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Chapter 125 – Hard RainAlex winced inwardly. She knew exactly what Jack meant. Option Failsafe. She hated Option Failsafe, and she was scared silly they might have to use it someday, especially if they had to use it on an American city.
And it was all the fault of these stupid Collective jerkheads.
She asked Graham, “Can you two even get down the stairs to Jo and Lieutenant Marshall?”
Graham frowned. “We have to try. You don’t know how to get down there, and I don’t know if Marshall needs any biochem assistance, so I want Klar along.”
She guessed, “It’s not just a simple stairwell, is it? At the mansion, you had to go from an elevator over to a ladder then around to a stairwell and then over to a different elevator, and there were all kinds of things in between, so it would be a nightmare for a normal person.”
Graham admitted, “And we’ve got Birkin to deal with. He mutated from a mild-mannered scientist into this … thing that looked like its skin was wrong side out, with a right arm and shoulder the size of a side of beef, and the new growth looked like it was mostly one enormous eyeball. And then he got worse. Now he looks like some sort of four-legged alien thing that couldn’t have ever been human. And every time we stop him, he mutates more, and gets stronger and tougher.”
Klar muttered, “Swell. Can hardly wait.” He took his Ruger out of his pouch. Alex wasn’t sure if he was holding it in a threatening way, but he was definitely holding it. “Do you want me on point?”
Graham thought for a second and said, “No. You’re not invisible as long as you’re sopping wet or we’re wading through water. Tera on point, I’ll take our six.” He hefted the M203. “Let’s move out.”
Alex heard the signal over her earjack. “Lupo to Miller, we’re taking on water but we’re not flooded out yet. We’re two feet deep right now, so Marshall can still work, but if it rises much more we’ll lose almost all the work surfaces.”
“Marshall to Miller. But we’re on it.”
“Miller to Lupo. What about computers and electricity?”
“Lupo. Gone when the water reached the wall sockets. But the computer data were already useless. Marshall figured out someone tampered with the RNA and DNA sequences in the computer files, so the virus isn’t doing quite what they planned and their ‘cures’ will be worse than nothing. We’re making do, but just barely.”
“Miller. Okay, we’re on our way down, but there’s no telling how long it’ll take.”
“Roger that. Over and out.”
Alex asked, “If they have no computers and no electricity, how are they doing anything?”
Klar said, “I doubt they’ll be able to make do with bunsen burners and alchemy. Marshall probably figured out something ingenious.”
Graham said, “They’re both smart and resourceful. They’ll have something up their sleeves.”
Alex’s earjack buzzed again. “O’Neill to Miller, come in.”
“Miller here, sir.”
“We’re having to evac up here. The fire’s spreading like crazy. Something on one of the floors below us is stupidly flammable. Maybe Umbrella’s ‘children’s pajamas’ division. We have the chopper coming in now, but assume you have a really short time before the building starts coming down around your ears.”
“Roger that, sir. We’re going into the basement levels to try and extract Lupo and Marshall. Please keep us apprised of structural integrity.”
“Will do. O’Neill out.”
Graham looked at them and said, “Sounds like we’d better hurry.”
Alex thought about asking him if he wanted her to take them both in her morph, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to tell her where to go if she did that. She just hoped the water didn’t slow them down much.
Okay, she was really hoping that a few basement floors full of monstrosities wouldn’t slow them down too much. Or kill them. Or do something worse.
* * *
Jack had to drag Lieutenant Bailey away from his keyboards. But Willow was downloading crap for as long as the computers had power. Well, as long as the computers and the hubs and the gateways and the satellite dish all had power. As soon as one of them went, that would be it. Not counting the three hard drives the lieutenant had managed to pull and stuff in his pack.
But the area was starting to fill up with smoke. The fire on the east side was turning into an inferno, and the penthouse offices on the floor above were even worse. They had to move before the exit to the roof was impassable for anyone except Action Girl and maybe Carlson.
They moved out, with Bailey wisely keeping all his grumbling to himself, since he was talking to his commanding officer’s commander. Scott was already in position at the exit topside, while Heller was in position on this side of the staircase with the door firmly closed.
He looked at Action Girl, and she gave him the hand signals for three opponents. Great. Three man-eating monsters in zero visibility.
But this was Action Girl. She signaled for him to move Carlson and Bailey off into a closed office to the right.
As soon as he had the office door closed, she moved. The office door had a one-foot by two-foot glass panel, so he could see exactly what she was doing. He was sorry to see it was exactly what he was expecting.
