‘Yeah… I got them. Had to push the punches to stop them and I’m a bit… sapped.’ Cygnus looked down at Blutadler’s prone form. Blood was pooling under his body and staining his white coat. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘Yeah. Andrea persuaded me not to finish him… though if we wait a while, he might bleed to death. And I guess you get a casting vote…’
Cygnus smiled. ‘You know what I’m going to say.’
‘Yeah. I need to get out of this light and–’
‘Guys?’ Mink’s voice came over the radios, sounding a little nervous.
‘Mink, problem?’ Twilight asked.
‘Maybe. They’re trying to smash through the door here. The air vents are too small for me to get out and I’m not sure I can take them all on.’
‘I’m too tired to get up there and be much use,’ Cygnus said. ‘I’ll take care of Kopf and come up in a few minutes.’
‘Right.’ Twilight nodded and moved around Cygnus. ‘On my way, Mink. Hold them off until I get there.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
~~~
Mink looked over at the door. She was sitting at the computer, scanning files and passing the interesting ones off to her hacking device which was transmitting them to her system back at home. It was a backup. She was hoping to get out of this with the room’s contents intact and enough to sink the Nine Kings. And, hopefully, get the SFPD off her back, obviously.
‘June, are you getting this stuff?’ Mink asked.
‘The system is confirming receipt of every file you’ve sent so far,’ June replied. ‘Have you seen anything that clears you yet?’
‘Not– Wait…’ Mink got to her feet and scanned the cabinets. Rushing forward, she yanked open a drawer and leafed through the files.
‘Mink?’ June asked.
‘Got it! The contract documents, printouts of emails, and… Oh, yes, an order from Jade Flame to have Kuff assigned to the case.’ She looked at the buckling door. ‘Now I just need to get this out of here in one piece.’ She pulled her camera from her costume and began snapping pictures of documents.
Behind her, the tone of the impacts on the door changed from a resonant clang to more of a dull thud. They were breaking through. She clicked the shutter on the order concerning Kuff and then gathered the papers, stuffing the file back into the drawer and replacing her camera in its hiding place. Then she turned to look at the door.
There was an obvious bulge near one side, near the lock which was manual on this side. They would be through any second. Mink pulled one of the smoke grenades she had never used from where it was clipped to the back of her costume.
‘Where are you, Twilight?’
‘Ten, maybe fifteen seconds away,’ Twilight replied.
A sledgehammer smashed through the door, buckling it. ‘Hurry.’ Mink pulled the pin on the smoke bomb and tossed it down in front of the door as a hand reached in for the lock. She loosed her rope dart from around her waist, swinging it out in one movement. The hand jerked back as the point of her dart scored through skin. Mink heard shouting and another hand pushed through, now obscured by the gathering smoke. She struck out again, heard someone swear in Mandarin, but the hand kept moving and she launched the dart out again as the hand closed around the latch. Green flame erupted around the hand, now little more than a dull glow through the smoke, then the light was gone and the door was kicked open.
Mink dropped, rolling for the cover of the computer desk. Bullets slammed into the filing cabinets where she had been standing. She threw out her dart, aiming for the general area of the doorway, and heard a yelp of pain as she hit something. Then…
‘Fool! You’ll damage the files!’ Mink guessed it was Jade Flame, Zhu Lei, and the words were followed by a scream. The smoke shifted and two green lights showed through the smoke. ‘Must I do everything myself?!’
Mink rolled out from under the table and swept her dart out, aiming right between the two flames. There was a grunt and she pulled the weapon back. Something moved swiftly behind Zhu, disturbing the smoke: someone else had entered the room and Mink was fairly sure she knew who that was. She swept her dart out in a wild swing, hoping to hit the assassin, but encountered nothing but empty air. And the two green flames were advancing.
Twisting, Mink kicked out, sinking her heel into Zhu’s gut. Green fire swung at her and she twisted, smelling sulfur as the fire passed in front of her nose. Whatever power this man had, Mink did not want it coming into contact with her. She ducked and turned, sliding around the heavily built man. Mink felt the assassin’s rope dart sweep through the air in front of her and whipped into a rapid pair of returning strikes, feeling one of them hit something and hearing a gasp. Behind her, Zhu swung wildly into space, but Mink felt him turning: he was coming around. Two more swings at the assassin hit nothing as she dodged away from the dart. Was the smoke thinning? Or… was it getting darker?
