Her bare feet touched the floor and she looked around the room. It was cluttered with all kinds of odd things. Kara reached around to the back of her belt and slid her small knife away and took out her mini flashlight.
She stumbled back into the large cabinet that loomed behind her.
The beam of light was not wide, but the few things she could see made her jump. The whole chamber was decorated like a torture chamber or a haunted house.
Kara shook her head.
“There is nothing to fear here.” She told herself aloud.
She walked among the shelves and looked at the details of the obscure objects that decorated the room.
There were all kinds of tribal weapons and ornaments. There were other more grotesque things as well that gave her goose bumps. Like shrunken heads and painted human skulls.
The oddest of these skulls had small protrusions from the forehead, small conical points.
Suddenly Kara understood what she was looking at: This person was a Post-Human.
“What is this, Ace?”
She flashed the torchlight at a wall of fish tanks. They reeked of formaldehyde. Her torchlight glowed green as she shone it through the opaque liquid.
Floating in the tanks of formaldehyde were human body parts. They had been cut cleanly from the bodies of men and woman and bobbed silently in the tanks.
Kara screwed up her nose. “What is this?”
She had not seen anything like this before, and she had seen some obscure collections in the homes and personal museums of different people she had stolen from in Hong Kong.
This was a tomb.
A nightmare place created by a sicko.
She shone the light on a woman’s head that bobbed in the fluid. A look of pain was etched on her face and her hair drifted about in a wild pale green mess. She noticed the earrings in the woman’s ears. They were designer earrings.
Kara stepped back. She recognized the brand of the earrings. They were part of a custom collection released last year. She was commissioned to steal a pair of them for a businessman’s wife before their official release.
“This was done a year ago at the least.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Ace, what is this? Who the hell are you?”
She decided she had seen enough.
Kara made her way back toward the window where she had come in. On the way past she saw more horrific sights that made her stomach churn.
There were some deformed bones and some other humanoid adaptations that had been cut from bodies and left to dry or placed in formaldehyde.
She tried to remain calm as she grew closer to the window. Then she saw the skin.
There was the whole flayed skin of a Post-Human woman pinned to the wall. Her skin was adorned with beautiful patterns that appeared to be natural.
“They are like me. They must all be like me. Ace, how are you linked to this?”
She felt the tears burning her eyes. Her hands began to shake and her legs went weak.
She leaned against the cabinet behind her and slid down to the floor till she was sitting on the cold concrete.
She couldn’t find the strength to get up and leave. Her body wouldn’t listen to her. She simply sat on the floor and shook, sobbing uncontrollably.
She expected to learn something unpleasant about her boyfriend, but what she found was far more horrifying. Maybe she wasn’t his girlfriend, maybe she was another trophy for his macabre collection.
She sat and cried in the dark.
Chapter 15
Matt stood in the doorway of the hotel room and surveyed the damage.
“Shit.”
Cynthia was sitting on an outdoor chair she had dragged in from the balcony. She smiled at him through her bruises.
“What the hell happened here, Cynthy?” He scanned the floor, the walls and the broken furniture.
“Mirage.” Cynthia said simply.
Matt raised his eyebrows and closed the door behind him. He sat down on the bed and took a deep breath. “Are you alright? You look like shit.”
Cynthia shook her head and smiled. “I’ll be okay.”
Mat was analysing the distribution of blood on the floor and the spatter patterns. It didn’t take him long before he had a clear view of what had happened in the room.
“You were hurt.” He looked at the way she was sitting: legs weren’t crossed. “Your leg. Your leg is hurt.”
She nodded and rubbed at the thigh. “It will be just fine. It just needs time.”
Matt could see that the leg of her pants was caked with dried blood and there was a hole punched into the pants at the front of the thigh.
Matt stared at the hole, it was small, familiar.
“She did that with one of those steel things, didn’t she?”
Cynthia picked at the hole. “Yeah, so we need to stop at the hotel to get me another pair of pants.”
Matt half smiled as he scanned more of the details.
A blood smear beneath the broken mirror told him that one of them had leaned over and grabbed some of the glass, and some blood splashes and stains near where he stood told him the rest of the story.
“So your leg was bleeding and you grabbed a piece of glass and stabbed her with it while she was standing here.” He paused, nodding, impressed with himself. “How’s your hand?”
Cynthia smiled again. She enjoyed it when Matt played detective. Sometimes the clues were obvious, but she let him feel good about it anyway.
She held up her right hand. Besides being crusted with blood, the obvious cuts in the palm and fingers had closed already and were starting to heal.
Matt nodded, understanding now that there was another side to Deadfall’s abilities.
She was able to heal her body quickly.
That was good, because it would take the two of them to track down Mirage.
“She’s strong, Matt.”
Matt nodded. “Obviously. I’ve never seen a normal man that you couldn’t handle.”