She flung the stairwell door open and fired off a blind three-shot grouping into the thick, black smoke. Three of the plant-lions came barreling up toward the noise. She screamed and ran toward the east side of the building, so naturally the things chased her.
Smart girl. He knew she was only screaming to get the attention of the creatures. Now all she had to do was lead them in a circle back to the stairway and shut the stairwell door in their faces.
“A.G. to O’Neill. Am leading red team into the fire. Will take alternate route down.”
He snapped, “Goddamn it Heller, just lead ’em in a big circle and …” There was something roaring angrily a couple stories down the stairwell, and probably moving upward. “Negatory on that. Take that alternate route. And if you get so much as a scraped knee, I will be giving Janet full disclosure!”
He growled at Carlson and Bailey, “Everyone, try not to breathe in the stairwell. I have point, Bailey, you try to keep up. Carlson, if either of us folds, feel free to sling a commanding officer over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”
Carlson grinned. “Yes, sir!”
Jack breathed deeply for a couple of seconds and then took as big a breath as he could before diving into the smoke. He closed his eyes, felt for the handrail, and ran up the stairs, all the while telling himself it was just like moving in a pitch dark stairwell. But the smoke was hot and cloying. And he was worried about Bailey. All right, he was worried about Hanna, too, but he wasn’t going to say so.
He burst out onto the roof, and found Scott monitoring the east side of the roof.
Crap, the fire had already turned the whole helipad into a weenie roast. Eddings had the chopper hovering over the roof exit instead. Scott gave Jack a boost onto the roof of the exit, and he jumped up into the chopper. Bailey was only a few seconds behind him, and Scott was right on Bailey’s tail. Jack looked out in time to see Carlson take a running jump to grab a handful of gutter and flip himself up onto the exit’s roof. Carlson staggered a tiny bit and smoothly leapt into the chopper.
Jack snapped, “Okay, let’s move this piece of crap!”
Eddings pulled up and wheeled away from the fire. But Jack could see that the top floors were doing their ‘Towering Inferno’ imitation, and everything below including the surrounding buildings was at risk.
He wasn’t a happy camper that the ‘everything’ included five of his people.
* * *
Hanna held her breath as she sprinted through the burning hallway toward the east wall. The plant things ignored most weapons, but they were on fire now. She dived out through one of the shattered windows and took a deep breath of clean air. She wondered idly if the plant-lions would stand there and burn to a cinder, or leap after her and fall to their deaths.
Jill Valentine looked up when she heard someone gasp. Oh, shit, someone was leaping to their death out of a burning room. That was twenty-five or thirty stories up. And a burning four-legged monster leapt after her.
Then Jill realized it was Action Girl.
Jill yelled, “Get clear! Incoming!” And she started moving police officers out of the zone where that monster was going to hit.
She watched as Action Girl extended one arm and …
Holy shit, that was that grapple gun she’d used to pull the two of them up that elevator shaft. Jill watched in amazement as Action Girl pointed one arm at the building across the street and then swung in that direction on a cable that wasn’t even visible from twenty stories away.
Action Girl swung across the street, around the corner of another building, and a few seconds later, came swinging back on the far side of the same building, only fifteen stories lower. She landed expertly on top of a fire truck, tucked her grapple guns into their holsters as she touched down, and then in the same motion did a double front flip onto the street. She landed it perfectly.
About fifty policemen and firemen and National Guardsmen just stared open-mouthed and started applauding, like it was a circus act.
Action Girl just ignored the applause and ran over to Sergeant Walters. She looked like she hadn’t done anything more strenuous than skipping in a breeze. Jill clenched her teeth and told herself that she was not going to feel utterly jealous.
* * *
Alex gaped in astonishment as she flew into the lab room.
The water was over three feet deep. The lab tables were totally submerged. The equipment was ruined. The wall outlets were underwater and shorted out. There was something nasty swimming between the tables, and it had a massive fin jutting up above the surface.
And Jo and Lieutenant Marshall were high and dry. Well, mostly.
They had yanked several long countertops loose and put them across the gaps between the really solid tables. Then they had pulled the movable tables and stuck them on top of the solid tables. And they had electronic gear and chemistry equipment going on top of those tables.
One of them had yanked a couple of cables out from some of the ceiling panels and wired the electronic gear they wanted into that, so they still had ceiling lighting and they still had power for their hardware. And they were just ignoring the deadly mutant shark-thing swimming hungrily under and around them.
