“The Djinni!” he shouted, unslinging the M4 from his back and pointing it at Red.
“Hey hey,” Red cautioned, holding up his hands. “No need for that, Chuckles. We’re just talking here. Why don’t we keep it that way?”
“Nobody invited y’all,” growled the Reb, wrapping a bike chain around one fist.
Red raised an eyebrow. “I needed an invite? I’m sorry, I thought this was an open market. Or do you have a problem with money?”
The Reb just stared at him, confused.
It was Red’s turn to roll his eyes. “Money,” he repeated, slowly. “Whatever Mr. Wonderful here is offering, I’m betting I could do you one better. Maybe you’ve heard, but ECHO’s in the market for metas too.” He craned his neck, and looked at the boy. “I’d also bet the kid would rather come with us. Wouldn’t you…?”
“Pike,” the boy stammered. “I don’t really know what’s…”
“All right, that’s enough!” Christian barked. “I have had it with this shit!” He pointed at Pike. “You are coming with us!” He pointed at Mullethead. “You are taking this briefcase!” He pointed his gun at Red. “And you, can piss right up a rope and bugger off!”
“Well that’s damn rude,” Red scoffed. “You tongue-tango your boyfriend with that mouth?”
Christian snarled, and answered by shooting.
Instead of hitting the shirtless meta, the bullets struck a wall of dirt and broken concrete that somehow erupted between them.
“God dammit,” Red yelped, as he took shelter behind the rampart Vickie had thrown up. “Shooting again! What the hell? I’ve gone almost a month without being shot at!”
“You were overdue!” Vickie shouted back, emerging from her hiding spot and flinging herself into the shelter.
“I was just trying to be friendly! Maybe this wasn’t the best approach…” They both winced as rounds ricocheted off the concrete.
“You think?” Vickie covered her head with her hands. “Now what’s your plan? Aside from catching bullets with your teeth?”
“I am plan-less,” Red replied. “This is more or less diversion until the cavalry arrive. What we need here is less Butch and Sundance, and more Reservoir Dogs.” He raised his voice to shout to the Rebs. “Yo! I’m serious about upping the offer! Tell you what, we’ll throw in a little extra for helping us nab these Blacksnake goons!”
The gunfire came to a halt.
“Don’t even think about it!” Red heard Christian snarl. “You think ECHO’s going to let you boys walk away from this? Double the twenty if you perforate this idiot and his girlfriend.”
“I’m not his girlfriend!” Vickie yelped, her voice shrill and Chihuahua-like.
“From the diaphragm,” Red said, dryly. “Your voice will carry more indignation that way.”
On the other side of Vickie’s shield, there came heated whispers and threats. Finally, there was a grunt of agreement, and the shooting recommenced.
“Well, so much for that idea,” Red winced as the concentrated gunfire began to eat away at the barrier. The ground under them trembled, and another layer shoved up, thicker and higher. Red drew two pistols from his holsters, and fired blindly around the edge. The assault faltered as their would-be killers dove for cover. Red flipped one of his guns to Vickie, who caught it with deft, if shaking, hands.
“They’re going to try to flank us in a moment,” he whispered. “Ideas?”
“I—I—could bury us, maybe tunnel us out.” The idea was exhausting just to think about, but they didn’t seem to have much choice. Without the suite in the Overwatch room she didn’t know where the storm sewer lines were. She’d have to build everything herself. Then again, if they weren’t ducking bullets, she could take her time.
“Can you grab the kid too?”
She groaned. “I’m a geomancer first, technomage second, and unless you’ve got a piece of him, I can’t apport him to us.”
“So I just need to get to him,” he confirmed. “And you need a piece of me.”
“Yes,” she said automatically, then did a double-take. “Are you insane?”
“I swear,” he muttered. “That should be the Misfits’ battle-cry.” He handed her his remaining gun, took a breath and grunted as claws sprang from his hands. To his surprise, Vickie took that moment to pop over the top of the barrier and return fire before ducking back down.
“I don’t suppose you brought extra magazines?” she asked, her voice shaking and high-pitched.
