Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  But it was me in that armory and not most people, and that door was locked with biometrics and had zero glass for someone to break their way through. I was vaulted in, and it’d take an army to drag my ass out of that safety zone. They may have had fifty or a hundred mercenaries (I doubted it was that many, my guess was on twenty to thirty—minus six), but …

  I was locked in an armory.

  Me.

  In an armory.

  Teehee.

  I opened the door long enough to see faces, surprised at my sudden exodus. I didn’t actually do much more than peek out, though. Well, that and throw eight grenades out in a scatter before slamming the door shut again. They were a mixture of pineapples—that’s fragmentary grenades—as well as a flash, and two WP. WP stands for “Willie Pete,” which is what soldiers in Vietnam called white phosphorus. It’s a really nasty bit of business.

  My mentor, Glen Parks, once showed me what one did. He took a fifty-five gallon drum, filled it to the top with water, pulled the grenade pin, and dropped it in. Then he took a whole lot of steps back and we watched the magic. It evaporated every drop of the water and melted the drum to slag, leaving a rather large, black scar on the ground.

  Ah, memories. Things like that are why I thought of that time of my life as the best.

  I hit the deck out of habit, even though none of the grenades were likely to penetrate the armory walls. I pulled up a gas mask and secured it on my face as I heard screams from the other side of the door. No sounds of shots fired at random, though, so that was a positive sign. For me, not them.

  I opened the door again, this time in a squat, peering out through the literal fog of war. Men were screaming, fire was blazing, I was pretty sure someone was in the middle of the flames, and I cared about none of it. The smoke was thick, heavy, and a perfect cover for someone who knew this building like it was her own home. Hell, it pretty much was.

  I crept along the corridor, thankful that my aim with the grenades had worked out like I planned it. I’d chucked the Willie Pete to the right, intending to go left in the chaotic aftermath. I stayed close to the wall as a guy ran by, billowing flames. He flapped his arms like a chicken. Like a big, roasting chicken. I think he was screaming, but it was hard to tell. He collapsed after a few feet, and I didn’t take the time to mourn him.

  However many men they sent after me, I’d blinded them, but I was under no illusions that it was anything other than temporary. I kept my hands firmly on my M-16, which I had attached to me via sling, in case of emergency. I had lost one gun tonight already, and I aimed to not lose any more. If I made it out of this alive, it was going to be due to my grit and daring, and while those were very fine things, they wouldn’t stop a bullet from splattering my brain into a nearby snow bank. Ask Leonid Volkov if you don’t believe me. Take his silence for the answer.

  I kept as quiet as I could, even in spite of the screaming still coming from behind me. I had to assume that not all the enemies were down, and whoever was left could end me with a stray, blind-fired bullet just as easily as a carefully aimed one. The smoke may have been my friend and ally, but it was hardly a protective blanket from everything my pursuers could throw at me.

  Plus, there very well could have been an active meta back there. Vitalik, Natasya or Miksa. I had no idea what any of their powers were, so they were just giant question marks for me at this point.

  I dodged into a training room quietly, slipping behind the metal doorframe and using it as cover while I peered out into the smoke-filled hall. The air was choking, a heavy cloud hanging on the ceiling and thinning closer to the ground. I had a suspicion that the force of the grenades exploding had probably blown out some windows somewhere in the building. I wondered why the fire sprinklers hadn’t activated, but an explanation occurred to me. Whoever had “warned” me about the mercs waiting in ambush outside the armory clearly had system access. It was entirely possible they were keeping my smokescreen intact. The fires were already dying down in any case; the WP wasn’t left with a ton to work with in the bare, tile hallways.

  I watched the clouds thin, and finally heard voices that weren’t screams. I heard someone pounding on the door to the armory, which I had quietly shut behind me in my exodus during the commotion. Hushed voices broke through the air, behind the faint crackle of dying flames. I saw shadows in the darkness, lit by the orange glow of the remaining fire. One. Two. A third brought up the rear, hobbling slightly. Two of the three were carrying weapons that looked like submachine guns, maybe something in the HK family.

