Suddenly the squirming girl clutched to his chest reminded him of the package. Perhaps it would not be a good idea to bring her up with him as there was a high probability she could be injured. He was about to toss the shield outside the open elevator doors when another flash struck him. He squeezed his eyes through the same peculiar sensation and then carefully placed the shield on her feet. He pushed her, gently, out of the elevator and hit the button denoting the thirtieth floor.
The confusing flashes had stopped, his mind was once again clear. Focused.
The doors slid closed and soft music washed into the box as it lifted.
And then it lurched to a stop, music and movement and all.
He tapped another icon on the screen of his EB and the music and movement returned. Twice more the elevator stopped, and twice more Fischer’s back door key allowed Dent to override the system. Eighty-seven seconds after leaving the ground floor, the elevator came to a halt. This was his stop.
He drew his other gun from his right side, heard the familiar tick as the gun’s ID palm reader recognized him, and leveled them both at chest level.
Guns pointed forward, he watched as the door slid open.
XIX
No armed men in suits greeted him. That was unexpected.
He stepped off the elevator and touched his EB screen. All secondary power in the building went out. With a loud thrumming whir, backup lights kicked on. They ran on the city power grid, and so were effectively out of his control.
He was in an intersection. Left, right, straight ahead. He scrolled through his EB, found the required floor plan, and headed straight. As he made his way deeper into the thirtieth floor, the environment reminded him more of a hospital, complete with men and women wearing scrubs. Except these scrubs huddled under chairs and desks or were running with their hands covering their heads down corridors off to the left and right. That act had never made sense to Dent. A bullet passed through hands easily.
He turned right.
Rooms lit by streaming sunlight. Odd that a tech company owned and run by Grant Chisholme had rooms with blue-blanketed beds and small bathrooms instead of rolling chairs and cubicles at the main office. As he made his way deeper in, some of the beds were occupied. Mostly young children, monitors beeping discordantly and erratically. These he ignored.
He made another right.
The flash was the only warning before Dent dropped his gun as pain flared through the meat of his left shoulder. He sent two shots that way in reply and then bent to retrieve his weapon. He picked it up with a weak, but serviceable, grip and pushed on.
He ignored more occupied rooms, stepped over the body and blood-soaked carpet at the end of the hallway, and made his final turn to the left. His target was straight ahead. So were four males and two females. Three of the males had firearms, one female did, as well. The other two people were in lab coats. Behind them was a metal door, painted a pale blue. The lights at the end of the corridor were on. A generator had to have been rerouted, purposely and beforehand, to keep the machines and electronics there powered on. At the top of the door, imbedded in the wall, was a familiar blue light.
An illegal blue light on two counts. One; it signified an eField being used in a public space accessible by civilians. And two; it was an eField.
One of the six fired Dent’s way, destroying a computer to his right. He ducked back around the corner and planned his extraction.
He tucked one gun under an armpit and pulled his phone out with his free hand. He scrolled through, found the page he needed, and scanned for available devices. More than a score came up and he found three appropriate devices and forced a pair with them. A few more buttons and then he started a short countdown. He put his phone back in his pocket and grabbed his gun and then waited seven seconds.
His pocket beeped three times and three phones at the end of the corridor let out a very high-decibel siren. It was planned to run for five seconds. Enough of a distraction for him to turn the corner and rush the six people in front of the pale-blue metal door. He dropped two people, a man and woman who hadn’t covered their ears, first. A shot grazed his left calf and two more struck something metallic behind him. He dropped two more and then he was upon the surviving pair.
Too close for firearms to be effective, he dropped his guns and prepared to grapple. A wild swing from the male landed the butt of his gun across Dent’s right cheek, stunning him momentarily. He dealt the man a backhanded blow and then sent his left fist slamming into the man’s stomach. He doubled over in pain and Dent was about to bring his right elbow crashing down on the back of his head when two sharp lines of pain were carved into his back.
He spun, grabbed the woman in the lab coat’s wrist and applied pressure. She yelped in pain and dropped the medical scalpel that was coated in Dent’s blood. Her yelp derived from pain turned to a scream from the back of her throat as she raked the nails of her left hand across Dent’s face. Before he could react properly, the man had recovered and jumped on Dent’s bleeding back, throwing his arms around his neck and cutting off his air supply. Dent turned, man still attached, and slammed backwards into the metal door. The man expelled the air in his lungs, but still he hung on. The female picked up the fallen scalpel with her good hand and closed in.
These two fought like they had nothing to lose.
The blue light above the metal door burned steady.
The woman swiped at Dent’s stomach. He sucked in his stomach, pivoted, and then threw his weight forward. The man flew over his shoulders, his legs crashing down on the woman’s head and raised arm. When Dent righted himself both people stayed down, though they still moved and twitched.
He snagged the female’s ID badge and held it to the pad at the right of the door. It accepted the authorization and beeped. Dent stepped to the middle of the doorway as the pale-blue metal barrier disappeared into the wall.
