by Nels Wadycki
Jrue reacted like the medicine ball had been a stun grenade and had just exploded in his hands. Ana realized she should have taken another moment to consider his words instead of rushing to misinterpret his perception of her and the project that had taken the place of her family. Especially since he had no way of knowing the parts of her life and personality she'd had to bend and reshape in order to even make it to this point. So she began to backpedal.
"I'm sorry. Like I said, I don't really talk to anyone except, y'know, my co-workers." Not enough, but it softened the blow somewhat.
"Don't take it personal, Ana. People talk behind your back. If they can't say it to your face, it's 'cause they're scared or jealous. Probably both."
"Thanks," she said, then looked at her feet. She didn't usually—okay, ever—shy away from conversations, or confrontations, or whatever, but she'd already embarrassed herself pretty thoroughly when all she'd wanted to do was come by and see how he was doing with his recovery.
Then a strong, gentle finger guided her chin up until her eyes were drawn as if by a tractor beam into alignment with his. She bit slightly, unconsciously, at her lower lip.
It was at that moment of a budding but precarious intimacy that her comm chose to crash between them with a sonic boom. She jolted with the noise; Jrue shook himself free of the momentary reverie.
"Shit. I got to run. Keep up with your recovery. I'll see if I can get you flying for me some time." She said it with a tone of professional courtesy, but she wanted desperately for him to misinterpret it as badly as she'd done with his comment.
"I'll keep my comm on."
--
The temperature didn't change as she entered the room, but Ana definitely knew she was walking into a firestorm. She managed to shut the door against a backdraft and faced a good-looking silver-haired gentleman with gently tanned olive skin. In addition to the skin tone, the Senator's eyes were wide and dark, all too similar to those of her brother. That had to be why his son looked like her lost sibling. A little bit of hope surged within Ana but was quickly consumed by the conflagration of rage swirling around the Senator.
"I thought this project was supposed to help people!"
"It does," Marisol said, but the words barely made it over his shoulder.
The man—the father of the kidnapped child, Ana presumed—whirled to face Marisol. "Well, it's not doing a very fucking good job finding my son."
Spittle flew across the room, thrown as if from a bio-grenade, a poisonous gas looking for its next victim. Pointless anger reddened the senator's face. Ana's backbone stiffened to a level close to where Malcolm's already appeared to be. Marisol and Justin were significantly more relaxed. Justin she could understand, he didn't seem to be the target of the invective attacks. Marisol had skin lined with a titanium alloy. Ana could practically see the laser beams from the senator's eyes bouncing off of that metal-infused skin.
Luckily for the three Valkyries, Malcolm wanted to remain in charge.
"Mr. Senator, I can assure you that we are doing everything possible."
"Wow. How old is that line? I thought we gave you the budget you've got so you could be more than a fucking police station."
"I'm sure you understand that this assignment is different from the projects we typically work."
"What I understand is that I came to you as a specialty Agency because I have friends who run your program and they have told me about the great work you do." The 'great' came with a set of air quotes, but the inflection in his voice made them entirely unnecessary.
"Your friends have not deceived you. We do a lot of good here. But as I said, our assignments more often consist of information-gathering and counter-intelligence activities."
"Perhaps I should go back to the police, then, and leave you to more important matters than my only son."
Again with the air quotes. Several sets in that last sentence.
Ana stepped up. "Sir, after tracking down the van that was used in the abduction of your son, we were shot at by guns containing acid bullets which completely destroyed all organic material they came into contact with."
She paused, hoping the impact would register before she continued.
"Do you want the traditional child abduction unit from the ordinary police force trying to figure out how to deal with that? Or do you want this Agency, which remains on the cutting edge of scientific and technological advances, handling people with that sort of weaponry?"
The senator's chest rose and fell as he let go of a heavy breath. The fire that warmed the room still simmered in his eyes. Ana worried that if he snorted, flames might shoot from his nose like a dragon. Then, just as quickly as he had thrown out insults, he walked out of the room without another word.
"Idle threat motherfucker," Marisol mumbled.
"If I get to decide who lives, it's not going to be him," Justin said.
Malcolm turned to them, but it was Ana who spoke. "Guys, seriously. The man just had his son kidnapped, I'm sure you can understand on some level that he's more than a little stressed out."
Three sets of eyes rolled. It wasn't like Valkyries were used to cutting anyone a lot of slack. No one ever did for them, and since they most often worked with each other, after a while it became a force of habit to return the favor. None of them spoke. They didn't have to; they already knew what the others were thinking to a level of confidence that would make Aerin accept them as psychic.
"Any other leads?" Ana asked. The point was that a child had been kidnapped and they needed to find him, even if his father suffered from a general lack of tact and social graces.
"Aerin has some ideas." Malcolm paused, hesitating. "But I'm going to let Rani, Kara, and Melanie follow up. They've been resting. You've been working. You've been attacked."
"But," Ana sputtered, "we saw the organic destruction weapons! We know about the kid! His school!"
"And we just got yelled at by the client!" Marisol said. "We deserve this one just for taking that shit from the Senator!"
