by A. M. Pierre
“Wait.” It was the first word Connor could recall their driver having said. The large man held up a satellite phone. “Call for you.”
Dice looked at the older man warily but took the phone anyway. “Hello? . . . But why . . .” He didn’t say a word as he listened, but he did turn a bit paler. “Understood.” He handed the phone back and turned to Connor and Kaia. “Although the original set-up was for me to hang back and monitor things while you two stormed the castle, I will now be right in the thick of it with you.”
Connor wasn’t sure why, but he felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach. “Why?”
“It seems we’ve received some last-minute intel. Apparently, there’s a laptop on site which contains valuable information about the rebels, including their future plans. This information is only valuable if they don’t know we have it, so we can’t steal the laptop. There’s also no evidence of it having online access, so we have to copy the files manually. Seeing as how I’m the resident computer expert, I’m the obvious choice. You two will be my cover while I’m downloading everything.” He turned away and started marching. “Typhoon, Shard—clock’s ticking. Let’s get a move on.”
Connor was getting antsy. The three of them were sitting in the woods, fifty yards away from the dilapidated building where the hostages were, like they had been for the last five minutes. Once he was on a mission, Connor hated sitting still, but knowing how little time they had was definitely making it worse. The oppressive silence in this remote location didn’t help, either. “Aren’t the cameras in place yet, mate?”
Dice kept pecking away at his laptop. “I’m trying to get a complete understanding of the layout before we go rushing in. I don’t like being unprepared.”
“Have you at least found the special computer yet?”
“Yes. Actually, I should clarify that. I have indeed found a computer which fits their unbelievably vague description of ‘a laptop whose sole defining characteristic is that it resides inside that building.’ As to being able to say with absolute certainty that the random laptop I saw on a random table contains the plans they seek, no, I can’t.”
Connor looked at his watch for the tenth time in the last five minutes. “Are you certain enough that we can start heading down there?”
Dice shrugged. “Sure, why not? Minimal guards outside, so now’s as good a time as any. One thing, though. Once we get down there, it’s not going to be ‘we’ heading inside. Just ‘me.’”
Connor stared at him, but Dice wouldn’t look up from his computer screen. “What are you talking about? How can we watch your back from out here?”
“There’s more security outside than in. I need you two to keep the escape routes clear while I’m copying the laptop’s hard drive. Then you can come in and help me get the hostages out.”
Kaia spoke up. “Dice, we don’t have coms. How will we know when to come in?”
“Well, we have these things called watches that allow us to time things. Once these ‘watches’ have shown five minutes have passed, you move.”
Connor frowned. “Hey, there’s no need to get tetchy. She asked a perfectly sensible question.” He paused. “Wait, this is . . . You’re hiding something.”
Dice met Connor’s gaze, unflinching. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
* * *
Daisuke tried to breathe slowly so he at least appeared to be calm. Connor knew him far too well. Something was seriously wrong with this mission. The problem was, Daisuke couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him. It was infuriating—he knew it was staring him in the face, but his brain wasn’t putting the pieces together. And until those pieces fit, he wasn’t about to risk anyone’s life other than his own.
He pulled up the camera feeds again. Everything looked as expected. The hostages, mostly women and children, were being held in one large room together. One guard stood in the doorway. A few more guards sat around a table in a nearby room, and the remaining ones patrolled outside. Off the top of his head, Daisuke couldn’t identify anything that was missing.
But something was.
Or maybe Connor’s right and I need to ease up on the paranoia. Daisuke put away his laptop, pulled out his smaller tablet (also linked to his camera feeds), and followed Connor down towards the back entrance to the building. One thing Daisuke appreciated about this mission—all the security came in the form of manpower as opposed to tech. The back door didn’t have any retinal scanners or facial recognition or anything like that. No, it had something a teensy bit less complicated—a lock. Daisuke almost felt sorry for the evil hostage-takers. They weren’t making it the slightest bit difficult for him.
Only a few seconds’ work with his lock picks and he was in. Daisuke turned to look at Connor and Kaia, who had positioned themselves on opposite sides of the door. “All right,” he said, “I’m going in. Five minutes, then we get everyone out. He took one last look at the views from his various spy cameras, squared his shoulders, and stepped through the door.
* * *
Kaia kept looking back and forth for any movement and only occasionally let her glance fall towards Connor, who stood less than ten feet away. She still wanted to talk, but not like this. She’d probably get interrupted again before she’d said anything meaningful.
At least during a mission, she didn’t feel any pressure to come up with small talk.
“So how’s your wrist doing?” Connor whispered.
So much for that. “Fine, I guess, but should we really be talking right now?” she whispered back. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be watching out for guards over there?”
“Yeah, but I can multi-task.”
“Typhoon.” She tried to make it sound imposing, but in a whisper it sounded more like a scolding teacher.
“I’m serious. You don’t think I can do it, do you?”
“Not that. That!” She stabbed her finger at the corner of the building behind him.
The corner where a guard was aiming a weapon at Connor’s back.
