The Valkyrie Project

by Nels Wadycki

  These thoughts had cycled through his head so often that when he heard the call that she was in the building, he wanted to run to her, pluck the sword from the burning embers and hold it high, proclaiming to the world that together they could not be stopped.

  But genetics were genetics, and saving Ana from the fire too soon would leave her brittle and weak and likely to snap the first time she was thrust into battle.

  "You hit her over the head?"

  Sera looked sheepish while Jordan just looked away.

  "You didn't have any tranq rounds left?"

  "We used them up getting onto the data floor and then coming up here."

  "Well, let me just mark that down on the shopping list. Double batch of tranquilizers."

  The room to which they had brought the captive barely held the four of them and having three more loitering outside didn't make Guillermo feel any better.

  "So we don't even know how long she'll be out?"

  "Come on, Moze," Sera said. "Tranquilizer estimates are a crap shoot at best, you know that. And given her unique genetic makeup, who knows if those estimates would even be accurate?"

  Whip smart, Sera was. She reminded him of what Ana must have been like through all those years he’d missed. Of course, cuffed to the leg of a table welded to the floor, Ana looked like a hamstrung gazelle waiting for a lion to come tear her apart. Her head lolled a bit, hair closing like a curtain across her face. Then her back stiffened. She was coming around already.

  "Okay, folks," Guillermo said. "Time to clear out."

  He ushered Jordan and Sera out where they joined the man who had failed to subdue Ana, along with Codar and Ikashi, the two others Guillermo had chosen to bring along.

  Guillermo paused at the door, looking back at the caged creature, the sleeping giant, alone and helpless once more.

  Ana raised her head, and her eyes pierced the veil of her hair with a strength, intensity, and ferocity that made Guillermo grin. He returned her stare with one of his own, and watched as the awareness of that look—and the man behind it—tore across her face in a series of progressive emotions. Confusion and anger—as she jerked her arms against the cuffs and realized she was stuck—and loss—as Guillermo closed the door. She called his name, but the door smothered the sound.

  --

  The electrocuffs weren't turned on, but the metal still dug and scraped Ana's wrists as she flailed about trying to free herself. She cried out but wasn't sure if her mouth formed words comprehensible in any language. She realized quickly, like she knew she should, that neither the cuffs nor the table were going anywhere. Then she slumped against the table leg, as much as she could slump with her body pinned the way it was, and began to brood. Then stew. Then scheme. Though the scheming consisted mostly of trying to block out the blurry vision of her brother and thwarting the attempts at comprehension and rationalization that her mind created during the brooding and stewing.

  After a while—she couldn't be sure how long—Ana's eyes dilated to make use of the narrow shaft of light that came in through the tiny window in the door and she decided to look around the room to see if there was anything to help her get out. She shimmied up the leg of the table, working the cuffs up inches at a time, trying not to damage any muscles or ligaments while moving her arms awkwardly with them trapped behind her back. At a position that approximated upright, Ana rotated a few degrees at a time, scanning the dark room. The dark, empty room.

  Just as Ana got around as far as she could go to her right, she spotted a small white object at the opposite corner of the table. Ana craned her neck, but there was nothing else on the table, and nothing she could see on the floor. She doubted that Memo would leave something in the room by accident with her locked up there. She didn't know how he expected her to get it, though. If Ana had been facing the table, she could have reached it with an outstretched leg, but with the corner of the table poking her in the back and the key to the cuffs as far across the table as it possibly could be, her flexibility was not enough to get there. She swung a leg up and around to her right first, and then to the left just to make sure. The failure brought with it hesitation, suspicion, and the questions that had clawed at her while Ana planned her escape. She slumped with her left leg still up on the table and as the corner at the short side of the table caught the lip of her boot, it pulled her down onto the table just enough for it to occur to her that she might be able to contort herself up onto the table if she flipped up on her back.

