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  “Guys,” she called out in a half-whisper. “Where are you? Who’s covering me?” When she received no answer, she muttered, “Shit!”

  She was living her worst nightmare. Despite her better judgment, she’d agreed to come out into the field instead of remaining in the Globemaster’s comfortable and oh-so-safe Command Center, and now here she was—wandering around a substation alone, dead people everywhere, and live ones still skulking about, looking to kill her and her friends. All she wanted to do now was find a place to hide and wait for this whole thing to—

  She turned a corner and saw an NSA gunman stealthily approaching her. With no other choice, she closed her eyes, pointed the barrel of the submachine gun in his general direction, and squeezed the trigger. She knew how guns worked, of course, but she had never actually fired one herself. She was shocked by the way the gun came alive in her hands, by the sheer power it radiated. The sensation was so overwhelming that she stopped firing immediately, unsure if she could handle any more of it. She opened her eyes then and saw the man she’d fired at lying on the floor, dead—and then some.

  For a moment all she could do was stare at the man’s corpse. I did that, she thought. I killed him. She felt sick, but she also felt—not good, exactly, but in a strange way relieved. She’d just proved that she could take care of herself in a combat situation, that she was more than just a computer nerd behind a pair of owlish glasses. She could kick ass when she had to, and kick it hard. She wondered if she could get people to start calling her the Techinator.

  Two more gunmen came toward her then, but she wasn’t worried. She could handle them. She stepped forward, intending to fire on, but she tripped clumsily and fell, losing her grip on the submachine. It hit the floor and started firing on its own, spraying the corridor with bullets. The two new gunmen jerked and jittered as their bodies were shredded by gunfire, then the machine gun went silent and fell onto its side, and the two very dead agents did likewise.

  Lying on the floor, Becky stared at her second and third kills.

  “Oh my God, that was fucking awesome!” she said, and then—forgetting she was alone—she said, “Did you guys see—”

  She broke off when she saw a shitload of fresh agents approaching.

  “Shit,” she said, scrambling to her feet and running for cover in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  Xander performed a backflip, his right knee landing square on Donovan’s back. But Donovan pressed his Exo-Gloves against one of the data consoles and as the gloves shattered its surface, the recoil shoved his body backwards, sending Xander flying into a corner filled with monitors.

  Xander got to his feet as Donovan came at him, Exo-Gloves ratcheting like a pair of piledrivers. Xander knew he couldn’t allow Donovan to land a single blow with those damn gloves. With the amount of force those things could deliver, one punch in the right place could easily prove fatal. Donovan came at him swinging, but the gloves were heavy, and that slowed his punches down a little, giving Xander more opportunity to evade them. Donovan swung at Xander over and over, but Xander kept moving, and the Exo-Gloves smashed into various pieces of tech in the Command Center, shattering plastic and sending sparks flying.

  Xander fell back into one of the workstation chairs. The chairs could swivel, but they were bolted down to prevent any unwanted movement during flight. He grinned at Donovan to goad him, and as the man moved in for the kill, Xander slipped out of the chair. Donovan slammed a glove into the chair, tearing it free from the floor and sending it flying into Marke, who was in the process of reaching for Pandora’s Box. The impact knocked the woman down, but Donovan didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t care. All he wanted was Xander’s head on a plate.

  The man bellowed in fury and charged Xander once more.

  * * *

  Xiang ran across the cargo bay and leaped feet first into a soldier near the doorway, drop-kicking him in the chest and sending him backwards into another man, causing them both to topple to the ground and clearing a path for him to enter the weapons cage.

  Once inside, Xiang immediately turned to the soldier nearest the entrance. He broke the man’s arm with a single motion, then punched him hard across the face, sending him spinning out and dropping easily. He turned to his next targets—a pair of soldiers who stood gaping at him, unable to believe how swiftly he moved. He smiled and pointed at them, as if to say, You guys are next. Then he spin-kicked toward them, easily knocking them down.

