by Tom Harem
"I'm going to smoke then," Elisa said.
"Do you smoke too?" I asked her.
"Not really, but I've always smoked before a dangerous mission. It helps me calm down." She answered me.
Kendra and I crossed the crosswalk and entered the pastry shop next to an old tavern with the name written on a wooden sign above the entrance. There were two girls in the corner. They were drinking a cup of coffee and each ate a slice of chocolate cake that was still hot and melting on its sides.
"Good morning, what are you looking for?" A gentleman, already in his 50s, asked us. He had a soft smile with a steel tooth on the bottom of his mouth.
"It's six of those still warm loaves of bread and six of these cupcakes," I told him and pointed to the showcase where there were a dozen vanilla cakes with thin caramel linings and chocolate chippings on top of them.
He bagged the slices of bread and put the cakes in a little box. Then he pulled the Hunters' ATM version out of a drawer on his side. I ran my Hunter app through the code bar and the money was deducted from my account. We thanked him and he wished us a good day. When we left, two young men, scrawny and with visible facial bones, smoked two cigarettes outside the tavern. Their hands were swollen, trembling, and their eyes were empty and lifeless. They had no cheeks and the skin appeared to be being pulled in until there was not much left. It was a sad sight, almost haunting, because I knew that could have been my future if I hadn't been accepted at the Hunters Academy. It wasn't that there was no other job for me, something I could learn to do, it was just that there was nothing that I wanted, not even half as much as I wanted to be a Hunter. And if I didn't fight until I lacked the strength and the breath, for my dream, how could I live my future knowing that it was only the remains that were left of what I had lost?
"Are you all right, James?" Kendra asked me, watching me standing there, with the hot bread bag getting cold.
"Yes, you know I have this habit of getting distracted." I said, "What about you? We haven't had many opportunities to speak these past few days."
"I'm fine. I am only to blame for my sister being a murderer, a gun dealer and one of the most wanted criminals on this continent."
"Do you really believe that?"
"She sacrificed herself for me! She had no right to do so."
"Okay, true, but do you understand why she did it? She wanted all that and you didn't. Don't you think she saved you? Even if she did it for her."
"Maybe, but right now, I don't want to think about it too much."
"You may not get another chance to do it."
"What do you mean by that?" She asked me and looked at me, her black eyes scrutinizing my soul.
"It's a risky mission. Something could happen to one of us. We shouldn't go in there with regrets or unspoken words."
"And since when did you become a cheap philosopher?"
"It's one of my many sides," I answered her and came up to her. Our cold breaths, whitish as ghosts in the daylight, intermingled. I placed my free hand on her back and drove her close to me. I kissed her cold lips and bit them before I walked away, "for good luck." I told her before I headed to the crosswalk.
I still heard her trying to stifle her laughter. She followed me and we returned to the alley where they were. Maggie and Victoria were sitting on the van floor, at the edge of the back door, Lipa was smoking her cigarette and Kendra was about to finish her. Only Lipa was prepared for that cold weather.
"Damn it. You could have warned us that low temperatures were waiting for us here."
"I didn't think I'd have to. We won't be spending much time in this area either. Is everybody ready? Let's get going. There are some blankets in some of those containers. The others contain fruit."
I looked inside. Dozens of sealed boxes, according to her filled with fruit, covering the entire ample space. There was only a small square of free space, at the bottom of the van, where they had settled.
"Are we seriously taking fruit?" I asked Lipa.
"Of course. You guys are really new at this. What if they decide to peek into it? We can't get caught that easily, can we?"
"What if they see us?" Vic asked him.
"Why do you think the boxes in the entrance are taller? At most, they'll check to see if they have any fruit, really. They're not going to look in the whole van, I guess."
"You think so?" Vic asked again.
"This is no exact science. When we get there, James will text you and you'll move a few of the boxes to the middle. It should help to cover you up."
