Book 2: Chapter 53: Life and Death
Book 2: Chapter 53: Life and Death
“Go!” Gable ordered in a terse, deep tone.
Daniel’s veil pulsed, and a section of wall vanished into t-space. The last barrier between the frozen tunnel and the interior gymnasium disappeared, and Dan immediately blinked backwards. Officers rushed in, guns at the ready, shouting out commands. They weren’t the elite SPEAR Team members, those had all been committed to the Crew raid and were now in need of rescue. These officers were the best of what remained, drawn from every precinct, and lead by Captain Gable himself.
The Captain was a mutate, one of the very, very few in the APD. As a general rule, the upgrades used by government organizations were much more powerful than those available to the public. They were also subject to far more regulations, and therefore statistically more stable. Most departments in major cities had only a single mutate, two if they were lucky. Captain Gable’s upgrade, already formidable, had been massively enhanced. He, backed by Gregoir, were the tip of the spear in this operation.
Dan followed their progress through his veil. They burst into the room, backed by loyal officers, and immediately moved to clear the area. There were at least a score of SPEAR Team members trapped in the walls, and at first glance they seemed to be trapped in some kind of isolation pod. Their bodies were barely visible through a layer of blurry ice. They were suspended vertically in cocoons of ice shaped to resemble medical equipment. Ice dangled off the pods in a mockery of wires, and the ice itself glowed eerily blue beneath the APD flashlights.
“Torch,” Gable ordered, and an officer set the ceiling on fire. The upgrade-fueled flames had no effect on the ice, but provided plenty of light. Twenty-five officers were visibly trapped in the walls of the gymnasium. Some were missing.
“Fan out,” came the order. Gable gestured towards the side rooms, their entrances caked in ice. “Take it room by room. Gregoir, open a path.”
The massive blonde roared in righteous anger, and slammed his meaty fist into the frozen entrance of the nearest room. The ice buckled under the blow, and his second shattered it entirely. It was only a thin layer, nothing more than a doorway to block the entrance. Gregoir stepped inside and glanced around, weapon at the ready.
“Clear,” he called.
His fellow officers went about mimicking his actions, with slightly less success. The next three side rooms were cleared with relative haste, muscle and fire and the occasional emptied magazine clearing the ice away. The rooms were vacant, though clearly a firefight had broken out at some point. Thus far, everything matched the communications that Cornelius had given during the raid.
The next part was where things had gone wrong, and where Gable took the most care. The door to the lockers was frozen over. After clearing the interior, Gable called Dan to the front. He posted men to watch the door, and brought Dan to the rows of pods. Another officer was snapping pictures, documenting everything inside. It was all a clue, every use of Coldeyes’ power gave them the information that might bring him down.
“Does the shape mean something to you?” Dan asked, begrudgingly marveling at the detail presented. They truly looked real, like cryo-pods straight out of science fiction. His eyes insisted that they were constructed of different materials. Only Dan’s veil told the truth.
“No,” Gable replied. “I don’t know why he chose it.”
“It must mean something,” Dan insisted. “He wouldn’t have gone to the effort, otherwise.”
“Some Naturals manifest their power in specific ways,” Gable cautioned him. “That said this… doesn’t track with what we know of him thus far.” They watched, impatiently, as the officer finished taking his pictures. Gable gestured unceremoniously. “Can you get them out?”
Dan stepped up without a word, released his veil, and dug into the ice. He let out a relieved breath when his power bounced off the motionless form of the officer. The inside of the pod was as realistic as the outside. Dan realized that it was designed in a way that the top could theoretically pop right off, assuming the ice melted in a specific way. It was the fastest path Dan could see towards freeing the officer.
“Gregoir!” Dan called, as he positioned his veil carefully around the borders of the faux-glass cover.
The officer bounded over, snapping to attention before Gable, then turning to Dan. “Am I needed?”
Dan triggered his veil, creating a hair-thin crack between the faux-glass cover and the rest of the ice.
“Pull the cover off,” Dan ordered. “It should be loose enough.”
Gregoir frowned in confusion, but quickly stepped up to the pod. He gently touched the cover, and started as it shifted beneath his hand. Grinning vibrantly, he grunted, and lifted the entire chunk of ice away from the rest of the pod. He set it down, gently, for later examination, as other officers rushed forward to retrieve the trapped SPEAR member.
Dan quickly sent out threads of his veil, searching for officer who remained alive. He grimaced at the response, at the feeling of dead flesh, but he knew it was necessary to prioritize now. Only combat oriented upgrades had been brought into the tunnel; Dan was the closest thing to a scout that they had. The suits that SPEAR Team members wore contained bio-monitors, but the ice had somehow shorted them out. Dan pointed at four pods, one by one.
“I’m not feeling life from those,” he said, apologetically. “I’m leaving them for last.”
Gable nodded, his expression darkening. “Save who you can.”
Dan shoved his veil into the next pod, and set to work. He could move much faster, this time. Mass wasn’t an issue, given how little material he was actually removing. It was more like surgery, and his veil was the scalpel. Not taxing in the least on his reserves, and thus Dan was free to search the rest of the building.
He sent tendrils past the barrier blocking the locker rooms. They were nearly as thin as he could make them, to account for the ridiculously dense ice that made up the walls and floor. He wouldn’t feel much with tendrils this thin, but he could feel life. That was all he needed. Officers were missing; Dan intended to find them.
It didn’t take long before his veil pinged off live flesh. His eyes widened, and he immediately informed Gable. The Captain’s expression only grew darker. He glared at the iced up doorway like it was his most hated enemy, before turning to Daniel. His jaw worked silently as he grinded his molars together.
