Blood gushed from the wound, making a sticky puddle on the tiles.
Dead. Tris breathed a sigh of relief.
Now what the hell is going on?
With an almighty crash, the dressing room wall splintered. Kyra came tumbling through it, wearing just her bra and panties, still grappling with an assailant.
She landed on top of him, but their momentum kept them rolling. He was on top, then she was; finally Kyra stuck a knee out to stop them, and ended up sitting astride her uniformed attacker. She rained punches down on him faster than he could block, each blow bouncing the back of his head off the tiled floor. The man tried to grapple with her, his hands reaching for her shoulders but only making it as far as her boobs.
Kyra ignored the inadvertent fondling, slamming punches into the man’s face in time with her complaint: “Didn’t. Let me. Finish. Getting. Dressed!”
As the man tried one last futile grab for her throat, Kyra reached out towards her foot. One shiny red stiletto had somehow managed to stay attached; she yanked it loose, raised it high over her head in both hands, and drove it down like an ice-pick into his forehead. It wasn’t terribly sharp, but it seemed to make an impression.
The man shrieked, both his hands dropping to grab desperately at the shoe — as Kyra threw her weight on top of it, driving it into his skull with a wet squelch.
The man convulsed briefly, then lay still.
Kyra rolled off him, panting, her face streaked with blood.
Tris rushed over to offer her a hand. “Shit, Kyra! We’ve gotta get out of here!”
“Yeah…” She got to her feet, then stooped down and pulled the stiletto heel free with a tearing sound. “First, do me a favour,” she said, holding it out to Tris. “Can you find me these in a size seven?” She shook the shoe, sending blood droplets flying. “And slightly cleaner?”
While Kyra dragged the attackers together, Tris frisked their bodies. He found no ID, but he took the impressive watch his guy was wearing in case it contained tech that wasn’t readily available on Earth. Then he stood back and looked down at the dead men. No two ways about it, they represented a shedload of evidence. “You don’t have any, like, alien goop that you pour over bodies to disintegrate them?” he asked.
Kyra looked at him like he had three heads. A flick of her hands reminded Tris that she was still only wearing her underwear. “You know what? If I did, I would probably have left it in my other pants.”
“Oh man. Kreon’s gonna be so pissed off!”
“Meh. What else is new.” Then she snapped her fingers. “Oh, that reminds me!” She rummaged in one of the bags Tris had been looking after, digging out an oversized purse. From that, she extracted a metal box the size of a pencil case, and from that she pulled out a lipstick-sized cylinder.
“What’s that?” Tris asked.
“I borrowed a survival kit from the Folly in case we needed it at the base. This is a fire starter.”
“Oh! Right. What are you using it for?”
“Starting a fire.”
Tris was confused for a second, until she started sending tiny laser blasts into the security guard’s uniforms.
“This’ll take forever,” she moaned, concentrating the laser until a bit of padded jacket began to smoulder. “Way too much gear to leave here. Get me something that burns!”
Tris glanced around. All he could see were G-strings and peephole-bras. Not a lot of material in either item.
Then he remembered a cleaner’s cart he’d seen when we went to the bathroom.
“Back soon!” he yelled, racing off.
The floor, and probably the whole building, was mercifully empty. Anyone not scared off by the knife-wielding maniac would have run like hell from the gunshots. In his mind’s eye, Tris could see the headlines: ‘Armed Man Opens Fire In Central Bristol!’ ‘Security Officers Killed In Line Of Duty!’
In the sudden silence he could already hear the distant wail of police sirens.
He found the customer toilets, called out to see if anyone was hiding inside, and went in. The cleaning trolley was exactly where he’d seen it. Rather than rummage through its contents he took the handles and pushed the cart back through the shop at a sprint.
“Got it!” he panted breathlessly when he arrived.
