Project Phoenix

by D. C. Fergerson

  Cora didn’t wait for the door to fully shut before she darted to her feet.

  “Cora,” Richard said, holding up his hands. “It’s not what Drake made it sound like.”

  “Then tell me what it’s like. Did you get me into something I can’t get out of?”

  Richard walked around the conference table, closing the distance between them. More than a foot taller than Cora, he looked down at her, and his face softened. His hands held both of her shoulders.

  “I have never lied to you,” he said. “You’ve been like a daughter to me. I can’t tell you how much sway and favors I needed to use to put you on the deactivated list. Your last fitness report made you sound like a dynamo, then I asked you to be retired. They agreed, but I’m not going to be around forever. Things change. Administrations change.”

  “What are you saying?” Cora asked.

  Richard’s face soured. “You’re retired and rich. Now it’s time you take some of that money and set up a rainy day fund. Put the UNS in your rear view, maybe go back to Wyoming.”

  Cora stepped back, shrugging his arms off her. “I haven’t been back to the tribal lands since I was ten!”

  “It’s your birthright,” Richard replied. “Those are your people’s lands.”

  “You’re telling me to go into hiding! What about my mother?” Cora yelled.

  Richard sighed. “That’s not what I’m saying. You don’t have to hide. I’m only telling you to have a fallback plan in case the UNS decides to go bull-headed into another damn war.”

  Richard took a cautious step closer, lifting Cora’s head with a gentle touch. “I only want what’s best for you. I want to keep you safe. You’re not an asset or a weapon. You’re one of the most important people in my life.”

  Cora shook her head. With a sigh, she leaned in, wrapping her arms around him. She pressed her cheek to his heart. “I know you do, Richard. It’s just...hearing that, and finding out you’re staying behind...I feel like you’re giving me something you shouldn’t have promised in the first place.”

  “I kept my word,” Richard said, patting her head. “And you know better than to worry about this old man. I’ve been in the game a long time. I’ll be fine. I just want to make sure you’re taken care of, that’s all.”

  Cora pulled back, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Between you and Johnny, I have more dads in my life now than I ever did growing up.”

  The pair exchanged an uncomfortable laugh. Richard stepped back and took a breath, giving Cora space. Leaning back, he seated himself on the edge of the table.

  “C’mon, the car’s waiting,” he said. “Let’s have dinner and celebrate.”

  “No,” Cora said, blowing out a heavy breath. “You go on ahead. I’ll ride my bike. I need to clear my head.”

  Richard hesitated. If there was something he wanted to say, he was holding back. He lingered a moment longer, and nodded, heading for the door.

  Cora walked through the halls to the far side of the floor. Never seeing the hideous red carpeting of these halls was an added bonus to retirement. Cora tuned out the sounds of Richard carrying his bags to the elevator. Soon after, the elevator chimed, and for the first time in a year, she was the only person on the entire floor. The quiet caused a nervous rumble in her belly. She turned a corner and walked into Room 3226 to collect the last of her things.

  She preferred to keep things simple. Giovanna had her seven trunks of designer clothes and a shoe collection loaded to a commercial plane ahead of their departure. Everything Cora owned for the past two years fit in a single suitcase and a duffle bag. The luggage sat on her bed, waiting for the last of her necessities. The items she kept with her weren’t suited for a commercial flight, anyway. Her sword, dagger, and pistol rested on the mahogany dresser beside the one thing she could not live without - her antique portable music player. She walked to the side of her bed and opened the drawer on the nightstand. A folded square of olive fabric lay inside, holding her gun oil and brushes for cleaning. She pulled out the square and tossed it in her duffle bag.

  As she zipped it up, her eyes were drawn to her sword. The blade still awed her even after all these years having it strapped to her back. Forged specifically for her by an elven master in Tokyo, the black-handled katana was not only a work of art, but a reminder of her time spent with Richard in Japan. He brought her there to experience nature in a foreign land, and to use the experience to open up her magical abilities further.