"I know you hate to wait. To be told not to do anything." Ana wondered if Malcolm ever got tired of being calm, confident, and reassuring. "But you need a few hours at least to recover. I don't want to push you for this case when there are other important matters we need to get back to."
"Let's get back to them, then!" Ana said.
"You will, Ana. But like I said, you need to rest. I want you fresh. There are challenging circumstances I must take into account."
"Can you tell me what they are?" Her question was half-interrogation, half-curiosity.
"You will find out soon enough. Please, go home and get some rest. All of you. You know the work never ends. If we could work all day, every day, we would, and there would still be more to do."
Ana sighed. They all had extraordinary work ethics, but they also knew that Ana had nothing to look forward to in her downtime. No one acknowledged it openly, of course, and sometimes she wondered if the walls she had built around her personal life harmed her more than they helped.
Marisol clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, mija. I'm sure that chef Malcolm is cooking up something really good for you."
It was the best she could offer. So Ana took it, and they headed out with much less drama than the Senator.
–
"The black van. Can you run a history scan of any kidnappings involving black vans? I know it's totally generic and ridiculously stereotypical. I know it’s a long shot. But Memo was taken by people in a black van and this kid was too. I don't know if these guys went to some kidnapper training school, but there's got to be something to it."
"So, find a pattern?"
"Find a pattern."
"It's going to take a while to actually come up with anything. It's not like black vans are a rare thing. Kidnappings more so, but still."
"Yes, Aerin. I doubt you'll even be able to find anything. But just check it out."
"Oh, no, no, no. I will find something. Whether that something has anythin
g to do with your brother is the question mark. But, then, you're the one who'll have to answer that question."
--
Ana had grown dangerously close to relaxing in the bathtub in her apartment when that thread in the back of her mind started to unravel like a second-hand sweater. The larger-than-life image projected on the briefing room screen popped into her head. She opened her eyes and looked at the white swirls in the large gray tiles that made up her bath and shower stall. The image faded for a moment. She focused on the water lapping gently around her. The picture was there though, not visible, but visceral. The thread that nagged continued to unravel through her muscles.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Memo.
She could save him. She make up for letting him go. She could. The child was in there.
Ana rose from the tub slowly, her body still trying to let go and relax, her mind pulling it into an internal briefing room. For a moment, she stood, contemplative, feeling the weight of her wet hair on her back. Feeling the water slide off her skin into the tepid pool below. Her ankles and feet were still held by the water, just warm enough to remind her how nice it had been.
Then she sprang into action, Valkyrie-style. She toweled off head-to-toe in one swift motion, walked briskly into her bedroom, whipped a black shirt and pair of pants from her "Valkyrie" dresser, stretched them over her body, slapped on a pair of dark shoes, and went to the closet to weapon up.
--
Ana entered the building with her gun drawn, held back against her shoulder. Darkness drew her in, but her eyes adjusted to reveal the same barren shell of a warehouse she'd seen earlier in the day. Darker now, of course, without the day's natural light. The ambient light of the big city provided its own version of daylight, subtle and shifting, aided by the stepchild of illumination that was the sun's reflection off the moon. Ana moved quickly across the cold gray floor, feeling like Cinderella in her ball gown, in a hurry to get the job done before her purloined vehicle turned into a pumpkin.
It was much easier to be stealthy by herself. Even if the security forces—or Infinite Army or whomever—had replenished their numbers and increased their awareness, she was a shadow, only appearing briefly when a streetlight entered through a window that hadn't yet fully succumbed to the grime.
The feeling rose again within her that there was more to this decrepit place than even those enlisted to safeguard it would have known. There was somewhere in here a child, taken from familiar surroundings, just like her brother, trapped by strangers with nowhere to go. She could feel it just as she could feel her heart beating in her chest.
The telltale heart drew her from shadow to shadow. Steeped in darkness she moved deeper inside the building. Boxes hid her movement as she crept past one guard and then another. She avoided every place they'd passed or inspected in the first run-through. They hadn't skipped over anything, she knew, but they'd missed something. The same uncomfortable doubt knotted her lungs, straining, drawing her stomach up. She kept her breath steady, but it took work.
As she approached one of the sets of rusty stairs that dropped from the corners of the building Ana saw pallets that hadn't been there before. A new shipment; others had shifted to accommodate it. The thought that there could be a child inside one of the new, clean wooden boxes flashed through her mind.
Ana would have to subdue the security force before attempting to get inside any of the new arrivals. She counted five guards now patrolling the warehouse, and they were in frequent contact. She didn't need to try to pick up the communications on her handheld, they were speaking loud enough to be heard across the small warehouse. Still speaking into the comms, though. Probably just trying to make their presence known to discourage intruders. Ana wondered if they actually thought they were fooling anyone with that.
Through visual inspection combined with the conspicuous auditory clues, Ana deduced the patterns for three of the five guards. The other two appeared to be what she termed designated roamers.
She set an interception trajectory for the first of the three routed guards and made her way up the now-familiar metal stairway, light steps from soft rubber soles drowned out by the din of the city impinging on the warehouse.