“In my belt,” he said through clenched teeth. He had wrapped his hand around one of his claws, and with a groan he brought it down and snapped it off. Vickie paused briefly before tucking one gun in her armpit. She snatched the broken claw, stuck it between her teeth and dipped into his belt pouch for ammo magazines. Her hands still shaking, she dropped the partial mags from the pistols and performed an admin reload, saving the partial mags for later.
He nodded in encouragement. “On your count, I go, you cover.”
She shoved the broken claw down her shirt, checked the chambers on the pistols, and got ready. Turning to him, she mouthed it silently.
One…two…GO!
She flew up and onto the top of the barrier, flinging herself flat on the dirt and broken concrete, and began to lay down cover fire. Red sprang from the safety of her stone wall and sprinted for the shadows. Both her volley and his appearance were met with shouts of alarm.
She laid down general fire for effect until she ran out of ammo, then dropped back down. With the same gut-wrenching effort it would take to bench-press her current maximum weight, she reached into the earth around her and heaved up more into a cone-shaped protection, not unlike an anthill with her safe in the middle.
With shaking hands, she ejected the empty mags and slammed in fresh ones, just in case. Outside, muffled by the earthen barrier, she heard Rebs and Blacksnake shouting at each other.
“Where’d he go?”
“How’n hell do I know?”
“Well, get the goddamn girl!”
“How?”
Any more of this interesting dialogue was suddenly cut off by the eruption of gunfire. A few shots pinged off the top of the cone, but so few that it was obvious they weren’t actually shooting at her.
She turned her attention to the ground at her feet, which, fortunately, was already broken up by her early efforts. Like a kid compacting wet sand, she shoved magic force into the churned-up dirt, pushing it to either side, making a hole, and kept repeating the action, driving downwards.
Outside, there was more gunfire, and now, screaming. She continued to work; she was about six feet down when there was sudden silence.
That brought her head up like an alarmed deer. She turned, and started to scramble up to the top of her cone, when the screaming started again. Fueled by adrenaline she returned her attention to the hole, and at ten feet, suddenly punched through cement.
A storm sewer! Oh, thank you, Mother…
And just in time, it seemed.
“Now, Victrix!”
She clapped both hands, guns and all, over the claw in her shirt, ran through the equations in her head at light-speed, found the mass, and pulled.
She had them, she felt them. Red had managed to grab the boy, by a fistful of hair from the feel of it. She willed her power to engulf them, through the earth, to her. And just when she was sure of her grip, she hit a snag. There was something wrong…the mass separated, and the Red-part was engulfed by a much greater mass. Too much she couldn’t ID…too much to pull without an ID…she didn’t have a choice, she dropped Red and hauled on the other piece, which still bore his faint trace, just enough to use the Law of Contagion. She pulled.
The boy dropped into a shivering heap at her feet, and she sagged back against the dirt, panting.
“You!” she snapped at him, voice more of a squeak than a bark. “Down! Go!”
Somehow he understood, and dropped down into the storm sewer. No longer her problem.
She scramb
led back up over the top of the cone and out. The sense of “Red-ness” still told her where he was. Firing to give herself cover, she scrambled down the slope of the cone, into the shadows, following that tug of direction.
There! Shouts and a mass of bodies, chaotic in light from a night-lamp swinging wildly overhead. She made a quick estimate of where he was in there, and shot high. Shouts turned to screams. The screaming multiplied, and Red erupted from the crowd, claws slashing. Vickie gasped. Only minutes had passed, but the Djinni was in tatters. His bare torso was riddled with bullets, embedded in new layers of thick and now broken skin. His face and arms bore fresh cuts, and slabs of epidermis even hung in torn places. His victims were screaming, but Red didn’t make a sound. His face was cold, his lips a thin slit as he lay into them, his hands moving with surgical precision. It was doing a number on the Blacksnake agents and the Rebs, but it had left him open. While the Rebs pressed the attack, the remaining Blacksnake Ops had fallen back to regroup.
Her shots drew their attention, and they turned to focus on her.
That was when she saw it.
The Blacksnake with the flame-thrower, the little ignition-flame flickering ominously at the mouth of the muzzle.