  She turned back to the long side of the table and took a shuffle-step running start, swinging both legs off the ground and onto the table—so much for saving muscles and ligaments. Nothing tore, but Ana's shoulders burned and she needed to catch the breath that was knocked out of her lungs when her back smacked the hard metal table. She lay there for a moment before carefully sliding her legs down the table to cradle the small lump. Using her calf, Ana brought it halfway across the table—far enough that she could stand up again and get it the rest of the way. After doing that, she maneuvered the key with her elbow, off the edge of the table, holding her breath as she did.

  The key fell and bounced away from her when it hit ground. Ana lowered herself back to the hard durocrete floor, her arms arching from the strain of moving while restricted, and hoped it would still be within reach.

  It lay just close enough for Ana to place her lower leg to the outside of it, trying to figure out how she would get it all the way back to her hands. Then there was the small task of fitting the key to the lock to undo the cuffs. First things first, though.

  She gingerly scraped the key along the ground, careful to keep it pressed firmly under her leg as it chafed against the friction of the rough, gritty floor. When that course of action took her as far as it could, Ana realized it was within reach of her foot if she stood, or assumed a hunched approximation of standing, as it were. Her arms protested with aches and threats of detachment, but she told her body it was lucky the cuffs weren't electrified.

  On her feet once more, she looked down at the key. Just as she reached her foot out to paw at it, a shadow passed by the door, momentarily obscuring the light. Ana froze.

  She was not surprised that no one had passed the door up to that point—the floor was secure and it was after business hours. She just hoped that the dark of the room had veiled her movements within.

  A moment later, the room went dark again and stayed that way as someone stood in front of the small window, entering an access code into the security panel outside.

  The click of the lock echoed in the small room like a death knell. The flood of light from the hall blinded Ana even as she looked away.

  "I thought I saw something moving around in here. And what do I find but a caged rat."

  The awful caw of the Raven Natalya.

  Ana managed to keep her wits about her to some degree as she pulled the key under her foot casually back toward her.

  "I should just leave you here to rot, but I'm fairly certain that something much faster and more definite is waiting outside this room. I will be much more satisfied as well to watch you tremble before a firing squad after the Board recognizes you are as unfit and worthless as I told them."

  Ana crashed to the floor, exhausted and defeated. Her dramatic move covered her grab at the key on the floor and lowered Natalya's guard. The onyx stones of her eyes gleamed as she stood triumphantly over her new prisoner.

  Ana faked a few silent sobs but was spared further overacting when an alarm outside sounded. Natalya rushed to the door to see what dared to spoil her moment of victory. With no obvious cause in sight, she turned back to her quarry. That short break was all Ana needed to go from prey to hunter. Adrenaline overpowered the dull ache in her arms, and she worked the lock with the ease of someone who had gone through the motions until they could do it unconscious.

  Ana was on Natalya, her arm around the nasty woman's neck, pressing the gun stolen from the Raven's own holster to her chalky white temple.

  "I'll have
to take a rain check on the execution," Ana whispered into her ear.

  Then she flung Natalya at the table, giving the dark, bony woman a solid smack to the gut, doubling her over and giving Ana plenty of time to get out and shut the door behind her. She held the handle until she heard the lock click shut. She hoped it sounded like the clang of a durosteel prison door inside the room.

  Ana almost took off at a dead sprint, but paused to waggle her fingers, saying goodbye to the wannabe arch-villain. Natalya screamed and pounded on the door. Ana smiled to herself. It had been a while since she'd felt like a badass.

  12. THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

  Guillermo walked right across the screen in front of her. Ana didn't need to rewind and watch it again to regret not having gone to the video feed immediately after the incident. She’d jumped through hoops to get access to Continuum data that left her empty-handed while the biggest clue she had sat right there in the Valkyrie Project headquarters.

  Her brother had waltzed in with his groups of commandos and slipped out with only a single casualty. Ana still wanted the head of whichever one of his thugs had taken Justin's life, but she understood the intention behind the rest of the actions of the group and knew it had been a careless mistake, probably by an inexperienced agent.

