The Old Ones were outsiders. They weren’t part of The Plan for this reality. Their intrusion into this world would change everything. Too many humans were soft, weak, easily swayed, and they’d worship anything that was sufficiently powerful, and the Old Ones were powerful beyond mortal comprehension. If they had enough worshippers, then the lines between worlds would blur, and our reality would fall under their jurisdiction. Humans didn’t seem to realize just how good they had it, living under their current benevolent steward, with crazy ideas like free will and eternal progress. Humans thought small. They had a hard time realizing that the Old Ones took the long view. They were vindictive and spiteful masters. Let them take over and they’d own humanity from before they were born and for an eternity after they died. All mankind would witness Hell for themselves. So yes, he occasionally had to shorten an already short mortal life to keep that from happening. They were collateral damage. And when that was necessary, it was better for him to be the one to pull the trigger than some poor soft human who still possessed a soul that could be damaged by the act. Franks’ immortal spirit was already an irreparable mass of scar tissue. He had no humanity to sacrifice. It was best if he was the one to drop the hammer.
So he shrugged.
“I don’t know, Agent Franks. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Do your job right and you won’t have to.”
* * *
The Spider appeared to be an Asian female in her late teens. The humans in the van had unconsciously placed themselves as far away from the Tsuchigumo as possible within the tight confines of their vehicle. Kurst sat directly next to the creature. Its presence did not bother him. Its illusion magic would affect his eyes but was not nearly strong enough to cloud his mind.
The creature’s mask was very convincing, with wide eyes and a bubbly schoolgirl demeanor. During his current existence the doctors had exposed him to many popular culture materials, so that he could better blend in with human societies, so he understood that the Japanese schoolgirl act was supposed to be attractive to some humans. The Spider put one delicate hand on Kurst’s bicep. “Ooh, you such a strong big man.”
Kurst had only had this flesh body for a short time, but he’d been watching the mortal world for centuries. Long ago his spirit had observed such perverted beasts take on the form of beautiful women to seduce unsuspecting men, before spinning them into a silken cocoon and sucking their life out. The Spider was wasting its time on him.
He put a small measure of his true power into his response and whispered in the old tongue. “I am not food for you. I am your better.”
It hadn’t expected to hear him speak in such a manner. The Spider recoiled in horror as it realized it had bothered something far more dangerous than itself. For just a split second the mask slipped, and Kurst was staring into dozens of black eyes and hairy mandibles, but then the illusion returned before any of the humans noticed. It scooted as far away from him on the seat as possible.
“Did someone say something?” Foster asked from the driver’s seat. No one answered. “Damned bunch of freaks,” he muttered under his breath.
In addition to Kurst, the passenger van carried four human overseers, two of Kurst’s siblings, the Tsuchigumo, and a human under a Fey curse named Renfroe. Stricken’s plan was cunning, and Kurst was impressed with how even if they failed to eliminate their primary target it would still be a victory. However, Kurst did not plan on failing.
He had waited a very long time to see Franks again.
Franks is mine. You may hurt him, but I’m the one that gets to send him back to Hell.
The other two Nemesis assets received the message and understood. Stricken and his scientists were unaware that their Nemesis creations could communicate freely with each other telepathically. It had amused him to discover that STFU was so oblivious to the horrors they had invited into their world. Each of the thirteen spirits who had claimed these powerful new bodies had been leaders among the Fallen, but Kurst had outranked them in the before time. They would do exactly what he ordered now.
The streets of the American capital city were empty this early in the morning. Steam rose from manhole covers. Kurst liked how the buildings here were gilded palaces. Pride was what had gotten his kind exiled, yet how quickly mortals forgot themselves and erected marble monuments to their own meager power. He hated humans so much.
“That’s the MCB building. Get ready,” Foster said.
“There are four cameras on us.” Renfroe could sense such things. The tall, extremely skinny, bespectacled man was still a human being, but he had peculiar abilities that made him just odd enough to be on the ragged edge of being PUFF-applicable.
