Opposition Shift

by Sarah Stone

  Una snatched Hayden's arm and he rejoined her in flight as more bootleggers and Akiaten joined the fight.

  Una kept leading, and he followed, passing through the maze of old servers, stacks of crates, and makeshift walls of hanging fabric and string lights, towards a door at the back. Behind him, the yelling continued. The sound of gunfire rang out, blades slicing through the air and singing as they met each other in a shower of sparks.

  They soon reached the back door and Una's momentum was halted as she tried to turn the knob, only to discover that while the door was unlocked, something was barring it from the other side. The sickening thought that the assailant had barred their exit made Hayden's blood chill, and he looked behind him, past Glitch as the slinger reached them, towards the firefight they'd fled from. That was when Hayden saw the enemy for the first time.

  Not Laine.

  Hirohito.

  The shimmer suit shorted out as a cloud of projectiles from bootlegger and Akiaten alike cascaded across the ghost, revealing the operative in the low light of the basement workshop.

  Hirohito was covered head to toe in top of the line Asia Prime power armor. It was already showing the dents and damage from the withering amount of point-blank fire it had sustained but the suit was more than a match for the gamma loads.

  In the span of a panicked breath, the armored nightmare's opticals flared yellow in the shadows of the basement as it crouched low and lashed out with the thin black blade of a synthetic obsidian combat knife. The impossibly sharp edge sliced neatly through the thigh of an Akiaten as the resistance fighter's own steel blade swept through the empty air where Hirohito's head had been a moment before.

  The Asia Prime operative fired his machine-pistol, a wicked looking thing with a triangular drum clip that held no less than twenty rounds, as he rose from his crouch, strafing the basement with punishing fire. Unarmed bootleggers and techs scrambled for cover as bullets from Hirohito punched into the two bootleggers who continued to hurl rounds against the thick hide of the armored operative.

  Hayden started to turn away as the Akiaten who'd been cut stumbled backward and collapsed as his femoral artery pumped out his life in a red flood across the floor. Those yellow eyes locked onto Hayden and the operative began running towards the exit, ignoring the remaining combatants in the basement, as if they were of no consequence.

  Una screamed and kicked open the door, the force of her blow dislodging a barrier bar, the sort used by riot officers to control buildings during raids.

  If Hayden had been on his own there would have been no way he could have dislodged that bar, and he was again taken aback at the raw power of this small woman.

  As soon as he followed her through the shattered door Hayden had a moment of panic when he realized that it led into a bathroom and not a back alley. But Una kept moving confidently, her hands steady as she sprinted to the last stall and slammed it open.

  It was missing a toilet but had a door.

  Hayden’s laugh was too shaky to sound real, but it came out all the same. This time Una didn't bother trying the lock, just slammed her shoulder into the frame at a full run, screaming with fury as she knocked the entire door off its hinges. The door, and the barrier bar that had been affixed to it spilled out into the alleyway. Una landed on top of the door, on her back, but had her pistol pointed up as soon as she hit the ground.

  Hayden realized she was prepared for an ambush, and would rather face that than the Prime operative wiping out their comrades behind them. However, there was no ambush waiting for them in the alley, and Una nodded the all clear to Hayden before he turned to signal Glitch and make his exit.

  Glitch turned at the sound of his voice as the young bootlegger, with messy brown hair and a green T-shirt rounded the corner. An instant later the young man let out a short cry of pain, the point of a long black blade punched through his chest, ribs cracking outward as blood slicked his lips. Glitch leapt out after Una and Hayden and slid his pistol from its holster.

  "Go!" snapped Una as she sped down the alley, away from the shattered door of the formerly secret workspace.

  The afternoon sun was bright but muted as it filtered down between the taller buildings that surrounded them.

  The alley was too narrow for all three of them to run side by side, and as Hayden was the human of the bunch, he fell quickly to the back of the group, Una and Glitch leading the way. Hayden poured on as much speed as he could, the smell of singed flesh and the sound of the blade cutting the air still strong in his mind. It was a morbid sort of incentive that kept him from stopping as they cut from alley to alley. Una looked back at him every few seconds, and then forward, as though she wanted to run faster but couldn’t protect Hayden if she did so.

  He fell when they crossed the first street. Curious bystanders turned toward the direction the shots had sounded from, while others were too wrapped up in their own business to even care.

  It was a testament to how wild life in the city had become that people had acclimatized to a point where they paid the growing chaos no mind. There was little to do but carry on. Hayden's foot caught on the edge of a storm drain as he moved from street to sidewalk and he went down so hard on his knee that his vision blurred at the edges. He really wished he'd been able to score a balance pill, or at least get a cup of Glitch's tea in his belly before that Asia Prime bastard crashed the party.

  An arm was under his before he could even attempt to scramble up on his own and Glitch was shoving him forward, into the mouth of the alley where Una waited, her pistol at the ready.

  Glitch paused for a moment and slid his bandana onto his face before pulling the hood of his jacket over his head. Hayden could see something in the Akiaten's eyes, a kind of determination, or fatalism perhaps, and he suddenly understood what Glitch was about to do. Hayden started to protest, but Glitch firmly pressed his hand against the slinger's chest and pushed him into the alley with Una.