“Oh, hi,” Jo said casually, like she wasn’t facing a flood and monsters and zombies and zombie-monsters. “I take it we can swim our way out now?”
Alex flew over to the shark-thing and hit its fin with a massive jolt of lightning. It writhed a couple times and then sagged. It floated belly-up, its huge toothy maw wide open.
Lieutenant Marshall politely asked, “Could you drag that out into the hall? If anything else comes this way, I’d like the appetizer course somewhere else.”
Jo asked, “Is there anything else down here?”
Alex told her, “Maybe not. We found some pretty nasty stuff that looked like it had been ripped apart and chewed to pieces.”
Lieutenant Marshall nodded. “Probably the Big B. We haven’t seen it for a little while, and we would’ve heard if you guys ran into it.”
Graham waded into the room with Klar right behind him. He grinned. “The ‘Big B’? Is that a technical term, lieutenant?”
Alex kept listening while she used some of her TK to pull the dead shark-thing through the water and out into the hall.
Lieutenant Marshall said, “I think I’ve got a potential antiviral that ought to knock out the t-virus. But I’m working from paper files because the computer files have been tampered with.”
Jo cut in, “Probably sabotage.”
Lieutenant Marshall nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I figure, too. So we got the gene sequencer and some other hardware up here where they’re out of the water and still powered. I should have several samples in another …” He glanced at his watch. “… four minutes. And three extra samples a few minutes after that. But that’s assuming the water doesn’t rise any more, and nothing else comes in here feeling especially hungry.”
Jo added, “I’m not even sure Big B can fit through that doorway anymore. Maybe not even down that little hallway. He’s gotten a lot bigger. And a lot tougher. But now we have Terawatt, and you’ve got your M203, so we have more options.”
Graham frowned. “Because firing grenades in a narrow hallway is always a fun option.”
Lieutenant Marshall said, “It may be the only option. We shot it, and it grew bulletproof skin. We roasted it, and now it seems to be fire-resistant. So it may be mutating to adapt to whatever damages it.”
Graham turned and said, “Tera, take up station at the end of that hallway and let us know if we have incoming. Use your earjack.”
Jo said, “We may need to call you back here. We’ve got crap in the air vents, too. That mutant plant does not take a hint. And based on the sounds we’re hearing, I figure there’s some non-plants threats in there, too.”
Great. Alex couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Okay, she wasn’t leaving without the antidote, and as much of it as Lieutenant Marshall could make. But she wanted out of here, and she didn’t want to have to deal with Umbrella ever again. And they were all mega-jerkheads who deserved to go to prison for a thousand years. Or to have to put up with Maggie Walsh.
She was still watching at the end of the hallway for more creepiness when her earjack buzzed. “O’Neill to Miller, report please.”
“Miller here. Entire team is safe … for now. Lab is half-flooded and waters don’t seem to be subsiding. But at least they’re not rising any further. Marshall has a possible antidote, and we expect to be able to move out of here in minutes. We may have to deal with Birkin, though.”
“O’Neill. Describe current form.”
“Lupo, you’re up.”
“Lupo here. When last seen, it was about the size of a rhino, pretty much bulletproof, able to charge through a wall when we set it on fire with some of Lieutenant Marshall’s homemade napalm, and its front third has turned into a wall of two-foot-long indestructible spikes.”
“O’Neill. Does it stalk or just plain charge?”
“Lupo. It’s pretty much charge and ‘hulk smash’ now. We have no idea if it has any intellect left.”
“O’Neill to team. Get back up here as soon as you can. Expect support at the top of the steps leading to the atrium. Do not let Action Girl charge down the steps at anything. She’s already gotten to play with her toys from that guy in Gotham.”
“Carlson to Colonel O’Neill. Sir, she’s giving you the pout now.”
“O’Neill out. Be careful down there.”
Alex listened as Graham checked, “Marshall, you close to wrapping up?”
“Yes, sir. Three vials being generated and sealed now, last three in under three minutes after that.”
“Miller to team. As soon as Marshall gets his antidote, we move out. Terawatt on point, me with Klar and Marshall, Lupo has our six. If Tera runs into Birkin, she detours and leads it off while the rest of us move for the ground floor. If Lupo engages Birkin, Terawatt and I move to the rear to support, and Klar and Marshall run for it. The most important thing is getting that antiviral to the CDC and Major Finn. I would also like to get everyone out of here before a burning skyscraper collapses on us.”
