***
After laying low in a busy entertainment complex for a few hours (during which Keera took the chance to sleep off the worst of her shift fatigue) they prepped their gear and drove out to the estate. The biometric scan on the gate allowed them entry to the grounds, and a second lock got them into the darkened, deserted parking garage beneath the main building. “If we do run into anyone, let me do the talking,” Keera warned as she cut the engine. “Since I’m supposed to be here.”
Jennifer nodded. “Right. Did you look at the building layout?”
“Yes. We’re headed for Gullane’s private office.”
“That’s on the first floor, just outside his personal apartment, right?”
“Right.”
“OK then, let’s roll.”
Keera led Jennifer through an ostentatiously decorated series of high-ceilinged halls. The whole central building appeared to be a simulacrum of an ancient Terran mansion, and it was almost eerily clear of staff or guards in the small hours of planetary morning. Keera, expecting to be challenged at least once, stopped at every junction to listen, but nothing and no one was moving.
She didn’t like it.
“What’s wrong?” Jennifer demanded in a low hiss on one such check at the top of the stairs.
“I don’t know,” Keera replied softly, unease intensifying. “I just… it’s too quiet.”
“All the more reason not to delay,” Jennifer chided.
Keera took a slow, calming, breath. “Right. Come on, it’s just along here.”
The office door was unlocked and ajar, sending Keera’s apprehension rocketing. She tapped Jennifer on the shoulder, pointed at the door, and mimed a pistol with two fingers. Jennifer dipped her head in agreement, easing her pistol free of its holster and taking up a position next to the door. She took aim, and nodded.
Keera shoved the door open with the flat of her hand. Jennifer darted through, weapon levelled. The changeling counted off a second then followed, narrowly avoiding crashing into Jennifer’s back as the human had ground to a halt just inside the door. Looking past her, Keera quickly realised why.
Octavius Gullane was sitting at his desk.
And Octavius Gullane was unmistakeably dead.
“Aw, crap,” Jennifer muttered, staring at the neat fist-sized hole drilled through the centre of his chest.
Keera ignored her, hurrying to the window and risking a quick look out. Nothing moved, but the stillness only worsened the itch between her shoulder blades. “We’ve been set up.” Backing away from the window, she ducked into a crouch as she moved to the dead man’s side. “Keep away from the window,” she instructed as she looked over Gullane’s body. “Damn. He’s been dead for at least a day.”
“He can’t have been,” Jennifer protested. “I spoke to him this afternoon.”
“You saw him?”
“I saw a vid. The guy I spoke to looked like that.” Jennifer pointed for emphasis. “Minus the gaping hole in the chest.”
“You spoke to a changeling,” Keera surmised. It was the only logical explanation.
Jennifer curled her lip in a sneer. “Fuck. You bastards get everywhere, don’t you?”
“Never mind that now,” Keera hissed. “We’re in trouble. He’s been posed in that chair—there’s no blood in here. Someone knew we were coming. We’ve got to get the data and get out of here, fast.” She synched her comm wristband into Gullane’s desk terminal. “It’s an isolated stack, just as I suspected. And it’s totally unsecured.”
“Well, that’s odd,” Jennifer muttered.
“No odder than finding this guy with a hole in his chest. It’s all one big honey trap.” Keera wrinkled her nose. “Copying the data will take too long, there’s too much. I can set up a broadcast frequency, then we can pull the data down to the Fortune remotely.”
“Stop talking, start doing.” Jennifer moved behind the desk and drew her sidearm, covering the door as Keera slid a transmitter into one of the stack’s peripheral ports. Enabling it, she used her comm wristband to hook it up to the Fortune and started the upload. She unplugged the monitor unit, removed the whole stack from the desk, and stashed it behind the overstuffed leather sofa in the corner.
“The longer it runs, the more data we’ll get, and if they’re too busy looking for us…” Even as she spoke, the household security alarms began to wail.
“Shit,” Jennifer cursed. “I’m gettin’ real fuckin’ tired of that happening.”
Keera snorted in derision as she moved to the door. “Somebody really has it in for you, don’t they?” Easing the antique handle down, she cracked the door open and looked out. “All clear. Getting back to the garage is our best bet.”
