by Jay Posey
“We’re OK, Wren,” she whispered.
“You hurt him,” he answered.
Cass nodded. She squeezed his shoulders, and labored to her feet.
“I need to look for something. Want to help?”
He shook his head.
“OK, baby. OK.” Cass patted him gently, then staggered to the back corner, placing her hands on the wall. Her side crackled, pain radiating, organs and nerves alive with all-consuming fire. She squeezed her eyes, tried to force the ache to wash over her and away, tried to concentrate.
Breathe, Cass, she thought. Breathe.
Focus eluded her. Without it, she would never find what she was looking for; without it, she would die. And they would take Wren.
Something brushed against her leg. Cass opened her eyes, found Wren by her side, his tiny hands outstretched, spread on the wall.
“It’s OK, Mama. I’ll do it.”
He didn’t even shut his eyes, just stared ahead, seeing not what was in front of him, but rather the information stored around him, history embedded in the invisible electromagnetic swirl. There was a faint whir, and the deep hum grew louder. Across the room, a section of concrete wall withdrew, slid open, revealing an inner chamber, stocked with gear. Cass felt tears come to her eyes.
She bent down, kissed Wren on his head, raised his face so she could look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry I had to hurt that man, baby.”
Wren nodded.
“He was lying,” she explained. “He wanted to keep us here. We have to hurry.”
Wren nodded.
“I’m sorry I made you cry.”
He wiped his eyes.
“It’s not your fault, Mama,” he answered, brave, bottom lip quivering. She hugged him tightly.
They separated, and Cass half-stumbled her way into the hidden room, with Wren trailing close behind. Inside, the small interior space was packed with the delicate machinery of a chemist: vials, thin flexiglass tubes, pristine stainless surfaces. An overhead panel glowed a soft blue-white, bathing the room in a surgical sterility. The hum came from a centrifuge, spinning contentedly on one of the stainless steel tables. Next to it, placed against the wall, Cass spotted a silver floor cabinet, nearly Wren’s height. She moved to it, swung open the unlocked door. Tabs, vials of viscous fluids, injectors, powders. Chems. Lots and lots of chems.
She rifled through the case, searching with trembling hands for the little lavender tabs that she desperately needed. Black spots floated in her vision, a weakness seized her legs. Cass buckled to the floor, pulling shelves from the case, scattering a rainbow assortment of geometric shapes and vials across the glass-smooth floor. Wren stood in the doorway.
“Mama?” he called, hushed.
“I’m OK, baby. Just give me a minute,” she soothed, hoping she sounded calmer than she was.
“No,” his whisper was quieter, but more intense, urgent. “He’s here.”
As if on cue, thunder pounded the steel front door, three rolling booms. Cass pressed a single finger to her lips, motioned for Wren to step inside the room. He tiptoed in, careful not to step on any of the chems that covered the floor. Cass’s heart raced, she bent low, searching anywhere and everywhere for the lavender tabs. Her vision swam, colors confused. Again, three shuddering blows.
She glanced up, flicked her eyes from Wren to a translucent panel on the wall by the door. He nodded, crept to it, ran a small finger across it. The false concrete wall slid back into place with a whisper, as seamless inside as it was without. A pounding heartbeat later, the blue-white light switched itself off.
Pitch-black.
Cass could hear Wren’s rapid breathing. She opened her mouth to whisper to him, to calm him, when suddenly the air was rent with the shriek of steel exploding inwards.
Then, silence.
Cass strained, tried to hear anything over the rush of blood in her own ears, the hammering of her heart. Nothing, but the happy whir of the centrifuge. Even little Wren must have been holding his breath. In the darkness and honeyed-buzz, Cass lost all orientation, felt herself spinning slowly in every direction at once, slipping across the frictionless floor without moving. Her forehead thunked hard against something. A wall? No, the floor. Or was it the ceiling? It was warm. Much too warm.
A spark of light. Something moving in the darkness. Piercing cold in her hand, tiny, a splinter of icicle thrust through her palm. Wren. Lips to her ear. Calling her.