  Were they agents? Or were they just soldiers of fortune? Or something in between?

  The answer would lead her to him.

  Of course, first she had to deal with the question of how she was going to get the answer.

  The obvious solution was to break into the Agency's data stores—again—but before going through that charade, Ana suspected she might be able to shake down Malcolm and get him to divulge some additional classified information. He had caved pretty easily last time, but she had faced him down with undeniable truths. This time she packed no deadly ammunition of that sort.

  Nevertheless, Memo was sticking his neck out and Ana needed to grab him before he disappeared into whatever deep, dark hole he'd been hiding in for the past fourteen years. She had been poking around and chasing worthless Agency intel long enough.

  Ana shut down the terminal and the image of her brother and his gang faded into darkness. She stood, determined to suck all the privileged information from Malcolm's brain. She would prefer not to leave a desiccated corpse in his place, but if he thought she'd been a hard-ass before, he would not be prepared for her newly reinforced gluteus muscles.

  Of course, giving him all kinds of death stares would have been much more effective had he been in his office. Or a briefing room. Or anywhere on the ninth floor. But Ana couldn't find him in any of the spots that might be considered usual, and, not wanting to lose her momentum—or her opportunity to find Memo—Ana turned to her next best shakedown victim: Aerin.

  "Hey, Aerin." Casual. Real smooth. "Have you seen Malcolm recently?"

  He glanced up, seemed to realize he should not have, and quickly returned his eyes to the dissected electronic instrument lying on the table with its wiry guts shoved this way and that so Aerin could probe deeper inside.

  "No, can't say that I have."

  Unusually terse for the normally bubbly little man. Interesting sentence structure as well, as though he might have seen him, but was not allowed to tell anyone. Aerin's way of disguising the truth so he didn't have to actually lie.

  "Well," Ana said, "maybe you can help. What do you know about the group that broke in here? Anything you noticed in the videos? Reports? Research they had you do?"

  "No. Nothing. Sorry."

  Aerin didn't look up as the words clipped from his mouth.

  "Really? No one asked you to look into anything?"

  "No, but I am looking into this." He gestured at the pile of dismantled components on the work bench, keeping his eyes focused on it. "And I'm really busy right now. I need to get this done. Sorry I can't help you out."

  "I understand. Sorry about that." Ana hoped she could soften him up because his obvious attempt to dismiss her was, well, obvious. "I know you like to dig in to stuff though. Weren't you at all curious as to how they got in past all the security?"

  "Well, I've been trying to tell them for months that there are several glaring holes waiting to be exploited if people were smart enough to get past the more basic mechanisms." The words spilled out in a rush, a pent-up rant stored in a vein Ana had tapped. His head began to rise along with his ire, but it dropped again as he remembered whatever it was that had muzzled him at the start.

  Ana waited, but he just stood, sullen and silent.

  "Dammit, Ana!" He looked up, his eyes straining with sadness and confusion. "You only come to me when you need something! I'm happy to help you, but I'm not just another resource to be exploited!"

  Ana stepped back. She didn't know where the sudden tirade had come from, and while she couldn't deny that what he said was mostly true, he’d never seemed to mind before.

  "Aerin, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…" Ana trailed off as she searched for words. Finding none, she broke from his painful stare, her eyes taking refuge in his pile of parts. "Maybe I'll come back when you're not as busy."

  The coward's way out.

  Aerin looked down again as well and whispered, "Yeah, come back another time."

  Ana turned away, her stomach churning, the gears of her mind spinning untold revolutions in trying to process what had happened. It was as though someone had told Aerin that she had killed his childhood pet.

