“Of course she’s in trouble. Now shut the fuck up and stay hidden until I come back for you.”
“He threw her into a… into a gap. The… lift is down or something. She’s probably dead.”
“She’s not dead. I heard her. Now keep your mouth shut or you’ll both be dead.”
“Yes, of course. I heard her. She needs me, Cain. I hate this entire situation.”
“Save it.”
He said something else, but I was already gone.
I moved along the wall, disappointed the distraction smoke was clearing and suspecting I might have been played. Callus was probably securing his primary objective before focusing all of his attention on me.
Or throwing her down a hole like the doctor said.
The smoke thinned, and I realized that Elise had moved into the tower before being attacked. The main level of this structure was similar to a hangar, but instead of moving ships into the void, it had been designed to take heavy equipment into the guts of the station. I didn’t think the big stuff could be raised. The tower served a different purpose than the base or the sub-deck access points.
There were four platforms, one of which had been lowered long before we arrived if the streaks of polluted grease were an indicator.
I moved carefully, keeping to the last swirls of smoke. Callus was looking into the hole, chest heaving from recent effort. A second later, he pivoted on the balls of his feet and resumed his search.
Steam settled as the smoke from the distraction devices finally dissipated. I moved cautiously forward, worried that my adversary and his squads of elite commandos would return. I knew they were searching for me, but their efforts had been complicated by their primary mission objective.
I wondered if all of them hated me as much as Callus did.
Electricity pulsed through my cybernetics, interfering with my vision and cutting me off from X-37 completely. Damn inconvenient right now. My natural eye adjusted the darkness at the bottom of the elevator shaft while the glitch corrected itself. The platform had locked halfway between levels. Three meters below me was a body.
"Elise, can you hear me?” I asked.
No response.
I did a quick circuit of my immediate area. Gunfire broke out around the corner of the tower where spec ops squads engaged an usually strong contingent of Red Skull Gangsters.
"I don't care who you are, soldier boy. He took something from Slab and we want him," a voice shouted.
I climbed down the wall of the industrial-sized lift. Elise groaned, turning onto one side as I approached. The deck below her head was slick with blood. When I checked her, it was hard to find the wound in her hair.
"Elise, you have to talk to me. I need to know if you can go on," I said.
"What are you doing here?” she asked groggily.
"Getting myself killed," I muttered as I looked up at the edge of the hole we were in.
"You're not really answering my question." She squirmed and pushed herself into a sitting position, then struggled to her feet. “What I meant is, why are you helping us if you know you're going to die?"
That was a pretty good question I didn't have an answer for.
"What's the matter, Reaper got your tongue?" she asked.
"Ha ha, very funny. Someone put me on this mission thinking they could order me to kill you.”
“Is that what you think?” Her tone radiated disbelief and sarcasm.
“That’s what I was trained for.” My job had always been to kill the target even if it cost my own life. Looking back, I wasn’t sure how I ever thought joining the Reaper Corps was a good idea.
“Then why did they send that other man?” she asked. “Why are they trying so hard to kill you?”
“Those are good questions,” X-37 agreed. “You haven’t received an order to execute the girl or her father, which would indicate your assumption is incorrect.”
“I think someone sent you to help us.” Her tone softened. “Like a guardian angel.”
“Unlikely,” I said. X-37 seconded the conclusion in my ear.
“Whatever. You’re so smart,” she said with renewed attitude. “Tell me why the Union would send someone like you, who is so hard to kill? They can’t all be bad. There has to be someone among them working to do the right thing.”
“You really are just a kid.” I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth.
She turned away, crossing her arms and refusing to even curse at me.
18
I pushed Elise up the elevator shaft, hoping the lift didn't start to move by some random accident and smash us. There were no safety railings. I could see the exposed gears that made it move up and down. They were covered in rust, but still large enough to crush anyone who fell in them when they were moving.
We found a control room and locked ourselves inside. Looking at the cameras of the exterior reminded me of Bug and his friends. A few of the workstations had power, and I found a speaker box by the door and pressed the button, hoping against hope.
"Bug, can you hear me?" I called.
"Not only that, but I can see you and the woman,” the kid’s voice responded. “She's been around. The RSG always find her and take her back, though. Is she nice? She seems nice.”
I gave Elise the once-over. “Are we talking about the same person?”
She presented me with the middle finger.
“Well, yeah,” Bug said. “I think she’s beautiful. Tell her my name. Put in a good word for me.”
“She can hear you, Bug,” I said, watching her reaction.
“Hello, Bug,” Elise said. “Are you someplace safe?”
"Can you see the other soldier who was helping me?” I asked. “His name is Grady."
"Doesn't matter what his name is,” Bug said, “Would you like to see him?"
“He stayed behind to keep the other soldiers from getting us," I said. The monitors to the outside of the tower showed Callus had placed guards on the main level and had others searching for Hastings. His hiding place wasn't good enough to withstand close scrutiny.
“You left him there?” Elise snorted, disbelief in her tone.
