Winter Halo (Outcast 2)

We finally made it to ground level. As the elevator doors opened, the guard once again came out. Williams opened the window and handed Frank another manifest. The guard checked it, nodded, then stepped back and waved us on.

I shoved the truck into gear and resisted the temptation to flatten my foot. Once we were on the street and heading for Central’s gatehouse, Jonas turned to Williams and said, “What in Rhea is going on? Why are you in the damn truck?”

“Because I’m not taking a fucking chance of being stranded,” Williams bit back. “So suck it up and get us out of here.”

“Your absence will be noticed, and that is going to cause problems.”

“I won’t be missed immediately,” Williams said. “It’s not unusual for divisional heads to accompany cargo past the main gate, just in case anyone decides to do a full inspection.”

“They could provide a regular guard with the correct paperwork to prevent that.” I stopped at a cross street and waited for several airbikes to scoot past.

“Regular guards don’t have the authority to override random goods inspections. I do. Now shut your fucking trap and get us out of here.”

“Say anything like that to her again,” Jonas said, voice mild, “and I will knock you out, tie you up, and dump you somewhere nice and convenient for the vampires.”

The scent of Williams’s fear got stronger, and I hadn’t thought that possible. But the threat achieved the desired result—he shut up. I flashed Jonas a smile and concentrated on getting the hell out of Central without drawing any attention to either the truck or us.

Williams relaxed once we got through the gate, but I wasn’t sure why. We weren’t exactly out of the woods yet.

“You’d better get off the main road,” Jonas said, voice flat and annoyed. “Alarms will be raised once our passenger is missed.”

“Going off-road won’t exactly help,” I said, even as I swung the truck onto a track that would eventually join what had once been a secondary arterial road into old Central. “A truck this size will be easy enough to spot, especially if they send out aerial.”

“Yes, but we won’t be staying in this. In about twenty kilometers we’ll hit a crossroad. Turn right, and after another ten you’ll see a series of abandoned factories. Head into building ten.”

“Seriously,” Williams said, “you’re going to extreme lengths for very little reason. They’re not going to miss me until I fail to show up for the meeting at three. That gives us plenty of time to get away.”

“You overestimate the speed of this truck and underestimate the determination of those behind the experiments,” Jonas growled. “You should have followed the plan you were given. By joining us, you’ve endangered everyone.”

Williams snorted. “I’ve worked too fucking long for Winter Halo to trust anyone. Which is why I came equipped with a backup plan.”

Something inside me went cold. “What sort of backup plan?”

“Each kid has a pellet containing a variation of VX inserted into him. Get me to my family, and ensure that we’re safe, or I’ll kill them.” Williams’s voice was smug. “And don’t think you can wrench the control from my grip before I have a chance of setting it off, either.”

VX was an old-school, man-made poison, and one of the deadliest to ever have been developed. All stocks had supposedly been destroyed long before the war, which meant the only way Williams—and Winter Halo—could have gotten hold of it was if they were now making it. And that, alongside whatever else they were trying to achieve in that place, was a scary development.

The urge to reach back and throttle the smug bastard was so strong my body shook. It took every ounce of control I had to keep my hands on the wheel and the truck headed in the right direction.

“How much of that stuff has Winter got stored?” Jonas’s voice remained flat, but his fury was so strong the force of it filled every breath.

“Enough to wipe out Central,” Williams said. “But it’s not stored or even created on-site. They wouldn’t risk that sort of exposure.”

“Then where is it created?” Jonas said. “And how did you get your hands on it?”

“That information,” Williams said, again in that smug tone, “can wait until I’m safe.”

I didn’t look at Jonas. I didn’t need to. Williams was a dead man walking. He just didn’t know it yet.

I reached the crossroad and swung right. A series of scarred, broken buildings soon began to dot the horizon. At first it was hard to distinguish their size and shape thanks to the vegetation that had begun to reclaim this area, but after another couple of kilometers, the green growth gave way to reveal a series of interconnected metal and concrete buildings. This area had been one of the first hit in the war, as it had been a main manufacturing hub for old Central. That so many of the buildings remained relatively intact despite the ravages of time was no doubt due to the fact that this entire area had been hit by more conventional weapons rather than the bombs that had ended the war and brought the rifts and the Others to our world.

I spotted building 10 and swung the truck toward it. Part of the structure had collapsed, and the exposed roof struts looked like rusting metal fingers reaching for the sky. There were a number of open loading bays along the still-standing portion of the building, but only one was free of debris. I dropped the truck’s speed and carefully drove inside.

Despite the brightness of the day, it was surprisingly shadowed in this portion of the building. There were no windows, and while there were skylights, time and bird shit had opaqued their surface. Odd bits of metal machines dotted the floor, all of them covered by rust and grime, but there was lit

tle else to be seen . . . I frowned, my gaze narrowing as I spotted an odd lump in the far corner. That, I suspected, was our next mode of transport.

I stopped the truck and glanced at Jonas. “What now?”