I couldn’t see any scanners at this security checkpoint. Just a closed door at the end wide enough for a single person to go through and the security (and press) in between me and it. There was a red light over the door. Red usually meant bad.
“We detect a weapon,” said a large, gray-skinned ramber, quite a bit more intimidating than the first guard I talked to.
I shrugged. “What weapon?”
“A knife.”
“You mean this?” I reached into my pocket and took out a four-inch folding knife. The security there all tensed like it was a bomb. “This isn’t a weapon.” I mean, I have stabbed people numerous times with something just like that, but you could say the same thing about a fork.
“That’s an illegal weapon,” the ramber said firmly. “It must be disposed of.”
“Whatever.” I tossed the knife aside. Everyone quickly backed away as it landed. The young woman guard then slowly approached it and carefully picked it up with two fingers. She quickly carried it to a panel on the wall, which opened up, and tossed the knife inside. When the panel closed, the light over the door turned from red to green.
“We good now?” I said impatiently. I looked at the press. “For the record, this is stupid. This is all really stupid.”
“You’ve made some violent threats,” the ramber said. “We have to be clear that you won’t be carrying them out here.”
“I threatened the Fathom,” I stated. “But they’re probably not here.” I turned to the press again. “But when I do find them, I will violently kill them. Extremely violently.” I looked back at the security guard. “But everyone here, I’m going to be nice to.”
The ramber stared silently at me for a few seconds. “You and your people may enter.”
“Great.” I headed for the door and motioned for those behind me to follow. “Thanks for keeping us all safe,” I said to the young woman guard and gave her my best charming smile. She blushed in response. Women like me. Most women.
We all entered through the security door. On the other side was a large open area, and yet I was instantly hit with the feeling of being enclosed. When I looked up, I saw sky, but there was just a slight distortion that let me know some sort of barrier was between me and the open air.
“You can’t see them all,” Eldan whispered to me, “but there are cameras everywhere. Every move we make from now on will be watched.”
This was a city where rules would be followed and any deviation from them would be reacted to, i.e., this was not a city for me. Emphasizing that point was that more members of the press now approached me. But other people besides reporters were headed my way, too. One was a human male in a suit. He was trying to look powerful while holding back his (understandable) fear of me.
“That’s Edward Cannon, representative from Ballillon,” Dip informed me. “Allied closely with the Fathom.”
And standing next to Cannon was a stunning blonde woman in a white dress who had the crooked smirk of someone who owned the world. Another Messenger.
“Rico, on behalf of the Codix Federation government, I welcome you to Vesa,” Cannon said, keeping his voice steady. He almost concealed the fear, though it bubbled more to the surface as I walked toward him. There was no such fear from the Messenger, her smile tempting me to do something about it.
I fixed my attention on the Messenger. “I don’t have any interest in talking to some puppet ... or in this politician’s case, a puppet controlled by another puppet.”
The press surrounded us, taking this all in. “I am not a puppet,” the Messenger said. “I speak with the full authority of the Fathom and am working as an advisor to Mr. Cannon and others. We are forging a path to peace and prosperity for the Codix Federation. Unfortunately, some people stand in the way of that and wish to plunge the galaxy into a war that will cost countless lives.”
“You, and all you cronies ...” I glanced at Cannon, making him flinch. “You all will get what’s coming to you.”
She laughed. “Yes, you vowed to kill us all.” She held her arms out. “Here I am. Are you going to murder me like the Messenger on Calipa?”
I was again aware of the press watching me. Watching me be taunted.
“The Fathom don’t control everything,” I answered. “And not everything is on your schedule. In due time.”
“You were going to end the Fathom in a week,” the Messenger said, not changing her amused expression. “That gives you, what? Three more days?”
“Give or take.”
She stepped into my personal space, putting her face close to mine. “You’re impotent here. You have no weapons. You are just threats and no actions. A snarling beast chained and wearing a muzzle. We’re going to put you down, Rico. And anyone who follows you will regret it.” She glanced at Eldan behind me.
I put my hand on the Messenger’s shoulder to push her back a bit. “Okay, sunshine, but why don’t —”
It was like a metal vise crushed my hand. The Messenger had grabbed my hand with her own, squeezing it with inhuman strength. I barely controlled a yell, but then the Fazium went into action. It felt like jagged shards of metal were ripping through my veins, and it took all my concentration not to collapse to the floor. Instead, I kneeled down, trying to compose myself as the Messenger released my hand. I could see Eldan start to make a move behind me, but Diane held him back.
“Something the matter, Rico?” the Messenger asked. I could see cameras all around pointed down at me.
I slowly rose back to standing and managed a smile through force of will. “As you may have seen, I just got shot a couple times. I’m very delicate right now, so be gentle.”
“We’ve spent enough time on you,” the Messenger said. “Everyone knows what your fate will be. And we have important business to attend to.”
“What we representatives need to focus on now,” Cannon said, “is the business of —”
I pointed a finger at him, and the words immediately got stuck in his throat. I looked back at the Messenger. “See you around.”