  A fourth man stepped forward from the corner of the cage, wielding a semi-automatic rifle he’d grabbed from a weapons rack. He aimed the weapon at Xiang, but Xiang grabbed hold of the barrel just before the man fired. He jerked the barrel a foot to the right, and when the rifle went off, the spray caught the man whose arm Xiang had broken as the man was struggling to rise to his feet. He went down and would never get up again. Xiang then shoved the barrel to the left, smashing it into the face of one of the men he’d spin-kicked as he tried to rise. His partner was trying to get up too, but Xiang struck him with a brutal neck punch, and both men fell once more. Xiang then tore the weapon from the rifleman’s hand, spun it around, and rammed the butt of the gun into his face. The man dropped like a rock.

  Xiang tossed the rifle aside as the first two men he’d attacked recovered and came at him from behind. Both men had grabbed semi-autos, and Xiang turned around and intercepted one’s gun barrel, giving it a hard yank and flinging the man into a steel table behind him. The second man rushed toward him, but Xiang delivered a blow that sent him back down. Xiang turned and delivered a head-kick to the man on the table, knocking him onto the floor next to his friend, who was fighting to rise to his feet. Xiang pin-kicked the man’s head against the edge of the steel table, and this time when the man fell, he didn’t get back up.

  There was a heavy metal case on the table, and Xiang snatched it up in time to ram it into the head of the man who’d caught the rifle barrel in the face earlier. He fell once more, but then the man he’d neck punched was coming at him, but another quick strike sent him back down to the floor. The man who Xiang had hit with the rifle butt was up and made another go at him, and as Xiang dealt with that man, the one who’d gotten a face full of metal case ran to the gun rack by the doorway and grabbed hold of a semi-auto. Xiang saw what the man was doing, and he said, “Come on, baby. Let’s do this!”

  Xiang dropped the metal case, ran toward the man at the gun rack, and delivered a vicious spin kick to his head, sending him flying out of the cage and onto the deck outside. One of the men had retrieved the semi-auto that had fallen on the floor earlier, and now he stood up and fired two shots. Xiang leaped out of the way, rolling over two of the unconscious soldiers as the man with the rifle and the man at the gun rack—who’d gotten to his feet and snagged his own weapon—advanced on Xiang. Xiang grabbed one of the unconscious men, picked him up, and then shoved him at the two armed soldiers, knocking them down. One of them hit the floor, but the other slipped forward into the splits, so Xiang hooked his foot around the man’s head and yanked, causing the man to strike the floor face-first. His gun skittered away from his hand, and Xiang stopped the weapon with his foot, slid it toward him, and using both feet, he flipped it into the air and caught it in his right hand.

  One of the men on the floor started to come to. He lifted his gun, but Xiang shot it out of his hand before he could fire. Xiang stepped toward the soldier, whose hand was now bleeding, and placed the barrel of his weapon against the man’s nose, scolding him with a wag of his finger. He then angled the gun barrel to the side, leaned down, and punched him in the face, returning him to unconsciousness.

  Xiang left the weapons cage and returned to the main cargo bay. He headed for the stairwell that led to the upper deck, but another soldier came rushing down it, 9mm in hand. He couldn’t see Xiang from the angle where he was standing, and Xiang shot the man in the back of the leg, causing him to tumble the rest of the way down the stairs. Xiang moved around to the front of the
stairs to deal with the newcomer, when suddenly the Globemaster began to shake violently.

  What the fuck are you doing up there, Cage? Xiang thought as he fought to maintain his balance.

  * * *

  Donovan grabbed hold of Xander and flung him against a console. Xander lunged forward, grabbed Donovan from above and elbowed him in the back. Just then the co-pilot ran out of the cockpit, pistol in hand, ready to fire on Xander. But Xander spun Donovan toward the co-pilot and shoved him forward. The Exo-Gloves rammed into the man, smashing him against the hull. His gun hand slammed against the wall, the weapon pointing toward the cockpit. The co-pilot’s finger tightened reflexively on the trigger, the gun went off—bam, bam, bam!—and the bullets flew into the cockpit, each one striking the pilot.

  Marke had stood pressed into a corner all this time, trying like hell to stay out of the fight. She looked to the cockpit, realized what had just happened, and her face went white with fear.

