by Tom Abrahams
“Go ahead,” Li said.
“I’m here because I wanted to see for myself,” said Louis. “No offense, but you’re not the intoxicating ingenue some would have me believe. I like my women a little…thicker. To each his own.”
Li wasn’t offended. This man’s opinion was as irrelevant as a non-protectorate-sanctioned gardener. To think people used to plant their own food and harvest it. That seemed so insane. What seed was this man planting?
“To question three now,” he said, running his hand across his mouth. “I don’t want anything other than to satisfy my curiosity.” Louis shifted in his seat, drawing his legs together. The fabric bunched and pulled against his thighs. “You realize that the first two questions are different ways of asking the same thing?” he asked, his voice pitching higher. “I’d have thought you cleverer than that.”
Studying him, she knew the answer to that question was a lie. The lieutenant was hiding something. What was it?
The lieutenant gripped the top of the glass with his fingers and lifted it. Tilting it on an angle, he tapped its bottom corner on the laminate.
“What about question three?” she pressed. “How do you know about the mission? Did Frederick tell you about it?”
The lieutenant let go of the glass and shifted in his seat. Opening his mouth to speak, he paused, closed it, and opened it again. The man was thinking about his response. There was no doubt he was being deceptive at best, and outright lying at worst. Either way, Li eagerly awaited his response, repressing a smile that came from having figured him out. This wasn’t a simple meet and greet.
“I…I have sources,” he said. “Suffice it to say I am not on the best terms with my brother lieutenants. And so, I don’t always trust what they trust. They trust you. It doesn’t automatically instill the same instinct within me.”
Li’s brow furrowed. She said nothing.
He pushed farther back from the table and used his chair’s arms to lift his considerable heft to his feet. Lieutenant Louis Donne bowed, genuflecting before her.
“It was a pleasure,” he said. “I’m so glad I took the time to come meet you, to gauge for myself the allure of your…of you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of one another, Adaliah.”
Louis lumbered toward the door, opened it wide, slid past it, and left it ajar. Li reached for her glass and emptied the water into her mouth. The hum of the cooler filled the silence in the space.
Had he come to learn about her? Or had he visited her so she could learn something about him? She was considering these questions when something on the wall-mounted display opposite her caught her attention. Li rolled the chair back and stood, walking past the open door toward the monitor. There were four color images on the screen, each of which took up a quarter of the display. They alternated every few seconds, giving the observer different views of the Fascio’s exterior. She’d not seen this before. When she’d arrived, they’d brought her to the building through an access tunnel and, for security reasons, hadn’t allowed her outside yet.
The images cycled from one to the next. It took several minutes before the one that had drawn her attention reappeared. When it did, her knees weakened. A thick stream of acid rose in her throat and her stomach roiled. Tears blurred her vision and a wave of dizziness forced her to place a hand on the wall to steady herself.
On the image in the upper left corner of the monitor, in full color and in sharp focus, were three bodies hanging from chains at the entrance to the Fascio. The body on the left was unmistakable. Despite the gore, the exposed bone, and the blood, she recognized the person whose soul had once occupied the flesh that hung there purpled, swollen, and rigid.
Li didn’t want to believe it. She took her free hand, the one not keeping her from collapsing in a blubbering heap on the floor, and gently touched the display.
Her fingers distorted the image, pressing into the soft display, as she reconciled in that moment the truth of what Brina had told her. Her chin quivered, and she used her black shirtsleeve to wipe the sheen of tears from her eyes.
As much as she’d wanted to kill Zeke for having left her to fend for herself, as much as she’d convinced herself she hated him as she rotted in her rat-infested cell, as much as he was a coward and a weak-minded petty criminal, he was a man she’d once loved. He’d been a mark, a target, but he became more than that. She loved him. That emotion, which she’d suppressed as she struggled to survive in the Tic’s dungeon, bubbled to the surface.
She loved him.
She was in love with him.
Now he was dead.
