Free The Far Shores (The Central Series) by Zachary Rawlins Page B

are
basically a living supercomputer, then a bunch of fragments and some time is
all you really need to put Humpty Dumpty back together. Took the Director all
of a weekend to figure out what you bloodsuckers had built. Not like he
reversed-engineered the thing – that would take weeks – but we didn’t need to.
Didn’t need to know how it worked, just how to break it. And there are so many smart guys in China these days. Betcha some of the engineers that put your
toy together helped out with ours – and what we wanted was a lot simpler.
That’s the thing about your machine – the Etheric interference kept us from
porting in, but it also stood out like a sore thumb to the remote viewers when they
surveyed the area. Like using a loud radio to screw up hidden microphones. You
might mess it up for the spooks, but neighbors are gonna notice the noise.
    “Found one of your
maintenance technicians during his off time, and provided him with some additional
machinery to install in your generator the next time he changed out the fuses. Haley
worked him like a puppet – made him install the new gizmo and then erased the
memory. All we needed was to get you to pull all the scary guys with guns out
to the perimeter, so that I wasn’t jumping into the middle of a shooting
gallery. Kids did alright with that, don’t you think?”
    Wan-Li nodded again.
There didn’t seem to be any reason not to. The best he could hope for at this
point was that the Auditor needed him alive for something, so he intended to be
cooperative.
    “You’re a good listener.
I appreciate that.” Alice looked so pleased that he was prepared to believe
that she actually did appreciate a receptive audience – excepting the fact that
her smile was grotesque. “I’ll get to the point. We know what you’ve been doing
here – and since I’m here, I bet you’ve already figured out that it ends today.
Have to assume that you are doing it all over the place. What we don’t know,
though, is where.”
    Another nod. He understood,
and felt slightly fortunate.
    “Million-yuan question
here, my friend,” Alice said, resting the shotgun across her thigh so that the
contoured muzzle break pointed at – but did not touch – his midsection. “Do you
know?”
    Wan-Li nodded.
    “Talkative motherfucker,
ain’t you?”
     
    ***
     
    Regarding the transported bullets.
    They didn’t
dematerialize. They just disappeared from Alice Gallow’s vicinity. They
reappeared a microsecond later, retaining their original velocity and
orientation. Another fraction of a second, and they were embedded in the
internal organs of one of the vampires standing in front of Katya. It wasn’t
enough to kill a vampire, of course, but it was enough to get its attention.
    On cue, Min-jun dropped
the barrier around them. Alex’s ears popped as if they had changed altitude. He
jumped when he felt the hands of the African apport technician on his shoulder.
    “Hello, friends,” Chike
said, his smile easy and unworried, as it always was. “Your work here is done.
I have come to retrieve you.”
    “Good enough for me,”
Katya said, grabbing a hold of the arm that rested on Min-jun’s shoulder. “Give
’em hell for me, Xia.”
    The man in the mask and
goggles gave the briefest of nods. He was already surrounded by a faint,
flickering light. The last things Alex heard as the apport took hold were the
vampires screaming in rage and frustration at the disappearance of their prey,
and the crackling as the air around Xia’s fingers ignited.
     
    ***
     
    Alice limped through the embers,
motorcycle boots crushing charred bone and scattering ashes. Xia waited for her
at the mouth of the compound, wreathed in a translucent cloud of accelerant,
cooked flesh, and burned silicon. The edges of his Kevlar coat were singed, and
he bled from a wound in his shoulder.
    “Nice work,” Alice said
approvingly, her blood-spattered features diabolical in the light of the dying
fire. “Any