The door exploded as I reached for the handle. Some of the wood peppered against my leather jacket, leaving fresh scratches in the material. Seriously I had just bought this thing a week ago, and you’d be surprised how much a custom leather jacket like this cost. The blood would wash off, but scratches were forever. Another blast ripped through the door as I crossed in front of it. The small glimpse of the inside of the room let me know I was in the right place. Kim was firing at the door as three women knelt on the ground in front of him acting as a human shield.
The girls didn’t deserve to be killed, but they also didn’t deserve to be here in the first place. Sometimes that’s what life gives you, rotten broken eggs. There was no way I was letting the three of them stand between Kim and me. That bastard had to die, and it needed to happen quickly. Time was running short until what passed for law on this planet would be showing up.
Flashing across the opening again I shot two of the women in the legs sending them to the ground shrieking in pain. Kim fired another shot into the door. I heard one of the girls gasp in surprise and then he started talking.
“Come any closer, and I’ll kill this bitch.”
“I think I’ve already demonstrated that I don’t care,” I shouted back through the shattered door. As much as I hated to admit it, I did care if those girls died but I couldn’t let Kim know that. Why did I care so much about these humans? Now wasn’t the time for self-inspection. There was still an asshole to kill. I’d have to worry about my feelings later.
“You just wounded them. The game’s up, you don’t have the stones to do what needs to be done.”
“Guess again.” The remains of the door flew into the room from my kick forcing Kim to duck to the side. I shot the girl he was holding right between the eyes. He tried to get the shotgun up, but her dead weight kept him off balance. I pumped three rounds into his chest from each of the guns. Standing over his body, I fired one last round into his head. It was better to be sure. I scanned the room and nothing immediately caught my eye as being out of place, but something just felt off.
The two women I injured were lying on the floor staring at me. I dropped the clip from one gun and replaced it. I shot one of the women in the head before replacing the clip in the other gun. I couldn’t afford to leave witnesses. As shitty as it made me feel, I had to have a clean getaway. There was no way I could risk the exposure. Imagine the field day the media would have hearing about a lone female assailant taking out Kim and a good chunk of his goons. I had come here to save these women, and now they were paying the price for my half-assed plan. The mission hadn’t exactly gone the way I wanted, but the end goal had been achieved.
The woman on the floor was backing away from me now. With a simple push, I entered her mind forcing her to stop. She climbed to her feet and walked towards me. The pain must have been immense, but none of it showed on her face. I had her wrapped in a dream of her eleventh birthday. She got exactly what she wanted that year, and all of her friends were jealous. It was her one perfect day. I replayed the memory as I fed.
A blast from Kim’s shotgun hid the bite wound. Now it was time to get the hell out of here. I sped through the halls retracing my steps. I wondered why the hallways weren’t filled with additional guards. In truth, I almost didn’t care, but something kept tugging at the back of my mind telling me my escape was too easy.
Bursting through the door on the roof I fired into the two bodies on the ground before running past them. I tossed the guns to the side as I broke into a sprint. I hit the edge of the roof and flung myself out into open space. My jacket caught the wind, and I landed two blocks away in a dark alley. Instead of walking out into the street and heading home I crouched behind one of the large trash bins.
The tears came then. I might not have let all of those girls down, but I failed at least three of them completely. Hopefully, any of the girls that were left alive would get a second chance at a real life. The guilt threatened to overwhelm me, but I tried to focus on the good I had done. I saved lives tonight, but even as I repeated it to myself, the words rang hollow.
The tears continued, and then they passed, almost like a summer afternoon storm. Maybe there was a little bit of Samantha left inside of me after all. There was nothing I could do about it now. I had to get home before they sent the hounds out to track me down. Then I could crawl into bed for the rest of the day. If anything held true to form this moment of freedom would be quashed with a mission from the think tank that controlled my life.
Chapter 22
Samantha Ripley
It was three agonizing days before the next mission came in. Three days where I watched the news about a brewing gang war and the death of Kim Sanchez. Three days waiting for the electrical surge to go off in my head and bring me to the floor. I waited on pins and needles, but it never came. When the phone finally rang, I was almost praying for a swift release.
The simple fact was I had been sloppy going after Kim Sanchez with a half-assed plan like I did. Smashing the two men’s heads together made a mess I might not have been able to clean up, and I didn’t leave a calling card from another gang. The only positive was that every gang out there wanted the credit, so it ended up being a wash. Next time I decided to make the world a better place, I needed to be prepared. It was easy to forget that one little mistake could lead to the end of my life.
The mission was a simple assassination. It was the method and the world that was the problem. I was going into the Kang Federation of planets. They were an odd system. Their worlds had almost returned to a more feudal Japanese style of government. An emperor ruled over the entire system, and firearms were banished on all planets with a penalty of death. The laws of the system were harsh, and they used swords to settle their differences.
As excited as I was to get to play with my new blades, I was terrified what would happen if I went up against a real pro. The warriors on the planet had trained their whole lives to defend the emperor, and even with my enhanced reflexes, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep up. At least I hadn’t been tasked with killing the emperor himself, only his lovely wife.
