Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives

by Kieran Strange

  “Charlie, Golf, this is Romeo – when you’re able to get clear and static, I need to relay something to you. Priority Red. Like, the brightest of reds.”

  Even as Ronnie’s voice came in through the comm channel for only the second time that evening, Alice was politely and professionally continuing her side of the conversation. “I imagine there’s a lot about him we probably don’t know, a man that inventive.”

  “No joke,” he chuckled, shaking his head and taking another sip of his drink. “Which is actually the perfect segway into my announcement that I should probably be getting back to him pretty soon here. He’s got a tight schedule tonight, and if I don’t keep him on it, the publicity team’s not gonna go as easy on me as they did at Thanksgiving.”

  Alice’s mouth dropped open a little and she pointed. “Wait, the reason he wore that tie to the reception...?”

  “All me,” Cabe said sheepishly, without a single effing clue what the hell he had just taken credit for. He made his polite goodbyes, which were returned in kind, and with as much haste as possible made the split-second decision to head for the foyer between the club and restaurant where the building’s main elevators were located.

  “This is Charlie, I’m hot but mobile.” Cabe was the first of the two to check in, which meant Dasilva was likely still hobnobbing with Espinoza. “What’s with all the red? I hate red.”

  “Some of our alarms were just tripped on the recurring floor by the stairwell. I’ve been monitoring them all night. They were fine until now, but here’s the thing: all of Mr. Wright’s own security protocols are still reading as armed with no intrusion.”

  “So the mole’s possibly somebody who knows about Elliot’s security measures but not ours,” Cabe muttered as he shouldered the heavy double doors to exit the club. By a window at one end of the hall, a local news station was reporting on the gala. A lone photographer was kneeling at the other, contorting his body into a human pretzel to capture the perfect angle of the recessed honeycomb lights in the ceiling. A trio of young women in full evening gowns were giggling together by the door which led to Elliot’s private third elevator, which was where Cabe was now headed.

  “Plausible suspects? Hotel has the list.”

  “Plausible suspects would include,” came Faraj’s immediately interjection, because of course, the young agent handler had been one-hundred per cent ready, “Mr. Dhawan, Ms. Bell, Miss Flynn, Miss Knapp, Mr. Hamilton of APEX, Mr. Bell who was the architect for the renovation...”

  “That list is way too fucking long, Hotel,” grumbled Cabe as he impatiently inserted his keycard and hit the button for the elevator again, as if that made some sort of a difference. “I’ll tail their entry. See what’s going on.”

  “This is Juliet, is the Whisky still in the Jar?” It was Flint’s voice this time, and he sounded like he was walking.

  “This is Charlie,” he replied in a murmur as the private elevator doors opened up at last and he stepped inside. “Echo Whisky is in the Jar.”

  “I’ll lock it down and secure it. Charlie, you intercept and investigate on the recurring floor. I just had a visual on you, Golf – stay on Espinoza unless Charlie calls for back-up. Let’s keep this all very clean and very quiet, people, until we know there’s actually reason for alarm.”

  “Charlie is traveling to the recurring floor,” Cabe continued to update them, unfastening the buttons of his herringbone dinner jacket so that he could better access the sidearm covertly concealed in its holster. “E.T.A. about forty-five seconds. Romeo, what kind of a breach am I looking for?”

  “Those two extra laser sensors on the stairwell door in Mr. Wright’s office and the main bulkhead into the lab have been broken,” Ronnie reported, swiftly and clearly as she had been trained to do. “The lights were deliberately turned off that so Mr. Wright’s the cameras we planted in the stairwell wouldn’t pick anything up, but the infrareds we laid down this week caught the heat signatures of two humanoids heading for the recurring floor.”

  Two figures... the mole and the mule. Cabe’s ears popped uncomfortably as the elevator slowed to a rather smooth halt at the thirty-third floor. So far, so good, but that didn’t keep him from gingerly drawing his Glock as he stepped out of the lift and into the waiting area for the C.E.O.’s office.

