The immigration officer looked up from the Taiwanese passport he had been presented with, checking the photograph against the face. The photo did not do her justice, but then passport pictures were notorious for that. She was a beautiful woman, her face a little narrower than classic Chinese features would give, high, arched eyebrows sat over pale-brown, almost amber, eyes. There was a straight, petite nose and red-painted lips with a pronounced bow. She was wearing one of those high-collared dresses you saw in Chinese movies, red with a flower pattern woven into the material, and the officer could see some sort of flower tattooed on her throat rising up what little he could see of her neck.
‘Rose Hung,’ she added when he did not immediately continue.
‘Are you here on business or for pleasure?’
‘A little of both. My company has sent me to negotiate a contract for export of grapes to my country, but I hope to have some time to see your beautiful city while I am here.’ She had a Chinese accent, but her English was perfect.
He stamped her passport and handed it back to her. ‘Have a nice stay, Miss Hung.’
‘I am sure I will.’
~~~
The girl in the short, red, oriental dress, red hose, and high-heeled pumps walked into Zhu Lei’s apartments with the poise and elegance of one trained to achieve it. Zhu watched her as she moved to stand before him, coming to rest with her ankles together and her hands clasped before her, her head slightly bowed. She was a beautiful creature, and a very deadly one.
Her passport claimed she was Rose Hung, a resident of Taiwan, but Zhu knew her by another name. ‘Diao Hua, I presume,’ he said in Cantonese.
‘Mr Zhu,’ she replied in the same language. ‘You have a mission for the Sisters of the Silver Cord.’
Zhu took a brown file folder from one of his desk drawers and placed it down in front of her. ‘There is a woman in this city who is causing me considerable difficulty. I wish her to die. Unfortunately, finding her may not be easy as she is a very secretive woman. The only name she is known by is Mink.’
Diao Hua, Elder Sister of the assassins known as the Silver Cord, picked up the folder. ‘Consider her dead, Mr Zhu.’
Part Four: Whispers
Antarctic Ocean, 24th September, 2014.
Cables strained. Twin gantries creaked. The freezing waters parted to reveal something smooth and metallic. Someone had sealed plastic over part of the streamlined shape and, as more of it emerged from the light swell, the front section could be seen along with the damage to it. Whatever the thing was, it had crashed and crashed hard.
‘Hold it there,’ Aquarian ordered. ‘The forward section needs to drain before we can lift it onto the deck.’
There was already water streaming from breaks in the hull, but the winches stopped, as ordered. Aquarian watched the thing as though it might, in some way, come to life at any moment. It had taken thirty-six hours to rig the lines to it and cover over the window onto the flight deck, and all that time the aquatic Ultra had been feeling more and more uneasy.
‘Doctor Ultimate,’ Aquarian said, ‘it’s above water. We’ll complete the lifting operation within the hour.’
‘Thank you, Aquarian,’ Ultimate’s voice said from a speaker in the control room. ‘Be careful. I’m registering a small but significant increase in cosmic energy emission. It appears to be modulated in some way.’
‘Modulated? It’s transmitting something?’
‘That’s certainly one interpretation of the data.’
Aquarian frowned. ‘Transmitting what?’
‘A very good question. However, I believe a better one would be to whom is it transmitting?’
New Millennium City, MD.
‘Penny? Are you okay?’ June was looking concerned.
Penny had noted that her friend was concerned, but right now she had other things on her mind. Or in it. ‘The voices,’ she said.
‘Those weird voices you hear? I thought they only appeared when you were stressed.’
‘Sometimes they just happen. Rarely. Stronger. Louder. I’m going to change.’ With one eye half-closed as though she had a headache, Penny lurched to her feet and headed for the bedroom. It was not that she cared about June seeing her transform, but all her clothes were there. The voices were not just louder: they also seemed clearer. There was something there, on the edge of perception, as though Penny might reach out and grasp it and finally understand…
Silence descended upon Cygnus’s mind as the transformation completed itself and she let out a breath she had not realised Penny had been holding. There had been something else in among the random voices, the chatter of alien tongues, the roar of battle, the screams… There had been something urgent, almost demanding: a new tone in the cacophony.