The girl stood there, arms crossed at her chest, looking up at him.
“I knew it was you,” Fifth said as her lips parted and curled upwards at the corners.
---
Package recovered, guns recovered, Dent tapped his EB and returned power to the elevators.
The ride down was quiet as the girl leaned into Dent and held his right arm with both of hers. When they neared the first floor Dent didn’t have to shrug the girl off. She let go willingly, allowing him to draw both of his weapons.
He looked down at her, and when she didn’t move, he stepped in front of her. It was simpler than pushing her back. She would only get in the way.
“Be careful,” she said in a quiet tone. She probably expected an answer, acknowledging that he heard her words, so he nodded once.
But when the doors slid open her warning was for naught. The lobby had been emptied, of both civilians and hostiles. He made his way forward, sunlight shooting in through glass and shattered glass just the same. It had only changed its angle slightly since he had left it. He went to the dark-stoned fountain, retrieved jacket and backpack, put them on, and led the girl outside Grant Chisholme’s flagship building. The metal-and-glass doors still stood so he exited through them.
Before the pair hit the sidewalk, a stout Filipino-American man in an all black suit and orange tie stepped around a planter and halted their escape. He stood a good distance away from the pair.
“Dent.”
“Charon.”
“Karen’s a boy?” the girl asked aloud. Dent and his handler ignored her.
“So,” Charon said, keeping his arms neutrally at his sides. “You have reacquired the package. Well done, I suppose.”
Dent inhaled, feeling the dual guns press gently into his sides.
“Although you just took the package from its intended location, Dent,” Charon commented. “You just went back on your contract of employment.”
“Chisholme broke the contract back at the airport. And you allowed that breach.”
“I did not.”
“He’s lying,” the girl whisper
ed up to Dent.
Dent nodded. “You’re lying, Charon. The drop off was designed to either capture or dispatch of me.”
Charon tilted his head just so. He did not deny Dent’s accusations. “There is a way to make this all right, Dent,” he said. “A way where we all win.”
The girl at Dent’s side stepped closer. When he looked down he saw her body shivering, which was odd as it was not a cold day.
“If you do this, you ruin a world of future opportunities for yourself. I know many clients who would pay dearly for your services.”
“Clients like Grant Chisholme who had agreed to pay dearly?”
“Dent. Stop. I’ve arranged to have your payment acquired. That is no longer an issue.”
The girl moved closer on his right, hindering the quick movement of his arm to draw his weapon.
“Enough. Leave the girl, and you can go. This mission was complicated. Leave it at that, and go.”
“I failed the mission,” Dent said.
“If you take the package from here then you will have failed the mission.”
Dent raised his right hand slightly. The girl clung to it suddenly.
“Package delivered, Dent. End of your participation. That is the way it has always been. It will be the way we continue to do business. What happens to the package is none of your concern.”
Dent recalled the secret files that Fischer had led him to. “I don’t think the package will be … safe.”
“Who cares about the damned package, Dent?” Charon had raised his voice. “Chisholme can kill her for all I care! You do this and you’ll ruin me! You take the package and I’ll never be trusted again. My clients will seek out other sources of employment. You can’t do that, Dent. I won’t let you.”
Dent assessed the threat. The man was unarmed, this he knew. But the man never went anywhere without a security team. If Dent killed the man then a bullet would likely bury its way into his own head. He looked up, and determined it would likely be his right temple. Better angle from across the street. But if he killed this man, perhaps the package could avoid having her future manipulated like his had been.
Perhaps that would be the appropriate response. Charon’s life for his life. His life for the girl’s.
He kept his eyes on Charon, specifically the spot directly between the man’s eyes. He lifted his right hand and eased it toward his middle. He could feel the weight of the gun just a few inches higher. It would only be a matter of ….
There was that mind-flash again. He felt the girl’s hands tighten around his elbow, stopping him. He looked down.
“No.”
She did not understand. He pulled against her grip.
“No.”
“But—”
“But no!” She pulled his arm down, away from his gun, and into both of her hands. She stepped forward and when he didn’t follow she tugged at him. He obliged. With each step she took, Charon stepped back, until eventually the man had to work his way back around them, toward Chisholme’s building.
“Not smart, Dent,” Charon called out to him.
The girl tugged Dent along. “Come on,” she told him. He had to walk or be dragged along behind her.
Once Dent started forward, away from Charon and Chisholme’s building, she looked up and asked him, “Where’d you park?”
He told her. She slapped his arm, wanted to know why in the world he would park so far away. When he explained it to her, she slapped him again.
He did not know why.
XX
Six days later and seventy-four miles southeast, Dent had his hands full.
Two bags from Albertson’s and one from Home Depot. Food and beverages and duct tape and a pruning knife. Essentials.
He was walking back to their motel rooms located just one street over and two up. He was hardly limping, and his right arm held the heavier bags. He passed by a Starbucks as he turned left out of the shopping complex and a few of the patrons there followed him with their eyes and their heads. One man with a fedora atop a mass of unruly thick black hair pointed at him with a lit cigarette. Dent ignored them and walked on.