  “About to make contact now,” he whispered, depressing the trigger on the inside of his jacket cuff whenever he needed to speak. “Going dark unless I know it’s clear.”

  “We’re here, Charlie,” came Ronnie’s warm but professional response.

  The espresso wood doors to Elliot’s office opened readily under his splayed, cautious fingers, not showing any signs of obstruction or protest. There was nothing to suggest forced entry, either; whoever had entered had unlocked these doors manually, either with their own keycard that had access to Elliot’s office or with one that was stolen.

  Why the hell am I suddenly getting the feeling there are more people with access to this office than he wanted to tell me...? Cabe moaned to himself as he crept through the dark office as quiet and stealthy as a cat, each placement of his Oxfords controlled and coordinated. He knew the layout by heart; in fact, he was fairly confident that if he were totally blindfolded, he would be able to navigate the office purely from memory.

  Long, swift, careful steps brought him to the reinforced steel vault door that was nestled away in an alcove between (no joke, it was like something out of a movie) two of the bookcases in the room. The barricade had been left partially ajar, security bolts sitting snug against its thick sides as the inky-black darkness pooled out from the winding staircase beyond.

  Goddammit, seriously?

  “It’s Charlie. Our suspect list just got considerably shorter.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Faraj’s fuzzy voice.

  “Bulkhead’s been manually opened,” Cabe was growling as he inched up on the door, his hand tight around the weapon clutched within it. “It’s gotta be his P.A. – the mole has to be Emiko Bell.”

  “Oh my – you’re sure about this?” Ronnie asked.

  “No, but that’s my hunch right now. Stand by.”

  Skulking through cramped corridors and up narrow, spiraling tunnels might not have been his favorite pastime, but at least he’d done it enough that he was good at it by now. Claustrophobia wasn’t something Flint’s ‘Heavenly Father’ had decided to bless him with in addition to his fear of flying, thankfully. That was Ronnie’s cross to bear.

  “Our beam at the T-junction of the lab corridor was just broken,” came Ronnie’s placid report in his left ear as he ducked low to slip beneath the laser beam sensor he knew cut across the middle of the staircase about halfway up. “And again... and again, and again... The WrightTech beam two feet before it hasn’t been disturbed.”

  Because she knows where they all are, was the thought he didn’t dare voice out loud as he drew closer and closer to the bulkhead that closed the stairwell off from the laboratory on the floor directly above. She’s avoiding them the same way I am. But she doesn’t know where the ones we laid are hidden...

  The steps evened out into a small landing, his patent-leather shoes avoiding the sensor across the top stair as he crept closer to the vault door. The tips of his fingers found the glossy, metal lip and gave it a cautious but firm tug; as expected, it heaved open several inches toward him, smooth and silent, to let a knife of piercing bright light cut through the gap and strike him across the face.

  I love my job, I love my job, I love my job...

  The vault door was at least five or six inches thick, and every fraction of that Cabe had to open it before the gap was large enough that he could properly peek through was agonizing. A mental image of Emiko standing on the other side of it with the mule, watching the door creep open with that bitchy look on her face as she prepared to finish what she had started the last time he snuck in here.

  She’s small but she’s fast, he reminded himself as more and more artificial light flooded the narrow stairw
ell. And strong. Going toe to toe with an enemy who could quite literally bend the laws of human physics to their advantage was never something you took lightly if you wanted to walk away from it alive. While Cabe had a habit of cracking wise on occasion to ease the mood, the one thing he never allowed himself to do was underestimate his opponents. Especially those who could bench-press twenty-seven of him with one hand.

  First rule of Anomaly Fight Club: don’t ever fucking joke about Anomaly Fight Club.

  The door was now ajar a good nine or ten inches, and he was finally able to see enough of the lab that he could make out an unfamiliar figure standing with their back to the stairwell door, talking to someone out of sight around the corner at the far end of the T-junction corridor. He wasn’t close enough for their words – or even their voices – to be heard, but he was able to fully see the person he presumed was the mule from behind.

