“Certainly,” said the young woman.
As Brother Jacobi walked back toward the van, the young woman gave Frannie a broad smile.
Frannie turned away, searching the high windows, wondering where Hank might be.
“Leaving someone behind?” the young woman in gray said.
Frannie’s head whipped around. How could she know?
“Yeah, me too.” She looked down at Frannie.
“What was his name?” Frannie asked.
“It was a she, actually. My twin. Why don’t you join me in the van and I’ll tell you all about her.” She extended a hand to Frannie. “It’s Frannie, right?”
“Yeah. It’s short for Francesca.”
The young woman shook Frannie’s hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Frannie. My name is Jacira.”
26
Old Friends
Jacira Barretto leaned an ear close to the security barrier between the east and west wards on the thirtieth floor. The riot put the entire prison into lockdown, activating solid steel emergency barriers along the meridian of each circular level and thus, blocking every concentric passageway. These, combined with the always locked stairwell doors, effectively contained each ward in a half-circle steel box. Using the key fob given to them by Member Principal Jacobi, Jacira, Balthazar, and the unnamed redheaded woman could open the barriers, but they had to be careful to make sure no one waited for them on the other side. They’d decided to avoid groups, large and small, as the weapons the three of them carried made them attractive targets. While they could easily defend themselves, they wanted to avoid the attention if at all possible.
The three former Members of the Order of the Coppice had worked their way down the west stairwell from the top level of the Keep without major incident. They’d waited almost an hour after the riot started before setting out. Jacira figured the time gave the thrust of the worst violence time to fizzle out and enough time for their quarries to get to their quarters and settle in. They’d be easier to find and easier to kill.
Having donned impromptu ponchos made from prison blankets, the three assassins and their weapons had attracted little attention. The seven inmates they encountered in the stairwell had been dispatched easily and silently with blades. They used scroll tablets to tap into video feeds from all over the prison. The extra eyes allowed them to avoid trouble where possible, but it also gave them an idea of what was happening in the prison. Most of the inmates had gathered in the mess halls on each floor. The seating areas and kitchens had been divided by the security barriers along with the rest of the floor, but plenty of food could still be found there and it provided an open area for rioters to gather.
It was clear that factions of gangs controlled each floor. In some cases, summary executions were carried out on rivals—their bodies tossed down the Great Atrium or hung from homemade ropes to dangle in the open air as a warning. In spite of the lockdown, however, inmates were managing to traverse between levels. The stairwells were used by some who, Jacira assumed, had kidnapped a guard or a Tapper and used their access chips. Others used makeshift rope ladders thrown down and strung across the Great Atrium. One view from a higher floor showed the Great Atrium growing into a multi-tiered spider web of cordage, sheets, and cables of various types.
She couldn’t speak for Balthazar and the redhead, but Jacira was anxious to finish this job and leave the Keep behind forever. Once upon a time, she thought she’d done just that … only to be proved wrong by fate … and James Sarazin.
In the outermost passageway, in the west ward of the thirtieth floor, Jacira listened with her ear an inch away from the metal barricade. After a moment, she looked at her partners and shrugged.
“I think we’re good, but …” She shook her head and scanned the video feed on her scroll tablet. The view from the other side of the barrier showed nothing but blackness. The camera lens had been obstructed, which meant they could be walking into an ambush.
Jacira reached out with the key fob, about to swipe it across a panel in the bricks, when she stopped cold. Leaning forward again, her ear grazing the cold metal of the barrier, she squinted in concentration. A soft thud from the other side and she pulled back.
“Let’s …” She was interrupted by a shower of sparks overhead. They rained down with a loud crackling and popping. Everyone spun in place, weapons at the ready, searching frantically for the threat. The sparks continued for five more seconds then stopped. Acrid smoke filled the space.
“Shit,” Balthazar shouted and jumped backwards, kicking and stomping on the toes of his right boot.