In his absence Kyra had collected her clothes; her smooth, coppery skin and scar-covering tattoos were safely hidden beneath a black leather jacket and leggings. Her flexible swords rode her waist once more — obviously her attacker had waited until she’d taken them off before he struck.
Kyra wasn’t waiting for anything. She planted a boot heel against the top edge of the cart and tipped it over, spilling its contents across the two bodies. She fired blast after blast from the laser torch, burning through clothes and paper towels, until one of the shots punctured something flammable and blew up.
Tris flinched in spite of himself, as the heat washed over him. He backed up, admiring the blaze, which was growing by the second. “Time to go, then?”
“Time to go,” Kyra agreed.
Tris turned for the stairwell.
“Hey!” she called behind him. “You forgetting something?”
He looked back — to see her pointing at the pile of boxes and bags she’d spent the first half of the day amassing.
“Oh, you have got to be shitting me!”
“Tris,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Do you like me when I’m happy? Or when I’m sad?”
“I like you when you’re alive, and not leaving the building in police custody.”
She batted her eyelids. “Let me put it another way. Please carry this shit for me, or I’ll shove it up your arse and carry you.”
Tris hesitated for a split second longer — just long enough to shoot her the mother of all stink-eyes — then bent down and started grabbing bags. “Sports is one floor up,” he said. “We’ll find something there to put this crap in.”
They made it up the stairs without incident, finally coming to a section that was off limits to customers. Leaping the railing they took the much narrower, bare concrete steps the rest of the way up. At the top, a chained and padlocked door gave way to a quick slice from Kyra’s swords, and they were out onto a vast flat rooftop festooned with air-con ducts.
Shouldering one of the two sports holdalls they’d acquired on the way up, Tris set off at a jog over the roof. He’d been up here before as it happened, on one of his late night parkour jams. The buildings on either side were crazy high, but their tops were level with this one. Fortunately, the one furthest from the incident they’d caused also had the smallest gap.
He reached it and looked over the edge, thankful this store didn’t have a decorative parapet. The drop was a full eight stories, ending in the kind of smelly back alley that drunks snuck down to take a pee.
Not the nicest place to die.
The jump across to the next building was totally doable though — he’d done it himself, in both directions.
Mark had totally chickened out.
He dropped the holdall off his shoulder, twisted around, and flung it with all his might. It landed with a thud on the next roof, skidding to a stop on the gravel.
Kyra came up behind him. “Woah there, tiger! Careful with that stuff.”
“What? You want me to throw it delicately?”
Kyra peered over the edge. “I just want you to be aware that, if it falls down there, I might be sending you to pick it up.”
He ignored her, taking her bag and flinging it over the gap. It tumbled to a stop next to the other one.
“Nice shot.”
Tris looked back at Kyra, a horrible thought occurring to him. “Oh crap. I just thought — I used to do this all the time, jumping the gaps, but it’s pretty far. You think you can make it?”
In reply, she gave him a long-suffering stare. “Anything you can do, I can do a hundred times better.”
“Because your muscles are enhanced and stuff?”
“No, Tris. Because I’m
a girl.”
And she sprinted towards the roof edge, vaulted high into the air, and landed in a roll on the other side.
Tris followed suit, clearing the ten-foot gap with ease and rolling back to his feet. “Not bad,” he said to Kyra, nodding in appreciation.
“Not bad?” She pointed to the shoulder of the jacket she was wearing, where little bits of roof gravel had become embedded when she rolled. “I literally just bought this!”
Hefting the duffel bags containing the rest of her purchases, Tris found sympathy hard to come by. He handed one to her. “Looks better that way. The distressed look, you know?”
Kyra closed her eyes in private pain. “Distressed look.” She shook her head. “Story of my life.”
