by Adam Thielen
Again she screamed in pain, rolling backward into a reverse somersault, recovering to her feet, and pressing her palm against the wound. Blood dripped from the blade, seeped from between Roland’s fingers, and soaked her left leg while the psion wore a smug grin.
His smile waned when his future-sense showed Cho coming in for another attack, but she didn’t. She stood there instead, still holding her shoulder, and began to speak. He had no memory of her speaking at this time.
“What is this?” he demanded with outward anger and inward fear.
“You’ve got me,” she said. “Again. And you will again and again and again.”
Her defeat comforted him, despite the apparent desynchronization.
“I can’t keep up, and I’ve lost too much blood,” continued Cho. “But I want to say something to you, before you end this, before you hurt me again.”
Without guidance, he decided this must be a ruse. But for some reason he wanted to hear what she had to say. The part about hurting her made him feel angry.
“Hurt you? You were the one who came to steal one of our assets!” he yelled defensively.
“You’re right,” she said, nodding. “The New Republic is playing the same superpower games America did before the Collapse. So maybe we overreached in our attempt to learn more about Chantech. But you didn’t have to kill us. We were willing to go. And even if you thought you had to kill us, you didn’t have to rape me. You could have let me die with dignity.”
Roland found himself flustered. “Your sweet ass up in the air? How could I resist? I fucked you because that’s my place in the world, and you got fucked because that’s yours. You’re born to be dominated by us.” An uneasy feeling crept into Somer’s stomach at hearing his own words.
“Biologically, sure, you have been given all of the physical advantages,” she replied. “So you look to the animal kingdom. You think if something is natural, that somehow makes it right. But our civilization and technology stand in defiance of what is natural. The only thing that truly separates us from other animals, save for a few IQ points, is our ability to deny our primal natures. But you take your cues from brains that don’t even have the ability to consider the appropriateness of their own actions. That must make you feel very superior.”
“I take my cues from my path, and if I deviate, it’s because I want to… my desires are my own,” Roland said. His voice started loud and trailed off near the end. What he said was what he believed, then what he used to believe, and then he found himself questioning his own motivations. What is wrong with me? he wondered.
“Right,” said Cho. “Your desires rule you, and you are willing to make anyone and everyone suffer for your every whim. The others around you, the men you lead, they see your example. They have desires too but unlike you, they may actually give a shit about how others feel. They may not see women as objects to be abused and discarded. But your actions normalize it.”
Tsenka took a deep breath, activating her perfect recall storage to remember everything she had wanted to say, to remember the speech Matthias told her to prepare, and the one she had practiced awkwardly in front of a mirror. She was still bleeding. The silver had reacted with her blood, deadening it, magnifying her thirst, and preventing her vampiric healing. Roland did not respond during her pause but stood morosely.
“You spread your hate and disregard for others like a disease,” she continued, “until it becomes a culture where women live in fear that whether they enter conflict, turn down the wrong street, go on a date, or come home to their husband, that each encounter with a man could be punctuated with a violation that they must live with and think about every day. It changes the way we look at the world, the way we look at our friends, and even the way we look at our own families. Every night becomes a battle for tranquility, and every morning a struggle to find a reason to rise.”
“Why are you do—saying all this?” asked Roland.
“Because you’ve lived your life on your terms without giving a shit about anyone else,” said Cho. “Now you will pay the price of admission and listen to the truth about your actions. You pretend, you tell yourself that all you are doing is having a bit of fun, fucking someone against their will. You beat them, you drug them, you trick them, you bind them, and it’s just a laugh, isn’t it? Except you know it’s not. You yourself have been embarrassed, you’ve been tricked, you may have even been violated. Perhaps it’s been a long time, but you know the pain though you’ve never felt the magnitude.”
One of Roland’s men moved forward, tiring of her speech, but Somer turned and waved him back. “Let her speak her last words,” he told them.
“You know who’s to blame for my rape?” asked Cho. “I am, or I was, in my own mind, for weeks and months. The blame I put on myself was far worse than any of the bullshit others were saying. I felt like I had put myself in danger and got my team killed. Believe me, nothing is worse than than the guilt we feel for what others have done to us.”
Cho’s bottom lip turned downward and quivered. She swallowed and coughed and forced herself to continue. “Then I was carted into an emergency room where everyone could pity my victimhood, where I could lay embarrassed and unable to move, eat, or shit on my own for days. The shame and guilt was too much. I couldn’t live with myself any longer. I had had a great job and friends and a caring lover, but what you did to me made me hate them all. Every night I relived the torment you put me through. Hours that I needed to recuperate were spent sweating, crying, and wishing you had finished the job. Then I made plans to end it myself. At least then, I’d be going out on my own terms. One last act to take back a little bit of the choice that you had taken away.”
Roland was holding his stomach, bile fighting its way into his mouth. He looked at the ground, then back at Cho as she continued.
“But the lover I could no longer lay with was willing to let Agent Tsenka Cho die, so that he could still enjoy the presence of this empty shell for a little while longer. This skin I wear will fool some, but it doesn’t fool me. You took everything from me, even my identity.”
