“Jak, think you can take out that room, see if we’re alone here—and quick?” Ryan asked.
Jak nodded, a grin splitting his scarred and pitted white visage.
On the other side, J.B. had guessed exactly what Ryan was telling the albino, even though the one-eyed man had deliberately kept his voice low, in case the rooms were, in fact, occupied. The Armorer turned to Dean and Mildred.
“We need to see if those rooms are free. Ryan’s sending Jak into the shower room. I’ll take the dorm.”
“I’ll do it. I may be quicker,” Dean said, his dark eyes glittering with the fire of battle. It took the Armorer less than a fraction of a second to decide. With a nod, he indicated to Dean that he could take on the task.
Dean and Jak glanced at each other across the breadth of the tunnel. Jak held up a white hand, skin almost pearlescent in the fluorescent overhead lighting. Three fingers were erect. Jak curled one, then two, and then the third, bunching them into a fist.
Dean caught the count immediately: three…two… one…and now.
As one, the two young men sprang from their stations behind the pillar, their companions ready to cover them should any fire be drawn by their sudden action.
There was none. Within seconds, each youth was in front of the room he had to recce and secure.
It was bizarre that many rooms in redoubts that didn’t house comp equipment or supplies like the armory or the dispensary hadn’t been fitted with sec doors. Perhaps, in the distant days before skydark, this was the result of a bureaucrat penny-pinching on the black budget of the Totality Concept. But all that it meant for Jak and Dean was that they didn’t have to punch in a sec code and wait for the door to creep open at the slow speed usually favored by the creaking and worn-out systems.
Jak didn’t bother with the smooth knob of the door in front of him. Raising one combat-booted foot, he used every ounce of strength in the wiry muscles of his calf and thigh to crash his foot into the area of the door just below the chromium. The thin metal of the door crumpled, the fragile lock, which was a simple Yale in design—giving under the sudden stress. The door flew back, slamming hard against the wall with a crash. If anyone had been waiting behind it for Jak to enter, then the force of it would have stunned them.
Not that the albino cared about that at this precise moment. Even before the door had reached the wall, he had adjusted his balance and taken a flying leap into the darkened shower room, somersaulting in the air and making himself a hard target to hit.
The fact that there was no light within the room was of no hindrance to Jak. In dim or darkened conditions his pigmentless red eyes were better adjusted to the gloom. He had spent much of his early youth in the bayou hunting by night, and his instincts had evolved to the point where it was possible for him to become almost at one with the shadows.
The shower room itself resembled a locker room, where it was possible to dry off and change clothes, the towels and soap being kept in freestanding metal cabinets. Through a narrow channel was the tiled shower area, where the actual showers were a series of self-contained cubicles.
Plenty of places for an enemy to hide, but also plenty of places for Jak to take cover.
The .357 Magnum Colt Python blaster was in his fist as he emerged upright from the somersault, his trigger finger resting lightly on the guard. He adjusted it without thinking, so that he was ready to squeeze off a shot if necessary. In his other hand, which he held palm up, lay one of his razor-sharp leaf-bladed throwing knives. As he shifted, weight forward on the balls of his feet to facilitate rapid motion, a shaft of light from the corridor outside caught the blade, its edges glittering. Without even registering that he had noticed this, Jak shifted the angle of his hand so that the light no longer caught on the blade.