by Wesley Chu
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Meeting of the Minds
Ella’s second year at the Prophus Academy in Sydney was when things really started to fall apart. Nabin began leading his own team and running his own operations. His visits became less frequent.
She found herself with more time on her hands and not sure how to spend it. Part of it was her lack of friends. Another was her lack of disposable funds. She chafed at the many restrictions imposed on her. The girl from the streets began to bubble back up to the surface and her natural instincts began to speak over her good senses. Her mind wandered as she hatched new schemes and her focus at the Academy suffered.
For the third time this month, someone cracked Roen’s dentures. This time, they completely shattered and the pieces flew out of his mouth as the punch connected with his jaw.
He had made a bet with Nabin that Ella wouldn’t be stupid enough to go home after what happened at the bar. Just in case, he had pulled out a Penetra scanner to check, and was vastly disappointed when the blip of a host popped up on the scanner.
It was a good thing the only things at stake were pizza dinners, which Roen was more than happy to pay for. Jill had banned pizza five years ago, citing his skyrocketing cholesterol and his new allergy to exercising. He would have to get all of the pizza out of his system before the mission was over. Or into his system, as the case may be.
When he opened the door, he fully expected to find Ella either packing or doing something stupid. Something stupid covered just about everything that wasn’t packing or literally walking out the door at that very moment. He would also perhaps accept being in the process of climbing out the window as something non-stupid as well.
Roen wasn’t the only one lining up to yell at the poor girl. Josie was ready to lecture her on basically failing to follow every protocol in the Prophus agent textbook. Nabin, well, poor Nabin, he was so worried about Ella’s safety that he looked like he was finally ready to consider kidnapping her. That or asking her to marry him. All in all, everyone was looking forward to a chat with Ella.
Imagine his surprise when Roen opened the door and instead of finding Ella, he found a rather attractive woman.
They were both holding Penetra scanners in their hands. No one used Penetra scanners unless they were involved in Quasing business.
He took a moment to take in everything. The only very good-looking people involved in Quasing business were Adonis vessels. If this were an Adonis vessel, then not only had the Genjix reached Ella first, Roen and his band of merry people were in deep trouble.
Roen added two and two and two together and came up with, “oh crap.”
The result of all of these shenanigans was a legit punch in the jaw from the hand of the attractive woman not holding the Penetra scanner. That got his dentures. It may just be his imagination, but he had been on the losing end of a lot of fights this mission. In fact, he may have lost just about every single fight since he volunteered for this job. Even the fight with those kids.
By the way, that woman hit damn hard.
Roen’s feet lifted off the ground and he flew backward. The world became a mush of colors and stars. His vision strobed, and then time sped and slowed up. He remembered this feeling; it was called a concussion. He slammed into the opposite wall and slowly slid to the ground like water rolling down a window.
If Tao were here, he would tell Roen to hang it up. Roen agreed; that was likely the right assessment. He came to a rest on the floor, arms and legs splayed out, and watched the events unfold. His mind was still clearing the cobwebs and his body refused to cooperate.
Fortunately for Roen, his team was nearby. All five surged at the woman as he lay in the middle of the hallway, the wall propping up his head. Unfortunately for Roen, and his team as well, this woman was definitely an Adonis vessel.
Tarfur got to her first, before she could draw her pistol. He managed to wrestle it away, but an uppercut snapped his chin back. She took his legs out from under him. Hekla leaped over the body of her countryman and threw several punch combinations at the Adonis vessel.
Roen didn’t have a great view from the floor, but he was pretty sure she hit only air. After Hekla’s last attempt, the Adonis vessel struck back, stunning Hekla with a blow to the throat, and then grabbing a fistful of her hair ramming her face into a mirror.
Someone grabbed Roen’s collar and pulled him aside. Josie shouted something that he couldn’t quite make out. She left him where he lay and charged into the fray. The colonel had barely stepped into the room when a foot connected to her midsection, sending her tumbling to the floor next to Roen. Pedro and Nabin were the last to charge inside together. They must be having a little more success, since neither had been tossed out yet.
Roen groaned to his feet. He gingerly touched his aching jaw and spat out any remaining loose fragments of dentures. Unbelievable. He was going to have to liquid-diet the rest of this mission, and that infuriated him more than anything else at the moment. Wondering if he could blend pizza, he stepped over a writhing Josie and joined the fight.
He entered the apartment and his jaw dropped. Nabin and Pedro had wrapped up the Adonis vessel pretty good. Nabin had her neck and left arm in a tight lock while Pedro had shot low and was pinning her hips to the wall with his arms and shoulder. Yet somehow, they were still losing.
The Adonis vessel snapped her head to the side and smashed Nabin’s eye, sending him reeling. She brought an elbow down on the center of Pedro’s spine until he loosened his grip on her. She followed up with two jabs of the knee that flattened him on his back.
Roen tried to blind-side her. She turned and caught his punch with her hand, because of course she did. She retaliated with a punch of her own, which to her surprise – and honestly Roen’s as well – he blocked. Barely. Her fist hovered inches from his face.
