I realized he wasn’t just snapping at me— it was a real question. The truth was, I still thought there was something wrong, but this was obviously a bad time to argue with him, so in the end I just nodded. Satisfied, he reached for the large brass knocker on the door. If you should come across my lock, I’ll let you in, but first, please knock, the little rhyme ran through my head. I frowned, wondering where I remembered that from, but before I could think of it, the doorman showed up. I was careful not to jump again.
The doorman led us upstairs and dropped us off at a little parlor that would have been pleasant if not for the guards—one in each corner, two at the window, and another standing outside. Alger didn’t look worried, so I tried to tell myself that maybe this was normal. But I was still ill at ease, and the half an hour we stood there in silence didn’t help at all. So I was wound up like fishing line when I finally heard footsteps in the hallway. I had to consciously stop myself from taking a step back when the door swung open.
I tried to take note of every detail as I finally got a look at Antonia Signorille. Nearly as tall as me, with salt and pepper hair curling into an understated but fashionable bob at her chin, she wore a black, pinstriped, perfectly tailored man’s suit. It would’ve looked strange if she hadn’t worn it with such unshakeable confidence. From the silver streaks in her hair and the lines around her mouth and eyes, I’d have placed her in her forties, but something in her presence told me she had more years of experience than that. And despite all that presence, she was smiling, disarmingly relaxed. She must not have much to worry about; I just hoped we didn’t either.
She crossed the room and shook Alger’s hand, leaning forward and embracing him warmly. She said something in Italian—I assumed it was a greeting—and Alger responded flawlessly in kind. Then she released him and glanced in my direction. There was a short exchange I didn’t understand, and then Tony turned to me. She looked me up and down and stroked my cheek with one finger, assessing me as if I were a well-made piece of expensive jewelry.
“She’s lovely, Slade,” she said, her English only slightly tinted with an accent. Alger smiled approvingly. I held my breath and tried not to shudder; up close, there was something in Tony’s eyes that unnerved me. Behind the obvious appreciation and friendly manner, I was positive that I saw white-hot anger, waiting for its turn to come out. But I wasn’t supposed to speak first, so I just averted my gaze demurely. Eventually, she pulled up a chair on the other side of an antique wooden desk.
“Please, sit down,” she invited us, and we complied. She snapped her fingers, and the two guards at the window came over to stand behind us. Were they protecting us, or her? Either made me worry. She took a cigar out of a box in her desk, chopped off the end, and lit it, offering Alger one (which he politely declined) before putting it away again.
“So, you’ve been scarce lately,” she said to Alger. “Hiding from someone?”
“Certainly not,” Alger replied.
“Are you sure?” Tony asked. “The rumor is that you ran into some trouble yesterday.”
I reeled my gaze back in from Tony and watched Alger totally fail to react to
her question.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he said.
“That’s good to hear.” Tony answered, sitting back in her chair. “Well then, my friend. To what do I owe this visit?”
“Well, in fact,” Alger said, dropping his voice a little, “I’m looking for a piece of information to which I believe you may be privy.”
“I see,” said Tony, taking a puff of the cigar and chomping down on the end. “And what kind of information is that?”
“I’m interested in anything you happen to know about a fellow named Patrick McManus,” Alger said.
Watching the exchange intently, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he really, really shouldn’t have said that. I saw the name strike home in Tony’s eyes, and she grinned wolfishly. But of course, that might’ve meant anything—and I had no proof that it meant something was wrong. So I bit my tongue and kept watching.
“I see,” Tony answered again. “And what’s the nature of your interest in this McManus?”
“He approached me about a job.” Alger lied so easily that I could’ve believed him myself. “I thought it would be inappropriate to accept without being certain that he isn’t a rival of yours.”
Once again, it was the wrong thing to say—but this time, we all knew it. In an instant, the mask of friendliness dropped from Tony’s face.
“Liar,” she hissed.
Alger was a statue with a raised eyebrow carved into its face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I give you the chance to tell the truth, and instead you try to play me for a fool!” Tony exclaimed, leaning across the desk. “I had my suspicions when I learned that you’d been at the auction yesterday, but now I’m certain: you’re looking for it too. You know McManus and I were both at the private auction the night before—of course you do, being who you are. That’s why you’re here asking these questions, in the hopes that I’m idiot enough to help you find the very thing I’m after!”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m really not certain what you mean,” Alger said.
Tony stood up and leaned forward even further, the flame of anger I’d seen in
her eyes spreading into a blaze.
“Come now, my friend,” she said. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t be the first to know about the infamous puzzle box, when it was in my city?”
Alger didn’t stand up or react in any visible way.
“Ah. I see the confusion,” he said calmly. “I think there may—”
That’s when I heard it. Subtle for sure, but there it was, and I was the only one who noticed: the unmistakable click as the guard behind me cocked the hammer of his gun.
Reacting without thinking, I stood up, toppling my chair and hitting the guard in the arm. The gun went off before he’d finished pulling it out and he collapsed with a bullet in his side. I flinched and clapped my hands over my ears.
