by G T Almasi
“No way, you need a Med-Tech.” I press one hand on each of his thighs to slow his bleeding. He’s got a neuroinjector, too, but CoAgs can’t clog wounds this big.
Cyrus shuts his eyes. “I thought there’d be more foreplay.” He hisses between his teeth. The dirt on his face is streaked by saliva. Cyrus comms, “Jakob’s never done anything so carelessly.”
I look around. Smashed ceiling lights shower sparks on the melted carpeting. Wind blows past the instant veranda ripped in the seventh floor.
Careless maybe, but pretty fucking dramatic.
Dr. Herodotus and a horde of his Medical-Technical staff burst from the emergency stairway. Dr. H sends the Med-Techs to the scattered wounded like a hunter setting hounds after a group of foxes. A trio of medics descend on my boss to lynch tourniquets around his upper legs and stab him with fistfuls of hypodermic devices known as Drug Optimization System: Epidermal, or DOSE for short.
Before he succumbs to the pharmaceutical onslaught, Cyrus barks, “Scarlet, find Talon! That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, then I comm to my partner, Patrick. “Where are you, Darwin?”
He comms back, “Down in the lobby. What the hell happened?”
“Talon bombed Cyrus’s office.”
“Who’s Talon?”
“One of the agents we’ve been interviewing.”
“And what, you blew her up?”
“No! She planted a bomb on the floor—here.” I comm him the still video frame of Talon’s face I saved earlier. “This chick. We need to—”
“Shit! She just ran past me.”
“Where?”
“Garage.”
“She’s one of Fredericks’s people.”
“Goddamn! Okay, I’ll keep her in sight.”
I fire up my infrared vision Mod and examine the emergency stairwells. Crammed with people. So, once again I exit through Cyrus’s window, except now I monkey-clamber down the building’s exterior before lighting out after Patrick and Talon.
Patrick’s No-Jack signal leads me to 14th Street, toward the middle of town. He comms, “Competitor is on foot proceeding south toward—no wait—”
I’m within a block of my partner, closing fast. My neuroinjector has me fully cranked on Madrenaline. My limbs whirl like pinwheels.
Patrick continues, “Talon swagged a police car. I’ll get DCPD and—”
“Darwin,” I comm, “fuck that! I’m right behind you. Find us a ride.” Patrick turns around as I run up to him. He chooses the nearest vehicle, a blocky pickup truck, and pulls open the passenger-side door. I dive inside, slide across the bench seat, and rip out the ignition lock. My partner gets in next to me while my fingers do the hot-wire hustle. The engine grumbles to life.
“Where’s Talon?” I comm.
Brando—one of my nicknames for Patrick—peers ahead into the traffic. “She just swung left on Penn.”
I gun it down 14th Street. My foot keeps the gas on the floor while my hands wrangle our unruly vehicle through a red light, around a corner, and off a parked car. Behind us, an acrid cloud of tire smoke obscures a hurricane of insurance claims.
I comm, “Where’d this skanko come from, anyway?”
Brando comms back, “CORE says she’s on loan from the Secret Service.”
“Yeah, I know that, but—”
“Weird,” comms Patrick, still reading from CORE on his Eyes-Up display. “Her file lists her as a graduate of the AGOGE in Atlanta, but that location is missing her admission record.”
Big surprise.
Ahead, the Capitol Building rises beyond the traffic tornado Talon generates as she tries to escape. She’s activated the cop car’s siren, but she’s going so fast none of the other drivers can move out of her way. We flash past the National Archives Building, along with gaggles of dented cars and stunned onlookers.
Patrick leans forward to see over the surging sea of automotive chaos. “Right! She turned right onto Constitution, heading back along the Mall.”
I swerve onto 6th Street to cut her off. Talon flies by us, only inches from the clifflike grille of our truck. My hard right turn becomes a wailing two-wheeled stunt move. The National Gallery swings through my field of view as I wrangle us onto Constitution Avenue. The Ford leans over so far, my partner slides off his seat and under my legs.
