Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Because cold renders it pretty useless.” He held what looked like the end of a leaf blower in front of my face. “This shoots liquid nitrogen. If I blast you with it, not only will your suit fall off into pieces, but you’ll probably shatter. So I’m going to let you up if, and this is a big if, you decide to play nice. You’re going to come with me very slowly. Capiche?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, and as soon as the word left my lips, the weight on my back vanished. I got slowly to my feet and looked around. Bang was standing there with his cold gun pointed at me. Flash stood off to his left with her own cold gun pointed at me. Evidently, they were taking no chances.

  “So, where’s Morris?” I asked, putting my hands up.

  “Sent him back to base,” Bang said with a shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know why you listened to him at all. He’s kind of a weasel.”

  “I noticed.” Morris was kind of a weasel, but how had Bang sent him back to base? Was he being serious or did he just mean Morris had run away?

  “Told you. Girl not smart,” Flash said, and I somehow managed to like her even less than I previously had.

  “Don’t mind her,” Bang said, waving his hand at her. “Anyway, here’s the deal. You need to come with us right now.”

  “I still don’t see why we can’t shoot girl in the head,” Flash interjected, making a shooting motion with her gun, and sadly, I could see the logic in her statement. If I were in their shoes, I’d want to put me down.

  “Um because we like money?” Bang answered, shaking his head. “Honestly, sometimes I think she forgets we’re mercenaries.”

  “Must be tough,” I replied as I desperately tried to think of a way to escape.

  “See, she understands my plight,” Bang said, glancing at Flash before moving close to me and jabbing me in the ribs. “Now let’s get going. As I said, circumstances changed.”

  Circumstances changed? That didn’t bode well. Everything about this mission seemed to be coming out of left field. Originally, I had been trying to capture these two mercenaries and now they were capturing me, presumably for a pay day? Were they going to turn me over to the Israelis? I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could help it.

  I lashed out, grabbing the gun with one hand as I whirled. The weapon went off, narrowly missing me and spraying the tree behind me. There was a cracking sound as the trunk shattered into a zillion scintillating shards and came tumbling toward me.

  My foot lashed out, catching Bang in the side of the knee. There was a loud popping sound as he tumbled to the ground with a grunt, leaving me in possession of his freeze ray. I pointed it at where Flash had been, but she was gone. Not like she had run away gone, but like she had completely vanished gone.

  A twig snapped to my left, and I threw myself to the side as a blast of cold flew by me and turned the ground behind where I’d been into ice. I fired back, but I wasn’t sure what I was firing at. Bang cried out as I grabbed him around the throat with one arm and hauled him up like a shield. It was pretty hard since he was really heavy and couldn’t stand.

  “Do you really think this is wise?” he grunted through the obvious pain of his knee. “We both know you can’t see her.”

  “That’s what you think,” I growled as my suit switched to heat signature mode in time to see her fist coming right at my head. I ducked and the whoosh of air over my head told me I’d gotten very lucky. I dropped Bang and lashed out, planting a hard kick into the center mass of my attacker.

  There was a howl of anger as the Flash staggered backward. I leapt forward, tackling her to the ground as my vision switched back to normal. Flash’s armor seemed to short circuit from my contact. It had sort of seemed to bend the light around it, reminding me of the Predator in those movies as I reared back and drove my elbow into her blocking arms.

  The force of the blow reverberated through my arm and into my shoulder. That was when she grabbed me under the armpits, throwing me forward as she slipped out from under my legs like a goddamn eel.

  I hit the ground on my hands and knees and scrambled to my feet. A gunshot went off. The bullet caught me in the left shoulder, spinning me around as pain ripped through me. I was pretty sure my suit had staved off most of the damage, but it still hurt like hell.

  “Look,” Bang wheezed, leveling a huge revolver at me. “We don’t have time for this, Abby.”

  Was he really suggesting I was bogging down his schedule when he was the one trying to capture me, presumably to turn me over to the Israelis for a payday?

