“Serah, what’s wrong?” Parrino asked, startled.
“It’s still happening.” Serah clenched her fists clenched and pounded the armrest. “That bastard is still controlling everything!” she spat, beating her head into the seatback.
“Who?”
“Halferne! He’s been in my head every night for the past four days, and now he’s there even without the dreamspinner.” She began to cry. “He’s put … stuff in my head, and he won’t tell me why or what to do with it! I can’t keep doing this!”
Parrino weighed their options for a moment. “Okay, okay. We don’t have to do this. It’s not worth your life. We can head straight for a hospital when we reach Calais–”
Serah waved him off. “No, no. We’re so close. I’m going to find out what this is all about. My boss is counting on me to get this story. He doesn’t think I can do it. I’m going to prove him wrong.”
Parrino scoffed. “You’re hardly a journalist writing a story, Sera. If you are trying to convince yourself you’re still a detached and impartial reporter, then you’re not thinking straight, and you’re a danger to both of us. You want to try again?”
Serah glared at him, “Fine. This man messed with my life. Innocent people are dead. My friend is dead. There’s a reason for it, and I’m going to find out what it is. So, you’re right; detached is for police and reporters. I’m sick of being manipulated and controlled. Maybe I’m not a reporter anymore, but I’m certainly not going to be Halferne’s courier, puppet, chess piece, or whatever he’s trying to make me.”
“Okay, okay.” Parrino held up a hand. I just wanted to make sure you understood where your head is at right now, especially since we’re about to enter the really dangerous part.”
“More dangerous than being framed, beaten, and almost killed?”
“Attacking police officers? Interfering with an active investigation? In a few minutes we’ll cross the border into France, so add flight to escape arrest. We’ve evaded the LMPD, but we’re international criminals now. London will have transferred the case and flashed our complete profiles to the French authorities by standard procedure. No doubt, after I killed one of their own, Division 4 will be waiting to greet us at the station in Calais.”
Serah sat back and frowned. “So, this whole trip has been a waste. Unless you’ve got a plan you’re not telling me about?”
“I’m working on that. Have you worked out where we’re going when we get to France?”
“No. I’m only half-sure we’re even supposed to be going to France, remember?”
“Ducard’s partner says that when they were tracking Soranus around various religious sites, they assumed it was for a hired hit on a religious figure of some sort.”
Serah’s eyebrows crinkled. “Who’s Soranus?”
“Well, up until Ducard, we assumed he was Halferne’s killer. At least the gun you’ve got was his. He’d managed to sneak onto Earth a few days before Halferne was killed but never made it to London. Ducard caught up with him in a Paris hotel room. He’d gone completely frothing mad.”
“Mad? You mean like Ducard was in my apartment?”
Parrino thought for a minute. “Maybe…”
“Some sort of contagion? A communicable insanity? Ducard seemed perfectly normal at Nine Stones.”
Parrino nodded. “And when he told us he was taking over the Halferne case. So, how did a Division agent in France get turned? By all accounts, Ducard was an honest agent. He doesn’t go around finishing missions for assassins after he captures them. If Soranus was insane and raving, how did Ducard learn about Halferne, and how did he know Halferne was looking for you?”
“We’ve got a third party involved.” Serah nodded, “Probably our master slicer who faked the transfer orders and reprogrammed the attendant drone to kill Erik.”
Parrino considered this for a moment. “But is the slicer running this, or is he just another recruit like Ducard? How is the mastermind convincing these people to work with him? And why do they all go insane shortly afterward?”
“Are they being controlled, and is that some kind of after-effect?”
“Could be, but I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Parrino said.
“So, we need more information.” She sighed and chuckled. “We need to talk to Halferne. It’s a pity I killed him in that last dream. He’ll probably be angry about that next time I fall asleep.”
“Let’s assume he has allies in France, but he went to London, and you, because he knew Soranus was tailing him and didn’t want them exposed.”
“Why religious sites?” Serah asked, remembering her last moments with Flo in the Phrame cathedral.
Parrino frowned. “I was hoping you would know. Any indication Halferne is particularly religious or has some sort of interest in religious history?”
“No. None. It’s one of the only degrees he didn’t have.”
“Swell, another mystery. At any rate, better get ready. We’ll be in Calais in ten minutes.”
“Where Division 4 will be waiting for us.”
“Yes, well, leave that to me. You just figure out where we’re going.”