  Glitch checked the safety on his pistol and then turned to rush back across the street and into the labyrinth of alleyways they'd just fled.

  Shots rang out as Hayden and Una ran, the sound bouncing off of the tight walls of the alley and making it difficult to tell where they were coming from. More shots followed, and then no more, only the now familiar sounds of the city met their ears.

  Una wept openly as they sprinted, and Hayden's stomach had become a cold hard knot. Had it just been the two Akiaten perhaps they'd have been able to escape without one of them staying behind to occupy Hirohito, but they'd been burdened with Hayden. The slinger was no slouch, and kept himself plenty fit, but he was no Akiaten, and after the free-running tactics he'd seen them display he knew that he may have cost them a life.

  Hayden heard no steps behind him, and already haunted by the sight of the power armored nightmare killing his new comrades, he didn’t let himself turn back. Una's face was twisted in revulsion and fury. He started to let himself steal a glance as they turned, but Una grabbed his arm, sank her nails in deep and led the two of them to safety.

  Or, if not safety, the closest thing they could achieve.

  Distance.

  Chapter 8

  Hayden had no idea how long he and Una raced through the streets and alleyways of Manila, how long Hirohito chased them, or if the fine-tuned killer had even continued his pursuit after Glitch went back to face him. He only knew that they ran until his lungs stopped working and it was only Una tugging him forward each time he slowed that maintained his forward momentum.

  He kept waiting for Glitch’s footsteps to catch up, pounding after them as he pulled level with a smile, but he never did and Hayden knew his hopes were unfounded. If Laine had barely escaped with her life after engaging the Prime alpha, then what could Glitch do but die, even if he was Akiaten.

  He let his feet ease to a halt when Una slowed at long last, and doubled over, hands on his knees without bothering to look back. If Hirohito was behind them, it would make no difference; he was confident that his feet couldn
’t take another step.

  “I believe we may have evaded him,” Una said, her breath coming hard, though not nearly so hard as Hayden’s. The Akiaten advanced senses were on display again—Hayden hadn’t been able to properly see the slight disturbance in the air that indicated the man since he’d first entered the black site. Each time he’d chanced a look back afterward, he’d seen nothing but civilians moving frantically to one side of the street or another to avoid first Hayden and Una, and then the presence rushing after them. Or at least he kept thinking he saw something moving, just beyond the edges of his perception, though he could not be sure.

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” Hayden said.

  Her answering smile looked strained, but she gave it anyway, and sharp as it was, he liked her for that.

  “Come on,” she said, and he followed. They switched streets often, though he noted she was careful not to cross over a path they’d already taken. On this chase, the risk of bumping into Hirohito as he tried to catch up was too risky. They edged closer to the outskirts of the city, took a cab for 10 blocks and then climbed out near the fields that turned slowly to thicker jungle. That was where they headed. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough to be off the grid, meaning it would take high tech drones and a lot of skill to get to them from the datascape, and a tracker with modifications at least as good as Laine’s to find them outside of it.

  They were nowhere near the safe-house that Laine had discovered (or been led to) all those weeks ago when they had first arrived in Manila; this was nearer to the fish market than any other landmark he was familiar with, and even that was rather distant, this was close to the coast. The ground under his feet was looser and he could hear the crash of waves if he strained his ears to pierce the sounds of the city. The path they walked through the brush was narrow, but it widened once they had woven deeper, just before they left it altogether.

  Hayden followed Una closely. The trees above them got lost as the city finally gave way to the jungle, the light making its way to the ground in sparse dappled patterns that provided more in the way of beauty than they did in light. He worried about their footprints as they went, so visible behind him, but even he knew that the trail would be difficult to impossible to find after their ride in the cab. Their enemies would have to know the exact route it had taken and which part of the sidewalk they had been dropped at. Even with enhancements to help, no one could see their prints if there were none to see.

  Una led to him to a small cabin situated near a river that flowed, she said, all the way down to the sea. He could still smell the city and could see the denser, darker air that hovered above it in the form of pollution, but he could no longer hear the noise that went along with it—sirens, loud conversation and louder laugher, brakes, and tires screeching as if competing for attention.

  As a city kid, it made him uneasy, though he did his best not to show it. Not once in his life had he been this far from the concrete and neon of urban life, and though he knew that it wouldn't take all that much time to get back into the city, he felt as if he'd entered another world.

  He took comfort in the slinger's rig still hanging steadfastly from his shoulder. It was a self-sufficient model, modified to his personal specifications. He could sling with it here if he had to, even if that meant bouncing from the most rudimentary hard systems on the edge of the city and making his way from there through CodeSource.

  It would mean he'd have to take longer to get in and out for any useful hack, and he doubted such a small space had the capability to manage a throne, but he knew he would have to make do when it came time to plug in again.

  The guard system here seemed to consist of two men smoking on the porch, passing a cigarette back and forth, absently grasping at the assault rifles beside them as they talked. They turned their heads and held their masks aside for each drag of smoke. Hayden marveled at the rarity of the cigarette more than the gun. Most people in New LA had switched to electronic ones when he was still so young he barely remembered it.