  With meta speed, a split shot on three people would be cake. Preferably Funfetti Cake with white frosting.

  As Sienna Nealon, slightly injured and depowered malcontent, I wasn’t so sure. I’d practiced quite a bit with this specific type of gun. With my powers, I could field strip one pretty damned quick. Fast enough for an Army record, at least. Without that additional strength to control the recoil, to keep the weapon centered and on-target? I was definitely hesitant.

  Hesitation makes corpses of us all, though, so I leaned slightly out of my doorframe, took aim, and fired at the first guy.

  The shots rent the air, thunderously loud without hearing protection on my ears. I aimed for center mass and I saw the target drop after three shots. My barrel climbed with the burst, the blast of the muzzle dying after the third round. The M-16 isn’t a fully automatic weapon; it fires in three shot bursts because—surprise, surprise—it turns out that most people can’t really control a weapon spraying bullets wildly at the rate of lots per second. I certainly couldn’t, not now.

  When the barrel climbed for the second and third shots, it was all in a flash and haze. It happened so fast I was stunned. I was not used to firing a gun and having it make that sort of movement. I’d fired fully automatic shotguns and kept them snug to my shoulder the whole time (still hurts, BTW). But I caught a glimpse of an unmistakable pink mist on one of those climbing shots, and I knew the guy was dead.

  I recovered from my surprise in time to shift targets but not quickly enough to fire first. I felt my enemy’s shots slap the wall behind me. He’d aimed into the darkness, without the benefit of a backlight to guide him, and missed. Not by much, but enough to keep me breathing for a little longer. I didn’t panic. I didn’t freak out. I just did as I was trained to do and shifted targets, the screaming voice of worry telling me that I could die safely buried in the back of my mind. I squeezed the trigger as soon as I saw the red dot fall on the man’s stomach, and I watched the barrel climb again with a three-shot burst.

  This time I missed completely with the second and third shots; my gun jumped up and left, placing the follow-ups over his shoulder. I heard him grunt, re-honed my aim to his center, and fired again. I didn’t know if he’d had body armor that had stopped my shot, and I didn’t want to chance it.

  This round hit, dropping him to the floor. He moaned, and I went to change targets again, but the last guy was gone. I put away that thought of major concern and fired another volley into the man I’d just put down; mercy was a sweet concept and all, but I needed injured enemies returning to the fight like I needed more holes in my head. Because I had no doubt that’s exactly what they’d do to me given half a chance. Mom was very clear about how we fight—to win, accept no substitutions. If that makes me ruthless, so be it. Fighting for your life doesn’t come with rules beyond the one about winning at all costs.

  I turned my attention to the problem of the missing man, listening beyond the very slight hiss of a faint fire in the distance for any sign of him. If he was moving, I wanted to know where. If he was about to come out shooting, it’d be helpful to know what direction that would come from so I could anticipate it and fire back. It was a straight hallway, and he’d been down it a minute ago and disappeared. That meant he probably went into one of the side rooms. But there wasn’t any way he could flank me from there; the training room I was in lacked windows or another entrance. It was just a big space with canvas mats on the floor for sparri
ng practice, no distractions. There were swords and stuff hanging on the walls, but those were about the last thing on my mind at the moment. I’d have rated them as useful if I had powers, but less than useless in a gun fight without my powers.

  I was trying to figure out what my enemy would do next when I heard something hissing in the room with me. It was subtle at first, and it got my attention immediately. Divided attention, admittedly, because I didn’t want to take my eyes off the hallway for more than a second in case it was a distraction.

  It wasn’t.

  The wall was burning, the drywall turning blue with a glow that made it look like cerulean energy was dissolving it along a circular line. It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t drywall, it was concrete, and that that was indeed what was happening.

