Dirty Mirror

by R S Penney

  A ball of rippling electrostatic energy sped across the room and hit Jensen's knee. The man let out a squeal as he fell forward, catching himself by bracing his hands on the floor. He was gasping. The shock of touching a force-field wasn't pleasant. Hopefully, it would give Harry a few moments.

  Harry stood up.

  He rushed across the room and then dropped to one knee in front of his opponent. Without even thinking, he slapped a palm against Jensen's forehead, and the N'Jal's fibers dug in. He activated Jensen's pain receptors.

  The other man screamed, dropping to the floor and flailing about like a mugger hit by a taser. Crude but effective. Now to end this.

  Harry scooped up the pistol that had fallen to the floor.

  He stood up and pointed it at the other man. “Stun rounds.” Of course, nothing happened. The gun was keyed to Jensen's voice print. It wouldn't do if an enemy could change your weapon's settings simply by shouting. Fortunately, Leyrian pistols could be activated manually.

  Harry set the weapon for stun-rounds and fired.

  A charged bullet hit the back of Jensen's neck and bounced off, causing the man to flail about almost as much as he had when Harry had tickled his pain receptors. When the spasms had subsided, the man was lying face-down on the floor.

  Chuckling softly, Harry shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead with the back of one hand. “Justice Keepers,” he said. “You're not so tough.”

  He ran out the door.

  Skidding to a stop just outside the cell, he spun around and began tapping at the door controls. “Thank you, Jensen,” he said. “You just happen to be in the best place you could possibly be right now.”

  The door slid shut.

  The doors to the cell-block slid open, allowing Isara to step into the small reception area outside. The desk was unoccupied, of course, but she found a small pile of weapons on the floor. Pistols, ammo cartridges and even a shotgun. Jensen had done as he was ordered and readied supplies for them.

  Isara squatted near the pile, smiling down at the weapons. “Well done, my boy,” she said. “Quickly, arm yourselves.”

  Cara and Calissa both did as they were told, each woman snatching up pistols and sliding magazines into place. “What do we do now?” Cara asked. “It's only a matter of time before they realize we're gone.”

  “Both of you will take the south-east stairwell to the first floor and exit the building as quietly as possible,” Isara said. “Keep your heads down until you reach the apartment complex on Third Street. Our contact is hosting us in Unit 108.”

  “And you?” Calissa asked.

  Isara picked up the shotgun and laughed softly as she caressed the weapon. “I'm going to make some noise.”

  Harry stumbled through the door to the reception area with a hand pressed to his chest, gasping for breath. “You're getting too old for this, Carlson,” he wheezed, shaking his head. “Way too old.”

  He looked around.

  There were half a dozen ammo cartridges and a few pistols scattered on the floor. More than enough for one person. Which meant Jensen had let out someone else. He had to hand it to these evil Keepers; when they turned bad, they did it big.

  “Think,” Harry said. “You're only a few minutes behind them. They can't have gone very far.”

  But how to find them.

  Now that he wasn't fighting for his life, his cop instincts kicked in and he recalled his training. Going after them alone would be stupid. He rolled up his sleeve and began tapping at the screen of his multi-tool. “Full security alert!” he said. “Prisoners escaped. Activate containment protocols.”

  Alarms started blaring. Having access to the building's restricted areas meant that he had many of the same computer privileges as any Justice Keeper. Including the ability to declare an emergency.

  What to do next? He had to find Isara!

  The answer was there in his mind in an instant. He lifted his left hand and allowed the N'Jal to scan the air. Trails of pheromones drifting through the room. They were still quite distinct, meaning the women who had created them had been here just a few short moments earlier.

  He rushed through the door and found himself in a long gray-walled hallway with bright lights in the ceiling. Some had turned red to indicate a state of emergency. The trail of pheromones extended through this corridor to an intersection maybe fifty feet away. There it split in two. So, the women – somehow, he could tell they were all female – had split up, had they?

  Harry ran through the corridor.

  When he reached the intersection, he noticed three distinct trails, two heading into the corridor on his right, the other going left. It was likely that Isara was the one who had decided to go solo; it was what Jena would have done.

  What to do…

  He went after the other two, huffing and puffing as he ran like a mad-man. He was in pretty good shape for a middle-aged man, but it had been over a year since he had left the Ottawa PD. Not much opportunity to run when you were working as a diplomat.

