Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [125]
A moment later Colleen pulled away. “No. No. I was supposed to be able to save Alice. That’s why I dreamed about the fractoids. I used my precog power to find a way to save Alice. That’s why I saw them entering our world. I saw myself saving her. This can’t be true.”
Ocastya grabbed the woman’s arm and shook her. “Save my mate. Do it now, and you can still be with your daughter in her final moments.”
The declaration was cold and vicious, but Hella couldn’t fault Ocastya. If Stampede’s life had hung in the balance, Hella knew she would have been just as focused and driven.
Angrily Ocastya shook Colleen and pushed her toward the computer. “Do it now.”
Trembling, overcome with pain and sorrow, Colleen tapped commands on the keyboard. Ocastya stood at her side, watching the scrolling numbers, letters, and symbols on the computer monitors.
Grimly, Hella split her attention among the computer screen, the security monitors, and Scatter. She didn’t know how any of it would end. Alice’s breathing thickened and became more troubled. Hella hated standing there, knowing she was listening to the little girl’s last moments. She’d heard people die before, had held some of them in her arms, but Alice would leave her marked forever.
“There.” Colleen tried to speak more but she couldn’t. She pulled away from Ocastya’s grip and returned to the hospital bed. She took her daughter’s limp hand in hers.
In the security images, Riley led the hardshells down the stairwell. Others took a nearby elevator that was still working.
Scatter moved suddenly then reached up and took the wires in one hand to rip them free. He stood and embraced Ocastya.
Ocastya looked at him. The high-pitched machine language filled the air.
Scatter wound his fingers in those of his mate. The machine language passed back and forth between them so loud and so piercing that Hella wanted to plug her ears. She concentrated on the security images.
Riley and his team had reached the fourth-floor landing.
Hella looked at Stampede as she morphed her hands into weapons. “They’re here.”
Stampede’s ears twitched as he snorted angrily. “We played this one too close, Red. My fault.” He readied his rifle.
“You can apologize after we get out of here.” Hella took a deep breath. “We’re still getting out of here, right?”
An evil grin spread across Stampede’s face. “Yeah.” He held up the remote control for the satchel charges they’d left in the fourth-floor landing. “Button up.”
Hella pulled a face mask from her chest pouch and put it on. The mask filtered out the smoke and pepper gas in the satchel charges.
“Do you know where Pardot is?”
A quick check of the security images showed Pardot’s location on the third-floor landing. “One floor above. He’s in the stairwell.”
Stampede looked at her. “Don’t hesitate, Red. Those guys would have killed us if they had the chance.”
“I know.”
“No mercy.”
“I know.”
“And don’t make me come after you.”
Hella blew out a breath.
“Go!” Stampede pressed the remote control. The satchel charges blew immediately, filling the hallway with thunder, screams, and flying body parts.
Hella whipped around the doorway and ran into the maelstrom of death. The satchels had been packed with flash-bangs that disrupted the hardshells’ vid and aud feeds as well. A small EMP explosive detonated on the second wave, flashing a system-killing pulse that threw the hardshells’ musculature off.
The hardshells struggled to stay on their feet, fighting against systems that no longer supported them or moved the way they wanted to. That was the primary reason Stampede didn’t embrace technology. In a heartbeat cybernetic infrastructures and smart programs could be disrupted.
Hella’s nanobots shivered, and she feared that she would be affected as well.
“Concentrate, Hella.” Scatter’s voice echoed inside her skull. “Your nanobots are not like those systems in the hardshells. Yours are part of you; they are tied to you in ways those men in those suits will never know. You are stronger, faster, and better than any of them. You know what your body