Tsenka’s left hand opened, and the small pen-shaped syringe Matthias had given her fell to the ground, its reservoir spent. Roland bent over, puke shooting from his mouth and splattering on the ground. He coughed, wheezed, and puked again. He moaned, then spit a few times, staring down at the mess below. He was completely desynced and adrift, and he realized that his entire life had been a series of ridiculous lies he had told himself. Quite simply, he was a horrible person, beyond any redemption. A tightness gripped his chest as he considered the pain and suffering he had caused others over the years.
“You’ve done something to me,” he accused, still facing the ground. “You’ve killed me, destroyed me, destroyed my mind. What do you want from me?” he demanded, straightening up to face Cho. “To say I’m sorry? Well... I’m fucking sorry! I am sorry!” The pain would not abate, so he turned to his men. “I’m sorry!” he screamed at them, and he meant it, but it did no good. He looked at them, and they stared back at him, looked to each other for guidance, then back at Roland. Each one of them had raped and killed people out of enjoyment or to get what they wanted. He despised them all.
He turned back to Cho, the pain on his face subsiding and his demeanor calming. “I am sorry, Tsenka Cho. I had no right to do that to you.”
Tsenka had no response, except a mixture of stunned silence at his apology and a suspicion about its authenticity. Roland could tell that he wasn’t convincing enough, and he so wanted to convince her.
“To your doom, she said,” repeated Roland.
“Who?”
“Your friend. She said the path would lead me to my doom, but she was wrong,” insisted Somer with a crooked smile. “This is my salvation.”
“I have an idea,” he continued with a hint of excitement, moving toward his pistol lying on the ground. Tsenka looked to her own weapons then to Roland’s men, who had raised their guns in response to this strange turn of ev
ents.
Somer dropped the dagger and picked up his handgun. “I want to show you something,” he said to Cho, who stayed silent, wondering if the serum she had injected him with was already wearing off. “Something I bet you’ve never seen before.”
A series of explosions sounded in the distance. His men and Tsenka all looked in that direction, but could only see smoke, debris, and wrecked cars. Roland ignored it and moved to the middle of his squad. He grinned, swiveling his head to look at the ones to his left, then the ones to his right.
“Alright, boys,” he addressed them. “You either kill me or I kill you.”
All seven of them stared at him with concern, turning to each other and then back to their leader. “No joke,” he added. “Now, someone start the show.”
“Sir—” tried one of the men.
“No talking,” said Roland. “It’s kill or be killed.”
For a moment all stood perfectly still. Then two of his men began to circle around him to get a good angle. Again, stillness. Then, after an eternity of waiting, one of the newer men in the squad aimed his rifle at Roland, but before he could pull the trigger, a round from Somer’s Desert Eagle tore through the man's chest. This triggered a chain reaction where two more men opened fire, and then the remaining four. But none of their shots landed. Roland moved in between them erratically, making it difficult for them to fire without the risk of hitting each other.
The psion ducked and moved to the left while shooting another of his men, then rolled forward and shot another. The men’s gunfire stopped and started in bursts as they adjusted their aim and position to avoid friendly fire.
Cho watched with fascination as Roland took out one man at a time. His movements were perfect. He knew exactly where to position himself to frustrate them, and Tsenka knew immediately why. She recognized the strategy he was employing. She knew the motions he made intimately. And Roland was right, she had never seen it done before.
When one man was left, that man lowered his gun and looked at the bodies of his comrades in despair and shock. Roland shrugged, then raised his arm and shot his last goon in the face. He then turned back to Cho, ejected his magazine to check it, then pushed it back inside the grip until it clicked into place.
“I told you, ey?” he said, admiring the look of surprise on Tsenka’s face. Somer lowered to his knees, closed his eyes, and breathed. He thought of his rabbits, Sage and Rosemary, and tears began to stream down his cheeks. All he wanted was to be back in that room to see them again, to run his hand over their snouts, and refuse to leave ever again. Somer forced the thoughts out of his head and opened his eyes, wiping at them with his free hand.
“And now,” he said, pausing to remove his crown and set it on the dirt beside him. “I give you a choice for the one I took away.” He pointed the barrel of the gun at his temple.
Tsenka limped closer. She stood over him and stared at the man who both was and was not the one who had killed her. She nodded.
“I know what I deserve,” he said. “But try to find your way to my condo when this is all over. I have a couple critters that will need a new home.” Without waiting for her response, he squeezed the trigger, all too happy to end the guilt besieging him. The bullet made a small hole on the right side of his head, and a large one on the left as shattered skull bones and brains exploded out of his head. His body relaxed, slumping forward and falling to the side.
Cho sobbed loudly as the shot rang out. The man whom she thought about every hour of every day had killed himself in front of her. She felt a relief that was both joyous and tragic, and the closure she had written off as a fantasy began to sprout up through the ashes of her former life.
* * *
Corporal Ryan Mickelson glanced at his antique watch, one of the few accessories neither smart nor purely cosmetic that he owned, then looked back at Perry Walters. The journalist drank from a bottle of water while producers in the background signalled for him to continue.
