The Harmony Paradox

by Matthew S. Cox

  When his speedware shut down to spare his nerves, the arm blurred out of sight behind the corner. Wailing and German swearing echoed in the hall.

  「A team is on the way, Kurotai-sama,」 said Kenji. 「They should arrive within four minutes.

  Masaru’s virtual avatar rendered a shallow bow. 「Thank you, Omura-san. We have a defensible location and will hold it until they arrive. Advise the team that I am not alone. Sergeant Abe Noriko of the JSDF is with me.」

  「Yes, of course, Kurotai-sama. She will no doubt be calling for reinforcements as well?」 「I would imagine she already has, but our people will arrive here much faster. The JSDF will need to finish their game first.」

  Kenji almost smiled. 「It was wise of you to vid. Our team is in the air. May the spirits protect you.」

  Rapid whispering echoed in the hallway. His NetMini grasped snippets, enough to understand they prepared to coordinate two men spraying blind fire around the corner while another re-attempted the grenade toss. The delay came from everyone trying to avoid being the guy stuck throwing the grenade.

  Intermittent bullets went back and forth between Noriko and the ground floor. It sounded like she pinned them behind cover and had no clear shots. A bullet caromed off the wall near her helmet and zinged across the room, before going out the window.

  「You honor us, Omura-san.」 Masaru ended the call. I cannot sit here and wait for them to act.

  He stood out of his crouch and leaned into the hall, peering to the right to check for threats. The blue flame spitting from Noriko’s rifle reassured him, as did the distance from his doorway to where the hallway collapsed by her position. No one on the ground level would be able to shoot him unless they fired through the floor.

  “34 Auf drei,” whispered a man.

  Masaru engaged his speedware again, sending threads of heat flaring down the length of his limbs. He rushed to the left, sprinting to the stairwell, and whipped around the corner to find three men in arm’s reach. They huddled close to the wall, two with rifles about to spray the hallway, the other clutching a grenade.

  A fourth man, the one he’d shot in the wrist, lay on the floor down at the landing, forcing a stimpak into his arm.

  Tiny bits of square foil leapt into the air from the side of Masaru’s rifle as he fired, each marked by an electric spark burn. The chemical-blue muzzle flare washed over the standing shooter’s face, as the barrel hovered a hand’s width from his cheek. Two bullets cored his skull, the third passed harmlessly along the expanding wound channel created by the first. He lowered his aim point toward the kneeling man, who extended his rifle into the hall inches off the floor.

  The grenade man surged out of slow motion and glared at Masaru. He dropped the explosive without pulling the pin, and lunged, shoving Masaru’s rifle aside and up. More bullets punched into the chest of the already dead man.

  A black-bladed knife came out of nowhere, in the foreigner’s hand like magic. The man kept a one-handed grip on Masaru’s rifle while swinging for his throat with his left. Abandoning his weapon, Masaru leapt back. The knife passed a finger’s width from his neck. The blond man grinned, tossing Masaru’s rifle behind him, and advanced.

  The kneeling shooter still hadn’t reacted to the fight going on over his head, and started sending bullets down the corridor with a cadence like a methodical taiko drummer.

  Boom… boom… boom.

  “35 Zeit zu sterben, Mischling.” After tossing the knife to his free right hand, the foreigner advanced. Salt and pepper stubble warped around a murderous grin.

  Masaru ducked right and swung his arm up, tangling the incoming stab and brushing it aside. The man raised his left hand, but caught Masaru off guard with a head-butt. A brief flash of bright white blurred his vision at the impact of forehead on nose. The man punched him in the abdomen, and again in the side, with a noticeable crack. Augmented strength lifted Masaru off his feet and knocked him into the wall. He stumbled to the right, barely managing not to fall down the stairs. The foreigner moved to lunge again. Masaru drove a side kick into the man’s stomach, knocking him back while suffering a superficial slice to the calf. He advanced a step, drawing his Nano katana into a killing stroke that took the head of the kneeling shooter.

  In the ground floor area, foil squares hung in the air like silver snow, glittering in a scrap of sunlight leaking past the shattered concrete walls.