They quickly found the fire escape and made it down as far as it went, tossing the bags down the last floor and jumping after them. They landed in an alleyway and took shelter behind a pair of huge steel rubbish bins while they waited for any reaction. After a couple of minutes, his heart still pounding, Tris led them out. He clutched one bulging holdall and Kyra carried the other, as they emerged onto the main pedestrian thoroughfare. A block away, chaos reigned supreme. Fire trucks and police cars were pulling into position, their sirens blaring. People ran past them in both directions, swearing and shouting. Camera phones were out in force, the event being documented from every angle a dozen times over.
Tris led Kyra in the opposite direction, up another narrow alley that climbed steeply between two huge shops, and out onto a road where traffic was flowing as normal. A few honks from disgruntled drivers showed the incident was causing a bit of disruption, but Tris’ house lay in the other direction.
Facing a long walk with heavy bags, after a day that had been surprisingly stressful, Tris stopped at the taxi rank and climbed into the back of a waiting Ford.
Kyra settled in next to him as he gave the driver an address two streets over from his own.
The taxi pulled away, accelerating between two other cars to reach a roundabout. As they cruised slowly around in a circle, the store they’d been attacked in suddenly filled the rear-view mirror.
Kyra had unzipped one of the holdalls and was admiring its contents. “Well, that was fun,” she said.
Tris craned his neck to look out of the back windscreen. Behind them, the top floor of the building was wreathed in flame. People screamed and pointed; fire engines swung into action as the sound of a helicopter beat the sky. Smoke and flames billowed from the upper-storey windows, curling up towards the roof.
Tris settled back into the seat’s plush upholstery. “I’m not sure we managed to keep a low profile, though.”
10
The cab driver dropped them off a short walk from the house.
Tris scanned the surrounding rooftops and windows for anything out of the ordinary.
“How did they find us?” he asked Kyra.
“That’s question three,” she corrected him. “Right after, who they are — and why.”
He watched a car drive past slowly, all his senses still on high alert. “They were pros, I reckon. By my standards, anyway. My guy was… well, he came close.”
Dangling a holdall from one hand, Kyra threw a casual arm around his shoulders. “You got him though,” she pointed out. “What did you do?”
Tris hesitated. “It’s… I dunno. I don’t feel good about it.”
“Oh?” He could tell Kyra’s interest was piqued. “Now you’ve got to tell me.”
“Yeah. I just… I sort of created an image of myself, and pushed it into his mind to distract him. It was a cheap trick, and it felt wrong.”
Kyra stopped dead, her grip on his shoulders tightening. “Say that again?”
“Look, I know there’s probably all kinds of laws against that shit. And there should be. I just didn’t have a choice, alright?”
Kyra swivelled him to face her, and for once there was no trace of mockery in her face. “Tris, are you sure that’s what happened? You didn’t throw a rock or something at the same time?”
Tris shrugged. “Fresh out of rocks. But I felt his mind… change, or be changed, when I did it. Sort of like with Gerian back on Helicon Prime.”
“What happened on Helicon Prime?” Kyra’s expression was intense now.
“Uhhh… Gerian tried to probe my mind, and I threw him out. He was proper pissed off, too. I think it really hurt.”
“You caused him pain?”
“Well, the bookcase caused most of the pain, I think. I just flung him back into it.”
“With your mind?”
“Yeah. Kyra, are you okay? You’re starting to freak me out.”
She grabbed his hands and squeezed. “Tris, this doesn’t happen. It can’t happen! I can use the Gift to send thoughts to you, and I can read minds to a certain extent — but that’s it. Your father was the most powerfully Gifted person I’ve ever met, and he could read minds across a battlefield. But no-one can change another person’s thoughts, Tris. No-one can put images into unGifted people’s brains. Make them act a certain way, or feel pain? That’s… that’s mind control.”
“Oh.” Tris glanced around, feeling suddenly awkward, then resumed walking. “That’s odd. I’ve done it a bunch of times.”
They took their time to reach the house, Tris leading them up and down the streets either side before approaching his front door.
Once inside, with the door double-locked behind him, he felt like he could finally relax.
