by Jett Lang
His jaw tightened. He stared at her, searching for the lie.
“If you didn’t want a complicated life, you should have stayed back in New Paradise with your old money father.”
“Don’t bring my father into this,” he snapped. Just as she knew he would. “The man saved your skin.”
“So he did. Sure would be a waste of his time if we died in this shithole.”
For a while, she wasn’t sure he was going to say anything. She half expected him to finish what he started on the stairs. The sound of her heartbeat drummed in her ears. Eventually he stood, an explosive charge in one hand and his flashlight in the other.
“I’ll plant at the front, you start here. We’ll meet in the middle.”
“Alright.”
Then he was gone, lost in the noise and the destruction of his warpath. She took a deep breath in, let it out slowly. Bent down to fetch up her Winnow.
She typed in the countdown for the first charge.
※
They were eight flights up when the explosives shook the stairs. Their lights bobbed in the pitch black, and they ran with their hands fast to the railing. No words passed between them. There was only the soft sound of breathing, and the echo of footsteps.
She tried not to think about what was ahead, beyond the stairwell and beyond Wayne. Jack glanced over his shoulder at her. Above all things, she didn’t want to think about him. Her head swam with half-cocked notions that he would see sense and realize their future was with Syntheia. Their names were certainly blacklisted everywhere else. She didn’t know anyone who could change that. Maybe Syntheia could, but she was in no position to ask a favor of that scale. She forced her focus on her target, let herself slip into the routine of patricide.
She came to the top of another landing, swung right. Her cone of light slid over another heavy, red steel door. Once they were through it, they would link up with the main team. She placed her ear against cool metal, but heard nothing. Surely a base of this size would have people running around, trying to determine the source of the power outage? Moreover, that not a soul had been seen on the stairwell was disconcerting. Had the other team cleared the path for them, made sure they would not be intercepted?
She pulled the door open and stepped into the semi-dark of the hallway. Warning lights were rotating mutely above them, a red hue cast on the sealed doorways at either side. She heard the door clank shut behind her. Jack, not bothering with any semblance of stealth. He could feel it, too. The sense of wrongness. Something difficult to put a finger on. She breathed in. No acrid smell of burning metal or the scent of stale gun smoke. Nothing at all.
Movement caught her eye. She saw various figures at the end of the hall, from slim to broad, helmeted, moving along to the left. The figures did not regard them, but she had the sense they knew they were there. Had possibly chosen that moment to cross; a show of skill, proof that they were the ones in charge. The two assassins put away their flashlights, and jogged over to join the primary team just as the last and lithest among them was disappearing.
“Your armor,” the lithe figure said.
“Trouble in the tunnels,” Queen said, watching herself speak in the figure’s reflective helm. Black visor, facial qualities of a strong jaw, high cheekbones. Below this, her armor was a mirror of Jack and Queen’s. “Is this it?”
“Other team is elsewhere.” The figure’s voice was distorted by the headgear, but she was sure it was female. Certainly a feminine body type. Unmistakable sway to the hips, self-assured and easy. No fear or doubt in that walk. “Trouble. What kind?”
“Genetic freak,” Jack said. “We took care of it.”
“With those?” The woman pointed to his sidearm.
“It’s all they gave us.”
“Questionable choice. I’ll tell disposal about the body once the radios are online.”
“Run into any trouble yourselves?”
Queen felt relief. He was being friendly. Professional. He was making an effort, and that was good. Though, it could have been the company of trained killers that eased her.
“It ran into us,” the lithe figure said, with a touch of satisfaction.
As they traveled the hall, it widened, and the red warning lights on the ceiling were higher. The sealed doors on either hand looked built for giants. No handles, only a keypad beside each. Embedded in the wall, above the keypad’s acrylic glass housing, was an eye and fingerprint scanner. Excessive security. That was three layers of wasted confirmation without the electricity on. Now, none of these offices could be unlocked in the traditional fashion. Queen heard thumping at the doors. The team continued down the hall.
Jack and Queen had two explosive charges left between them. She didn’t know what kind of ordinance the others were totting. The lithe figure had a sidearm strapped to her hip; gunmetal non-shine, short barrel, unsuppressed. A basic pistol. It was a well-cared-for throw-away in comparison to Queen’s Winnow.
The other members of the team were spread and spaced about ten feet apart, their identical pistols at the ready. They wore a similarly-designed armor to Queen and Jack, but reinforced. Complete neck guard, additional layering at vital areas on the chest, arms, and legs. The frontal assault team. It begged the question as to why the female of the group wasn’t wearing the same.
“Don’t suppose you’re one for business cards?” Jack asked the woman.
“Never had the need for those.”
“Aren’t you liquidation?”
“While back.”
“So you’re like us: traded out.”
“Call it as you see it.”
“What do you call it?” Jack said, his question edged with irritation.
“Upward mobility.” The woman signaled a man to her left. “Easier that way.”
“Is it?”
“Varies from day to day, but I’d recommend it.”
Jack made a dismissive noise under his breath.