  Most of the time, provided they didn’t use their recently-acquired abilities in public, Anomalies were completely capable of passing as un-affected, un-powered humans (man, this job was making him more politically correct than he’d ever stopped to realize before). In the case of the mule sent to collect the items for the buyer, that likely wasn’t the case.

  She stood at about Cabe’s height with thick, curvy muscles and strong legs beneath protective black tac pants. Her hair, a vivid golden-blonde, was braided back against her head into a high dreaded ponytail, in a way strangely reminiscent of some kind of valkyrie or something. But the most striking aspect of her appearance, even beyond the broad, tanned shoulders and viking warrior princess hairdo, had to be her arms – or, more specifically, her hands and forearms. Each and every vein was risen from the elbow down, pointed sharply at the edges like tattoos and glowing a very soft, cool aqua-blue color, bright even that he could see it clearly at a distance. Her hands themselves, currently resting upon the slope of her hips beneath her belt, were bedazzled with patterns of the same radiance ending at the tips of her fingers, which seemed to completely dissolve within their own dazzling aura.

  He hated it when Anomalies were involved like this. It was hard to constantly push back against the assholes he had to meet in this line of work when he actually witnessed them committing the crimes he was trying to clear them of. Extremism is the enemy, Lara’s voice reminded him from the back of his mind, as if it felt he needed to hear it.

  “This is Charlie, I have eyes on the mule, but not the mole,” he whispered as loudly as he dared, more allowing the words to just tumble around in his mouth than anything else. “Mule is definitely an Anomaly... they’re by the back wall, can you see them?”

  “This is Romeo, I’m looking at the WrightTech surveillance feed literally as I’m talking... there’s no one in the lab, anywhere. Not at the back, or the front.”

  Wincing, Cabe dared to guide the heavy door open several more inches. “The vault door next to the elevator... is it open or closed?”

  “... closed. It looks like it’s still locked.”

  “It’s a dummy feed. It’s not live.”

  “What!?”

  “Charlie – this is Golf,” came the far-too-welcome voice of Cabe’s partner, and he could tell by the spacing and pant to her breath that she was probably running. Sprinting. “That room is live with two Anomalies, don’t you DARE enter until I’m there –”

  Even as she was talking, something inside the lab wasn’t right. He felt it before anything happened, like a sixth sense burning in the very pit of his gut. He couldn’t help flinching as the tall, blonde woman suddenly screamed something and lashed out at who he’d presumed by now was Emiko, still out of view, knocking her from the sound of things clean into the thick, glass wall of the corridor. Almost immediately after there was what could only be described as an explosion of pink electricity from Emiko’s position on the floor in retaliation, the charge throwing a small but powerful bolt clean through the mule’s chest to send her staggering backward.

  Enraged, the mule didn’t bother getting to her feet again, remaining on one knee as the flung one glowing hand out in front of her. A beam of crisp blue light burst from her palm with a bizarre, pulsing dull, static noise. It clearly struck its target, because somewhere behind that weird, deafening, audial throb, he heard a yell.

  “Charlie!? Do you copy!?”

  “Golf, what’s your E.T.A.?” Cabe’s hand clamped tighter around his sidearm, entirely subconsciously, as the blonde Anomaly stood, the beam of light the same diameter as her palm still crackling as it flared out from her skin. The lines on her arms glowed brighter, and he had no idea what she was doing to Emiko.

  “Maybe five minutes, tops. Stay. Put.”

  Another, deeper cry echoed from within the lab. Cabe grit his teeth. “Make it faster, this ain’t going so well. She’s gonna kill her in there –”

  “Stay PUT, Sparrow!”

  I love my job...

  It was beautifully ironic that the same night he had grilled himself for perhaps taking his job too seriously saw him throwing open a vault door that weighed more than he did in order to charge down some ridiculously powerful Anomaly and save the very person who had not only made every minute of his existence here a misery, but had now betrayed them all.

  Cabe was only able to embed two bullets in her black bodysuit before the world jerked violently and painfully to the left in a flash of bright white-blue light, and everything that had once been up was suddenly down. His back slammed into something very hard and very solid which rattled ever so slightly in protest, depositing him in a heap on the floor at the bottom of it.

