I didn’t hesitate. My Glock was up and firing even as I ran at the man. The shots went wild but forced him to turn his attention to me. His rifle barrel swung toward me again, and he started firing. Some of the shots hit home, and I faltered but kept running. He backed away as he fired but hit the railing at the corner.
His rifle clicked empty as I reached him and swung my Glock in a wide arc that connected with the side of his head. He staggered, but I grabbed his armored vest and started smashing the Glock into his face. When I dropped him, he was limp and blowing bloody bubbles from his ruined nose.
Don’t judge me. He was about to murder a little boy.
The aftermath was somber. Four of the kidnappers were dead, the other three wounded. The police also had three wounded, one of them seriously. Scotty was safe and reunited with his parents seconds after Karl had walked him out. For my part, my cell phone had caught a rifle round and was little more than a pile of scrap.
I was sitting alone on the curb examining the remains of my phone and watching the flurry of activity among the police cars, ambulances, and news vans when I heard someone say, “Mr. Hanks?”
I looked up to find a lean man in his late thirties looking down at me. He was dressed in expensive but casual clothes and had the haggard look of someone who hadn’t been sleeping well. I nodded to him.
“I’m Chris Hardiman,” he said. “Scotty’s dad. I just wanted to say thank you. You’re a real hero.”
I looked back at the cluster of vehicles and people that were milling around me. One of the cops that I had smarted off to earlier was being helped into the back of an ambulance. He had one arm in a sling and a heavy bandage around one thigh.
I stood up and nodded at the wounded man. “That guy’s the hero,” I said, “not me.”
Hardiman looked at the departing ambulance. “Well, of course, but you were the one who actually protected Scotty. I think that’s pretty heroic.”
“Not really. Not in my case, anyway.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.
“Heroes risk themselves, Mr. Hardiman. The only thing I risked was your son and this.”
I dropped the mangled phone into his hand and walked away.
The End
A Word From C.Steven Manley
I’ve been writing my entire life. Well, the last 42 out of 50 years of it, anyway. I never worried much about publishing or making money off of it or any of that other rich and famous crap. I just love making the stories. I’ve written all kinds, some better than others, but I always seem to come back to the fantasies; tales of real people in unreal situations.
I’m the author of The Paragons Trilogy superhuman thriller series, The Pickman Files dark urban fantasy series, and The Brace Cordova space opera series along with an assortment of other genre fiction short stories that you can find out more about here or buy them here.
Agents of SCRAM
By Jon Frater
As first dates went, Crypto and Psy-Block’s wasn’t the best.
Kyle Richards and Kelly Kravitz climbed out of their cab in midtown Manhattan, him leaving what she thought of as a small tip and scolding him for it as he put his wallet away. They were in their civilian dress, and the movie theater marquee lit up the night. GALACTIC OUTLAWS. The 3D version, no less.
He pulled out his phone, swiped to the e-ticket and presented it to the staff as they walked in. “Twenty-two dollar fare, three dollars is fifteen percent,” he said.
She shook her head as they headed to their seats. “No, three dollars is thirteen percent. You should have given him the extra dollar. These guys live on their tips, you know.”
“Well, if the team office wasn’t so far uptown we could have walked.”
“Well, when Arch-Angel got nabbed by SCRAM we lost his deep-pocketed friends, so we had to move somewhere. That meant uptown. At least the rents are affordable.”
“I suppose.” They played with their seats. The new generation of movie seats were adjustable. You could lie down and go to sleep in them if you felt like it. Despite their efforts at being nonchalant, this was their first movie together, and they were too excited to sleep.
“How was dinner?” he asked.
She made a noise. “Disturbing.”
“What? I thought the food was good.”
“It was fine. That restaurant, though… something happened there months ago. A chef attacking someone with a kitchen knife. I could feel the psychic residue pulling at me. Twisted my insides a bit.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine. I don’t go out much, and this is why. People are difficult to be around.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you. But you’re only in town for a week, you’re the first guy to ask me out in months, and I like the way you smell.” Pause. “Now, if only this place wasn’t two blocks away from the ugliest building in Manhattan.”
“We’re nowhere near Trump Tower.”
“No, I mean the phone company’s carrier hotel building. Have you ever looked at it? It’s twenty stories tall, utterly without windows. The whole thing is a giant column of brown brick slabs. All it does is house thousands of wires and cables for the internet. I used to have nightmares about it when I was a kid.”
The theater lights dimmed. “I think I know why you don’t get a lot of dates.”
“Mr. Richards!” she gasped.
“Miss Kravitz!”
The previews began, and they sat quietly and watched the screen. Occasionally their eyes wandered to each other.
They were well into the film’s second act, a scene involving a giant space battle and shock troopers in black armor attacking the heroes. The surround sound speakers did their job perfectly. He could feel the floor tremble whenever an explosion appeared on-screen. Suddenly she grabbed his hand and held it tightly. He grinned in the darkness and squeezed back. Finally, she hit him on the shoulder and spoke into his ear.
“Something’s wrong,” she hissed.