They turned right at the hall’s end and came to a blast door. Red light streamed over its carbon steel body and yellow-black trim. Two men at the vanguard unfastened cases from their broad backs, bent, unlatched the cases, and began assembling the medley of parts from within. Their fingers worked with a well-accustomed dexterity, and in a moment they had a tripod ready. Both men had to pick it up, lug it over to the front of the blast door. As they set it down, two other members of the party bolted the feet of the tripod into the floor. The larger men returned to their cases. The parts that remained were strange and crystalline in one case, plain and metal in the other.
“A laser gun on this scale?” Queen half laughed.
The woman didn’t see the humor. “Yes.”
“Seems excessive. Why not a plasma cutter?”
The woman shrugged, arms folded. “As briefed as you. Note my unlabored hands.”
Queen shook her head. “So, have you used it before?”
“Sure have,” the figure said, scratching a forearm absently.
The firing mechanism and convex crystal portions were far more intricate than she expected; several tiny pins went into the assembly, hard for even her to track in the vacillating red light. When the laser gun was complete, she was unable to shake the feeling that she had seen it demonstrated elsewhere. A failed project from a rejected scientific mind she couldn’t put a face to. She was usually so good at remembering faces, too. A male, she recalled, but a common. Easy to forget.
The large men transported the finished weapon onto the tripod and held it steady for the other two to fix atop.
“Before?” Queen said.
“Few times.” The lithe figure nodded. “Prototype model from a New Paradise lab.”
The openness of the information brought her a modicum of comfort, but Jack’s words were pinging around in her head, contradicting any confirmation of her longevity in Syntheia’s organization.
“Did you ever use it on a blast door?” She gestured to the one in question.
“We have. Device is made for th
em,” the woman said. “Wouldn’t be here if we weren’t prepared.”
“Syntheia treats her people well, then?”
The woman regarded her straight on. “Must think she’s going to kill you, asking that question.”
“I didn’t–”
“My team has no orders for you to worry over. Can’t speak for the others.”
“How many others?” Jack said.
“Couldn’t say.”
A smaller man was typing into a miniature console wired into one of the ports along the gun’s side, the weapon corresponding to his directional commands. Slowly up, slowly down. Left, right. Another technician did a walk-around, inspecting, fine-tuning.
Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “Set-up time’s a problem?”
“Sensitive instruments. Assembly needs to be proper,” the woman said. “Else you risk damaging the whole thing.”
“Yeah? That ever happen?”
“Hammered the problems out early on by finding the right people. Boss is good at that.”
Arms patiently folded, the figure overlooked the two technicians as they went about their work with practiced quickness. They knew where every piece fit and what each line of code needed to say. For Queen, it was all gibberish.
“Are we the right people?” Jack said, no concern in his tone either way.
“The boss chose you. Good start. She cuts out the chaff initially, makes the payroll less redundant.”
The two brutes of the party were spraying a luminescent coating onto the blast door. A hiss of aerosol. A door upon a door. In any other situation that might have struck her as poetic, but there was a person behind those doors that she was being paid to kill, and that was where it ended. She felt anxious to get the job done, and wasn’t sure what would kill her first; the wait, or some unaccounted trap primed to trigger the second they burned through the bulwark. They needed to hurry and get the process underway.
She’d been fighting for her focus ever since they set the charges on the backup generators. Jack was one problem, but the woman, the supposed ex-Liquidationist, was by no means assuaging her rising uncertainty. She needed to stop her ceaseless thinking and hone in on her assignment. Wayne. But like the blast door in front of her, her thoughts were overheating. She detected it in Jack, too. He was the last person she’d expected to lash out so violently. She watched him observe the team at the laser gun. Every slight move he made created a surge of paranoia within her, a dread that he was going to ruin everything. He turned to look at her.
“Queen?”
“Yes?”
The large, armored men had moved behind the technician aiming the now-active laser. Its invisible beam scorched the metal door, the flames that leapt from it reflected in the mirrored helms of the frontal assault team. Queen shielded her eyes from the glare, but Jack turned back to look at it. Dark face tinted orange.
“You were starin’.”
“You know how it is.”
“You need to have your head on straight for this,” he said. “Are you gonna be okay?”
“I was going to ask you the same.”
He didn’t respond, only watched the steel bubble and burn. There was a compulsion to say more, but he didn’t need her truth or concern. He needed her silence. She turned back to the boiling metal.
※
Wayne was waiting for them in an impeccably tailored suit, one that would have cost more than Queen’s old apartment in rent for a year. Whatever illusion of age she had expected evaporated when she laid eyes upon the man. He sat behind a high mahogany desk, unsmiling, paperwork scattered about and drooping over the front. The papers fringed the carving of his corporate crest; sword and assault rifle crossed below a golden crown. Behind the leather headrest of his chair, birch framed photographs lined an identical mantle. Aside from his desk, his chair, and the shelf of photographs, the room had no furniture.
The team filtered in slowly, weapon’s ready. Wayne stacked some papers.
“May I ask who it is that sent you?”
“Wouldn’t be kind of me to say,” the woman said.
“Prudent. And these unmasked assailants here?” He gestured to the duo. “I recognize them. Is their presence here meant to have me speculating?”
“We’re not messengers.” The woman unsnapped the throwaway pistol from her hip holster.