Connor couldn’t have had time to think. His reaction was pure instinct. Even as he rotated to face the guard, his hands rose from his sides. Before Connor’s turn was complete, the guard had gone flying into the nearest tree where he slowly slid down to the ground, unmoving.
Kaia stared at him. “You were saying?”
Connor rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry about that.”
“About getting distracted?”
“No, about knocking that guy out.”
Kaia had a quick mental flash of him doing something similar the day they’d first met. “Why do you always do that—apologize, I mean?”
Connor shrugged. “I’m British. We apologize—it’s what we do.”
“Even when you’re beating up bad guys?”
He grinned. “Especially when we’re beating up bad guys.” Without even turning his head, he flicked his wrist, and the guard flew further into the trees on a sudden gust of air. “Now we have to hope Daisuke finishes up before this guy’s buddies notice he’s missing.”
* * *
Daisuke impatiently tapped his fingers on the desk. He knew he was supposed to be as quiet as possible, but there was nothing more maddening than waiting for files to copy when the bad guys could discover you at any time. Fortunately for him and his patience, there wasn’t that much on the hard drive.
Daisuke wondered for the hundredth time in as many seconds what was in the files he was copying. Despite Ms. Smith’s claims they contained the rebels’ plans, Daisuke suspected it was something more. Maybe these guys had stolen some government secrets before they went AWOL. Or maybe they had dug up some dirt on one of their commanding officers.
Dirt.
Daisuke wanted to slap himself. He whipped out his tablet and checked the video feeds again. That’s it. That’s what’s wrong. It isn’t dirty enough. The ho
stages’ room is perfectly clean—and so are the hostages. They look well-fed—and bathed—but they’ve been here for at least three days. Arranging for proper meals, sanitation, and fresh water for all those people in the middle of nowhere? It can’t have been easy. But why go to all the effort? If men go so far as to use women and children as shields, they can’t let themselves see their hostages as human anymore. They need to view their victims as things, as tools to be used.
Unless they aren’t.
Daisuke looked again at the camera feeds, focusing now on their actions—trying to see past his expectations and observe what they were actually doing.
It was all wrong.
The women played with their children or talked quietly to each other, but the few who occasionally looked up in fear weren’t looking at their armed guards—they were glancing out the small window towards the woods, like they had heard something out there that had scared them. And the guards themselves? They were holding their weapons wrong. Not incorrectly, exactly—but still wrong. It was how a civilian would do it if someone had explained it to him, not how a military man with years of experience would let the weapon fall naturally into place. They weren’t guards. They were guardians. Civilian guardians. What on earth is going on here?
In what he had previously been calling “the hostage room,” a small boy toddled away from his mother and headed towards the man standing at the entrance to the room. The boy’s mother saw him go, but she didn’t look the slightest bit concerned. As the little boy approached, the armed man set his gun down out of the child’s reach, then knelt down to be on his eye level. The toddler’s babblings were slightly incomprehensible, but one word stood out loud and clear.
Daddy.
“No. No, no, no, no, no.” Daisuke immediately started clicking on files on the laptop he’d been copying. “This can’t be right. Why would they be . . .” The first file opened up, and his jaw dropped.
They weren’t army. They weren’t even close. They were refugees.
Every file told the same story. They mostly consisted of maps of possible escape routes and contacts who could help them flee the country. The only other files were pictures . . .
At first, the black and white images didn’t make sense. The shapes and shadows didn’t seem to form anything real but still looked so repetitious and regular. A blink, and in an instant the photographs made perfect, gruesome sense. Daisuke closed the pictures as quickly as he could, but the afterimages still lingered, and he had to focus on keeping his lunch where it belonged. “Mass graves,” he muttered under his breath. “Someone’s gotten proof of the government’s dirty little secrets, and now they’re fleeing for their lives.”
Something still doesn’t add up. “Talk it out, Dice,” he mumbled to himself. The words spilled out at such a rapid pace anybody listening in wouldn’t have understood a word, but it helped him slow down his thought process so he could review everything as he went along. “We’ve been told to retrieve information about these ‘rebels’ and rescue the hostages. But the government knows they’re not hostages—they want them all dead. Those pics prove the government’s rather good at killing—and these people aren’t soldiers—so why bring in an outside party? (A) The government wants to keep their hands clean, or (B) they don’t know where the ‘rebels’ are. So, they go to The Company and either say ‘hey, kill these guys’ or ‘hey, we need to know where these guys are so we can rescue the poor little hostages.’ So why would The Company send us three? We would never kill anyone, and they sent us here—right here—so they already knew where the ‘rebels’ were. Why waste the money sending us out here to risk our lives to retrieve information they already have?”
The answer was obvious, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. “The risk is the point. We’re the targets.” Daisuke shook his head. “No. They made sure I’d come in. So, definitely me, but the other two are possibilities, too. Why?” He shook his head again. “No. Don’t. Doesn’t matter now.” He glanced around the room. “They could’ve been here already. And if they were here, they could have done other things, too.” He closed his eyes and focused on “seeing” any copper wiring he could find. He saw the glowing trails running to the light switches, to the electrical outlets, and then, up in the ceiling, he found it. A small bundle, festooned with wire, and not attached to anything else in the house.