  Instead of replying, I ran at him, screaming like a crazy person. I was nearly to him when a roar to my left caught my attention. Flash tore out of the brush on an ATV and slammed into me. Breath exploded from my lungs as I flew across the ground and rolled like a busted mannequin. She threw one last glance at me before scooping up Bang and throwing him over the back of the vehicle.

  “Shoot her,” Flash said, handing her freeze ray to him. He stared at me like he was thinking it over in his head, and I wasn’t sure why he didn’t do it. Still, I wasn’t about to look gift horses in the mouth. Before he could get a clear shot, I threw myself backward down the hill. Let me just say this right now. Rolling down a rocky hill is way less fun than it’d seem to be.

  15

  Morris was standing over me when I woke up. I wasn’t quite sure how long I’d been lying at the bottom of the ravine, but judging by the position of the sun, and the clock ticking away on the front of my HUD, it’d been less than a minute since I’d jumped off a cliff.

  “You should get bonus points for sticking the landing when you fell off the cliff,” Morris said, offering me his hand like he wasn’t a giant jackass who had told me to venture beneath an ancient ruin and then neglected to help me confront two deranged mercenaries.

  I scowled at him as I got to my feet, sans taking his hand. “Thanks for all your help,” I snapped petulantly. “Let’s go after the mercenaries before they get too far away.” I began walking to a gunmetal colored motorcycle sitting beside the road. Part of me hoped it was Morris’s ride. The rest of me didn’t really care because that motorcycle was about to be my motorcycle.

  “Abby, there’s something I need to tell you,” Morris called as he jogged after me. Evidently, I’d been moving quick enough to have crossed considerable distance while he stood there like the slack-jawed, non-helper he was.

  “If it’s an apology for leading me on a wild goose chase just so I could get ambushed, save it,” I said, leaping onto the motorcycle and fixing him with my best glare. I’m not quite sure what it looked like, but he stopped in his tracks and stared at me. Then he swallowed. Loudly.

  “It’s not like that at all, Abby—” He had probably been about to say more, but I didn’t really care. I kicked the motorcycle into action and roared off, leaving him standing there. What else was I going to do after all? It wasn’t like he’d been helpful and I was going to catch those two mercenaries if it was the last thing I did. Why? Because they were the key to saving my father. If I didn’t get the codes from the director, the life support would shut off and my father would die. I was through wasting time with idiots like Morris.

  “How close am I?” I asked the suit, somewhat annoyed I hadn’t figured out a way to communicate with it that didn’t involve talking. A translucent blue map appeared in my vision displaying two markers. One was a blue dot and indicated my location. The other? A red dot indicating Bang’s position from when I’d stuffed the tracker into his belt. Who says I hadn’t learned a trick or two?

  I was hoping he hadn’t found it and, say, thrown it into a random car as I gunned the motorcycle and took off up the road. As I got closer to the dot, traffic got worse, and while I was able to weave through it with the best of them, I quickly realized something. Greek drivers were insane. Speed limits and lanes meant nothing to them.

  Still, I was gaining on the dot. I kicked into a hard turn that brought me screeching around a corner. Off in the distance, I could just make out the ATV. From here,
it looked like they’d ditched their Mr. Freeze guns, but I wasn’t about to let my guard down.

  So what did I do? I twisted the throttle and zoomed forward until I was nearly on them. They never even saw me coming as I leapt from the speeding motorcycle and tackled Flash right off the front of her ATV. We hit the ground with a bone crushing impact that would have ripped my flesh to bits, but I had a protective suit.

  Flash did too, though hers wasn’t nearly as awesome as mine. We rolled across several lanes before coming to rest in the middle of oncoming traffic. Cars began to swerve and honk as I leapt to my feet and advanced on the woman. She was almost to her hands and knees when my boot lashed out, catching her in the chin and snapping her head backward.

  She flopped to the ground as a shotgun blast took me full in the back. I pitched forward to the ground as Bang leveled his shotgun at me and pumped five more blasts into me. If I said it didn’t hurt, would you believe me?