Kyle slid into Crypto mode instantly and tried to sense the room. The noise from the speakers notwithstanding he could feel the ground rumbling beneath them, even through the cushioned seats, he knew that it wasn’t the subway’s dull roar.
He’d been in enough earthquakes in his life that he recognized the motion the ground made when it sighed or coughed. This was something else.
They raised their seats and noted the reaction of the crowd. People were rising up, looking around. It wasn’t just the two of them.
“Let’s get to the street,” he suggested. “Maybe a few of these people would like to come with.”
“On it.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes in concentration. Within moments the crowd began to vacate the theater in an orderly fashion, getting out of the space as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There was no shouting fire in a crowd where Psy-Block was concerned. He admired her control. She was improving very quickly.
They emerged with the crowd to see a wall of water running down the street. He felt rooted to the spot as he watched a literal wave emerge from the intersection then collapse into smaller, lower waves as the water spread out. Gravity pointed it to the lowest point in the terrain…right towards him. The wave pushed past parked cars, pedestrians, and anything that wasn’t part of the street or a building was swept aside. The few civilians who decided to brave the water made things worse as the wall ran down the street, drenching hundreds of people who rushed into doorways and lobbies to escape the oncoming threat.
Crypto’s mind rebelled against his eyes as he tried to reconcile the events with the earlier part of their evening. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and there hadn’t been any rain in days. What was going on?
The rumble of water dispersed as the river ran its course down the avenue. After it passed, inches of water remained in the street, and the sidewalks were strewn with garbage and detritus. Half of Manhattan was going to get its feet wet tonight. That much water couldn’t be accommodat
ed by the sewers. The spillage would eventually find its way over the side of the concrete island as it worked its way to the East River.
“It came from that way,” she said, pointing up the street.
They hustled, passing hundreds of upset but essentially unharmed people. Psy-Block collapsed against him, shaking and sweating with the effort she’d put into moving civilians out of the water’s path. She could barely stand, arms and legs twitching with her exertion. He put his arm around her waist, alternately propping her up and pulling her along. She insisted on leading him around the corner and down a side alley, their shoes sodden as they sloshed through the street. They arrived at a gaping hole in the pavement, a foundation that was filled with muddy, murky water…but no building.
“This was it,” she said. “The carrier hotel building. It was here. What happened to it?”
He tried to do the math in his head. “Twenty stories tall…one hundred feet of sidewalk…call it a quarter million cubic feet of volume…how big a wave would that make if it just…?” He pulled out his phone and found no signal. He looked around at angry New Yorkers finding the same problem. No signal, no updates, no calls going in or out. Nothing.
Finally, he understood. The vanished building maintained service routes for half the calls in the city, and without it, two million cell phones, land lines, and internet feeds simply died.
Without any way to call Strongarm and report the emergency, their only recourse was to head back to the office. They arrived at New Angels headquarters damp and angry. Ted “Strongarm,” Armstrong, the team leader, met them as they arrived, his cool, smooth demeanor in shambles. Crypto and Psy-Block started as they saw the damage to his calm. Strongarm did not sweat events. Until tonight.
“Hey. Thanks for coming in, you two. Sorry to cut your date short,” he apologized.
Psy-Block frowned. “It wasn’t a date.”
“Right. It was just a movie,” Crypto agreed.
“We’re co-workers. Dating would be weird.”
“And technically illegal.”
“But definitely weird.”
Strongarm waited until the two quieted then nodded to the man in black jacket and slacks who stood behind him. “This is Agent Will Carson, from SCRAM. He has a problem and would like us to assist.”
Crypto stood up straight. He couldn’t take his eyes off the newcomer. Carson had aged a bit since the last time they’d met. “And will we? Assist?”
“I hadn’t decided yet. I wanted to hear the team’s thoughts.”
Braintrust, their net-wizard, lounged on a sofa in the back of the room, surveying everything. She couldn’t help scowling. Crypto assumed the sudden disruption in network service was affecting her badly. “My kid builds robots for NASA, and I have a killer headache,” she said. “That’s my thought.”
“Congratulations,” Carson said. “You must be very proud.”
“I am. Meanwhile, the net is failing, I’m slowly going dark, and I’m really pissed off.” She blinked and shifted. She took deep breaths to manage her anxiety regarding being cut off from her workstation. “What’s your story, Agent Carson?”
Carson’s eyes swept the room, finally settling on Crypto. “Margaret Arrow went rogue.”
Crypto blinked at the news. Margaret Arrow was a name he hadn’t heard or used in years. “Deep Six split?”
“Two months ago. Agent Fist issued a kill warrant on her. If I get to her first, I can keep her alive. I can’t do it alone, and you have experience working with SCRAM, so. I need help.” Pause. “Your help, Kyle.”
Psy-Block looked from one to the other. “Guys? A little background?”