But it was gone now. Cygnus pulled on a robe, belted it around her waist, and walked back out to meet June’s concerned expression. ‘Much better,’ Cygnus said before June could ask.
‘Yeah, but what brought it on?’
‘Well, I don’t know what causes it to begin with, so I’ve no idea what might have caused it to get so loud all of a sudden.’
‘It happened once when that sniper went after you. Do you think this could be some sort of warning?’
‘I have no idea. And if it was, I have no idea what it was warning me about. It’ll go again. I’ll change back later. So, anything special you want to do with the afternoon?’ Cygnus dropped onto the sofa beside June.
June grinned. ‘I spent all last week in rainy Washington state. You know what I want to do.’
‘We spent most of the last two days in bed…’
‘I wouldn’t say most.’
‘…so we should probably…’
‘Quite a lot, sure.’
‘…try to do something a little more…’
‘Well, you might be right, but you were busy before I went.’
‘…constructive with our time.’
‘Sex is constructive.’
Cygnus shook her head, grinning. ‘You know what I mean. What about the calendar?’
‘Dom’s on the model list. Nothing for me to do there until we have a shortlist. I’ve got a studio in Uptown that’s willing to rearrange slots as needed when we’re ready. Susan and Ever are picking out locations in the swamp. We won’t be able to organise locations up here until we know who we’re shooting. All in hand.’
‘Very efficient.’
‘Well, I used to be a PA. I was a good one, even if half the qualification was to look pretty.’
‘Yes, you were. A good PA. And you’re still pretty.’
June smirked. ‘Prove it.’
Cygnus sighed and undid the belt on her robe. ‘Oh, what the Hell.’
~~~
‘You two spent all day banging each other senseless again then,’ Andrea said as she poured coffee.
‘What makes you say that?’ June asked as innocently as she could manage.
‘You’re both in robes at six p.m. and Cygnus just went to get changed.’ Andrea frowned. ‘Though there is a pair of panties lying on the floor so one of you must have been dressed at some point.’
June coughed. ‘Those would be mine. We had good intentions. We got dressed and Penny was being Penny. Then her weird voices kicked in with a vengeance and she had to change form, and things went sort of downhill from there. Or uphill, depending.’
‘Huh.’
‘How’s Jacob?’
‘Fit as a fiddle but still on medical leave.’
June nodded. ‘And they still have no idea what caused it?’
‘Doc Ultimate’s working theory remains that Jacob’s body had an unusual reaction to the doses of Excelsior he got caught by. He caught the flu, his temperature went up, and his body massively overreacted. But now he’s fit there’s no sign of any Ultrahuman powers or cosmic anythings.’
‘But the UID is still insisting on a full medical before he can go back to work.’
‘Yeah, well, the UID are being dicks at the moment.’
‘Tell me about–’ June stopped as Cygnus walked back in from the bedroom, closing her robe. ‘You didn’t change?’
‘I did,’ Cygnus said, ‘but the voices were still there. I got about fifteen seconds of normal and then they were back, just as loud.’
‘Oh. That’s–’
‘I’m not going to worry about it unless it keeps going. I can be Cygnus for a while. You were talking about Jacob?’
‘Yeah,’ Andrea said. ‘His medical’s on Friday. I’ll go see him after it.’
‘Have you two made up? Properly?’
‘He’s been a bit… edgy. If he’s cleared on Friday… We’ll see what happens then. His bosses are still being pissy about it.’
‘Well… Utah caved today and lifted the ban. Not many states left. Soon it’ll just be DC and we weren’t allowed in there anyway.’
‘I can’t believe they’ve strung this investigation out for so long,’ June grumbled.
‘Like I said,’ Andrea said, ‘they’re being dicks.’
26th September.
With June at a meeting with her agent, Penny had some free time. She grinned as she stepped into the shower: okay, so June’s enthusiasm for catching up on their sex life was both catching and easing off, but the respite was welcome.