Pointed at her.
Fire…
Her mind went blank with black terror. The guns drooped in her nerveless hands, as she froze, unable to think, move, or even breathe. No, not true, there was one single thought overwhelming her mind.
Fire…as she saw herself blazing, felt the flames even though they hadn’t reached her yet, felt every nerve screaming with agony.
Again.
* * *
…feint…there, exposed armpit, drive in, opponent down…next target…disarm Mullethead, he’s watching the claws, do a sweep, he’s open, spin, get his throat…
Red was fighting for his life. He didn’t have the luxury to feel anything resembling remorse for his victims; he didn’t have the luxury to do anything but survive. They were out to kill him, they were many, and they were armed to the teeth. The years spent as the underdog, the thief in the shadows, had taught him many things. One of the most important was just how dangerous these sorts of fights were. You avoided them whenever possible. Even a complete amateur could get in a lucky strike. It helped to have fingers with razor sharp edges, just as it helped to have the ability to grow an instant bullet-proof vest. To have meta-strength, speed and endurability were all assets, but he wasn’t invulnerable. He had faced odds like this before, and he had managed to survive, even if sometimes survival meant he had been the last one to crawl away. Still, all it took was one well-placed bullet in the brainpan, just one blade to find his jugular.
His skin was screaming. Not just from the pain of being shredded pretty badly in places, but with other, more useful, information. Even around corners, he could “see” them, sense their number and movement. He had gone for the gun-toters first. His hit-and-run attacks had kept him from getting shot up too badly, but a fair number of rounds had found their mark in him. They had swarmed him in the end, just as he had managed to work his way to the kid, and had resorted to pummeling him with their bare hands. He had felt the boy slip away, his odd musky aroma, akin to a ferret, wild and pungent, fading away into the very floor. That’s when the insults began, and the Rebs began revelling in taking turns delivering deadly kicks and darting in to hold him down while others landed on top of him with pointed elbows and harsh laughter. In the seconds that Victrix was away they had almost knocked him out, when he sensed her return. Through the crowd of bodies that stank of sweat, grime and god knows what other filth, her amber scent blazed into the room like a beacon, like a ray of hope. He heard the shots ring out, and sensed a sudden opening. Delirious, he managed to get to one knee and with a jolt fueled by desperation he lashed out. The ones on top of him were thrown off, colliding into others, and back on his feet he returned to his task. The boy, presumably, was safe. There was still the matter of battle-hardened thugs who were bent on killing him. He had only one focus now. Get rid of them. The icy clarity of it would have shocked his newly found sensibilities, an old voice trumping more recent revelations of morality. Any such inclinations were drowned under a tidal wave of cold detachment.
As he came out of his spin, neatly slashing through Mullethead’s throat, he saw the remaining Blacksnake ops, their backs to him, trained on…
“Vickie, move!” he cried, but she stood in shock, her guns sagging in her hands. She was frozen in fear. What was it? She was up to this! He had been so sure of it.
Then he saw the flicker of flame, smelled the acrid gas, felt the heat of the igniter and tasted the metallic propellant, cutting through the murk of filth and sweat and blood like a honed razor as the Blacksnake merc charged his flamethrower. Her eyes were fixed on the weapon, like a bird’s fixed on the snake about to strike. She could no more move than that bird could.
Red charged. He couldn’t see much choice in the matter. The mercs heard him thundering towards them. They turned as one, and opened fire. Some shots found their mark in his chest, but a few struck his unprotected legs. Red faltered a bit, but kept coming. His eyes were fixed on the flamethrower. The merc, who had been so intent on dousing Vickie with fire, leveled the muzzle at Red and a gout of flame and propellant belched out, washing over him. It was surprisingly quiet. It was also hot. A lot hotter than he’d expected. The ragged, dry tatters of bloodless epidermis that had been shredded in the fight caught fire.
And hell. It hurt. Worse than the bullets.