Outside the room there were screams of terror: Twilight had arrived. Mink started for the door and the assassin’s dart smacked into the side of her face. She let out a gasp, turning with the blow and seeing green fire in the corner of her eye. And then the room fell into pitch darkness.
There was silence, silence and the kind of dark you only saw in the bottom of a deep cave. Mink had met that kind of darkness before having been on a number of cave dives, but this had some other quality to it. It was almost as though there was something in the black, right on the edge of her perceptions…
And then the shadows pulled away to reveal a room dusky with thinning smoke, and Twilight standing in the doorway with her burning sword in her hand. ‘You okay?’ she asked.
Mink looked around. The Yin Xian girl was standing, huddled into a corner and shivering slightly, her eyes fixed on Twilight. Zhu Lei, the great Jade Flame, was lying in an ungainly heap on the floor, his eyes closed.
‘I think he fainted,’ Twilight said.
‘Then I guess I’m okay. Well, I’m going to need make-up to cover the bruise she gave me’ – Mink pointed a finger at the assassin, who flinched – ‘but otherwise I’m okay.’
‘Well she,’ Twilight said pointedly, ‘is going to give up and let herself be arrested. Otherwise she is going to get another dose of what she just had.’
‘No!’ the girl squeaked, holding out her wrists.
‘Good girl.’
‘Blutadler?’ Mink asked as Twilight pulled a cable tie from her boot.
‘I stabbed him in the guts. Cygnus is trying to stabilise him.’ Twilight looked up at the assassin. ‘Well, with an outfit like that, you have to be into bondage, so you might even enjoy this.’
~~~
Drifting up the stairwell, Cygnus paused as she heard a scraping sound and lifted over the handrail to land on the stairs just below the first basement level. She looked down with some bemusement at the sight of Night Shift, crawling up the steps on his belly.
‘Are you okay, Night Shift?’ Cygnus asked. ‘What happened?’
The armoured figure tilted his helmet up as best he could and was probably glaring: it was hard to tell with the faceplate. ‘Do I look okay? I… fell down the stairs.’ The second part of the sentence sort of trailed off toward a mumble and Cygnus got the impression that Night Shift was not exactly telling the truth.
‘You’ve hurt your back? Stop moving, you idiot!’
‘Can’t feel my legs…’
‘Stop crawling! June, get a paramedic team out here. Tell them we have a possible spinal injury.’ Cygnus put her foot out, planting it on Night Shift’s shoulder. ‘Just… stop. You fell down the stairs? How far?’
‘I… There was a woman. An Asian woman in a black bikini. She threw me over the rail at the top.’
Cygnus looked upward. ‘You fell thirteen storeys? You’re lucky to just have a bust back. Well, I heard from Twilight and Mink that they got the skinny little girl who tossed you over a balcony, so you just lie there and wait for the medics to get here.’
‘You think this is funny?’<
br />
‘I’m going to think this is hilarious right up until they tell me you’ll never walk again.’
‘Right…’
‘Then I’ll consider it a cruel form of poetic justice.’
~~~
Between them, Mink and Twilight managed to carry Zhu through into his dining room and into one of the chairs there. The assassin, now known to be Diao Hua, was not happy but cowed by the threat of the shadows which Twilight kept boiling around their feet like black smoke.
‘Guy has to weigh three hundred pounds,’ Twilight grumbled as they got Zhu upright.
‘And change,’ Mink agreed. ‘Surprisingly nimble for a fat man though.’
‘He eats like a pig,’ Diao Hua commented from the other end of the table.
Mink turned and walked down toward her. ‘I hear you threw Night Shift down the stairwell?’
‘His technique was sloppy. Brutish.’
‘Yeah, well that earned you some kudos, but you’re going away for killing Snapshot.’
Diao Hua smiled. ‘American prison?’