“Take it, Mama,” his voice floated in nothingness. “Take it.”
Quint. In complete darkness, somehow, impossibly, miraculously, he’d found what she needed. Cass moved heavy arms, threw open her coat, raised her shirt. The device implanted in the right side of her abdomen snicked open, accepted the tab, sealed itself. It would metabolize soon.
Maybe soon enough. Maybe not.
Gradually, the room slowed its spin, and Cass could tell she was lying on the floor. It was a start. She felt Wren lie down, curl up next to her. Clammy, trembling. Her mothering instinct wanted to soothe him, but a more powerful instinct refused. Survival.
Outside, in the main room, the barest suggestion of sound: a light scuffling. Someone had found the doctor, shifted his corpse. It was then that the centrifuge completed its work, with a click that sounded like the racking of a shotgun, a beep like a klaxon. Reflexively, Cass squeezed Wren to her.
Silence. Nothing. Then dread. The false wall decompressed, unsealed, slid open. The blue-white light bore down, pinning them to the floor.
In the doorway stood the tall man.
Cass felt Wren bury his face; her side, where his small body pressed against hers, grew warm, wet. The tall man glared down upon them, silent, sharp features like a bird of prey before the kill. His eyes locked with Cass’s. Smoldering.
The pain was receding, but the quint hadn’t taken hold yet.
“Fedor,” she rasped. “You’re too late. Overtapped. Me and the boy.”
Fedor did not react.
“Go home. Let us die in peace.”
No reply, no hint that Fedor had heard her.
“We’ll die together,” she bluffed. “The way it should be.”
“Not yet,” Fedor replied, robotically. His eyes unfocused, stared through or beyond them.
“I’ve got them,” he said, pimming someone far removed. “Yes, and the boy.”
It was a one-sided conversation, but Cass knew to whom Fedor spoke.
“Da, OK, OK.”
His eyes refocused on Cass.
“He says I bring the boy,” Fedor said, with an Eastern European accent and a smile like a corpse with its lips stretched back over its teeth. “You? You may die.”
Cass tensed, willed the quint into her bloodstream, pleaded with her nerves to accept the chems. Fedor took a step into the room, and then stopped. Held, like a wolf catching an unfamiliar and unexpected scent.
“Everything alright in here?” came a voice from the main room.
Fedor turned slowly on one heel. Cass forced herself to an elbow, peered around Fedor’s legs to see who had spoken. He was just sitting there, on the steel table in the middle of the main room, like he’d been there all day, hands on his knees, feet dangling.
“Reckon not,” said Three, glancing to the crumpled remains of the doctor.
“Doctor’s closed, friend,” Fedor answered, emotionless. “Time you go somewhere else.”
Three sniffed.
“I’d rather not.”
Fedor advanced on him a few paces, drew up to his full height.
“Not a request, friend,” said Fedor. “There is private business here.”
Three shrugged.
“I’ve got some business with the two of ’em myself. Maybe you can wait outside.”
“I don’t think you understand, friend.”
“I don’t think you understand, friend.”
Three leaned slightly to one side, made eye contact with Cass.
“Hey kid,” he called.
Wren m
ade no initial response, but Cass nudged, encouraging him. He peeked up, terrified. Three reached into his own left coat pocket, saw Fedor tense, pupils constricting, jaw tightening, readying himself. Three slowly withdrew his closed fist, turned it palm up, and opened it.
“You lose something?”
Wren scrunched up his face, then raised his head as recognition came. His shuttlecar, resting on Three’s palm. Wren nodded slightly, frightened, timid, unsure of what to do.
“Well, come get it,” Three said.
No one moved. Three looked Fedor dead in the eyes, saw them dancing frantically as Fedor internally searched for any kind of record or file on this stranger.
“You wanna let the kid by?”
Fedor hesitated, calculated. Then sidestepped slightly, and held out a hand, making space and gesturing for Wren to enter the main room. Three looked again to Cass, still outstretched on the floor, caught her eye; saw fear, desperation, but something else not there before.
Hope.