Whatever it was, it was probably none of his business.
When he reached the motel complex he headed straight for their rooms at the rear of the palm tree lined walkways. He had to pass the registration office, with its flat screen mounted high on the wall for guests to watch while they checked in. The middle-aged woman who ran the desk watched him briefly through the windows. She reached down to pick up her pink-rimmed glasses and by the time she had them on her nose, Dent had already reached the stairs leading to the second floor.
Whatever that was, it may have been his business.
When he closed the door to his room behind him, the girl was seated on his bed, watching his TV. He looked left. The door adjoining their rooms was wide open. Her bed was empty, her TV was off.
He walked in front of the TV, causing the girl to lean this way and that in order to not miss whatever the brunette newscaster was saying. He put the bags on the glass-topped table as the girl commented, “You’re on TV.”
Dent turned and watched and listened as the woman finished wrapping up her report. “Once again, he is wanted in connection to last week’s massacre at HelpTouch in Downtown Los Angeles as well as the blackout at the airport. As of yet, no ties to any terrorist organization have been found, but police say the man is considered armed and dangerous as well as mentally unstable. Reports are coming in that he has been in and out of mental institutions his entire life.” A picture flashed on the screen. It was him, seated by himself, holding a rifle. He knew the picture. It was taken when he was still with DUUP. He was sitting outside an airplane hangar, in his civies, and had just finished cleaning his government-issued weapon. The picture was cropped perfectly so that no military insignias were seen and that the group of four more DUUPers to his right, also handling their weapons, was not shown.
The newswoman continued to talk while the picture shrank and hovered over her left shoulder. “If anyone has seen this dangerous man, they are urged to contact the police. Once again, he is considered armed and dangerous and may be a cold-blooded killer who feels absolutely nothing for his victims. Mixed in with this are reports of a young girl abducted—”
The woman’s mouth continued to move but MUTE appeared across her chest. The girl tossed the remote back onto the bed and asked, “Is it true what they’re saying?”
“I am armed, and yes, I am dangerous.”
“That’s not what I meant, and I think even you know that.” She met his eyes and asked, “Are you really incapable of feeling?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes began to gloss over. “And me, Dent?” she asked.
Dent held her gaze for a moment and then said, “I need to make a call.”
He grabbed one of the three phones he’d taken from Fischer’s when the pair had stopped by after leaving Chisholme’s building. They had taken a few other things as well as Dent did not know when they would have another chance. He walked through the portal to the girl’s empty room, tapped a few icons, and then dialed a number he hadn’t used in years, but one that was forever engraved in his brain.
Only two rings and the man picked up.
“Dent,” his old commanding officer said in a voice that held no tone of discernible inflection. It was odd the man knew it was him since Dent was calling from a secured number.
“John Elmerson.”
“I knew you’d be calling. You’re predictable to a fault.”
“The news program ….”
“I had it running since yesterday. It was the only way to get your attention.”
Elmerson was correct, but Dent didn’t agree vocally.
“You have the package still, I presume?” his old commanding officer asked.
“Yes. The original contract was breached and—”
“Yes, yes. Whatever happened, happened. Let me explain it all in terms that you can follow, Dent. The facts are
these; you have stolen property — in the most extreme of definitions. You will be hunted by all parties involved as long as you have possession of the package — for the rest of your life, however long that may be. But, if you hand over the package willingly and without any further complications I can make all that go away.”
“The news reports,” Dent countered. “They say I’m responsible for it all.”
“Already taken care of as soon as you called me. Contingency plans always in play. I taught you that, soldier. Charon will be blamed. Reports of human trafficking will surface with him as the mastermind. Takeda Int’l will seek revenge on him, the media will condemn him, and I will launch formal charges against him. I have enough information, real and fabricated, to begin building a case against him. Everything that has occurred since the moment you accepted the contract will be laid at his feet. Unfortunately, he will be found dead, possibly by a self-inflicted GSW. He’ll never see the inside of a courtroom, the taxpayers will see their money saved. Chisholme will even forgive you your lapse in judgment.” He paused, then added, “I can arrange it all, Dent.”
Dent knew his former-XO could indeed arrange it. He had the full backing of the U.S. government. But everything Elmerson had just said had excluded one thing. “And the package?” asked Dent.
“Will be taken care of.” Flat tone, no discernible inflection.
Dent was unsure of how to respond.
“Dent?”
“Yes.”
“This is the part of the conversation where you talk.”
Dent looked to the wall dividing the two rooms, to the girl hidden behind less than a foot of wood, plaster, and metal. “The contract,” he finally said, “was changed when payment was not left in the designated spot.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, Dent. Good man. I have already secured the rest of your payment. I took the liberty and had it doubled. I hope you don’t mind that change in the contract.” When Dent did not respond Elmerson went on to say, “Contract is now set at twice the remaining partial payment of previous contract. Drop-off site will be of your choice. I will be the hand off. Same parameters as previous contract.”
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