Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

58 - When it Rains, It Pours

"So it worked?"

"Oh, it worked alright." A grin of dark humour stamped itself on Holly's face as she looked Treysi.

The plan had been simple enough once they'd burned their provocative message into the floor of the shopfront. Simple, but not exactly without danger. They hung around, worryingly long and worryingly close, while sirens screamed and drones swept overhead, tucked away in Nevay's pre-prepared bolthole just on the edge of the plaza.

They'd banked on the net of their adversary being better than anyone might have expected, and it turned out they were correct. Barely five minutes after they reached their refuge, Holly seemed to go ramrod stiff for an instant, before giving them a curt nod. Time to leave.

And now they were here, back in back room of a grimy autoshop, putting the pieces together that might very well lead them right into the teeth of an all-out civil war.

"The message got through," the AmpCore operative continued, "blanketed the whole fucking plaza looking for little Treysi. I think our friend's been wondering what happened to his lost hardware."
Treysi snorted. "When we see him, he's not gonna be so happy to have it back."

"So you got a ping?" Kirk put in. "You know where he is?"

"Simmer," Holly told him with a shake of the head. "It's not quite that simple. The signal bounce was good, but we've still got at least a couple of blocks of the city to search. And..." she pursed her lips as she stood, moving over to the table where clunky 3D atlas Nevay had purloined from their hosts sat open, "you're not going to like where."

Her amplifier glowed softly as she swept through the wafer thin circuited pages until she found the one she wanted. Even before the projection emerged from the page, Kirk saw where it was, and felt his stomach sink.

"How in the fuck did he pull that off?" Nevay murmured in awe, leaning forward and resting both hands on the table as the image rose up from the atlas.

He didn't have much to add to that. The stretch of the city where the transmission had originated from would certainly not have made his shortlist. It wasn't quite the Heart, but probably as close as an outsider could get. Some way, somehow, their quarry had installed himself somewhere in Hadrian's main port: the Prometheus Anchorage.

Eighteen city blocks across. More than a mile of jetties, warehouses, shipyards, along with high-climbing luxury apartment blocks, hotels, floating casinos, restaurants and even a fucking sports stadium anchored there.

Their quarry might have found a way to sneak down beneath all of that, but Kirk wasn't entirely sure how their ragtag band of freedom fighters could accomplish the same feat.

"Our friend is full of surprises," Holly said quietly, a tinge of admiration in her voice.

"You're the only one in the city who's laid eyes on this guy." Kirk looked at her. "You sure that's him there?"

She nodded. "It's where I'd go. If he was able to get him and his people past the main security checkpoints, there are miles of underground infrastructure there, and half of it's just left rusting. It's been built over so many times I doubt we even know how much is actually beneath those streets."

"So you spivs built our friend his very own fuckin' labyrinth," Nevay grunted. "Terrific. Well, it's your turf, Lockley. What's the play?"

Holly chewed a lip for a moment, her eyes narrowing as she examined the map. "We've got to clear the checkpoints first. U-Rail would get us close, but might not be an option."

"Why not?"

"Because every security drone and camera is probably on the look out for Missus Cabrera." She cast an apologetic glance at the young cyborg. "So we're going to have to take the scenic route."