Terminal (Visceral Book 4) Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Adam Thielen

  All Rights Reserved

  For questions, comments, or issues with the book, including mistakes, please contact the author at [email protected] - I value correspondence with readers!

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner.

  Depictions of companies, brands, or corporations are fictitious and do not represent real activities, roles, or any other aspect of those entities. Mentions of actual brands or corporations are not endorsements, nor are used with the endorsement of any brand or corporation. Any resemblance to actual events is coincidental.

  Dedicated to my bunny boy Ajay, you are forever in our hearts, cracked though they may be.

  Special thanks to Jesse Weibe at jessewiebe.com for her great work in proofreading Pivotal.

  Episode 1: Kate's Fate

  Tsenka Cho pried her weary eyes open a crack, letting the bright world outside her mind flood in. Her brain adjusted to her senses, and gravity told her she was sitting up. A white room with walls covered in square ceramic tiles came into view. The agent’s eyelids slowly lifted along with the fog in her brain.

  When she attempted to move, she found her wrists were restrained at her sides, bound by cuffs built into the seat of a gleaming metal chair. Cho tried to lean forward, but her neck was similarly trapped; her ankles too. She could still smell the fumes in her nostrils that had knocked her out. It was like nothing she had experienced before and had somehow penetrated her trachea’s filtration.

  Her captors had left her clothed at least. Her charcoal-toned combat suit tightly hugged her athletic body, and would not have been easy to remove without her mind issuing the necessary commands to the suit’s CPU. Made from a graphene composite weave, it would not have cut easily either.

  A large one-way mirror broke the monotony of the white wall in the rectangular room. Chrome trays mounted to poles that extended from floor to ceiling carried menacing-looking cutting tools. But it wasn’t the likelihood of torture that immediately concerned Tsenka Cho. Instead, it was the people in the room. A man in a suit. A woman in jogging pants. Another in a blouse and suit pants. Two men in jeans. She recognized the latter as those who had been standing outside of the thick net they had used to trap her.

  The final person in the room was an overweight man in a blue polo shirt and khakis. His gut and love handles filled the lower portion of his tucked-in shirt and hung below his belt line. As he strode with a wide gait likely created out of the necessity to shift his mass around as he moved, Tsenka couldn’t help but wonder, Who the fuck are all these people?

  The problem was that they didn’t appear native to Libya. They didn’t appear to be nocturnal. They hardly appeared to be anything at all. They could have been a random assortment of mall-walkers for all she could discern. Except for the big man. He could not have done a lot of mall-walking.

  “Quoi de neuf?” asked Cho as the polo shirt neared.

  The man stopped and turned around to face the others in the room. He shooed them out, then ran his hand through his hair, which was primarily composed of a comb-over. The woman in the suit pants did not move but instead continued to stare at the captured agent of the New Republic. The remainder of the motley crew shuffled out through a small door on the far end of the room.

  The fat man grabbed the top of a chair identical to Cho’s and placed it in front of her, facing away. Tsenka eyed her gun and sword resting on a stainless steel cabinet opposite the one-way mirror, then shifted her view back to the man. Cho tugged on her restraints, her biceps bulging under the strain.

  “I don’t speak French, Ms. Cho,” said the man, straddling the chair backward. “But I bet you figured as much. I’m actually from New York, back from the days with the individual scrapers all poking upward.”

  Cho could detect a mixture of accents, indicating some truth to his words. “You know who I am, but I can’t say I recognize you, mister…”

  “That’s not important,” he replied, with air straining through his nostrils. “Just call me Smith.”

  “Fine, Smith,” said Cho. “Are you with a recognized entity?”

  Smith frowned. “You ask the right questions, but I’m afraid you are the one that will be giving answers.”

  Cho’s heart rate picked up. They weren’t going to let her go, whether or not she talked. “What do you want to know?”

  Smith twisted his head back to the woman behind him. He smiled. “See? She gets it.” The woman did not respond, except to cross her arms. Smith turned back to Cho. “You came here looking for someone, didn’t you?”

  Tsenka did not respond.

  Smith sighed. “Come on, that was a test. We both know that I know. All you have to do is say her name. What’s the harm in that?”

  “I came here to vacation,” said Cho.

  Smith shook his head. “Normal circumstances and I’d find that funny.”

  “So whoever you are, you’ve got a bit of a problem?”

  The man grinned, but he was not happy. “Cho, you are embarrassing me. I could do this with a data probe if you’d like.”

  “Desre Somer,” spoke Tsenka.

  Smith laughed. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

  “Tell me where she is, and I won’t kill you,” said Tsenka. “This is the only offer for leniency you will get from me.”

  Smith’s smile went flat. “I don’t know where she is, Tsenka. When did you last see her?”

  “What?”

  “Today, yesterday?” he persisted. “When?”

  Cho’s head oscillated almost imperceptibly. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. The agent was at a loss.

  “We know, already,” said Smith, his voice becoming loud.

  Tsenka looked back at the woman while trying to hide her confusion.

  “She can’t help you,” said Smith, scooting his chair closer to Cho’s, its metal feet loudly scraping against the smooth linoleum flooring. “What did Somer tell you?”