“Don’t disrupt them until I tell you to,” Foster ordered. He was listening to an earpiece connected to the command center. “Spider, the second that door slides open, I want you doing your thing, just like we talked about.”
The Tsuchigumo giggled. “Yes, Mr. Foster.” Her fake accent was cloying.
They were coming up on the back gate of the MCB’s parking garage. It was deceptively heavy duty. “Do your thing, Renfroe.” The gate immediately began sliding aside. The guard waved them through as his computer informed him their plumbing van was expected. “Nice.”
“We’re on the schedule. I told their system we’re emergency maintenance and backdated a service request to forty minutes ago.”
“You’re the best IT guy ever.”
The van went down a ramp into a concrete chamber. This area was safely separated from the main building in case of car bombs. A pair of uniformed guards came out of a door, one leading a dog, and another with a mirror on a long handle. Their human overseers in the vehicle all had firearms, but that was more for the Nemesis prototypes than the MCB. Other guards would be watching the vehicle, and an alarm this early would cause a lockdown. If they were spotted, Kurst knew he would have to kill everyone quickly, then flee, and Franks would remain out of his reach.
“You know what to do, Spider.”
The human overseers shifted nervously. They were depending on the Tsuchigumo’s desire for a PUFF exemption to keep the treacherous creature in line. A uniformed guard approached the driver’s side window. Foster told him something about a plumbing issue, but it was drowned out by a sudden buzzing in Kurst’s ears. The interior of the van seemed to quiver. The side door slid open and the guard with the dog looked inside, eyes glazing over as he scanned them. It was as if they weren’t there at all. The guard didn’t even notice that his dog seemed extremely frightened, whimpering and tugging on its leash. He closed the door.
The guard smacked his hand against the side of the van, signaling Foster that they were good to proceed. The strange noise and shifting visual cues tapered off. Impressive. Kurst studied the Japanese creature. He could see where such tricks could be useful in his future plans. He would need to enslave a few of these things.
The plumbing van went down the ramp and then they were beneath MCB headquarters. It was empty except for a handful of black vehicles with tinted windows and government plates, so Foster was able to park near the main doors. A few of the humans pulled out tablet computers. “Renfroe, start messing with their security systems,” Foster ordered. “The rest of you know what to do.”
Kurst put in a radio earpiece, opened the door, and stepped into the chilly garage. The Spider and the other two Nemesis soldiers followed. They had not taken mortal names yet, so the female was still known as Prototype Nine and the male was Prototype Four. They were all dressed in the basic business attire appropriate for MCB employees. Kurst had worn the same type of dark suit that he’d been told Franks preferred. That would make the Spider’s assignment easier.
They entered the lobby. A fat human was sitting at the guard station, tapping at his keyboard and scowling at his monitor. “Plumbing problems?” He looked up and saw Kurst approaching. Only Kurst could see the light bending around his form and hear the strange frequency of the Tsuchigumo’s magic in his ears. The illusion
must have been perfect. “Agent Franks? I didn’t expect you—”
Kurst reached over, grabbed the back of the guard’s head, and flattened his skull against the heavy desk. The body rolled out of the chair and lay on the ground, one foot twitching wildly.
“What the hell?” Renfroe demanded over the radio. “You told me they were going to sneak in. Nobody was supposed to get killed!”
“Change of plans. Get uppity about it and whatever weirdass electrical ghost thing you’ve got goes on the PUFF list tomorrow,” Foster snapped back. “Now make sure you tweak the time stamp on that murder so it coincides with their exit.”
The others were already waiting at the correct elevator. Kurst joined them. The door closed behind them. The Spider pointed at the hidden panel. Kurst went to it and spoke. “Franks. One.”
“Forcing voice pattern recognition.” A glowing ball of light appeared in the elevator car with them. The will-o’-the-wisp bounced about wildly as Renfroe’s voice come from inside of it. “Adjusting scanners. Changing weights. Damn. The Spider is ugly as hell on the X-ray . . . What is she? Okay, okay, never mind. That’s gone. And now it’s just Franks in here. All records match. Changing the logs so he’s going rather than coming . . . Okay. You’re good. Camera on the other side is live.”