“Darwin, get outta there, I can’t reach the brakes!”
We thud onto all four wheels and Patrick crawls back to his seat. “Where’d she go?”
I swerve around a school bus full of gawking kids. “There!” I point at a cloud of white smoke.
“That’s the Smithsonian. Jesus—” Patrick leans back and forth to keep track of our fleeing competitor. “She’s on the sidewalk!”
The Grecian façades of federal buildings blur past as I speed into the oncoming lane to keep up with Talon. She soars off the sidewalk into 12th Street at full throttle. Her car bottoms out with a sparkling bang before she bounces onto the far sidewalk and swings left onto the lawn around the American history museum. We follow her across the grass. Our vehicles’ wheels carve matching ruts into the bright-green lawn. One after the other, we slide off the grass and onto the sidewalk along Madison Avenue, roaring west.
“Cops and feds are converging to seal the area,” Brando comms. “Keep her in sight.”
Talon propels her vehicle off the high curb and roars across 14th Street. Her car’s trunk lid lolls open. Her jarring ascent to the next block slams the trunk shut again. Our beefy pickup prances across this urban savanna like a four-hundred-horsepower antelope. We’re catching up to her.
We thunder past the Washington Monument as Patrick comms data to the D.C. fuzz. “Competitor is proceeding across the Mall.” He pauses. I’m only dialed into his side of the call. “No, sir, I mean she’s on the Mall. Yes, sir, on the grass.”
Talon’s car spews a dark carpet of black smoke across 17th Street. It’s incredible she hasn’t hit anyone yet. We rumble across 17th and catch up to our competitor as her sedan struggles onto the grass again. Crowds of tourists dive out of the way. The Pacific War Memorial zings past us.
We’re right on her ass. Our two-vehicle conga line streaks alongside the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I tailgate so closely we bump into the beaten-up cop car and start pushing it.
I roll down my window. “Darwin, take the wheel!”
“Wait, no! We only have to—”
I climb out my side window, lean into the wind, and advance across the truck’s wide, flat hood. Red and blue lights flicker across my body. We’re still jammed against Talon’s car. I jump from the pickup’s hood to the sedan’s trunk, then its rear window. I grasp the flashing light bar and pull myself up onto—
Bang! Bang-bang!
Large-caliber slugs rip holes in the car’s roof, only inches from my face. I lean away and reach for Li’l Bertha. I’ll pop a few shots at—
“Scarlet, she’s—Jesus—she’s out of her seat!”
Talon’s head and shoulders rise from the driver’s side of the car. The girl aims her pistol at me. I swing my lower body across the roof and kick the gun out of her hand. She grabs my foot and begins twisting it, like she’s trying to unscrew my leg. I can’t shake her off, but she’s wide open for a jaw-shattering blast. I cock my other leg and—
—CORE: HIGHLORD—
28 AUG 1981
EXOPS REQUISITION FOR SECRET SERVICE AGENT TALON
From: Office of the Director of Central Intelligence
To: Office of the Director of Secret Service
Re: Agent Talon
Hello Director Smith,
We respectfully require the services of your Level 9 Interceptor, Talon, for Operation HIGHLORD. Please advise her to report to ExOps HQ, German Section, tomorrow morning. She will
be briefed by her new Front Desk, Cyrus El-Sarim.
Thank you,
—William H. Webster, DCI
02
TWO HOURS LATER, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 4:45 P.M. EDT
EXOPS HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C., USA
I wake to the usual shit: wires, tubes, beeps, and boops. My right arm is so sore I can barely raise it off the bed. I leave that arm where it is and wave my left to stand out from this jungle of whirring medical gear. This produces no results, so I yell, “Hello-o-o, I’m awake!”
A medium-brown face appears between me and the ceiling. It’s Nurse Stace. She smiles at me warmly.
“I do declare, Scarlet, don’t you look pretty with all those new scars.” Stace indicates the space around us. “We set your usual room aside.”