  The tech Xander knocked out earlier came to, rose unsteadily to his feet and charged toward him. Xander shoved Donovan aside, grabbed onto a ceiling handhold, and swung forward to kick the man squarely in the chest. The man flew backwards, unconscious once more.

  At that moment the dead pilot pitched forward onto the Globemaster’s controls, throwing the plane into a steep dive. Xander, Donovan, Marke, and the unconscious tech flew upward and hit the ceiling, and then the Globemaster went into a violent spin, throwing them around the Command Center, until they hit zero gravity. Everyone now floated, and Xander and Donovan struggled to get command of their bodies so they could continue their fight. Pandora’s Box floated like everything else that was loose, and Marke tried to push herself toward it, but without anything to push against, she went nowhere.

  And the Globemaster continued its screaming dive toward the ground.

  * * *

  The zero gravity effect struck the entire plane, and in the cargo bay, Xiang, the fallen soldiers, and their weapons began floating upward. Xiang used his feet to push off the stair railing and glide toward one of the semiautomatic rifles. One of the men closed in behind Xiang, and Xiang kicked him, sending him flying toward the back of the cargo bay. The momentum caused by Xiang’s kick sent him gliding toward the gun, but the man with the wounded leg was heading for it too, hands outstretched. But Xiang was moving faster, and he beat the man to the weapon. He grabbed hold of it, aimed, and finished the man off at close range.

  The gun’s propulsion sent Xiang flying backward, and Xiang began shooting at the surviving NSA operatives, somersaulting upside down and backwards as the rifle fired. The soldier who’d first closed in on Xiang tried to unholster his sidearm, and Xiang—still upside down—shot the man dead. He then finished his somersault and landed upright. Two more operatives still lived, and Xiang fired at them. The men fired back, but they were unable to match Xiang’s acrobatic moves as he somersaulted to the rear left side of the cargo bay, ducking bullets before firing back at the two surviving operatives and pushing off the wall and down onto the floor, using it for momentum to push himself back in the air, where he fired two more times, delivering the final death blows to his last two foes.

  * * *

  With the Globemaster still in zero G, Xander hung from the ceiling handhold. The co-pilot had recovered, and he aimed his gun at Xander while Donovan continued to struggle with the zero gravity. The Exo-Gloves didn’t help. Every time he tried to grab hold of something, the gloves activated and destroyed it. Xander saw that a pair of NSA soldiers had managed to reach the Command Center, and one of them took a shot at him.

  Xander flipped down onto the floor and launched himself toward one of the men, grabbing him and using him as a human shield against the co-pilot’s gunfire. The soldier stiffened as he took a bullet in the back. Xander spotted an oxygen tank mounted between two consoles. Continuing to hold onto the dead soldier, he pulled the tank free, stuffed it under the soldier’s belt, broke the seal, and using the escaping oxygen as propulsion, he aimed the dead man at the co-pilot and released him.

  Xander saw the dead man’s Beretta floating above, and he reached up to take hold of it just as the second soldier flew toward him. The man grabbed him from behind, and his momentum sent them both floating toward the Command Center’s rear door. Xander straightened, and when his feet came in contact with the door, he used it as leverage to kick backwards, sending them both down to the floor, with Xander on top. Xander rolled off the soldier and fired the Beretta at the co-pilot. The man was struggling to shove aside the dead soldier Xander had sent flying at him, and since Xander didn’t have a straight shot, he banked the bullet off one of Donovan’s Exo-Gloves. The bullet sparked as it ricocheted off the glove’s metal and struck the co-pilot in the heart, killing him instantly. Xander then flipped himself over to shoot the soldier behind him.

  The Beretta was empty, and Xander tossed the gun into the air, and launched himself toward Donovan, tackling him. Donovan in turn spun Xander into the cockpit, but not before Xander saw Marke finally snatch Pandora’s Box out of the air and begin making her way toward the rear of the Command Center.