  The hotel phone rang, startling her from her reverie as if woken from a nightmare. She caught her breath and rolled her eyes. Someone probably forgot something and wanted her to haul it downstairs. She picked up the receiver.

  “Yes?” Cora said.

  “I had a dream about you,” a male voice said. He had no German accent. Instead, the voice had an ethereal quality that sent a chill down her spine.

  “Who is this?”

  “I had a dream about you,” the voice said again.

  Cora pulled the phone from her ear and shut it off. She shook her head, setting the receiver back on the cradle. She did not have time for weirdos. The phone rang again. This time, she checked the phone’s display for a name or number, but there was nothing there, not even a ‘Private Number’ message. Dodging a hotel’s security features was impressive, but a lot of work to go to for crank calls. She lifted up the receiver and dropped it back down.

  The phone rang again. Annoyed, Cora lifted the entire phone unit from the nightstand and checked the back of it. She hated technology. She could never remember which one was the power cord and which was the fiber optic cable, so she wrapped her palm around both and yanked. The phone went dead, the frayed ends of both cables resting in her hand.

  “They can bill me for the damages,” Cora said, tossing the cables to the floor beside her.

  She finished zipping up her duffle bag, then walked to the other side of the room. On the dresser, she scooped up her customized Apex Predator series 9mm and slid it into the holster at her hip. The phone rang again behind her. The color drained from Cora’s face. Her jaw fell open as she turned around. It rang again.

  Cora crept back beside the bed and stared down at the phone. It had to be in her head. There was no power to the phone. Staring at it wasn’t going to change anything. Cora lifted the phone to her ear.

  “I had a dream about you,” the man said. There was a break in the voice. The background noise sounded far away, like a chorus of white noise. “In my dream, I saw men coming for you. Six men in hoods, riding an elevator to the thirty-second floor with rifles drawn.”

  “Who is this?” Cora gasped. Not one to be rattled easily, the magic required to ring a dead phone thirty-two floors up in a hotel and speak through it was beyond her understanding. She had heard of powerful magic-users before, but mostly as urban legend.

  “Go, Cora, now!” the voice shouted. There was pain and urgency, but the ghostly sound of the voice frightened her most.

  Cora let the phone fall to the floor as she reeled back a step. The elevator door chimed. He wasn’t lying. She shook the cobwebs and shock from her head and looked around. She grabbed up the sheathed katana and slung the strap over her shoulder. She grabbed her dagger from the dresser and put it in the sheath on her hip opposite her pistol, then shoved her music player in her pocket.

  Her room was on the far corner of the floor from the elevator. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, just like Richard taught her.

  Assess, calculate, breathe, and act, always in that order.

  Even if they knew her exact position and checked no other rooms, it was two-hundred fifteen steps to her door on the fastest route. Lock the door, that buys the five more seconds it takes to blow off the lock. She dashed to the door and turned the bolt.

  Spinning around, she saw the window. It was the worst of all possible choices, but not off the table. Six men were too many, even with all her training. If they were Bauer Securities men, they could have tech to counter her magic.
She looked down to the silver bracelet on her wrist and sighed. Pressing her finger to the face of it, she swiped out a holographic screen to the back of her hand.

  “Call Richard,” she whispered.

  The screen blinked back, ‘Not Registered On Network’, over and over. They must have been jamming communication. She swiped the screen back to her wrist and stared out the window to the Berlin skyline.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  Her hands crossed and pressed to her chest, her index and pinky fingers pointed on both hands. She shut her eyes and remembered Japan. More specific, she recalled her worst experience in Japan, the prolonged observation of a spider the size of her outstretched hand. Richard tasked her to watch it and understand it for hours, and in so doing, duplicate its prowess through magic. Once she recalled the huntsman spider in all its nightmarish glory, she felt the magic pulse through her. It was like turning a dial on an ancient radio, finding a frequency that put her body and mind in rhythm with the magic in the world around her. White light appeared like bulbs at the tips of her fingers. She pulled her hands from her chest and lifted her left foot. Waving a hand over her shoe, the light in her finger faded, and she repeated the process on the other foot.