She pushed Wren up, whispered to him. Wren nodded, clambered to his feet, shuffled through the door, wary of both men and obviously ashamed of the darkened wet spot trailing down one leg of his pants.
He stopped halfway between Three and Fedor, out of reach of either. Three didn’t get off the table. Just held out his left hand, where the shuttlecar waited.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” he asked.
Wren shot a glance to Cass. She was sitting up now. She nodded. He looked back to Three, nodded.
“Well, come get it.”
Wren started to move, but Fedor stopped him.
“No!” he barked. “That is close enough, Spinner.”
Three eyed Fedor. Fedor glared back.
“Can you catch, kid?” Three asked, not taking his eyes off Fedor.
Wren didn’t respond. Just stared. Three turned to look him in the eye.
“Here. Soft pitch. Ready?”
Wren nodded slightly.
Three exaggerated the motion, down, up, launching the tiny model car in a high arc towards Wren. In the same instant, his right hand flashed, snatching his pistol from its holster, bringing it to bear on Fedor. Fluid, flawless, perfect.
Yet not fast enough.
Fedor seemed to teleport across the room, hammering his forearm into Three’s wrist, catapulting the weapon from Three’s grasp. It clattered against the wall about the same time Fedor buried his fist in the side of Three’s head, sending Three flailing backwards and sideways off the table.
Stunned, dizzy, Three managed to roll up just in time to see Fedor’s heavy boot hurtling towards his throat. He twisted, felt the wind of Fedor’s kick whistle by, not comprehending how a man that size had closed that distance so fast. No time to figure it out. Three rolled again, spun on his back, gained his feet just as Fedor’s fingers darted towards his eyes, seeking to pry them from their sockets. With his right hand, Three slapped downwards, caught Fedor’s fingers in an iron grip, sidestepped and twisted, cranking Fedor’s wrist and elbow into a locked position. Driving upwards, Three whipped his blade from its sheath with his off-hand and slashed deeply into Fedor’s exposed underarm, feeling the soft tissue and sinew sever and tear away in a gush.
Fedor spun from an impossible position, lifting Three off-balance, and then bashed Three with an elbow across the forehead, slamming him to the floor. Fedor’s right arm hung limply, his entire side darkly saturated, as he raised his boot to stomp Three’s crotch. A moment before impact, a streak shot over Three and caught Fedor in the throat, launching him backwards into the smaller interior room. He crashed heavily to the concrete floor headfirst with a wet crunch, where he lay still, rasping and struggling for breath.
Three raised his swirling head, saw Cass crouching at his feet, facing away, a single hand outstretched towards the back room. A moment later, with a barely audible whir, the door to the back room slid shut, and all was still.
Three slumped back to the floor, stared at the ceiling, wondered if it would ever stop its lazy spin. He felt robbed, having gone from sober to massive hangover without ever passing through pleasant drunkenness. Pressure from inside his head counterbalanced the throbbing from the outside in a low-intensity equilibrium of pain. His right ear rang. A tiny silhouette slid into periphery, towering above Three from his worm’s-eye view.
“Is he…?” a small voice whispered, trailing off.
“Yeah, baby,” Cass said, from somewhere. “I’m afraid he is—”
“I’ll be fine,” Three interrupted. “Eventually.”
Cass appeared, sidling next to Wren, kneeling, eyes bewildered or amazed.
“We should go,” she said, hushed. “Can you walk?”
“In a minute.”
“They’ll be here by then.”
“Then go on.”
The weakening sun left the room a murky brownish-gray, making features difficult to distinguish. Three thought he caught Cass biting her bottom lip again; might’ve imagined it. She stood, face enshrouded by shadow, took Wren’s hand, and left.
Three closed his eyes. Twice now. No “thank you”. At least his ear had stopped ringing.
A pitter-patter approached, and Wren called from the door.
“Thanks for my car.”
Three raised a hand in silent acknowledgement, and Wren was gone.