Fifteen minutes later, Parrino exited the train on the northeast side and immediately scanned his surroundings. As expected, he spotted agents, whom he assumed to be Division, at strategic points in a straight line between the train and each exit. He kept his cap down, merged himself with a small crowd of people, and walked with them toward the information booth in the middle of the concourse. In the corner of his eye, he caught Serah mingling with a group, attempting to keep her face obscured behind her cap. She had already managed to pass two sets of hovering security drones with glimmering Division 4 logos on them. He scanned the half of the room he could see, did the math, and decided there were no less than twelve such drones, scanning and cross-referencing each face in the concourse. This meant that within five or six more minutes — if a drone didn’t get lucky and tag one of them beforehand — they would be descended on by the process of elimination as the only two people in the room who hadn’t yet been scanned.
Serah was approaching the front door when two drones glided in her general direction. Parrino felt terrible for deceiving her and not revealing his complete plan, but he always knew there was no realistic way both of them could escape a Division 4 dragnet in an enclosed building. They wanted him more. He just hoped he’d given her enough information to finish the job on her own. It was a long shot, but something told him if determination alone was enough, she’d see it through.
Parrino lifted his cap from his head and pretended to scratch his hairline, making sure to turn his face directly toward the nearest drone. It would take about three seconds for the drone to report a target match and maybe five seconds for the officers in the building to receive this information. He slowly started counting seconds in his head.
After ten, there was still no movement from any agent on the floor, and at least three drones should have scanned him by now. Was he wrong? Had there been no BOLO flash about them? No longer trying to be subtle, he moved toward where Serah had been and tried to find her in the crowd. Something still did not feel right.
He caught sight of Serah as she walked between two drones approximately twenty meters from the station exit. She was still moving slowly and methodically, so she had not yet lost her nerve, but she was probably unaware Division 4 was scanning her.
Parrino started counting again. This time, he got to three before he caught movement out of the corners of his eye. Agents were running toward Serah, still walking slowly and with purpose. Parrino darted toward her. At the very least, he wasn’t about to let her go down alone.
Two agents had already secured the exit. Across the room, he saw one agent draw his sidearm and aim it directly at Serah. This would be the delicate part, Parrino knew. While one could not be too careful taking any suspect into custody, doing so in a crowded public space was particularly tricky. It was reckless for that agent to even pull a weapon at that distance when there was no indication of any resistance on Serah’s part.
The agent fired at Serah twice in rapid succession. Heart racing, Parrino tried to find her through the crowd, half expecting to see a bloody corpse sprawled out on the floor. Instead, to his shock, he caught sight of a drone hitting the floor in a shower of sparks and smoke. It had suddenly dove directly into the agent’s line of fire at the last minute. Serah was trying to get up after stumbling and sprawling on the floor. Parrino darted toward her.
In the confusion, he made out the screams of other agents frantically yelling at each other to hold their fire and stand down. Most were now surrounded and being pushed back by panicking civilians desperately trying to exit the station. Using the crowds to his advantage, Parrino avoided being grabbed by agents and made a beeline for Serah. In one motion, he grabbed her arm, lifted her to her feet, and led her toward the exit in a half-bent run.
They exited the station in the middle of a crowd of screaming civilians. Parrino directed Serah around the corner of the building and across the street to what appeared to be a hotel lobby. He gently steered her onto a couch, then sat opposite her with a vantage point of the front door and the side of the train station.
“Thank you,” Serah gasped. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“They shouldn’t have shot at you in public for no reason like that; something’s very, very wrong here.” He scanned the hotel lobby for signs of pursuit and possible exits.
“What now?” Serah asked.
“I’m not sure. Frankly, I didn’t expect us both to make out of the station without getting caught,” Parrino admitted. Serah looked at him in disbelief.
Outside, walking along the side of the train station, several Division 4 agents were aggressively following and questioning the rogue agent who had shot at Serah. Sever tried to grab his arm, only to be aggressively pushed back with angry shouts of something in French.
“Do you recognize that one? The one who shot at you?” Parrino asked, nodding toward the street commotion while examining other exits from the room.
“No. Never seen him before.”
“The way they treat him, I don’t think he was following orders back there. Another of our enemy’s recruits? Division 4 must be crawling all over themselves by now.”
The agent ran, still pursued by several colleagues a few paces behind. He reached a Division 4 aircar, flung the door open, and roughly threw the pilot to the street. Then, he grabbed the still-dazed pilot by the throat, removed his datajack, and affixed it behind his ear just as the other agents reached him and wrestled him to the ground. The captured agent shrieked and began thrashing and punching aimlessly at his captors. For a moment, Serah thought he might be having a seizure of some kind. By the time the agents disconnected him from the aircar controls and wrestled him to his feet, he was screaming hysterically, his eyes wide and insane.
Serah looked at Parrino. “Just like Ducard was in my apartment!”