But I wasn’t the only one reacting anymore. In one motion, Alger stood up, turned and set one foot on the edge of the desk, and grabbed the other guard’s hand. He twisted it sharply with a nasty snap. Then he turned back the other way, kicking the desk into Tony and flipping the guard over onto his back at the same time. The gunman landed with his elbow twisted awkwardly in front of him, his own gun pressed to his chest, locked in Alger’s grip. As the other guards finally took aim, Alger extended his other hand and produced a pistol from nowhere. He pointed the second gun at Tony, stepping on the upturned desk and pinning her against the floor. A symphony of clicks spread through the room. Everyone waited, fingers tense on triggers, afraid to blink.
“As I was saying, before we were so rudely interrupted,” Alger told Tony with flinty calm, “I think there may be something of a misunderstanding.”
“I disagree,” spat Tony, still more furious than afraid. “It’s perfectly clear that you’re threatening to kill me in my own home.”
“And you tried to kill your house guests in cold blood,” Alger hissed, leaning on the desk and shoving the gun a little harder into the guard he’d pinned to the chair. “But if we can both put that behind us, given that we appear to be after the same ends in this endeavor, surely we can settle this without killing each other, and come to some sort of arrangement. Don’t you agree?”
Well, I don’t think she would’ve agreed, but as it turned out, we never found out. Right about then, a raucous smattering of gunfire echoed from downstairs. It was quickly followed by shouts, thuds, and the familiar sounds of breaking furniture.
“On second thought,” said Alger, stepping off the desk but keeping his aim steady, “maybe you’d better see to that that instead.”
Slowly pushing the desk to the side and rising to her feet, Tony didn’t appear to have any intention of taking her attention off the present situation. But as heavy booted footsteps thumped inexorably close
r and the sounds of slaughter approached, the guards started to look a little nervous.
“In all seriousness,” Alger said, “I only have two pistols. I can likely do significant damage before you take me down, but from the sound of it, whoever’s coming up the stairs is undoubtedly more of a threat.”
Tony glared murderously at him, nearly baring her teeth in rage. She opened her mouth to say something—but right about then, the body of a guard crashed through the door and rolled across the carpet. Tony spun around to face the doorway, and five guns re-trained on the entrance, waiting to see what would come through. A huge figure, dressed entirely in red, with a long red leather coat, a broad-brimmed red hat, and a red mask steamrolled into the room, brandishing an oversized smoking gun in each hand.
“Tony Signorille!” he roared. “The Red Death’s come for you!”
At that point, all hell broke loose. The vigilante started picking off guards with resounding blasts. Some took cover, and others charged him. Tony hid behind the desk and started fishing around inside it—for a gun, I assumed. Bullets and men were scattered everywhere, and the room was rapidly becoming a war zone.
And what were we doing during all of this? What any self-respecting thieves would be doing under the circumstances, of course: getting the hell out of there.
The moment the shooting began, Alger practically tackled me, diving behind a bookcase, one gun still in hand. When the battle shifted towards the window, he grabbed me, and we made a break for it. We skirted the edge of the room, dashed out what was left of the doorway, and sprinted down the hall, crossing paths with a flood of reinforcements along the way. Luckily, they were completely uninterested in us. Alger made a right into a room at the end of the hallway, dragging me along behind him, and threw open a window.
“Go,” he said.
I scrambled out the window without even pausing to nod, and he stood facing the hall, covering my escape. It took me what seemed like an agonizingly long time to climb down, but I had to take care not to lose my grip on the ice-slick trellis. When Alger saw that I was safely on the ground, he climbed out the window and closed it behind him. Then he jumped.
For a split second, I was terrified—but then he just hit the ground with nothing but the crunch of frozen grass and rolled, like he’d done it a thousand times. For all I knew, maybe he had.
“Well, that didn’t go as planned,” he said. Standing up and dusting himself off, he took my arm and started walking towards the street.
“Um,” I said, “shouldn’t we be, you know, running?”
“No,” he said, picking the padlock on the gate almost without stopping. “Now we have to appear as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.”
Still too shaken to object, I fell into step, and we strolled down the sidewalk in silence for a few minutes until I’d calmed down enough to ask questions.
“So,” I started, “what do we do now? If she’s so important, and she’s—”
“Yes, Victoria. I’m aware.” He sighed. “We go home and get the boys. And then we relocate.”
“Relocate?” I repeated. “But her territory is all of New York, isn’t it? Do we have to go to another town?”
He glanced at me sympathetically, and his eyes told me I had no idea what I was in for.
“Think a bit bigger,” he said. “Another continent.”
Chapter 13—Take It To The Limit
As G3 fired the grenade launcher at the robot lumbering toward the storefront, scattering the wiseguys crowded outside the El Fey Club, R7 knew that Spence was right. Von Krauss had been taking the time to build something. The grenade hit its target, erupting into an earsplitting explosion, but when the smoke cleared, R7 saw that it had done little more than dent and singe the robot.
And it hadn’t even touched the second robot stomping down Forty-Fifth.
Two somethings, she corrected herself.
“Told you it wouldn’t work,” she shouted to G3.
“Sure it did,” he yelled back. “You’ve got a clear path now.”