Alex just gritted her teeth and told herself it would work out. After all, they got down here without much trouble. Even if the reason why was probably Birkin ripping every other monster to shreds.
Lieutenant Marshall stowed his vials in a padded steel case, shoved a bunch of papers into big ziplock baggies, and tucked everything into his backpack. Graham moved them out toward Alex’s position. Then she flew forward, retracing their route down to the lab. It wasn’t too bad, and once they got up to the next level up, things were way better. The water had almost all drained down into the bottom two levels, so they were just splashing along in less than an inch of water.
They got up to basement level two when Jo started firing her machine gun way behind everyone.
“Tera, support!” Graham snapped over the comms. But Alex was already on her way. And …
Oh, crud. The thing roared like a dozen lions, even if there wasn’t a mouth Alex could see. It looked like an oversized buffalo covered in orange spikes. Every spike in front looked like two feet of orange-painted steel sharpened to a nasty point and going back until it was maybe three or four inches across. Jo’s bullets looked like they were just bouncing off.
Alex hit it with a massive jolt of lightning. It jumped back a couple of feet, but didn’t look hurt.
Lieutenant Marshall’s voice came over the earjack. “Did we mention we electrocuted it once to drive it off?”
“Crud.”
Jo calmly said, “Call it an homage.”
Graham ignored the chatter and snapped, “Clear!”
Jo ducked around a corner, and Graham fired a grenade that went right underneath the thing. He ducked around the corner, too, and the grenade went off just behind the Birkin monster.
It leapt forward about twenty feet and roared angrily, but it didn’t even sound like it was seriously hurt.
Graham said, “Okay, let’s try the WP …” He fired the second grenade right into the thing’s front spikes, and the grenade exploded in a ferociously white-hot fire.
Oh, right. WP was white phosphorus. Ick.
The monster just charged them.
Alex darted in front of Jo and yelled, “Yo! Over here!” Then she darted down the side hall, loudly smacking the floor with her TK as she flew. It charged after her, even if it had trouble making the sharp right turn. And it was still on fire from white phosphorus, and it acted like it didn’t care.
Graham called into her earjack, “Just run it in circles until we tell you it’s time to retreat up the stairs to the atrium.”
“Roger that,” she replied. “Oh, crud!”
She had just flown into a dead-end hallway.
“Miller here. Do you require assistance?”
“I’m okay!” she squawked into her comms. She flew to the last doorway in the hall and popped it open with her TK. Birkin rampaged down the hall after her, but she was still a lot faster. And a lot better at making turns. She slammed the door behind her, went silvery just in case, and darted up to the ceiling.
Oh, great, two of the long-tongued zombies were in there, and one immediately came after her.
Birkin hit the door and smashed the entire doorframe out of the wall.
Holy crud, just how strong was he now?
The door, the door frame, and a big chunk of the wall around the doorframe went flying into the room ahead of Birkin. If she hadn’t gone and hid up near the ceiling off to the side, she probably would have been swatted into the floor like a fly. And not one of those gross giant flies that were in the atrium, either. As it was, that first zombie was now just a smear underneath the door, which slid most of the way across the room.
Birkin roared and attacked the other long-tongued zombie, which was still on the other side of the room. Birkin charged and opened up its mouth. Alex gulped in horror. It had an immense vertical mouth which started at the bottom of those front spikes. And it bit the zombie in half with a bunch of teeth that would have scared off a great white shark. And it was pretty much ignoring the thing about it still having fire all over its front.
Alex got the heck out of there. She ducked out into the hallway. Then she went normal again and called out, “Oh, Mister Birkin!”
The monster wheeled about and chased her down the hallway. She led it into an elevator shaft and back down to the half-flooded level. It didn’t seem to care that the water was up to its haunches. It just chased after Alex like she was made of extra-delicious chocolate. Still, it was way slower when it had to plow its way through all that water.
She ran it around a loop of hallways. It didn’t seem smart enough to realize it was just going in a circle and would never catch her.
“O’Neill to Tera. Party favors in place. First guests off to visit a sick friend. Come on up.”
Alex took off for the elevator shaft. She figured Jack meant that Lieutenant Marshall and at least one other person were rushing the antidote off to Riley. And she figured Jack had a nasty surprise in place for what was left of William Birkin.
She darted up the elevator shaft. Was the thing trapped down there now, or could …
There was a roar, and Birkin leapt completely up the shaft and landed in the hallway, tearing the elevator frame apart along the way. Crud!