"Couldn't we do this at night?" Maggie asked, "By the way, speaking of the cold." She said it and snapped her fingers. A drop-shaped flame sprang up in her hand. We all got close to her except Lipa. The breeze heated up as we rubbed our hands and felt the heat grazing our faces.
"There was only this delivery scheduled for today. It was our only chance." Lipa answered. She tossed her cigarette on the floor and stepped on it until the smoke dissipated, "Let's go."
We stayed a few more seconds by the flames. Lipa had already climbed onto her seat and slammed the window by my side.
"We better go. We can do this. It's going to be all right." Vic said. She sighed as she climbed into the van one more time. The others followed her. I went to my seat and we got back on the road. Lipa spent the whole trip with her eyes on the road, sometimes appreciating the hills and rows that flanked both sides of the road, but never looking at me.
"We're getting there." She said after making a detour to a campsite, where a road, in the middle of nowhere, led us into a forest.
"Are you sure we're in the right place?" I asked her.
"Yeah. What better place to have an illegal lab than a place like this? Hidden from the general population?"
"You're right, but in the middle of a forest or whatever this is? It must have something to do with their master scientist's pet mania."
"What are you talking about?" Lipa asked me.
She drove through the forest's zigzags, past dead trees, dull plants, and even colorless bushes. Dozens of thick wires traversed the entire forest from one end to the other. Whatever they were leaving along the way, probably radiation, was killing the surrounding wildlife. A forest with greyish trunks and a rancid smell that stretched for tens of meters. I took advantage of the trip to explain to her why all beasts looked like insects, mentioning, over and over again, how strange it was that there weren't any animals in the area. Not alive, dead, or even mutated by the smell or the radiation. There wasn't a living soul out there.
"Strange, but it makes sense," Lipa answered me.
"I even understand him. Not the whole world domination part but the part of surrounding himself with animals when he had no one else." I told her, " I had never been through what he went through but we all had lonely moments."
"I assume so." She said, straining away from the conversation, "Look, there."
Chapter IV
Ahead of us, just meters away, was a lab that stretched out over vast yards. With its rectangular shape and oval white roof, a car entrance on the far right, the laboratory existed in a world of its own. Nature had no domain there. Science overlapped wildlife. The sea of trees stayed behind and made room for the gravelly soil. The road widened in two directions; one for those who worked there and the other for people like us who were only there to deliver supplies. There was still a solar-panel park. The sun shone there, the golden light changing to a silver shade that reflected on the iron gates that surrounded the entire laboratory. There were two well-armed men in dark green uniforms supervising the gate. Lipa stopped near them and waited for them to meet us.
"Fruit?" One of them asked. He was bald, tattooed and kept his arm shrunk and the gun up to his chest while he was talking.
"Yes. You can confirm that if you want." Lipa answered him. Her voice didn't tremble. Neither her fingers nor her legs. She lied easily without taking her eyes off the man.
"I need to do it." He said and asked us to get out, "Open the back door.
"
I slid the door and strayed away from it. Sun rays snuck out among the clouds and brightened the interior of the van. The security guard peered inside and didn't suspect a thing. Then he pulled out one of the boxes, opened it and chewed one of the green apples. A trail of saliva ran down his chin goatee.
"Good shit. I'll take this one." He said and put the lid on top of the box. "Come on in."
"Wait." The other man, who had a pimple on his lower lip and an unshaven beard, said, "We must search you."
"Is it really necessary?" I said, "We don't have anything that's not allowed."
"That's up to us." The man said. His partner was delighting himself with the apple. He hadn't even peeled it off.
Luckily Lipa had warned me that that could happen, and we had hidden our weapons in a secret compartment under the floor. The man groped me from my shoulders to my knees and did the same to Elisa.
"Watch where you're touching me." She repeated it while he roamed through her body.
He returned with the other man to their cabin, still chewing the apple, and with the gun by his hip.
"Too bad we can't eliminate them now." Lipa said, "Oh, well, let's do this."
"You like this, don't you? The adrenaline rush, the possibility that you might have to kill someone?" I asked her.