He barked a loud laugh. “Hah, I bet you didn’t think–”
The Genjix flicked her middle finger and snapped him in the nose. Roen’s eyes watered, and he tripped over Pedro’s legs as he stumbled back. Luckily, the bed caught his fall.
The Adonis vessel towered over him. “Are the Prophus in such poor shape they recruit out of retirement homes?”
That voice, that accent. She sounded familiar. He had heard recordings of her in intelligence surveillance reports. This was not only an Adonis vessel, but someone prominent. He squinted. Her face was familiar, too. That was when it hit him.
“Wait a minute, you’re Mengsk’s little girl! Alexandra! The one they call the Scalpel. I cooked you pancakes once when you were a kid.”
Her face darkened. “Now I recognize you, Roen Tan. What is someone like you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“I meant someone as old and used up.”
Roen grimaced. He had kind of walked into that one.
Hekla staggered into the room and blocked the doorway. She was visibly in awe of Shura. “That’s Shura the Scalpel? Wow, I never thought we’d run into someone like her here.”
“You can ask for her autograph later,” growled Roen.
“How is dear Cameron?” asked Shura. “Last time our paths crossed, he wasn’t doing so well.”
“I’m glad you two didn’t work out,” he shot back. “You would have made the worst daughter-in-law.”
“Wait what?” Nabin sputtered. “She dated Cameron?”
“Please,” spat Shura. “You should probably let me walk out of this room. It’s the only way some of you may survive.”
Roen scrambled to his feet. “We have the numbers, lady.”
“How’s that working out for you so far?”
Roen checked. His team was ready for round two. Nabin and Pedro were to his right, Hekla and Tarfur to his left. Josie was standing outside, because this apartment couldn’t cram any more people in. No matter how good Shura the Scalpel was, there was no way she could overcome these odds. She had to know that.
“
We don’t have to fight. We outnumber you,” said Roen. “If you surrender, we will treat you humanely and with respect.”
“If you surrender,” she countered, “I won’t.”
Roen considered pulling out a blade, but decided against it. In a space this small with this many bodies, bare hands was safest, especially against someone of her skill. They were probably more likely to accidentally cut one of their own. Since all of them were wearing body armor, knives would be rendered mostly ineffective anyway. Shura must have come to the same conclusion, as she had not reached for her knives either.
The team synced up by sight and converged. Nabin and Tarfur took the brunt of the damage going in. Roen took a knee to the neck as he wrapped up her legs. She managed to buck him off once, but not the second time. Shura was hard to pin down. There was something about the way she relaxed her body so that it felt like you were trying to wrap your hands around a bag of sand, and then when she did move it was sudden and quick, like a hard jolt or a snake striking.
Just as they thought they had her tied up, she threw a hard elbow to Josie’s chin and buckled the older woman to her knees. It gave Shura just enough room to reach down to her thigh. A blade appeared in her right hand, and Shura the Scalpel lived up to her moniker.
She moved like a blur, first slicing Pedro in the arm and then nicking Nabin in the neck. Hekla suffered a gash to the crown of her head while Roen’s head got the butt end of the handle. Instead of charging for the door at Josie, the Adonis vessel managed to plunge the blade beneath Tarfur’s armor and into his chest. She slammed the blade in deeper and drove him backward.
The two exploded through the window and onto the fire escape. For a second, it looked like the momentum would send them over the side, but Josie managed to dive out and grab her teammate by the pant leg, so only Shura went flying.
As she fell, the Adonis vessel grabbed the shoulder of Tarfur’s armored vest, and caught herself dangling five stories above ground. Josie yelled and held onto his legs while Shura threatened to drag him over the side with her. Nabin was there a moment later, adding his weight to hers. Hekla and Pedro joined in, helping haul him back through the window.
They got to work trying to stem the blood immediately. Hekla unfastened his armor and applied pressure to his chest. She looked up at Roen. “The cut is deep. He needs a hospital.”
Roen nodded and made the emergency call to 119. He crawled onto the stairwell just in time to see Shura agilely monkey her way down the fire escape and then drop to ground level. She looked up at him and waved. It wasn’t smug. She wasn’t gloating. It was just a wave, one that said, you had the odds heavily stacked against me, but I escaped, and I will see you soon. Then Shura took off down the end of the alley, around the corner and out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Captured
The Prophus Academy in Sydney took care of all of their students’ needs. By her second year, Ella lived in her own dorm room, had access to as much food as she wanted, and even had clothing and toiletries provided. Ella wanted for nothing.
What the Academy did not provide for her was disposable funds and focus, in reverse order of importance. Nabin had previously occupied most of her time and thoughts, but now that her hands were idle, Ella began to revert to her Crate Town ways. The gears in her head started to turn every time she saw an opportunity to make a profit.
The world was dark and hot. The bag had been tied firmly around Ella’s neck, making it hard to breathe. Her lungs labored. She was lightheaded and short of breath. The constant jostling in the back of the moving vehicle disoriented her sense of direction. The only sensations Ella could feel were the numbness in her wrists, the ribbed surface of the van bed, and the damp tingling of perspiration matting the bag to her face.