“I give them good show,” the Spider said. Then she covered her mouth with both hands and blushed, as if she was jealous of all the attention.
The blast door rolled open. Two tired MCB guards were on the other side. To their eyes and to the camera above them it was the hulking form of Agent Franks that entered the security room.
“Evening, er, morning, Agent Franks. I hadn’t been told you’d left the building.”
Kurst ignored them, walked to the lockers, and picked out the number Stricken had supplied him with. He balled up one fist and slammed it through the sheet metal. Kurst yanked the door off the hinges, then reached back inside and pulled out a Glock 20. The guards were surprised, briefly, then he shot them dead with a single well-placed round each.
“And cut,” Foster said. “Beautiful. That’s the opening scene of our masterpiece. I call it Franks goes on a rampage.”
The metal detector buzzed as Kurst went through it. He’d sensed more heartbeats on the other side of a partition. There were two more guards there and he intercepted them as they came out. They had their sidearms drawn, but their human reactions were far too slow to keep up with his movements. He shot the one who was further away in the throat, then took hold of the closer of the two and hurled him into the nearest concrete wall hard enough to break half the bones in his body. Kurst took a moment to take the guard’s spare magazines of MCB-issued silver 10mm, while Four and Nine entered and took the other two pistols and all the magazines from the locker. Ballistic testing would show that the bullets pulled from the victims’ bodies came from Franks’ issue weapons.
You know what to do.
The four of them went to the real elevator. “Cameras show your primary target is in his office,” Foster told them over the radio. Kurst pushed the button for the ninth floor. “Secondary target stopped at the cafeteria on the third floor.” Kurst pushed that button as well. “Spider, can you disguise multiple assets at the same time across that much distance?”
“Yes, Mr. Foster. I do my best for you!”
“Okay, Renfroe, you’ve got some editing to do. Make it seamless.”
The three Nemesis prototypes waited patiently while the Tsuchigumo hid in the back. Two of them were wearing heavy backpacks. One pack had already been left at the security checkpoint. They rode in silence. Kurst did not need to give the order. At the third floor, Nine stepped out and walked away silently. She would take care of their secondary target. They continued upward.
The door slid open. The ninth floor was a maze of cubicles and offices. This was the administrative center of the Monster Control Bureau. There were a handful of people there, a few MCB employees, and some janitors vacuuming and dumping trash baskets. Franks would be on the far side of the space.
Kurst lifted the stolen 10mm and shot a janitor in the spine.
* * *
Gunshot.
Franks unconsciously reached for a pistol, only to find his holsters empty. Fucking Stark.
“We’re under attack.” Franks stood up and went to the doorway, listening carefully and picking apart the patterns. Handguns. Two shooters. Screaming. It sounded like standard MCB 10mm, and he’d been around a lot of those over the last decade, but what were his people shooting at? Had another monster got through? “Call it in.”
Strayhorn was also futilely reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t there as he went to Franks’ desk. He grabbed the phone and dialed the MCB’s internal operator. “We’ve got shots fired on the ninth floor.”
Franks took a quick glance around the edge of the door. “Hmmm . . .” He did not surprise easily but then again, it isn’t often that you saw a mirror image of yourself executing the janitorial staff. The man who looked exactly like him spotted Franks and raised his pistol. Franks stepped back as the frosted glass shattered and a bullet zipped through his office to slam into a stack of binders. Franks scowled. Curious.
Holes appeared in the walls around them. Another bullet smashed the desk phone and Strayhorn took cover. The rookie struck him as relatively calm. “What do we do? We’ve all been disarmed.”
