“Did you just call me honey?” she says with a mix of surprise and utter satisfaction in her voice.
I chuckle painfully. “I guess I did.”
C H A P T E R
VIII
Mission completion time: T minus 526 minutes.
“Tanya, can we get visual confirmation that Ahmed died in the explosion? I can’t seem to be able to contact the drone,” I say.
“I’m afraid the drone’s camera was damaged in the explosion. Would you like me to recall another one? The nearest one is about five minutes away.”
“No that’s okay. I’ll get visual confirmation myself.”
I secure Ahmed’s lieutenant, bounding both his arms and legs with lock-foam. The white shaving-cream-like material solidifies in less than two seconds to form unbreakable restraints.
I’m out of the apartment and rushing back upstairs, climbing steps three at a time. I need to see it for myself. I need to make sure Ahmed bit the dust. The staircase reaching to the sixty-fifth floor has been damaged in the explosion and I have to use my super strength to leap far enough and land at the top of the stairs.
The second I land I feel the floor under me give in. The structure isn’t stable enough and before I know it I’m stumbling back downwards. I instinctively fire my repulsors in thruster mode just in time before hitting the ground below and soon I fly back upwards.
When I land on the floor where I stormed the apartment earlier, the entire corridor is in flames, sparks shooting from the walls, and I feel something’s wrong with my neuronal HUD. The interface is blurred and jittery. At first I wonder if it’s because of interference from the damage all around me.
“What’s happening, Tanya? Status report?”
There is no response. I try again.
Then something weird happens.
My view is filled with a holo-view of Tanya but the image is distorted. I can see her speak but no sound reaches my brain. I slap my scalp. The last thing I need today is hardware failure of any kind. The image gets more and more distorted and then her face is replaced by another.
My heart skips a beat. It’s Vassiliki. She smiles and looks at me for a few seconds.
What the hell is this?
Her smile vanishes as she gives a frown, a solemn look on her face. Her lips part and I hear her voice. It’s distorted as if the quality of the communication is weak. Her words send shivers down my spine.
“Cole, do not trust everything you’ve been told. There is more than meets the eye here.”
“Vassiliki? How is this possible? You’re . . . you’re dead,” I say, feeling a tear travel down my left cheek.
To my despair, her image fades away and is replaced with Tanya’s avatar. She’s still speaking to me. It takes a couple of seconds until the words are comprehensible.
“Cole . . . we can’t stay on this level for long. Too much interference, and it’s affecting all my systems.”
No shit!
I want to tell her to run diagnostics. I need to know what the feck seeing Vassiliki was all about. But then I remember why I came here. First and foremost I need to find Ahmed's dead body. It’s very hot all around and I don’t have time to help fight the flames so instead I activate my temperature shield augment. It radiates the right amount of sub-zero air around the force field surrounding me so I’m unaffected by the blazing flames.
Soon I reach the room I ordered the drone to blast a few minutes ago. I scan the room for remains of a body, anything to confirm that my nemesis perished in the explosion. But I find none. I punch a hole in the nearest wall before storming back downstairs.
On my way there I ask Tanya to run a self-diagnostic. I don’t know what happened earlier, but it worries me. Before I reach the apartment where I left Samir, she answers me.
“Self-diagnostic complete. All systems working perfectly.”
Why do I have trouble believing any of it? Is she hiding something from me or am I being paranoid because of all the stress?
When I arrive next to Samir he is still unconscious. I approach him and kneel beside him and Tanya deploys the drug injector from my right index finger.
“Wake that fecker up please, Tanya.”
“In his current condition, he won’t last long. Fifteen minutes at best.”
“That’s more than enough time. This will be a short conversation.”
I press my index finger against his jugular artery and feel the drugs injected into his bloodstream with a slight pneumatic depression from the tip of my finger.
The drugs act fast and Samir comes back to consciousness screaming. I put my hand on his mouth to muffle his scream as I grab a knife and put it under his left eye, applying enough pressure to get his attention.
“Listen to me, sucker, I don’t have time to lose. So the only words I want to hear from you are answers to my questions. Are we clear?”
His bloodshot eyes stare at me with pure hatred. I remove my hand slowly from his now silent mouth.
He spits his answer like acid venom: “Go feck yourself, infidel!”
“Wrong answer!”
I plunge my knife into his thigh, about an inch away from his artery and twist it ninety degrees, resulting in more screaming.
“Listen to me, Samir, I have no intention of going easy on you. If you think this hurts, you obviously don’t comprehend how far I’m willing to go to get the information I require from you. So let’s try this again, shall we?”
Samir’s eyes are now shut closed from the pain.
“You know I don’t like it when you torture other human beings,” says Tanya, trying to be the voice of reason.
What she doesn’t understand is that I can’t afford to be a human being with feelings if I am to accomplish my goals. Not when the fate of hundreds of thousands of souls hangs in the balance. I switch off my emotions completely and only focus on results. This pathetic excuse for a human being will suffer and then he will die. How much of it he will have to endure is entirely up to him. But both his pain and death are set in stone as far as I’m concerned. Nothing can change that now.
