Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

72 - In the World Across the Water

Holly moved slowly. Softly. Her feet kissed the ground, her amplifier simmering gently as she artificially lightened her steps. She had to admit, of all the things she'd expected to find at the bottom of that elevator shaft, this hadn't been on of them.

A tunnel. An honest to god tunnel, cut right beneath the plaza.

How long had he been working on this thing? It wasn't very large, only really wide enough to fit maybe two or three people walking side by side, with a low ceiling and jagged rough-hewn walls. But all it really needed to be was long. Long enough to bypass corporate security; long enough to let him slip away while the rest of the world tore the Oldcastle plaza to pieces looking for him.

In some ways, the decision to slip away and plunge into the depths after Osric had been an easy one, she supposed. There wasn't a single person in that gathering who didn't wish her ill in some way, and when she saw Toran standing in that doorway holding god-knows-what, she knew she didn't want to be there anymore. If he'd laid eyes on her she would have been as good as dead.

Where did that leave her now?

Fuck knows.

All Holly had driving her now was curiosity. Knowledge. The drive to find out just what the hell was happening across the water, and why. For all his flawed madness, Osric represented something that should never have been, and Holly wanted to know why. Ever since she touched that presence in the datastreams – that thing that wasn't Osric, but was so much more – she knew that all the myths and legends about Hadrian South bore some truth to them.

Stories. So many stories about what might simmer across those corrosive waters. That was how they'd roped her in after all, to all those experiments, and the final production of the AI beneath Hadrian, all because they said something in Hadrian's dead shadow was waking up.

If only her bosses had known just how right they'd been.

Holly wonder how many of them actually believed it. How many of them actually thought someone like Osric existed? Not enough, she suspected, given the way the cyborg had sliced his way through the city with such reckless ease. No-one really thought something this intelligent could still exist.

Rage, sudden and fierce, burned her heart. Holly Lockley had given her finest years to her benefactors, and for what? To be tossed on the junk heap when something went wrong. Scapegoat. Liability. Acceptable loss margin.

She knew the language, and knew exactly how her life had probably been spoken of by those fuckers. And it turned out, the people she'd trusted and put her life on the line for, didn't know shit.

Holly didn't bother searching ahead. Osric only had one direction he could travel here. She just ran, moving as fast as her feet would carry her, her amplifier pulsing as she warped gravity in her local volume. Her strides were unnaturally elongated, covering several meters with every step, and before long she could hear him.

Clanking metal footsteps, rapid like firing pistons. Holly piled on more speed, bounding like a gazelle under the propulsive power of her wand. A minute later, she cleared a shallow curve in the passageway, and saw his dark shadow up ahead.

She didn't say anything. She just moved faster – faster and faster until she felt like she was flying. A lapse of concentration could send her smashing off the walls like a pinball, but she held it, sweat beading on her cheeks as she sent herself flying past Osric.

Her heels slammed into the ground as she pivoted, her energy shifting to stop her momentum. Pieces of metal and concrete spat in all directions, and she forced herself to look into those bleak, crimson eyes.