  This corridor was far shorter and ended in a hallway with windows along one wall. He ventured a glance around the corner.

  A tiny blonde woman ran side by side with a taller raven-haired woman through a hallway where trails of smoke were curling at the ceiling. Unless he was mistaken, these two were Cara Sinthel and Calissa Narim.

  As they approached a stairwell door at the end of the corridor, a force-field sprang to life in front of them, a wall of white electrostatic energy that cut off their escape. Cara pointed her gun at the ceiling.

  She loosed a single white tracer that struck the force-field emitter and caused it to short out in a flash of sparks. EMP rounds. His own force-fields would be useless, and he wasn't wearing body armour.

  Both women had their backs turned, but Keepers didn't need eyes to see you. Cara noticed him and then spun around to point her pistol in his direction.

  Harry jumped back into the adjoining corridor just before a flurry of white tracers sped through the intersection. The cautious voice in the back of his mind whispered that going out there would be suicide. Justice Keepers could react several times faster than an ordinary human being, and his force-fields were useless.

  He should just leave – his first responsibility was to his daughters – but memories of confronting Slade on the moon bubbled up. He would not be a coward again. Harry Carlson was not going to run every time he came up against a Keeper. Still, if his force-fields were useless…

  Or were they?

  Harry aimed around the corner, firing blindly with his pistol. Stun-rounds only, but they would knock out a Justice Keeper if any of them hit their target. With any luck, Cara and Calissa would react the way Keepers always do.

  He stepped into the other corridor to find the two women standing side by side, each one a smear of colour as they used Bendings to redirect his bullets into the wall or the windows. They couldn't return fire so long as they were taking refuge behind warped space-time.

  Harry raised his left hand, crafting a force-field as tall and as wide as the corridor itself, filling every inch of space from floor to ceiling. Then he sent it flying toward his opponents like a truck barreling down the highway.

  Cara and Calissa tried to dodge, but there was nowhere to go.

  The force-field hit them both and threw them backward with incredible momentum. Each woman was flung about like a rag-doll. Calissa even went shoulder first into the wall next to the stairwell door.

  Cara landed on her side, grunting and wheezing as she tried to catch her breath. Now, Harry thought. Take her down.

  He aimed for Cara and fired.

  The tiny woman rolled aside just before his bullet hit the floor where she had been. In the blink of an eye, she was a streak of colour, a streak of colour that reformed into a woman who stood with her arm extended, the gun pointed at Harry's chest.

  Harry wasn't sure what he did.

  Something very much like a force-field rippled into existence and sped toward the woman in th
e instant before a single white tracer erupted from the barrel of her gun. The charged bullet passed through the curtain of rippling energy, and just like that, it wasn't charged anymore.

  But it was still a bullet.

  Still moving at incredible speed.

  The slug pierced Harry's chest on the right side and ripped right through him. He was barely even aware of the sting. Then, for some reason, his legs gave out, and he was falling to his knees in the middle of the hallway.

  He couldn't breathe. It was like someone had sucked the air away or filled one of his lungs with fluid…with blood. His own blood. He had been shot in the chest. That fact was only beginning to register with him.

  Cara marched through the hallway with her arm extended, pointing the gun at his face. “Idiot!” she snapped. “Even with that toy, did you really think you could stand up to both of us?”

  At only five-foot-three, she towered over him. Close enough that he could almost reach out and touch her. “I regret this,” she said. “I feel no animosity toward you, Harry Carlson, but you have chosen to oppose-”

  It took some effort – a great deal of effort – but Harry managed to lift his left hand. And then he flung something at her.

  A force-field the size of a tennis ball hit Cara right between the eyes and pushed her head back with enough force to snap her neck. Breaking a Justice Keeper's bones was no easy task – their bodies were incredibly durable – but he had managed it. With the side-effect of quite literally smashing her face in. Harry would have vomited if not for the fact that he could barely even breathe.

  The woman dropped to her knees and then toppled over, landing sprawled out on her side. Damn it! Nearly twenty years as a police officer, and he had never been forced to take a human life…Until now.

  At the far end of the hallway, Calissa turned her back on him and kicked open the stairwell door. She was gone before Harry could even think to do anything to stop her. Apparently, the woman wasn't willing to risk her life attacking a man who would likely bleed to death anyway.