  The two gave Una and Hayden both a skeptical glance. He was beginning to notice that in the encounters between Una and the other resistance members, both human and Akiaten. At first, he’d thought the lingering glances and latent hostility were aimed at him; being new and a company man, as Glitch would say, he was bound to be met with suspicion at the least. Then, he’d thought the looks had been aimed at the fact that he and Una were together, that perhaps the fact that they’d slept together was stamped on his forehead. But it seemed to be neither of those things and was almost completely confined to her, and he started to wonder what reason they would possibly have to so openly dislike one of their own.

  “Glitch,” she began, but one of the guards cut her off.

  “We know, word got here faster than you did. Arvin was supposed to make a drop there and came across the gunfight a few blocks from the site. Some guy in power armor took out Glitch with a lightning round, fried him in his boots.”

  She nodded once, a quick dip of her head. “Were the bodies recovered?” Her face was cool, and her voice betrayed no emotion when she asked, to the point that it reminded him a bit of Laine’s constant stoicism.

  The second guard shook his head, mouth working below the bandana, as though his teeth were clenched, grinding. “Too risky to go in. Asia Prime was already all over it, tech staff and security forces. We thought we could at least get Glitch—not that there was much left—but someone had already scraped him off the sidewalk.” His hand clenched around his gun. His eyes found Hayden’s, but he still spoke to Una. “Hope your slinger can make good on his reputation.”

  Una’s face was softer and Hayden thought, now that he was looking closely, that there was grief in her eyes. “Glitch thought so.”

  They walked up the three short steps and through the door. The house was small and square, the wood walls poorly insulated to the point that, in several places, Hayden could see roots that had forced their way through, as if they were holding the house up. He could see a staircase that led up to a second story, but it was shadowed and looked disused. The floor he and Una stood on was filled with dusty footprints and a half-open door towards the back appeared to hold at least several beds and sleeping bags, clothing and armor piled on a chair. He’d have to ask about grabbing some for himself before they left—he’d felt worse than naked running from Hirohito without armor, knowing that any lightning round or bullet, if it should strike any part of him, would leave him as dead as the men and women they'd left behind.

  Unless, of course, Hirohito wanted to question him, and that was perhaps why the operative had chosen to chase them down instead of going after them with a sniper rifle. He was still puzzling over that when it came to Glitch. The slinger had known much about the resistance and would probably have been more use than any random fighter when it came to answering questions. By shooting him in the manner that he had, Hirohito had made any sort of interrogation impossible, the lightning round melting all of the Akiaten's augments in addition to cooking his flesh with high voltage. He tried to wrap his head around it as Una led him down the stairs.

  It smelled the way that all basements do, damp and cold and with a hint of something like mildew. His head drifted back to the black site, the concrete walls splattered with still-warm blood, running then but surely dried by now.

  He saw the knife pushing through the young bootlegger’s chest, he thought of him as a kid because the bootlegger had been just a kid, however much Hayden’s brain tried to deny it, no more than eighteen. He closed his eyes to steady himself, pushing the thoughts from his mind as best he could. He'd seen more of the down and dirty side of hostile operations on this trip to the islands than all his years in the Union put together, and it was getting to him. He opened his eyes, loosened his painfully tight grip on the rickety wooden railing, and followed Una down the last handful of steps.

  Despite the age of the house, it was miles better lit than the black site, having been built on a slope, so that there was
still a bit of the dying sunlight coming down through a ground level window, and instead of bootlegging supplies, it seemed to contain a variety of weapons. Guns were lined up on one of the back tables, a man meticulously checking the condition of each. The man looked up at their entrance, and though his face was grave, he made an effort to look less so at their arrival.

  He was around forty or so, perhaps a bit older, nearer to Captain Mitchell’s age, his long hair was held back from his face with a band tied at the nape of his neck. He was free of armor, dressed in a dark civilian shirt with a logo in the local language, and a jacket that looked old military, worn so thin in a few places that holes had grown and spread outward.

  “Una,” the man greeted, noticeably without the reservation and hostility that Hayden had begun to notice in the other resistance members, and then the man hesitated before adding, “And Hayden Cole.”

  “This is Alejandro,” Una explained to Hayden, “He leads the people, coordinates safe-houses and supply delivery. Runs things with our network of sympathizers.”

  As he stepped closer to give Hayden’s hand a brief shake, he noticed that the man’s eyes were normal, reflecting his image as it would have appeared in a mirror. Having spent so long around the Akiaten, he recognized this as an anomaly and raised a brow. “You’re not Akiaten?”

  “I am a Filipino, and that is enough,” the man replied, his voice firm but with an edge of friendliness to it that Hayden thought he might grow to like. “I was told about Glitch,” he said. “He was a good slinger, a good man.”

  “He saved my ass back there,” Hayden admitted. “I couldn’t keep up, and he…”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Alejandro said. “Glitch would have wanted the scales balanced. You’ve helped our people several times now.”