  I lay there, trying to remember how to function as Bang dropped the gun to the ground with a clatter and climbed into the driver’s seat, practically dragging his bad leg along. Pain filled his face as he stomped on the throttle and turned the vehicle into a turn that brought it straight at me.

  I scrambled to my hands and knees, trying to get out of his way as the taste of blood filled my mouth. That wasn’t good. I was on my feet just as he leapt from his ATV. The vehicle crashed into me, driving me forward into the side of a parked taxi. It hurt so much, I couldn’t even see straight even though I was pretty sure my suit had saved me from the brunt of the impact. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to focus as I reached down and grabbed hold of the ATV, struggling to push it off of me.

  Bang tossed one last look at me as sirens filled the air. They sounded close. Too close. People were everywhere, and I was immediately surprised no car accidents had occurred.

  I spoke too soon. A huge bus came barreling up the road and plowed straight into the ATV, ripping it off me and flinging it down the lane in a flurry of sparks and rubber. The giant vehicle slammed on its brakes, skidding by only inches from me. I took the moment to push myself backward onto the hood of the taxi. It was way harder than it should have been.

  I dropped down on the other side, running toward the back of the still skidding bus and looked around for Flash and Bang. They were nowhere to be found.

  “Where are they?” I snarled as an older man came walking toward me. I didn’t even register his face as the dot popped on my screen. It looked like Bang was inside the building across the way. I took a step toward it as the older man reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

  I glanced at him, taking in his scruffy grey beard and bald head. “Miss,” he said, “Are you okay? Do you need to rest?”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped, and as I tried to shake him off, he jabbed me in the ribs with something small and black.

  “Well, I think you should take a rest.” As he finished the words, a bazillion volts of electricity ripped through me.

  I staggered backward, my HUD turning into a mishmash of colors and fragmented images. The man advanced on me, the object still in his hands. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the spot where he’d struck me burnt like I’d had a live wire pressed to my flesh. Even through my suit.

  So I punched him in the face.

  He fell backward to the ground like his bones had turned to jelly, and I barely resisted the urge to kick him really hard. I didn’t because I’m a nice person and nice people didn’t kick unconscious old men. Instead, I scooped up his electrical doom device and sprinted across the intersection. Surprisingly, it sort of looked like a remote control with a big red button in the center along with a big chrome arrow pointing toward the end I assumed was the hurty end.

  I was almost through the door when the cops drove up clad in full on riot gear and packing those clear shields and stuff. I glanced at them, decided to ignore their shouts of “Stop!” “Halt!” “And for the love of Ares, look at all the damage!” and stepped inside.

  It was some kind of clothing store and every rack in front of me was filled with underwear and bras. I looked around, trying to decide whether I thought Flash and Bang had gone upstairs or downstairs when a timid looking blonde girl poked her head up from behind a solid white counter and began speaking gibberish in my general direction.

  “Where did they go?” I asked, brandishing my television remote at her.

  She stared at me, wide brown eyes full of uncertainty before pointing down the stairs. I nodded once and made my way past a cute panty and bra set I could never have afforded and glanced up and down the stairs just to be sure no one popped me in the head with a bullet.

  When no lead-based death came, I flung myself down the stairwell as quickly as I could. It opened onto another floor filled with shorts in every shade of neon one could imagine. A few customers milled around, evidently undisturbed by the explosions outside. Apparently, the Greeks were an imperturbable people.

  My heart sank as I stared past a girl eyeing a pair of hot pink short shorts. Just beyond her a door stood open. It wasn’t exactly dark beyond, but since there were no other obvious exits, something told me Flash and Bang had gone that way. I tightened my grip on my shocker stick-thing and raced through the doorway after them.

  I tripped over something and the world spun. I hit hard, landing on the cement as what felt like a billion metal bearings struck me, thankfully pinging off my armor even though I was really sure my body had been reduced to one giant bruise. I couldn’t hear anything as I slowly crawled to my feet and tried to peer through the smoke and debris.

  How had they managed to set up a trap in so little time, and what was worse? How had I been stupid enough to trip over it? I cursed Flash and Bang as I stumbled forward only to be blinded a high-intensity beam of light.