The full-color digital representation of his body made it unmistakable. He was a partial corpse rotting in the sun, which, in the arid heat of the city-state, was a long process.
Li clenched her jaw. She steeled herself, slowing her accelerated heartbeat as her masters had taught her to do so many years ago.
The torture hadn’t broken her. The imprisonment hadn’t killed her resolve. And this new development—the death of a targeted liaison with whom she never should have shared any emotional connection—would not stop her. It couldn’t. She’d come too far, survived too much, for this, of all things, to break her.
Yet there Zeke was, dead. The man she’d foolishly allowed herself to love, killed by the very people she’d dedicated her life to…
Chapter Eighteen
The Watchers scowled at Zeke.
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m doing my best,” he said through the fabric of his bandana and beneath the din of the crowd surrounding them on all sides. “Remember, I found out I’m dead. You could give me a break.”
“We could,” said Uriel, “but we’d rather your failure irritate us.”
They sat in the bar where Zeke had murdered Mogilevich. It was midday, but the place was busy. A new waitress hustled from table to table while Markus worked the bar. He’d glanced at them twice but didn’t appear to take further notice, being preoccupied with the string of drink orders. They were at a table in the back corner of the room so they could observe the comings and goings of everyone in the place. They’d entered the lion’s den with much of the pride already hunting them. This was dangerous.
Uriel threw back a shot of engineered Cocuy and slammed the glass onto the table. Gabe nursed a beer. Phil lit a cigarillo and puffed it to life. Smoke hung in the air around his large head. He took a drag and blew the smoke out through his nose and tucked a lighter back into his pocket, letting the cigarillo hang as he spoke from the corner of his mouth.
“How many more places to check?” he asked. “This was number four.”
“One more,” said Zeke. “She has to be there. It’s an underground compound.”
“Connected to the tunnels?” asked Uriel. She raised her hand to get the waitress’s attention. She pointed to her shot glass.
Zeke shook his head. “No. It’s separate from everything. They store weapons there, coordinate shipments, extract information.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Extract information?”
Zeke rubbed his thumb along his ruined fingertips. “Torture. If they think someone has betrayed them, they find out, and they…”
Letting the sentence trail off, he shrugged. There wasn’t a point in delving into the details of what the Tic did in that place. Truth be told, he didn’t want to consider the possibilities of what had happened, or was happening, to Li.
The waitress arrived at the table. She wiped her hands on the filthy apron at her waist. “Another shot?”
“Two, please,” Uriel said. “Same stuff and fill it to the rim.”
The waitress pointed a finger at Gabe. “You good with the beer?”
Gabe picked up the mug and toasted her. “I’m good,” he said, with a flirtatious lilt to his tone.
“Anyone else?” she asked. She eyed Zeke, and she squinted. “What’s with the scarf?”
“It’s a bandana,” interjected Uriel. “It’s his thing. He’s trying to make it happen.”
The waitress’s eyebrows twitched with confusion. “Make it happen?”
“You know,” said Uriel, trying to explain with her hands, “make it a thing. Like a fashion statement. He’s on the leading edge of a trend.”
“A trend?” the waitress said suspiciously.
Uriel put her hand on her chest, speaking as if Zeke weren’t sitting right next to her. Leaning in, she lowered her voice. “Personally, I think it’s douchey. Nobody’s gonna wear a bandana over half their face all the time. It’s hot, it’s uncomfortable, and it smacks of someone who tries too hard.”
The waitress appeared to scrutinize the four strangers at the table. Then she settled on Uriel. “I haven’t seen you in here before. Are you making a run from another protectorate?”
Zeke spoke up before Uriel could answer. “Isn’t it your job to bring us drinks and not ask questions?” he said firmly. “If I remember from the last time I was in here, Mogilevich had rules about talking to customers and whatnot. Right?”
The waitress nodded sheepishly. “I’ll get the Cocuy.” She hurried off toward the bar.
“Douchey?” Zeke grumped to Uriel. “Really? Aren’t you supposedly an angel? Not a demon?”