That was especially true since the voices seemed to have cut back on their recent assault. They were still there, constantly, but not as loud or as insistent. It was almost like they were a little further away, but Penny thought the urgency she had felt was gone. Now she seemed to be listening to whispers almost all the time where, previously, the voices had been a stress-related, louder, annoyance. She could work with this.
With the pressure off and the water streaming around to relax her, Penny felt she could almost understand what some of the voices were saying. Maybe it was just her imagination, but some of the ‘words’ triggered associated memories. It was like hearing something in a language you knew just a little of, so you got a vague, jumbled impression rather than a clear sentence. Not that what she heard ever seemed complete anyway. There were a lot of snatches of growled syllables, rapidly cut off streams of sounds which almost seemed like singing.
‘Protect,’ the voices said. ‘Guardian… Justice… Punish…’ The words matched the sense of purpose she had when she took the form of Cygnus, but there was an almost sinister edge to them which made her feel uneasy. Cygnus had none of that unease: her purpose was clear. If that purpose came from the same source as the voices, then it had to be… filtered, clarified, but by what?
Washington, DC.
Jacob walked into the office, uncharacteristically nervous. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and that was not like him.
‘Special Agent Dannon,’ the man behind the desk said, ‘please take a seat.’
Jacob sat down and tried not to look as nervous as he felt.
‘We’ll be running further biochemical tests,’ the man said, ‘but we have the results of the physical ones and, subject to review, you are cleared for active duty as of Monday.’
‘Uh, thank you, Doctor. Subject to review?’
‘The biochemical tests. Given Doctor Ultimate’s theory regarding your condition, we may need to revise your status if something abnormal is revealed. It would need to be something… Something which compromised your ability to function as a UID agent, I would imagine.’
‘Ah, right. Of course. So, there’s no indication that I’m an Ultra?’
‘None.’ The doctor gave a slight grimace. ‘Well, there would appear to be a slight rise in gamma wave activity on your EEG. It’s a characteristic of Ultrahumans and Doctor Ultimate detected much higher levels during your illness. Excelsior is believed to increase that kind of activity, among other effects. However, you are not exhibiting unusually high levels and we can detect no cosmic energy radiation from you. It’s likely a side effect of the Excelsior.’
Jacob nodded slowly. ‘Okay. That’s okay then.’
‘Would it be a problem? If you were Ultrahuman?’
‘Well, I’d lose my job. The UID doesn’t employ Ultras. For anything. I’m not quite sure what I’d do if I didn’t have my work.’
The doctor smiled at him. ‘Hopefully you won’t need to find out.’
New Millennium City, MD.
‘You’re officially cleared?’ Andrea asked.
‘Subject to review,’ Jacob replied. He was sitting in his favoured chair in his lounge. Andrea sat on the sofa, looking how he had probably appeared in the doctor’s office.
‘Right. They’ll find something. I mean, not necessarily something dangerous, but something. I mean, there has to be something a little odd in your biochemistry, right? Otherwise you–’
‘Wouldn’t have turned into a walking cryogenic unit?’
Andrea managed a half-hearted grin. ‘You weren’t doing much walking.’ She had come straight from work, determined to find out what the results of his medical were. Now, sitting there in front of him, she was almost as nervous as she had been the night she first came to him.
‘Okay, yeah. A not-walking cryogenic unit.’ There were a few seconds of silence. ‘Look. I really didn’t want to bring that shit here. I didn’t want to have to talk to you about… I’m sorry. You were right. I should’ve told them where to stick it.’
‘And then they’d have suspended you, come up with some “conflict of interest” bullshit, and reposted you to Alaska or something.’
‘Yeah, but you can teleport. And you like the cold.’ Andrea snorted out a laugh at that. ‘Anyway,’ Jacob went on, ‘I do have a conflict of interest. And I overcompensated. I’m sorry.’
Andrea looked across at him. ‘Apology accepted. So… You’re officially fit?’
