Page 68 of Night in a Waste Land

Slowly, he stowed the binoculars, and watched the others do the same with obvious reluctance and uncertainty. “Yeah. That’s true.”

The child-sized conduit was dressed as they were, in fatigues and tac gear, gray/white/black urban break-up camo flecked with fire-red, a helmet, goggles, boots, gloves. She carried no weapons – Bedlam had been firm on that – but Lance figured her own powers were more effective in this instance than any of their guns, knives, or grenades.

“If you can detect them, can’t they detect you?” Tris asked.

“Yes, that’s true.” She nodded. “But that’s one of the risks of bringing me along.” She looked to each of them in turn, those big, cornflower-blue, guileless eyes assessing without betraying any of the thoughts happening inside the borrowed skull.

“It’s worth the risk,” Rose said, firmly, pulling her goggles down over her eyes. The rain was picking up. “You ready, Sergeant?”

Gavin snorted at the honorific. “She call you that in bed?”

“I call your mother that in bed,” Rose fired off, without inflection. “Lance?”

“Right.”

Gavin was squawking in dismay – only that he’d been bested at his own joke, while Tris and Gallo sniggered at his expense.

“Let’s move out, as planned.”

They’d flown into the base – formerly a civilian airport, and now an army headquarters – and moved into the outer fringes of the city on camo-painted dirt bikes. They’d stopped a half-mile out, in a dark abandoned lot between two boarded-up houses, where the garbage lay thick as snow drifts, slick with algae and mold, and where stray cats yowled like babies crying. There might have been actual babies. A scan of the city from here, just across the bridge, revealed the glow of fires, the faint yellow squares of electric and candle light in windows, and lots and lots of darkness.

Lance wished for a helo, and a line dropping down onto a rooftop, and the assurance of a lone target, and a departure time. He wasn’t afraid – he refused to think of himself as that, no matter the odds – but they’d not tackled an op this dangerous, with this much possibility of disaster, in a long, long time. He felt green and unsteady again, like the newly-minted officer he’d been when he’d been assigned to infiltrate Castor’s operation.

The city was three times as dangerous, now.

They swung back onto their bikes, the rain pattering against their helmets and goggles; Morgan climbed on behind Rose, tiny arms linked tight around Rose’s waist. Rose glanced back, Lance nodded at her, and they cranked the motors.

The bridge had fared better against the corrosive rain and ash of both Rifts than the city’s skyscrapers – but it had been over thirty years, now, and Lance thought he felt it shiver beneath their bikes. A glance down at the water revealed white-capped, black chop, rain-lashed and seething. Things moved beneath the surface, cresting in flashes of sleek bodies, hard scales, and gleaming plates.

Better not to look down.

There were people on the streets, as they rode past shuttered windows and blackened shop fronts. Strong-shouldered men in black coats: the dealers. The sad, scrawny tweakers in patched clothes, dirty faces whipping toward them, dilated eyes full of fright.

Shubert’s headquarters was a narrow, three-story townhouse in a part of town that had probably been posh once upon a time. Now, it was only slightly less sad than the rest of the city – as well as guarded day and night, at both ends of the street, by heavily-armed, armored thugs with night vision goggles. Doing a drive-by wasn’t an option.

They parked two streets over and left the bikes behind a burned-out dumpster.

“They’ll be stolen,” Gallo said, looking at his own with wistfulness.

“Ha,” Gavin said, unwinding a length of wire. “If they wanna get blown up.”

As far as deterrents went, rigging an explosive device up to all their bikes wasn’t the best way to preserve them – but it was better than hoping for the best.

Lance scanned their surroundings through his goggles, noting dark windows, and empty, slimy sidewalks. There was no way of knowing if there were human eyes, or even cameras watching them.

He’d had his misgivings about the idea, at first, but it was with a large dose of relief that he said, “Morgan? Can you tell if anyone’s looking at us? Even with cameras?”

When he glanced toward her, she had her eyes shut, and her head tipped back, breathing deep – searching, somehow, supernaturally. He’d spent plenty of – too much – time around Castor’s pet conduit, once upon a time, but it still rattled him to see one use her senses in this way.

“There are cameras at either end of the street,” she announced, when her eyes opened. She blinked a few times, as if clearing her vision. “But they aren’t pointed toward us.”

“Guess that’ll have to do.” He met Rose’s gaze, and she nodded, ready, a length of cable attached to a grappling hook already coiled around one wrist. “Are you good to climb?” he asked Morgan.

“Yes.”

The building was three stories, old, weathered brick gone slippery from years of water, algae, mold, and ash. The hooks went up cleanly, firmly attached, and they had gloves, and boots with thick, rubber tread; safety carabiners. Still, it was hard going. By the time he finally reached the top, Lance all but dragged himself over the parapet, and flopped inelegantly down on his stomach, shoulders and arms burning, breath coming in sharp pants. He was lying in a puddle, could feel it soaking into his fatigues, but he shut his eyes a moment, let the rain pelt the side of his face, and pretended he couldn’t feel how disgusting the texture of the roof was against his other cheek.

When he pushed himself up, he wasn’t at all surprised to find Rose on her feet already, stowing her rope, Morgan standing beside her, placid and unbothered, and not even out of breath. At least Gavin and Tris and Gallo looked properly winded.

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