Novels by Smart

Ray looked at the blinking red light under Priya's skin and understood immediately what it was.It was not a location tracker.It was a trigger."Everyone stop moving," he said.The room went still."Ada," Ray said. "Can you feel all six of them right now."Ada had both palms flat on the nearest wall, her eyes closed, the blue light running along her fingers in the slow diagnostic pulse she used when she was reading a system rather than controlling it."Yes," she said. "All six are active. The red pulse is a secondary function running underneath the location signal. It's not transmitting location." She opened her eyes. "It's waiting for a command signal.""A detonator," Saul said."Yes," Ada said.Charlie put his hand to his neck and pulled it away quickly like the tracker had burned him. "Ghost told us in the arena. He said detonator tracker and he said it directly.""He wanted us to know," Priya said. She was still at the desk, completely calm, the canister still in her hand. "It'

Ray opened his eyes and saw a ceiling he recognised.The hotel room which was their hotel room. The same walls and the same window, adjoining door to the second room. He sat up fast and immediately regretted it, the pain behind his eyes was sharp enough to make him stop moving for two full seconds.He put his hand to his neck.A small raised point under the skin, just below his jaw. The detonator tracker Ghost had mentioned before the gas came down. He pressed it once and felt it pulse faintly against his fingertip, active and transmitting.He looked around the room.Everyone was there.Priya was on the floor beside the desk, coming around, her hand going to her own neck the same way he had. Zoe was on the bed, sitting up slowly, her eyes finding Ray's. Ada was against the wall, already awake, staring at her hands. Charlie's face was down on the second bed, groaning. Saul was in the chair by the window with his eyes closed, breathing steadily, either still unconscious or doing

Ray pulled the chain apart with both hands.The metal snapped at the anchor point with a sharp crack and his arms came free and he was moving before the nearest masked guard processed what had happened.He hit the guard once. The man went down and stayed there."Now," Ray said.Zoe pulled her chain free from the wall behind her, the anchor tearing out of the concrete in a shower of dust, and the blue light was already building in her hands before she fully stood up.Ada pressed both palms flat against the floor.The lights in the hall flickered once. Then the cameras flickered and half the screens around the walls went dark as Ada pulled the power selectively, cutting the feeds that covered the group's position and leaving the rest running.It actually bought them a blind spot in the middle of the most watched room any of them had ever stood in.Charlie broke his chain by looping it around a support bar and dropping his full body weight against it. The bar bent and the chain came fr

Ray came back slowly.First the sound then engine noise. Road vibration moved through metal floor beneath him. Then the pain, his wrists pulled behind his back and secured to something fixed.His shoulders carried the strain of a position he had been in long enough for it to matter.He opened his eyes.The vehicle was a large transport, military grade, the kind built to move people who weren't going willingly. The interior was dim, red emergency lighting along the ceiling, and along the benches on both sides of him his team sat in the same position he was in. Their wrists were chained to anchor points behind them and their ankles were secured to the floor.Priya to his left, already awake, already running her eyes across every surface of the interior with the focus of someone building an escape plan from available materials.Zoe was on his right, her head still down, coming around slower. Ada sat across from him, awake, her hands trying to do something and the chains preventing t

Ray picked up the phone.He looked at the live stream screen for two seconds. The view count was at four hundred and was climbing fast. Four hundred people on a dark web platform who had just watched Ada kill the lights in a tunnel and Zoe throw four armed men into a wall without touching them.He handed the phone to Priya."Get this to Mara," he said. "Locate the IP address of whoever is hosting the stream. Whoever is watching it, all of it."Priya already had her own phone out, photographing the screen before the stream could be taken down.Ray turned to the man on the floor.He was young in his mid-twenties, the youngest of Yen's three, which was probably why he had been put in the corner with the phone instead of at the front with the weapons. Ray crouched and grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him upright against the tunnel wall."Talk," Ray said.The man looked at the zip-tied Drogo, then at the unconscious Yen and Park and Doss, then at Ray.He spoke.*******The way

They went in at two the next morning.Doss led them through a service entrance on the west side of the building. A metal door behind a dumpster that opened with a key Doss produced without explaining where he had gotten it. The tunnel beyond it was exactly what he had described. Old brick, low ceiling, the smell of decades of disuse sitting heavy in the air.Ray went first with Ada one step behind him, her eyes slightly not focused, feeling the space ahead of them the way she had been doing since they entered the city.Yen, Park and Doss came next.Then Priya, Charlie, Zoe and Saul at the rear.They moved for ten minutes through the tunnel in silence, Doss navigating from memory, taking two turns Ray marked in his head for the exit. The power draw Ada had been tracking grew stronger as they moved, the pull of it visible in the way her hands had started to glow faint blue at the fingertips.They stopped at a heavy door at the end of a wide section of tunnel.There was sound on the