by Michael Todd
“Oh, right, did I forget to say?” The screen of the comm came alive with the picture of a small plant—a vine with bright green leaves. “The poison is derived from this plant here. The antidote comes from the leaf. Squeeze it, drink the juice that comes out, and you’ll be fine…ish. Sal didn’t fully explain what kind of side effects the poison and the antidote have, so you’ll have to play that by ear.
“Anyway, the timer on the door should open in about five minutes, so if you guys all want to survive, I’d suggest you stick together. But knowing what kind of people you all are, I think you’ll be every man for himself as soon as the first sign of trouble comes. Be that as it may, if you keep this comm line with you, you’ll be able to follow the tracker to the nearest plants that are about…eight to nine klicks away. And since you’re all trained killers, I’m sure none of the nasty little creatures in the Zoo will bother you.”
Anton breathed deeply and looked at the rest of the men, who were all awake now. They each had the same reaction when they realized that they would die in perhaps twenty-four hours if they didn’t get to this…plant. He wasn’t even sure if it would work, but being one of the few members of this team who had previously gone into the Zoo, he knew that this many people together would attract attention. Without weapons, they would be shredded anyway.
With those odds, they might as well stay distracted in their search for some random fucking plant until the inevitable happened, right? There were questions to be answered—like how they had even managed to get them into this cage and so deep into the Zoo—but he wouldn’t bother with them at this point.
The cage door suddenly buzzed and unlocked.
“The countdown is on, boys,” the voice in the comm said in a sing-songy tone. Anton cursed, yanked the comm link from the cage, and stepped out. He didn’t like this. It definitely would not end well. He probably shouldn’t have tried to get involved with these people in the first place. The amount of money that they had offered was too damn good, and every time anyone offered too much money, things would get fucked up. Badly.
“Come on, boys,” he said and decided to take charge of this suicide run, “we need to get moving.”
“I disagree,” the man he recognized as their sniper said. “The way I see it, we’re in a cage that can protect us from almost anything out there that can kill us. If we stick around and try not to move too much, we will be fine, right? We could probably even jimmy a lock on the door so that nothing can get us and rig that comm link to make contact with someone who can save us. Someone with guns, suits, and hopefully, a way out.”
“We have poison in our system, dumbass,” Anton retorted. “Besides, there are creatures out there that can get to us even inside the cage. That spit acid. Do you really want to wait around for one of those to find us?”
They all exchanged glances. The chances were, if they were poisoned, that there was no antidote that would help them.
The truth was that they were dead men walking, one way or the other. So they might as well go out on their own terms, right? There was absolutely no sense in waiting around to die like pussies.
After a short debate, they set off and maintained a narrow and quick-moving formation through the dense jungle. The bitch hadn’t even left them with their boots, which made the trip even more unbearable. At one point, Anton began to rethink the whole idea of waiting around to die. Ego be damned, he wanted at least some comfort before he bit the dust.
A scream erupted from the back of the line and someone yelled at them to move. Anton turned and recoiled when he saw a pair of massive panthers gnawing on the remains of a couple of the men.
Why wait around for them to be finished? What would they fight the giant panthers off with anyway? Their fists?
Anton ran, as did the rest of the men, and they spread out as they made a break for it.
“What did I tell you?” the woman on the comm in his hand asked. She sounded like she was munching on popcorn.
“Fuck you!” Anton retaliated, not sure if he meant the woman or himself for ever having agreed to this bullshit assignment. He pushed his pace and tried to put some distance between himself and the rest of the men before his foot caught on what felt like a root. The jungle was so thick, now, that it was really hard to tell what was what down there.
He scrambled painfully to his feet and winced. His wrist had twisted in the fall and maybe his ankle too. Something was definitely wrong, but he couldn’t stick around. He’d done all this for pride, dammit, and he would go through with it.
Something moved in the darkness and he froze instantly. People talked about their lives flashing before their eyes, and he had a sudden glimpse of what they meant. Roars and screams resounded behind him as the rest of his squad were torn to pieces, but the beasts seemed to avoid him for some reason.
Or maybe they simply left him to a predator that was higher up in the food chain? It was a solid theory, one that was immediately confirmed as a figure moved in the darkness and stepped closer. It was big and not quite mammalian, although he could see fur on the creature’s heavy forelimbs as it stepped ponderously through the underbrush.
“Oh…shit…”
“Do we really have to hear this?” he heard the Russian girl ask.
“Of course,” the bitch said with a laugh. “This is the best part.”
Anton tried not to listen to them. He stood as still as he could and refused to even breathe as the creature moved closer. Crazily, he thought he could identify more than four feet strike the ground, but it also sounded like a single creature thrashed and pushed through the bushes and plants in front of him.
The underbrush parted and a pair of heads emerged. Light reflected in the eyes—four of them—that stared down at him. He knew it was pointless to even imagine that it couldn’t see him, and yet, what the hell could he do? Run away?
“Fuck me,” he whispered as the lips peeled back to reveal a long row of shiny fangs in each mouth. His last thought, as the two heads descended on him, was that it looked like they were smiling.