“Where is Ahmed’s dirty bomb located at the moment? Give me what I need and I’ll make the pain stop.”
Samir blinks his eyes back open. I can start to see fear in them. The dance has begun. There’s still a healthy dose of defiance in them though. That tells me I need to keep pushing.
I grab one of his fingers. They’re arched from the pain, but he can’t move his hands because of the lock-foam. I go for the little finger. I don’t need to use much of my augments for that next move. I break his finger, hearing every bone in it brittle under the pressure, and rip it from his hand.
By now I don’t hear Samir’s screaming and moaning anymore. I just need the Intel I’m looking for; the rest of the world around me is now just background noise.
“Now, Samir, where’s the dirty bomb located? I don’t enjoy this and I’m sure neither do you. There’s no way out for you. Today is your last day, and it’s up to you if you want to die fast or have me make it a living hell for as long as it takes.”
“Allahu Akbar . . . you shall burn in the flames of hell for all eternity,” he says back to me, tears of pain forming around his eyes.
I take the knife out of his thigh and plant my finger into the wound.
“Not the answer I’m looking for, Samir!”
His teeth are clenched so hard and his eyes close shut.
I approach his ear and whisper to him.
“This, what you feel right now, is nothing compared to what will come next. Do you understand me, Samir?”
But then Tanya interrupts the process. “Cole, the wound in Samir’s leg. It will make him go into shock soon and probably die shortly after if you continue, and then he won’t be able to give you any answers.”
I remove my finger from his wound and activate one of my repulsors in concentrated fire mode. A short, blue-tinged flame comes to life. I usually use this mode to solder things. It will do the trick just fine.
Time to seal that wound then. I burn the wound to stop it from bleeding. Without anesthesia I can only imagine the level of pain that he feels from this.
I give Samir a few seconds to recover from the shock of it all. I then pry his left eye open and place my blade under his eye once more.
“Don’t force me to do this!” I scream. “Tell me where the bomb is!”
He mutters something in Arabic. Tanya translates: “I do not waver in the face of adversity. Allah the merciful is my guiding light.”
“Allah can’t do shit for you anymore. Last chance, Samir!” I shout, one inch away from crushing his face from frustration.
I can feel him trying to close back his eye, but I don’t let him.
I exhale deeply. “Very well, Samir, you asked for it.”
I use the tip of my blade and plunge it under his eye ball and with a swift movement I pop it out of its socket.
“Stooooop! Please stop!” he begs.
Now we’re getting somewhere. His eyeball dangles on the side of his face.
“Where . . . is . . . the . . . nuke? Answer me or I’ll keep going!”
A few seconds pass before he answers.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say as I grab his eyeball and close my fist around it and start pulling, slowly.
The sound he emits is beyond pain. His facial grimace mirrors that fact.
“This next part will hurt more than anything you can ever imagine,” I say, my voice ice cold.
“Please, just . . . kill me.”
“I will if you tell me where to find the bomb, Samir. You can meet your maker fast; all it takes is that one piece of information.”
“World Security Center.”
“I didn’t ask what the target is. I already have that Intel. I need to know the location of the bomb at the present time.”
“Only Ahmed knows that. I don’t know where the bomb is right now, I swear!”
Tanya intervenes.
“Cole, he’s not going to be able to take much more of this, and I detect no deception from his last statement. Maybe we should give it a rest. We have another lead in our mission’s Intel package, and perhaps we should get your friend and go pay a visit to Rasul Yasser instead. I don’t think we’ll get anything of use from Samir.”
“Very well,” I say as I rip his optical nerve in frustration and throw it to the side.
He screams from the top of his lungs in agony and part of me disagrees with the move. That part is called my conscience. It’s not happy about this unnecessary act of brutality. I know full well this was gratuitous and that Vassiliki wouldn’t have agreed. I’m surprised at the thought. I usually can contain my emotions better than this. But there’s no denying it, today I’m off my game and I know it. The nightmare has shaken my foundations and I’m not able to turn off my human side the way I know I need to in order to accomplish my goals.
I grab a sonic grenade when my arm stops moving.
“Tanya! What are you doing?”
“Cole, you don’t need to do this. Just shoot him in the head and end his suffering already.”
“Tanya, override and give me back control. Now is not the time, you hear me?”
I can feel the sensation back into my arm and shove the sonic grenade in Samir’s open mouth, breaking and dislocating his jaw in the process. I don’t activate it just yet. I get up and leave the room, and when I’m far enough I send the mental command to detonate it. I don’t need to turn back to know what happens. I get the mental image of Samir’s head being blown into pieces from the detonation and spread all around his now dead corpse.
“Was that really necessary?” asks Tanya with the unmistakable weight of disappointment in her voice.
