Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

65 - Snake's Head

The elevator had a view. A good one.

Odiye let his eyes drift across the skyline of Hadrian as they climbed and climbed. The other skyscrapers of MacIntyre Plaza spoiled the view a little, but it was still spectacular. Different to the opulent, deliberately plotted vista from Mazvinar Karga's tower, this place showed you the real power behind the city.

Solid, quake-and-storm hardened towers, more robust than military installations, mixed with the squatting, brute structures of the security hangars. As they ascended, he saw rooftops iris open to release more of the heavy copters. Searchlights flickered between rows of buildings, and if he looked really hard, he could see the occasional prick of gunfire in the distance.

Then the elevator stopped. He felt all the anxiety come rushing back into his body as it all became very real again.

Turning, Odiye stepped out onto the eighty-eighth floor, and found himself face to face with two towering armoured security guards. They scanned him. Twice. Satisfied that he was indeed Odiye Tambo, they then marched him down the hallway, keeping him in front, with their big rifles never more than a few feet from his spine, ready to blow him apart.

Frankly, he couldn't have made any sudden moves if he'd tried. He limped along until they passed another pair of guards, and entered the inner sanctum of the Skiltron tower. Techs worked feverishly with scanners, their visors sizzling with frantic code as they scoured the passages he walked through. Guards were everywhere, as well as clusters of football-sized security drones zipping through the air.

No sign of a struggle. No bullet casings or blood and bodies. Whatever had happened, no one had blasted their way in here.

That made more sense, Odiye supposed, as they passed through a set of black sliding doors. Anyone trying to fight their way in here was nothing short of suicidal. Their quarry, whoever and whatever he was, certainly wasn't suicidal.

He stopped trying to figure it out when he entered the last room – the palatial office of Conan Knox. His chaperones melted away, letting the doors shut behind him, sealing him off from the world. There were no guards in here, no techs, just a large room swarming with data screens, and two grim-looking figures.

One was Toran, standing with an elbow cupped in one hand, standing and examining a metal vent in the ceiling that lay slightly askew. Below it, the desk was strewn with a slipped coffee cup, data slates and a mangled folder of reports, the chair knocked back onto the floor.

On the other side of the desk, examining a long, slender data slate in one perfectly manicured hand, stood Brogan Knox.

Brogan looked a lot like her brother. Same sharp, dark eyes and straw-brown hair. She wore it in a single long braid, combed back tight against her skull to give full view of the implants in her temples – thin slivers of metal that connected her to the evergrind of the datastreams. She wore a sleek black blazer over a slate-grey tank-top, with a long asymmetrical skirt of deep obsidian that left one of her long legs exposed up to the thigh.

To that thigh, she'd strapped a gun – a small needle of a thing clasped in a delicate iron-grey holster. Her eyes flashed to him as he approached; one eyebrow climbed slightly, her full-lipped mouth twitching. She glanced at Toran.

"This is Skiltron business," she said, her voice like a crystal – sharp and melodious, but fiercely hard. "He shouldn't be here."

"No, he shouldn't, but he dragged himself all this way on half a body," Toran replied flatly, "so let's save this for another time and hear what he has to say." The visor fell from his face, his shoulders sagging as he turned. Odiye was met with eyes dark-rimmed from lack of sleep. His friend's pupils were wide and dark, a certain sign that the only thing keeping him together right now was a cocktail of medical-grade stims.