Reality Echo. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ force of a .50-caliber round was sufficient for the Appalachians to trust against the Fomorians.

      “You cannot move until Kane is in plain sight!” Epona said.

      Grant glared at the witch woman, his rage only barely under control. “Do I look like I’m getting off this fucking rock?”

      “Mind yourself, stranger,” Epona warned.

      Grant turned away, pushing the aggravating witch out of his thoughts. It was time to do everything he could to watch over his best friend in the world. That meant pulling up the hood folded into the collar of his shadow suit. The fabric sheathed the big man’s head, conforming to it snugly as if it had been grown as a second skin for him. In truth, the high-tech polymers of the shadow suit were pliant enough to fit anyone who wore one, stretching or contracting, yet giving up none of its environmental protection capabilities.

      But Grant hadn’t donned the hood to keep out a chill. Instead, he drew the face piece of the shadow suit, a rolled-up mask kept in a flat pocket, and affixed it to the edges of the hood. An electrostatic charge gave an inaudible crackle before the unit was sealed to his skull. Though the mask was opaque to outside viewers, as soon as the charge hooked the mask in place, Grant was able to see through the circuitry laden fabric.

      Though Grant had hated squeezing into old Magistrate armor suits, he had enjoyed the advanced optics and communications abilities built into the Mag helmets. It had taken months of experimentation with the shadow suits to convince the veteran Grant that they offered the same sensory enhancements as the Mag helmets, except in a far more compact and portable form. As well, with the hood tucked into the collar and the face piece folded away, the shadow suits were far less imposing than the ominous black helmets and polycarbonate armor shells of old. Grant still pulled a jacket and pants over the shadow suit sometimes, to give himself some pockets and a modicum of modesty. The skintight uniform conformed to every contour of his body, so while he might have been able to walk through an Antarctic blizzard without feeling a single chill, he wore pants to keep his sense of decency.

      Grant focused his eyes, and the remarkable technology built into the mask interpreted his eye movements and magnified his vision. Suddenly, it was as if he was only five feet away from the tree line, and Grant swept the forest, looking for signs of Kane. Gunshots cracked, and the magnification dropped back to zero, a green heads-up circle showing in Grant’s vision. He adjusted his gaze to that spot where the suit had picked up the sound. All he could see were trees, but now Grant had at least an idea where Kane was on the slope.

      “Can you see anything?” Brigid asked, unfurling her own hood and drawing out her face mask.

      “No, but apparently the suits can pick up the origin points of loud sounds,” Grant said.

      Brigid nodded, affixing her face mask into place. “Like that last gunshot.”

      The former archivist turned to Epona. “This isn’t violating the letter of your law, is it?”

      Grant smirked behind the safety and anonymity of his faceplate. Though environmentally he wouldn’t even feel the iciest breeze, a chill ran through him at the sound of Brigid’s question to Epona. Diplomacy and courtesy were all fine, but right now, Kane was shooting at something, and from the sound of things, he wasn’t having an easy time.

      Epona shook her head in response to the barbed question. “Just remember, you can only go to Kane’s aid when he is in plain sight to us. Who knows how far you can see into the forest with your technology, but we are not gifted like you.”

      Grant’s fist clenched around his Barrett, tendons creaking under his polymer glove. “Trust me, witch. If I could see him right now, I’d tell you hillbillies to go piss uphill.”

      “Behave,” Brigid admonished, though this time her heart wasn’t in the warning. She gripped the handles of her Copperhead submachine gun with as much tension as Grant felt. He couldn’t see her knuckles through the black polymer of her gloves, but he knew that she was as white-knuckled with concern for Kane as he was.

      Grant stared, as if trying to command the shadow suit to spontaneously develop the power of X-ray vision to peer through tree trunks and other foliage as if they were made of glass. He rested the Barrett’s steel-girder-like stock on his thick, powerful thigh, because even his powerful shoulders couldn’t hold the heavy rifle aloft forever. Crouched deeply, resting on his haunches, Grant was poised to explode, but the fuse burned far too slowly for his taste.

      He activated his Commtact, opening a connection back to Cerberus redoubt, where Lakesh, Bry and others were watching the events of this mission as closely as they could.

      “Bry, you there?” Grant asked.

      “Nah. I’m in the middle of a Three Stooges marathon and eating bonbons,” the computer expert replied with his typical, laid-back sarcasm.

      Grant rolled his eyes. “Do you have anything that could make this wait a little more bearable?”

      “There’s only so much I can do with a virtual reality girlfriend for you,” Bry answered, but Grant could hear the clatter of his fingertips across a keyboard as he commanded the network of satellites from his computer console. Bry’s acerbic, bored tone was the young genius’s armor against a world of panic and emergency.

      “Kane,” Brigid said over the communications link. “Where is he now?”

      All the Cerberus personnel had been fitted with subcutaneous biolink transponders that, among other things, allowed Cerberus redoubt to monitor their whereabouts.

      “Range?” Grant asked, rising off his haunches. “Bry, give me—”

      “He’s 4200 feet from your position, which means 3700 from the tree line,” Bry answered. “He’s getting closer.”

      “But still not in plain sight,” Grant growled.

      “Where is he?” Epona asked. Anxiety and concern had crept into her voice. Whether it was genuine worry for Kane and the people standing watch for him, or it was fear of reprisal from an angry Grant, it was a disarming change.

      “Still a long run from the tree line,” Grant told her. “It’s a two-way shooting match now, so that means one of the Fomorians has an assault rifle.”

      “More than one,” Epona warned. “That’s why we called you for help.”

      “So you’ve got mutant freaks who need 50-caliber rifles to kill them now armed with assault weapons, and you told us to send one of our own after them while he’s outnumbered and outmuscled?” Grant snapped. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

      “Kane told us that he was as silent as the wind and twice as hard to capture,” Epona said. “We figured that he would be stealthy and not end up on the run from a superhuman horde with high-tech weapons!”

      Grant was tempted to rip his face mask off his hood, but he needed its advanced optics to keep an eye on Kane. Luckily, his hood’s sensors picked up the chatter of more automatic weapons. “What’s Kane’s range to the tree line, Bry?”

      “Now 3400 feet. He’s not making much progress, and according to the audio pickups on your hood, there are four hostiles shooting at him,” Bry informed him.

      “Four,” Grant grumbled. The bark of a Sin Eater was amplified by the hood’s sensors. He shouldered his СКАЧАТЬ