shuffling of feet and I realize they’ve figured out what I’m up to. Far below I hear a door open, followed almost instantly by a loud explosion.

  The grenade I dropped was different from the kind Darla used to kill the guards. This one throws off a brutal sphere of hot shrapnel. I’m not surprised when I hear a guy scream as his body is raked by pieces of metal. An unmistakable thud follows and I know he has fallen. But he’s alone, I hear the other two running for their lives.

  They appear to be heading for the main elevators. I race back to the elevator I have waiting for me and push the button that will take me to the lobby.

  The slow ride down is maddening. If I can reach the bottom ahead of them, they’ll have to go through me to escape.

  At the same time, they could try for the roof. They might figure, even if I’ve sabotaged the helicopter, they have people on a tower just a hundred yards away. If they can signal them, they might get picked up before I can arrive and kill them.

  Right now, anything is possible.

  My elevator finally lands. I rush out into the main lobby and find two Telar guards waiting by the front door. I shoot them in the head before they know I’m there. I might have just chased them away but they had already shot the human watchman.

  Studying the lights on the main elevator board and listening, I estimate my two remaining adversaries have stopped ten floors above me. I have already called for another elevator and have one waiting for me. I suspect the Telar heard me kill the guards and are thinking the roof is now a better bet.

  Are the two remaining Source members in touch with their people in the other building? If they are, they will stand a better chance of escaping if their helicopter pilots on the north tower are waiting to lift them off our roof.

  The Telar on the tenth floor finally reenter their elevator and head upward. I watch them climb, for a second, before leaping into my own elevator and hitting the top button. Now I’m in the elevator shaft next to theirs. I can hear them talking to each other, a man and a woman, as they rise above me. That’s how I know they haven’t tricked me.

  But as I pass the tenth floor, I hear something. Breathing, powerful heartbeats—I’m not sure. It makes me wonder why the couple above me is talking at all. They must know about my hearing. They should be silent.

  Then I get it. These Telar are not just old, they’re smart.

  The voices I hear in the elevator above me, it’s one cell phone talking to another. But they’re not ordinary cell phones. Those wouldn’t have fooled me for an instant with their poor sound. No, these are Telar cells, like the kind Matt gave me, their sound quality is perfect.

  The two Telar never did leave the tenth floor.

  I have been tricked.

  I struggle to stop my elevator but it goes up another two floors and I get off on the fourteenth. I run like hell to the stairway and am not surprised to hear them galloping down the stairs ahead of me. But before I can uncork another grenade, they exit the stairway at what I estimate to be the third floor. Hell, they could jump through an office window at that height and survive.

  Then the truth finally hits home.

  That’s what they’re going to do!

  They have me above them and they know exactly where I am.

  This is their best chance to get out of this building alive.

  I listen as they run to the far side of the tower, away from the stairwells and elevators. I hear them kick in a door. Damn, I totally underestimated them, they’re going to get away.

  Unless . . . what?

  Unless I get to the ground floor the same time they do.

  I rush to the window at the end of the hall. Before I jump, I wait a few seconds for the sound of another window exploding. There it is! On the other side of the building! I hear their weight as they land. They’re outside! I have at most five seconds before they reach the north tower.

  Backing up a few steps, I prepare to rush the glass and fall fourteen miserable floors. I can survive such a fall, I’ve done it before. Not that it’s comfortable. I mean, I’m a vampire not a goddamn bat. I can’t fly.

  Something makes me hesitate. It’s the idea that they would expose themselves by running between the two buildings, which jumping out a window would force them to do. By dumb luck, due to the layout of the hallways on my floor, I’m unable to glimpse the ground on their side of the building. However, they don’t know that, which makes me wonder why they would expose themselves where I could just pick them off with my rifle.

  Yet I heard their window burst open.

  I heard the weight of their bodies hitting the ground.

  But what if it was the weight of something else I heard landing?

  A desk for example. They could have shoved two desks out their window. Now that I think about it, I didn’t hear any running footsteps after they hit the ground.

  Then the truth hits me again. A new truth.

  They are still on the tenth floor.

  They still haven’t left the building.

  Their goal is to get me to leave the building.

  Smart. Very smart. They almost had me.

  Yet two can play their game.

  Picking up a desk, I throw it through a nearby window.

  To them, they just heard me jump outside and fall fourteen floors.

  I just stand there, waiting for them to make a move.

  I hear two people enter the tenth-floor elevator.

  They push a button and head up.

  I run up two floors, before I return to the secondary elevators and call the elevator that took me to the lobby a few minutes ago. When it arrives, I ride it to the top floor. Climbing the stairs that lead to the helipad, I see a Telar helicopter swooping in to make a quick pickup.

  Taking aim, I shoot off the tail rotor and the tail fin.

  Nasty, trying to steer a copter without either of them.

  The copter spins out of control and vanishes over the side.

  I approach the two big shots carefully. The bald man with the big head, Mr. Kram, and his daughter, Alia. I know of the
ir relationship from the attack we made on them at the hotel. They’re armed with handguns but they don’t reach for them. The woman’s left arm is bleeding, probably from the grenade I dropped in their path. I gesture to the wound.

  “How did you hear it coming?” I ask.

  “I felt it coming. It was a good shot,” the man says.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Alia stares at me with dread. “We don’t support Haru. We told him not to take you prisoner.”

  She’s speaking the truth. I return the favor.

  “You’re members of the Source. It was the Source that ordered the creation of X6X6.”

  “We never thought it would be used,” Kram says. “Even now, it hasn’t been released.”

  “Can you guarantee it won’t be released?”

  “No,” he says.

  I gesture with my gun. “Then what can I do?”

  “Spare my daughter, Alia. She opposed the virus from the start. Haru hates her. She’s only a member of the Source because of me.”

  “And because she’s a powerful psychic.”

  “She’s a healer at heart,” Kram says.

  I study Alia. “Is that true?”

  She shrugs. “I do what I can.”

  I shake my head. “I have to destroy the Source.”

  “Alia will never go back to the Source,” Kram begs. “Not after tonight.”

  “What’s so special about tonight?”

  “I finally saw the spirits Haru has attached to us,” Alia says.

  “You must have known about them,” I say.

  “I did. Alia did not,” Kram says. “Please. We’ve heard you can be . . . merciful.”

  “I can’t let both of you go,” I say. The truth is, I need one of them alive. “You may live, Alia.”

  The man is grateful. “Thank you.” He turns to his daughter. “Go, Alia. Please.”

  Alia weeps as she falls in his arms. “No, Papa. I can’t.”

  He gently cups his daughter’s face. She has inherited many of his features but not his huge head. With dark lustrous eyes, a mane of black hair, she is truly beautiful. He wipes away her tears.