  “I—I haven’t seen her,” stuttered Cho.

  Smith grunted as he lifted himself off the chair. “The probe it is,” he said, walking back to the woman supervising the interrogation.

  Cho’s eyes darted about the room, then back to her captors. They stood ten meters from Tsenka and whispered to each other. Their voices were low, but Cho’s vampiric senses and audio processing implants picked up their words with ease.

  “We need to know for sure,” said Smith.

  “And if we are wrong?” challenged the woman, unfolding her arms and flinging them outward.

  “Then we wait.”

  “Or she contacted someone else.”

  “Not possible. She says the chief saw her.”

  “Anything is possible, and if you fry her brain, then we lose a lead,” the woman argued.

  “We don’t have time,” insisted Smith, his body tensing in frustration.

  The woman sighed. “Fine,” she relented. “Don’t screw it up.”

  Smith nodded and walked to a steel plate with speaker holes embedded in the wall next to the door. “Bring it in,” he ordered.

  The door opened and a black man in a white jacket rolled a metal cart into the room, steered it in Tsenka’s direction, and pushed it next to her chair. Smith joined him while the woman left the room.

  “You sure?” the new man asked Smith.

 
; “Do it,” said Smith. “You know what to look for.”

  “Wait,” said Tsenka. “There’s no need for this. Why would I be looking for her if I’ve seen her?”

  The probe technician looked to Smith, who nodded back. He ignored Tsenka and picked up a small drill. He squeezed its trigger, and the bit spun to life. He started to move around behind Cho, but his body froze in place and the room darkened slightly.

  Cho tried to turn her head, but she too was in a kind of stasis, only capable of looking forward. Just in front of Smith appeared a ghostly image of a woman, translucent and radiant. Cho recognized her face instantly, despite the better part of two decades of aging.

  “Desre!” she cried. Her mouth did not move. She had only thought the word.

  “Ey, Tsenka,” replied Desre, her body apparently immune to the time-stop. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Behind the psion, a room slowly materialized as if Cho were looking at her old friend through a window. She recognized a wall, some lights, and the left side of a door. She also noticed a large metal helmet resting on Desre’s head.

  “Where are you? How are you doing this?” asked Cho.

  “I had some help tunneling in through your com,” said Desre. “I can communicate with your mind fast enough so that it seems as though time has slowed.”

  “Where are you?” asked Cho. “Who are these people?”

  Somer’s expression was grim. “I need you to listen, Tsenka. I’m going to get you out of there, and together we are going to finish this.”

  “Finish what?”

  “Everything. Find me in Mumbai.”

  “What?” asked Cho. “Where in Mumbai?”

  “I will let you know,” assured Desre. “And, Tsenka, when—if you meet Daria, be nice. I need her help as much as I need yours.”

  “Why would I—?”

  “I must go,” Desre said. “Get ready to move. Fighting your way out is not going to be easy, but I know you can do it.”

  A wave of despair took hold of Tsenka’s mind. “Wait, Desre, I’m restrained!”

  “Not for long,” said Desre. “I’ll be in touch.”

  The image of the seer faded away, and time began to return to normal. The technician moved behind Cho with the drill and placed the boring bit at the base of her skull.

  CLICK.

  The restraints holding Cho’s ankles, wrists, and neck opened simultaneously, and for a moment Tsenka stared at Smith, Smith at Tsenka, and the tech at the back of Cho’s head. He looked up at Smith as the big man’s eyes widened.

  All at once, the three bodies sprang to life. Cho spun as she stood and laid into the tech’s face with the back of her fist. His head flung back, and as his body fell, Cho grabbed the now loose drill out of the air. Smith turned and scrambled for the door.

  “Help!” he screamed in terror.

  The door opened and Cho sprinted toward him, reaching him as two men with hoods and breathers entered. Cho kicked out Smith’s leg. He yelped and fell to the ground, grasping his knee.

  Tsenka recognized the guns the two thugs carried, which looked like long-barreled paintball rifles, as the same type that delivered the gas that had knocked her out. Both aimed and sprayed. The vampiress held her breath and leapt at the one on the left. She tore off his breather with one hand then jammed the spinning drill bit into his larynx. Droplets of blood flew off the bit as it exited the man’s windpipe. He dropped the gun and grabbed his neck.

  The third man also dropped his gas rifle and reached for his sidearm, a Browning handgun. Cho dropped the drill and grabbed the barrel before he could aim, then thrust her knee into his stomach. He fell backward out of the room, gasping for air. The first man lowered to his knees, choking on the blood entering his lungs.

  Tsenka held the breather over her mouth and ran to her sword and gun. Alarms began to blare. She checked her handgun, an XM-23 descended from pre-Collapse era Berettas. It was a modular gun outfitted with a strobe and augmented reality aiming. As her palm pressed against the grip, the gun connected to Cho’s neural implant. She holstered it and slung her sword behind her back. As she turned, she saw Smith trying to squirm through the doorway. Tsenka stalked toward him, then bent over and picked up the drill.

