Helix Nexus, Chris Lofts [best android ereader .txt] 📗

Turning his attention to the rack, he found his rucksack, jacket and weapons. He stopped, one hand on the rack. Lytkin had no intention of allowing them to leave. What had she said? They were not so different. Maybe she was right. No loose ends. It worked both ways.

He slung his holsters over his shoulders and fastened them. Snatching up his jacket, he knocked his PCM and the plastic unicorn Gabrielle had given him to the floor. The EMP would likely have fried the PCM. But it was worth a try. He hung the unicorn around his neck. Pulling up his trouser leg, he thumbed the device into the back of his calf beneath the flap of loose skin. He waited for the boot sequence to stream through his vision. The darkness persisted. Two seconds more. Nothing. His arm and leg weren’t impossible to manoeuvre without his enhancements. The body was quick to adapt. He chambered a round in each P226. The dead PCM meant that the smart-ammo was no longer smart but he could live with that too. Close quarters, left handed, what’s not to like? He donned his jacket, slung the rucksack over his left shoulder and headed for the door.

Crouching beside the fallen rack, he scooped up Ethan’s stubbies and shoved them into the rucksack. A smear of blood down the edge of the door marked the direction of Lytkin’s exit. Helix tightened the straps on the rucksack. He needed to find Ethan first, then he would deal with her.

He pulled one of his guns and eased himself through the double doors. Guiding the door shut, he scanned the cavernous open space. Encased in concrete and steel, the organs and innards of the building groaned, ticked and wheezed like a slumbering monster. The air was heavy with the smell of dust, hot equipment, paint, rubber, grease and metal. He bobbed and weaved, his weapon in a double handed grip, checking the recesses and the gaps between pipes, chains, cable trays and ladders.

Human access was delineated by a green-painted footway edged in yellow and black. To the right of the path, the bare concrete wall was punctuated every ten feet with anonymous grey doors. Helix rested his hand on the handle of the first. Tilting his head against the door he listened, pressed down and shoved it open. He swept the room in an arc with this gun. Clear. The weak emergency lighting seeped across the threshold, falling across racks filled with hubs, routers, switches and other equipment. Yellow, blue and green lights danced in panels suggesting that whatever it was, it hadn’t been affected by the EMP.

Moving to the second door, Helix repeated the entry procedure, making the same discovery. Door three was different. The faecal smell of drains seeped from within, like a camp latrine with a dose of dysentery in town. He flung the door inwards, recoiling from the stench that rolled out. ‘Jesus!’ He clamped his arm around his nose and mouth. Standing at the threshold, he forgot the smell. He’d seen some things in his life, but what confronted him was a first.

Two Perspex cells. Ethan pinned to the floor on the left, Dmitri, snarling and caked in his own excrement in the second. ‘Ethan,’ he called rushing through the door. Something shifted under his feet. ‘Fuck!’

Dmitri’s eyes widened as the partition separating him from his next meal was jettisoned courtesy of the plate that Helix had stepped on. He grunted breathlessly and lunged towards Ethan. The first bite at Ethan’s left arm failed to connect.

‘Fucking hell, Nate,’ Ethan said, managing to shift an inch within the restraints.

Dmitri wheezed. Rolled closer and launched himself again.

‘Argh! Shit,’ Ethan yelled as Dmitri connected.

A deep canine growl came from deep within Dmitri as he clamped his teeth into Ethan’s shoulder and started writhe and twist.

‘Get him off me. He’s going to rip my fucking arm off.’

A familiar angry buzz repelled Helix from the front of the cell as he approached

‘The kill switch is behind the door,’ Ethan said.

Helix holstered his gun and slammed the door. Palming the prominent red button, he turned back as the front wall dissolved. He sprung forward, the toe of his left boot connecting with Dmitri’s side, winding him but more crucially forcing his jaws open. Stepping in front of his brother, Helix flipped the Ukrainian away with his foot. A few more shoves got him into the corner of his own filthy cell. With the fight gone out of Dmitri, Helix turned back to Ethan.

‘You OK, Bruv?’

‘I don’t think he broke the skin,’ Ethan said, tilting his head upwards. ‘I thought that was you earlier.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘The dull thud and lights flickering out.’

‘Where’s Gabrielle?’ Ethan asked.

‘She’s safe.’ Helix went to work on Ethan’s bindings.

‘Safe where?’

‘Back in the woods,’ he said, freeing the hip bindings.

‘What? You came back on your own? Jesus Christ, Nate.’

‘I wasn’t alone. I had help. Just relax. Pressing against the straps isn’t making it any easier.’

‘And Sofi? I take it she found you.’

‘Yep.’ Helix looked away. ‘You’re a dark horse.’ The last strap came free.

Ethan pushed himself upright on his thick arms. ‘I thought you might get on better with something—’

‘Oh, she’s something alright.’ Helix said, getting to his feet.

Ethan’s brow wrinkled. ‘You didn’t shag her, did you?’

‘What? No. She’s, it’s a bloody machine.’ He clamped his hand on Ethan’s good shoulder.

‘Look as much as I want to chat, we need to crack on. She was more helpful than you know. Come on.’

Slipping the rucksack off, Helix pulled his brother’s prosthetics from the bag and handed them to him. Ethan located the concealed Allen key and set about attaching them to the posts grafted into the ends of his fibulas.

Helix went over to Dmitri and flipped him onto his back. The tortured man’s head flopped to the floor, his one remaining glassy eye staring up.

Dmitri’s plaintive howl filled the room.

Ethan looked up. ‘What are we going to