She took off for the ladder. She flew up the ladder shaft and headed for the stairway. It was relentlessly following her. It leapt up the ladder shaft in one bound and raced down the long hallway. She wondered if it was following her scent now.
She darted up the stairs and saw what Jack meant by ‘party favors’. Yikes. She darted over to where Jack and Hanna were kneeling in front of the airlock doors.
Jack yelled, “Fire in the hole!”
Hanna twisted the trigger in her hands, and the C-4 planted all along the stairs exploded. Concrete and steel and everything else blasted up and out of the stairwell, even as more concrete blasted in the other direction and even more concrete collapsed in on the staircase. Hanna grinned at Jack. “That was fun!”
“Whew.” Alex breathed a sigh of relief, because she didn’t want to have to take on something that just got stronger and tougher the more you fought it.
BLAM!
A wall of rubble erupted out from the wreckage of the stairwell, and one of Birkin’s front legs came punching upward behind the explosion. Then another leg knocked a massive pile of concrete and steel out of the way. It was going to be loose in the atrium in a couple of seconds.
Jack calmly said into his earjack, “Sergeant Scott, you owe me ten.”
Hanna grinned excitedly. “Can I attack it now?”
Jack said, “Hell, no. You and I are making a tactical retreat. Right now.”
Alex asked him, “Got any more ideas?”
“Already got it ready.” Jack pointed at a pile of empty three-gallon buckets. “How’s your Jackie Chan fu?”
The buckets all said ‘surfactant’ in big block letters. And she knew what that was, thanks to her dad and Annie. She even recognized the chemical name.
And she knew what Jack had done. Surfactants mess with surface tension. Most surfactants get used in soaps and detergents. And most surfactants make water soapier or bubblier or foamier or goopier. This one made water extra slippery.
There was water all over the atrium floor. And all of Jack’s buckets were empty. So that meant … She almost giggled out loud.
She darted back toward the stairway as Birkin plowed its way out of the rubble. It charged right at her, so she drifted through the air until she was right in front of a massive support block. Birkin roared and leapt for her.
Its feet slipped out from under it, and it crashed head-first into the wall. She darted up out of its reach, but there was now a Birkin-sized crater in that wall.
Jack yelled “Olé!” over her earjack.
She darted off to the side, and Birkin scrambled after her, slipping and sliding as it went. It only got traction when it could find sections of damaged flooring to push off of.
Like right there. It leapt into the air after her and took a ferocious swipe with a paw that looked like it had borrowed Lady Deathstrike’s fingernails.
She darted to the side. It was stupidly strong, but even when it jumped it couldn’t go as fast as she could. And it sure couldn’t change directions in mid-air.
It missed her with its swipe, but it still tore a chunk out of the marble-clad concrete wall. Alex gulped, because it had just ripped a chunk over a foot across and going up to two feet deep into the concrete. And it didn’t seem to notice when it ripped right through part of a steel girder.
And she had an idea.
She darted across the atrium. She pretended she was really scared. “Oh, no, don’t come after me over here!”
Okay, she was plenty scared. This was an indestructible creepy monster that could bite her in half, or claw her into six pieces with one wicked slice of a paw. And she knew it might have virus-contaminated blood, and it might have other even-freakier powers. But she’d faced scarier things than this. Heck, this thing didn’t even make her top five.
And what was wrong with her life that she even had a Top Five and Top Ten Scariest Things Ever Faced, and this thing wasn’t making the top five? Maybe it was time to start a Top Twenty.
She stayed still as it charged at her. At the last second, it leapt at her with its front paws out and its claws extended. She jetted straight up. It slipped and couldn’t make a correction. It ripped two massive furrows in the wall. Each gouge looked like a narrow backhoe had just clawed through soft dirt.
She jetted across the atrium to a huge concrete support column that had to be five feet thick and went all the way up to the ceiling, two hundred feet overhead. She stopped right in front of it and waited for Birkin. She didn’t have to wait long. Whatever she’d done to get it mad at her, it wasn’t quitting. It scrambled across the floor, sliding into the side of a fountain and crashing right through. It got traction in the remains of the fountain and sprinted her way.
It leapt for her, and she darted straight up. Its claws shredded the column before it went face-first into what was left. She flew sideways in case the column dropped. It really looked like it might, since now there was a four-foot-high section where nothing was left except a few pieces of concrete-speckled rebar on the back side.
