by Tom Harem
"And that's a good thing?" Kendra interrupted her.
"Let me finish. Some of the fleeing members have come to ask for a place in my trenches. My army has never been so numerous and with such varied skills."
"You're saying that sooner or later you two will have to face each other, right?" Kendra asked her.
"Something like that, yes. I know he's locked in his condo. We're both dealing with our problems in our own way." Lipa said, "But there's no point in wasting time on it now."
"Aren't you afraid?" Vic asked her.
"Fear weakens us. In this line of work, it's normal to be hunted anyway. Dying from a bullet is an honor. A sign of respect even."
"Damn it, Lipa. You haven't changed at all. You still have those ideas." Elisa told her and sighed.
"As I recall, you had them too." Lipa said, "You lost your guts, didn't you?"
"Of course not, but I realized that there is more to life than the longing for one more fight and the faint urge to die on the battlefield." She answered her, looking at me.
"You've finally found a family. You know, what I said to you still stands."
"Thanks, but I don't think this is the right time."
"What are you talking about?" I asked them.
"Lipa offered to help me find my birth parents. And just like before, I'm going to reject it. I don't want that in my life right now. And none of you dare say anything about it."
"We won't." I replied, "So where are you taking us, Lipa?"
"We have to go somewhere. I just don't want to leave through the front door. I can't risk it. Well, just a warning, the person we're about to meet is very impatient and stubborn. Don't try to argue with him."
"But who is he?" Kendra asked.
"He's an old hermit who's spent his whole life exchanging trinkets for others. He knows everyone, even more people than I do, and everybody respects him. He never screwed up a business. In this line of work that is essential. As time went by, he became a little paranoid and moved away from the limelight. Now he only accepts face-to-face meetings with people he's heard of or who can offer him something he can't afford with money." Lipa explained, "And definitely don't give him too much talk. The man's a great manipulator, and he loves to see people arguing. He's going to take something you guys hadn't even noticed and use it to drive you away. I suppose he sees it as fun."
"We have no secrets between us," I answered her, even though I still felt Kendra was hiding something from me.
Lipa laughed, "I hope not."
The corridor finally came to an end. She had led us to a wide section that seemed to have been used as a coffee shop once. There were round white and yellow striped tables with enough dust on top to fill the whole room with a light blow. On the floor, there were dozens of open boxes, with the lids beside them, and semi-automatic weapons inside. Some had only pistols and there was one only with grenades. Three men carried a box at a time, each with its own box, through a dark, rusty green door on our right. Each time they opened it, it crawled across the floor and the whole building seemed about to collapse on us. A drizzling rain was coming down on us. I looked up and noticed that the closest thing to a ceiling that was there was an electric net, one that was used to kill insects, and that, there, seemed to be used not only as a roof but also as a measure of defense. It was strange, to say the least, but no one else seemed surprised except Victoria who also had her eyes on it. Maggie tracked the men carrying the boxes and Elisa and Kendra were expecting Lipa to say what we were supposed to do now that we'd made it there.
"Anybody want coffee?" Lipa asked and went to the side of the small countertop on the opposite side of the room.
She bent over and pulled a coffee maker out of there. It was one of those old, non-automatic ones that needed to be plugged in. There was a plug on the white wall with black stains on her right. The men were still walking past us like we didn't exist. They didn't even look or glance at us when they stopped to stretch their muscles. They all wore a tight black sweater with their sleeves pulled over their shoulders. The sewing seemed about to burst every time they bent down and clenched their teeth to pick up another box. The three of them had a gun strapped to the back of their waist. As they leaned over, the shirt climbed, and the nine-millimeter gun popped into plain sight.
Only Vic and Elisa wanted coffee. Lipa did it all by herself. She didn't seem in a hurry. She pulled three cups out of a drawer, which was apparently on her side, put them down on the counter and filled them with a still steaming black liquid. Finally, she put a sugar sachet on beside them.
"It's not the best coffee in the world, but it'll have to do." She said as she fetched her cup.
None of them sat down. The chairs had no back and the red cushions were torn. They drank their coffee standing while we waited.
"We've already loaded everything into the van." One of the men said. He was bald, with green eyes and besides the dragon's tattoo on his right arm he had only one tattooed date above his left eyebrow, "20.05. 2122.". I assumed it was his birth date. From his face, he could be in his late 20s or late 30s.
"Well done. You can take them. Don't forget. If anything seems strange to you, call for help. We can't risk being attacked again. We need those guns." She said, took a break to finish drinking the rest of the coffee and finally wished them good luck.
The door closed behind them and the noise was carried across the air, raising dust from the tables. Vic rubbed her white sweater and even had to moisten two fingers in her mouth to see if she could clean the little brown spots that had remained on her clothes. They'd already finished their coffee and Lipa was storing the machine.
"Well, let's get going. Don't ask questions. We're going to the new black market, but we can't go in through the same place as normal people. All the security guards are on the albino's payroll."
"Did he set up the new market?" I asked him.
