by Blaze Ward
She had always wanted to do this, but it had never been an option, even in this line of work.
Without breaking stride, she stepped up and kicked the handle with all the anger she had accumulated since she came to this planet, shattering the strike panel out of the frame and a good chunk of wood from the door.
Inside, a fat Grace was talking on the telephone and looked up with a surprise that turned his tentacles nearly white.
“I’ll call you back,” he said. “Something just came up.”
The rest of the office was empty. Just the short, fat man behind a battered desk, two chairs, and wall-to-wall pictures of famous people who had been here or played the club at some point in their careers.
Eveth still had the gun in her hand, so she sat in the nearer chair and smiled at him.
“I want information,” she said primly. “You have three options. One: you can just tell me what I need. Two: you end up spending the rest of the night and maybe a week or two in jail while badly-misfiled paperwork gets untangled.”
Pause.
“What’s option number three,” he asked, falling for it like any good straight man.
“You have to stop at the hospital first,” she smiled.
Confrontation
Gareth was in no shape to fight, but he had no choice. He stumbled upright as Talyarkinash put his arm around her neck and wobbled with him towards the door.
A crash nearby signaled the secret door being broken open, and suddenly there were people pointing guns at him.
Gareth tried to manage his drunkenness, but his body was only vaguely under his control at this point. He recognized two Warreth females, both holding what looked like stun pistols pointed at he and Talyarkinash. Both women were cherry-red, with the taller one having black and white highlights and the shorter one having mostly yellow underplummage.
A Vanir male entered a second later. He was magnificent. At least seven-foot-four and built like a linebacker. Handsome face with dark, curly hair covering the man’s head. He seemed to be familiar.
“It looks like we’re too late to stop her from upgrading you,” the man said in a cruel voice. “But that just means that I’m not too late to stop you.”
He smiled down at Gareth, but it was more of a sneer.
After a moment, Gareth finally recognized the man. The scale had thrown him off.
Intellectually, he had known it was a fact, but coming face to face with it was something entirely else.
“Hello, Marc,” Gareth said slowly, trying to sound more coherent than he was. “Or should I call you Maximus now?”
“Either will work, old friend,” Gareth’s worst nightmare smiled. “Welcome to the Accord of Souls.”
And then the bastard shot him.
Overlord
Marc smiled as the bolt took Dankworth square in the chest. For good measure, he shot the woman as well. Stunners were a cheap way to handle prisoners.
“Find the other two,” he ordered brusquely.
It became clear within moments that Morty and Xiomber weren’t anywhere in the suite of rooms, and there were no more hidden doors to blow open. Nothing but this operating theater, a control room, and a small lab, and no indication a pair of Yuudixtl had ever been in here.
In a way, that made it worse, because it suggested that those two knew he was going to catch up with Liamssen and Dankworth, and had already moved on, probably hoping to find another Field Agent from Earth Force Sky Patrol, or maybe even a Special Agent.
He couldn’t put any of his other plans into action until he had cauterized this wound. And now he might have to start over.
How long had those two been planning to betray him?
“The place is empty, Maximus,” Maiair confirmed. “What’s next?”
“You two grab her,” he said, pointing at the doctor on the floor of the operating theater. “Bring her along to the truck. I only gave them a medium stun, but they won’t be conscious for at least thirty or forty minutes. Then I need to know where the other two are.”
“What about the human?” Yooyar asked.
“I’ll bring him myself,” Marc said.
It was almost like picking up a ten-year-old child, using his enhanced muscles to lift up the man who had once been his best friend and toss Dankworth over a shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“What about the rest?” Maiair pressed.
Marc looked around at the space. There was no way to hide the kicked in front door of the other suite, nor the destroyed hidden door between the two flats. It would only be a matter of time until someone called the police, and the place would be crawling with badges.
Still, he had the doctor. He could get what he wanted out of her before he killed her. And still had enough connections to the authorities to get copies of her files once the police impounded them. He was pretty sure all of the corrupt locals he owned would be in jail fast enough as a result of this fiasco, but not before he could get that much out of them.
“Leave it,” he decided. “I’ve got what I really need.”
The girls were gone first, lugging the Nari traitor between them. Zorge was covering the front door when Marc emerged from the bathroom with his own burden.
“So that’s him?” Zorge tsked. “Doesn’t look like much.”
“Neither would you, stunned,” Marc snapped. “This man, this human, is orders of magnitude more dangerous than you ever dreamed of being, Zorge. He might be the only person in the universe that could stop me.”
“Why haven’t you killed him, then?” the spymaster asked abruptly.
“I need to know what he knows first,” Marc promised. “After that, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
Getaway
Marc’s truck was right where he had left it, double-parked in a loading zone at the bottom of the short tower. The Accord wasn’t big on personally-owned vehicles, but there were always a few, so most buildings dedicated a couple of floors of the big towers to landing bays.
He had brought a simple panel truck tonight, painted on the outside with the name and phone number of a local plumbing service as a way to vanish into the scenery. Let the fools drive around in big, black limousines that screamed “I’m important. Somebody arrest me!”