"I don't know how to tell you this, Cain, but your friend isn’t going to be re-joining you."
"What do you mean, Bug?" I already knew the answer.
"Well, he's either dead or taking a nap. I think he's dead. The way he's lying isn’t natural, like maybe somebody roughed him up pretty bad," Bug said. "Hey, I think the guy who killed him is trying to get inside the tower you're hiding in. That's a shit tower, by the way. I've been there once a long time ago, back before we got settled in this tower. Much better here. Closer to the shipyard.”
"I'll keep that in mind. What else can you tell me? I need an escape plan," I said.
Static filled the line and I heard Callus’ voice.
"I bet you do. Who is that you're talking to? Sounds like a traitor to the Union. If he doesn’t stop helping you, he’ll probably have to be rounded up and executed along with all of his friends,” Callus said.
"You're an asshole, mister," Bug spat, muttering several words lost in the distortion filling the speaker box. "Not you, Mr. Cain, the other mister."
“He’s gross!” an even younger child shouted through the speaker.
“I hate him,” said a third.
I pulled up video screens one by one while the elite super soldier argued with the orphan kids living in a security room someplace on Dreadmax. Callus had set up a good perimeter and had a breaching team ready. They’d have a hard time with the industrial-strength doors on this place, but I had no illusions we were safe here.
The small camera view made Callus seem even bigger and more menacing than he was. “Listen, Reaper, I have an offer."
"You probably also have an ass you can shove it up," I drawled.
X-37 chastised me for my lack of negotiation tactic.
"Come on, X, you know that was too good to pass up," I said, unrepentant.
Callus s
lammed a gauntleted fist on the door. "You're not half as funny as you think you are, Reaper. Come out now, with the doctor and the girl, and no one gets hurt. Your friend Grady needs medical attention. All you're doing now is slowing things down. If he dies, it's on you.”
His accent struck me with an epiphany. The angrier he got, the more I realized he’d been hiding his heritage in Union military speak. He might not have been from my neighborhood, but he was from someplace rough. The way he talked, walked, and cursed now was like going home.
Where I had wiped out every gang member I could find. Killed their friends. Associates. Anyone who didn’t damn them. Union federal prosecutors convicted me of seventeen vigilante murders. There were a lot more.
The reasons probably didn’t matter, but I wouldn’t change what I had done. They killed everyone I knew or cared about except my mother and my little sister, who were still missing. “Who are you, Callus?”
“You know who I am. Where I’m from. And you know why you’re a dead man. Come out here, give me the girl and her father, and I’ll handle them according to Union regs. Last fucking chance, you gutter rat.”
Son-of-a-bitch. That was what the soldiers of my neighborhood gang called boys who refused to join.
“Your heart rate is elevated far above optimum,” X-37 said through increasing static.
"Does he know my father is not in here?" Elise asked, unaware of my inner struggle.
"A better question would be why they're not storming this place,” I said, feeling heat in my neck and face. “Callus already knows the layout from when he threw you down the elevator shaft."
"I don't think he realized the lift was only a few meters down,” she said.
"He's trying to keep us pinned in this location while they look for your father.” I searched the door cameras for a better view but was unable to locate Hastings.
Elise shook her head slowly while she talked, testing her balance and fighting down pain. "Don't be so sure. I'm really good at hiding. I think it was one of the things my father's research was supposed to do for soldiers, improve their escape and evasion abilities. The problem is, I was never trained, even if I have the tools."
"What tools?" I asked, thinking of my cybernetic enhancements.
"Nothing like you. I could pass for normal, slip through a crowded public area without setting off alarms. That's the reason they put me on this place. I could escape, but I can never escape into the galaxy and they knew it."
"But you tried anyway," I said.
"I was bored.” She ran one hand through her hair as she sized me up for the hundredth time. “I’m a liability because they didn’t realize what I was in time to brainwash me. Study me, yeah, that might serve their project. Literally direct me, yeah, that. But give me one ounce of actual freedom? That will never happen, so fuck them.”
She talked and I half listened as I searched for a way to keep the soldiers out long enough to come up with a miracle. I had to get the doctor back and escape with him and his daughter, who was also injured. She didn't show it, not much, but she'd hit her head pretty hard.
Her revelations should have driven me into a rage, but I expected nothing less from the Union. Now was not the time to solve the mystery of her origin. Escaping the gagglefuck was going to take everything I had, up to and maybe including my death.
There wasn’t time to get bogged down on that last detail. Elise wanted freedom? How did I explain to her she was her own worst enemy?
"Help me watch these cameras," I said. "Bug, can you help me?"
"I can, but the other guy can listen in. You hurt him. He’s hacked into the surveillance network," Bug said.
"Why isn't he smashing his way in here?" I asked as I watched the soldiers search and clear each small section of the area around the massive tower. If there were a few more of them, they'd already be done.
"I don't think he really believes you're in here. And he probably thinks I'm dead," Elise said. “But I'm not."
"Why is that, Elise?" I asked, remembering something she’d said earlier.