Screams echoed through the comm link, backed by primal roars which quickly drowned the shrieks out altogether.
Amanda smirked and tapped her empty popcorn bowl. She turned to see Anja staring at her with a horrified expression.
“What?”
“You’re a little scary, you know that?”
“Sure,” she replied with a shrug. “What’s your point?”
“If you intended to kill them, why didn’t you simply do it here?”
“Besides the fact that I didn’t want to have to clean blood up from all over the damn place?” the armorer asked reasonably. “Because I didn’t want people to track the bodies and those jerks’ armor to our little homestead. This way, those who might come looking for them will look in the Zoo, and those that knew where they were going were sent a very important message. Do not fuck with Heavy Metal.”
“Sure, that’s important,” the hacker conceded as they cleared the beer bottles and popcorn bowls from the server room. “But it seemed like you actually enjoyed yourself there. A lot. Maybe too much.”
“Enjoyed it?” Amanda asked with a grin. “Hell, I only wish we had some video.”
Chapter Fifteen
“So,” Sal said as they finished their dinner and prepared to settle in for the night, “how much thought have you put into us retiring and letting someone else run Heavy Metal?”
“The healthy, sane amount,” Madigan said with a grin. “I mean, it’s not like someone would want to go into the Zoo for the rest of their lives. You’ll get old eventually, so it’s always good to at least have a retirement plan if you ever decide that you actually want to use it.”
“Speak for yourself, peasant,” he tossed back. “Madie is known to have some very interesting anti-ageing properties, and while I probably won’t need that for now, I can only imagine what the effects of using it in the long term are.”
“Yeah.” She regarded him warily. “Have you ever consi
dered that taking that blue stuff might be bad for you? We don’t know much about what the goop does to a human body, and the stuff that they’re selling is heavily diluted. I haven’t seen you diluting shit.”
“You haven’t had any complaints so far,” he said with a grin and took the inevitable punch to the shoulder. “But yeah, I’ve thought of that. I’ve kept track of all the changes that it’s made to my body. The good and the bad. Some might only be effects of a vigorous lifestyle with a lot of exercise, so my notes should be taken with a grain of salt. But the way I see it, I get to be at the forefront of some very important scientific testing. If things go bad, my notes will be turned in to the people who matter and then people will know what not to do. Until then, I’ll continue to observe and test.”
“I can’t imagine that there are many scientists willing to put their bodies on the line like you are,” she said and shook her head.
“You’d be surprised. Curiosity is the force that drives people like me to get out of bed in the morning, so I wouldn’t demand that anyone do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.”
Kennedy nodded. “But do you have a retirement plan in mind?”
Sal shrugged. “Like you said, nobody wants to do this forever. Eventually, I will get tired of doing it. I already have a few plans in mind, but...well, you know what they say about telling God your plans.”
“Good point. I don’t doubt that a lot will change in the world between now and when I decide that I’ve had enough. For the moment, though, I have a company that I want to be a part of, a team that I care about, and a partner-slash-lover whom I’d rather keep alive for as long as possible. I drink less and love life a lot more. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy, but this is about as close as I’ll ever get, I think.”
He grinned and leaned in to press a light kiss to her lips.
“And in case you were wondering, I’m loving you too, Sal,” she said and her eyes took a few seconds before they opened and a wistful smile touched her lips.
“I love you too,” he replied and quickly gave another kiss. Without the bulky armor they both usually wore, there wasn’t much to prevent them from drawing in close to one another and enjoying the shared body heat from the contact.
“Hey…so,” Madigan said after a few long delicious minutes, “if you keep poking me with that thing, something is bound to come along and stop our fun. It’s like…a law. It’s a fucking Hollywood trope, for God’s sake. Have sex, the monster comes.”
“Enough of that,” he protested and nibbled gently at her neck. “You’re the one who said monster, not me. I’ll remind you of that.”
She slapped him gently on the shoulder. “Asshole.”
Sal pulled away. “Well, we’ve never done it there before. I always assumed that you didn’t like it, but I’m willing if you are.”
Kennedy giggled, pulled him back in, kissed his lips, and purred softly as he moved on top of her.
“I’ll risk it,” Sal said, and the blood rushed downward in his body as she spread her thighs around him and tugged him in closer. They were both in the middle of pushing his pants down when they were interrupted by a low roar.
“Goddamn it,” he protested and yanked his trousers up again as they scrambled for their weapons. “I still won’t let some Zoo monster have my dick as an entrée.”
“I think we’re both agreed on that,” she said with a soft chuckle and extricated herself from their tangle of limbs to snatch the rifle she’d placed beside her suit of armor. “I thought that setting up shop outside the Zoo would make it so that we didn’t have to deal with this bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a reason why the construction sites still need protection,” he pointed out as he retrieved his rifle and hesitated for a second as he waited for his arousal to diminish. “The animals still get out of the Zoo to be a pain in our collective asses, so I think we should get a watch system going.”