That, and her breath.
I tell you to brush your teeth all the time.
“You never said it was that bad.”
Quasing do not have a sense of smell.
That was new. “You can hear and touch and see, but you can’t smell?”
We actually do not do any of those either. We interpret your reactions when you use those senses. It is the same with smells, but we do not know exactly what is considered a good or bad smell.
That took her mind away from reality. Someone had just kidnapped her, and she was probably going to die. She wasn’t scared of dying exactly. Death was growing up on the streets. It was just what happened when you lost. Ella didn’t like losing though.
“So,” she pondered. “When we were in Crate Town, and you said something smelled bad, you didn’t really mean it.”
Not one bit. It is the same with the other senses as well. When you admire an attractive person, I do not see him as beautiful or ugly, but almost as a formula based upon subjective societal preferences. It honestly is math. You humans interpret your senses in a similar way. It is just more subtle with many variables that influence your decisions.
“You call Nabin ugly all the time.”
He is objectively not a good-looking man.
“Don’t talk about my guy like that. He’s not that ugly.”
He is also no longer your guy. And according to math, he is. I also do not like you two together.
“Is it something about him specifically you don’t like, or just any man?”
Mostly any man, but a Prophus agent especially. You also tend to get a little crazy with regards to him, but that is usually the case with most humans your age. Puberty is the worst.
These were all points rehashed from countless arguments. Ella couldn’t fault Io’s logic or reasoning, and she would have actually agreed with her Quasing on almost all of it when they had first met, but things were different now. She was older, had experienced more, desired more. That’s what made all of this difficult.
In any case, Ella was relatively certain that she was going to die tonight or tomorrow or at least very, very soon. She decided to take this opportunity to make peace with herself. She forgave the three hundred and thirty million gods for her lot in life, forgave her mother for dying on her when she was a kid, and forgave Nabin for being boneheaded. She even forgave all the jerks in Crate Town who gave her a rough time: the Fabs family, the cops, and the street rat gangs who stabbed her in the back.
The only people she left out of her pardons were her dad and that asshole politician who killed Burglar Alarm. Ella would gladly stab them both if she saw them in her next life.
The gravity of the situation set in. She hadn’t lived the best of lives, but she was going to miss it. She honestly never thought she would survive this long, especially after she lost her parents. But now that she had, there were still so many other things she wanted to try. Dying felt premature.
“Cameron once said that a part of every one of his hosts lives within Tao. Is that true? When I die, will you carry a little piece of me in you? Does that mean I’ll live forever?”
Honestly? No. It is just something we say, like ‘to the Eternal Sea’ or ‘a part of you will live forever through me’. Platitudes we tell our hosts when they are about to pass.
There was a long awkward pause. Ella’s eyes began to water.
Would you like me to say something nice? Ella, a part of you will live forever through–
“It’s too late for that, you jerk!”
Uh, to the Eternal–
“Shut up.”
The van came to a screeching halt. Ella tensed. The back doors swung open, and an artificial white glare shined through the tiny holes of the cloth bag. Rough hands grabbed her elbows and dragged her out. A cool breeze raised the hair on her arms. More doors slammed. Shadows passed nearby.
We must be underground by the sound of the echoes, maybe a cave? By the number of voices and footsteps, there is anywhere between four and twenty people around us.
“Between four and twenty? You might as well say between two and a thousand, and where the hell are there caves near Tokyo?”
&nb
sp; I am simply helping interpret what I sense from our surroundings. No need to get angry.
“You are not helpful. What am I going to do? Make a break for it with a sack over my head and my hands tied behind my back while four or twenty people chase me in what may or may not be a cave?”
I do not see you volunteering anything useful. My life is at stake as much as yours.
“You’re the one who is supposed to be ancient and smart.”
I AM ancient and smart. I told you to leave Tokyo days ago, but you wanted to stay and hang out with your little friends and try to make one last score.
“They’re the only friends I have.”
Another lengthy awkward silence passed.
Ella, I am your–
“Shut up, Alien!”
Ella was moved from the “cave” into what sounded like a hallway. The lights changed from white to yellow, and the echoes were replaced by the hum of central air. She was marched into an elevator, and they ascended several floors. She caught alternating glimmers of white and black – fluorescent ceiling lights likely – and heard what sounded like someone talking through a PA system above her. The elevator dinged open and she was dragged once again down another corridor.
“Do you have an idea where we are?”
This feels like an office building. Possibly a military base.
“Please be an office building. Please be an office building. Do you think the yakuza have us? The Genjix? The Prophus?”
I am not sure. It could be a government agency as well. Japan has been very strict regarding their neutrality on the Quasing conflict.
“Why does everyone want my head? Why can’t they just leave me alone?”
You are forgetting about the bounty.
“That’s just great.”
Ella finally came to a stop when she was tossed roughly into a metal chair. The plastic straps around her wrists were cut off and her hands yanked onto a hard surface in front of her. Chains rattled as something hard and cold clipped around her wrists, cutting into her flesh. A yellow light clicked on, poking a hundred tiny beams through the cloth fabric.