  “36 Verdammt. Scheisse. Neuronale Beschleuniger,” muttered the man on the landing. A stimpak fell from his fingers as he reached for the rifle draped over his lap, eyes wide with fear.

  The severed head careened toward the stairs, and bounced back into the air.

  As the black-haired man with the knife charged toward him, Masaru leapt off the upper landing. Speedware created the sense that he floated, gliding down the short stairway. The foreigner ran after, gaining easily on him since his boosted legs touched solid ground. He raised the knife in an icepick grip, aiming for the center of Masaru’s back. Accelerated perception slowed the sudden shriek of a vibro-blade activating to a demonic wail.

  Blood flew from the neck of the severed head as it bounced again, spraying onto the wall in an arc.

  Masaru twisted his body to the left in a midair logroll. He faked a kick to the man’s face as a distraction, and swept his katana across, cutting the man’s arm halfway between wrist and elbow. The ear-bleeding scream of the hypersonic blade cut out as the fingers clutching its handle slackened. Hand and vibro-knife tumbled over him. Masaru continued rolling, facing into his fall as he held his katana in both hands with the point aimed downward. He swung his legs forward, placing his shoes on either side of the man lying prone on the landing. The momentum of his leap drove the Nano blade to the hilt, piercing armor, flesh, and concrete with little resistance.

  The severed head struck a step three away from the landing, and bounced.

  Roaring in rage, the foreigner swiped Masaru’s rifle from the stairs with his one remaining hand. Leaving his katana impaled, Masaru grabbed the dead man’s rifle and let the strength out of his legs. He held down the trigger as he fell; a stream of bullets separated by inches glided away from the blue flames spewing from the front of his weapon. Incoming bullets glided over him.

  Blood burst out in trails behind the foreigner. The first shot hit the man below the right knee; Masaru walked the fire upward, over the thigh to the chest. Five slugs plunged into the man’s torso, pulling fabric into vortexes, flesh undulating like gelatin. Masaru’s shoulders struck the floor; the impact jarred his aim, lofting his remaining barrage over the foreigner’s head.

  The man’s enraged glower faded with the telltale vacancy of death in his eyes.

  Masaru let off the trigger; the severed head came to rest beside him on the landing.

  He shut down his speedware, allowing the fiery threads in his limbs to cool. The slice on his leg burned, and the pain of a broken rib exploded across his torso under his left arm. After a half-breath, he shifted onto his knees and helped himself to two stimpaks from the dead man’s belt. Hot pain in his calf faded to cool tingling. He gritted his teeth at a splintery crunching in his side for a few seconds, nanobots pulling his broken rib back into place before knitting it.

  “My suit.” He grumbled, examining his shredded pant leg.

  Noriko fired a few rapid bursts.

  Though the exchange on the stairs stretched over several minutes of consciousness thanks to his speedware, it had only been seconds. Masaru eyed the ceiling, attempting to exert his willpower over fate to hasten the arrival of his people.

  “Die Rakete, die Rakete!” shouted someone on the ground floor. “Sprengen Sie, das Miststück weg von hier!”

  ‹Detected: [German]› appeared floating in Masaru’s vision. A neutral robotic voice repeated the phrase in Japanese at the edge of Masaru’s consciousness: “Missile! Missile! Blast that bitch out of there.”

  Shit. Masaru grunted past the pain of his still-mending rib and ran up the stairs. He ducked into
the nearer door at the same instant Noriko let out a frightened scream. Once again, Masaru activated his speedware.

  Noriko lunged to her feet, abandoning her covered firing position into a twisting dive for the middle of the room. A flash of orange-white lit up the downstairs, flickering on the walls. An accompanying roar filled his ears, the slow motion rocket motor emitting the growl of an angry dragon roused from its slumber.

  He sprinted toward her.

  A plume of white smoke rose in a shallow arc, tipped by a spinning black missile with fins gradually unfolding in slowed time. Despite her leap, it raced toward her back, pitching downward to follow her. Masaru pushed his neuralware to the limit; each time his foot struck the floor, his skeleton burned within his body, every bone outlined in pain.