I didn’t get to ask questions like who hired us for the job? It didn’t really matter, I couldn’t refuse to do it anyway, but sometimes a girl just liked to know who she was really working for. Did the emperor have a new girlfriend? Or maybe someone was hoping to move into that vacant seat. I’d never get the answers, but I got to watch the aftermath play out in the news vids with a little more understanding than everyone else.
Looking at my bag, I snorted in disgust. The truth was I probably packed more than I needed to for this mission, but I liked to accessorize. Not in the fashion kind of sense, but in the what can save my ass if I get in over my head kind of sense. Wire, knives, brass knuckles, a few explosives. You know, stuff any girl needs to feel comfortable in the most intense situations. The pilot just looked at my overstuffed duffle and pointed to a space in the back of the ship as I boarded.
I secured my bag and poked my head into a curtained off area of the cargo hold. Hanging on the wall was an outfit that would make any woman look like a badass, but I was going to rock the shit out of those clothes. Tight leather pants, a bitching armored vest that faded from black to blood red and a leather jacket with kickass armored shoulders. I also had a scarf that could be pulled up to cover my face. With my two swords strapped to my back, I was going to fit right in.
The pilot spoke over the comms. “We are breaking atmosphere now, and will reach our destination in just under twelve hours.”
Well, there was no time like the present to try on my shiny new things. I stripped out of my clothes and got dressed. Behind where the clothes had been hanging, I found a small fridge and warmer. Come on, nobody likes ice cold blood for dinner. There was also a disk from my employer sitting on top of the mini fridge. They liked to drop off last minute instructions or details via holodisk. I fit a bag of the cold blood into the warming device and then slipped the disc into my holo. It pr
obably wasn’t anything too important, but last minute instructions tended not to be good for someone, mainly me.
Sitting back against the wall of the ship, I hit play on the vid and watched as Dr. Marcom stepped in front of the camera. He looked almost apologetic. “Subject Thirty, I wanted to let you know that I won’t be able to keep my promise to you. Even after all these years, I’m truly afraid to let any of you be free, especially you. Subject Thirty you are something altogether unprecedented amongst your kind. You have abilities that shouldn’t be possible. In all senses of the word, you have truly become a vampire. The rest of our research has only created augmented hemovores. None of them have grown past the enhancements the way you have. Every year you get stronger, and frankly it scares the shit out of me. I’ve managed to keep most of your abilities and mutations a secret. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was just an old man’s folly, but I fear if anyone else knew the truth, they would terminate you before we realized your true potential.”
There was a banging coming from Dr. Marcom’s left, just off the camera. If he were in his office, then it would have been coming from his door. Why would he have barred it? What kind of game was the doctor playing and why wouldn’t he set me free? Did he not realize that I was scared of being out in the world on my own as well. I hadn’t done a damn thing for myself in fifty years, the thought of being free was terrifying. It was also exhilarating. That would never happen now.
The doctor looked back into the camera. “I know I owe you more of an explanation, I just don’t have the time.” He looked towards the door again. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. Sorry for all of it. You deserved better, and in the end, I’m only letting you down again.”
He reached into his coat and grabbed a scalpel from inside. He slit the artery in his wrist and then looked up one last time. “I’m sorry, Samantha.” He reached up and ran the blade across his throat and then fell off the edge of the desk to the floor. The door must have finally given away because security rushed into the room. Two of the men went for the doctor, and one moved towards the camera.
From off-screen, a man spoke. “Stop that damn thing from transmitting.” The camera rocked back and forth and then went black.
So the doctor was dead and with him any chance I had of being free. That begged the question of who left that disk for me. Why would they risk it? The other scientists wouldn’t want me to know anything about what happened to the Doc. So who snuck on this ship risking everything to make sure I got it? That was going to have to be a question for another day.
I popped the tubing into the warm blood and started to sip at it contentedly while I pulled up a vid to watch. There was nothing I could do about the Doc now, all I could do was complete the mission and bide my time. Who knew, maybe one day I would find a way to free myself from their clutches. Until then I had to play the part of the content servant.
When my belly was full I’d probably pass out for a bit, try and get as much rest as I could before we landed. Once we landed I’d only have until dawn to kill the emperor’s wife. This wasn’t supposed to be a two day mission, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep that deep in enemy territory. Trust me when I tell you, this girl needed her sleep. That was if you actually wanted the mission done on time. Anyone that woke me up on the trip back home might just end up getting injured. I wiggled around against the side of the ship until I found a spot that made me comfortable and then I settled down to relax. It wasn’t as comfortable as a bed, but it would do until I finished this bag of blood then maybe I’d curl up in a ball and get some sleep.
The ship's landing jostled me enough to wake me up. Had I really slept the entire flight? That was unusual even for me. As much as I loved sleep, ten hours straight was a bit much. I liked to break my sleep up with bursts of activity followed by a nap, and every now and then, I indulged in something called elevensies, followed by, you guessed it, another nap.