  10

  Hawk and Talon had taken cover behind two different stone pillars on the substation’s ground level. There were NSA operatives everywhere, and Talon was out of bullets. He signaled to Hawk that he didn’t have any more ammo, but Hawk just shrugged.

  “We don’t need any bullets,” he said.

  He leaned out from behind his pillar and took aim at a gas cylinder situated among a collection of equipment sitting against a nearby wall. He fired the last of his own bullets at the cylinder, causing it to ignite. The resulting explosion sent several operatives flying. Grinning in satisfaction, Hawk pulled back behind his pillar and gave Talon a nod. The other man nodded back, Hawk cast aside his weapon, and they simultaneously stepped out from behind their pillars, ready to face their enemies head-on.

  Talon came out kicking, easily taking down three operatives. He rolled into a cartwheel, snapping up one of their guns lying on the floor, firing it at an agent and taking him down. He then tossed the gun into the air, hitting another operative in the head and knocking him out.

  At the same time, Hawk picked up a crowbar that had been stored in the equipment stash and was sent flying when the gas cylinder exploded. The metal was still hot, but Hawk ignored it. He advanced toward an operative and swung the crowbar, knocking a gun out of the man’s hand. Hawk then threw the crowbar at a group of advancing operatives, hitting one of them in the head and knocking him out. The others started shooting wildly, missing Hawk but striking an electrical wire that hung from the ceiling, fraying it incrementally.

  Hawk spin-kicked, headbutted, and dropkicked multiple NSA men. He disarmed one operative by grabbing the gun out of his holster and slamming him face-first into the floor. Hawk was surprised to see water splash into the air when the man’s face hit, and he glanced over toward the area where the cylinder had exploded and saw that the blast had taken out a chunk of wall and ruptured a water pipe. Water was gushing from the broken pipe and spreading across the floor.

  Spotting a shit-ton more operatives coming toward them, Hawk rolled himself in Talon’s direction, getting his clothes wet in the process. He grabbed a machine gun along the way and sprayed an operative with gunfire, taking him down. He saw Talon launch into a run then, and he tossed the gun away, got to his feet, just in time to give Talon a boost, becoming a human springboard for the man. Talon soared toward the now-sparking electrical wire, and once Hawk realized what he intended to do, he hauled ass to get away from the wet part of the floor. Talon flipped over the wire, and as he did, he grabbed hold of the wire, yanked it apart, released it, and continued onward. The two ends of the live wire touched the floor, and more importantly, the water covering the floor—water the operatives were standing in. Electricity popped and crackled, surging through the operatives’ bodies, frying them from the inside out.

  Talon landed beyond the wet section of floor, rolled, and ca
me up on his feet. He grabbed a machine gun that an operative had dropped, then he ran toward Hawk, making sure to give the water a wide berth. Hawk also retrieved a fallen weapon, and the two men ran off in search of their companions.

  * * *

  Tennyson, Becky, and Nicks hid behind a concrete pillar, hunkered down, out of bullets, out of space, as NSA operatives closed in on them. Serena and Adele hid behind the next pillar over. They checked their weapons, but they were also out of ammo. They tossed their guns aside, and Adele offered Serena a knife. Serena took it with a grateful smile.

  Hawk and Talon ran up and took positions behind the pillar next to Serena and Adele’s. They’d had to fight their way here, and they checked their weapons to see if they had any ammo left.

  “You got anything?” Hawk asked Talon.

  Talon shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Me neither,” Hawk said, mad enough to spit.

  They looked to Serena and Adele, both of whom were now armed only with knives. It looked like Nicks, Tennyson, and Becky didn’t even have that much to fight with.

  Serena held up three fingers, her message clear. She intended for them to storm the remaining operatives. It would be a suicide run, of course, but what else could they do? Attack, don’t attack… either way they’d die. At least Serena’s way, they had a chance—however slim—of taking some of the motherfuckers with them.

  “We go in three,” Hawk said to Talon, and Talon nodded.

  One of Tennyson’s pant legs was soaked with blood, but Nicks and Becky helped him stand. Tennyson might be wounded, but he wasn’t going to sit this one out.

  Three.

  Serena lowered one of her fingers.