R7 growled, but he was right: the hailstorm of tommy gun fire had subsided in the wake of the explosion, as the wiseguys had backed away from the fight to let the bigger guns handle it. So, as her partner loaded and fired another grenade at the robot advancing on the El Fey Club, she took off sprinting toward its partner. Both struck at the same time—as another grenade exploded, toppling cars parked next to the club, R7 leapt into the air at the robot in the middle of the street.
One of her booted feet hit home, and she used her momentum to bound up the robot’s metal torso as it stumbled with the impact. By the time it had regained its equilibrium, she’d braced her feet on its shoulders and gripped its antenna in both hands. The robot was made of that alloy, but all the bolts couldn’t be, right? The robot swatted at her, but its saucer-sized metal hands were clumsy, and she ducked and twisted away from its hammer blows.
Meanwhile, G3 continued pelting the other robot ineffectually with grenades, while it punched its own huge hands down through the club’s roof and stooped to reach for something. R7 couldn’t pay attention to what, though, because her robot had given up swatting and clamped both hands around her torso. A breath huffed out of her as it squeezed, and she felt her ribs bow in its grip, but she only screamed inarticulately and tightened her own grip on the metal monster’s antenna.
Seemingly infuriated—though that must have been the operator’s reaction—the robot switched tactics again, this time from squeezing to shaking. As the world rolled and swayed wildly around her, R7 clenched her teeth and focused on her objective. Whatever else you do, you aren’t going to let go. Get the job done! As the mechanical man continued mixing her like a mint julep, she held onto the antenna and braced her feet against its shoulders, straining her muscles to their breaking point as she pulled with all her might.
Sure enough, between the robot’s motion and her own strength, the antenna tore away in her hands. As suddenly as a snuffed candle, the robot stopped moving and stood harmlessly still, its eyes dark, its signal disrupted.
With a cry of victory, R7 wriggled free of the metal fingers’ grasp and dropped to the street, antenna safely in hand. She turned to see how G3’s fight was faring and saw the remaining functional robot straightening and turning away from El Fey—with a safe under one metal arm.
This was a robbery?
She was still gaping at it and catching her breath, her ribs expanding back to their normal shape, when G3, having expended his last grenade, pulled out his Colt 1911 and shot the robot in one of its glowing red eyes. That, at last, was enough to draw the operator’s notice: the robot turned and batted G3 aside like a buzzing fly. G3 flew a few feet through the air, hit the street with a crunch, and rolled to a stop a few yards away, while the robot started to lumber away down Forty-Fifth unhindered.
R7 froze, looking back and forth from the escaping robot to G3, crumpled in the street. Go after it, you idiot, she chastised herself, as indecision held her feet like quicksand. You were made to break things, not save people. A month ago, she probably wouldn’t have had any trouble leaving him behind. Six months ago, she definitely wouldn’t. But now...
Swearing, she turned away from the departing robot and ran to G3’s side, kneeling in the street. He was breathing, but his right arm and ribcage were clearly misshapen where the robot had hit him, and one side of his face was painted in blood. Just one hit had done this to him, she realized, when her slugfest with the robot had left her sore but uninjured. Was she really so different from a regular person? She listened to the robot stomping away as she found G3’s pulse, then carefully lifted him and carried him to the sidewalk. As she laid him back down, supporting his head with one arm, he stirred and blinked muzzily, then tried to sit up. She held him firmly in place and he winced.
“It...got away?”
R7 nodded.
“You should...go—”
“Not a chance. Is your radio still working?”
G3 started to r
each for his belt, then thought better of it.
“Should be. Call the...cleanup team.”
“And the medics,” R7 muttered.
She found the radio on his belt, still miraculously intact, and put in the call to Spence while G3 focused on breathing without passing out and fending off onlookers with a baleful glare. After that, the two of them sat in silence for a little while amid the twisted snarls of shrapnel, shattered brick, and the smell of burning rubber and metal dust—G3 covered in blood and abrasions, R7 in dust, ash, and now only faint bruises.
“So there’s definitely a mob connection,” she finally offered, glancing at the half-crushed El Fey Club and the wiseguys creeping around it like cats after a thunderclap. “And two operators now, I guess. Hopefully Spence or my asset will have new information soon.”
G3 turned his head to look at her, his eyes narrowed against the pain, pupils dilated in an obvious concussion.
“Your asset,” he repeated, controlling his breathing a little better now. “Meaning Professor Gregory?”
“Yeah,” she answered, barely suppressing a smile. “Why?”
“Nothing,” said G3. “It’s just that you’re making good progress in a very short time. Of course, your unusual abilities don’t hurt.”
R7 shifted her weight, trying not to move G3 too much, and looked down at her arms to find her bruises entirely gone already.
“About that,” she said. “I’ve always wondered—when did you first know? That I’m not...normal?”
G3 cracked a smile.
“Well, you did plenty of impossible things during training,” he said. “If you ever have a chance to ask any of the men you fought during those exercises—or anyone else who went through them, like B4, who took at least twice as long—you really should. But, the first time I knew was when I saw you walk across all that broken glass without cutting your feet.”
Canon in Crimson (Symphony in Red Book 1) Page 10