Daemon

was still there, just inches from his face. ‘I see you got past the firewall.’
    How the hell was this possible? The sound was appearing in midair. No stereo could possibly do that. Merritt scanned the arrays of sensors again, but none were visibly active.
    The voice was right in his
ear
, whispering. ‘They knew you would die, but they sent you, anyway.’
    Merritt jumped away, twisting his gloved finger in his ear as though an insect had flown into it. ‘Son of a—’
    Merritt let the shotgun hang from its shoulder strap while he drew one of his twin P14-45 pistols. The voice continued in his ear, but there was no pain. No agonizing constriction of his intestines.
    ‘They’re willing to sacrifice you to find out what I’m capable of.’
    ‘Keep talking, asshole.’ Merritt stood in formal range stance – aiming at the ceiling sensors. He started shooting them out, one by one, waiting a second after each shot.
    ‘Did they even tell you—’
    The fourth shot cut him off. A reflective, white plastic panel shattered as the bullet hit it. The voice was gone. Merritt shotout another identical sensor on the far wall, then flipped the safety on the pistol, holstering it. ‘Blah, blah, blah.’
    Merritt noticed his reflection in a mirror over the mantel as he walked farther into the room. His whole face was crimson red and covered in blisters, with the headset melted onto his cheek. His Pro-Tec helmet had protected his scalp, but the whites of his eyes were shockingly blood red – and blood trailed down from his nose over his burnt chin. The Nomex hood and suit had kept him alive, but he might soon be entering cataleptic shock. The dizziness came at him in waves. He felt the rage building in him again. His men had had much worse.
    Merritt heard a slight
tick
sound and a sizzle of static electricity. He spun around to see the plasma-screen television come to life. A 3-D graphic of the mansion as seen from the air resolved on-screen. It looked like a briefing schematic.
    ‘You’re here for the server room. It’s down the hall, to the left, and to the left again. I’m sure they gave you a map, but in case it burned up, here are directions …’ The 3-D graphic leaped into action, with the camera performing a virtual fly-through, coming down on the mansion from above, straight through the doors Merritt had entered by. The camera flew down the adjoining hall, banked left, then sailed through the billiard room, left, and up to the cellar door – which flung open as the camera went down into blackness. It was like a first-person video game.
    Merritt grabbed an end table nearby, clearing off the lamp standing on it.
    Sobol’s voice continued, oblivious. ‘Did you want me to replay that? Yes or no.’
    The face of the plasma-screen television shattered under the impact of the heavy end table, and the entire thing keeled over backward on its stand – sending up a puff of electrical smoke as it died hitting the floor.
    ‘No more mind games.’ Merritt strode past it and grabbed a piece of the sectional sofa, pulling it up with great effortfrom the sunken area onto the main floor level. He shouldered it in front of him as he advanced toward the doorway leading farther into the house. He held the shotgun in his free hand.
    The dimensions of Sobol’s house went beyond anything Merritt would consider a home. To him it felt more like a university building. He guessed these were twelve-to sixteen-foot ceilings, and the doors and adjoining hallways were all two or three times wider and taller than necessary. The hall adjoining the entertainment area was easily ten feet wide, with terracotta tile flooring in two-foot squares. The hall could pass as a serviceable elevator lobby for the Biltmore. It ran along the center of the house and was braced here and there with gargantuan furniture – angry-looking armoires and iron-studded cabinets done in something akin to Spanish Inquisition style. They looked large enough to serve as a redoubt in the event of Indian attack.
    As he stood at the entrance to the wide hallway, Merritt leaned right and left to glimpse a little of what lay ahead. He couldn’t see into any of the doorways. He pushed the sofa section onward, down the left side of the hall. The sofa’s metal-studded feet scraped the tile like nails on a chalkboard.
    Suddenly the floor dropped away beneath the sofa section, and Merritt caught himself just before pitching forward into the yawning blackness below the