Jacira looked at the barrier and immediately saw the source of all the commotion. A quarter-inch wide gash, roughly eighteen inches long, had appeared in the barrier. It stretched from the top of the barrier straight down. The metal around the cut glowed bright red with heat. She looked back at Balthazar’s boot. A wisp of smoke rose from a hole above his big toe. He cursed and sneered at the fresh cut in the steel.
Voices reached Jacira’s ears. Another soft thud against the steel barrier and the sparks resumed. She jerked her head in the opposite direction and the three killers raced stealthily down the corridor. She and Balthazar took point with the other woman in the rear.
“Where did they get a cutting torch?” Balthazar said. The sound of fire melting through metal faded as they jogged.
“No idea.” She pointed down a corridor to the right. The others’ footsteps padded behind her as she then turned another corner into the next passageway. Another steel barricade stood across the curving hallway; four open cell doors lined the right-hand side. Random items had been wedged in the jambs and under the doors to keep them open. The prison lockdown would have sealed all cell doors that were already closed. To her, it looked like none in this passageway had been closed.
A quick check of her scroll tablet and Jacira could see the other side of the barrier. Empty. The hallway onscreen was a replica of the one they stood in now with the exception of one cell door sealed shut.
“It’s clear,” Jacira said. She reached into her pocket and grasped the key fob.
“What we got here?” said a voice behind them.
The three assassins turned. Two cell doors away a wiry man leaned against the doorframe.
“Hey, boys, y’all didn’t tell me it was time for visitation?” he said toward the interior of the cell. He stepped away from the door and four more men emerged from inside the cell.
Jacira faced the redheaded woman. “I thought you cleared the cells.”
With a shrug, the woman smirked, looking amused.
The five inmates lined themselves up in a rough line across the passageway. Each held a weapon of some type. Some stained, caked with dried blood. Two of the men bore the crimson stains of a recent fight on their white uniforms. All looked thirsty for violence.
“I could tell you was a lady even with that bullshit do-rag you got there,” the lanky man said from the center of the line. “And ole red there ain’t even tryin’. I mean what the fuck? You must want to bed down with one of these here lunatics.”
The redheaded woman laughed. Jacira looked at her again and became convinced that she was genuinely amused.
“Big fella is mine,” a massively built black inmate at the end of the line said. “The rest of you can fight over the split tail.”
“To each his own, Lentwood.” The lanky inmate grinned. Looking back toward Jacira and the others, he said, “Y’all make this easy and nobody has to die. Can’t guarantee it won’t hurt, but you won’t die.” He held up his hands. “You probably won’t die. Let’s just say that.”
The three assassins didn’t speak. They silently spread themselves across the hallway. Hands disappearing under their ponchos.
“Either way,” the lanky prisoner continued, “this is happenin’.” The five inmates moved forward as one. Smiles grew. Eyeballs darted between Jacira and the redhead, except for Lentwood, he only had eyes for Balthazar. “What did you plan to do about that
steel wall behind you anyway? You got some secrets under them get ups?”
Jacira tightened the fingers of her right hand around the grip of the knife attached to her body armor. Her left hand found the pistol with its attached suppressor in her rear holster.
“Let’s do this quietly,” Jacira said.
The lanky man threw his head back in a gut busting laugh. “That all depends on you, hon. We can be as loud or as quiet as you want.”
The nearest man was three feet away. Jacira’s hands whipped from under the poncho. The pistol fired into the center mass of the man on her right; the bark of the pistol gave a muffled pop from the suppressor. He fell back. She fired at the man on her left, red mist puffed from his shoulder; the shot was off target. The man staggered but kept coming toward her raising his club high, swinging at her head before she could adjust her aim and fire again.
She fell to one knee, ducking the blow.
The knife in her left hand swung in a short arc across the man’s inner thigh. Bright red arterial blood shot like a fountain from the wound. He fell back.
Leaping forward, Jacira swung her knife across the throats of the two inmates laying side by side. They clawed at the gaping slashes as pools of blood spilled from between their fingers.