“We need to free the ones above, first,” he stated.
Dan wasn’t the sole person working on freeing the officers, but he was by far the fastest. It took him only thirty seconds to shape his veil, trigger it, and free the trapped victim. Even as Gable spoke to him, Dan cut open another pod. Officers pulled off the cover and dragged another unconscious SPEAR member to safety.
Other police mimicked Dan’s idea, using fire upgrades like a hot knife to carve through the ice. It was slow, steady progress, taking more than twice as long as Dan. It would only take another five minutes before they were all free, but there was no way to know if the ones below had that five minutes. They were so close, yet so helpless.
Dan understood Gable’s plight, and his hesitance. The man wasn’t willing to risk opening up an unsecured area while his people were wounded and trapped, nor while a civilian worked to free them. It was impossible to know what awaited them past the locker rooms. Dan’s veil could map it out, even provide the locations of the trapped officers, but it couldn’t spot traps any better than Dan. It couldn’t even be trusted to spot a living person. There were bound to be ways to avoid his power’s sight that Dan was unaware of. He was a small fish in a very large pond.
“You think Coldeyes is waiting below?” Dan asked, as he moved to the next pod.
Gable shook his head. “No. I never would have risked more of my people if I thought that were the case.”
“Then where is everybody?” Dan asked. “This was a raid, right? Where are all the bad guys? Where the hell did Coldeyes go?”
“I don’t know.” The admittance seemed to pain Gable. “They must have had another way out. Something we missed.”
“How did he even get into the city?” Dan pressed. He was pushing his luck, but he was also critical to this operation’s success. Now was the time to get answers. “Cornelius told me nobody could get in or out of the city.”
“There’s always a way,” Gable muttered. “We did our best, but there’s always a way. You are a civilian, and a possible target. He told you what he did to ease your mind.”
“Great,” Dan muttered. Another pod popped open. “Brilliant.”
“You mustn’t blame him,” Gable cautioned. “Don’t let anger poison your thoughts of him. He may very well be dead, attempting to stop this threat to the city.”
Dan grimaced, but didn’t reply. Instead, he glanced back to the ice blocking the locker room. Officers were still posted up beside it, watching it carefully. Others ferried the injured SPEAR members out through the tunnel on stretchers. His veil probed the entrance, finding that the ice ended after several feet, before starting again outside an entrance leading downward.
“I’m going to work on the locker room ice while I free the rest,” Dan said.
“You can do that?” Gable sounded confused.
Dan’s step hitched, but he continued. “Yes. It’ll be slow, but you should be able to breach immediately.”
Gable stared at him for several seconds, then nodded. “Do it.”
Dan did. He left a narrow sheet of ice separating the two rooms, the untouched side facing inward, just in case his veil was missing something and his work was being watched. Likewise, he hollowed out the chunk of ice blocking the stairs down, but left a thin pane on either side of the hollow. To an outside observer, it should’ve looked untouched.
Unless Coldeyes was there, and could sense through the ice he created. But if that were the case, everyone present was already fucked, so Dan didn’t bother thinking about it.
He freed the last SPEAR member, and watched as the man was dragged away. Only the dead remained. Gable gave those pods a forlorn look, but turned towards the last section of the gym.
“Breach,” he ordered.
Gregoir went first, shoulder charging through the thinned-out ice and entering the locker room like a localized whirlwind. He scanned the small room, baiting traps with his own body, before shouting, “Clear!” and moving on.
Cornelius had reported a secret passage downward, and Gregoir found it exactly where he expected it to be. The massive officer shattered the remnants of Dan’s work, and entered the basement. There was several seconds of loud stomping. Dan heard fists slamming against something hard, and Gregoir bellowed in triumph.
“I have three officers down! I need heat packs and excavation teams!”
Dan ignored protocol, and blinked down beside Gregoir. The big man was cradling a frozen chunk of ice with a suited officer inside. Unlike the others they’d found, this one was not deliberately posed, nor was his container shaped in any way. He was caught in a kneeling stance, his weapon positioned outwards.
“He was stuck to the corner,” Gregoir stated, pointing to the base of the stairs where he’d ripped the misshapen block free.
More officers poured in to the room, pausing only briefly to stare. Shouts of ‘Clear’ echoed across the small basement. Dan placed his hands over the ice, and sent in his veil. He quickly shaved away the prison layer by layer, until Gregoir was able to grip it. The blonde officer roared, as he peeled the ice open like an onion, and it shattered beneath his impossible strength.
The trapped SPEAR team member dropped free. His gun clattered against the ground, falling from limp hands. Dan caught sight of the stripes on his shoulder, and the emblazoned A. This was the SPEAR Team leader for Alpha squad.
Cornelius.
His veil poked the man, verifying that his life remained. Gregoir ripped off the helmet. Cornelius looked like a corpse, his skin pale, and breath almost nonexistent. His eyes fluttered weakly beneath the helmet. Gregoir gently passed him off to a waiting medic, while Dan stared blankly.
Cornelius was… alive. Dan slumped weakly against the wall, his pulse suddenly racing. It hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment, that the possibility existed for otherwise. Seeing the otherwise indomitable man looking so weak was a shock like no other. Dan took a few ragged gasps, then dropped into t-space.
He floated in the void, letting himself soak in its comforting numbness. There was relief and anger and despair and horror in equal amounts. He screamed into the darkness, raw, animalistic fury at the sheer wrongness of the world. He cried, as his fear and worry tore its way out of his belly, up his throat, and erupted from his mouth in great, wracking sobs. He floated for an eternity, until his mind stopped spinning and his body once again obeyed his orders.
He found his resolve again, then dropped back into the world.
There were more people to save.