Checking my gear revealed nothing out of place. I hid a few more blades and a coil of wire under my coat, and then slid on my gloves and pulled up the cloth to cover the lower half of my face. The ramp descended and the last rays of sunshine filtered through the opening and into the cargohold. Yes, I could go out in the sun. No, it wasn’t comfortable for me. Fifty years living in an underground lab probably contributed to it, but something they had altered in our DNA had to be a bigger factor.
I’d seen UV tests on a few of the others, and they didn’t have quite the same resistance I did. That being said I wasn’t immune. If left in the blistering sun all day, I’d develop massive skin lesions that could only be healed by feeding. If that didn’t happen, I’d eventually go comatose until I either received blood or I died from further exposure to the sun. It wasn’t optimal, but it let me enjoy enough of the light that I didn’t feel sorry about missing a day on the beach.
The buildings on this world were amazing. None of the buildings were over fifty stories tall, and each of them was surrounded by greenspace. Huge parks dotted the landscape, giving the city a tranquility that had been sorely lacking on Hyperion Four. Something had to be said for a society that thrived on balance. The gardens balanced out the metal, and the buildings being separated by the parks let the natural light filter down to the street. It was simply stunning.
So far, I’d only seen pictures of the core Alliance worlds, but the buildings pictured were massive dwarfing even the three hundred story towers of my home. The space between those massive towers was minimal. Almost no natural light would have made it to the ground making it so even someone like me could travel during the day. No wonder Dr. Marcom was worried about what could happen if I got out.
Living at the bottom of those towers must have been horrible for a normal human, but for me, it would have been bliss. I wouldn’t be forced into a nocturnal lifestyle. I kind of imagined it’s what it would have felt like to live in one of the massive forests. The trees blocked the light forcing the scrub to either adapt or die. Maybe I would be that adaption, the scrub that lived despite the harsh conditions. I shook my head bringing myself back into the moment. It wouldn’t pay to get lost in my own wandering thoughts while I was out on a job.
Moving through the crowds, I realized that my getup didn’t quite match the standard garb, but it was close enough that I didn’t receive too many lingering looks. They probably thought I was a tourist or a bodyguard for some offworlder doing business on the planet. No one tried to stop me as I moved closer to the palace.
Closer was a relative term as I continued to wind my way back and forth down the city’s streets. I kept my route varied for a couple of reasons. One it helped me to determine if anyone was following me, and two, I needed to wait for it to get darker before I could sneak into the palace. Walking from one side of the city to the other didn’t prove to be very insightful. I couldn’t understand some of the languages being spoken, and I hadn’t brought enough currency with me to do more than browse. Fortunately backtracking through the marketing district proved to be a little more revealing as I spotted two men on my tail.
Had the scientists finally grow tired enough of me to send a couple of beasts to bring me down, or maybe whatever protections Dr. Marcom had been extending to me expired with his death? It seemed like a lot of work considering the scientists could have just pushed a button to end my life. Maybe they had been sent to make sure I executed my orders, or they wanted to test a new combat model of the beasts against me? That also seemed unlikely with the magic death probe in my head. The scientists were already a pretty twitchy lot, but when your top scientist and head of the bioengineering program killed himself, it might be just what it took to spur them into considering a more drastic approach towards my health.
I needed to confront these two and find out who they were working for. If nothing else, it might bring me a little peace of mind. I decided to move faster, giving them the impression I was trying to shake their tail. Once we got somewhere a little more quiet, I’d be able to find out just what in the fuck was going on.
I spent a few more minutes perusing the street merchants’ stalls, before breaking into a jog. I rounded the corner of a building quickly climbing the exterior wall and then jumping over the fifteen-foot fence into the garden that surrounded the next building. Turning to face the gate, I waited to see if the two men tried to follow me. It was possible that a highly trained human could make it over the gate, but a beast would make that kind of leap without hesitation. A new thought managed to squirm its way into my head. What if the scientists had sold some of the beasts to the emperor? Worse yet, what if he had found a way to create his own?
This was where knowing who requested the job would have come in beneficial. If it had been the emperor, I doubt he would have two of his own trailing me. Either way, it seemed likely my cover was blown and that I would have to move quickly if I wanted to have any chance at successfully completing my mission. There was no time to muse on the situation further as the two men rounded the corner and swiveled almost in unison to face the garden that I was in. I took a step back into some shadows, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
The two men rushed towards the gate pulling massive swords from behind their backs. With a single leap, they landed on top of the fence and started to scan the garden. I still couldn’t tell if they were beasts, but at the very least they had been augmented. Making that kind of leap meant they were strong, possibly even stronger than I was. I had the feeling things were about to get interesting real quick.
One of the men’s eyes settled on me and didn’t move. Shit, they could see in the dark as well as I could. The scientist in charge of my mission hadn’t briefed me on any other vampire activity in the area, so I was going to have to just take things as they came. The man nudged his partner, pointing in my direction and then he jumped down from the fence.
Forced Compliance (The Galactic Outlaws Book 1) Page 18