“Ah, but you are.”
Queen didn’t know what the woman was waiting for. She would have gunned Wayne down as soon as she saw him sitting there, but the lithe figure prolonged the task with needless speech. There was the faintest hesitation in the figure’s stride as she made her way to the desk, her weapon dangling in her hand.
“Sir, I am sorry for this.”
Wayne smiled. It was almost affectionate. Sad. “Please. We are past formalities, Ellie.”
A distorted exhalation from Ellie’s black helmet. She aimed the barrel at the tycoon’s head.
“This is how you want it?” Voice quiet. Far away. Jack and Queen exchanged a look.
“My work is my life,” Wayne said. “You know that.” He reached over the desk and took Ellie’s free hand. Looked up into her reflective face. “And you know what you mean to me. Forever and ever.”
“Forever and ever, sir.”
The sharp report sent Wayne slumping back against his chair. Ellie returned the smoking gun to her holster. She sounded diminished when she spoke.
“Charges. Panel underneath the shelf is where the backups are installed.”
Queen followed Jack around the desk, located the birch panel and unscrewed it. The crawlspace was busy with omni-hued lights and colored wiring. They set the timers and nestled them at opposite ends of the crawlspace. Once they were out, they saw the technicians were pulling the drawers out of Wayne’s desk. The chair and corpse were pushed to one side.
“Have to make this look like raiders,” Ellie said.
Jack brushed dust off his knees and said, “Raiders aren’t this organized.”
“Story’s for the ignorant masses. Convenient scapegoat.”
“Won’t the conglomerates know better?” Jack said. “Wayne was a major player.”
“Conglomerates don’t dabble in mystery as long as their consumer base is satisfied and the money is constant. Things won’t change for the world, won’t change for us. Only thing that will change is the name of the person in charge.”
The technicians finished removing the mahogany drawers, a slew of manila files contained therein. Ellie riffled through the contents distractedly for a moment, then nodded and thrust her chin at the two assassins. Jack and Queen unzipped their empty duffels and let the assorted files cascade in, one drawer after the next, until their bags were bulging with the dead man’s business. What justification raiders could have for taking civilized possessions was for shareholders and news junkies to decide, not her.
“Time.” Ellie asked one of the technicians.
“One hour.”
“That should do.”
Their transportation radioed in.
※
Syntheia greeted them at the landing pad. Her dark dress flowed about her ankles, uplifted by their descending propwash. Queen saw that her skin, formerly pale, had acquired a balanced tan throughout, from head to momentarily-exposed calves. The fine, angular features of the heiress’ face seemed to have been sculpted to even finer points since last they met, and Queen had no doubt of who would be running Wayne’s company anymore. That was the face that would convince the conglomerates – a designer beauty for the prosperous continuance of city-state armaments.
“New boss seems ready,” Ellie said, seeing Queen’s admiration.
The two women and Jack were situated at the back of a cargo hovercraft, different from the one that had originally dropped them off in the forested outskirts of Wayne’s facility. The same black leather interior, though, the same cool air. Minibar lights faded from orange to red to green to blue, stocked with aged liquors impossible to resist in the wake of victory. Elli
e had divested herself of her helmet and joined them in a timid celebration. With her hazel eyes, short brown hair, and unremarkable face, she brought to Queen’s mind a demure secretary resigned to her position, and holding within her memory ten lifetimes of corporate secrets.
Perhaps if she was a different woman living in a different world, she could have embraced Ellie and soothed this plain-faced woman with the correct words. But Queen didn’t have it in her to give, and Ellie didn’t seem the type to want or need anything more than a strong drink.
The hovercraft door hissed and swung upward. Queen turned to Ellie.
“Do you think someone like her will need us?”
“We’ve proven ourselves capable and loyal,” Ellie said, with something that approached but never quite arrived at resentment.
Jack scoffed. “Yeah. And maybe she wants one final glimpse of us before she has us lined up against a wall.”
“Not how she works.”
“Ruthlessness and efficiency seem her calling cards,” Queen said.
“And she expects the same from her employees,” Ellie said.
The woman slid over to the passenger door, her helm clenched to her chest. She rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, straightened up with a long breath, and ducked out into the light of the hangar. Queen did likewise, her body moving despite the wariness in her bones telling her to just lay back and let the temperature-controlled cushioning take her to the slumber lands. Jack followed. Relief was not forthcoming. Mr. Chamber’s was the first name on Syntheia’s lips when they presented themselves before her in a well-aligned row.
“Ellie, your vacation will have to wait until this matter is settled. I thought I could keep him contented for a while yet, but the man is rapacious, and when he smells the blood of an enemy there really is nothing to do besides satiate him.”
“Does he know?”
“No, but he suspects we have gone ahead without his permission. I do not consider him a threat, but when he learns what we have done that will change. I assume you are prepared to prevent this from happening.”
“Of course, ma’am. My team–”
“Is right here,” Syntheia finished. “They succeeded in my eyes, now I want to know if you think them worthy additions.” No condescension in her tone. Rather, she sounded genuinely interested in Ellie’s opinion of them. The woman shifted uncomfortably.