Chapter 19: The Devil's Handshake
Three Days Later – The Rendezvous
The air in the old subway station was thick with the ghosts of a million commutes and the more recent smell of damp and rust. We stood on the platform, a tense circle of light from our lanterns pushing back the oppressive dark. Ade, myself, and two of our most steady fighters, Chidi and Boma, both now hardened men with eyes that had seen too much. The .50 caliber rifle was a heavy, comforting weight on my back. The LAWs were distributed among the others.
We were early. The silence was a physical weight.
"This is a trap," Chidi muttered, his knuckles white on his rifle. "He'll lead them right to us."
"He doesn't need to," Ade replied, his voice calm. He was scanning the dark tunnel mouths, his scout's instincts on high alert. "If he wanted us dead, he'd have just let the Keeper do it. This is about something else."
A single, blinking red light appeared down the tunnel, moving towards us with a soft, whirring sound. It was a small, six-wheeled robot, a modified toy from the old world, with a tablet screen mounted on top. It rolled to a stop in front of us.
Hacker's face flickered onto the screen, his smirk digitally crisp.
"Punctual. I appreciate that. Let's skip the pleasantries. You have the boom-sticks. I have the blueprint." A schematic of the Stock Exchange building appeared on the tablet, with a single, pulsing point deep in the basement levels highlighted. "The Keeper has established its nexus here. It's using the building's original fiber-optic backbone, fused with… well, let's call it 'bio-organic cabling' of its own design. Charming, really."
"The plan," I said, my voice flat.
"The plan is simple. Your brute squad," his eyes on the screen flicked to Ade and the others, "creates a diversion at the main entrance. A big, noisy, explosive one. The Keeper will commit its forces to the threat. Meanwhile, you and I," his gaze locked onto me, "take the service entrance. I slice the nexus. You plant your high-explosive calling card on the hardware."
"And why do you need me for that?" I asked.
"Because, little mouse, even I can't code and provide security detail at the same time. The nexus will be… physically defended. You get to be the firewall."
The screen went blank. A map uploaded to the tablet, showing two routes through the building. A moment later, a screech of metal echoed from the far end of the platform as a service door we hadn't been able to pry open swung inward on squealing hinges. Hacker's work.
The deal was struck. The devil had given us our marching orders.
The financial district was a canyon of silent giants, but the silence was a lie. We could feel the watchful presence, the predatory patience that saturated the area. We moved like shadows, the memory of Courier's lessons in brutal efficiency somehow guiding our steps.
We reached our positions. Ade's team was at the main entrance, a grand, pillared facade now scarred with strange, chitinous growths. My team—just Hacker's drone and me—was at a grimy, ground-level service entrance half a block away.
I keyed my radio. "In position."
"Acknowledged," Ade's voice came back, steady. "Fireworks in ten."
The ten seconds stretched into an eternity. Then, the world exploded.
The WHOOSH-CRUMMP of the LAW rocket was followed by the roar of collapsing masonry and the shrieks of a hundred Rippers. Automatic gunfire chattered—Ade's team, making as much noise as possible.
As if on a single, silent command, the chittering horde surrounding the Stock Exchange converged on the sound of the battle.
"Go," Hacker's voice buzzed from the tablet.
I shoved the service door open and stepped into the gloom. The air inside was wrong. It was warm, humid, and smelled of ozone and something sweetly organic, like rotting fruit. The walls were no longer drywall and plaster; they were veined with the same pulsating, crimson-lined biomass we'd seen in the tunnels.
The drone led the way, its light illuminating a path through the transformed corridors. We descended, level after level, into the heart of the beast. The sounds of Ade's diversion grew faint, replaced by a new sound—a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a gigantic heartbeat.
We reached a sealed bulkhead door. It was fused shut by a web of the black, chitinous material.
"This is it. The nexus," Hacker said. "The Keeper's server room. It's in there. So is the local security."
"What kind of security?"
Before he could answer, the web on the door retracted, and the bulkhead slid open with a hiss of compressed air.
The room beyond was a cathedral of nightmare technology. The old server racks were still there, but they were now encased in a living, pulsating hive of the obsidian material. Wires of light pulsed within it, and at the center of the room, suspended in a web of energy, was the core of the nexus—a sphere of swirling, dark matter that hurt to look at.
And standing between us and the core were two creatures I had never seen before. They were the size of Reapers, but their form was different—sleeker, more refined. Their carapace was the same polished obsidian as the Keeper, and in their upper limbs, they held not scythes, but jagged shards of crystalline energy that hummed with power.
"The kind of security that requires a .50 cal rebuttal," Hacker said, his voice devoid of its usual mockery. "I'll start the slicing. You keep them off me. You have ninety seconds."
The drone rolled forward, a probe extending from its body and jacking into a fused server rack. The two guards turned their featureless heads towards me, the crystalline shards in their hands flaring to life.
I dropped to one knee, shouldered the massive rifle, and looked through the scope. The world narrowed to a crosshair and the first guard's center mass.
I exhaled.
And pulled the trigger.
The sound in the enclosed space was apocalyptic. The round hit the guard like a fist of God, punching a hole clean through it and sending it crashing back into the hive wall. It twitched and did not rise.
The second guard was already moving, unnervingly fast. It lunged, its energy shard leaving a searing afterimage in the air.
I worked the bolt, the spent casing clattering loudly in the humming silence. I didn't have time for a second shot.
The war for Earth was no longer a distant concept. It was in this room. It was this single, terrible shot, this race against a clock set by a madman. We had made a deal with the devil, and now it was time to see if we could outrun the hellfire.