Book 2: Chapter 53: Life and Death (1/2)

”Go!” Gable ordered in a terse, deep tone.

Daniel's veil pulsed, and a section of wall vanished into t-space. The last barrier between the frozen tunnel and the interior gymnasium disappeared, and Dan immediately blinked backwards. Officers rushed in, guns at the ready, shouting out commands. They weren't the elite SPEAR Team members, those had all been committed to the Crew raid and were now in need of rescue. These officers were the best of what remained, drawn from every precinct, and lead by Captain Gable himself.

The Captain was a mutate, one of the very, very few in the APD. As a general rule, the upgrades used by government organizations were much more powerful than those available to the public. They were also subject to far more regulations, and therefore statistically more stable. Most departments in major cities had only a single mutate, two if they were lucky. Captain Gable's upgrade, already formidable, had been massively enhanced. He, backed by Gregoir, were the tip of the spear in this operation.

Dan followed their progress through his veil. They burst into the room, backed by loyal officers, and immediately moved to clear the area. There were at least a score of SPEAR Team members trapped in the walls, and at first glance they seemed to be trapped in some kind of isolation pod. Their bodies were barely visible through a layer of blurry ice. They were suspended vertically in cocoons of ice shaped to resemble medical equipment. Ice dangled off the pods in a mockery of wires, and the ice itself glowed eerily blue beneath the APD flashlights.

”Torch,” Gable ordered, and an officer set the ceiling on fire. The upgrade-fueled flames had no effect on the ice, but provided plenty of light. Twenty-five officers were visibly trapped in the walls of the gymnasium. Some were missing.

”Fan out,” came the order. Gable gestured towards the side rooms, their entrances caked in ice. ”Take it room by room. Gregoir, open a path.”

The massive blonde roared in righteous anger, and slammed his meaty fist into the frozen entrance of the nearest room. The ice buckled under the blow, and his second shattered it entirely. It was only a thin layer, nothing more than a doorway to block the entrance. Gregoir stepped inside and glanced around, weapon at the ready.

”Clear,” he called.

His fellow officers went about mimicking his actions, with slightly less success. The next three side rooms were cleared with relative haste, muscle and fire and the occasional emptied magazine clearing the ice away. The rooms were vacant, though clearly a firefight had broken out at some point. Thus far, everything matched the communications that Cornelius had given during the raid.

The next part was where things had gone wrong, and where Gable took the most care. The door to the lockers was frozen over. After clearing the interior, Gable called Dan to the front. He posted men to watch the door, and brought Dan to the rows of pods. Another officer was snapping pictures, documenting everything inside. It was all a clue, every use of Coldeyes' power gave them the information that might bring him down.

”Does the shape mean something to you?” Dan asked, begrudgingly marveling at the detail presented. They truly looked real, like cryo-pods straight out of science fiction. His eyes insisted that they were constructed of different materials. Only Dan's veil told the truth.

”No,” Gable replied. ”I don't know why he chose it.”

”It must mean something,” Dan insisted. ”He wouldn't have gone to the effort, otherwise.”

”Some Naturals manifest their power in specific ways,” Gable cautioned him. ”That said this... doesn't track with what we know of him thus far.” They watched, impatiently, as the officer finished taking his pictures. Gable gestured unceremoniously. ”Can you get them out?”

Dan stepped up without a word, released his veil, and dug into the ice. He let out a relieved breath when his power bounced off the motionless form of the officer. The inside of the pod was as realistic as the outside. Dan realized that it was designed in a way that the top could theoretically pop right off, assuming the ice melted in a specific way. It was the fastest path Dan could see towards freeing the officer.

”Gregoir!” Dan called, as he positioned his veil carefully around the borders of the faux-glass cover.

The officer bounded over, snapping to attention before Gable, then turning to Dan. ”Am I needed?”

Dan triggered his veil, creating a hair-thin crack between the faux-glass cover and the rest of the ice.

”Pull the cover off,” Dan ordered. ”It should be loose enough.”

Gregoir frowned in confusion, but quickly stepped up to the pod. He gently touched the cover, and started as it shifted beneath his hand. Grinning vibrantly, he grunted, and lifted the entire chunk of ice away from the rest of the pod. He set it down, gently, for later examination, as other officers rushed forward to retrieve the trapped SPEAR member.

Dan quickly sent out threads of his veil, searching for officer who remained alive. He grimaced at the response, at the feeling of dead flesh, but he knew it was necessary to prioritize now. Only combat oriented upgrades had been brought into the tunnel; Dan was the closest thing to a scout that they had. The suits that SPEAR Team members wore contained bio-monitors, but the ice had somehow shorted them out. Dan pointed at four pods, one by one.

”I'm not feeling life from those,” he said, apologetically. ”I'm leaving them for last.”

Gable nodded, his expression darkening. ”Save who you can.”

Dan shoved his veil into the next pod, and set to work. He could move much faster, this time. Mass wasn't an issue, given how little material he was actually removing. It was more like surgery, and his veil was the scalpel. Not taxing in the least on his reserves, and thus Dan was free to search the rest of the building.

He sent tendrils past the barrier blocking the locker rooms. They were nearly as thin as he could make them, to account for the ridiculously dense ice that made up the walls and floor. He wouldn't feel much with tendrils this thin, but he could feel life. That was all he needed. Officers were missing; Dan intended to find them.

It didn't take long before his veil pinged off live flesh. His eyes widened, and he immediately informed Gable. The Captain's expression only grew darker. He glared at the iced up doorway like it was his most hated enemy, before turning to Daniel. His jaw worked silently as he grinded his molars together.

”We need to free the ones above, first,” he stated.

Dan wasn't the sole person working on freeing the officers, but he was by far the fastest. It took him only thirty seconds to shape his veil, trigger it, and free the trapped victim. Even as Gable spoke to him, Dan cut open another pod. Officers pulled off the cover and dragged another unconscious SPEAR member to safety.

Other police mimicked Dan's idea, using fire upgrades like a hot knife to carve through the ice. It was slow, steady progress, taking more than twice as long as Dan. It would only take another five minutes before they were all free, but there was no way to know if the ones below had that five minutes. They were so close, yet so helpless.

Dan understood Gable's plight, and his hesitance. The man wasn't willing to risk opening up an unsecured area while his people were wounded and trapped, nor while a civilian worked to free them. It was impossible to know what awaited them past the locker rooms. Dan's veil could map it out, even provide the locations of the trapped officers, but it couldn't spot traps any better than Dan. It couldn't even be trusted to spot a living person. There were bound to be ways to avoid his power's sight that Dan was unaware of. He was a small fish in a very large pond.