Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  That’s when the alert comes through my earpiece. “Watch post Seven to Erin. We’ve got an intruder here saying she needs to talk to you.”

  “Would you kindly share who this intruder might be?”

  “The Dark Angel, sir.”

  I set aside the bottle of whisky I’m holding when I hear the reply. “The what now? She got here that fast?”

  “She says she has something you’ll want to hear.”

  I can feel the blood in my veins rushing to my head, like my head’s been slapped between the grips of a vice. Feels like I can barely think straight as I’m flipping around the eyepiece of the headset, giving me a good view of that seven-foot bundle of black armor. “To hell with me . . .”

  “Sir?”

  The worst part is how she stands there, acting like she’s got not a care in the world. Still, after what she’s done, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a bit impressed at the ballsiness of it all. “Send her here, then. I want an armed guard on her every step of the way. If she slips up, we send her to wherever demons go after they’re killed.”

  Jackie’s Recording 37

  I’m really not sure what I’m looking at as I stare down from the balcony. There’s a casket at the back of the room below and a few musicians set up next to it. One’s on a guitar and there’s another on flute, plus someone on drums. The music’s . . . upbeat, and everyone is dancing and drinking. The only thing I can say in all of that is, “Thank you for meeting with me, Erin.”

  He doesn’t look over at me at first. Instead, he reaches down to the table next to him and picks up two cups. They’re both filled with a deep brown liquid. He looks like he’s seething, like he’s burning up as he holds the glasses out. “Drink.”

  “Um, no, I’m cutting back right now.”

  “Drink,” he insists again. “You’re not going to come to a wake and then shame the memory of the grand lady by not drinking to her memory. You’re the one who killed her, after all. Besides, you’ve got the Creep in you. With your kind of metabolism, you’ll only get drunk if you want to. Unless you don’t think I know about all that.”

  For a second, I just look at him, but I finally take the glass he’s offering. I toss back a drink, and instantly squeeze my eyes tight. “Feels like fire in my throat.”

  That gets a smile out of him as he finally looks at me. “Whisky has a habit of doing that, and worse.”

  “You’re being pretty gracious for someone who’s supposedly furious with me.”

  “I don’t have the fire in my belly to take it to you. Not without her,” he says as he raises his glass to the casket below us, on the ground floor. “Don’t even know where I’d start.”

  I frown and raise my glass alongside him. “To the Tank.”

  “To Ishara and Tara, two sides of the same coin.”

  I nod and take another drink alongside him, squinting as the liquid sears its way down my throat. “Tara. I learned her name from Ishara’s recordings.”

  “A truer woman couldn’t be found in all the Deadlands. She played every bit the part she had to keep Ishara a secret best as she could.”

  “And Ishara was trying to keep Yousef from finding her?”

  “Wasn’t that solely, no,” he says as the music below us keeps beating, people gathering in a circle and spinning as the pace picks up. “Ishara didn’t have a reputation with the raiders out in the Deadlands. How could she? She was the sister of the Golden Jackal, bloody devil himself. Wasn’t a one of us who could have assumed she was coming with the right intentions. Tara did though. Maybe that’s why they fell in love. Kindred souls and all. Although, I suppose the Creep bond between them helped that along.”

  “That was another thing on the recordings. Tara had a reputation with the clans before Ishara ever came along.”

  “That she did. If I’m right, then she led a clan at least as large as mine. She wasn’t one of the great clan chiefs, but she had power and a reputation. Exactly the sort of person Ishara needed to help build a movement. Nobody had ever tried to unite the clans before, not on that scale. I’m sure if you’ve listened to Ishara’s recordings then you realize why. Even the great clan chiefs can’t make all of their people fall in line. Well, Neddy may be the exception. He’s got the loyalty of his people down to a man. We could have used him in the fight against Yousef.”

  “This is where you lose me. I get why you hate Yousef so much. Believe me, I get why Ishara hates him and I understand him and his father both did some terrible things to you. What I don’t get is why you kept fighting against Central. President Branagh was trying to make peace with you.”