The two up top were on an idiotically predictable timing route, which brought them surprisingly close to the other route-walker on the floor below. Ana felt more than just lucky that the two freelancers were spread at the corners of the warehouse when the three came together. She wrapped herself in a shadow next to a conveniently placed air duct and drew two silenced Raptor X5s from where they lay strapped to her thighs. A quick shot from each Raptor gave the two guards watching the floor below a headache they would never feel.
With two sleeping beauties at her feet, Ana flipped over the railing and swooped down on the third. It was one of those rare times that she wished she had some sort of cape or leather trenchcoat that would fly out around her as she dropped on top of her still-unsuspecting prey. Rare because in every other situation, the skin-tight body armor she wore was more realistic, useful, and appropriate. It did make it easy to grab the guard by the neck with a leg lock and use her momentum to flip him to the ground. Any long piece of fabric would just get tangled, throwing off her precisely executed neck break.
The swift execution and sleek outfit did not mean her actions were silent, though, and even the traffic from the skylanes nearby wasn't enough to cover the sound. The tumble and scuffle sounded to Ana like a train arriving outside her apartment, and she knew one of the rovers had heard her when a deep male voice rang out.
"Infinity check-in!"
Should have just shot the third guy. The flying drop takedown was fun, though. And there were only two guards left now, so the odds were in her favor.
From across the warehouse the other responded, "Infinity Seventy-Two checking in."
"Infinity Seventy-Three checking in." It was the first guard again. Yep, just the two of them. An awkward silence followed as the remaining two realized they were alone. Footsteps clattered across the cement floor toward her position.
A metaphorical hop, skip, and a jump took Ana toward one corner where her Raptor silently dropped the approaching guard identified as Infinity Seventy-Two.
As Infinity Seventy-Three appeared from around a group of large wooden crates, Ana considered some clever secret agent lines.
Infinity ends here.
Welcome to the endfinity.
Infinity minus one, now.
The Raptor didn't let her get any of them out, though. Probably better. Infinity Seventy-Three wouldn't have had time to appreciate them.
Ana walked cautiously—apprehensively—back to the crisp, unmarred crates that had appeared there sometime after her previous visit.
She circled the set, four in all, looking for any easy way to get them open. They were all sealed in a similar fashion, with large bolts drilled in at strategic points. At least, that was all Ana could tell from the outside. Her mind once again presented the possibilities of what protected the interior. First, she'd have to get through the wood.
Ana hadn't thought to bring proper crate-opening implements, but a quick look around the dim warehouse revealed a bolt driver hanging on a wall alongside a fairly comprehensive set of tools. She grabbed the driver, picked one of the crates, and began unscrewing the bolts. They came out quickly, but when Ana was done with that, the side of the box didn't pull back from the rest of it at all. Sealed on, then. Ana consulted the wall of tools and found a crowbar, clearly the object of choice for prying apart large wooden crates.
Levering off the side panel was not as easy as slipping the bolts out of their holes. A clear epoxy held the wood butted together, and pieces of the crate began to splinter and crack as the bar worked its way into the opening between the pieces of wood. A dull silver-colored surface emerged in the space created as the box came apart. The light from the outside reflected off the surface, revealing soft metallic tones the further Ana dug in against the crowbar.<
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Finally, the entire side of the box snapped away from the other five sides, exploding into several large pieces of wood and glue, scattering across the warehouse floor. The large wooden panel was gone, leaving a large metal panel, this one with a security system that she would be able to crack without as much brute force as the wooden exterior. There was a keypad, almost identical to the one on the warehouse door. Ana reached into her bag and extracted the lock decoder. It was not physically the same machine that Justin had used earlier in the day—had it really only been a day?—but she had double-checked that the model she had at home was the same. No reason to mess with success.
Ana held her gun in her left hand as she set the lock-picker to work. She waited with muscles taut. Her body was rigid with the isometric exercise, a departure from the more natural concentric contractions of muscles used in jumping from a gangway to topple an enemy.
Finally, the lock beeped, OPEN flashed across the display in bright green letters, and the door to the metal container inside the crate hissed open a half a meter and stopped. Back to brute force, then.
Ana hauled the thick metal door open, and as the dim ambient light illuminated the interior of the box, Ana jumped back a step and then rushed forward—a staggering, hesitant rush. She didn't want to frighten the small children who squinted up at her in the faint light. As she moved through, more and more of them seemed to appear all around her, some mewling in tiny voices, others placing a light touch on one of her legs, checking to see if this was more than just another nightmarish mirage. She looked around frantically for her brother. She looked around frantically for the Senator's son. But the children in the box had been there for a lot longer than a day; their faces were gaunt, their eyes sunken and padded with dark circles.
Ana lit up her comm and called the Agency. Melanie—V27—was on graveyard. She was surprised to hear Ana on the other end, but Ana plowed through the confusion with a full serving of determination and a side of desperation. Backup was on its way. Ana set to work on opening the other three crates in the formation, praying that she'd find, well, anything besides more than the poor creatures that occupied the first box.