Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  “That’s what I heard. She’s some black thing. Some monster with claws that’ll rip you apart and a burning arm that’ll tear you in half.”

  “Real nightmare, she is.”

  “Wouldn’t want to mess with her.”

  “Won’t have to. The Tank will take her if she needs to.”

  I guess I don’t really care what they think about me. After all, I’ve been hunting raiders down for almost a year now. Ever since the incident at Highpoint Waystation. And hearing them talk about me like I’m a monster? Well, I am, to people like them. The mask, the fire, it all started because of them. Because they killed the people I cared about. They created the Angel. If I’m a monster to them, it’s because I did everything possible to make sure I was. To let them know they couldn’t get away with killing innocent people anymore.

  I must be really deep in my thoughts because I almost jump when I hear a voice break into my ear. “Dark Angel!”

  It snaps me back to reality, and I’m suddenly whispering into the mic in my helmet. “Yeah. Sorry, Captain Jones.”

  “What’s going on? Your suit readouts say you haven’t moved in a while. I know you said not to contact you, but we kind of need this information about the Panzer.”

  “I heard . . . there’s just this . . . there were these two guys talking about the Dark Angel, and what a monster she was. It just bothered me.”

  “So, you’re feeling insecure because some raiders were talking bad about you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “If the raiders are talking about you, it means you’re in their heads.”

  “I get that. Don’t talk to me like I haven’t been here before.”

  “I didn’t . . . I’m sorry, I know you’ve been doing this for a while.”

  “Yeah, I have.” I shake my head as I stare down on the street. There’s something cooking down there that smells delicious. If I were in Central, I’d jump down to have a bite. “Anyway, yeah, I’ve been here for a while, but the sensors on the suit have been grabbing scans of the area to go with some of the aerial photography you guys provided. There’s only one place all these streets are leading.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “I’ll let you know when I’m there,” I tell him as I leap off the building I’m squatting on. I go flying across the street, a dark figure far above the streetlights, until I hit the building across from me. Immediately my glove’s fingertip claws slide forward, so when I hit the side of the building, they dig deep into its side to give me a good vantage point along the wall. For a second, I just let myself hang and watch all these people walking back and forth down on the street.

  Like I said, it's the smells that really get me. I can smell food, so much food, on the streets beneath me. At every little café and food cart, there’s someone serving up some kind of meal. Vegetables, of course, but seasoned so that it smells mouthwatering. Not to mention the lights coming from the street that wash the building walls until they’re dancing with every kind of color. Yeah, maybe it’s only this one street, and almost everything else around it is hidden in darkness, but it still feels like a place you’d want to call home. It’s a lot better than the Tower, at least from a bird’s eye view.

  So yeah, I definitely have a moment of crisis where I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by spying on the place. It’s hard not to think about how bad Yousef’s messed up the last few weeks and the things Fort Silence has done to make Central worse. Then again, nobody on our side’s ever attempted genocide. There’s a walking piece of robotics as big as a building that, once upon a time, was so strong it could go toe to toe with some of the worst creatures the Creep ever created. If the Tank uses it, there won’t be a person left alive back at Central. That brings my thoughts back to Mandy, and that’s when I remember, it doesn’t matter what I’m feeling. I have to do what it takes to save her, because there has to be another generation that comes after me. Mike, Dodger, Tommy, even Cynthia . . . we can all take care of ourselves to some degree. Mandy though . . . No girl as young as she is should have to deal with a world like this. I shouldn’t have had to deal with it. Nobody should have asked me to deal with being psychologically separated from my parents when I was a kid. Mandy shouldn’t have had her parents killed in front of her. But that’s what happened, and if this Panzer goes active, she could lose the only family she still has left.

  I won’t let that happen to Mandy.

  The second I think about her, I feel some new energy just come down on me before I start clawing my way back up the building wall. Small bits of brick tear away into the alley behind me. It’s not the best way to get around, but it’s the quickest and sneakiest way. I rip my way up the building and leap back onto the top. I literally explode back onto the roof before I find myself breathing hard, literally for no reason. There’s no reason for me to be tired.

  “You okay, Jackie.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got an eye on the target.”

  “Already?!”

  “Kinda.” I mean, I’m not lying. When I look to my right, I can see a few city blocks down, to a darker part of the city built mostly of small buildings only a few stories high. Even from up here, I can make out a squat little building that’s maybe four stories tall but lit up with enough light to spot me pretty easily. Honestly, even if the building’s small, it’s not a bad place to hold up. I mean, it’d be hard to bomb from the air. There’s not a lot of space you’d have to defend. Plus, I mean, it’s literally in the center of a square with tons of military hardware surrounding it. This is all going through my head as I’m leaping across rooftops until I’m finally overlooking the plaza. When I finally get a clear look at my target, I just shake my head.

  “Why did everyone build their military headquarters out of old libraries? Does nobody like reading anymore?”