Kyra was still looking at him like he’d just grown wings, and the house was a tip, but he couldn’t worry about that stuff right now.
“Gotta call Mark,” he mumbled, heading into the kitchen. “If he even gets a signal underground.” He opened the drawer where old phones went to die and started rooting around. “One these must still work,” he said, pulling out a tangle of charging cables.
Kyra came up next to him. “Ugh! You’re right. But none of that crap’s going to work. I’ll have to comm Lukas.”
Tris looked at her. “You got his number?”
“Don’t start,” she levelled a threatening finger. “For emergencies only.”
She’d mounted her comm on her wrist, like the security guard who’d attacked them. And just like his, it didn’t remotely resemble an Earth watch.
It beeped for a few seconds.
“Hey babe,” Lukas answered. His voice was oddly strained, and there was a thudding in the background. “Kind of in the middle of something right now. Can you call back later?”
Tris tensed as Kyra shot him an anxious glance.
“Lukas! Are you being attacked?”
“What?” He sounded surprised. “No! If you must know, I’m getting a massage. The nurse, Petra, does a great deep tissue. You should really—”
“Hey!” Kyra barked at the comm to shut him up. “We were attacked. Tris and me. Today. Not far from your location.”
“Wow. Sounds like a drag.”
“What I mean is, you need to be ready in case there’s an attack on the base.”
“Relax, babe, I got it covered. I got patrols upstairs, patrols outside, the whole drama. Don’t worry your pretty little head about us. You just take care of you.”
And the comm cut off with a click.
Kyra stared at it for a few seconds, her jaw clenched tight enough to make her head shake.
“I really hate that man,” she said eventually.
Tris barred the door to the basement from the inside, and carried the last bag down to Kyra. She’d found a few extra items around the house that she’d left on her last visit, and was enthusiastic about returning to the Folly with them.
“Soon as we get there, I’ll go put this stuff away,” she explained. “You find Kreon and run interference. Tell him about the attack, as much as you can remember, and you might want to start discussing your new talents with him.”
Tris nodded. “He’s going to know we went shopping, Kyra. I’m just hoping he doesn’t know we started the Great Fire of Bristol.
”
Instead of taking the bag off him, she thrust hers into his arms as well. “Tris, I don’t ask for anyone’s permission to go shopping. If you’re going to last long in this business, you have to stand up for what’s important to you. I take orders, but I take them on my terms.”
“Okay.” He adjusted the bags to carry them by their handles. “How does that square with burning down buildings?”
Her eyes twinkled wickedly. “I just do that for shits and giggles.”
The trip back through the Portal was every bit as disturbing as the last one. Tris could practically feel slimy tendrils of malice reaching out for him. When he got to the other side he was shivering so hard he nearly collapsed on the Folly’s decking bay floor.
“Welcome home, Tristan,” Askarra’s voice chimed from hidden speakers. “I see your trip was productive.”
Tris looked down at the sports bags dangling from both hands. “Ah, well, you know. We grabbed a few bits. Any messages from Ella?”
“There is one, it arrived shortly after you left. Would you like me to play it now?”
“No, no,” he said, catching sight of Kyra’s sly smile. “I’ll play it later. Where’s Kreon?”
“Kreon and the others are not currently on board,” the computer replied. “They departed aboard Wayfinder once the refugee exodus was complete. I was not made aware of their destination.”
Tris thought he could detect a hint of disappointment in the monotone.
It reminded him of something. “Hey Mum, I found this computer chip, and I was wondering—”
“Askarra?” Kyra cut him off.
The computer chimed in acknowledgement. “Yes, Kyra?”
“Tristan has found a memory engram of your husband, Mikelatz. He’s promised me he’ll wait to access it until he’s shown it to Kreon. I thought you might also like to curate its contents first?”
There was a second of silence before Askarra responded, sounding positively chirpy. “Yes, thank-you Kyra. I would very much appreciate that opportunity.”
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