"Yes. He found the new place, controls who sells there and, unlike the old market, they have to pay him 10% of the profit. And with no one to stand up to him, no one dares to criticize him." She told us, as she walked past us and signaled to follow her, "But I found a way in without him knowing. Don't get in trouble, okay? They can't know we're there. And, if I remember correctly, last time we almost died."
"On the other hand, we discovered the whole truth," Kendra answered her sister.
"It didn't do much good, did it?" Lipa replied, "It doesn't matter now either. Knowing that the albino works with Reapers, some Hunters and even technology companies before he tried to attack me gave me time to put together a couple of prevention measures."
"What if he gets new, unique weapons before they even come out? Or if they're made just for his army?" Vic asked her.
Before answering her, Lipa asked me to help her with opening the jammed door. I got marks on my fingers from the strength I had to make just to open it halfway. Lipa turned on the lights. A string of neon lights, which surrounded the entire garage, dawned. Four white vans, each pretending to have a different use, acted as a cover for the weapons transport. One of them had a poster on the right side stating that they were carrying paint cans, the other one was for sofas, and the other two belonged to construction companies. We followed her to the van that was supposed to be carrying sofas.
"Let's use this one. You four get in the back. James is coming to the front." She said, "And as for your question, girl, yes, that can happen. But wars are won outside the battlefield. It's not with the fight that I'm the least bit concerned."
"I thought you weren't afraid of anything." The sister counterattacked.
"It's not fear. It's not liking him being so unpredictable and having no boundaries. It's hard to predict what he's going to do and how far he's willing to go. Above all, it's not knowing what his endgame is. Men like that aren't happy. He'll want more than the black market." She answered her with her hand on the handle.
"Why do we have to go in the back?" Elisa asked her.
"Because there's only two seats u
p front and the man we're going to see is an old-fashioned idiot. He'll value more if he sees a man in the forefront instead of two girls."
"Are you sure there wasn't someone else to turn to?" Elisa said.
"Yeah. He was one of only three options. One's not around and I had a problem with the other. He's all that's left. What matters is it's going to work. Now hurry in. We're early but we can't really be late."
Elisa still didn't like the idea very much, but even though she was upset, she did it. They slid the door and, one by one, got into the van and sat on the cushions that were lying on the floor. Two boxes similar to the ones with weapons we had seen before were in one corner as well as another orange box, locked, with a padlock that only opened with two keys. I sat next to her in the front seats. Before starting the engine, she opened the compartment under the radio and removed a cigarette and a lighter from there.
"It helps me calm down," she said and lit it, "they can't hear us back there." She added and placed her free hand on my leg.
"What are you doing?"
"I like to tease, James. I don't think that's anything unusual." She said it and started rubbing her hand against my leg even more, moving from the knee to the crotch.
My breathing thickened, "We have to go, don't we?" I asked her.
"Yes, unfortunately. He doesn't like delays." She told me and took her hand off my leg. She lit her cigarette and took a deep breath. With the other hand, she took her mobile out of her pocket and pressed the cardinal button for five seconds.
The iron door rose, and the daylight flooded the whole room. It seemed to be an old dorm used perhaps for the wounded or just where several people slept on top of each other. Several beds, all with four wooden legs, cushioned stables and serration sheets, were next to a wall. On top of the two wooden tables, one of them in the diagonal view of my eyes and with different signatures scraped in its thickness, there were several lamps that were about a hundred years old. They were made of glass and had a lamp inside and, as I had learned in school, were used in specific and secret locations during the wars. Unlike mobile phones, lights that hovered automatically in the air, among other lighting possibilities, those could not be located or canceled from afar. They were old and offered different benefits, almost as if they had adapted to the time they were in, in order to survive and, in the end, ended up in those corners at the end of the world, gathering dust until they were destroyed. The car drove off, bumped into a hump outside the garage, and Lipa drove us through narrow streets, turning right and left several times until we got back on the highway.
Chapter XVIII
"We're on time." She said, "Also, don't think I forgot that you promised to protect my sister and you failed," she added, driving with just one hand on the steering wheel, holding the cigarette with two of the fingers of the other hand and her eyes on me. She wasn't afraid of what could happen. She did not fear death and her dark eyes pierced my soul, blaming me for what had happened to Kendra minutes after she had taunted me. She stumbled between opposite poles and it was scary how much she could change.
"She's alive, isn't she?" I answered, disliking her accusation. It's not like I didn't give it my best shot.
"You need to improve your best. You were lucky last time." She said, still puffing her cigarette and expelling the smoke out of her half open window.
"I couldn't have guessed we'd end the night fighting a human beast."
"If you weren't so handsome, I'd have hurt you by now, you know?" She said, "I'm kidding. Don't worry about it. I know you tried. Even if I was there, the same thing would happen to me."
"Lipa, are you genuinely okay? You look a little..."
"Crazy? All geniuses are a little crazy, aren't they? I'm okay. I'm okay. Or I will be. Don't worry about it. At least the organization you're in has better conditions than I expected. The hospital where my sister was in was a high quality one." Lipa said and threw the cigarette out the window.
"The hospital? You were in the hospital?!"
"Sure. Don't you really think I wouldn't visit my sister?"