  The area’s quiet but heavily patrolled. The plaza’s surrounded by sturdy but sloppy looking walls that were obviously just recently built. There are watch towers all along the walls, with heavy machine guns mounted inside. Along the street, tanks and rocket vehicles are idling along rows of buildings. On the grounds inside the plaza, I can see anti-air guns ready to soak the sky in gunfire. So, yeah, it’s a military base, like I haven’t seen enough of those recently. It’s just such a shame to see what they’ve done with the old library. It’s got these huge, ancient looking columns holding up the entry arch and impressive statues sitting on the lawn. I can only imagine that it was a much nicer place when kids and their families were visiting instead of having the whole place packed with soldiers.

  Anyway, there’s no reason for me to pretend like I can’t get this done fast as long as I stay out of the floodlights that are saturating the ground and the spotlights that are sweeping the skies. It’s not really a tall order for someone like me. I plummet to the ground, into one of the few areas that’s still covered in darkness, and angle out of the way before one of those spotlights cut across me. At the last second, I see someone in the dark starting to turn my way. He doesn’t even catch a glimpse of me. My legs propel me with enough force to send me flying over him and rocketing through one of guard tower windows behind him. There’s a second when the guard inside realizes someone’s flying his way, but he doesn’t get a word out before I’ve got him by the collar. A second guard at the back of the room is trying to bring his gun up, but I’ve already launched the man I’ve got locked in my fingertips, pummeling the two of them against the back wall so that they crumble to the floor. They’re immediately unconscious, so I hit them with enough punch that I know it’ll hurt in the morning.

  Not that I have time to care.

  The second both of them are out, my eyes cut both ways out of the room. On my left, I can see some random guard walking toward another tower further along the wall. To my right, it looks like I’m staring at a mirror image of the same thing. It doesn’t matter. I throw both of my unconscious victims through the back window and into the bushes below me, then I chase after the guard to my left
. I almost slam tackle him as the two of us roll into the next tower, and I immediately I’m in a little trouble, because I spot yet another guard jumping out of his chair and turning his rifle at me. Before he can even say a word, I spring into him and crush him against the back wall.

  Two more unconscious guards. Truth is, trying to keep people alive’s hard. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t even try, though. That’s what makes Central different from the raiders.

  That’s what makes me different from the raiders.

  A second later, I’m crouched over as low as I can get and scrambling along the wall. The path’s narrow, but I’ve got enough cover on either side of me that I’m absolutely sure nobody can spot me. Not from the ground, anyway. My eyes are pinned ahead of me, to where the wall ends. It runs right up against this huge window on the second floor of the library. With an entrance in sight, my visor’s already coming alive as I’m getting up to my target. Heat signatures are all over the place inside the building, but nothing in the room right behind the windows. They’re those old kind, the sort you find made with wood frames and closed with latches. Nothing tricky about just throwing those right open, and I just slide right into a pitch-dark room.

  “Night vision,” I whisper as I close the windows behind me. Not that I really have to, I mean, the visor adapts to my surroundings on its own most of the time. It’s just . . . old habits, I guess, from before I knew all the tricks to using my tech. Anyway, the world around me comes to life with a green filter. Everything that was in total darkness is suddenly visible, and I can see I’m in some sort of old office. Lots of stuff hasn’t survived over the last few hundred years, especially if it wasn’t made of metal or plastic. These old desks though, made out of really heavy wood? Somehow, they’ve really champed it out over the years. You see them all the time unless the Creep’s been chewing into them. That’s some sturdy craftsmanship. Same for the tall bookshelves I see around the room. This is the kind of furniture that survived, and you see it all over the Deadlands.

  I scan the room as fast as I can, but don’t really find anything that looks important. It’s hard to even really tell what I’m looking for, since all I know is it has to have something to do with the Panzer. My eyes flick to one of the nearest doors, and I make my way over. I stay low to the ground as I crack it open, my night vision flicking off as I stare into a more brightly lit hall. It’s still pretty low lit, but the electric candleholders burning along the walls give it a soothing look. And it’s hard not to look, because the hallway’s honestly impressive. The floor’s made out of tiled marble, and there are these huge archways that rise up against the ceiling. I’m staring down the hall, and it feels like it stretches out for forever, with massive wooden doors interrupting the walls every now and then.

  There’s also voices, too. The lower right corner of my display shows how strong the voice is. I’m basically running in stealth mode at that point, and one of the things I personally like most about the display’s how it tells me where voices are coming from. If the voices are strong enough, I’ll get a dim light in my display telling me what direction my target’s in. As the voices break through my ear, the light flashes to my left, but it’s dim. Whoever’s in the next room has to be pretty far away, but the mic in my helmet still picks them up.

  “Yeah. Tank’s up there with her sister,” I hear someone say. That kind of comment gets my attention.

  “When’s she not up there with her sister?”

  “Whenever she’s out in the Deadlands busting heads, obviously.”

  The Tank. Good. At least that’s one of my targets. I slow down to spy in on the conversation and slide up to the closed door on my left.

  “Tank ain’t done nothing in, what? Must’ve been a month. You ask me, she’s leaving everything to Erin to handle.”

  “Would you listen to yourself? You think we’d be holed up in some sweet gig like this if it wasn’t for the Tank?”

  “Are you saying Erin couldn’t have gotten this all sorted out himself with enough time?”