“Yeah,” said Gabe. “With her it’s debatable.”
“We should go,” said Zeke. “We shouldn’t be wasting time here now that we know Li isn’t here. Every minute we waste—”
Phil held up a hand to stop him, took another drag of the thin, sweet-smelling cigarillo, and blew the smoke out in twin streams from his nostrils. He tapped the ashes into a black plastic tray at the center of the table and pointed at Zeke with the ashy end of the butt. “We’ll head out in a minute, as soon as Uriel throws back her shots. If we hustle out of here, we’ll draw attention to ourselves. Better to act natural.”
Zeke scanned the bar. He didn’t notice Markus staring at him as the waitress whispered into his ear.
“Can people see you?” Zeke wondered aloud to the Watchers sitting with him in the corner of the dank watering hole. “I mean, I know they can see you. I guess, how can people see you? How can they see me? We’re dead.”
“You want me to take this?” asked Gabe, checking with Uriel and Phil.
They nodded their consent. Gabe took a sip of his beer and planted the mug with a heavy thunk that spilled the foamy, pale liquid over the rim and sloshed it onto the table. “We’re all dead, but we’re not dead. We’re in that middle ground between life and death. We can walk amongst mortals, act as them, mingle with them.”
“Be intimate with them,” Uriel cut in. “And let me say, there is nothing like doing it with a Watcher. It’s heavenly. Or so I’m frequently told.”
“That’s the perfect segue,” said Gabe. “We’re not in heaven; we’re not in hell. We’re—”
“In purgatory,” said Zeke. “Seeking redemption. Trying to earn our wings?”
“More or less,” said Gabe. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Phil?”
Phil flicked the back of the butt with his thumb and then smashed it into the ashtray. “There’s good and evil everywhere. Not just here, not just now. It’s always existed. It’s the balance of things. To know good, you must know evil. To know light, you must know darkness.”
“To everything there is a season?” Zeke surmised.
“Not really,” said Phil. “And it’s not right. There’s not a purpose for everything. Some things just happen. Anyhow, as I was saying—”
“Sorry I interrupted,” Zeke apologized.
“As you do it again,” Uriel chastised with a smirk.
“As I was saying,” repeated Phil, “we have a job as Watchers. We seek out where there are imbalances. When there’s too much of something, our job is to tip the scales back to an even balance.”
Zeke blinked. “Wait, you’re saying that sometimes you fight on the side of good, and sometimes you fight for more evil?”
“That’s an oversimplification of it,” said Gabe.
“But yes,” said Uriel.
“This is a place with too much wickedness,” said Phil. “So we’re here to help with the recalibration.”
“Is that why you’re allowed to kill people?” asked Zeke. “I mean, that would seem to be an immediate disqualifier for an angel, or whatever we are.”
“It’s part of the balance,” said Gabe. “We’re empowered to do whatever we need to in the course of restoring stability between the good and the not so good.”
Zeke’s eyes widened. “And you’re helping me because you think I’m good?”
“No,” said Gabe flatly. “You’re the cog that got this gear spinning. That’s it.”
“That’s not entirely it,” corrected Phil. “Redemption does have a role to play, but, like we’ve said multiple times. It’s compl—”
A pair of loud blasts punctured the air, like the sound of two metal sheets clanging together. Screams and the clattering of people scattering or grabbing their weapons followed. Mouth agape, the color draining from his face, Phil’s chin dropped as he reached for the back of his head with a trembling hand.
Zeke saw the blood leaking from the corners of Phil’s mouth in the instant before the big man sank in his chair, wavered, and dropped face-first onto the table. His nose smashed onto the hard wood with a sickening crack. The bowler hat flipped off his head and rolled onto the floor.
Behind Phil, moving forward with purpose and a raised rifle, was Markus. His body jerked from the recoil as he sent another volley of shots toward the Watchers.
Zeke dove to the floor, as did Uriel. Gabe took a shot in the shoulder, but freed one of his fighting sticks as he spun and rolled onto the floor.
