Damnation Code (William Massa) - William Massa Page 0,48
wait?”
Serrone asked for an energy drink instead. Today wasn’t the day to quit bad habits. As they waited, she studied the workspace more closely. Hockney’s office was a separate room at the far end of a much larger work area. Men and women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, faced their computer stations. The desks were decorated with toys and other examples of geek culture. Serrone saw a Star Wars screensaver and action figures from some comic-book flick.
These Nerf-ball warriors didn’t strike her as vicious killers, but she’d felt the same way about the attackers back in the Apple Store.
As Serrone sorted through these impressions, all activity in the office suddenly ceased. No typing, no phone calls, no conversation. Everyone sat ramrod straight in their Aeron chairs, eyes fixed on their screens.
Curious, Serrone took a step closer. To her surprise, all the monitors showed the same strange stream of data. She leaned forward, hoping to get a reaction from one of the workers — perhaps a hello or some form of acknowledgement — but the Omicron tech-heads remained in their drone-like trance state.
Serrone was getting a bad feeling about this place, once again reminded of the blank fanaticism she’d encountered during the attack on the Apple Store. She chewed her lip and balled the keychain in her pocket until her hand hurt.
“This is ridiculous,” she said to Dawson, who projected a calm rivaling the monk-like Omicron workers. “How long are they going to keep us waiting?”
Dawson shrugged in response. Serrone shook her head and scoped the office floor for Hockney’s assistant. The young woman seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Fed up, Serrone pivoted and strode briskly toward Hockney’s office. She knocked on the closed door. No one answered. She repeated her knocking. Still no response.
Impatience boiling over, she pushed into Hockney’s office to find him slumped back in his chair, shirt soaked with blood, a wide gash in his throat.
Jesus…
Serrone went for her pistol. Weapon out, she circled the desk and glimpsed Hockney’s assistant hemorrhaging red on the hardwood floor. Her legs twitched, heels bobbing up and down. Hockney must’ve assaulted her first before killing himself.
Next to his lifeless features, the same strange computer code slashed over his monitor. Serrone’s blood turned to ice. The horror she’d first experienced in the Apple Store had followed her to Omicron.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TALON AND ZAGAN faced other in the server maze, about a hundred feet between them. Two classic adversaries gearing up for the bitter, final confrontation. Zagan’s physical condition was worsening at a geometric rate. The skin was stretched taut against his skull and pockmarked by a shimmering patchwork of circuitry. Steel fingers pierced through a fraying layer of broken skin and made his hands look like bloody gloves worn by a robot.
Advancing down the corridor of servers, the flickering lights on the explosive charges extinguished one by one as soon as Zagan passed them. His mere presence was manipulating the material world.
Talon’s heart sank.
“I don’t know how you broke free of my program, Sergeant, but you’re too late.”
We’ll see about that, Talon thought.
The fog thickened and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Casca had said the pendant would protect him from Zagan’s reality hacks, but so far it was doing jack shit.
Talon’s hand came up with the Glock in it and he started firing into the demonic cyborg-creature closing in on him. Bullets might be useless against his enemy, but Talon didn’t want Zagan to catch on that he might have an ace up his sleeve. Lead slammed into Zagan in hot spurts, each round connecting with its target in a fiery eruption of flesh and steel. The bullets stitched bloody patterns on his chest. It barely slowed down the monster’s inexorable approach.
Talon replaced the magazine in his weapon with a metallic snap. For Talon to use the Demon Slayer, Zagan needed to move in closer. As long as Zagan felt secure in his superiority, it would be easier to lure him into a close-combat situation. Talon prayed that Casca’s fearsome knife would prove more effective than his talisman had.
His thoughts were interrupted when the roiling carpet of frosty mist engulfed him, erasing Zagan from view. The freezing fog swallowed the blinking servers, too. He tried to focus on his other senses. Were those incoming footfalls?
Talon squinted, desperately hoping to penetrate the thick fog. He sensed more than saw vague movement, but it was too late. A fist popped out of the mist and found him. With the force