Before, he had been able to mute the pain somewhat. It was something he had picked up over the years. The level of control he had over his skin used to frighten him. The first trick he developed was directed growth, which later led to a complete reversal of directed necrosis, allowing him to shed away what he grew. In the early years, the acute sensitivity of the nerve endings in his skin yielded not only heightened senses but extreme pain. He had to learn some control over that, if just to keep from going into shock. Cuts from blades and bullet punctures were sharp stabs that could be muffled, and he could muffle the continued throbbing of wounds, but this…this was a perpetual torment, and it seemed to be everywhere.
Red stumbled and collapsed, screaming.
Vickie’s scream pierced his. He hadn’t known a human could hit that high a note.* * *
She couldn’t have moved, wouldn’t have moved, until he flung himself between her and death.
Then it wasn’t she who was the target, and she shrieked in fear and pure fury as he went down, burning. Equations exploded in her mind; power rushed into her, and she found a completely new level of force and concentration inside her. Time slowed. She pulverized concrete with a thought, flung it without even that, smothered the flames engulfing the Djinni, blinded the rest of the mercs. In the next moment, she had found the right support, caved in the floor beneath it and brought part of the roof and some of the loaded industrial shelves down on them. One of them got off a shot that burned across her bicep before she smashed him with an avalanche of broken concrete.
Then she was stumbling across the broken floor, sobbing, praying he wasn’t—he wouldn’t—
His body was still smoking as she scrambled next to him. “Djinni! Djinni! Vse zayebalo! Pizdets na khui blyad! DJINNI!”
“I cannot believe—” he coughed. “You actually—eat with—that mouth.”
Vickie exhaled in relief, hugging him instinctively.
“Ow,” he said, though he did nothing to stop her.
She cradled him gently, and just as she did, she heard a buzz over her embedded earpiece. “Five minutes, inbound,” followed the buzz. She recognized the voice as Panacea, one of the ECHO Med team; she’d be the DCO, then. The cavalry was almost here. The Djinni looked terrible, however. He had a habit these days of getting pretty beat up, though he seemed to heal back remarkably fast each time, and if he wasn’t invulnerable, he was frighteningly resilient. Stabbings, multiple GSWs, even disembowelment, but with the help of Bella a
nd Einhorn, he would manage to pull through. They never had to worry about anything on the surface, at least. Left on his own, he could knit his own skin together. Still, she had to wonder how bad it would be this time. Bella could fix the a lot of it, but the damage covered so much of his body, and it was hardly skin deep. She fought down a wave of panic as she took in the blackened areas, already cracking open to show oozing red beneath, already starting to flake away leaving what looked like half-cooked meat, leaking juice. It was all too familiar, and at the same time almost foreign. She dressed in the dark, these days. She hadn’t looked down at herself in years. Still, the memory of that day burned so very brightly, so terrifying it could catch her unawares at almost any time. She could be caught up in the most delicate of operations, running missions in the safety of her own home, and yet something could jar those horrific moments from the cobwebs of her mind, and she would freeze, or shiver, or even cry out in fright, caught in the memory of pain and terror. They said you couldn’t remember pain properly. They were wrong.
“Tell me what to do,” she told him, tearfully. “I’m not a healer. Tell me what to do!”
He opened his eyes, painfully, but the look of it. “Tell me,” he croaked. “Tell me…”
“What? What is it?”
“…tell me about the rabbits, George.”
The incongruity jarred her out of panic. “Red Djinni, you are such an ass,” she said, though with a startled laugh. It never changed with him, he would always be an asshat. She continued to chuckle, but it was mixed with a terrible sadness. He was in such agony, but he persisted in playing the clown. For her benefit, she supposed. He must have known what the charred sight of him must be doing to her. Or perhaps it more than that.
“Your file,” she said. “I told you there’s nothing in your file.”
He looked up at her, and for once held his tongue.
“You said I could piece it together,” she continued. “You were right, in a sense. You’ve been at this game a long, long time. Still, ECHO has next to nothing on you. What it tells me is that you’ve always been careful, and methodical, probably even paranoid. Rightly, of course, given you what you were doing and who you were up against. You’re not paranoid when they really are out to get you. So what does it tell me when I’ve watched you be reckless and living on the edge for the last year. What does it mean when you let yourself get so hurt, even close to death so often?”
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 18