  She returned to her desk and slumped in her chair, hands playing absentmindedly at her terminal. She checked Jrue's schedule. He was out on assignment, but she could not view any of the details. He hadn't told her about any assignment. Then again, she realized she hadn't spoken with him since Justin's funeral. Only twenty-four hours past that event and she'd gone from the complete blank slate of information, to seeing her brother in person, to saving her own life for the hundredth time while biting her thumb at the Bitch Natalya, to feeling like someone had set fire to the bridges that connected her to her friends and possibly her sanity. Maybe she could hop in the Continuum's time machine to go back to see how everything had spun out of control so quickly.

  Or she could push forward and find her confounding tease of a brother.

  --

  The Raven Natalya exited the building, her lips colored a much brighter red than her usual dried blood shade. Her eyes were ringed in black, a heavy circle contrasting against the stark white around her jet black pupils.

  Ana fell in behind her as soon as they'd cleared the Spire's secure perimeter. They passed a high-priced salon, a high-class restaurant, and a high-rent high rise before a break in the buildings that served as an alley. Ana picked up her pace to pull alongside Natalya and forced her into the alley. She held her gun waist high and hissed at the Raven to get in the hovercar stashed there. Ana had gotten lucky on that count. Natalya's hot date could have been in the other direction, leaving Ana to question her in a much less confined space. Fifty-fifty chance and the odds broke in her favor.

  "Get in the car!" she snapped when Natalya hesitated. The Raven looked ready to shout, but could come up with nothing to make someone passing by on the street want to stop.

  "You're crazy," Natalya spat instead. "You have no idea what you're doing."

  But she got in.

  Ana kept the gun on her as she lifted off and zipped down the alley between two towering structures. "My Agency doesn't know anything about the group that invaded both of our offices. I don't think there will be such a lack of answers from the Continuum."

  "I think you've got the wrong person."

  "Just tell me what you know."

  Fear outlined Natalya's eyes like another layer on top of dark eyeliner.

  "Tell me and I'll let you get back to your date. I'll drop you wherever you need to go if you tell me what I need to know."

  "Ana, please. I'm not the person who's going to help you with this."

  "Oh, you know my name now? Isn't that convenient?"

  "Yes. I do. And I know
they've been holding back a lot of information from you at your Agency."

  "Really? You think?"

  Natalya looked at Ana, sympathy drowning the fear in her eyes. She cast about for the words to make her kidnapper understand.

  Understand what?

  "This whole thing," Natalya started, "it's more complicated than your Agency can deal with. Your leaders have neither the foresight nor the comprehension to see more than black and white options."

  "Maybe you don't understand," Ana broke in. "I don't care what the Agency does or what its leaders can or cannot comprehend. I want to know about the group that is stealing information from both of us. There's a link between the groups, but—" Ana interrupted herself. "No! I don't even care about that. I just want to find them!"

  Ana sped through cross traffic and swerved perilously close to sides of new buildings that sprang up forming the crevice of the alley on the other side of the thoroughfare. Natalya grabbed the roll bar at her side, more out of panic than the thought that it might somehow protect her.

  "I know they killed your friend, so if this is some vendetta—"

  "It's not a vendetta. You can call it atonement if you want, I don't care. I just need to find them."

  "Ana, the fight we are fighting, it is bigger than you and me. It is bigger than some group of misfits who assume they're doing the right thing because they're fighting against organization in favor of their careless notion of chaos."

  "I've been fighting this grand fight you're talking about for way too long. I don't care how big it is. I don't care about the big picture anymore. I just want to find them."

  Natalya sighed, accepting that she would not convince Ana.

  "When you came to the Continuum, I thought you knew what you were fighting for. My superiors, unlike yours, know the endgame is bigger than a pissing match between intelligence organizations. I thought you would see that. Now you are like a lost little puppy who just wants to find her owner. I'm sorry. You could have been much more, but they've dealt you a poor hand and bid you in to a game you cannot hope to win. Since there is no trump I can play, I will tell you what I know. The group that broke into our facility, they stole the package that you and Etienne brought back from Triton Laboratories."