Blades of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

Alix when we’re on a job, but he sometimes loses his composure when I go flying around.
    “Yeah …” I wheeze. “Wind … knocked out of me.” I groan as I brush off dust and broken glass. I climb to my feet and stagger out to the street so I can watch what’s left of my house burn to the ground while I try to get my breath back. “Trick, you’re sure there was … nobody in there, right?”
    “Absolutely. I checked infrared, spectral, aural, positronic—”
    “Okay, okay, I got it. Good. Where was the bomb?”
    Trick runs his hand through his hair. “Down in the basement, behind the furnace. I didn’t get a chance to examine it, but I heard a mechanical timer ticking.”
    Cyrus walks around the burning pile of rubble and examines the smoking house bits. “The people who set this device would have given themselves time to get away, but not much more. We aren’t far behind them.” He walks over to the two of us and says, “The debris pattern is fairly broad, and the individual pieces are relatively small. I’d say this was about twenty ounces of RDX or maybe a pound of HMX.” He’s been on the job for so long that he can tell what kind of bomb it was simply by looking at the mess it leaves behind.
    Cyrus comms back to HQ for some Tech Specialists to scan the area for intel about who did this and where they went. I turn away from the blazing wreckage only to see my family’s ruined possessions sprayed all over the neighborhood. Up and down the street my neighbors stand on their front lawns watching the show.
    Until I was four years old we moved every six monthsor so, but we’ve lived here for fifteen years now. Even when my dad died, Cleo and I still had the house. Now she’s missing, I’m homeless, and all my stuff just got blown to hell. My breath comes in little gulps, and my eyes can’t focus. I’m tempted to take some Kalmers, but I’m supposed to use my meds only when I’m in the field. Cyrus finishes delivering his directions and turns around to look at me. His eyebrows move apart, and he walks over and wraps one of his big arms around me. I lean into him, close my eyes, and cry into his shirt.
    She’s fine, she’ll be fine
.
    I stand in the circle of Cyrus’s arm. I decide that I’m in the field and tell my neuroinjector to give me a hit of Kalmers. The Tech Specialists arrive. Patrick takes them around the site before rejoining Cyrus and me.
    The three of us drive back to HQ. Patrick zips upstairs to use Info’s jackframes, Cyrus heads for his office, and I clatter down to the armory to get heated up and meet with a group of Squad guys. I walk by rows of armored suits, all different shapes and sizes. The really enormous suits are exoskeletal robots used deep underwater or in other hazardous locations like erupting volcanoes.
    I don’t need a primary gun or communication stuff, but I need everything else. I load up on ammo, grenades, and a full suit of SoftArmor. I keep a small mirror in my locker, and as I dress, I see that I’ve got dust all over my face and the bandage on my cheek needs to be replaced. On the wall behind me is a rack of mechanical devices that look like body parts. These are the neuroprosthetics for people who have had hunks of themselves blown off. Hands, feet, legs, arms—all the body’s parts except heads and chests. There’s even a lower torso kit that includes a full set of legs complete with pelvis. I try to imagine how someone who’d lost that much of her body could possibly survive long enough to have this huge prosthetic installed. Nothing pleasant comes to mind.
    Trick comms in, “Scarlet, she’s okay. They’ve got your mom in an office park near Quantico.” Trick is the fastestjackframe operator in the organization, which I appreciate now more than ever.
    “Thanks, T,” I comm back.
    He tells me, “We’ll find her, babe. Then you can give ’em the F.U.C.K.,” and comms off. Trick and I have a little in-joke about how many acronyms