‘I am, yeah.’
She got to her feet and took a step closer. ‘I’m not going to trigger a relapse if I raise your temperature, am I?’
‘I’m willing to risk it. I mean, if that is going to be a problem, it’s better to find out sooner rather than later, right?’
‘Right. I’d better try really hard to get you hot then.’
Jacob grinned. ‘Why? It’s never been that difficult for you before.’
San Francisco, CA.
Mink did not patrol. The San Francisco Stars, or some of them, did a perfectly good job of keeping street crime down, and even the police were not exactly inefficient in that area. Duplicating effort was pointless and Mink had bigger fish to fry. She was most effective when she was working on a planned intervention of some sort.
However, that kind of planning needed information and some of that information was best gathered on the streets. The Nine Kings continued to keep their operations low-key, which was starting to get worrying. Checking on the distribution of the local dealers, monitoring traffic in and out of the brothels they ran, and just keeping an ear to the ground seemed like a good idea.
An hour of running across rooftops, leaping between buildings, and generally criss-crossing Chinatown got her not a whole lot of information. The biggest bit of data Mink picked up was, however, nothing to do with the Kings: someone was tailing her.
That was fairly impressive in itself, but the fact that her watcher seemed to have been at it for a while was even more interesting. A woman, tall, possibly Asian, with very long, black hair tied up into a ponytail which fell to her behind. She was dressed for warm weather, or a lingerie catalogue: some form of strappy bikini and leggings, and flat shoes of some sort. Mink had caught hints of someone behind her thirty minutes or so before actually seeing the girl. So she was fairly good at what she did. The outfit and the fact that she was keeping up maybe suggested an Ultra.
Mink broke line of sight and doubled back along the alleys before moving back up to rooftop height and finding a place to observe. The moon had gone down an hour ago, but the light from below and ultraviolet from above gave Mink enough illumination to catch a few details. At first she questioned the bikini idea, but a second glimpse suggested that the girl had some impressive tatt
oos: some sort of bird on her chest, maybe a crane, and other oriental patterns on her right arm and both thighs. Her face was not especially concealed, but she had fairly intricate patterns of red, white, and black around her eyes and along the sides of her nose which broke up her features a little. The flat shoes seemed to be split-toed designs, like you saw in ninja movies. And it looked a lot like this girl had a rope dart wrapped around her waist.
That last little titbit of data was, perhaps, the most interesting. Mink turned and slipped away, double-checking behind her at several points as she made her way out of the area. The rope dart was not exactly an unheard-of weapon, but there was one person who knew more about it and those who used it than anyone else Mink knew. If there was a new player in town, and she was interested in Mink, then Mink needed to know who it was, and why.
New Millennium City, MD, 27th September.
Marty Koslowski was not having a good night. Finding anyone on the streets was damn hard, especially at three in the damn morning. When he did find them, he got pocket change. The riots had been fun, but the end result was that Marty was finding it really hard to make a living. Not even his Colt Python could scare up more money.
He was out at three a.m. because he had come up with a genius plan. If he went out when hardly anyone was actually on the streets, then there would be no Twilight about since she had no one to protect. Brilliant!
‘Next time you come up with a genius plan,’ Marty grumbled to himself, ‘just forget it.’
And then he spotted the guy in the leather jacket on Avenue C. Yeah, he was trying to look like a local, but that jacket was far too new, way too clean. Oh yeah, that guy was going to have something good to steal.
Marty crossed the street and moved into the man’s tracks. Yeah, the guy had not noticed yet. Someone local might have spotted that move, but not this guy. Marty reached into his own jacket and settled his hand around his Colt. Half a block and then it was going to be pay-dirt city!
And then the shadows reached out from an alley, something grabbed Marty’s collar, and the next thing he knew he was sprawling in a pile of black trash bags. ‘What the f–’
‘Now, now, Marty,’ Twilight said as the shadows sank to curl around her ankles like mist. ‘Let’s keep the profanity to a minimum.’
Hunting Mink Page 14