“Crap, I hope not,” Wu muttered. “Been spending enough time with you two these days.”
“Is that a problem?” Karin wondered as Dino guided the Ram into the underground parking structure.
“Well, the testosterone is a bit high. You two compete like siblings, all the time. Gets a bit tiresome at times.”
“Us? Compete?” Karin glared over at Dino. “Do we?”
The young soldier laughed loudly. “Only because you won’t admit I’m better than you.”
“I don’t see it.” Karin eyed him critically, then turned to Wu. “Do you see it?”
“Let me put it this way. If you two ever got blind drunk and decided to mate, you’d have to do it standing up because both of you would wanna be on top.”
Karin laughed raucously as Dino finally found a spot to his liking. “Blind drunk? Shit, there just isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make that happen, Wu.”
Dino removed the keys and cracked the door open. “Time to focus. All this mating crap isn’t helping.”
“Don’t like girls, Dino?” Karin joined the two men around the front. “San Francisco has a zoo. We can always take you there after we’re done.”
Dino ignored her, pulled out his cellphone and waited until the address they wanted had loaded up. “Three minutes,” he said. “We ready?”
Karin shrugged into a rucksack. “As fuck.”
It was an office building, a high rise, and Webb’s space was on the thirty-fifth floor. Karin thought it was unusual for him — the madman usually preferred to live at the highest levels so he could look down on everyone — but she thought he might have kept this address as unassuming and secret as possible — it was something he treasured and the elite storage facility of his entire life’s work.
Every precaution, she thought.
Which made what they were about to do all the more…
Stupid? Naïve? Clever? Smart?
She smiled grimly to herself as she realized the answer relied on the outcome.
The trio entered through a swing door on the ground floor, spied a bank of elevators and headed over. Men and women wearing dark suits wandered to and fro. An information desk sat in the far corner, manned by two black-haired secretaries. The noise level was low, everyone keeping it down. Karin saw one overweight guard in a corner, staring out at the passing traffic and three security cameras. She steered Dino to an information board.
“Thirty five.” She nodded. “One company owns the entire floor.”
“Makes sense.”
Wu stared at the name. “Minmac Systems?” he read. “Same old, same old.”
Faceless corporations that ran the world.
Karin pushed on, reaching the elevators and re-checking. Finding a blank 35 would not have surprised her — or the number missing all together — but there it was — white and shiny just like all the others. Various floors were pressed by the occupants and Karin waited until the very last, but only she pressed 35.
They didn’t wait long. She took her rucksack off, pretended to rummage inside for something. Dino and Wu also made ready. As the elevator dinged and the doors opened at 35, the trio waited just a few seconds to see what they faced.
A polished hallway ran away, doors and windows to either side. At the far end stood a wooden desk. Pictures adorned the walls, bland and boring. Karin guessed somebody was waiting from the very moment she’d pressed the button, but they were here now. They were ready, eager, young and capable.
She led the way, stepped into an odd world that somehow still belonged to a dead man. If anything, this was Webb’s legacy. His mother lode.
No CCTV. No guards. The first door she tried wobbled so crazily in its frame she walked away. It was all for show, just a front. She pulled out her gun and stuffed her pockets full of magazines. The vest she wore beneath her coat had felt bulky all the way here, but now it kept her secure. The team spread out as they approached the desk, wary.
Karin paused and looked both ways down two new hallways. She was surprised when a robotic voice spoke up.
“Can I help you?”
She noted the sensor attached to the front edge of the desk. Still, she saw no cameras.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Playing the fool.
All the while, she considered the blueprint inside her head. Not only had Webb’s large data stream led her to this address, she had been able to pinpoint the location of the exact terminal it arrived at by using a digital construct of the building’s frame. She knew they should head left and then to the right, but wondered what the robots might do…
“I think we’re lost.” She shrugged at Dino and Wu. “Just wait, Mr. Robot, whilst we try to find someone.”
It was worth a try. Karin headed left, the guys at her back. The first man-mountain appeared from the left, stepping out of an office, baseball bat held firmly in one hand, its head slapping the other. A second appeared up ahead, closely followed by a third, and then a fourth stepped up from the left, this one carrying a hammer.
Wu grunted. “Three behind.”
Karin waved her gun. “C’mon guys, what am I missing?”
The first mountain, a bald-headed individual, grinned. “There’s a radar, girl, and we stay under it.”
“I see. So, knowing Tyler Webb as I do — a man that relishes making noise at the right time and place — this is his garden of tranquility? Meditation? Well, we’re unlikely to disturb him now boys, are we?”
“A gunshot will have the cops here in ten minutes,” the man said. “SWAT in twenty.”
“And building security?”
The man laughed. “Whatever.”
“Thanks for the info.”
Karin shot him in the arm without warning, saw him stagger. She shot the next too, a round to the stomach, and waited for him to fall to the floor before leaping over his back and using his spine to push off.
A baseball bat swung close to her head, missed, and smashed through a door, shattering the glass and framework. She ignored it. Wu was behind her, with Dino dealing with the other direction. A third obesity blocked her way. She fired two shots into the general mass, ducked a hefty swing and then had no choice other than to hit the immovable bulk head on.
She bounced back, shaken.
She held on to the gun as she fell back on her spine. Looking up, she saw the enormous round face staring down at her — a numb, cruel giant with bullet holes he didn’t feel, blood flows he didn’t see, and the biggest razor-blade-spotted, wooden club she’d ever seen.
“Fuckin’ caveman.”
Karin fired upward as the club came down. Two bullets fired through the overhanging belly, striking the ceiling, but the club kept on coming down. Karin averted her skull. The club landed beside it, splintering the floor, drawing sparks from the glinting blades. For a second it lay there, then the arm holding it strained and it began to pull away from the floor.
Karin scooted back, saw the terrible face and fired straight at it. This time the owner felt it and staggered immediately, luckily falling to the right and straight through another colleague, trapping the lesser man beneath.
Wu jumped over her, firing into two more hefty bulks. These men fell to their knees. A club slapped Wu across the bicep, making him yelp. Karin turned to see the first man — the bald guy she’d shot through the leg — dragging himself alongside her, leaving a trail of blood.
“You just fucked it up real good, lady. For everyone.”
“Oh, so now that I’ve shot you I’m a lady, yea? I take it you know what we’re here for?”
He scrambled for his club, and a knife that hung at his belt.
“You kidding? There’s only the one thing here, you know that.”
Karin nodded. “Sure.”