He would settle for a quiet time in the shadows, building his power up until he could simply explode out and take what he wanted. Liamssen’s notes on what she had done to Dankworth would be invaluable for that.
What little extra did they think would give that man the edge he needed to take on Maximus?
The girls were carrying the rogue geneticist towards the back of the truck as he approached. Zorge had gone ahead and was sitting up front with the driver for the word to move.
Lights suddenly appeared at the near edge of the garage as an auto-taxi landed and deposited two figures on the balcony apron outside. Something about them just had Marc’s hackles up, so he crouched down, carefully setting Dankworth’s body behind a window-washing repulsor craft.
The two were Vanir, and the way the female walked just screamed cop as Marc watched. When she passed into the internal light from the darkness outside, Marc also saw the badge on her chest.
For a moment, his rage burned crimson at the thought he had been betrayed by someone in his organization, but he stopped himself cold. Cops looking for him would have surrounded the building with heavy teams and be storming the place right now, so maybe they had just gotten lucky tip and arrived too late to keep him from his prize?
“You there,” the woman cop yelled as she saw Maiair and Yooyar, carrying a body between them in unfortunate circumstances. “Stop and hands in the air. Police!”
One of the reasons Marc had chosen a Vanir as his final form, in addition to the amazing physical size, were the reflexes.
Warreth were gliders, with human-like upper arms that had been extended and flattened into wings that ran along past their hands. They were more like bats that way, and couldn’t truly fly, not like the Elohynn. But that latter r
ace was a true hexapod, a body that could usually pass for human in dim light, plus wings like an angel, except they hinged down instead of up.
The two Vanir cops had guns out and pointed before either sister could even consider dropping their package. Zorge was up front, probably with the door closed. He would suddenly find a stunner in his ear, if he wasn’t paying attention.
And the cops were coming up at a bad angle for anyone in the cab to see them before it was too late.
Good thing Marc was sneakier than everyone else.
He pulled out his pistol and adjusted it to the highest settings. The beam attenuated with distance, and this would be a pretty long shot for a hand-held stunner. But he only needed to soften them up enough that they couldn’t evade follow-up shots.
“What’s going on here?” the woman cop yelled in an angry voice as she closed.
Her partner was a few steps back and to one side, concentrating on the rest of the garage and possible ambushes. Like Marc.
He decided to take the male first, trusting that he had enough cover to protect himself from the female cop. Yooyar would also be able to get involved if the cop stopped covering her.
Marc stayed perfectly still, aware that Vanir, like humans, had eyesight keyed to motion and color. He measured the shot in his head and watched the two cops come to rest, too far away for the sisters to attack them, but close enough to track everything happening with the truck.
The male risked a glance the other direction.
Marc exploded into motion, raising his pistol into view and triggering the shot almost before he had the barrel down, trusting that the gun itself needed a fraction of a second from the trigger pull to the primary coil energizing. About the same amount of time it took a bullet to exit a barrel under the high pressure of burning cordite.
The shot was a little high, but still tagged the male cop in the shoulder. Hopefully, it would be enough, because Marc was already tracking on the woman.
She was spinning in his direction, targeting on sound as her eyes searched for him.
Time slowed to molasses on a Nova Jersey winter day.
Marc fired.
She fired.
Marc felt the brush of her stunner, like the kiss of a tree branch whipping by, but most of it went into the vehicle in front of him. Still, his eyesight grayed out for a moment.
He fired a second shot blind. Memory said he had gotten her harder than she had gotten him, with that first shot, but he had never seen anyone with reflexes as good as his.
He needed an Empress like her, one of these days, but a modified human. Still, he had a pattern upon which to base that future wife, if he got out of this situation alive.
A third shot rang out as Marc’s vision cleared.
A fourth.
Silence.
Marc managed to make out the scene.
The cop was unconscious. Both cops.
Maiair had gotten her pistol out and taken both cops down by herself, once he had distracted them.
Marc made a note to pay better attention to the older Warreth sister. She was making herself look better and better as a potential second-in-command for the organization, just as her younger sister was turning into a dangerous gunsel.
Maybe he really did need a harem after all, as a way to bind them more fully to the throne he intended to create.
“Good job,” Marc said as he holstered his pistol and gathered up Dankworth’s body.
“What do we do with them?” Maiair asked, covering them with her pistol anyway.
“Bring them along,” Marc decided. “If they’re here, there’s a leak in the organization, and we need to plug it. I’ll find out what they know before we work on the other two.”
Marc deposited the Field Agent into the back of the van as Zorge emerged, eyes wide with surprise.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You missed all the fun, old man,” Yooyar’s sarcastic tones could have been used to paint a building.
“Constables?” Zorge inspected them as he helped Maiair lift the female. “How’d they find us?”
“That’s your job, Zorge,” Marc said coldly. “Find out who talked and have them brought to me for punishment.”
“Yes, sir,” the Nari spymaster nodded.
