Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA Read Online Free

deep in some places. He nudged the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Look at that.”
    There was a wire attached to one corner of the tent. Someone had made an attempt to bury it, but he bent down, gave it a good tug and it popped out of the ground. That wire and the wires coming off the other tents were connected to a thicker wire. He pulled the thick wire out of the ground and followed it to the central pile of rubble, Lo trailing behind him. The wire disappeared into a seemingly impenetrable wall of debris. “Fournier’s facility was directly below us,” he said. “This pile is situated right over the elevator shaft.”
    At its center, the pile was twice as high as Scott was tall, and it covered maybe as much ground as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. He took out his holophone and walked all around it, getting a good holo to send to the techs back at headquarters. After he fired that off, he and Lo got closer, inspecting the rubble for any openings. Most of it was broken brick and concrete interspersed with battered panels of aluminum roofing, but he also recognized bits of tile from the showers and the tortured remains of the fence that had separated him from the crowd during grease fights.
    His holophone buzzed. It was one of the techs. Scott had never managed to remember their names, but the phone said this one was ‘Bob.’
    “That was fast,” Scott said.
    “Your op’s got priority. If you look up at the top of that heap, you’ll see there’s a satellite dish pointed in the direction of the café. Looks like the perp converted it into an antenna to extend his range and tap into the wifi holospot. It’s old school, but effective.”
    “Yeah, but where is he?” Lo asked. “No way he’s inside that mountain of concrete.”
    Scott said, “Not inside, but maybe under. There were four ways in and out. The parking garage and elevator shaft are out, but Fournier had two escape tunnels. Bob, can you check the report to see what happened to them?”
    “Yeah, hold on...it looks like the short tunnel collapsed on its own and the other was sealed off with an explosive charge,” the tech replied.
    When Fournier’s underground facility had been torched, Scott and the others escaped through the longer of the two tunnels, which had exited inside an office building about a quarter of a mile away.
    He stepped back from the mound to look across the empty lot towards the office building, then began to walk in that direction. “Just one charge? Can you confirm the tunnel was not only sealed off, but collapsed all along its length?”
    When he got about halfway to the chain link fence around the perimeter of the Warehouse property, he found a large panel of corrugated sheet metal lying on the ground.
    “Uh, that’s a negative on the confirmation,” Bob said. “They didn’t bother to collapse it.”
    “Alright. Thanks.” Scott disconnected and waved Lo over. “Look at this.”
    When she joined him, she frowned down at the oxidized sheet of metal. “Edges look sharp. Am I gonna need a tetanus booster after this?”
    “Maybe.”
    She started to bend down, but he said, “Hold on. Our guy is smart and probably paranoid. Let’s check for booby-traps first.”
    He took the flashlight off his belt and got down on the ground, lying on one side. “All right, lift up slowly.”
    Lo carefully curled her fingers around the edges and lifted the sheet with a little grunt, saying, “Ah, it’s kind of heavy, can you hurry this up?”
    Scott shone the light all around, but didn’t see any wires. He did see that his hunch paid off, though. The sheet metal concealed a hole in the ground.

Chapter Five
     
    Bryn ran ahead of Mia down the hallway and yanked open the stairwell door. Just as it closed behind them, one of the men bellowed, “Git back here!”
    “Faster!” Bryn said. “We don’t have much of a lead.” With one hand on the rail, she took the steps two at a time, quickly outpacing the smaller woman. They were