  Cora ran to the window and looked for an emergency latch. At thirty floors up, such things stop being safety features and become suicide buttons. She scanned all four corners, but found nothing. The unmistakable sound of soldiers’ heavy boots moving coupled with the metallic sound of a bobbing gun and closed in from down the hall. Time was up.

  Her hand pulled the Apex Predator from its holster. She stepped back with a sigh, lined up her shot with both hands, and fired three rounds in rapid succession. The triangle pattern she placed weakened the glass as she was taught, and shards cascaded down from the top of the window like a waterfall of diamonds.

  “We have contact!” a voice shouted just outside her door.

  A Band of Killers

  Cora didn’t think. If she did, she wouldn’t have been able to reach her hand past the window to the open air of Berlin, hundreds of feet above the city street. She would have thought it insane to lean forward and press her palm to the outer wall beneath the window pane, then do likewise with the other hand. She did that much without thinking, but couldn’t avoid the brief moment of self-doubt as her leg stepped over the window pane and she pressed her foot the smooth black marble wall below. With three limbs out the window, there was no assurances until she moved her last leg. Lifting it up, the vertical wall of the hotel held her body weight to it through the force of her magic.

  She had used Spider-Climb to scale a cherry blossom tree after watching the huntsman all day. Of course, she didn’t have to deal with wind resistance in trees, that was an altogether new experience. The air moved in deafening whistles. She struggled not look down and see tiny people moving on the street below, like ants marching. Vertigo was a risk at this height, so Cora focused on moving her body, eyes on the next step in front of her. Lifting her hand took effort, as if breaking a bond of glue. She leaned forward with careful precision. Her magic held fast, but gravity was still her enemy. Descending vertically would make the climb too dangerous, so she opted for a slower, diagonal descent. Only four steps in, she heard the gunshot that destroyed the lock to her hotel room.

  Whoever these men were, they had the necessary intelligence and the gall to attack a safe house of a Black Ops NSA team. Late to the party or not, they would move with military precision after that shot. Five seconds to breach, six more to the window. Cora counted, scurrying along the wall of the hotel. She didn’t need to get to the bottom, only out of their immediate field of view. If they wanted to kill her, she needed to be a hard target. She would have given anything to have that horrible, tight Apex Camouflage back on.

  Cora didn’t look back, making it hard to judge how far she’d gone. The climb was taking an extraordinary toll on the muscles in her arms as they fought against gravity and kept her moving downward. The street below sharpened into view. She could make out her Harley in the VIP parking space in front of the hotel.

  The marble beside her cracked. She felt pebbles strike her side. Her head darted left, and found a small, white, star-shaped crater where a bullet struck. The men above were not taking prisoners. She never heard the shot fired, which meant they were using silencers and she wouldn’t know when the next shot was coming. She quickened her pace and changed direction, crawling horizontally along the wall. Another explosion of rock popped at her heels. Reaching the corner of the building, she thought of her next move. It was stupid and would only work in movies, but she wasn’t going to let the men above take pot shots at her until they got better aim.

  One hand reached around the corner, pressing her palm to the smooth black marble. Counter to everything her body told her to do, she let her other arm hang, and kicked off with her feet. She swung around the corner, her body weight causing her slide down along the one hand she kept on the wall. Every bump and imperfection on the surface scratched and bit the skin of her hand. Cora had to let herself continue slipping until the rest of her body swung into position. Once her feet and other hand found purchase, her muscles tensed, absorbing the shock of the sudden stop. Another crack of rock burst around the corner above, exactly where she was a moment before.

  Cora’s feet pointed at the ground. She kept her head up, waiting for the killers to find her from another window. Meanwhile, she stepped down the building as if descending a ladder. Twenty seconds of climbing passed, and no one showed from the windows above. They must have been on their way to the bottom floor in the hopes to beat her there.