  “Was he now? We’ve got your crew dead to rights on video. Tanks, power armor, you name it, and for what purpose? To kill a bunch of wandering clans that make their lives in the Arrowheads? Say what you want about my people or the Wild Forest armies up north, but the people there? We’re talking about 1,300 square miles of land and maybe only 15,000 people living there, and you manage to track them down and kill them. Some of them, at least.”

  “Erin, I don’t know what happened, but that wasn’t Central. I watched that city every day from the second I realized things were getting tense. I would have seen the tanks or the troops. There was nothing like that.”

  “Then you’re going to have to explain to me why I watched a hundred bodies burned after driving off your people from our territory. Why I got there with my men and women just in time to save more innocents from the end of the gun. Like I said, it’s all on video. The hit came dead of night and without an explanation to be given. And then you wonder why we made a play for the Panzer.”

  “Erin, they didn’t . . .” I stop as I’m talking to him, my fingers squeezing together into a fist. “It had to have been Yousef.”

  “Come again?”

  “Do you think it may be possible that Yousef impersonated troops from Central to get you fighting against the city? You said there was power armor involved, right? Central doesn’t have any tech like that. Not the militia.”

  His eyes open a little wider as he sips from his drink. “I suppose he could have used the attack to agitate us into doing something reckless. Might have given your government more reason to put its trust in Yousef at the same time.” His fingers wrap on the balcony as he starts to breath hard. “Ah, damn it all to hell.”

  “You think he was playing us the whole time then? It was all just some long game to him?”

  “Ishara thought she was luring him in when it must have been the other way around. Gets you and us fighting one another while he kicks his feet back in his fortress, smiling all the while and knowing that we’ll get rid of each other without him having to do a thing.”

  “And he had someone on the inside working for him. The former president, Nikola Dravic.”

  Erin squeezes his fist and grimaces, looking away for a second before leaning back. “What the hell.”

  “He’s been planning all this. He knew it would take a year to get it all into motion. Since before I got there.” I put a fist to my heart and take a heavy breath. “He couldn’t have planned for something like me, so he started finding ways to keep me from turning against him. Yousef used his friendship with me to keep me from taking a hard stand against him. At least, he did that until he thought he had a way to kill me and his sister at the same time.”

  “I’m not quite understanding you on that last point.”

  I look over at him and struggle to find the words. “Did you . . . see, what happened on the panzer?”

  “I got the video feed in a file Tara sent along before she passed on.”

  “Then you saw how Ishara died.”

  “It was some sort of . . .” He shakes his head, and I can see a pained expression in his face as he’s recalling the moment. “Some sort of convulsion, it looked like.”

  “Did you see what happened to me after that?”

  “Well, that was impossible to miss. You went tumbling over the side of the deck like a drunken sailor.”r />
  “I was being hit by the same thing affecting Ishara. I don’t know how Yousef did it or what he used, but it affected me and her. The only difference is that I survived.”

  Erin nods. “Else we wouldn’t be sharing drinks.” He finishes his glass off and sets it aside. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Neddy mentioned it.” He looks amused. “And why would I want to help you?”

  “Because it’s time to make this right. I know you hate me, Erin, and I—”

  “Let me stop you a moment before you continue. I don’t hate you. Are we clear?” He reaches inside his shirt and lifts out a small cross tied to his necklace. “You know what this means?”

  “I do. My best friend told me about what that used to mean, in the Old World. He had faith in that kind of thing.”

  “I’m taking it you don’t share the same beliefs as your friend.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I take it seriously in between the times when I’m not. It’s hard to be a religious man when you’ve got the sort of . . .” He smirks as he runs a hand over his smooth head. “When you’ve got the sort of fire inside that I’ve got. That fire, it’s made me do things that I’ve regretted later. I have a sadistic streak that comes out in the heat of the moment.”