  The blue glow traced an ovoid pattern around the wall as I backed up into the room, M-16 held up defensively. When the oval was complete, a kick from the other side sent the cutout concrete block tumbling into the training room, a cloud of white dust billowing forth into the already smoky air.

  Miksa Fenes stepped through, hands glowing with what looked like blue energy, and his eyes locked on me immediately. Only one thought pervaded my mind as I stood there, wondering what the hell to do next:

  Why, oh why couldn’t I have shot him first?

  32.

  Whatever. This was no time for regrets. I ripped off a three shot burst at the bastard—

  —and watched him hand wave with his glowing blue crap and dissolve the bullets.

  “Dammit,” I said.

  Miksa said nothing.

  Unnerving.

  I shot at him again and watched my bullets dissolve in his fancy-schmancy blue-fire radiation or whatever it was. “Sonofabitch,” I said.

  “For Liliana,” he said finally, his cold eyes watching me with the reflected glow of his hands.

  Awww, crap. I guess they were close, after all.

  He flung the blue, glowing energy at me and I barely dodged in time. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, throwing myself to the floor and rolling like I’d always practiced. I felt something tear at my shoulder and I screamed as I came back up and reacquired my target, firing again. The recoil sent flames out the barrel and the feel of flames down my open wound, forcing me to take my finger off the trigger at the conclusion of the burst.

  Miksa Fenes just stood there, hands still glowing blue. He was calm, absolutely calm. He knew he had me, and he knew I knew it. I glanced back to see that he’d made a dog-sized hole in the wall behind me with that last blast, and I felt a sinking feeling inside.

  And then the fire sprinklers activated.

  They didn’t go for a subtle, light summer rain, either. We went from smoky and hazy to torrential downpour in a half-second, the cold air that had seeped into the room abetted by freezing water dropping on us from on high.

  I watched Miksa Fenes’s glowing hands peter out in the drowning deluge put out by the sprinkler system. His eyes met mine and I could see the faint panic as he realized just what he was dealing with here.

  I felt a wolfish smile play across my lips as I adjusted my grip and fired my underslung grenade launcher at the bastard.

  I swore like an angry Belieber at any who dared to doubt my idol when Fenes employed his meta speed to throw himself sideways a the last second. I tracked after him, but at substandard speed. He landed in a sideways roll that was inconceivably fast. It made me feel a little sorry for every human I’d ever dazzled with it.

  It also made me wish to have my powers back.

  I fired once with the M-16, then again, and Fenes dodged both bursts. He rolled low, closing on me, and I started to panic. The sprinklers were suppressing his powers, meaning I had the advantage at range. But he was blurry with speed, stronger than eighteen muskoxes chained together, and apparently mad as hell that I’d killed an old friend of his.

  I fired one more time before he got in under the barrel of my gun and laid a hand around it. I thrust it forward, hoping to jar his hand loose as I discarded the weapon, but it didn’t really work. I was trying to go with his momentum, but I just wasn’t fast enough to pull it off. He yanked the M-16 out of my hands, and I barely let go in time to keep him from causing some serious damage with it. I was already going for my Glock when he hit me with a short punch to the sternum that sent a surging pain through my chest and put me right on one knee.

  He slapped the Glock away as I cleared the holster with it, sending it skittering to the corner. He’d already thrown away the M-16, so fast I hadn’t even seen it. I heard it land, though, over the roar of the sprinklers. I got my head up in time to look him in the eye, prey to predator, before he slipped around behind me and put me in a chokehold. I felt his forearm tighten around my neck as he lifted me off the ground, my head squeezed against his chest. Stars and spots clouded my vision, and I felt the blood leaving my head as he pulled me up, up—to my death.

  33.

  I tried to slow my breathing, tried to slow my thinking, but my mind was whirling at a million miles a second.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  My body was in full panic mode, regardless of what my mind was doing. I needed air, needed it now, needed it like nothing I’d ever needed before.