And that was totally unacceptable. Franks would not have lasted one century, let alone three, if he hadn’t been consistently prepared. Walking to the far wall, he ran his hand down the Sheetrock, looking for the right spot. More bullets flew through the office. Their attacker was trying to pin them down, which meant someone else was probably maneuvering up on them. Strayhorn rolled behind the desk when the lamp on top of it shattered. The rookie was looking for something to use as a weapon when he saw Franks poking at the wall. “What’re you doing?”
They had remodeled this floor after the cinder beast had burned it. Franks had seen the construction as an opportunity . . . Stupid policies came and went as the MCB changed stupid managers, but paranoia was forever. There. He found the right spot and then slammed his hand through the Sheetrock.
Franks tugged the old Colt Commando out of the wall. It was covered in dust and spider webs, but he’d thoroughly oiled the weapon before stashing it. He pulled back the charging handle and it felt as slick as when he’d hidden it there years before during the building’s remodel. He let the bolt fly forward to chamber a round. There were at least two shooters. The sounds told him they were taking turns firing on his office while the other reloaded. A bullet punched through the wall and tore an inch of skin from his bicep. Franks frowned as his blood sluggishly rolled through the gash. This was his newest suit.
He turned back. The MCB night shift’s skeleton crew were either running or taking cover between the thin walls of the cubicles. Papers and debris were flying everywhere. The attackers were firing blind. Franks could do that too. He watched the bullet holes appear through the carpeted walls, calculated the angle, shouldered the Colt, flipped the selector to full and ripped a horizontal burst through the cubicles in response. The stubby barrel of the Colt was extremely loud in the enclosed space and the muzzle flash was enormous.
The shooting from that direction stopped.
“Stay down.” Franks went to the doorway, looking for the first shooter. The double had to be a doppelganger or something of that nature, but those things died easily enough when you started pumping them full of bullets. But there was no sign of his duplicate. There were bodies on the floor, some injured, some dead. There was too much movement. People were running for the stairs. The shooter had to be here some—
A shape crashed through the cubicles. A section of wall was being pushed directly toward him. Franks moved the muzzle of the Colt over and opened fire, but it was coming at him so fast he was only able to put half a dozen rounds through it before the wall hit him. He braced for impact.
Franks was not used to being bowled over.
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The Colt went spinning across the carpet as he was flung back into his office. Up in an instant, Franks turned to meet the threat. The partition was tossed aside, revealing what appeared to be a normal man. Early twenties, Hispanic, six foot one, one eighty, dressed in a black suit, but from the way he was ignoring several grisly rifle wounds to the chest, probably not a human. Franks launched himself forward, swinging for the man’s head.
The attack was intercepted by a raised forearm. Bones collided, and Franks came away with one arm stinging.
That was unusual.
Without any hesitation, Franks attacked with everything he had. It was a blur of fists, elbows, and knees. The man slid back across the carpet, taking the pounding, but protecting his head and torso. Then he countered, hands flashing back and forth with incredible speed. Franks barely managed to swat them aside. Dozens of blows were exchanged in a matter of seconds. A ridged hand that made the air whistle ripped a red line across Franks’ forehead.
Another. Franks pulled back, trying to save his eyes, but his back hit the wall. Fingers cut through his cheek. Not claws. Fingers. Franks swung, but the man ducked, and Franks hit nothing but air. His opponent came right back up and hooked a fist into Franks’ abdomen. The blow lifted him off the ground. Hands landed on his shoulders and Franks was jerked forward, spun around, and tossed hard into a nearby desk.
The man was coming after him.
His opponent stepped onto the fallen cube wall, so Franks kicked it out from under him. They both came up at the same time, but Franks had a head start and that was all it took. He slammed one fist into the man’s face, and then Franks was hitting him with blows that would break cinder blocks. And he knew that for a fact because he practiced on cinder blocks. His opponent made the smallest mistake, dropping one hand a bit too late, and Franks drove a quick jab into his mouth. A human jaw would have exploded. He turned a bit, and Franks snap-kicked him in the stomach. The shot would have staggered a vampire.
The man took a single step back and blinked.
Monster Hunter Nemesis Page 8