Standing over her kills, she surveyed the rest of the fight. Balthazar had dispatched his two foes in a similar fashion as Jacira. Four men were dead on the ground. The fifth, the lanky ring-leader, squirmed and moaned on the ground as the redheaded woman, with a blade in each hand, made cut after cut across his face, legs, arms, torso, and groin. She laughed through bared teeth, barely containing her mirth.
The lanky man whimpered, “Stop. Please. Stop,” while he pushed with one good leg trying, but failing, to escape her wrath.
The blades flew for another minute until finally, Jacira said, “Okay. We get it. End it already so we can move on.”
With a final thrust, the redhead drove her blade into the man’s eye socket, twisted the knife, then withdrew it. She then proceeded to clean her blades on the clothing of the dead man with what little fabric there was left free of blood.
The trio made their way through the barrier into the east ward, down the hall, and then backtracked in the outermost passageway. Soon, they stood several feet from the steel barrier they’d initially encountered. It stood with a gaping hole in its center. Eighteen-inch cut lines zig-zagged their way around the large square opening; the cut away section lay flat on the tile floor in the west ward. Bits of plastic attached to thin wires littered the floor.
Balthazar reached down and picked up a thin bar of what looked like silver clay roughly eighteen inches long. He turned it over in his hands and Jacira examined it. The brick’s edges were smooth, a plastic circle hung from a thin wire off one end. The wire ran down the clay bar’s centerline. “I think that’s a welding strip,” Jacira said. “Used to cut and weld metal. Pull the tab and it lights up. That’s what they’re using to cut through the barriers. Where did it come from?”
“Found it on the floor,” he shoved the welding strip into an unseen pocket under his poncho, “and I’m keeping it.”
Jacira nodded toward the door they’d gathered around. “Who wants dibs on this one?” She jerked a thumb toward the door. The redheaded woman patted herself on the chest, to which Jacira said, “You want it, you got it.” She reached out with the key fob and unlocked the door to Sister Jocelyn’s quarters.
Inside the Member’s room, Jacira stood with her back to the door. Balthazar crossed to one corner and the redhead stood in the center, near the foot of the bed. Jocelyn was sleeping when they entered, fully clothed in her long black cassock on top of her made bed.
Jacira watched the redheaded woman, wondering when she’d strike, but the woman just stood there staring at the sleeping Member.
Suddenly, Sister Jocelyn’s eyes shot open. With unnerving calm, she studied the three intruders. Then, as if this was something she completely expected, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her eyes settled on the redhead, looked her up and down several times.
“I guess I knew you’d come for me at some point,” Sister Jocelyn said to the woman. She spoke slowly, deliberately. Waving a hand toward the door, she asked, “Was this all your doing, just so you could get to me?”
The redhead said nothing in reply.
“And who are these two you’ve brought with you?” Sister Jocelyn eyed Jacira and Balthazar. “But wait,” she said, squinting at them, “I recognize you two. Aha, I see now. You’ve found … others … like you. Others who were … cast out. Others who weren’t worthy of the responsibility of being a Member of the Order.”
“No, Jocelyn,” said the redheaded former-Tapper, speaking for the first time since Jacira had met her. “The Order wasn’t worthy of me.” Her hand slipped from under the poncho, revealing a red stained knife.
The old Member blinked slowly and took a deep breath. A bead of sweat dripped from her temple. “No, Oona. No, I’m afraid you’re very wrong.” Sister Jocelyn eyed the murderous blade. “But I’m truly glad you’ve found a profession suited to your … skills and disposition.”
“You should be,” Oona said. “It was you who gave me my first taste.”
To Jacira, Jocelyn looked ill. She didn’t notice when they first entered the room, but the woman now looked frail and sickly. Her face was pale and her skin clammy. Maybe it was a good thing she was about to die, she thought. Put her out of her misery.
It was only then that she noticed Sister Jocelyn’s shimmering right index finger.