  My hands went up instinctively as an aluminum baseball bat slammed into my ribs with enough force to knock me from my feet. I crashed to the ground as Raul stepped through the smoke, leaning the bat against his shoulder. He smirked and waved at me with his free hand.

  “I thought you said she was tough?” he called over his shoulder. Then he smashed the bat into my skull and the world went dim and hazy. “It’s not nice to ditch me by the way. I might hold a grudge over such things.”

  “Sorry,” I tried to mutter, but instead of letting me get the words out, he smashed me in the face. A couple times.

  “See, here’s the thing. Plans have changed.” He hit me again, and I was starting to wonder if it was his thing. “My brother needs to talk to you. Calmly.” He punctuated the sentence with another blow that banged off my upraised arm and rang down my body. “Capiche?”

  He smirked like he’d won, but you know what the problem with that was? I was wearing high-tech body armor and he, well, wasn’t. I jammed the electrical doom stick into his ribs and smirked with smug satisfaction as lightning zipped through his body.

  “Capiche,” I huffed as his body flopped to the ground like a seizing fish.

  16

  The booming sound of jet engines filled my ears as I sprinted down the dark hallway, leaving Raul and his stupid bat behind in the darkness. I had been about to interrogate him, but something told me I should catch those engines before they escaped.

  I shouldered through a red steel door, surprised when it opened easily and without so much as a squeak of protest. A sort of parking garage filled with various vehicles spread out in front of me. A quick glance around the room revealed a host of motorcycles and an ATV that was strikingly similar to the one Flash used earlier.

  A scowl crossed my face as I watched a small Cessna-sized plane begin to roll forward, moving down a wide ramp I assumed led to some kind of runway. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite sure where I was or who was inside that plane but I had a couple guesses. Flash and Bang’s secret hideout for $100, Alex?

  I charged into the parking lot but realized immediately there was no way I was going to catch a plane on foot as it turned and disappeared from view. Instead, I
made my way to the edge and saw t it was going to pass right under me on its way toward an exit to the left. In the distance, a door was slowly lifting, but it was way too far for me to land on the plane if I jumped. Besides, the idea of falling a couple stories to the ground, even with my suit, wasn’t exactly appealing.

  Still. This was my chance. I had to try, right? After all, what was I going to tell Roberto when he died because I failed? “Sorry I didn’t want to jump off a cliff onto a plane for you, Dad.” I’m sure it’d be real comforting to him in heaven. Assuming he went there. I guess he was probably going elsewhere though.

  I shook off my theological thoughts around where my dad was going to go when he died and decided to focus on keeping that from happening. I gritted my teeth, and even though I knew it was one of my worst ideas ever, I leapt on the back of one of the motorcycles. The keys were still in the ignition and it started with one kick. See, who says I’m not lucky? Well, pretty much everyone ever, but still.

  I made my way back toward the far end of the garage and waited the half a second I thought it would take before gunning the bike as hard as it would go. It exploded forward in a squeal of rubber toward the edge. Part of me was glad it wasn’t a steel embankment or anything and was instead a glass wall lining the edge. If it had been something else, I wasn’t sure my plan would have worked.

  The bike surged forward as I pulled out the pistol I’d found on Raul’s body and fired a few quick shots. The window in front of me shattered just as I crashed through it in a spray of glass and debris. I tumbled downward, adjusting my feet and springing from the motorcycle just as the plane passed beneath me. I smacked into the top of the vehicle with a bone jarring thud that knocked the wind from my lungs and left me dazed as I started to slide down the side of the white steel.

  The motorcycle hit the ground a few feet away with a shriek of tortured metal as I forced myself into action. Wind smashed into me as I crawled on top of the vehicle, searching desperately for a handhold that’d keep me from flying off the thing. The propeller was loud enough to drown out everything, and while I wasn’t sure how the occupants hadn’t heard me smack into the top of the vehicle or the ensuing motorcycle crash, I was sure they’d notice the moment they started to leave the ground.