He watched the little group gather together again, cursing and moaning. Two went off trying to round up others for another try. They were confident the barricade could be breached. But then what? Kyle wondered. Did they think that past the line there was nothing? No army camp, no armored personnel carriers, no light tanks? Only freedom?
Suddenly, there were screams from behind him, a block, maybe two away. He spun, and saw bugs. A swarm of them, roaches and ants, had erupted from a sewer and flashed into existence among the crowd pushing toward the rumored food. Kyle pushed to get closer, but the surge of the crowd was against him. He wanted a clear view of the insect spirits, but there were people in front of him, hands in his face, screams in his ears.
A woman with a young boy still clinging to her was dragged forcibly into the sewer. Five or six wasps appeared. Buzzing angrily, they dived into the crowd, swooping to pick people up with their front legs, then lifting them skyward in a shower of blood and out of sight over the houses to the south. The army opened fire. Bugs were hit; the spirits didn't care. People were hit; they began to die.
Two elementals appeared, and were immediately consumed by a swarm of insect spirits. The bugs climbed across the people on their sharp, jointed legs, reaching down into their midst to pull some free and then skitter off with them. There were more gunfire and explosions.
Kyle saw an opening, prepared a spell, and was knocked to the ground. The fleeing tide rushed over him, stepping, smashing. Desperate, he cast a quick spell and a gray-green bubble appeared around him, pushing the people aside. The ones nearby, those still thinking clearly enough to grasp what was happening, screamed and rushed away. Some panicked and ran straight toward the bug spirits.
Kyle stood and let the spell fall. There were fewer insects, fewer people. One wasp, caught in the air by a hail of gunfire that would have reduced a tank to scrap, was slowly whittled away until it could absorb no more and fled into astral space.
The crowd fell back from the line as two helicopters arrived overhead, blanketing the area in wind and light. But there was nothing for them to do. The marauding spirits were gone, and with them maybe a score of people, probably more. Off in the side streets, between the homes and inside them, the wailing began.
Kyle watched as he leaned back against a tree half uprooted by the press of a bulldozer. How could this be happening? How could this be-
Vathoss.
Sergeant Keith Vathoss, cyber-soldier for Knight Errant Security, was standing a half-dozen meters away. Next to him was another man, similarly garbed in a bulky long coat. Both had military buzz-cuts, and both seemed tense as they eyed the demarcation line with the gaze of skilled professionals gauging another journeyman's work. Satisfied, they stood in the shadows and talked quietly. Kyle slipped around the tree to watch them, fairly certain they hadn't seen him.
After a moment, and some more discussion, they headed west, past him, parallel to Irving Park Road. Kyle thought about simply calling out to them, but didn't. There was something about their manner, the way their gazes searched the crowd ahead for threats, that put him off. He realized he didn't trust them. Only if they were with Anne Ravenheart would he make contact.
Kyle followed them carefully as they continued on. Keeping to the shadows, he deactivated the rest of his power foci. There were two spells he wanted to cast on himself, but he'd need all of his masking ability to conceal those auras. No way could he could handle the spell auras and the auras of power coming off the foci at the same time. He thought about trying to contact Seeks-the-Moon, but didn't know where the spirit had ended up after the insect attack. They'd arranged to meet later at Beth's house, but Kyle had no other way of contacting him.
He paused, and quickly cast me spell, running through the four levels of formula in his head. His view of the world shifted slightly, becoming fuzzier and slightly bluer, almost like pure moonlight. He was invisible to anyone who stepped within the area of the spell, but the spell didn't bend light around him and so wouldn't work against the heat-sensors Vathoss probably had in his eyes. What the spell did was insist to any onlookers in range that Kyle simply was not there. And, if he was lucky, they'd believe it.
Then, before the two Knight Errant troopers could get too far ahead, he cast the second spell, which blanketed him in near silence. The outside world sounded to him like he was underwater, but Kyle's own noises would be inaudible. He sprinted forward to catch up to them, making the internal adjustments necessary to mask the aura of the two spells. Again, if he was lucky, he'd be all but undetectable.
He followed them past Ashland until they came to some elevated rail tracks that had been dynamited and sealed. They turned south away from the demarcation line; the street sign read Ravenswood. Then, he noticed that the two men grew cautious. Though trying to appear natural as they carefully moved through the mass of people camped there, they continually changed their positions relative to each other, casually circling each other as if in animated conversation. All the while they scanned the area.
Kyle cursed. Until that point he'd been able to follow them by walking in the cleared area, away from the people. Now, the two cyber-soldiers were moving directly through the throng, forcing him to do the same. And though the people couldn't see him or hear him, they'd certainly feel him as he passed. Kyle would have to risk casting a third spell.
Fortunately, Vathoss and the other trooper were walking slowly, giving Kyle the extra time he needed. He marshaled me energy carefully; the fact that he was still sustaining the other two spells made casting this one extremely difficult. But when he'd completed it, feeling only a slight weakening from the strain, he floated upward, high enough to pass over the camped refugees.
He glided forward to within a half-dozen meters of the two troopers, who had relaxed their vigilance, satisfied that no one was following. After another four or five blocks, they passed Ravenswood's intersection with Addison and the angled Lincoln Avenue, and continued on for another half-block. Then Vathoss paused and casually finished his cigarette, which he tossed into the street, using the pretext to look around. Meanwhile the other trooper climbed the short stairs of what looked like it had been a small warehouse or perhaps self-storage company. Vathoss followed him up the stairs onto the short loading dock, then the pair pushed aside one of the large double doors and went in.
Kyle willed himself up onto the platform and then dropped the levitation spell. The door they'd gone through had yielded too easily to the troopers' touch to be locked. If they were keeping at least one major exit clear and unlocked in case they needed to make a quick exit, Kyle would use it to his advantage.
Stepping up to the door, he reached out carefully and grasped the handle. With only the slightest tug it slid aside noiselessly, the sound absorbed by his still active silence spell. Quickly, he darted through and scanned the area. It was a small-crate or large-package handling area. Seeing no one about, he slid the door shut. Had anyone been around, Kyle would have left the door open to make the guard wonder how it had done so on its-own.
There were two doors leading out of the darker area. One accessed an office, the other apparently opened into a larger storage or handling area. He moved toward the door.
Before going through, Kyle waited and listened, but heard nothing he could identify through the silence spell. Beyond the open door was semidarkness; only the faintest light leaked through from distant windows.
As Kyle stepped through the door, movement to his left immediately attracted his attention. He turned and began to duck reflexively as a matte-black weapon pivoted toward him, the flat plate of its main sensory array covered in dark mesh.
Kyle raised his hands and shouted for it not to shoot, but the machine heard nothing past the silence spell. And even if it did, it knew its target wasn't carrying the right transponder chip and hadn't given the right verbal override. All it knew was what its sensors told it.