She flew back to the elevator block and led Birkin slipping and sliding over there. After it ripped most of the elevator shafts apart trying to catch her, she led it over to five more of the support columns. Then a big marble-clad structure opposite the elevator block. Then the last three support columns.
The building groaned. It wasn’t a little noise, either. The whole building groaned like it was in pain. She looked over to make sure there was a door open so she could jet through the airlock, because she’d been in a collapsing building before, and being buried alive under thousand of tons of rubble wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.
Yeah, someone thoughtful had wedged open an interior door that was opposite one of the busted outside doors. Probably someone named Jack.
She looked around for anything else that might be supporting the upper stories, but the entire atrium had been beaten senseless. That pretty much left the outside walls, and there was no way she wanted Birkin busting through one of them and getting loose in the streets of Davenport.
“O’Neill to Tera. Got the interior stripped?”
“Tera here. Roger that. But the place is still vertical.”
“O’Neill. Not for long. The upper floors are all on fire, and we’ve finished soaping the outside steel support girders. When we blow them, the entire structure should drop straight down onto the atrium floor. I’ll give you a countdown, and I want you out past the outside doors before ‘one’ no matter what. Got me?”
“Roger that.” Because there was no way she was hanging around and hoping everything fell where it was supposed to, and not on top of her. Even if Jack and his team were doing the demolitions.
A huge chunk of ceiling fell between her and Birkin, but all the ceiling stuff was on fire. She darted backward and avoided the flaming debris that flew everywhere. Birkin didn’t enjoy having tons of stuff falling down, and made a big detour around the chunk to get at her. And it still kept slipping every time it tried to change directions.
And there it went, all four of its legs slipping in different directions so it went sprawling on the floor, sliding along and spinning like a monster-shaped top.
The whole thing would have been really hilarious if it wasn’t an indestructible monster that weighed over a ton and was trying to rip her to shreds while a burning building fell down on top of them.
“O’Neill to Tera. Countdown commencing. Twenty … nineteen … eighteen …”
She flew off to the side, trying to lead Birkin back toward the middle of the atrium.
“Seventeen … sixteen … fifteen … fourteen … thirteen … twelve … eleven …”
The monster realized it could get traction on the newly-fallen material, so it sprinted through the burning rubble right at her, completely ignoring that it was running through a fire.
“Ten … nine … eight …”
She squealed like she was terrified, and just hovered while Birkin charged. He leapt into the air.
“Seven … six …”
She darted upward twenty feet, so Birkin would pass underneath her. Then she went silvery and flew straight down as hard as she could, using her TK as a shield to smack Birkin in the back, and letting her own weight add to the impact. It was like flying into the side of an SR-71, except Birkin didn’t have as much mass. She slammed Birkin into the floor and darted back upward. She made sure she was moving away from the doors.
“Five … four … three …”
Birkin leapt right up and looked around for her. So she went normal and yelled, “Over here!” As soon as Birkin moved her way, she darted back the other way. He slipped as soon as he tried to follow her, and fell on his face to slide ungracefully until he bumped into more of the damaged areas on the floor. She went silvery.
“Two …”
She darted through the inner airlock door and headed out of the building.
“One …”
She jetted across the street.
“Fire!”
A series of loud cracks came from all around the building, and the whole thing just sort of dropped thirty feet. Then it picked up speed. The entire thing collapsed straight down. The burning upper floors came crashing down on everything underneath, until there was an enormous pile of rubble spilling out onto the sidewalk, with fires still raging across the top of the mess. As dust billowed everywhere, she stayed silvery so she didn’t end up covered in grey yuck.
“Tera! Report in!”
She popped her tPhone out of her morph. “Tera here. I’m okay. I’m in front of the big orange-ish stone building.”
“Carlson here. I have her under visual. She looks okay as far as I can tell.”
Everything was pulled way back. The barriers and the fences had all been pulled back to the far sidewalks, and everybody was well back behind the barriers. Even the police. Even all the National Guard who must have shown up while she was down in the basement levels.
She spotted where Jack had to be, because there was a knot of fancier-looking cars and trucks off to one side, along with a couple Humvees and an armored personnel carrier. So she darted over there and waited for the dust to settle. She went normal and landed over where Sergeant Carlson was slapping dust off his clothes.
Jack stepped out of one of the Humvees and smiled at her. “Maybe you should have named yourself ‘Pristine’ because you sure don’t look like you’ve been in flooded levels and fighting monsters and wrecking a building.”