“I’m afraid,” Jocelyn said, reaching her right, ungloved hand to the back of her own neck, “I can’t oblige you with another taste just now.”
“No!” Oona reached out for Jocelyn’s arm, but it was too late. The old Member’s body stiffened, and with a feeble wheeze, she fell forward onto the floor.
Oona stood glaring down at her old Mentor’s corpse, her face unreadable.
“Job’s done, Oona. Let’s go,” Jacira said.
Oona stood there, not moving, staring down at the dead Sister Jocelyn. She dropped to her knees beside Jocelyn with what Jacira thought was a look of grief. Instead, Oona raised her knife in both hands, and with a cry of rage, stabbed Jocelyn’s lifeless body. She lifted the knife again and stabbed once more. Then again. And again. And again. She spent the better part of two minutes mutilating the corpse of Sister Jocelyn before Balthazar physically removed her, kicking and screaming, from the bloody scene.
27
Ascent
On the twenty-fourth floor of the Keep, Martin Aubrey twisted his hands around the wooden handle of his axe. He stopped at the corner of the central corridor and glanced back at Malina who was scanning a tablet hanging from a lanyard around her neck. A machete hung at her side. Francesca and Rudolfo stood silently behind her, both holding spears with blackened tips.
Malina held up a flat hand, seemed to watch something move across the screen, then pointed forward.
The four of them crossed the opening of the north corridor and continued down the passageway. Aubrey glanced toward the Great Atrium as they passed the corridor. Bodies, at least half a dozen, strewn about on the floor. Blood covered the floor, the walls. The air smelled of burnt metal, plastic, and flesh.
They knew this section of the ward was relatively clear, having seen most of the prisoners gathering in the mess hall, but Malina kept an eye on things using her hacked feed of the Keep’s security cameras. Once again, Aubrey found himself immensely grateful to have found her.
They passed offices, the rec room, the Members’ observation room. All stood empty. Patches of blood-stains dotted the floor of the passageway but it was nothing like the north corridor behind them. No one spoke as they skulked along. Shouting could be heard coming from other parts of the Keep, some from their floor. The Great Atrium played tricks on the ear as it carried sounds up and down the tube of air.
It had been roughly an hour since the start of the r
iot. Aubrey had debated with the others on whether they should wait for things to settle before venturing out. His hunch was that Sarazin, having somehow started or at least facilitated the start of the riot, wanted to accomplish some objective in the midst of the chaos. He’d use the riot to cover his true plans and vanish once he’d accomplished what he came to do. Frequent checks of the video feeds showed them his plane was still parked on top of the Keep, which meant he was most likely still there.
They’d escorted the injured guard to a safe room, which Rudolfo could access with his implanted chip. Several other guards were in the small space already and quickly saw to caring for their co-worker.
Aubrey found the Tappers to be ideal companions, perfect for their present circumstances. They moved nearly silently, showed no fear, and, most importantly, seemed totally unflappable. Francesca especially impressed him. She was ruthless, lethal, and surprisingly powerful. She’d mentioned that future Members underwent some physical training and self-defense and it was obvious she’d excelled.
Aubrey stopped shy of the intersection with the central corridor and turned back to Malina once again. She swiped the screen, moved her fingers deftly across it, appeared to zoom in and out, then, finally, gave Aubrey the signal to move ahead.
Their destination lay on the other side of the central corridor thirty feet away. Once they reached the elevators, Rudolfo would use his chip to gain access and they’d shoot to the top floor and confront both Sarazin and Jacobi.
Crossing the central corridor, Aubrey heard more shouting. Where was it coming from? Closer this time?
As if in response to his thoughts, Malina whispered, “We’re good all the way to the elevator. A hundred feet beyond it, though, is the cafeteria where we are most definitely not clear. So, let’s not go that way.”
At the elevator, as planned, Aubrey and Francesca took up defensive positions while Rudolfo moved forward to call the elevator.
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