“Because of what my father did to me. The experiments. I’ve always been more resilient than other kids my age. Instead of dying, I matured into something beyond what they wanted or expected, thanks to the treatments my father stole from the project. They want my father back so they can silence him. But they either want to dissect me or turn me into you. Or worse.”
Good to know, I thought. “There is nothing worse. Don’t get cocky, kid. Getting infused with fancy tech doesn’t give you the skills or the will to do what I’ve done.”
Her attitude came back in force as she recovered. “I know all about the Reaper Corps.”
I wasn’t impressed. “From gal-net conspiracy blogs?”
She blushed.
“That’s what I thought.” I moved to a new camera, inwardly panicking when I couldn’t see Callus and his men. I wasn’t interested in being surprised again. “Run away from the Union if you can, but don’t get cocky.”
“How are you still alive?” she demanded. “No Reaper can take the kind of abuse you have.”
"I think they’re gonna make an entry. That team is affixing breaching charges to the hinges. An interesting choice," I said.
Elise crossed her arms, ignoring the cameras now. “When did they give you the Lex treatment? You're pretty old, right? It would've had to have been an early version."
"First of all, I'm not old. I'm thirty-seven."
"Whatever," she said, unimpressed with my humor or my age.
“Second of all, I’m a Reaper. I know all the things they put in me. I had to sacrifice body parts to prove I was dedicated to the program. Trust me, I know what they did to me."
"Is that what you think?" she asked, driving her gaze into me.
“What I know is that Callus has this tower surrounded. He's coming in sooner rather than later. Unless he finds your father first and decides to leave before Dreadmax comes apart," I said.
A sliver of fear showed through her hard-ass-runaway act. "What are you talking about?"
"This place won't be here in a few hours. I was given twenty-four hours to recover your father,” I said. “Since I arrived, I've run into people trying to repair ships and I’ve talked to others preparing for Climbdown Day."
“Why would anyone want to go down?” she asked.
I was disappointed with her question. “Because the atmosphere shields will collapse first and heading below decks will give them some time if they can survive the crazies and whatever else is down there.”
She shook her head. “There has to be more to it than that. Something down there that will allow them to fix the failing power core or escape altogether."
I knew she was onto something, feeling it with the force of a revelation, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly.
She took my place near the call box. "Hey, you, can you find the shuttle that was supposed to pick us up? Then tell me how many people the Union has guarding it?"
"My name is Bug."
“Nice to meet you, Bug. That's a nice name,” she said. “Now get on those cameras and help me out."
"You're not very nice,” Bug said. “You look nice. We all screamed and yelled at Slab when he put you in the cage the first time.”
“We don’t have time for that, kid,” Elise said.
Bug’s tone became petulant. “I’m not sure I want to help you."
"Please, Bug. Do it for me,” Elise said.
A short pause. "Fine, but you have to take us with you,” he replied.
"No problem. We can do that. Just help us find the shuttle and tell us how many people they have guarding it.” She looked like she wanted to slap the kid if she could reach him. “We’ll also need a way to get there without being caught by these assholes outside right now."
"Put Mr. Cain back on," Bug demanded.
I waved for her to step back. "Can you see the Union shuttle that is supposed to pick us up, Bug?"
"Yeah, but you d
on't have that other old man. You know they're going to find him if you don't do something, right?" Bug asked.
"Then we’ll have to leave him," Elise said, putting on her best tough-girl act. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes. Not even a teenager could fake such abject misery. "He’s such an asshole. I’ve been trying to get away from him for years.”
"He's your father," I said without pressing the talk box button, not sure why I bothered arguing with her. This was for Callus and his team, a little bit of impromptu deception. The girl had good instincts.
"If you're so concerned with him, why’d you hide him out there? He could've been in here with us where it’s safe," she said.
"It's not safe." I jabbed a finger at her face for emphasis.
"Safer than out there. Don’t you point at me!"
"Now you're worried about him?" I asked.
"Why are you such an asshole? This is bullshit.” She clenched a fist, made like she was going to punch a wall, but stopped herself. “Uhhg. You’re such a jerk!”
“Pull it together, kid.”
“We're all going to die anyway.” Her voice faltered. “I'd rather get shot in the back than experimented on anyway."
It was hard to argue with that logic, especially with a teenager. I was sure X-37 would've had an opinion, but I didn't ask. Time was running out and I needed to do something.
19
“It took some searching, but I found the shuttle. A lot of guys with machine guns there. And some girls too. Hard to tell with all that armor,” Bug said.
"How do we get there without being seen?” I asked.
"It shouldn't be that hard, but I think it's a dumb idea. It's not the only shuttle on this place. They left hundreds of them scattered here and there after the evacuation,” Bug said. “And the Union guards have a lot of guns.”
"Then why aren't people using them?" I asked, thinking of the Jellybird and the Red Revenge. Dreadmax soldiers protected the smuggling vessels. Without them, a lot of relatively innocent prisoners would’ve suffered and died over the years. But other ships would be a hot commodity.
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