“Oh, no.”
* * *
“I can’t believe you like that movie.”
“Boys aren’t allowed to like chick flicks, is that what you’re saying?” Connor crossed his arms and made a tutting noise with his tongue. “Sounds awfully genderist to me.”
Kaia grinned and raised one eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s not actually a word.”
He smiled back. “Regardless, I am shocked—shocked, I say—that you would deny a bloke the right to watch the occasional romantic comedy. I would’ve thought you’d think it was cool. I mean, I like it when girls like action movies.” He sighed in an overly dramatic way and looked at the sky with the air of a wounded martyr. “I guess I’ll have to sneak into one of Vlad’s clandestine movie nights.”
Kaia’s mouth opened slightly. “You know about those? He told me it was a secret.”
“Oh, he thinks it’s a secret, but everyone knows. I don’t know why he’s so embarrassed by it, but we let the big guy go on thinking it’s all hush-hush.”
“That’s actually really sweet of you guys.”
Connor grinned cockily. “You do realize you’re saying I’m sweet, too, you know.”
“Yes. I do.”
Connor’s grin faded, and his eyes got wide. “R-Really? You actually mean that?”
“Yes, I—”
The door between them swung open with a vengeance, and a stream of people, mostly women and children, came running out. Then a second door near the far side of the building opened, with more people fleeing that way, too.
Before Connor could ask what was going on, he heard someone yelling from inside. He didn’t recognize the language, but he knew the voice: it was Dice. Connor was getting ready to push his way in when he heard Dice’s voice again, coming from right in front of him. Connor jumped.
“Hey, guys! Can you hear me?”
“Y-Yeah. What . . . ?” It clicked as Connor looked down at his shirt. The origami crane pins. Dice had snuck a set of backup coms into them.
“No time. There’s a bomb in here. I’ve told the refugees to run, and you should, too.”
Refugees? Bomb?! “No, you need to get out of there, Dice! We’re not leaving you!”
“Connor’s right, Dice,” Kaia added. “You need to get out of there, now!”
“You guys don’t understand. I have to see it. I have to be sure . . .”
* * *
The bomb was right there in front of him. Daisuke didn’t dare touch it. Not with so many lives at stake. All I really need to see is if I recognize anything . . .
His breath caught in his throat. That wiring array. Those components. All manufactured by The Company. Only by The Company. Daisuke was sure of it. And that was all he needed. “It is. I was right.” No point in sticking around. Daisuke turned to leave. “Guys, you need to get out of here NOW.”
Connor’s voice crackled in his ear. “You can explain it to us later, mate. Get out of there!”
What does he think I’m doing? A beep sounded behind him, and Daisuke looked back. He frowned. The timer said 5 minutes. It had said 10 a second ago. A glint of light caught his eye. There, in the corner of the room, unnoticeable unless you knew to look for it, was a camera. They were watching. They knew. An instant sick feeling hit him. The timer was down to 2½ and speeding up. Daisuke clawed his way to his feet and scrambled for the stairs.
“Dice, I’m coming in.”
No, no, not you, too. I can’t let them— He mentally grabbed the bomb by its copper components as he to
ok the stairs three at a time. “No, just run. RUN! NOW!”
* * *
“No, Dice!” Connor started for the door, but something slammed into him and knocked him to the ground. At first he thought the bomb had gone off, but it was Kaia tackling him. “What are you—?”
Without a word, she closed her eyes, and a wall of sandy dirt exploded from the ground between them and the building, curling over them like an impromptu bunker. Connor tried to pull away as quickly as he could without hurting her, but she wouldn’t loosen her grip. “No, Kaia, let go! I have to help him, I have to—”
BOOM.
Connor opened his eyes. He was aware of only two things: his ears were ringing, and he was halfway buried under a huge pile of dirt. What on earth . . . ? Memory came back a second later, and with it came fear. “Dice? Kaia?” His voice sounded like he was speaking underwater. “Can anyone hear me?” he yelled, all while digging himself free. He heard a groan from underneath another nearby pile of dirt. “Kaia? Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” Kaia sounded like she was underwater, too. “My wrist hurts.”
“That was already hurt.”
“Oh. Right. My head hurts, too.”
Connor’s head felt like he was at a rock concert and they were using his skull as the bass drum. Judging by the amount of dust still hanging in the air and the pieces of debris still fluttering to the ground, they probably hadn’t been out for more than a couple of seconds. He felt his legs finally start to slide free from their dirt prison, and he scrambled out as quickly as he could. He crawled over to Kaia, who was trying to dig herself out, too. “Will you be all right by yourself for a little bit?”
“Yeah, I think so. Go find Dice.”
Connor finally took a good hard look at the wreckage of the building, and it made his heart sink. The wooden beams and walls had collapsed inward into great piles of rubbish, a couple of trucks off to the side were burning, and spot fires glowed throughout the rubble, sending up billowing clouds of black smoke. “Dice! Hold your breath!” he yelled, hoping he was loud enough. With his ears still ringing, he honestly couldn’t tell.