When she got no response, she looked back to see Jennifer glaring at her, expression harsh with hostility and suspicion. “You set me up, Naraymis, didn’t you?” the human asked sharply.
Keera stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Jennifer…” Keera couldn’t believe her ears. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You said it yourself. It’s too quiet. Too easy. The museum was easy too.” Jennifer’s gaze clouded with distrust as she aimed her gun at Keera. “Solinas made everything easy, then he made his play.”
Keera rolled her eyes heavenward. “We don’t have time for this,” she grated. Despite every instinct she had screaming at her to flee, she shifted to her normal human skin. “Please, Jennifer,” she appealed, locking her gaze to the human’s and throwing every ounce of sincerity she possessed into the look. “Please trust me.”
Jennifer still hesitated, hope warring with misgiving in her eyes.
Footsteps sounded in the distance, drumming a crescendoing cadence on the tiled floors.
“Damn it, Jennifer!” Keera swore. There was no way out of the office except through the door. They’d be cornered. Act, don’t react. “I’m leaving,” she declared. “Come with me or don’t, it’s up to you, but I’m not getting trapped in here. If you don’t trust me, now’s your chance to get rid of me.”
She turned her back and walked away, shoulders clenched in anticipation of the shot. When it didn’t come, she darted along the corridor, ducking behind a large chesterfield chair and peeking out carefully just as a party of shadowed figures gained the top of the stairs. Come on, Jennifer, get out of there.
The lights flickered to life, bathing the corridor in a harsh fluorescent glare. Keera pulled back into her cover, straining to hear.
There was a high-pitched whine as someone charged a blaster, and then a harsh, metallic voice rang out.
“You are surrounded, thief. Surrender, and you will not be harmed.”
Don’t be stupid, Jennifer, please, Keera begged silently.
There was a moment of terse silence, and then Jennifer’s voice sounded, clear as a bell.
“Oh, I don’t fucking think so.”
A single shot rang out, and the hallway was plunged into darkness.
Something clattered against the wooden-panelled wall. A second something skittered along the tiled floor.
“Grenades!” a panicked voice bellowed.
“Shit, take cover!”
Keera closed her eyes and covered her ears. She heard a dull, muffled crump, felt the ground shake as the grenades detonated. Not explosives—the shockwave was too weak. Stunners perhaps, or flash-bangs.
She opened her eyes to the darkness, just as gunfire erupted from the direction of the office. A single shooter, using a ballistic weapon rather than a blaster. Eleven shots, and then, as the echoes died away, curses and groans of pain filled the air.
“Shitting Creators, where the fuck did she go?”
“She was right there—why didn’t you shoot her?”
“I tried man, there was fuckin’ nothin’ in the power pack. Useless Terran piece of shit.” The first voice sounded bewildered. “I had it primed, how the hell did it just die?”
“Because she used a fucking EMP flash, you moro
n!” another voice snarled. “Somebody get me a damn light! Chel, check the team.”
“Did the changeling leave?” the metallic voice demanded coldly.
“I’ll check.” Footsteps rang on the floor. “She’s not there.”
“Seven casualties, sir, four dead, three injured,” Chel reported.
“Neither of them can have got far,” the metallic voice judged, edged now with anger. “You will find them. I want them both alive.”
“Did you hear Chel say four of my men are dead, and another three are injured?” the voice Keera had pegged as the chief lieutenant objected angrily. “That human’s more trouble than she’s fucking worth.”
“That is not your decision to make,” the metallic voice replied curtly. “However, she does not need to be able to do more than tell us what she knows, so you may use whatever methods you see fit to curb her actions. Now, I have issued my orders. Obey them.”
“Yes, sir.” The first voice sounded resigned. “All right, you lot, she can’t have got far. Split up, and stay in contact. If you find that human bitch, anything goes as long as she’s still breathing. Chel?”
“Yeah?”
“Find Bravo team, let them know we’re out of communication and what the plan is. And keep your eyes skinned for the other one.”
“On it.”
“All right, move!”
Keera held her breath, willing her heart to quiet down as footsteps drummed past her. When they died away, she counted slowly to twenty, then risked a cautious look around.
She was alone.
Jennifer was gone.
God and all the Creators, what do I do now?
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