‘Yeah, I know, holiday camp, you’ll be out in a week, etcetera.’
‘She… will not get there.’ They all turned at the sound of Zhu’s voice. ‘None of you… will leave here alive.’ He looked up at them, and his green eyes were burning.
Twilight’s shadows swirled up around her as fire blossomed around Zhu’s entire body. Mink and Diao Hua both threw themselves backward. And the room exploded into green fire. There were screams from the men tied up against the wall and then Twilight’s shadows swept forward, engulfing Zhu. There was a shriek from him, but it kept on going after the shadows withdrew. The reason become obvious: his chair was on fire.
‘Fucking idiot,’ Twilight muttered as she grabbed the man and pulled. It took her two goes to shift him, and by the time she had him on the floor beside his burning furniture, Zhu had blacked out. There was a fraction of a second’s pause, and then sprinklers cut in from above, dousing everyone with water and starting to put out the fires. ‘Oh…’ Twilight grumbled. ‘Just perfect.’
Part Six: Novelty
San Francisco, CA, 21st October, 2014.
Twilight sat with her booted legs up on the desk in Zhu’s records room, reading a file. Her sword rested beside her, propped up against the desk. It was, she thought, a very interesting file and she was still reading it when a man in a suit with a detective’s badge hung from his jacket pocket marched into the room.
‘All right, Miss… whatever.’ Already Twilight decided she did not like the man. ‘We’ll be taking over now. Hand over the file and get out of my crime scene.’
Twilight smiled at him. ‘Detective…?’
‘Venkman. Detective Harvey Venkman, SFPD.’
Twilight flicked over a couple of pages. ‘Uh-huh. You’re actually with the Tong Affirmative Action Task Force.’
‘That’s right. So this, all of this, belongs to–’
‘And you are affirmative to the tune of a hundred thousand a year.’
Venkman paused. ‘What?’
‘All right here. Payments, dates, noted actions on behalf of the Nine Kings tong. We’ve got some people from your internal affairs department coming in… Though I see we’ll have to be careful who we get. Anyway, if you run for it now, you might be out of the building before they get here.’
Venkman appeared to consider his options, though Twilight could see where he was going as his eyes flicked to her sword. When he pulled his service-issue automatic from his jacket, she was not terribly surprised. ‘Give me that file,’ Venkman hissed, holding out his hand.
‘Dickhead,’ Twilight replied, and the room went dark. There was a shriek and the clatter of a pistol falling to the floor, and then the shadows retreated again. Sighing, Twilight put the file down and got to her feet to walk over to Venkman, who was huddled against a wall, shivering.
‘You have the right to remain silent,’ Twilight told him. ‘However, anything you incoherently gibber can and will be taken down and used against you. That’s assuming we can decipher it…’
~~~
‘So this is what an Excelsior lab looks like?’
Cygnus turned to see Damian walking into the room, and she smiled at him. ‘This is what an Excelsior lab looks like, if it’s built by Professor Blutadler, and an Ultra had a fight with six zombies in it.’
‘Right. Noted.’ Damian’s eyes scanned over two of the ex-walking corpses as he spoke. One had no head and another had had its ribcage yanked apart… ‘You got the guy who built it?’
‘Medics are working on him at the far end. Twilight put her sword through him. He was lucky.’
‘That’s lucky?’
‘Yeah. She didn’t stab him through the heart. Damian, we found the records Jade Flame was keeping on the entire Nine Kings operation. We found evidence to get you finally cleared of that shooting incident.’
Damian was silent for a second. ‘Thanks… I hear rumours that you have internal affairs coming in here too.’
‘Uh-huh. It’s going to be painful. Zhu had a lot of cops under his thumb one way or another. On the other hand, that’s why you’re here and not some guy from the TAATF. Actually, Twilight arrested one of them a few minutes ago. A Detective Venkman? He pulled a gun on her and she had to give him a bit of a scare…’
Damian chuckled. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Uh, is Mink still here?’
‘No. She got a little burned and she’s not too big on hospitals. Plus, she’s not officially cleared of murder yet. She left before you guys arrived.’
‘Probably for the best.’