  There’s a delay from the other guy. “Look, I’m not saying the boss didn’t do some impressive things . . . It’s just, the Tank . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really think Erin would’ve ever been able to get a Panzer up and running same way she has?”

  “Yes. No. I dunno. Maybe.”

  “Looks like you’re answering your own question about why we need her.”

  “Well, like I was saying, she headed up to her room.”

  “She must be done for the night. Lots of planning she’s got to do before she heads out to the target in the morning.”

  “Must’ve wanted her privacy too, since she basically ordered the whole floor empty.”

  Bingo. That’s all I need to hear. I creep past the doorway and keep making my way down the hall. Same time as I’m doing it, I let out a subsonic pulse from my visor. It can’t be seen, and it can’t be heard, but it bounces back the whole structure of the floor up ahead. It’s like a really advanced form of echolocation. The pulse doesn’t go far enough to grab the whole building or anything, but it gives me a basic map of what’s coming up. Sure enough, I turn the corner and see another long hall. There are doors on my right, and smack in the middle of the hall, a stairway heading two ways, one to ground floor and the other up to the third. Only problem’s the guards making rounds up and down the hall.

  Two at the stairs. Two more walking down to the opposite side of the hall. In my head, I’m thinking the hallway’s long enough that I’d have the time to take out the first two then get the next. Only thing wrong with that approach is I’d risk setting off alarms if somebody tried to check in with them over radio or something. Dilemmas. At least, that’s what I’m thinking until I look to my side.

  Half the problem with being human is getting stuck thinking one specific way. You see a problem and think you have to face it head on. That’s not always the case, and it certainly shouldn’t be the way I think considering I’m not even completely human anymore. I look to my right and see the same pair of latched windows that led out onto the tower walls. There’s no light coming in, which means there’s no spotlight or anything on this side of the wall. Probably because nobody owns a powered suit of armor like mine that can dig into surfaces and climb straight up to a rooftop, so there’s not a lot of reason to be flooding the building with a spotlight.

  I flip the latch and push on the window just enough to get a look outside. There’s guards on the walls in the distance, but they’re all looking out onto the streets. Good. That means they’re still watching for intruders without realizing there’s one already inside. I swing out of the window and bury my clawed fingertips into the surface, closing the window behind me as I dangle from the wall for a second. It just takes a minute to get my other arm up and digging into the stone, the metal in my fingers sliding into the walls like a hot blade into the Creep. Then, it’s just one, two, three, my hands digging into the walls as I scramble up the dark side of the building. A second later, I’m at the third-floor window. It’s just like all the rest, down to the sets of square glass panels, with the only problem being that it’s latched from the inside.

  Not that I have time for subtleties. Well, I sort of do. My fingertips are sharp enough to claw walls, so they’re sharp enough to cut into glass, especially pre-war glass that’s this old. A lot of the newer stuff, stuff from around the time Apeiron and Carthage got into it, was hardened to be as strong as concrete. Older glass though? I cut around the edges of the square frame a few times until the glass panel literally pops out, falling into my palm. It takes all of a few seconds to reach inside the window, undo the latch from the inside, and set the glass plate down. Then, I’m swinging back into the building.

  When I do, I’m back inside another hall that’s just as big as the one a floor below. No guards, though. Just . . . emptiness. It’s so quiet that I can’t even pick up on voices for a second. I start to walk to my left, making my way do
wn the hall. Same as before, it’s impressive. Fancy floors and ceilings, paintings that are as tall as two or three of me, and massive chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. I swear, before the world went to hell, it was actually pretty good looking.

  It’s hard not to think about that as I’m making my way around the next corner. When I do though, I suddenly have to flip back. I’m pressed up against the wall and not even breathing. It’s really not hard to figure out why.

  There’s someone standing there, at a door down the hall.

  I only see her for a second, but that’s enough. I recognize her not just from the briefings, but that propaganda video out in the city. The Tank. She’s even bigger than what I remember. She must be seven . . . may eight? Holy hell, a straight eight feet tall. Has to be, because she looks taller than me in full armor. She’s actually as tall as a walker, with muscles the size of artillery cannons. Her arms are as thick as my torso and her legs look as solid as statue columns. I recognize some of the robotic implants she’s had done, including that replacement arm of hers. It’s all metal and cables. It’s kind of like Yousef’s, with one arm that looks real and one that’s robotic, except her cybernetic arm runs all the way to her collar and looks a lot less professionally done. The top of her head’s covered in a flat cut style that makes her shocking white hair looks that much more insane. I know she’s a woman, but she’s got a chest as broad as a barrel, which is easy to notice considering the white tank top that’s practically painted onto her torso. The fatigues she’s wearing on her legs practically show off every bulging muscle before they disappear into her combat boots. I see this all in that half second before I duck back behind the corner, but there’s no doubt in my head that she’s bigger than any other person I’ve met outside of Judge.

  I press my face against the wall and edge them to the corner. She’s still standing there, staring at a faint light in her hands. I’m thinking, if it’s a tablet, it could be important. War plans? Maybe technical information about the Panzer? I mean, there’s no way to tell from where I’m at, but it immediately becomes my target. I’m barely a few feet from my goal, but I still have to find some way of getting around that Goliath.