“She doesn’t change her shape either.”
Matt looked at her surprised.
She continued. “She projects an image of herself, or someone she wants you to see.”
“How?” Matt rubbed at his smooth chin, glancing again at the bloodstains near his feet.
“I don’t know, but when she was fighting me, it was like the illusion was fighting me slightly out of sync with the actual person who was doing the fighting.”
“Like virtual reality? A character that the player uses, an avatar.”
“No,” Cynthia shook her head. “more like one person fighting, but with a slight delayed reaction. Or she was able to deviate her moves slightly to what the projection was doing.”
Matt was silent.
“She made herself look like me, Matt. I had to fight…myself.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, Cynthy. I’ve always got your back, but I let you down this time.”
Cynthia laughed to herself and stood and limped to the bathroom. “You can’t hold my hand on dates, Matt.”
Matt screwed up his nose. “You slept with him, didn’t you? I didn’t know you could do that. I thought…” He teased.
“It’s not your business either way.” She sighed. “No, I didn’t.”
She’d need to have another shower to wash all the blood off before work.
When Cynthia left the bathroom she found that Matt was looking at the carpet very closely.
“What are you staring at?”
“Blood.” He stood and picked up his jacket off the bed and slipped it on. “There’s a trail. Not much of one, but its there.”
Cynthia’s bruising wasn’t as obvious anymore and her hair was tied back and free of the rusty bloodstains. Her clothes however didn’t look so good. There was an obvious hole in her pants and the white shirt she wore under her jacket was ruined.
She gestured toward the stain. “So we follow it?”
Matt nodded. “What choice do we have? We need to catch this wo
man before she kills us.”
Cynthia nodded in agreement. “You make sure you shoot her in the other leg when we are sure it’s her. She is tough, but as long as the bitch can’t run…”
The two of them left the room and closed the door behind. The corridor was empty, neither of them saw any blood, but it was obvious which way she would have gone. At one end there were stairs, at the other there was an elevator.
They chose the elevator.
Cynthia pressed the button and they waited a moment before the doors ground open.
“Ground floor, I’m guessing.” Matt muttered as he pressed the button with the ‘G’. He withdrew his finger and found a brownish residue. “Blood.”
Cynthia pointed to the floor near his foot. “And more. We are in the right place.”
After a minute of the elevator’s descent they arrived at the foyer of the hotel.
There were people everywhere; waiting with bags, looking after children and standing at the service desk.
Bellboys loaded trolleys with baggage and pushed them this way and that.
Matt and Cynthia stood in the doorway of the elevator looking around for any sign of their quarry. No suspicious looking women or men, and no one looked injured.
“She’s not here.” Matt scratched his head.
Cynthia started limping in the direction of the closest door to the city. “If she’s in as much pain as I am, she will be wanting to go where I want to go.”
Matt followed her with a raised eyebrow. “Where?”
“Chinatown.”
Chinatown from the outside was a colourful street filled with restaurants of various Asian cuisine and a myriad of other shops and businesses. It was a popular part of Melbourne.
What regular Melbournians didn’t see was the whole other world that was hidden by the oriental façade. There were several crime organisations that operated from there as well as weapons dealers and oriental medicine. Cynthia only new what Bronson Carlyle had shared with her, but she was sure there was more going on in this colourful area of the city.
What Cynthia suspected was that Mirage had shifted form and was looking for one of the secret doctors or surgeons that did business in one of the buildings above the restaurants. They were private, professional and there were no questions asked. It made these doctors wealthy and well equipped, but they were also superstitious and used some unconventional methods.
Chinatown was only one street over from the hotel; it would have been Mirage’s best option.
They entered Chinatown at the quiet end. There were quite a few people around as usual, but none of them looked to be the wounded woman they were pursuing.
They made their way past some restaurants and an insurance broker before they found their best clue. A bloody handprint on the corner of a brick wall that marked the opening of an alley. Inside the facades were dingy and scrawled with Chinese calligraphy and signage.
“This must be it Matt. Do you read Chinese?”
Matt shook his head.
“Then we are taking a stab in the dark.”
Cynthia limped up the alley and knocked on the first door. An old woman of oriental origin opened the door just a crack and looked them up and down. She made an impatient grunt, as if to ask what they wanted.
“Hello. We are looking for a girl with an injured leg. She would have come here about half an hour ago.”
The woman squinted and shook her head.
Cynthia sighed when the door was slammed. They were not going to find Mirage like this.
“What should we…?” Cynthia realized that Matt was standing a few metres away on the phone, speaking quietly.
When he hung up he was smiling.
“What was that about?” Cynthia buttoned up her long jacket against the cool Melbourne morning.
“Just called Carlyle. We are looking for a needle in a non English-speaking haystack. I decided to even out the odds a little. Bronson has an entire family working for him in here, not counting individual informants and other muscle for hire. We work for the man with his fingers in all the pies, we should make that an advantage occasionally.”