"How did you find the place? Or how did you even get in there without them noticing you?"
"I'm disappointed. I thought you expected more from me. The place was easy to find. I traced my sister's cell phone. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But it worked. Getting in was a little harder. There's security and cameras everywhere. I had to kidnap the doctor who looked most like me for one afternoon and wear glasses that covered half my face. I almost got caught, but I got enough time to talk to Kendra. She didn't tell you?"
"No. I didn't know anything about it. I think she wanted to tell me today, but she regretted it." I confessed to her.
"Normal. She's still ashamed of me. I don't think she'll ever forgive me for following our father's path."
"You knew that when you accepted, right?"
"I thought so. I just thought she'd understand that somebody had to do it. You may see this as an act of evil, but there's more to it than that. There are the monthly payments for those who work with me so they can support their families. There's a whole gear behind the pointers, isn't there? If it wasn't for me taking over my father's empire, it would be somebody else. You think he'd be as benevolent as me? Or so useful?" She asked me.
She drove down the road, the wind slamming in her face and throwing her hair back except for a few strands that glued to her damp lips. It was still raining, but the further away we got from the city, the more the grey clouds brighten up and fine rays of sunlight escaped through the mist.
"Benevolent, Lipa? You think I don't know about the 10 cops you killed? Does Kendra even know that?"
"No, and she doesn't need to know. Oh, shit. Who told you? The story is much more complex than that."
"It doesn't matter who did it, but I want to know the real story. You're not going to say you don't have time, are you?" I answered her.
"I'll tell you. I don't know why, but I feel comfortable around you. Maybe because I've always surrounded myself with people who don't hesitate to kill, and you'd do everything before you even thought about it." Lipa said, her voice lower than usual, the words slipping out of her mouth "Elisa knows this. Actually, she was involved, too."
"Did Elisa kill cops too?"
"That's the problem! They weren't cops. At least they weren't the good guys." Lipa answered, exalted, grabbing firmly the steering wheel, with both hands, until the bones were swollen.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I told you. I made my father's army grow. The control we had thrived on my command. Sometimes I had to be violent and fearful. That's how it works. It's been a long road. At the time Elisa was the right person for some missions and we used to end our nights in one of my bars."
"Do you have bars too?"
"Bars, brothels, laundries. Anything to make money or launder what I make in the guns business."
"And you're telling me all this? Me? I'm a Hunter, Lipa."
"Yeah, you are, and you're not going to tell anybody anything, are you? Part of you understands that I'm necessary, don't you?"
"I wouldn't put it that way, but maybe. I don't like to keep secrets, let alone from my girls." I answered her and sighed, knowing that I had no choice, "I also think part of you would like to stop all this. Now tell me what matters."
The sun glistened on the horizon. The orange flames rose above the distant skyscrapers and the rays reflected on the metallic litanies on both sides of the highway. We were on our way to another city, but Lipa didn't even slow down. She asked me for a brief moment of silence as we approached, driving past the red sign with the black letters wishing us a good stay and reaching the bridge that connected the city to the road. I had never been there before, but from the modern, tall buildings and luxury cars that crossed the bridge, on the exit side, I knew right away that it was an expensive city, one where money ruled above all else. There were no wooden houses or even roofs in danger of falling. The coffee shops were cheerful, colorful, flowery at the entrance
and perfumed with the different scents of the eccentric people and the businessmen who came in to eat something before they went back to work.
"Well, I'm calmer." Lipa started, "We had finished a job. She helped me recover an important item and we decided to celebrate. Same old coffee, on the edge of a concierge town. It was near the sea. I always enjoyed hearing the waves crashing against the rocks. That day 11 cops entered the bar. Nobody knew who I was back then. There was a sketch of my face but meanwhile I had dyed my hair and made bangs. They came to fuck with us. They started with abusive compliments, then touching our hair and shoulders. We asked them to stop. The bartender, who knew us, tried to send them away but they refused. They were already drunk. They threw him to the ground and started kicking him. We got involved. The fighting started and they were no match for us but then they started shooting at us. You know what I mean? We had no choice. The shooting started and they were so drunk that the shots hit the drinks, the ceiling, and killed the bartender. When the bullets stopped flying, we thought they were all dead. Elisa and I ran away."
"If they were all dead and ran away, how do they know it was you?" I asked her. She was different. The voice trembled, tapping the steering wheel with two fingers, repeatedly, and blinked her eyes.
"One of them survived. He told the police everything and they started chasing us. I couldn't let Elisa go down. So, I bragged that I killed the 10 cops alone. In the meantime, the rumor picked up and the original version was changed. The police still insisted that there were two people but knowing that he had alcohol in his blood no one gave him any importance. He ended up being relegated to a road job." She said. She looked at the explosion of colors on the horizon and sighed, "I don't think I'd ever told anyone the truth. Feels good. In my job, rumors like this build a person, you know? It's funny to see that I started being respected after that. Salesmen wanted to do business with me just for my name, men wanted to join me. I became an underground celebrity overnight. But, okay, this is so you know that not every story you hear is true. There's always each person's side and the truth."