  The missile glided into the room, an expanding trail of white cotton lit orange at its tail―beautiful, but deadly. Masaru slashed at the nose, estimating as best he could where the impact-trigger ended and the warhead began. The Nano katana sliced the missile without affecting its trajectory, though the wedge of the blade sent the nose cone tumbling downward.

  Its tip flat, the missile rushed by, leaving Masaru stumbling into a scorching hot plume of exhaust. It struck Noriko between the shoulder blades, snagged on her armor, and rocket-boosted her helmet first into the wall between two windows. On impact, the missile flipped upward and drilled itself into the floor, where it broke apart. Noriko slid down the wall and landed in a heap, covered by a haze of plaster dust.

  Masaru yelped and swatted at his burning right sleeve. In seconds, smoldering holes in the silk expanded to reveal reddened skin. He jumped back from the missing section of building, and shut down his speedware to spare his nerves. Bullets popped and snapped off the concrete at the edge of the floor.

  “Ugh.” Noriko shoved herself upright and scrambled to reorient herself. “That hurt like a―” She stared at the missile’s nosecone lying a few feet away from her.

  “I suppose I am fond of you.” Masaru frowned at his burned arm. “I only stop missiles from striking people I like.”

  She gawked for a second and rushed back to her shooting position, firing off a few bursts before her knees touched the floor. Shouts of pain and anger rang out below. “You’ve done that before?” She clicked her trigger again. “Cut a missile out of the air?” After another single shot, she turned her head toward him; red mixed with saliva splattered on the inside of her visor; more blood dribbled from her nose.

  A man below roared in rage and shouted, “Töte dass schlampe!”

  “Once.” Masaru eased himself seated on a block of debris with his back to the wall. He kept his rifle trained on the second doorway in. His muscles tremored, aching from overexertion. “Last time, I didn’t cut it; I pulled my friend out of the way.”

  “You have an interesting life for a negotiator.” She went to aim again, but her head rocked backward with a loud clack, the force of the strike knocking her back on her ass. “Oof!”

  Masaru’s heart almost stopped, until he noticed a scuffmark on her helmet over her right temple rather than a hole. He swung his rifle about to the left, held it past the broken wall, and fired down at the first floor without looking. She dragged herself back to cover. Light flickered over her eyes from her helmet’s display.

  “Ugh. That hit me hard enough to make me dizzy, and my armor’s out of stim charges.” She glanced at her forearm before raising her rifle again. “I called in for reinforcements already, but I don’t know how long it’ll take them to get here.”

  Mamoru pulled a stimpak from his belt case and tossed it to her.

  Footsteps drew his attention to the right. Two men in the tattered garments of Etamura barged in, wild-eyed with bloodlust. Masaru put a burst into the lead man’s chest, and wound up killing both, as well as leaving neat holes in the wall behind them. The bodies slumped over each other in the doorway.

  “It seems our friends have also summoned aid.” He checked his ammo counter: ‹12›.

  After dosing the stimpak, Noriko shifted left and leaned up, firing down at a sharp angle. “Shit. The eta are here… the foreigners are hiding in the back. I’m keeping them down, but we’re going to be overrun soon.”

  “Friends are coming. We have only to last another minute.” Masaru moved behind a slab of rebar-frilled concrete that offered better cover from the second doorway.

  “Friends?” Noriko ducked as a barrage of incoming fire tore fist-sized chunks out of the wall above her helmet. She fired two quick shots before ducking back in to reload. “This is my last mag. You don’t have to give me a pep talk. This is what I signed up for… protecting Japan. If I die, I die. We disabled the jammer and called it in. I have made a difference.”

  Masaru fired at a moving shadow in the hall. A man let off a stream of curses, and the clamor of a group falling down stairs followed. “I work for Kurotai Electronics. They are on the way.”

  “What?” She yowled as a bullet tore up from the floor and hit her in the leg. Again, her armor emitted a hissing sound. “Nghh….” She roared a battle cry and fired about sixteen rapid shots at the same point. “Oh, we’re playing shoot through walls, are we? Like that?” She ducked back behind cover and muttered, “Die, bastard.”

  “You get him?”

  “Yeah. You must be one of their best negotiators if they’re actually sending help.”