Madigan grumbled something under her breath and nodded. “You still owe me a go, Monster. You take the first shift and I’ll take the second.”
He nodded and began to put pieces of his armor on as she slipped back into the tent.
“I’m going to kill that fucking trope,” she mumbled to herself as she settled in for her half of the night of sleep. “I fucking swear.”
Anja paused and stared at her screen, a little uncertain whether she should discuss what she’d found so far with someone, or if she should continue digging. On one hand, the time she’d spent around there told her that she was a team player now and needed to run everything she dug up by the people whom she worked with. Amanda had been good with that and she’d helped her learn the ropes. She wasn’t the boss around there, of course, but the chain of command seemed to be somewhat lenient when it came to managing their people. It was a simple matter of make sure money wasn’t wasted and that everyone behaved like adults about their jobs, and everything would be fine.
The armorer had filled her in when they had worked up a cage to ferry into the Zoo when they dealt with the mercs who had attacked the compound. It wasn’t a matter of disrespect, but rather the fact that Sal and Kennedy both knew that what the two women did was out of their field of expertise.
She shook her head and checked the clock at the bottom right corner of her screen. People talked about the problems that arose when you traveled around the world, and the biggest problem cited was usually jet lag. She hadn’t had to deal with that too much, all things considered. Her body clock worked at all hours of the day and only rang alarms when she was too tired to focus on her job. That, added to the fact that she’d spent most of her time in this little corner of the planet as awake as much as possible—while hoping not to get eaten, shot, or otherwise killed—meant that adapting to the time zone around there demanded less focus. By the time she’d actually settled in, it had become fairly obvious that things were a lot less tight than they’d been at her last job. Fitting in had, in fact, been a breeze.
Which was why she simply nodded when the clock read a quarter past four in the morning. It explained why she couldn’t hear Amanda in yet another argument with Connie outside or…well, anything else. The tags she’d put on Sal and Kennedy’s suits told her that they were still out in the Zoo. All of that added up to the one simple conclusion. She was all alone and there was no one who could judge her if she dug deeper into what she’d discovered.
Anja opened an encrypted chat sequence a friend of hers had created with her help while she’d worked on her degree. It had started out as a way to compare notes on lectures and share information that would be asked for on tests and the like across campus. As their jobs became more and more dangerous, it became one of the safest methods of long-distance communication.
She pinged her friend and waited for him to ping back before she sent him the newest information—a connection between one Andressa Covington, a rich billionaire in the US, and a certain Dr. Alfred Monroe, father to one Dr. Courtney Monroe. The payments themselves weren’t what attracted attention, but rather, the fact that five of them, totaling in excess of seven million dollars, had been transferred days after Monroe Sr. died. At any other time, Anja would have guessed that there were certain funds that needed laundering after the death of a major player in a company in case of an audit, but there was more to this than met the eye.
She remembered that her friend, going by the screen name of Khaos, had minored in economics while they’d studied together, so she sent him the documents.
I need your usual rate, she typed in after hitting send. Twenty-five grand to tell me where this money came from and where it went after it was transferred into this account, and why.
Done, came the response a few seconds later with a winking face. The friends and family discount. My usual account. Why am I looking into this?
I’m tracking down what could have been a murder.
Oh shit. That message came as an immediate response before all other contact ceased. She assumed he was doing his research on
what had happened and how he would be able to track down the money’s origin and destination. Anja used the time to double check on the status of their defenses. While Amanda took an odd amount of pleasure in verbally arguing with Connie, the hacker found that it was far more productive to keep the AI on text only.
All the defenses were still up. She nodded and returned to the chat window.
Tracing the payments forward and backward from this one, said a message that was waiting for her, should be a while, but the logic is simple. There are only three reasons to move that much money through a man’s account after he’s dead. One is to launder money that will go offshore. Two is to incriminate the dead man posthumously. Third, and more likely, is that they tried to fake the sale of something.
Why is that more likely? she typed quickly.
The dates of the payments have all been marked as prior to the man’s death, but they only entered the system after, although they came prior to the money itself. It looks like the transaction is to prove that an agreement was made with the dead party and nobody can deny the sale. The official payment records are linked to a trade document that, again, dated to a few weeks before the death of Dr. Monroe but was only entered into the documents of the company and laid out for the IRS to see after the death. Considering that this Covington woman is, or was, one of the higher-ranking officials in the company, she would have had all the access in the world to fake the dates to fit her desired version of events.
A document he sent her contained the signature from both the buying parties and the selling parties. She made a note of the company involved in the sale, as well as the CEO who had signed the document, but she was sure it would lead to a confusion of shell corporations and dead ends. Still, she had to investigate each one.
The real problem was that the document looked like it had been signed by Dr. Alfred Monroe, which gave it all kinds of legitimacy despite the fact that it had been submitted after the man’s death. While physical paper signings like that were no longer common, they were still used from time to time and would be perfectly legal in any court should anyone seek to contest this sale. If it could be confirmed that Dr. Monroe had actually signed, there would be no way to dispute it.