  My hands flailed uselessly, slapping at Miksa Fenes’s arm, which might as well have been made of pure steel for all the good my little slaps were doing. He said nothing, or at least nothing I could hear, and since I could hear and feel his breaths on the top of my head, I assumed he wasn’t doing any talking.

  I stopped slapping his arm and searched for another option. I needed something. Anything.

  A weapon.

  Like the knife on my belt.

  I grabbed the Gerber survival knife out of its sheath with fumbling fingers and ran it straight into his hip. He screamed, breaking that quiet tradition. His grip loosened marginally and I brought my head down, then straight back into his nose.

  Not gonna lie—it hurt. The crown of my skull met his nose, and I felt the thing pop like full water balloon poked by a knife. Blood splattered into my hair and I spun—slowly for me, but fast enough—to bury the knife in the side of his neck.

  I pulled it out and stabbed him in the neck again. He looked at me, shocked, and reached out to take hold of me with hands that felt like they were about to burst into flames. I backed away, but knew that was a losing strategy, long term. He may have been weak, but he was still stronger than me.

  So I reversed my motion and went for a low tackle to the knees.

  It did next to nothing to him. He was a super-strong meta, and I was a normal person at the moment. My shoulders hit him and he wobbled a little. Even with blood loss that wouldn’t be immediately replaced, he was still worlds stronger than me.

  So I bounced off his legs a little, and jammed my knife right into his thigh, giving it a good twist once I knew it was in tight.

  He backhanded me with the force of a jackhammer blow and I crumpled, dragging my knife out as I fell. He made a cry, and I felt him fall beside me.

  I looked into cold, stunned eyes and felt my grip on the knife slick from what I’d done.

  But I wasn’t done yet.

  “You want to know how Liliana died?” I said in a low whisper, all I could manage under the circumstances. He blinked at me, and I rammed the blade into his chest, right under the sternum. Then again. And again. And again, not letting up. He pushed against me, but weakly, barely moving me as he struggled against the inevitable.

  The cold eyes found mine, then wavered, blinking, as his sight faded. Miksa Fenes died, the sprinklers raining frigid water down on him from above, showering us both as the red liquid dispersed, washing away the evidence of what I’d done.

  I felt cold and weak, trying to stir to my feet, to get the hell out of here before they sent more men after me. It wasn’t likely they were going to write the whole thing off as a bad idea, after all. No, Natasya and Vitalik were still here, and still meant me harm, and they had
a host of gunmen backing them up.

  So I lay there, in the cold water, trying to collect myself and get moving again, and only one thought came to mind that gave me the motivation to do so.

  “Two down,” I whispered, my breath stirring the puddle of cold water next to my face. The red from Miksa’s wounds was spreading through it in a faint cloud, like a wind was blowing it forward from somewhere. “Two to go.”

  34.

  The M-16 was useless, the barrel bent at a subtle angle by Miksa’s grab-and-throw maneuver. By itself, this would not have been a problem. I could have just gotten a replacement. But some genius had tossed a whole mess of grenades outside the armory vault and destroyed the biometric scanners that would have allowed me access.

  As they say in Latin, mea culpa.

  Also, as they say in the language of my people, shit.

  I collected the Glock off the floor of the training room and assessed what I had left. A pistol, some grenades, a couple Claymore mines (just in case), first aid kit, and a survival knife. I also gathered a submachine gun from one of my fallen enemies and made it my primary. I was suddenly thankful that Glen Parks had insisted on familiarizing me with every gun he possibly could. Otherwise I might have been heading into another nasty fight carrying nothing but my pistol.

  My new weapon was a Heckler & Koch MP5. I’d used one before, and I liked it. The benefit here was that all my flunky enemies were using them, so as long as I kept killing them, I’d have plenty of ammo. The downside was that it used a 9mm bullet, which had nowhere near the range of the M-16. I definitely wasn’t going to be able to pick out a nice spot on a snowy knoll and do some sniping through open windows from a pleasant distance. Not that I would have wanted to anyway, now that I was drenched in water.