I turned to leave with Diane and Eldan, but the press swarmed around us, shouting questions at us as we walked away.
“How did you survive the shooting?” one reporter asked.
“Sheer will,” I answered.
“Are you very injured?” asked another.
“I’ve been worse.”
“Do you plan to participate in any of the upcoming votes?”
“On what?” I asked.
“There’s the proposed import tax,” the reporter answered.
I leaned over to the reporter’s microphone. “I don’t like taxes. If you try to take money from me — even if you have an army behind you — I will kill you.”
“No further questions!” Diane shouted, physically pushing one reporter away. “Rico just survived an assassination attempt by the Fathom and needs to rest.”
Diane then tried to put herself and Eldan between me and the press as she led me to an autonomous vehicle. We three got inside and closed the door, and it sped off past the reporters.
“You can’t threaten to kill people over taxes,” Diane told me.
I shrugged. “There’s precedent.”
“Let’s avoid talking policy,” Diane suggested. “That’s not what we’re here for. How are you doing?”
“Bouts of extreme pain followed by numbness. So, normal.”
Eldan looked concerned. “I think that Messenger was threatening Calipa. Do you think they’ll attack my planet?”
“Just threats,” I assured him. This seemed like another one of those times not to tell the whole truth. “They can’t do much against Calipa because it’s too economically important.”
Diane patted Eldan on the back. “It’s going to be fine. They’ll be too focused on us here to worry about Calipa for some time.”
I looked out the window at the enclosed city that rushed by us and cradled my still stinging hand. “It’s really just a question now of how they’ll come at us here. And when.”
CHAPTER 24
“Get me a gun.”
We were settling into a hotel suite Wade and Sylvia had arranged for us. I had listed them as my aides, and they’d entered Vesa ahead of us, not wanting to be seen on camera. According to Eldan, we were okay to talk in the hotel room as long as we kept it down; Vesa security had strict regulations about surveillance in private areas. The hallway would be monitored, though, and any loud noise inside the rooms would be picked up.
Wade worked on setting up a computer. “It’s not that simple. Even if we had the contacts right now to smuggle a gun past security, as soon as it was detected, security would be all over us, and it would be over. They’re looking for an excuse to kick you out.”
I fell into a comfy chair. My whole body ached. Diane sat next to me, watching me. “And now we’re just waiting for the Fathom to try to kill us. The Shade obviously know where we are now if they want to finish what they started.” I rubbed my hand. “But they may not even need them. That Messenger had enhanced strength. A lot of it. We need a plan for her.”
Sylvia was watching the city through a window. She turned toward me. “They might settle for just humiliating you over killing you.”
“If the point was PR further establishing me as an unstoppable killing machine,” I said, “we wouldn’t have come here. Let’s just get this mission done.”
“We’ve contacted Stevens, the representative from Sufrov,” Wade said. “She has agreed to meet with you tomorrow. She wants us — those officially connected to the Galactic Alliance — with you.”
“Any chance she’s going to double-cross us?” Diane asked.
“The Sufrov government has been opposed to the Fathom so far,” Wade answered, “but let’s keep our guard up. First thing we have to worry about is that enhanced Messenger. Have any of you dealt with enhanced musculature before in hand-to-hand?”
“You try to avoid that,” Sylvia stated.
I took a deep breath. “I’ve dealt with it.”
“And how did that go?” Wade asked.
I was startled for a moment. It was just Diane putting her hand on my shoulder. I guess it was supposed to be supportive or something. “Well, our first encounter, she ripped my hand off. Second encounter, she beat me to a pulp. Third time, though, I snapped her neck.”
Sylvia laughed. “Hopefully we get that many tries.”
“Why don’t we get a list of every non-contraband item we can get and make a plan?” Diane suggested.
“Well, there’s a fun puzzle,” Sylvia said. I agreed. How to kill people with what was available was a problem my mind constantly worked, but this one was going to take more creativity.
“You,” Wade said, referring to me, “we just need to keep alive now. In the other room, we have a doctor very loyal to the Galactic Alliance.”
I shrugged. “I don’t trust him.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Wade said. “You need to get checked out. You look like you could just collapse dead any moment.”
“If you want,” Diane said, “I can stay by your side and make sure you don’t get murdered.”
I shook my head. “You have your own murdering to plot. I’ll leave you and Sylvia to that.” I was in miserable shape. I was kind of afraid the doctor was just going to say I needed to be put down. I slowly got out of the chair and headed for the other room.
“You’ll be okay,” Wade said. His tone was so supportive and sincere that I was unable to keep myself from laughing at him.
“That is a social faux pas,” Dip warned me.
“Thanks, but please don’t worry about my feelings,” I told Wade and went into the next room.
It was a large bedroom. Eldan was at a desk talking to someone on a console. By the bed was a middle-aged human woman who stood next to a large case. “Are you the doctor?”
“Yes. Doctor Higgins.” She stared at me. “You’re the Angel of Death.”
I nodded. My body was so tired. If she was going to murder me, it was worth it if it meant I got to lie down.