~~~
‘Probably,’ Bianca muttered. She was listening to the radio chatter coming from the console while June coated her butt in cream. ‘This is embarrassing.’
‘Well,’ June said, ‘this is one problem with high-cut costumes. More exposed skin for explosions of green fire to get at. On the plus side, I’m enjoying myself.’
‘Oh… that’s a big plus.’
‘At least we got everything you’ll need to make that warrant go away. Pretty soon, Mink will be free to pester wrongdoers all over the city again.’
‘Once my butt is back to a normal colour, yeah.’
‘It’s not that bad…’
‘It’s incandescent red!’
June suppressed a giggle. ‘Well, maybe a dull glow. A dull, throbbing glow.’
Bianca covered her head in her hands. ‘I won’t be able to sit down for a week!’
~~~
‘I hope you don’t mind me being late in,’ Cygnus said as she settled onto a seat in the control area with a mug of coffee.
‘We heard you were busy last night,’ Alice replied, smiling. ‘I think we can make an exception.’
‘Quite,’ Doctor Ultimate agreed, and then slid into two conversations at once, it seemed. ‘Exceptional work with computer seems to be asking Blutadler finally contained symbology which seems to suggest Excelsior, obvious, and–’
‘Hugh,’ Cygnus and Alice chorused.
Cygnus giggled. ‘Sorry, he’s your husband.’
‘Everyone does it, dear,’ Alice said, smiling. ‘One thread at a time, please, Hugh.’
‘Uh…’ It seemed to take supreme mental effort for the world’s most intelligent man to achieve that. ‘The ship’s computer just keeps flashing a symbol which I think means “Guardian.” Or possibly it’s a personal symbol for you, Cygnus. And good work with Blutadler.’ Ultimate looked at his wife as if to ask whether he had got it right.
‘You even summarised,’ Alice said.
‘I guess I should go see what the computer wants then,’ Cygnus said, draining her mug.
‘Elaine and Bianca are in there,’ Ultimate supplied. ‘Bianca’s playing the assistant. They’re looking at what’s needed to dismantle the replicator.’
‘Okay, I’ll check in there.’
~~~
‘And here comes the heroine of the hour,’ Bianca said as Cygnus stepped
through into the services cabin. ‘One of them anyway.’ There was a mumbling sound across the radio and Bianca grinned at Elaine. ‘What was that, Elaine? Don’t worry about her, Cygnus, she’s just in a huff because you didn’t call her in last night.’
‘I am n– Okay, yes I am,’ Elaine said. ‘However, I’d be less huffy if this computer was willing to give me the schematics I need instead of just flashing this glyph.’
Cygnus looked across at the virtual display the computer was projecting. There was a sort of cross-shaped symbol, a bit twisted and with a large blob on the short top riser, and it was the only thing there, flashing in a dull orange. ‘Okay…’ She switched to the computer’s language and said, ‘I’m here now, so you can show her the schematic.’ The display switched immediately to a diagram of the room they were in, and then it was joined by several other diagrams showing wiring, plumbing, air ducts…
‘At last,’ Elaine said. ‘Thank you, computer. Not that you can understand that, I guess.’
A message appeared and Cygnus said, ‘It’s worked out a bit of English. It’s happy to be of service. Hugh, that symbol you saw, it’s personal. That’s the computer’s name for me. It’s a stylised version of the constellation Cygnus.’
‘Ah! Of course!’ Ultimate sounded surprised at his own stupidity. ‘Of course it is. And the circle represents Deneb. Foolish of me.’
‘You probably didn’t have enough bandwidth on that problem, what with all the other things you’re thinking about.’
‘Kind of you to say so, my dear. It’s an excuse and I’ll stick to it.’
‘It’s like I thought, Hugh,’ Elaine said, eyes on the schematics. ‘The only way this system was designed to be fully overhauled was to take off the hull plating and yank the whole module out through the side. We don’t have much choice.’
Well, I could have told them that. Cygnus saw the message and forced herself not to giggle.
‘Very well,’ Ultimate said. ‘I was hoping we could do some of it without the need… We’ll get the necessary equipment and people organised and ready to start on Monday.’
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