I don’t answer. I know there’s nothing I can say that will justify my actions. I normally have no problem admitting defeat and ending an interrogation with a simple laser blast to the head, but I’m beyond mad right now. I recognize that. I also recognize that it’s not a good emotion to feel while in deployment. My augments usually allow me to control all my emotions, but today is different. There’s something lurking inside my brain, doubts doubled with fear, and that’s a very dangerous mix.
I get back on the jet bike and soon we’re flying over New Geneva as the day unfolds little by little. It all seems peaceful at the moment. People going to work, public transport getting them where they need to go, thinking this day is just like any other. They’re unaware of what will happen to them if I fail my mission.
“Failure is not an option,” says Tanya with a grave tone of voice. “Or have you forgotten that?”
I haven’t forgotten. I just have a bad feeling about today. I wish I could shake it, but I can’t. It lurks in the back of my head, eating at my confidence with every passing moment. I need to regain control, and fast.
C H A P T E R
IX
Mission completion time: T minus 487 minutes.
We arrive at Confederate Road. That road bears the name since Geneva was once part of the Swiss confederation, made up of multiple cantons that merged together to create Switzerland. Of course today the notion of country doesn’t exist anymore. Whatever few cities are still left standing are all part of the United Nations of the World. New Geneva is one of the largest cities on the European continent now. Today it’s one of the most advanced technological cities in the world. Up until not long ago it was also where most of the megacorporations had their headquarters. Until they moved them to New Paris and its highly advanced dome shields and lower crime rate.
It’s time to enlist Eleanor’s help. At least try, that is. I dread meeting her again more than I am willing to admit it to myself or to Tanya. We were close once, very close, like brother and sister close. We also made one hell of a team when we went into battle together. We sweated, bled and did everything we had to do to always get back alive from a mission, together. We never left the other one behind, no matter the state we were in. I can sincerely say I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for her acts of bravery under fire. I’m sure she feels the same about me. Past memories overload my mind in this moment.
Soon we enter the tall building where her apartment is. I stop in front of her door and freeze, looking at her name engraved into the small copper plate near the doorbell. My finger hovers a couple inches from the touch control.
“What’s wrong, Cole?” says Tanya.
I don’t answer.
“Cole, I understand you’re not feeling well today, but unless you get your shit together, we’ll both perish, and I haven’t signed up for this! You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I don’t think you do, Cole. I’ve never felt you so agitated before.”
“Feeling yourself die will do that.”
“Cole, it was a nightmare!”
“How do you explain that the target was right, then? This doesn’t make any sense and you know it.”
“I’m willing to recognize that it is peculiar, yes, but perhaps it’s a side effect of time travel. Perhaps you acquire some sort of discombobulated precog ability from it.”
I think about it. It’s true that during the time transfer I feel something indescribable, a state of pure consciousness detached from human experience. Perhaps in that state I glimpse into my own future, and my subconscious serves this back to me in my dream state. That could explain it. But even so, am I or am not destined to die? How does this explanation help me?
“I’ll tell you how it helps, Cole. You know what could happen, therefore you have the edge required to change your own destiny. But not if you keep obsessing about the one thing you fear the most.”
There is wisdom in her words, and it helps me calm down, at least a little. Except I never thought I feared death before. Not since Vassiliki died. And that’s part of what made me the unrelenting, unstoppable agent that I have become. She’s right, though, I need to get a grip and start grounding myself in the present instead of letting the past ea
t at my heart and the future scare the crap out of me.
I don’t even realize it but my finger touches the doorbell controls. The sound of the door chime brings me back to the here and now. I swallow hard.
“Tanya, activate privacy mode.”
“Cole, it’s against standard operation procedures to deactivate me during deployment.”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Tanya.”
“Very well,” she says, her tone grave. I hear the confirmation beep that she has turned herself off.
When the door opens my eyes focus on the barrel of an old .357 Magnum pointed right at my face. My focal point changes from the barrel of the gun to Eleanor’s cold and emotionless face.
She barks at me, “What part of ‘I’ll kill you, motherfecker, if I ever see your face ever again’ didn’t you understand, Cole?”
“I need your help.”
“I don’t give a feck! You don’t get to come here and ask for anything but a bullet, do you understand what I’m saying?”
I then recall our last conversation. Right after her court martial, right after I testified against her. My heart fills with shame and regret.
“I can’t change the past, Eleanor, no matter how much I wish I could. But please hear me out. If what I have to say doesn’t matter to you, then you can go ahead and shoot me.”
She looks at me differently now. I don’t know that look, though. Is it curiosity? Is it disgust or something else altogether? Whatever it is it makes her think. I can tell that much. She puts her thumb on the hammer and slowly de-cocks it.
“You have balls, I grant you that. Speak, but make it short. Just seeing you causes a host of memories and years of repressed anger to come back to the surface.”
I can understand that. In fact, I can imagine that killing me is on the top of her bucket list. If our positions were reversed, I might actually feel the same. But no matter how she hates me right now, part of her recognizes that I saved her life many times. Too many to count, in fact.
Rewind 717: The Adventures of Time Traveler Anti-Terrorist Agent Cole Seeker Page 9