by Joshua James
But it was still a fall.
Not willing to just hit the street, Clarissa decided to try and guide herself and LeFay towards a nearby building in mid-air. She figured LeFay would hit the roof, and she’d land on top of LeFay. It was the same concept as landing in the street, but a few stories further up so she’d have less to fall.
Clarissa chose the second choice, but didn’t quite make it over to the rooftop. Instead, LeFay hit the corner of the building. The former spy hit a split second later, and the two of them spun off from that corner down towards the street.
LeFay’s partially-open wings caught just enough air to soften her fall, but it also shifted the falling speed between the two of them. With Clarissa already jarred loose by the impact, she slid off LeFay and free-fell the rest of the way.
It was a miracle that the initial impact didn’t knock Clarissa out. Instead she saw the world spin like a top all around her as her body flailed and spun wildly. The second thing she hit was a balcony of the building next to the one she’d initially hit. It was that secondary impact that knocked her out.
When she came to, she was in a daze. Her eyes opened to the sight of LeFay lying in the street a dozen feet away, staring back at her with lifeless eyes.
Get up. You’re hurt. You’re surrounded by the enemy. You need to get out of here. You need to survive.
Glass shards dug into her palms as Clarissa lifted herself to her knees. Both ankles were swollen. She must’ve sprained them in the fall.
When she coughed, her lungs ached. Blood peppered her saliva and mucus as she spat it out onto the asphalt under her. A couple ribs hadn’t made it out unscathed, and she’d been barely alive to begin with. Whatever internal injuries remained, smashing off the sides of buildings wasn’t helping. Her stomach wound burned as if she’d just been freshly stabbed.
She braced herself on one knee and tried to push up with the other leg, but immediately was assaulted by intense pain shooting up from it throughout her body. After briefly screaming out, she fell backwards. Upon further inspection, Clarissa saw that her left leg was badly hurt. Probably broken.
A small black ship flew overhead. It looked like it was just passing by, but then it stopped shortly after flying over her. She knew before it turned back that it had spotted her.
Something told her that her former captors weren’t happy to just let her go. Something had happened up there with that bastard Saito. Her mind was a fog. She’d been reliving memories. She kept clutching at her chest and thinking of her husband. She had to move in order to not be in those aliens’ clutches again.
Don’t try to fight through the pain. Remember your training. Remember the Black Palace. Embrace your pain.
A snippet of a memory, one she actually called forth on her own, instantly replayed in Clarissa’s mind. She was in one of the Black Palace’s many rooms. She remembered the sickly-colored floral wallpaper.
Young Clarissa, along with other Black Palace cadets, had to crawl across a twenty-foot path of broken glass and ring an iron bell at the end. As sharp glass dug into them, cut and sliced their elbows, forearms, bellies, thighs, and shins, their instructor ordered them to embrace the pain. They were told that it was better to become one with it instead of trying to ignore or fight through suffering, because through that suffering their vision would become clearer. More importance would come from every action, every movement and expenditure forcing the person in pain to make each step count.
Clarissa’s vision and purpose was clear. She needed to get LeFay and find her friends. In truth, she should look for her handlers, but she’d seen little to put faith in there. Not that her friends should trust her after her lies, but she had to hope they’d understand. Everything she’d ever done, right or wrong, was to stop the Oblivion cult and their plans.
But where had they gone? Where were they? That didn’t matter. Not yet. Right now she had to make moves.
Clarissa made it to her feet. She limped over to LeFay. Each step on her broken leg threatened to floor her, or make her pass out from the agony of it, but she embraced it. She allowed it to fuel her, to fill her with adrenaline.
She dragged LeFay up over her shoulder. It was stupid to think she could do this. She could barely carry herself. Her body was on fire. Her stomach felt like it would rip open from the effort. Her leg kept buckling under the combined weight, and LeFay was far heavier than her frame would suggest.
The black ship that turned back opened fire. Clarissa ignored the bullets hitting the asphalt all around her, and somehow managed to put one leg in front of the other. Or at least, drag one foot after the other. Hot asphalt shrapnel kissed every uncovered part of her body, and no doubt most of LeFay, as she went. But somehow, none of the bullets found her flesh.
Clarissa stumbled down a set of stairs on the far side of the street.
Her shelter was an underground magnetic rail station. At first, it seemed like the ideal place to hide and get cover from the black ship. But then she looked up and realized the roof of the station was made from glass.
Well, that’s unfortunate. Can’t stay here, Clarissa.
Eager to keep moving, desperate to find some semblance of safety, Clarissa looked around the magnetic rail station. She found an exit that looked like it led downwards. It was to the subway, the Gold Line. Fate was on her side. She’d been on it more than once on a trip into the city as a kid.
Clarissa knew that Ben and the rest of the Lost’s crew had taken her to LeFay’s. She knew that LeFay had stitched her up and saved her life. And she also knew that more likely than not, they hadn’t stayed at her savior’s little shop and safe house. So where had they gone?
She probably took them to one of the government bunkers under the Government District. It’s not far from her biohack shop. And the Gold Line goes straight there. Perfect. All you have to do is bear the—
The glass ceiling in the rail station broke, sending a rain of little shards down on Clarissa’s head. Through the new hole that just opened up came cultist commandos, the zealots she knew as heralds, zipping down a line hanging down from the black ship.