  Masaru couldn’t help himself but smile as he pulled a spare magazine from his suit jacket pocket and reloaded. “I suppose they do not want to lose me.”

  lizaveta’s empty bedroom haunted Nina with silence. Moonlight traced gargantuan shadow monsters on the wall from her colony of stuffed animals, except for the white bear, which had gone with her to the grandparents’ house. The girl had to be asleep now. At 2:33 a.m., she’d better be.

  Noah’s mother had arrived at the manor house courtesy of a Division 1 hovercar perhaps twelve minutes after Michel’s death. Nina had expected a ‘too rich and busy to deal with my child’ attitude, so she’d come on hard. Ava surprised her by crying within seconds of seeing the frightened look on her son’s face. As it turned out, she loathed her husband despite the boy being close to him, so coped by always going out.

  Ava seemed almost happy at hearing the real Daniel Stirling was most likely dead. She had kept her relief at the news to a minimum for the boy’s benefit, and after assuring Nina she would be there for him, had accepted an offer of a ride from the same Division 1 officer to a nearby hotel. It would be a few days before the police finished with the manor house and they could return.

  She hoped Noah hadn’t noticed the eyeballs stuck to his bedroom wall. Maybe I should ask Agent Wren to check the place out. Michel’s going to be upset if he’s sticking around.

  Beep. Text appeared floating in front of her. ‹Inbound vid: [O6, CMDR] Hardin, Harold›

  She accepted with a thought. 「I just got home. What’s your excuse for being awake?」

  Hardin smiled. 「Still working. Been looking over the feeds from the Stirling event.」

  「Sorry, sir. Something didn’t quite feel right, but I didn’t think I had enough to risk barging in and potentially letting him send off a warning.」

  「No, no…」 Hardin shook his head in a way that said ‘don’t worry about it.’ 「Sometimes things happen that way. How’s the boy?」

  「Maybe he’s disassociating from watching a man die, but he didn’t seem too affected by it. He’s more worried about his father.」

  Nina stood and cocked her arm to punch something, but hesitated. 「It’s not like Michel’s going to give us any intel now.」

  Her butt-print in the Comforgel faded.

  「Right. We’re going to move on the remaining assets first thing in the morning, at LRI. We need to take them when they’re likely all to be in one place and before they become aware that De Merlier is out of the picture. Do you think he somehow had warning we were getting close?」

  Nina paced. 「The only plausible explanation… I thin
k he somehow read Noah. The boy was on edge. He said Michel had been ‘too nice’ to him. I think the man figured out the boy knew he was an impostor, and probably decided to cut his losses and run before the boy did something to expose him. Noah told me he feared ‘Dad’ was going to kill him.」

  「That’s probably right. Michel most likely planned to cut the Stirling persona and relocate to some other pharmaceutical company.」

  「And leave the Stirlings dead to burn his trail,」

  said Nina, deadpan. 「He probably would’ve waited at the house after killing the boy to finish off the wife, then disappeared.」

  「More or less.」 Hardin scowled. 「Try to get a little sleep. I know it’s a tall order, and it’s Saturday, but I need you here by seven. We’re confident the assets will be ‘working overtime,’ but focusing on their Harmony project. I don’t want to risk them trying to get in touch with Stirling. We’ll hit them before any suspicion can shift to action.」

  「Right. See you in a few hours, sir.」

  He nodded and dropped off the call.

  Nina peeled off her coat and went to her bedroom, where she stripped and crawled naked into bed. Squares of light from passing hovercars glided across the dark charcoal-grey tiles overhead. She watched them dance, no closer to sleep a half hour later than when she’d lay down.

  Oh, this has never happened before. A long night staring at the ceiling.

  Usually when she found herself staring at the ceiling, she dreaded morning. Tonight, she couldn’t wait. The NewsNet had been showing more and more cases of people randomly attacking police, bosses, supervisors, and even spouses. With sleep nowhere to be seen, she opened a link to the GlobeNet and checked for updates on the news.

  Sure enough, another sixteen reports had appeared. All involving middle-class or poor individuals snapping at random and getting violent with authority figures. No one with any possibility to obtain useful intelligence. More recent instances all involved police. One woman got into a screaming argument with her boss at work, and proceeded to storm outside and attack the first cop she found.