Originally from Bayonne, New Jersey, Stace earned her nursing degree in South Carolina, where she learned more southern idioms than Carter’s got peanuts, as she would say.
I sit up a little. “When did you know I was coming?”
“After the explosion, we knew somebody’d be coming.” Her big hands arrange the nest of plastic snakes to follow some ritualistic pattern bequeathed from peyote-popping shaman nurses. “And when I heard about the chase on the Mall, I just thought, What’s my honeybee up to now?”
Dr. Herodotus hired Nurse Stace away from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital earlier this year. During her introduction he said, “She knows more about medicine than most doctors and she administers to her patients with incredible efficiency and genuine affection.”
She’s also a hoot. During last year’s Kentucky Derby, she wore a hat the size of a parade float. She shows off her somewhat mannish figure by wearing scrubs a size too small and cracking ribald jokes in front of anyone and everyone—except me, that is. Stace always treats me like a gently bred southern belle.
I ask how her “bee” got here, and she fills me in. For the second time in my career, I was in a fistfight on a moving car with no driver. The first time I crashed into a wall near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This time Talon and I rattled up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, bashed into Big Abe’s left foot, flew off the car, and slammed into the ground so hard we both got knocked out. It’s a miracle neither of us died; I only suffered a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and some scrapes, cuts, and bruises.
Stace softly presses her warm palm to my forehead.
“Will I live?” I ask.
She winks. “As long as I’m around and the creek don’t rise.” Stace enters something on her data pod as Patrick walks in.
“Hey!” he says.
“Hey, yourself,” I say. “What’s going on? Where’s Talon? How’s Cyrus?”
Stace excuses herself as my partner sits next to me. He counts off his answers on his fingers. “One, craziness. Two, up the hall. Three, in the intensive care unit.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“For Talon?”
“Fuck Talon!” I bark. “What’s happening to Cyrus?”
“Well, um.” Patrick presses his palm to the back of his neck. “The Meddies gave him a fifty–fifty shot.”
“Of what?”
“Surviving.”
My voice slows. “Surviving?” I repeat.
“It’s pretty bad, Alix.” Brando looks down at his lap. “Maybe we should—”
“Maybe I should fuckin’ strangle you!” I snarl. “Tell me!”
Big sigh. “He’s lost his legs, Alix.”
I stare at my partner. This makes absolutely no sense. Cyrus is one of the toughest, grittiest people I’ve ever met. I hear myself sputter, “But…but he has reinforcement Mods, like I do.”
“I guess he was so close to the bomb…”
“No,” I whisper. “His legs were still there, I saw them.”
“Hanging by threads, Alixandra.” Patrick almost never uses my full name. He grasps a handful of blanket along the edge of my bed.
“Patrick, that’s gotta be wrong. I was standing next to him when—”
“I know,” my partner interrupts. “The energy that propelled you out the window dispersed the moment it got outside.”
“Yeah, so?”
Brando runs his fingertips along one of the plastic tubes arranged on my bed. “That same force pinned Cyrus between his desk and his row of filing cabinets. Then it rebounded off the heavy exterior wall and threw him out of the room, along with most of the material in his office.” My partner absentmindedly checks my intravenous feed. “An attack with a small device relies on a confined space. The explosive energy swirls around and makes mincemeat out of anything trapped in—”
“Okay, okay! I get it.” I whack his arm. “And leave that crap alone.”
“Sorry.” He stops fussing with Stace’s carefully placed medical miscellany.
I take his hand in mine. “Darwin,” I comm.
“Yeah?”
“What about Fredericks?”
“The warrant went out an hour ago.”
Finally!
I look around the room, planning in case I have to bust myself out of here. “We’ve gotta be in on that bust.” My eyes return to Brando. “But first take me to see Cyrus.”
Patrick calls Nurse Stace, who disconnects me from the medical snake’s nest while lecturing me to make sure I come back. She threatens to tan my hide if I don’t.
The intensive care unit is in one of the basements. On the elevator ride I ask my partner what that phrase means.
