The Operator

Peri searched her intuition, not surprised when she saw Jack cross the top of the hallway and vanish to the right. He had a yogurt cup in his hand, scraping out the last bits. “Lunchroom,” she said, breaking into a jog. “Call it a gut feeling.”

Allen looked up, tucking his phone away and lurching to come even with her. “Why would they be in the lunchroom?”

“Because the walk-in freezers hide heat signatures,” she said, turning the corner to find a double set of doors with BREAK ROOM stenciled on them. She slung her rifle and slipped her new CIA handgun from its holster. Allen did the same. “I ever tell you about the time I got caught by the Russian mob in a dance club in Florida?” she whispered, peeking in past the cracked doors to a silent, shadowed lunchroom. Jack was there, getting a soda out of the machine. “They trusted their technology more than a set of real eyes.” She slipped inside, easing to the wall to make room for Allen, tight behind her. “Believe it or not, I can fit in one of those tiny wine coolers.”

Jack turned from the vending machine, a bottle of pop in his hand. “She smelled like cheap red wine for a week,” he said, and Allen started, jerking Peri to the side.

Lips in a wide grin, Jack dropped the bottle to reach for his weapon. Red fizz sprayed the walls, and Peri gasped when Allen shoved a table over to hide behind. There was a muffled pop of Jack’s silencer, and a louder crack of Allen’s slug. “Bill!” Jack shouted, finger to his ear and running for the hall. “She’s in the lunchroom!”

And then Jack was gone.

Red fizz continued to spurt and hiss, and slowly the bottle settled until red sugar gurgled in a flood and finally stopped.

Bill is here. Shocked, Peri peered above the edge of the table. “I thought he was a hallucination,” she stammered, and Allen, busy changing his clip to a magazine, looked up.

“What?”

“A hallucination,” she said again. “I saw him in the hallway, and I thought he was a hallucination!”

Irate, Allen took her weapon and changed her clip to a magazine as well. “You like it here, or you want to move?”

“Kitchen,” she said, lurching forward when the doors to the hall exploded inward.

Head down and gripping Allen’s arm, she ran for the swinging double doors. There was no option to stand and fight. There was only trying to find a more secure spot. Bill hadn’t come alone either.

“Good God, how many people are out here?” Allen said, right behind Peri as they went past the silent industrial kitchen counters. There’d be a service door after the dishwasher.

They weren’t going to make it.

Shouts sounded behind them, and the almost inaudible puffs of high-projectile darts. Allen cried out. Peri shoved him into a corner and turned, firing with a rhythmic satisfaction, pushing them back. “You hit?” she shouted, firing off another round, pop, pop, pop, pop. “I said, are you hit bad!”

“Shoulder.” Allen’s hand lifted from his shirt to show a dart graze. “Damn, these hurt more than a direct lodge.”

Relief spilled into her, then worry. “If you say so.” Pop, pop, pop. She ducked down, not feeling as secure as she might. It was her bullets to their darts, but a dart could be just as lethal as a slug. Men were shouting, but they were safe for the moment, trapped between a walk-in fridge and a service counter. Between them and the attackers was a huge stove and more counters. Grimacing, she fitted her earpiece back in and thumbed her radio. “Harmony?” she said, not ever going to call her Viper. “We’re pinned down in the kitchen!”

Allen’s eyes showed his worry when a garbled response came back. There was actual gunplay at her end, and then Harmony shouting “Get out! Get out now!” Peri’s attention fixed on Allen’s, but she froze when Michael’s voice slithered into her ear, icy and clear. “Peri. I’m going to kill your team. Then I’m coming for you.”

She jumped at the pop of a gun. Harmony . . . But Peri could hear the woman grunting in anger in the background, struggling. It hadn’t been her taking the hit. Not yet.

Allen jerked his earpiece out. “They knew what they were up against.”

“No they didn’t.”

Eyes pinched, he looked at the ceiling. “Upper level is open. If we can get in it, we have free access to the entire complex.” Allen’s attention shifted behind her. “Down!” he shouted, handgun rising as a man in Opti gear sprang from an adjacent counter and shot at them.

A hammer slammed into her chest, hardly shifting her though her insides felt as if they had exploded. Gasping, she fell back, legs askew. Allen hit the floor, his hand pressed to his chest as blood leaked past his Kevlar vest. It was never meant to handle what had hit it.

So much for the darts, she thought, fear lighting through Peri as the call went out that they were down. Down and dying. Someone kicked her rifle and Glock away. Men ringed them, afraid to touch her.

Allen groaned in pain when they were pulled up and apart, his legs sliding across the linoleum. Her vision swam as she lifted her head, the pain familiar as it radiated out, but Peri smiled through it, the blood leaking past her fingers indescribably warm. Her eyes met Allen’s, and at his nod, the slow buildup of pressure in her mind peaked, eddied, and then overflowed.

With a satisfied, agonized smile, Peri breathed in the rising blue sparkles and shifted the timelines back.

CHAPTER TEN

Bill’s thick fingers waved the scrolling images on the screen to the trash to bring up a new set. His joints were knobby from being broken too many times in his martial arts practice, but wave technology with its holoscreens and light sensors was adaptable, and his hand’s inflexibility didn’t slow him down as it did with the rapidly outdating glass technology.