Sam's stomach flipflopped. The last time he had seen a man display such strength, the "man" had not been a man at all, but a dragon concealed within a shapeshifting spell. Allowing Willie's drones to carry the fight, he slipped into astral perception.
In his altered perspective, the attacking drones begame blurs of murderous intent, their clean-lined mechanical appearance replaced by a fuzzy presence of intent and purpose. As machines the drones were not truly present on the astral planes. But Hyde-White, a living being, remained clear in Sam's eyes. The fat druid glowed with raw power. It was a dazzling aura, but in its tone and strength unlike anything Sam had seen before in a human.
One of the drones must have caught the druid cleanly with a burst for he suddenly staggered backwards. A smaller man might have been dropped by the impact of the bullets, but the massive Hyde-White only reeled. Sam expected to see the man's torso splattered all over his fancy wall hangings, and the live glow of his astral spirit dimmed and dying. What he did see frightened him badly. Hyde-White's astral glow remained steady and strong. The image Sam saw looked like a double exposure he had once seen in an old photograph collection. There were two Hyde-Whites occupying the same space, the sharply defined astral image and the increasingly tattered flesh form. Sam saw muscles tear, bones shatter, and blood burst forth from the flesh form to stain the room incarnadine. But the druid did not fall. Torn skin crawled and flayed muscles writhed as though imbued with lives of their own. Splintered bones swayed together to disappear under closing wounds. New flesh spread across gaps where chunks of muscle had been torn away. Once the process began, Hyde-White regenerated the wounds caused by the drone's gunfire as soon as they were made.
Despite the fat druid's appearance, Sam could no longer believe the fat druid was human. Whatever Hyde-White was, he was invulnerable to physical damage. Sam's throat tightened with fear.
The explosion on the side of the tower was the cue for which Hart had waited. She settled the butt of the Conner firmly against her shoulder and sighted in. Fifteen pounds of pressure on the trigger ignited the propellant. The grapple gun kicked into her shoulder as it sent its alloy missile two hundred meters across the gap between the towers.
The missile struck cleanly and buried its head in the concrete wall. Moving quickly, she attached the carry line to the tension wire and to the takeup reel. She hit the go button and rechecked her gear as the winch reeled in the thin line and dragged the heavier weight-carrying wire through the pulley on the attached grapnel and back to itself. When the loadbearing wire returned, she attached it to the anchored winch. She slipped the wheels of the pulley slide between the now-parallel strands of wire, snapped the cover down tight, and attached the safety wire. Reversing the winch, she tightened the line and tested the grapnel's grip. It stayed firm at four times her weight, so she slacked the tension back.
The gunfire from within the residential level, though nearer, was barely louder than the increasingly sporadic noise from the plaza. There was no time left to waste. She sat on the coping and got a good grip on the handle bar of the pulley slide. She pushed off with her feet and started herself on the slide down to the Hawthornwaite Tower.
Glover felt the tremor in the building. He didn't know what it meant, but he felt sure that it wasn't a result of the ruckus at plaza level. The source of the vibration was somewhere above the level he was on.
"What was that?" Neville asked fearfully.
Glover didn't bother to look at the old fool.
"We must tell Hyde-White."
He may be dead already, Glover thought. He found himself wondering if that would be a bad thing, and after a surprisingly short moment of indecision, decided that it would. The fat old man was still necessary if they were to achieve their goal of restoring the land.
Barnett's office did not offer the full range of surveillance monitors available to the security desk in the main operations center, but the telecom controls allowed an operator to route input through the telecom itself or one of the two wall screens. Glover took advantage of the access afforded to Barnett's station and demanded data on the status of the GWN floors. The computer showed no contact with the security systems on those floors. The condition was flagged with an immediate response request that had gone unanswered, since the building security forces were engaged in the battle on the lower levels.
Clearly, the Circle was under attack. The apparently coincidental actions were obviously planned, designed to separate the members of the Circle. It had been cleverly staged. Glover suspected the enemy's goal was to isolate the members of the Circle and eliminate them individually. It was a clever strategy, but one he would not allow to succeed.
So far, the only direct thrust against a member of the Circle was the assault on Hyde-White's residence. That would be the enemy's major thrust, barring more attacks to come. Whatever the case, the Circle needed to combine their strength as much as possible.
As he reached his decision, the office door slid open to admit a disheveled Gordon. His face was fixed in an angry frown as he swept the room with his gaze. The narrowed eyes lighted on Glover and he strutted up to the archdruid.
"What the devil is going on, Glover? I was enjoying a nice quiet evening preparing myself for the next ritual and then all bloody hell starts breaking loose. First, Barnett stops by my flat and informs me that there is some kind of row going on downstairs. Then, there's a bloody great explosion that shakes the whole building. Is it the shadowrunners again? You must have gotten some of them, since one of their bloody aircraft went tumbling past my window." Gordon stopped suddenly in the midst of his tirade. "Where is he? Is he all right?"
Glover didn't need to ask to know that Gordon wanted to know what, if anything, had happened to Hyde-White. Bel's blistering face! Did no one accord Glover his pride of place as archdruid? Glover stifled the thought. The land came before any questions of dominance, and the needs of the land would not be met if the enemy succeeded. The foremost need was to end the threat to the Circle.
"He is in his residence, Your Highness. Neville and
I were just on our way there.''
Gordon didn't see the surprised look on Neville's face, and his own words drowned out those of the old druid.
"Then I'm going with you. I must know if he has been hurt. Those shadowrunners almost killed him before. If he's alone, he'll need our help."
Glover shook his head as he stepped past Gordon and grabbed Neville by the shoulder. He hustled the former archdruid toward the door, saying over his shoulder, "There's no need for you to go, Your Highness. Sir Winston and I will deal with any problem that might have arisen."
He might as well have saved his breath. Gordon fell in behind them, and his bodyguards behind him. The parade lasted all the way to the lobby, where Glover stopped in front of the GWN shaft. Gordon's constant babbling about Hyde-White's safety almost made Glover fumble the security code that called a car.
Glover shoved Neville into the car as soon as the doors hissed open. He turned to insist that Gordon remain behind, but before he could speak the man brushed past him and entered the car. Realizing that argument was useless and time was passing, Glover entered the car himself. The two bodyguards crowded in behind him. Glover tapped in the code for HydeWhite's floor. The doors slid shut and the car began to rise.
After only a few seconds, the car lurched to a stop.
"Power's still on," observed one of the guards.
"Must be a security check."
"Are you sure you entered the right code, archdruid?"
Neville's tone was unusually catty for the increasingly timid former archdruid.