Cynthia relaxed. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well he’s sending the order out now. We should have one hundred extra eyes and ears.”
“So we should get breakfast?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Matt smiled and pointed to a restaurant across the street.
***
Matt and Cynthia sat and enjoyed some breakfast and a cup of coffee while at the same time, watching the entrance to the alley diligently.
Half an hour had past and nothing had happened. They had tried to drink their coffee as slowly as possible to maximize their time to observe, but the restaurant staff was beginning to give them funny looks. They needed to move along.
They were paying at the register when Matt’s message tone beeped.
He glanced at Cynthia and drew the phone from his breast pocket.
Emergency surgery performed on
Older Korean woman. Upstairs in
Dalg Baguni. Leaving now.
The message was from an unknown number, probably one of Carlyle’s informants.
Cynthia looked at the screen and read the message.
“Do you know it?” Matt asked sliding the phone back into his pocket.
Cynthia thought for a moment. “I think so. Closer to the middle of town.”
Matt thanked the girl at the register and they both left the restaurant and power walked toward Dalg Baguni Restaurant.
It didn’t take long to find it, but there was no sign of Mirage.
“How the hell are we supposed to find a woman that can appear to be anyone else? Especially in the middle of the city centre!” Matt ran his hand back through his hair with frustration.
“I know.” Cynthia looked right and left, but shrugged in agitation. “I really did think we would have a good chance while she was wounded. It feels like I wasted that opportunity now.”
Matt patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll keep looking for a little longer.”
Cynthia rubbed at her temples and nodded.
It was about then when they heard the screech of tires.
Three ordinary looking cars had turned quickly into the main street of Chinatown and were accelerating toward the pair. Cynthia noticed that the back windows were winding down and black gun barrels appeared.
“Run! Take cover!” Someone yelled.
Pedestrians and shoppers began to step back or to run.
Then the first gunshots rang out, echoing off the buildings in the crowded street.
Matt drew his pistol from the holster under his arm and aimed in the direction of the first car.
He squeezed off three shots that hit the vehicle while he ducked behind a shop front. Cynthia limped in beside him, barely making it as a bullet ripped through some tiles, showering them with debris.
“The Chinese don’t like us poking around.” Cynthia hissed into Matt’s ear.
Matt shook his head. “They’re not Chinese. There are two in the first car. Too casually dressed for big time crims.”
“You think they are here for Mirage?” She pressed herself harder into the wall.
“Yeah. I also think they’d have to be tipped off.” He hung his arm out of cover and squeezed off two more shots. “Unless she called help.”
Cynthia shook her head. “That girl wouldn’t call for help. I don’t think that she operates that way. Carlyle’s been betrayed.”
Matt agreed and took a quick look out at the street.
“They are getting out and moving up the street.” He sighed. “Two civilian casualties.”
“Lets make a break for it.” Cynthia unbuttoned her jacket so she could move more easily. And slid off one of her long silk gloves.
“Can you make it?” Matt gestured to her leg.
She nodded with a clenched jaw.
The two of them ducked out of the shop front and headed back up the street the way they ha
d come.
The crack of gunfire told them that they were seen.
“Get out of the way!” A middle-aged man screamed as he pushed passed them and kept running. There were several more people breaking cover and running back up the street with them. They were part of a small, but growing crowd.
They could hear the gangsters calling out to each other. They were yelling at pedestrians that were laying on the ground begging for their lives.
Another gunshot rang out in the street and Matt stopped. He looked behind them at the group of men moving up the street and then to the front where people were still running and looking for cover.
“Cynthy,” he said slowly. “Tell me I heard that wrong.”
Cynthia glanced at him then looked up the street. A few people in the crowd were turning to run the opposite direction.
She shook her head. “They’ve blocked both ends.”
Chapter 16
Cynthia pulled Matt into a doorway close to them.
“We need a way out.” She called loudly, over the commotion around them.
“Carlyle won’t touch this.” Matt shook his head. “It will expose him legally.”
“What about these guys? They are walking around firing guns and they’ve shot civilians.”
Mat shrugged. “They will split up and disappear because no one knows who they work for. Or they might just tell the authorities they work for Carlyle anyway.”
Cynthia shook her head.
“What if,” she turned again to Matt, wide eyed. “What if we catch one?”
Matt laughed. “We are the ones that are caught right now. How do you propose we do that?”
Cynthia held out her bare fingers for Matt to see.
The gangsters that were moving up the street towards them drew close and Matt and Cynthia could hear their scuffing feet on the road and the comments they were making to each other and the cowering pedestrians.
Cynthia braced herself behind the column where she sheltered.
The first gangster came into view. He was across the street, wearing a grinning clown mask and carrying a handgun.
Deadfall: A Post-Humans Story Page 9