  “Charlie, Golf, this is Juliet,” Flint was barking frantically in his ear as he rolled onto his knees, blurred brown eyes flicking with absolute disbelief between the mule, and the mole – who was now entirely in his scope of vision, and who was definitely not the person he had presumed it to be. “Echo Whisky is not in the Jar, repeat: Echo Whisky is NOT in the Jar.”

  “I know.” Cabe glowered, as he spit the blood out of his mouth and snarled behind the butt of his extended Glock 19. “He’s in here with me.”

  Goddammit... I hate my job.

  Nineteen

  It hadn’t taken Cabe more than half a second to figure out exactly where he should be pointing his gun.

  And it wasn’t at Elliot Wright -- despite the itch in his trigger finger, the urge to line the sight up with that pretty damn face of his. Elliot Wright, who had broken into his own secret laboratory and shown the mule the way. Elliot Wright, who despite his promises of honesty and transparency, had blatantly omitted the fact that he had been in contact with the buyer, or at least the mule, himself. Elliot Wright, who had been nothing but a sexy pain in his ass from the moment he first Googled the bastard’s name in Ronnie’s car.

  The blonde stranger -- now officially labeled an Assailant, and the buyer’s mule -- had tossed Cabe’s body at the other end of the T-junction corridor, so that she was flanked between both men. At a glance, it seemed a foolish move in terms of strategy, but Cabe soon realized that the esteemed and infuriatingly elusive Elliot Wright was likely not going to be presenting her with much of a problem at current. The intense ray of light spurting from her palm had – somehow, someway, through some bastardization of everything he’d learned about physics in school – twisted itself up one of his legs to wrap around his waist, his chest, and then his throat, restraining his left arm behind him and crushing him into the nook between the ceiling and wall. Although he was still conscious, and the eerie energy itself didn’t seem to be physically hurting him, he was pinned in place.

  Which meant the blonde’s attention was entirely on Cabe, which meant Cabe’s gun was aimed at the center spot right between her eyes.

  “I honestly... wasn’t... expecting you to join us for this, Sparrow...”

  “Wright, I’ve listened to enough out of you for one evening.” Without even glancing back, the blonde Anomaly flexed her rear hand and sent the executive flying into the perpendicular wall with another yell of
pain. The other was splayed between herself and the W.A.R.D. agent threateningly. “Unless you’d like to explain to your groupie that this is a private meeting, and that if he cares about his own health, and maybe yours too, he’d best be leaving...”

  “He can try,” Cabe growled back at her, “but lucky for him, I’m not so good with the doing as I’m told.”

  “Charlie? Charlie, what the hell’s going on!?” As much as Cabe appreciated his supervisor’s persistence at times like these, replying to him became much more difficult when he couldn’t get a hand off his gun.

  “Put him down,” demanded Cabe, “nicely, or the next bullet doesn’t hit your armor.”

  “I’m not finished with him yet,” the mule snarled back. “He still owes me something.”

  “That’s not cool, lady, c’mon – no means no.”

  “This isn’t the sort of deal you back out from,” she scowled at the bodyguard. Cabe wasn’t sure what she did, whether she tightened her grip on him or something, but she managed to draw another sharp yelp of pain from her hostage. “My boss isn’t the forgiving type. And he doesn’t appreciate being tricked, or cheated, or lead on by cocky little shitheads in flashy suits.”

  She punctuated her point by slamming Elliot’s helpless body into the wall yet again. That was enough: Cabe squeezed the trigger and fired a single shot between her eyes, hawk-like vision guiding the bullet on track, and it would’ve hit its target had she not shielded her face with one glowing arm and deflected it. It shattered a glass pane to his left.

  Ah, crap.

  “The hell did you do, Wright?” Cabe grumbled, more to himself than to his client, but Elliot – because he was Elliot – chose to respond regardless.

  “Just – uhn, just a little fishing, nothing major...”

  “Nothing MAJOR!?”

  “It’s all in the details, Peaches.”