Three didn’t know who “they” were, but he’d lain on the floor five, maybe ten minutes, and no one else had shown up. After recovering his pistol, which was undamaged by the scuffle, he’d set out with the late afternoon sun towards the agent’s office. Three-thousand Hard waited for him. Tonight, he was going to get very, very drunk.
When he reached the agent’s office, the glass doors slid smoothly open to admit him, snicked closed behind. He ran his fingers absentmindedly over the goose-egg throbbing above his left eye, shook his head to clear it as he walked the long stone corridor. Three reached the agent’s cube, waited for the greeting.
“State your business,” the voice boomed.
“Bounty.”
“State your name,” said the voice. Almost familiar. Something different, maybe. Three was too hazy to be sure.
“We did this already. I’m just here for my money.”
The same slot opened in the cube, same metal case slid out, same rubberized interior.
“Deposit your weapons in the provided secure receptacle.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Please approach the door.”
Three stepped closer, sarcastic, nose almost touching the flexiglass door. It slid open. He looked down slightly, expecting to find the eyes of the diminutive agent. Instead, he found himself looking at a broad chest. Not the agent.
Fedor.
Three
A meaty hand clapped over Three’s face, so huge that having its palm on his chin didn’t prevent its fingernails from digging into his scalp just above his forehead. Before he even finished flinching, Three was hurtling headlong into the flexiglass room, crashing face down into a stack of aged and blinking hardware, which collapsed and buried his head and shoulders under a jagged heap. Behind him, the door slid shut, whirred, and clunked heavily, some kind of magnetic lock-and-seal dropping into place. Three lay still, mind scrambling. He’d barely survived his first encounter with Fedor, with three times the room to maneuver. Three felt Fedor prowl over him. A heavy boot stamped down on the back of his knee, grinding the kneecap into the granite floor.
“So,” Fedor growled. “You are not so much.”
He snorted, and spat on Three, then drew a breath to say something else.
Instead, an ear-shattering blast of white lightning erupted from the back of Three’s coat, slamming through Fedor, spattering him across the inside of the cube. Then, a weighty silence descended, no doubt magnified by Three’s self-inflicted deafness. He hoped it was temporary.
Three rolled slowly up on his elbow, shoved the broken hardware off himself, surveyed the scene. The wreckage that had been Fedor lay folded n
ear the door. Three’s shot had caught him right through the middle. He wouldn’t be getting up again. Three checked himself, side aching from the blast he’d fired from his still-holstered pistol. His vest was scorched, and the hole through his coat smoked faintly, but he was glad to see he hadn’t shot off any of his own important bits.
He sat up, inhaled deeply, jammed his fingers in his ears to work out the heavy dullness, took stock of his surroundings. The flexiglass cube was frosted opaque from the impact of the round that had torn through Fedor, but the walls were otherwise intact. In one corner lay the agent, broken by Fedor some time before.
Unnecessary, Three thought. Excessive. A waste.
He fished around in one of his coat’s many pockets, and drew out his remaining stock of shells. Down to six. With practiced fluidity, he flipped open his pistol’s three-chambered cylinder, and replaced the spent shell with a fresh one. He dropped the empty in another pocket, where it jangled with others he’d fired before, each eagerly awaiting a refill, though chances for that were getting increasingly slim. A sharp flick of the wrist snapped the cylinder in place, and Three slid the pistol back into its now-charred holster.
He stood, shaking his head, and set to searching for a way to get out of the cube. None of the devices that still blinked or whirred seemed to have anything to do with the door. The agent’s cluttered desk was likewise no help. He flipped switches, pressed buttons, stomped, kicked. After twenty minutes of scouring to no avail, claustrophobia began to settle in. Three realized his breathing was short, his jaw clenched. He forced himself to sit. Propped up on the agent’s desk, he tried to relax, told himself he’d find what he was looking for, that he wasn’t going to die in a box. At least, not this one. He took a deep breath and held it.
That was when he heard the scratching.
It was quiet; rhythmical, methodical. Someone was working the other side of the door.
Three crept cat-like from the desk, half-crouched on the floor, eyes darting to reevaluate his options. For all the clutter, there was no real place to hide, no solid cover. He improvised.