  “Like when you shot Tommy.”

  His eyes go to mine. “Thomas is a prime example. That’s the thing though. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t regret it. I like the feeling, of hurting my enemy. Puts a little beat into my heart.”

  “I don’t have that.”

  “Not sure you should. That’s why the faith’s so important to keeping me in line. It reminds me that my lesser angels aren’t ones I should be listening to.” He tucks the cross back into his shirt. “Tara and Ishara used to say the same thing, that I needed to think more about the greater good. It’s hard to think about that when you’re struggling to survive in a world designed to grind you up.”

  “Ishara left a message for you. I can give it you to listen to. It’s not that long, but she believed in you, Erin. She said you were a man who had a tough raising. That you did a lot of things, bad things, because you were violent. She also said you wanted to be better than that. Ishara said you wanted the chance to make real peace out here.”

  He takes a drink from his glass and just stares down, out at the celebration, with people raising toasts and cheering the Tank. “Said that, did she?”

  “Yeah. And she asked me to try and make things right with you so we could take out Yousef together.”

  He tucks the cross back inside his shirt and looks away. “This friend of yours, the religious one. He in the militia too? You intend to fight for him?”

  “I’m going to be fighting for him, but he won’t be there to see what happens when this is all over. Yousef backstabbed him too. He died because of that.”

  “Christ,” he says as he looks up at the roof. “My condolences on your sad occasion.”

  “My condolences to you, too.”

  “What do you need from me, Dark Angel. You say you need my help to make all this right. You arrive on the day of a wake, talking about getting vengeance for Tara and Ishara. Whether it’s fate or God, you couldn’t have picked a better day to try and get on my good side. Still, you’re asking a lot after killing so many of my people, not to mention killing the one woman who ever tried to unite the clans.”

  “I can tell you this. I tried to keep as many people of yours alive as I could. Every fight. The ones you found on rooftops after having their gliders destroyed or the ones who walked away with their arms and legs still on them, when I could have just sliced them off.”

  “Yeah. Ishara did mention that was a bit of a curiosity.”

  “And I’m not going to stand in front of you, at a funeral for two women, and tell you I shouldn’t be held responsible for what I did. When all of this is over, if you want me to stand some kind of trial, if you need that justice, I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right between us. Before any of that happens though, we need to get rid of Yousef. He’s got Central under lockdown, and he’s splitting his forces between the city and Fort Silence. I’ve got people ready to fight back in the city, but we’ve got to give them a fighting chance. We’ve got to take the fight to Yousef and split his forces. The Northwest Creep Colony is dead, so we’ll have a direct path to the fort. With your soldiers hitting from the north and the militia fighting in the city, Yousef will be vulnerable enough that I’ll be able to take my shot at him.”

  “That’s a tall tale. Fort Silence is the best defended place in all the surrounding Deadlands. Think we’re stupid just because we’re a bunch of raider lowlifes? We’ve scouted. We’ve seen the walls and the canons protecting the fort. And how could we forget the massive flying ship he’s got protecting him now. How do you propose that we fight our way in?”

  “By doing exactly what Ishara wanted and driving the Panzer right into his territory. I saw how Ishara was controlling it. I can operate it too. Ned might have secured the area, but Yousef’s going to try and go back for the Panzer eventually. We’ve got to secure it before he does.”

  Erin licks at his lips, and I can tell he has his doubts. “The Dark Angel. Suddenly, she wants to fight for the lives of us lowly raiders.”

  “I’ve made a lot of assumptions about you and your people, and I was wrong. I’m here now. And I know you’re not just raiders. You’re people, just people who want to live their lives. Help me lead those people to something better than what they have.”

  “I’m no leader, Angel. That’s what you’re not understanding. Not on that scale. Yeah, I did well enough managing my crew. Ishara . . . she was the one who managed the whole alliance. Now imagine me trying to steer a ship as big as this one. A whole military operation, running all of our forces? And it’s not just the military. I’d have to convince the other clan leaders that this was a fight worth having.”