"I take no pleasure in killing someone. But when it must be, it must be. If I don't shoot first, the other person will. I can't hesitate." She said, driving down the asphalt road that led us to the lab basement. Two muscular men, wearing yellow overalls and blue shorts, were waiting for us at the entrance.
"Wasn't this supposed to be empty?" I asked Lipa.
"Shit. Yes, it was." She replied.
The men were walking towards us. The tip of the leather boots stepped on the concrete floor and the sound propagated throughout the warehouse. There were only shelves, empty boxes and transportation vehicles for the supplies. Every step they took was like a pinch in my heart, the strings pressing it until my heartbeat was nearly nil.
Even though I wasn't sweating, a drop slipped down from my forehead to my left cheek. My heart was racing even faster. I already had my hand by my gun when Lipa tapped my shoulder and nodded her head.
"I'll take care of this. Act normal." She said.
I didn't like to be in her hands, but she was the expert there. I couldn't risk the whole mission because of my ego. One of the men knocked on her side window and she rolled it open.
"Yes?" She said.
"We're here to help you with the cargo." The man said. Her partner was just a few feet away from him, staring at me.
Lipa opened the door, got out, and walked around the van.
"Isn't he coming?" The older man, with his untrimmed sideburns and wrinkled skin, asked.
"He has to call our boss and let him know we're here. He was afraid we'd get lost. But two strong men like you can do this without his help, can't you?" She asked them.
"Yes, of course. We don't need his help for anything!" The youngest replied, clenching his hands and flexing his muscular shoulders in front of her.
She laughed, played with her hair, stirring through the threads, and leaned her ass against the van's wall. She leaned her back to further accentuate her ass and the men looked at her, nearly drooling, lost in her hookup web.
"Can you begin? Please? I don't want to be late." She said, in her typical high-pitched voice, like a baby who needs someone to take care of her.
They went straight to work. They were taking out box by box while she pretended to polish her nails. As soon as they both got into the van to take out a few more boxes she took out two pink metal bars with the round edges sealed from her pocket and hid them behind her back. She smiled at the men again as they unloaded the boxes on the floor, stretching with their backs to her. She walked up to them, and on the way pressed a button on both spears, which lengthened them until they were the size of her legs. They didn't even have time to turn around and see what struck them. She hit both on the head and they fainted on the spot, tumbling over the boxes and shattering them, the apples and pears rolling across the warehouse floor.
As Kendra had told me, her sister knew how to use several type of weapons.
"You can come out of there." She said, by the back door, "You brought tape, right?"
"Yes, I came prepared," Victoria answered her and, from the brown handbag she had attached to her waist, she removed the tape and a pair of scissors.
"You've come more than well prepared," Maggie said it and laughed.
I took a deep breath before I jumped out of the van. It was time to take matters into my own hands instead of standing back and watching them happen.
"Arrest them and cover their mouths. We better put them in that room. I think it's the pantry. I doubt anybody's going to come in here and be suspicious."
"Yes, boss," Maggie said and winked at me.
"Now I understand why Ashen wouldn't like to be called that. It's weird." I said it.
"You should get used to it," Maggie said, "I'm glad everything's going well so far."
"Yeah, but we can't stick around. We have to hurry before they ask themselves why we're taking so long." Elisa said.
Kendra already had a piece of tape on her hands and glued them to the men's skin and lips while Vic used it as if it were a tattered rope tight enough to hold them there. I grabbed them both by the collar and dragged them down to the pantry, whose Maggie door had already opened, and tossed them in there. Lipa and I took off our uniforms and kept them inside the van.
"Through that door, right?" I asked Victoria. Even though we all memorized the plan, it was up to her to know every detail.
"Yes, the first one is a red one. The next one's the white one, second on the left." She answered me.
We were ready. As a group of superheroes, and even anti-heroes, who were about to venture out even knowing the likely consequences, we made our way through the concrete path, climbed the two small slopes leading to the door and stopped before we opened it.
"Keep your weapons close." I warned them before I opened the door and peered, "Nobody. We can move on."
