Free Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) by Christina Westcott Page B

blazed past his face. He slugged her,
then hit her again, sensing something break inside her. Fear drove him, and he
smashed his fist into her again and again. The clatter of flying debris told
him the augie had fought her way to her feet and would be on him in seconds.
    A long, clumsy leap carried
him to the door, but it wouldn’t open. He pounded on it, drove his shoulder
into it, but only dented the metal.
    My access code.
    He clawed at the keypad,
fingernails skittering on the panel. The rapid squeak of boot soles against the
tile floor warned him that the augie sprinted toward him.
    The code, the code.
    But he didn’t have a
code, did he? Suddenly it appeared in his mind and he shouted, not trusting his
shaking fingers to enter the string of numbers before she hit him again.
    “9686425663WA”
    Where had that
information come from?
    The door slid open and
he charged through, pausing on the other side long enough to shout, “Close and
lock!” The mechanism obeyed, sliding shut as a fast-moving object hit the other
side with enough force to shake the entire wall.
    The Nameless Man ran
blind, without direction, no thought beyond escape. He blurred down corridors,
bouncing off the walls when he couldn’t break his speed quickly enough around
the corners. The building felt empty, with only maintenance bots in the halls
to trip him if he couldn’t leap over them in time.
    The fear made him
angry, and anger made him sloppy. He tried to break his headlong flight, hitting
the wall and careening around another corner.
    Dead end .
    He whirled back, but
heard no sound of pursuit. Had his trick with the locked door slowed her, or
was she silently trailing him? His thermal vision showed the lingering heat of
his bare feet leading back up the corridor.
    Might as well draw her
a map.
    He stared around,
realizing he hadn’t run into a dead end, but a lift alcove. The panels of the
three doors, each displaying a different floor, appeared frozen in time
distortion, but even as he watched, they started to move, tick over, pick up
speed. His perception twisted as the world slowed until he once again merged
with the normal flow of time.
    One car coasted to a
stop and the door opened on a technician, leaning against the wall studying his
tablet. Before the man looked up, The Nameless Man slugged him and lowered the
limp body to the floor. Ripping out the surveillance camera came next.
    He scanned the car’s
display. “Maintenance. Sub-level five. Emergency activation.”
    “Authorization?” The
computer-generated voice challenged him.
    He raked the tangle of
hair out of his face and held his breath. It had worked before, but would it
now? He had no memory of where that authorization code came from, or why he
knew it. A distant crash startled him.
    What choice do I have?
    The alphanumeric string
came to his lips easily, as if he’d used it all his life—a life he had no
knowledge of. The doors slid shut and the car plunged downward, picking up
speed.
    How much longer would
the code continue to work? The gray-eyed woman could be purging it from the
system now, trapping him inside a building under lock-down. He laughed. No, she
wouldn’t. That code revealed his every move. Each time he used it, he sent her
an announcement. Here I am. Here’s where I’m going. Of course she wouldn’t
block it; she’d sit back and follow his path like a scientist studying a gerbat
in a maze.
    No more running,
reacting. Time to take the initiative. Hell, they’d made him an augie; time to
act like one. He retreated into his mindscape, thought-clicking through a maze
of security, firewalls crumbling under the power of that access code. A bank of
security monitors swum in his vision.
    The thought of locating
Gray Eyes, of watching her try to puzzle out where he’d gone, tempted him, but
he couldn’t risk taking the time; not when she’d soon realize the mistake of
leaving him with access into the building’s security. He paged through