“Sorry, I’ll finish up my call here,” Eldan said. On the screen were his wife and two kids. I had wandered into view, and they all exclaimed upon seeing me.
“We thought you were dead,” Rayina said as she held her kids close. “We are so happy to see you alive.”
This was the sort of encounter when I preferred to have Diane at my side. “Thanks,” I settled on.
“Are you okay?” Rayina asked. “We saw the footage of you confronting the Fathom’s Messenger, and you seemed badly injured.”
I just shrugged.
“He’ll manage,” Eldan said. “He’s quite tough.”
“Please keep safe,” Rayina said desperately. She looked at me. “Please bring my husband home.”
“This is another one of those places where a small lie would be appropriate,” Dip told me.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, though that seemed like a lie anyone with even basic knowledge of the situation would easily see through. Still, Eldan’s wife seemed to buy it and smiled before they said their goodbyes and ended the call.
Eldan’s survival prospects didn’t seem that great. Things were pretty desperate for all of us, but he had the least combat experience. We probably should have sent him home, but his knowledge of Vesa’s security was potentially useful. This hero thing was an odd combination of arbitrarily risking my life to save others and then just as arbitrarily putting other lives at risk for some larger cause.
Eldan left the room, leaving just me with the doctor. “I saw the footage of you getting shot,” she said. “How is that patched up?”
I pulled my shirt off, showing the bandages. “I have Fazium active in me. It patched things.” I tore off the bandages. I had never looked at the wounds yet. There were two literal holes in my torso, the flesh crudely closed up around the holes but not enough to put it all together again. “That’s not good.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide. “How are your organs even functioning?”
I fell back on the bed. “You’re the doctor. You tell me.”
She ran a handheld body scanner over me. “You need internal reconstruction. A lot of it. I have the equipment to do some of it with me.”
“I said I’d kill the Fathom in the next three days,” I said. “So keep me going that long.”
The doctor put down her scanner, and her expression changed. I couldn’t quite place it. Anger? “My son was killed in the Fathom’s attack on Bastor,” she stated. “You tear them apart. You let them know the pain and the suffering we have all been feeling.”
“That’s the plan,” I answered.
She smiled. “I’ll do my best to keep you going. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
And that seemed to be the crux of being a “hero” versus being a hitman for criminals. Now my violent boasts gave people hope. And my determination to always see my job done didn’t make me look like an unstoppable monster but instead someone given to self-sacrifice. But I still was just a murderous psychopath, wasn’t I? Just with new reasons to kill.
“You have more people around you,” Dip said. “That’s new.”
Do you think it’s going to end well for any of them?
“That you even gave a thought to that is an improvement for you.”
But improvement into what? That was the question.
✽ ✽ ✽
Another nice, dreamless, medically induced sleep. When I awoke, the doctor was gone. I had no idea how long I’d been under, and there was too much planet-hopping lately to keep day and night straight. It was dark, though, in the room and outside the windows.
I could hear movement. I wasn’t alone in the bedroom. I scanned and saw it. Diane lay on a couch near the bed, covered in a blanket and asleep.
I looked down at my torso. There were new bandages. I was just going to assume the doctor had accomplished something. I did feel less achy, but that could have been drugs. If so, hopefully she left more of them.
I got out of bed,
and my body held together just fine under the movement. I crept over to the couch and looked down at Diane. She lay there, snuggled under the blanket with her head on a pillow. There was something about her — and just her — that fascinated me. And here she was, having slept at my feet to watch over me, as if I was something worth caring about and protecting.
I reached down to touch her but stopped. I didn’t know what I was doing. But you could say that for every choice I’d been making for a while. There was something I wanted, but I still couldn’t put words to it.
Her eyes opened. I smiled. She screamed and kicked me hard in the gut.
I fell back against the bed. The Fazium activated and I suppressed a scream myself.
“Rico! I’m so sorry!” Diane exclaimed as she sprang off the couch. It was a fair misunderstanding, as I don’t think I had ever crept up on someone sleeping when I wasn’t planning to kill them. Diane helped me sit up as I fought the pain of the Fazium coursing through me. She sat next to me and let me lean against her for support. She stroked my cheek as I lay my head on her shoulder, fighting the pain, and that soon faded as the activity of the Fazium died down. Then it was just me being held by her, and I realized I had on nothing but underwear, while she was wearing an undershirt and little else.
“What’s happening?” Wade was at the door, staring at the two of us.
“Nothing. It’s fine,” Diane told him.
“Get out,” I said, not lifting my head.
There was an odd expression on Wade’s face (disappointment?), and he left the room and closed the door. Then it was just the two of us again. I thought I was better, but I just stayed there, her arms wrapped around me. I didn’t understand what I wanted from her. It wasn’t sexual interest right now, as I was in no condition for that — though it seemed like we were crossing a line here, based on the parameters Diane had earlier put on our relationship. Still, whatever this was, for the moment I felt something like ... contentment, maybe. Just the two of us, together, silent except for our breathing.
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