“How many more questions?” asked Mickelson.
Perry set his water down and raised a thumbs-up to his production crew. “Two more, maybe three.”
“Great.”
“Corporal Mickelson,” started Perry. “There’s been some contradictions between officials I’ve spoken with regarding the Haven threat. Some have claimed it was a small-time group that the New Republic government has used as a boogeyman to validate its existence. Others say that Haven must have a massive operation somewhere in order to produce the technology displayed during the convention massacre. What is the truth about Haven?”
“That’s a hell of a question. I’m not sure what it has to do with Ms. Cho,” the corporal replied. “In any case, I think the intel community would be able to give you a better answer. Their official line is the latter of your two options. My personal opinion is that if we can’t find out where that airship was manufactured, then we stand a good chance of facing one again.”
“So taxpayer money should continue funding operations that violate the sovereignty of other territories in order to gather intelligence that will answer that question?” asked Walters.
“If the citizens wish to hold a referendum on the funding, they can certainly do that,” answered Ryan. “But as for how the agency conducts its operations, I think a little spying is nothing to get worked up over.”
Walters looked down at his tablet, scrolling with his fingertips through an automatically generated transcript of their conversation. He looked up at Mickelson.
“There was something else I wanted to ask you,” he said, tapping his chin with the edge of the device. His eyebrows raised. “Oh, right! You mentioned that Ms. Cho had written books. What were they about?”
Mickelson leaned back and folded his arms. “The two she had written were tactical theory, more or less. I didn’t read them—” The Corporal looked down at his lap then back up to Walters. “Wait, that’s not true. I did read a little from one of them when she submitted it for inclusion to the field tactics resource library.” Ryan grinned, piquing Perry’s curiosity.
“Was it amusing somehow?” the interviewer asked.
“No. Well, maybe a little,” Mickelson replied.
“Tell us about it, assuming it’s not classified,” Perry requested.
“The title of the book was How to Dodge a Bullet,” Ryan said. “You might think that’s just a catchy title but no, that’s what the book was really about. I will give her credit, she did the legwork on it. Half of it consisted of psych studies ranging from choice theory to sleight-of-hand magic tricks. Basically if a study was done involving how someone picks a target or makes a choice, it had a summary in that book.” Mickelson took a drink of his water before continuing.
“And uh, the other half was diagrams and examples of putting it into practice. You can imagine how incomplete such a thing would be given the nature of warfare. But it covered hundreds of scenarios, none of which any NRSF soldier should find themselves in. And it covered body movements that supposedly affected how others perceived their motion in order to sow chaos into an uneven situation. I think it even had some stretching exercises one should do before practicing their dance routines.”
“You make it sound a little ridiculous,” observed Walters.
“I suppose it was.”
“Did you reject it, then?”
“Hell no. As I recall, I sent a strong recommendation for it up the chain,” said Ryan. “Ridiculous or not, it was a terrific piece of work.”
Episode 19: Finishing the Job
Tsenka Cho ran to the source of the earlier explosions, where she found Kate wielding a new custom assault rifle and Desre holding an RPG launcher. Kate explained what had happened, her tears mixing with the blood smeared on her face. Cho hugged her tightly then turned to Desre and held up Roland’s crown.
“You did it,” said Desre in muted astonishment.
“Maybe you can find some peace now,” said Tsenka.
“I’m sure Chantech will continue to hunt for me
,” said Somer.
“They’ve lost a lot already, and the day isn’t over yet,” said Cho. “They may not recover.”
Kate raised her rifle and pulled the bolt handle, letting it snap back into place. “I d-don’t know about you ladies, b-but I’m not done here yet.”
“The nocturnal facility,” said Cho.
“I’m not much of a fighter,” said Desre. “But we’re a team now, aren’t we?”
“Hell yeah, we are,” said Tsenka. “Think you can use this?” She offered the crown to the psion.
“Hmm,” Desre pondered, sticking it onto her head, where it fell over her eyes. “It might help a little if Kate can help me figure out how to turn it on. It’s too damn big, though… Wait, I have an idea.”
She handed the ring to Kate and ran to the armored car and pulled out her Chantech hat. She put it on, then took the crown back and slid it over her head, letting it rest on the brim.
“Well?” she solicited.
“Looks aren’t everything,” said Cho. Kate frowned silently, and Tsenka felt guilty for her feelings of elation and amusement. She handed Desre a pistol. “Maybe you should just set the launcher down.”
“No, I got it,” said Desre, slinging the heavy weapon’s strap over her shoulder, then taking the pistol.
Kate looked at her, finally cracking a smile. “Come on,” she said. “Entrance is only a klick this way.”
* * *
With the tier transport tube disabled by Chantech security, Commander Gao and his men made their way up to the fifth tier by storming the entrance to one of the city’s skyscrapers, then taking its stairs and elevators. It was a long process, but they faced little resistance as most of the armed corpsec were occupied with a multitude of uprisings on the lower tiers. Gao knew that while the most heavily fortified Chantech headquarters were located at ground level, board members conducted most of their important dealings in an extravagant hotel on tier five.