Considering that the rail station wasn’t very big and she was alone, not counting LeFay’s husk, Clarissa knew she had to run. Little green lasers, sights from the zealots’ guns, crisscrossed the abandoned station. The former spy did her best to duck and hide from them, careful not to break or be caught in their lights.
Two more zealots rapidly descended from the black ship. Something urged Clarissa to look their way. Even in face paint and from a distance, she recognized them instantly. It was the same two bastards who’d kidnapped her and taken her to that damn alien ship: Ducar and Vesta.
“That’s them, all right.”
Clarissa turned at the sound of her late husband’s voice. Blake stood next to her. He was just as she remembered the morning before he went to work at the power plant. It was exactly how she remembered him before he died.
He’d been in the dreams with Saito. Were the Shapeless still in her head? “Are you really here?”
Blake looked sadly at her. “Of course not. I’m dead.” He pointed at the two recent arrivals as they touched their boots on a platform. “But they’re really here.”
No reason to stick around to see what they want, even if I am going crazy.
Clarissa peeked over the bench she hid behind at the commandos, who were methodically checking every nook and cranny of the station. She looked towards the exits and saw they were blocked. No matter how much she didn’t particularly want to, she had to go through the tunnels. She hesitated, waiting for the right moment.
“Now!” urged Blake.
Clarissa didn’t know why she listened to her dead husband’s voice. Most likely she was starving, dehydrated, and probably had more than her fair share of injuries. She considered the very real threat of internal bleeding. If she had a chance to stop, she could address these issues with her training from the Black Palace, but right now, there was no time.
C
larissa picked up LeFay and made a run for the Gold Line tunnel. She almost made it undetected, but LeFay’s lifeless, heavy cyborg body slipped from her grip as she navigated around a bench.
“There!”
Clarissa clearly heard Vesta’s voice. She glanced back as the smaller of the two silhouettes swung her gun around and pointed it in her direction. The super-heated rounds easily punched through the bench, but the former secret agent wasn’t there anymore. She’d dragged LeFay back over her aching shoulders and made her way into the tunnel a second earlier.
In the tunnel, Clarissa heard the exchange between Vesta and Ducar echoing around her.
“She’s escaping again!” seethed Vesta.
“I’ll meet you at the first station down,” Ducar said calmly. “Three with you, four with me.”
Clarissa heard the movement as the teams split up.
“Time to go,” Blake said.
But Clarissa didn’t think so.
Vesta didn’t care for Ducar ordering her around, but she let it go. Sometimes he forgot they were equals. She and her three men carefully climbed down from the station platform and looked down the dark subway tunnel.
Her life as a city sentinel was a lifetime ago, but sometimes she wished she worked with real equipment. The men with her were useful idiots, but they weren’t equipped with night vision. None of them were. Instead, they used the torches on the bottoms of their rifles.
All Vesta could hear was the sounds of her team’s footsteps, and the rats who scurried away scared upon their approach. There was the faint sound of dripping water, and slight breezes brought with them that musty, moldy smell subways often had. It was as if the air was sick in the absence of the sun.
“Sir, I see something.”
Vesta glanced at the source of the words. The man’s rifle-mounted torch was still, focused, not searching like the others.
“Well?” Vesta whispered.
The man nodded. She followed his muzzle line and saw the image of a woman, hunched over, sitting on the divider between the south- and northbound lanes of the subway.
“Agent Moreno,” Vesta called out. “It’s over. The captain needs to see you. Please don’t resist.” She silently motioned for her three men to approach Clarissa from all sides, to surround her. If anything, the tunnel felt even darker now, their torches causing light to bounce unevenly off the walls.
Vesta had never dealt with a fully trained AIC intelligence agent, but she knew the propaganda as well as any daughter of the city. As sneaky as a mouse, as vicious as a bear, and as deadly as a venomous snake. This one had been injured and unconscious when they’d grabbed her the first time. She was relieved to see Moreno’s slumped form again. She didn’t doubt she was capable of ambushing and killing a group of lightly trained ex-cops and soldiers at full strength.
Vesta wanted badly to order the others to just fire on her and get it over with. Surely the Pale Man would understand.
But the orders were clear. Capture, not kill.
One of Vesta’s men reached the woman sitting on the divider in the subway tunnel. He slowly shoved the woman’s drooping head up while bathing her face in light from his torch.
Vesta squinted at the features as she cautiously approached. The face was wrong. This wasn’t the Moreno she’d seen before. Wounds on the woman’s face exposed wires and metallic weave just under the flesh.
“Is this her?” the man asked, looking back at Vesta in confusion, his torchlight wavering.
“Get back—”
Before Vesta could finish her sentence, a knife was plunged straight into the man’s neck.
Vesta swung her rifle up behind the man, but there was nothing there but a ghostly outline on the wall behind him that disappeared before she could get a bead on it with her weak torchlight.
Vesta cursed under her breath as she felt her blood pressure skyrocket. She willed herself to keep a tight grip on her rifle and calm her breathing.