Crypto maintained eye contact with Carson as he spoke to the team. “Deep Six was a hacker we went up against when I still worked for the government. She worked out of her van. Had a real talent for getting into places where no one could follow. She ate military grade firewalls for breakfast and snacked on server farms all over the world. She limited her activities to taking out bad actors, but the DOD was terrified of her. One day, Agent Carson’s team cornered her and convinced her to join SCRAM. She and Agent Carson here got…close.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Carson protested. Then he sagged. “Maybe it was like that. A little. I treated her like my daughter. After a while, I started thinking of her that way. Her training became a group effort.”
“We trained her. You spoiled her rotten,” Crypto interrupted.
Carson powered on, “She was a solid team member for two years. Then she followed a double agent into Scythe’s arms, and that was that. We hadn’t heard much about her. Until tonight.”
“Sounds so simple, when you tell the story,” sneered Crypto.
“I thought it was.”
Strongarm tapped his foot. “So. What are we doing now?”
Carson jammed his hands in his pockets, staring at the floor for a good ten seconds. Finally, he continued, “She spent a year overseas, learning from an organization of powered individuals. I don’t know how they did it, but they changed her. She can turn solid matter into water now. And she just flooded midtown Manhattan.”
Crypto and Psy-Block shared a question. “I didn’t catch a thing,” she said. “Of course we were surrounded by a thousand people, and I was pushing them all to stay calm as a tidal wave ran down Third Avenue…”
Crypto turned back to Carson, glaring. “So you need us to track her down and corner her. You cuff her and escort her to a holding cell. Everyone is happy.”
“Something like that.”
“Crypto?” Strongarm asked. “You good with this? Or will there be a problem?”
“I’ll be fine. Carson knows what to expect from me. So do you guys. But it’s been years…” Crypto thought of something. He wanted to know how she thought and only the residue of his past experience with Carson could do that. “Do you still have the van?”
Carson frowned. “Her van? No. That was impounded a long time ago. But I can show you her equipment. Not the stuff she fried on her way out the door. But the gear that she used before she rabbited.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“So would I,” said Braintrust. “If she programs, she leaves traces. Crypto and I can suss out her digital fingerprints, and we can scour the internet for her.”
“She turns things to water now,” Carson reminder her.
“The perfect way of covering her tracks,” Braintrust snorted. “She didn’t choose that carrier hotel at random. Trust me.” She pulled her hair back to show him the data port embedded in her skull, just behind her ear. “I went dark for an hour about a year ago. Ask Crypto how I handed it.”
Kyle looked up. “Badly. She reacted badly.”
“Fair enough.” Carson rose from his seat and shrugged on his jacket. “Come on. I’ll show you the garage.”
They climbed into Carson’s black SUV and glanced nervously at each other as he drove through traffic like a madman. A small viewing screen rested on the dash between the front seats, and Kyle couldn’t begin to imagine what the extra switches did. “You guys have come a long way from the days of oil slicks and smoke screens,” he said.
Carson made a rude noise. “It’s been thirty years since we installed anything as primitive as a smoke generator on one of these babies.”
“What, then? Micro-missiles? Radar? Laser guided artillery?”
“With an EMP generator, you don’t need any of that.”
Carson narrowly missed a cab as he turned an intersection to make a yellow light. Kyle heard Brainy stifle a scream from the back seat. “I remember you all being about putting people first back in the day.”
“I still am,” he said. “That’s what drew me to Mizu in the first place. You, too, mister man of a thousand voices.’”
“You know that never took hold. The worst they ever called me was ‘one kay.” He paused as he screeched to a halt at a red light. “Mizu?”
“That’s what she’s calling herself now. Japanese for ‘water.’”
<
br /> “I know what it means.”
Carson swerved to miss a woman pushing a baby stroller as the light turned green. “I heard about you saving the vice president last year. That was good work.”
“Thanks. I’d say something like you taught me everything I know except you actually didn’t.”
“Come on. We taught you how to manage encryption codes. Screwing with cameras, breaking locks, and translating documents.”
“But nothing about defending myself in the field. That’s what I needed from you.”
Carson flew his vehicle over a bulge in the asphalt and Kyle gulped as the wheels left the ground for a split second. “Do you really want to do this now, Kyle?”
“No.” Pause. “But I liked you better when you were the director’s right-hand man.”
“Guys!” Braintrust shouted, pointing at the road.
It was a cloudless night, but two inches of water ran down the street. “Pull over,” Strongarm ordered.
Carson did so, standing near the open vehicle as the New Angels got to work. Crypto and Strongarm followed the new river upstream while Braintrust patched into the SUV’s wifi and Psy-Block wandered into the intersection, arms extended to catch the vibes of passing pedestrians. All their trails ended at a wide gap where another building used to be. The site could have been an Olympic-sized swimming pool if not for the environmental incongruities.
“Not again,” Crypto said.
Strongarm blanched. He couldn’t stop his eyes from sweeping the empty space. “She did this? Deep Six?”
Crypto sloshed along the empty sidewalk. The column of water had fallen to flood the intersection. He could see where the street’s gradient directed the flow of water toward the east side. He could hear sirens in the distance as first responders arrived on the scene. “Mizu. Yeah. This is her work. We saw the same thing across from the movie theater.”
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