Marc pulled the unconscious male to the van and then lifted him inside, noting that the man was skinny, but still a solid block of mass. Older cop, wearing the insignia of a Senior Constable, what Marc would have called Detective Sergeant back home,
Nothing else was moving in the garage.
Before they lifted off, Marc pulled the pocketcomms from both cops and tossed them under a nearby car, aware of how easily they could be tracked, if someone was suspicious. The rest of their belongings went into a sack someone had grabbed: guns, badges, wallets, handcuffs.
Accord cops used cuffs that keyed on bio-signature, rather than the old-fashioned iron key. Marc assumed that a competent cop would put herself and her partner into the tiny, electronic brain, so using their own cuffs on them was a mere annoyance, rather than a useful tool.
Still, they would be out for a while. Long enough to get back to the warehouse he had been using as a base.
After that, he would have all the time in the world, and all sorts of interesting tools, to torture these four for all the information they had, like squeezing a sponge completely dry, before he discarded them onto the ashheap of history.
Prisoner
Gareth woke to pain. Millions of microscopic ants marching through his veins, biting him with every stride. Hot coals scorching his flesh on a slow smoker.
A groan escaped his lips.
“Ah, you are awake, my old friend,” Marc Sarzynski’s voice intruded on Gareth’s nightmare.
He tried to open his eyes, but the light in here stabbed his brain with icepicks.
Gareth squinted to the merest slits and tried to focus on something beyond the torture in his soul.
“Too bright?” Marc asked.
Gareth groaned again and nodded. Tried to. He wasn’t sure how much of what was happening in his mind made it to the nerves and muscles of his body.
Sudden darkness reached out and embraced him in coolness.
“Better?” Marc asked. “I remember when I first awakened, as the growth began to hit. Everything hurt and I was nearly blind.”
“Thank you,” Gareth managed to slur out.
“Anything for my oldest, dearest friend,” Sarzynski sneered. “We want you comfortable for what comes next.”
Gareth heard the emphasis on that last word and knew what Maximus had planned.
He had failed. They had been too late to get everything done and escape.
Or rather, Talyarkinash had done everything she could, but Gareth had needed more time for it to happen.
Time he had run out of.
Gareth managed to open his eyes enough to see, this time. Through the fire in his body, he understood that he was hanging from a pair of manacles holding his arms up, those in turn attached to an I-beam running horizontally on some sort of frame. Another pair gripped his ankles.
The space smelled like a shipping warehouse, all dusty and oils and dry. The ceiling was far overhead, with a crane on rails up there for lifting things out of railroad cars, just like home.
Gareth was on his knees, so he fought with his body to stand. It was like lifting the old Empire State Building, but he managed, hanging forward on the chains to find his balance and drive upwards.
He couldn’t stand right now. Not really.
But he wasn’t about to be on his knees for Marc Sarzynski.
A breath pulled down into the base of his stomach seemed to quell some of the fires coursing through his blood. His mind might have even cleared a little.
Gareth focused on breathing and learning to think again. This was worse than the hardest concussion he had ever sustained, and his head was ringing like a church bell in synch with his heart.
“My,” Sarzynski exclaimed. “You do
look better already.”
Gareth managed to turn his head far enough to find Maximus, seated on a chair on a small platform, like a king on his throne. The rest of the royal suite stood around him, arrayed in layers of power and access, from the dumbest rookies at the edge of the crowd to the two Warreth women standing closest to Marc, the taller one whispering in his ear.
Gareth looked down and realized his favorite cowboy outfit was gone. Hopefully not destroyed, since he wasn’t sure who that tailor had been and wanted to go back soon for more wardrobe.
In its place, Gareth was wearing a long robe of a heavy, white linen. It hung long on his feet and wrists, as if it were for a Vanir, rather than a human. The white suggested something angelic, which was probably appropriate, given the roles he and Marc had chosen to play.
But the oversized nature also sent an important message. Sarzynski understood. Knew that Gareth would be growing as the various viruses worked their way through his body, reprogramming things and triggering all manner of changes. Hopefully, he would miss the important changes when focusing on the obvious.
“Are you ready to talk yet?” Marc asked a polite, even pleasant voice. “The others haven’t woken up yet, so I can’t put them to the question and find out what they know.”
“Why, Marc?” Gareth asked simply, as he managed to gain control of his mouth.
“Power, Gareth,” the man replied. “You had always managed to thwart me, back home, mister White Knight on a Charging Steed. Here, we are a whole new thing, and the Accord of Souls lacks the fundamental tools to prevent me from taking over.”
“Emperor Marc the First?” Gareth asked sarcastically.
“Indeed, old friend,” the criminal overlord smiled grandly. “I had even considered who I might need for an Empress…”
The way he left the phrase dangling left no doubt in Gareth’s mind as to whom Marc was referring.
“If you hurt her…”
“Relax, Dankworth,” Marc said. “She made her choice, and I honor that. She’ll make a lovely little housewife for you. Or would have. I will need a woman with grander dreams to create a new species of rulers here.”