“There aren’t many places to hide down here, Agent,” she said, gaze scanning the darkness as she urged the other two men forward. She wanted to flush Clarissa out again. This time, she’d be ready.
“Shadows are my friend,” said a low voice, followed by gagging.
Vesta spun in the direction of the noise.
Another of her men dropped his weapon as a blade erupted from his eye socket, then slipped away through the back of his bald head.
Vesta fired wildly, shooting the man in the process of firing all around him. When she stopped, her ears were ringing from all the reflected noise in the tunnel. Only the man with the sliced-open head lay on the ground, peppered with bullets.
Impossible. Nobody is this fast.
With only one man left now, Vesta’s nerves started to rattle. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. She whispered a prayer to the void. She’d long ago embraced the Shapeless, their saviors, and knew that whatever would happen, they would protect them. All they had to do was obey.
Bolstered, Vesta took a deep breath and continued scanning for the fanatic Agent Clarissa Moreno.
“I’m not surprised you hide in the shadows,” Vesta said. “You and your kind hate the light of truth.”
“That so,” a voice to Vesta’s left said.
She swung around, ready to fire, but the tunnel was empty. She heard the gurgling sound to her right too late. She knew what she’d find as she turned.
Her last man was dead.
It was just her now.
In the Black Palace, Clarissa had learned how to move without sound. It involved distributing her weight correctly throughout her foot to deaden the noise of footsteps. What seemed so simple had taken years to master. Her eyes, artificial, had no trouble seeing in the dark. All it took was changing a filter. And knives, well, there was plenty of training when it came to killing in the Palace.
“Careful now,” Blake said. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s fast.”
“She’s scared.”
“So are you.”
You’re not my husband. He died years ago.
“So what does that make me then, love?”
You’re in my mind.
“Lonely up here.”
Clarissa watched as Vesta aimlessly moved forward, trying her best to be quiet too. But she wasn’t. To Clarissa, she might as well be stomping around like an elephant.
“What did I say about being overconfident?” Blake whispered.
“I’m not—” She stopped. Blake wasn’t next to her. He was standing on the far side of the small platform. He pointed up, and Clarissa looked at the ceiling. It was arched. He was at one corner, a dozen feet away, but she could hear his whispering perfectly.
The curved shape perfectly carried the sound.
Clarissa watched Vesta as she approached the far side of the next arch. Clarissa silently moved into position opposite her, a dozen feet away.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered up into the curved ceiling.
Vesta froze. Her eyes were wide—not that it would help her in the darkness. “Stop these games. Come out and fight me.”
“She’s terrified,” Blake said. This time it was only in her mind. Maybe it always had been. It was hard to tell with him.
What are you saying? Of course he’s in your head.
“Of you,” Blake said. “Of them. What they’re making you into. Not a caged bird with clipped wings. No. You, my wife, are becoming something more. Embrace it. When this darkness envelops you as well, I’ll be there with our daughter to greet you. We’ll show you to the way to the light.” Blake’s voice was soothing and peaceful, but his words were just gibberish to Clarissa.
Vesta spun around, firing wildly with her weapon, blasting holes in the tunnel walls in frustration. The noise was deafening, which was a good thing, because Clarissa was forced to dive to the ground, and she couldn’t be quiet about it.
But Vesta was a bull now, all caution thrown to the wind. “Come out!” she screamed. “Fight me!” Her chest heave
d as the heavy weapon twitched in her hands.
“Okay,” answered Clarissa, rising to her feet behind Vesta and plunging her knife deep into her side, finding the spot just below her ribcage where she could do the most damage. With a quick flick, she twisted the knife, then slipped it back out.
Vesta screamed in pain, but had the composure to spun around and fire. But Clarissa had made sure she was right next to a column, and was already behind it.
Vesta staggered, wincing in pain as blood flowed freely down her side. She tried to put pressure on it while keeping her rifle trained in front of her. She looked more stunned than anything.
Clarissa waited for her to take a step, then drove her knife into Vesta’s shoulder. Vesta dropped the rifle with a scream as Clarissa danced away.
“You coward!” she yelled.
“Coward?” Clarissa whispered upward in the darkness, now back on the other side of the arch and once again using the curved ceiling to toy with her prey. And Vesta was her prey now. She deserved to suffer. “How about all those innocents you murdered or helped murder?”
Vesta staggered and fell. The blood pouring out of her side was making her entire left pant leg crimson in Clarissa’s night vision. She tried to apply pressure with her left hand, but only whimpered from the deep cut that Clarissa had given her shoulder. She could only make a crude attempt with the elbow of her right arm.
“No one is innocent,” Vesta said.
“Least of all you,” Clarissa said. She had little fear of Vesta now.
“Fight me,” pleaded Vesta, her voice growing weak.
“And what? Make it a fair fight? There’s nothing fair about your kind. Men, women, and children, all subject to your slaughter. Should I not slaughter you myself, turn the tables, let some of those spirits rest easy?” Clarissa kicked Vesta as hard as she could in the zealot’s Kevlar-clad chest, knocking her down on her ass. “What’s to stop me?”
“Please,” Vesta gasped, unable to sit up.