“It can’t be a coincidence,” Parrino said, filing it away in his mind. “Right now, we need to get out of the city and away from the Division 4 dragnet.”
He kept an eye on the transport station just outside the hotel’s door. At regular intervals, hovercars pulled up, boarded any waiting passengers, and then sped off again. He calculated the time between cars arriving as just over forty-five seconds. “What’s the nearest major religious site to Calais?” he asked Serah.
Serah pulled out her datapad and began typing. “Sangatte? She said after a quick scan.”
“Mean anything to you?”
She shook her head.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, disappointed but still thinking strategically, “We just need any destination outside Calais. We can refine the plan after that.” Serah looked at him, confused. He shook his head. “There’s no one in line for a taxi right now.” He nodded toward the transit stand. The next one will pull up in about thirty seconds. He stood up and gently grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the stand. It should arrive right about the time we do. We’ll get in, punch up a random destination in Sangatte, and hopefully be halfway there before anyone notices we’ve left.”
Serah nodded her understanding and followed alongside him. As predicted, when they were three steps from the loading platform, an aircar arrived just in front of them. Pausing only to smile at the bored human attendant, they lifted the door and sat in the front row of two rows of seats. Serah had the terminal up before she’d settled in, and from her memory of the map of France she had seen on her datapad a few moments earlier, entered a destination in the center of the metropolitan area of Sangatte and sat back, nodding confirmation to Parrino as the aircar slowly lifted up and sped forward.
“Is it too much to hope that worked and we’re home free?” Serah asked.
Parrino turned and looked out the back window to see two Division 4 aircars altered course to move directly behind them, holding several car lengths away. “These cars are completely automated. If Division 4 or any law enforcement had tagged us, they could shut us down or steer us right into a waiting prison cell.”
“So, hope we didn’t get spotted getting in, then?”
Parrino looked out the back window again. Their pursuers had neither advanced, nor dropped back. Without warning, the aircar lurched forward and upward. A split second later, the two Division 4 cars broke away and followed. Their sirens and warning lights now lit up.
“What the hell?” Serah cried, panicked.
Parrino studied the console in front of them. It showed normal operation. “I don’t get it. The police should have total control of this car.” He pulled up the manual override controls, but they stubbornly refused him. Concerned, he glanced back again. Their pursuers had closed half the distance.
His gut rose into his throat as the car dove sharply, dodged oncoming traffic and entered a narrow transit tunnel. For a moment, he thought they might have lost their pursuers, then three sets of flashing lights entering the tunnel behind him.
“Who’s controlling this car?” Serah’s voice was quavering.
“I don’t know,” Parrino admitted, “but they’re going to get us killed.”
The car exited the tunnel to daylight again and shot upward, banking between two tall buildings. A map appeared on the screen in front of them, showing the positions of police forces in relation to their own. A dotted line traced a path out of Calais, southeast to Lille. Serah zoomed the display in. It indicated a warehouse district on the southeast side of town. “Somebody reprogrammed our destination,” she said, “Division 4?”
Parrino shook his head. “If so, why are they still chasing us?”
The aircar suddenly dove, steadied itself just above street level, and accelerated in a straight-line course bearing southeast. Parrino saw the aircars behind them do the same.
“We’ll never beat them in a flat-out race, and we’re approaching open ground. We need to find some way to lose them before we leave the city.”
The car was moving at twice designated speed limit, bobbing between the cars riding the designated travel paths. The police, sirens blaring, were mere meters behind. Serah steadied herself with one hand on the door, the other on the dash as the car twisted through the maze of traffic. Parrino braced one foot against the floorboard in front of him and twisted sideways, tracking both the pursuers behind and the traffic in front of them.
“Whoever is controlling this car is at least trying to keep us alive and out of the hands of Division 4,” Parrino observed.
He and Serah were rocked into each other as the aircar suddenly decelerated sharply and climbed almost straight up. A shadow passed over the cockpit as another vehicle above them dove straight down and collided with the street in a brilliant fireball.
“Oh my god!” Serah exclaimed as the car dove back to street level and then banked sharply left, narrowly avoiding a second nosediving car that struck the ground pavement only meters to their right. The vehicle then banked right, just missing a third of the suicide bombers, and finally dove into a service tunnel that took them below street level.
“What the hell is going on?” Parrino did his best to remain calm. At the very least, their pursuers had broken off the chase to attend to the multiple fires and deaths of civilians both in the cars and on the street. He was somehow unsurprised when the car switched off its running lights, cruised steadily forward for another kilometer, then abruptly cut speed, banked right, and slowed to a stop. The external doors opened as soon as it touched the ground in near complete darkness.
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