  She first heard the ooh and ahh of a gathering crowd below before she saw them. She looked down at a group of people, from tourists with cameras to curious passers-by who watched as she climbed down the building. Witnesses made things more difficult. They would be able to tell her pursuers where she went as she made her escape. With only ten feet left, she released and fell to the ground. The shock of hitting the cement zapped up her ankles. The crowd around her clapped, giddy at the rare sight of magic on display.

  Cora couldn’t enjoy the relief of feeling the earth beneath her feet. She spun and pushed through the crowd, running to her bike. She threw one leg over the bike while digging the key from her pocket. Drake mocked her for having antiquated tech like music players and vehicles that required keys, but if her pursuers had any EMP weapons with them, any bike or car with a computer in it was a rolling coffin. She turned the key and started the bike. The roar of the powerful engine coming to life made the nearby crowd cover their ears.

  The motorcycle clicked into gear and Cora sped off. When her attackers emerged from the hotel doors, they were only dots in her rearview. At the next street down, she took a left, then her next right. She wasn’t sure where she was going, focused instead on making herself hard to follow.

  Cora used her hand to feel around her pockets. Where most people opted to have near-field audio receivers installed behind their ear at a young age, Cora always detested technology. Living without implants of any kind made life more difficult, as she was always looking for an earpiece and she was never as fast in sports as the kids with cybernetic enhancements. Her pocket was empty, the damn thing was probably still sitting on her dresser. She kept a spare earbud in one of the bags on the rear of her bike. She reached back blindly, fumbling through the satchel until she felt the C-shaped plastic in her hand.

  Wrapping it around her ear, she pushed a button on the side and said, “Call Richard.”

  “You’ve reached Richard Stoltz. Please leave a message.”

  “Dammit!” Cora shouted, tapping the button on her earpiece. She reached to her wrist and swiped out the screen. “Send a message to Black Squad, ‘anyone, respond’, send.”

  Her screen confirmed the voice input, showing her text before it vanished. Cora kept her eyes on the road, increasing the gas. Constant glances to her rearview showed nothing. She may have acted fast enough that they didn’t
have a chance to tail her.

  “Directions to a Steakhaus in Marzhan,” she said.

  The light of her bracelet computer intensified, projecting a holographic map between her handlebars. She put her eyes back on the road and gave the bike full throttle. At her speed, she needed to lean into turns to clear them, but her Harley was no sports bike. The raw power would throw her across the street if she didn’t respect it. She waited until a stretch of straight road before tapping the button again on her earpiece.

  “New message to Black Squad,” Cora said. “’Our floor got hit, no ID on shooters. ETA eight minutes to you.’ Send.”

  For the full eight minutes, there was no response. Something had to be wrong. Drake always had his screens within arm’s reach. As she pulled into the parking lot of Steakhaus Günther, though, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. A dozen cars filled the lot. For a shady part of town, known for Sim addicts and pickpockets, the newer-model cars in the lot indicated a decent clientele. The black Lincoln her team arrived in was on the far end of the lot. Cora pushed out her bike’s kickstand with her toe and parked.

  With the rumble of the engine gone, silence swarmed in from all sides. Cora looked around. She found no one on the streets in any direction. No music, no background noise, no plates clanging inside. No conversation came from the restaurant or from anywhere around her. That familiar rumble in her belly came back, followed by goosebumps.

  Cora kept her head on a swivel as she approached the entrance, looking around every building and down the streets. She took the first step up the entrance stairs and froze. Up and to the left, the wide, stained glass window was missing some panels toward the corner of the building. Shattered blue glass lay on the concrete below. She took in a breath and pulled her Predator from the holster. She closed her eyes, focused on the ground at her feet. Magic pulsed through her. Her next two steps made no sound as she walked. The front door was heavy as she tested it with her hand. Clenching her teeth, she held her pistol at the ready and shoved the door in, stepping across the threshold in a smooth motion.