  “We’re all going to have to push ourselves if we want to win this one, Erin. We’re going to have to do things we’re not comfortable doing. We can win, though. Besides . . .” I extend one of my armored hands toward him. “We can do this just like you did with Tara and Ishara. I know you were the glue, the person convincing all the other leaders to listen to Tara. All I’m asking is you do that one more time, this time for me. Then I’ll lead us into the fight.”

  He stares at me for a long time, his eyes going between my face and my hand. “This just to get back at Yousef?”

  “No. It’s to make sure your people and my people can live out here without Yousef threatening to wipe us all out. It’s for the people we’ve lost so far. What was the point of all this fighting if we let Yousef win now? They can’t have died for nothing.”

  “Honorable words, if I ever heard them.” He shakes his head and turns to me, his hand reaching out to grab mine. “Alright then. Neddy’s only a day out. In the meantime, I’ll get the rest of the great chiefs together. Then it’s your job to make your case.”

  Erins’s Recording 02

  I find the old girl standing by the whiskey bar when I come in. “Caught yourself a taste for it, did you?” I ask as I walk up to her. “No harm in it, so long as you keep a tight leash on the drink.”

  “It’s good. I’m not drinking, though.”

  “But you’re thinking about having one.”

  She looks my way, those piercing eyes of hers staring at me from beneath the mask. “The first time I met Yousef, it was over drinks. I really thought he understood me, at the time. He rattled off this whole story about how he lost his sister and how he was fighting to make the sort of world she’d want.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it. If there’s one thing I know, sure as day and night, it’s that Yousef has his way off deceiving people. It’s his superpower, as it were. The silver tongue. He could sell a mother on the idea of giving up her child to another woman if he had to.”

  “That sounds more than a
little insane.”

  “Man killed his own father and sister and still managed to keep his hands clean to his people. A man like that, he rules the world through his words. At least, until the lies catch up, at which point he rules at the end of aa gun. I like to imagine that way of living catches up to you, eventually.”

  “It does. After this last fight, Yousef won’t ever threaten anyone ever again.”

  I see her fists clenching as she says it, and I stretch a hand out to her. “Listen. I’m not as strong as you. Certainly don’t have the ability to lead a whole army like this. With that said, I’m an older gun. I’ve done my share of fighting and killing, and I know the things I regret and the mistakes I’ve made. So, for whatever it’s worth, I just want to offer one piece of advice. Take it or leave it. I had the same arrangement with Ishara.”

  “Okay.” She takes a deep breath and looks over at me. “What’s the advice?”

  “Don’t get caught up in the emotion of it all. You’re the biggest, strongest gun we have. By all accounts, you think faster in the middle of a fight than just about anyone, and I’ve got no doubts you can coordinate this whole thing. Won’t none of that matter if we get into the thick of it, only to have you lose yourself because you want revenge. Am I making myself clear?”

  “No, I get it. Once . . . There was one time, a long time ago, that I did something terrible. I lost control because I got so . . . so angry that I stopped holding back on my power. I blacked out, and when I came to, a lot of people were dead. Ever since then, I’ve done my best to hold back on what I can actually do. I’ve tried to fight without killing anyone whenever I could. So, I know I have to watch myself when I’m out there.”

  “Here’s the thing though. For this fight? You’re are going to need to go all out, to bring the pain. You just have to control it. It’s like a fire. You can either let it rage out of control, or you can use it to get some good done.”

  She smiles as she looks my way. “I can see why Tara and Ishara liked you.”

  “I was a crueler man before I met them.” I shrug as I look down at the whiskey table. “Drank too much and took too much pleasure in hurting others. Turns out, once they calmed me down, I had a lot of advice to give. Most of it comes from my mother.” I can’t help running a finger down the chain around my neck and to the cross on my chest. “Family, friends, faith. The three things she tried to give me before she died.”