  Smith eyed the machine. “Now, Ms. Cho, hold on. Just hold on, god dammit!”

  “Let’s find out what’s in your head,” said Cho, spinning up the drill.

  Smith screamed. “Y-you d-don’t have time for that! This building will lock down in less than a minute.”

  “How do I get out, Smithy?”

  “Shit,” considered Smith. “Left out that door, then right, then right again. Keep going and you’ll hit the front doors.”

  “Now who the hell are you?” she demanded.

  The man shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  Before she could question further, a gunshot rang out, and Cho felt it hit her left shoulder. It pushed her off-balance but didn’t pierce her combat suit. She took cover next to the doorway. Holding her gun out, Cho was able to see through a small camera under the barrel.

  The guard of the mysterious facility who had opened fire was mostly hidden in a nearby room. He carefully leaned out to look for Cho. He spotted her gun instead, but it was too late. Tsenka pulled the trigger, driving a bullet into the man’s chest.

  Tsenka activated her mapping system and plotted the route Smith had described. Based on an overhead view that her sonar system had compiled, the path appeared to lead toward a set of doors leading either to the outside world or to a room with a heavy amount of sound dampening.

  The map displayed translucently over her vision, zoomed in, then changed perspective to line up with what she saw in front of her eyes. The implant painted a set of arrows on the walls pointing her the right direction.

  Cho exited the interrogation room and entered a larger room with several exits, a surgery table, and a series of computer terminals. The NRI agent looked through a series of cabinets lining the wall, hoping for a lead on the entity that had captured her. She examined the tools next to the table, and then the underside of the table itself.

  The seismic sensors in her suit picked up a rhythmic shudder traveling along the floor. Listening carefully, she heard a dull thud accompanying the vibrations. Cho fired her gun above her head. The sound traveled throughout the building, remapping its interior and any humanoids that remained. She saw several figures grouped together in what she speculated might be a safe room. She also saw the shape of a giant man down the hall outside of the surgery room.

  Curious, Cho poked her head out of the room to see a guard fully enclosed in a powered armor suit clomping toward her. A large barrel attached to one of his arms adjusted its aim. Tsenka pulled her head back into the room as a chunk of the blocky door trim and frame exploded into splinters and dust.

  Cho holstered her gun and casually walked through the doorway counterclockwise from the one facing the hallway. She continued through a break room and then a room with several cubicles. The place was apparently light on security, and everyone else had gone into hiding.

  Tsenka unsheathed her sword and entered the hallway from the cubicle room. The armored man had stopped a few feet from where he had spotted Cho, as if pondering how to approach. She snuck up behind him, her footfalls nearly silent, rolling from her heels to the balls of her feet as she moved.

  The tip of her blade hovered just above the floor behind her. The nocturnal agent arced it above her head, slicing through the lowered ceiling panels and down onto the powered armor. Metal bars formed a protective cage over the man’s head, but the blade hummed as it struck, its vibrations sundering them. The edge continued downward and buried itself in the guard’s skull. The man grunted and the armored suit froze in place, no longer receiving a signal from its pilot.

  Cho caught herself grinning as blood trickled down the back of the man’s neck. She yanked the blade free, brought it to her mouth, and licked the blade. Tsenka sheathed it behind her back, turned
around, and stalked toward the safe room for more.

  Halfway there, a high-pitched whine stopped her in her tracks. Shit, she thought. The wall of the safe room exploded outward. Debris caught Cho’s body, hurling her back. She rolled onto her feet and sprinted toward the main hall. The floor lurched under her as another blast roared behind her. Tsenka focused on the arrows displayed through her augmented heads-up display while moving as quickly as she could.

  As she entered a narrow lobby, she saw the exit. It was a nondescript metal door. The agent reached it as the building began to growl. She tugged on the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Cho sliced through the latch and kicked it open. She felt air whoosh behind her as the building’s supports collapsed and the walls began to cave.

  In front of her stood a landscape of desiccated earth under a hot sun. The drought had not been kind to the region. Tsenka’s skin darkened to protect her from the daylight, but the heat wave that penetrated her body almost overwhelmed her senses. She fought through it, running from the building as it fell inward. A wall of dust rolled past her. Agent Cho continued running until she could see clearly again, then turned and stared back at the cloud. She waited, hoping to see if anything was left, though she knew there would be nothing but rubble. Everyone would be dead, and the computers would be destroyed.

  “Desre,” whispered Cho. “What have you gotten me into?”

  Terminal

  In the year 2029, governments had buckled under the pressure of financial debts and dwindling natural resources. In a chain reaction, one state after another declared bankruptcy and ceased providing services. Attempts to print money resulted in the halting of international trade, and as the crisis dragged on, much of the world’s populace declared their governments illegitimate. For a month it was Armageddon: no police to protect property, most hospitals shuttered, fires raging with no one to put them out, and rioters filling the streets.

  While America’s collapse was confined to riots and poverty, Europe’s turned ugly as its people razed entire cities to the ground. Much of Western Europe would be in ruin for years. The eastern world exploded outward into conflicts, its generals seizing power and waging campaigns over resources with neighboring states.