He sprang to his feet and whipped the stick at Markus. But the barkeep was fast on the trigger. His M27 unloaded another trio of shots, which hit Gabe’s center mass. Still, somehow, the warrior struck Markus with the weapon. It glowed blue as its energy pulsed and sent a shock wave through Markus’s body.
The barkeep spasmed and dropped his rifle. He cried out in pain and dropped to one knee. Other Tics were scrambling to gather their wits and their weapons.
Uriel was on her feet now and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a pair of them. Her body glowed as she kicked and spun at her opponents. They were no match for her.
All of this had unfolded within seconds. Zeke returned to his feet and tried to help Phil, but it was too late. A pair of spaced holes had bored through the back of the big man’s neck. Zeke’s hand came away wet and painted with his friend’s blood.
They might not be alive, but it was impossible to know from the carnage in front of him. Bullets whizzed past Zeke’s head and splintered the wall behind him. He ducked and knocked over a chair.
It was chaos. He reached for his revolver, but stopped short. He couldn’t fire at Markus with Gabe in the fight or at the men engaged with Uriel. It was too risky. So he reached behind him and grabbed Uriel’s M27.
He knew she’d reloaded it with a fresh magazine and that it was ready to fire. He aimed at the struggling Markus, who was working to get to his feet, and applied pressure to the trigger.
The rifle barked, repeatedly recoiling against his shoulder. Keeping the trigger depressed, a quintet of shots kicked from the barrel and rocketed into Markus. His body jerked with each of the impacts in a macabre dance, and the bartender collapsed to the floor.
Zeke caught a man taking aim at Uriel with his own handgun. He was shielded behind an overturned table. Zeke shouted a warning to her, swung the barrel toward the Tic, and pulled the trigger. A short burst of rounds shot from the automatic rifle, peppering the face of the overturned table until the horizontal line tracing the impact of 5.56-millimeter rounds found the target’s face and erased it.
Zeke whirled toward the door in time to see three Tics trying to leave. They weren’t armed as far as he could tell. It didn’t matter. He leveled the rifle and pulled the trigger. It pounded against his shoulder and jackhammered rounds into the trio.
One slamm
ed against the wall and slid to the floor, leaving a bloody Rorschach on the painted plaster. The other two fell into each other, tackling one another to the ground.
Zeke released the trigger, uncertain how much of the fifty-round magazine he’d emptied. Hands tingling, his body vibrated from the aftershock of the heavy fire, and he spun to see the waitress crouched against the bar, curled into a ball, her hands over her ears.
He shifted to see Uriel slam her palm into the chest of an outmatched Tic. His body shot backward and he crashed to the floor several feet from where he’d stood an instant before. The blue glow pulsed on Uriel’s skin, strobing and weakening with what Zeke imagined was each of her successive heartbeats.
Nobody else moved in the bar other than him and Uriel. She glanced at him before darting to Gabe. The Watcher lay on his back, holding a stick in the tight grip of his left hand. Somehow, he still breathed, but it was labored and audible. The only other sound was the whimpering waitress at the bar.
Zeke crossed the room and aimed the rifle at the woman. Adrenaline coursed through his body. His rapid pulse thumped in his ears, the rush of blood deafening.
It didn’t matter to him that the Watchers couldn’t truly die, that they were already somewhere between life and death. It was irrelevant that Phil, and likely Gabe, were rejoining Barach and Raf, who’d undoubtedly been caught by Badlanders. What mattered was that the Tic had tried to kill them in cold blood.
“Get up,” he snapped at the waitress.
Behind him, Uriel was offering solace to Gabe as he clung to whatever his existence was. Uriel, the tough, sarcastic, strutting double entendre, was crying. He could hear it in her voice as she reminded Gabe that everything would be fine, that this was temporary, and the eternal awaited him.
The waitress stood shakily. Her legs quaked. She appeared as though she might vomit right there. Then she did, retching chunks of indistinguishable rations onto the floor, on her shoes, on her shirt, and the already nasty apron that clung to her waist.