“What,” he comms. “Tan your hide?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t said that one to me before.”
“Literally, it means she’ll turn you into a leather jacket.”
“And figuratively?”
My partner shrugs. “She’ll hit you a lot.”
Swell.
The elevator dings and deposits us in the ICU. There are only six beds, so it’s easy to find Cyrus, but the first people I see are my parents.
Cleo and Dad sit next to a Kraken of medical gear-tech piled on and around Cyrus’s bed. Mom has been crying. She tries to give me a smile, but her lips refuse to curve the correct way.
Dad stares at the floor, slowly shaking his head. My father has seen—in fact, inflicted—some pretty gruesome injuries in his day, but Cyrus is so fucked up even Mr. Tough-Guy is speechless.
I take the patient file from the foot of the gurney. The summary on the cover nearly floors me. Patrick slips his arm around my waist and holds me tight.
Patient is in hypovolemic shock due to massive hemorrhaging. He also endured compound fractures to his legs and pelvis, and catastrophic lacerations of the iliofemoral, pubofemoral, and ischiofemoral ligaments, which has resulted in avascular necrosis in the heads of both femurs. Additionally he has multiple abrasions on his spine and a severe concussion with possible brain damage.
Cyrus’s legs are really gone. It took a vat of transfused blood to keep him alive while they sawed off the shredded remains of his legs and lashed him together like a shipwrecked boat. All this just to stabilize him enough to begin a long series of complicated operations and procedures, every one of which will probably kill him.
I numbly return the file to its slot, put my arms around Brando’s shoulders, and shut my eyes. Cyrus has been like a second father to me. I’ve always—always—called him “Uncle Cy,” even though I know he’s not really a relative.
I remember splashing in the town pool with him when I was a girl. He’d squat down so I could stand on his shoulders, then he’d launch me in the air like a squealing missile. Later it was Cyrus who taught me how to drive a stick shift through an uphill stop sign.
Cyrus was also incredibly supportive of my first passion, gymnastics. I signed up for as many classes as Mom could afford, but I still wanted more practice. He helped me install a few pieces of
gymnastics apparatus in my backyard, and he’d spot me as I furiously spun and twirled around the uneven bars or bounced off the vault. More than a few times I’d completely lose control of an airborne sequence and land in his arms instead of smashing into the ground. He attended so many of my meets he was asked if he’d like to be a judge.
Last year, when my first partner was killed in Zurich, Cyrus propped me up in a way nobody else could, not even Cleo. He knew what it meant to carry that kind of responsibility.
After a few minutes of silence, Patrick turns me around and leads me back to the elevators.
I choke down my tears. “Bran—” My voice cracks. “Brando…”
“I know, Alix. We’ll get him.”
—CORE: SCORPIO—
2 SEP 1981
Washington Post
MYSTERIOUS TRAFFIC INCIDENT ON MALL
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Yesterday afternoon, two speeding drivers slashed a trail of confusion and panic across D.C.’s Capitol District before they crashed into the Lincoln Memorial. First responders found both vehicles demolished, but unoccupied.
“It’s as though they were driven by ghosts,” said one D.C. police officer.
Tourists at the site saw an ambulance from Rescue America arrive, “amazingly fast.” The paramedics loaded three people—two unconscious—into the back of their vehicle. The red-and-white truck then drove north and disappeared into the streets of Foggy Bottom.
Minutes later, two more ambulances arrived, these from District Response. The drivers had no idea they had been beaten to the scene by another company.
“That was our call,” one driver complained. “You can’t just whisk people away because you happen to be going by.”
The driver’s partner added, “We don’t even know where they went.”
03
LATER THAT NIGHT, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 11:03 P.M. EDT
2906 KEY BOULEVARD, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA
By the time I returned to my room, Dr. Herodotus had signed my discharge form. Cleo and Dad were still waiting with Cyrus, so Patrick drove me home to the house I share with my parents here in Arlington. My partner and I split a pizza and he sent me to bed.