A lengthy corridor with several doors on both sides, illuminated by five lamps, and with a dustbin at the main door entrance, right in front of ours. It was a double blue door with an iron bar in a corner and a paper in the middle stating "Pull, not Push." We stepped into the corridor, turned right towards the desired door, and sneaked into it. We knew there were no guards in that hallway. Not since he was rebuilt. The plant Poe had given us had all that information.
It was an old corridor with a flashing light, almost blown out, the walls covered with advertisements from years ago and smelled as if someone had died there a long time ago, but the smell had prevailed. That hallway led to an old bathroom. It was only used by a few former employees who had become accustomed to it or by young people in emergencies at times when the rest of the toilets had someone. No one had cleaned it in months. There were rolls of toilet paper unrolled over the floor that reeked of piss. Two of the cubicles had the door ajar and the third one was open and had hand-shaped shit marks on the wall.
"Now what?" Maggie asked.
"Well, according to the plants, there must be some kind of passage over here." Vic said as she banged the tiles until she finally hit a hollow one, "Okay, here. We have to break this wall."
Lipa saved one of the metal bars, stretched the other and began tearing down the wall.
"That way we'll take too long. I've got an idea. Elisa freeze the whole wall, even the filaments in between the tiles."
Elisa stepped forward and put her hand on the wall. Within seconds, threads of crystalline blue sprang out of her hand pores and scattered across the wall until it crystallized and was frozen. I didn't even have to tell Lipa to come forward. She handed me her metal bar and took hers out of her pocket. Together we started digging the wall until fissures burst in the ice and the whole wall collapsed. Pieces of frozen rock fell apart on the damp ground and, ahead
of us, the tunnel they had tried to hide during the renovations. We crossed over to the other side. It was a pantry; brooms and buckets were leaning against the wall in the opposite corners and there was also a crate of lost belongings. The light was off, but Maggie had raised a flame small enough to enlighten the place but not to draw any attention to us before we got out of there.
"Left now, right?" I asked Vic.
"Yeah, first door. But be careful, there must be two guards out there."
"I'll take care of that. Stay here." I told them.
I raided the lost belongings box and pulled a jacket out of it. I wore it, straightened it and peeked into the hallway. A guard on each side as expected. I stepped out of there as if I belonged to that place. I even whistled and sang like I didn't care if they saw me.
"Excuse me. Who are you?" One of the guards asked me. They both started moving towards me.
I was patting the inside of my pants pocket with two fingers, "I'm one of the scientists. Don't you recognize me?' I answered him.
"I've never seen you around here before." One of them answered. They had the same dark green uniforms as their colleagues in the lobby, "ID, please."
"Oh, you're asking me today that I forgot about it. You really don't remember me? Not even you?" I said and looked at the other one.
He seemed a little confused. He was a cross-eyed man in his 30s with dandruff on his eyebrows, "I've never seen you around here..." he said and looked at the other man who had to be his superior.
"I'm not going to ask you again. Identification. Now." The older one said.
Both of them had already gotten close to me and had me surrounded. That was exactly what I intended. I couldn't beat them from afar, but up close it didn't seem that hard to me. We had trained handicapped hand-to-hand combat hundreds of times over the 3 years at the academy. I could see their movements in slow-motion; how they put one foot before the other while walking, their hands swinging close to their bodies, the youngest of them blinking an eye, and the guns shape under their sweatshirts. As soon as one of them stretched out his hand to reach over my shoulder, I dodged it, twisted his arm and kicked him in the face. In less than five seconds one of them was already down, whining about the pain, while the younger one looked at both, not knowing what to do. I don't think he was ever placed in that position before. He didn't even defend himself when I hit him with a right hook in the stomach. He wriggled, still on his feet, but a well-directed punch to his chin was enough to knock him round to the ground. The older one was still stirring his fingers and I noticed that his hand was getting closer to the inside of his trouser pocket. I kicked him in the face, and he got unconscious as well.