  Bleed to death.

  Oh, God help him, what had he been thinking.

  Harry fell over sideways, groaning when he hit the floor. “Help…me…” he croaked out. “Help me…”

  Anna was in a good mood.

  Bleakness take her, she had been in a good mood all day. It was amazing what a night off from your worries could do to improve your disposition. Months of beating herself up for the way things had ended with Bradley…For one night, she'd been able to put all of that out of her head, and she was eternally grateful for it.

  In beige pants and a navy-blue t-shirt, Anna stood inside an elevator as it descended to the first floor. She had been working late, catching up on reports that she had filed after interviewing several members of the Sons of Savard.

  The elevator came to a halt.

  Fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling went out to be replaced with the hellish red glow of emergency lighting. Why oh why did building designers think horror movie cliches were the best way to alert a passenger to a potential crisis. “Security alert,” the computer said over the loudspeaker. “All elevators have been shut down.”

  Biting her lip, Anna looked up at the ceiling and blinked. “Recognize Special Agent Leana Lenai,” she barked. “Authorization 2774-Vaela-Trialasi. What is the nature of this security alert?”

  “Prisoners have escaped from detention cells.”

  Anna winced, trembling as she drew in a slow breath. “Of course they have,” she muttered, stepping forward. “Reinstate this elevator and reset the destination for the third floor. Resume standard security protocols once I've exited.”

  She was descending again.

  Moments later, the metal doors slid apart to reveal a gray hallway where red lights in the ceiling cast an angry glow upon the walls. Luckily, there were still enough white lights to allow her to see. Not that she needed it – spatial awareness was a blessing – but there were some things you could perceive with your eyes that remained undetectable to any Nassai. The ability to look through windows, for instance.

  She stepped into the corridor and began making her way to the Detention Centre. There wasn't much else on the third floor. Her multi-tool identified her as a Keeper and prevented the computer from raising force-fields to block her path.

  It was pure dumb luck that brought her around a corner to find Isara in the middle of the adjoining hallway. The other woman stood there in a pair of gray track pants and a tank-top, carrying a shotgun in both hands. Why? How? Who would let her out? The very same people who let Pennfield out of his cell. There are moles among the Keepers.

  One look at the ceiling told her that most of the force-field generators in this hallway had been shorted out. Trails of smoke descended from several of them, and the stench of burnt circuitry was unmistakable. No doubt Isara had blasted them all to clear a path for herself.

  A rictus smile was Isara's first response. “Well, well, well,” she said with a nod. “I came to kill Larani, but you'll do.”

  Anna set her jaw, squinting at the woman as she strode forward. “Just a thought,” she said. “If you're going for intimidation, you might not want to rely on the 'just spent a week on the couch, eating cheese puffs' look.”

  “I'm glad to see your wit is intact.”

  Anna strode through the hallway with her fists clenched, shaking her head as she made her way toward the other woman. “Your wits are about to be splattered all over the floor,” she said. “Or the chunks of brain that are responsible for them, anyway.”

  “Why, Anna, you've grown violent.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  Isara hoisted up the shotgun in both hands, squinting as she took aim. “I think you might be forgetting something,” she said. “I'm the one with the gun.”

  She charged the weapon.

  Thrusting her hand out, Anna threw up a Bending without thinking, curving space-time to form a convex shield in front of herself. There was a soft buzzing sound, and then several dozen pellets were hanging in the air before her. They curved around her body on either side and sped off down the corridor.

  Anna let the Bending drop and ran forward.

  Isara charged the weapon again.

  Turning her shoulder toward the other woman, Anna brought her fist up and crafted the same Bending. Once again, pellets hit the patch of curved space-time and then curved around her on either side. Isara was just a few feet away.

  Anna let the Bending vanish.

  She leaped and turned her body for a flying side kick that took her opponent in the chest, pinning the shotgun between them. The impact was enough to throw Isara to the floor, where she slid backwards across the tiles.

  The woman lost her grip on the shotgun, and it slid to the side of the hallway and hit the wall. For a moment, Anna was tempted to grab the damn thing and use it on Isara, but while she was willing to take a life if it was necessary, she wouldn't ever be truly comfortable with lethal force. If you were at a point where taking a life was your only option, then you had already lost.

  Placing her foot on top of the shotgun, Anna slid it backward across the floor tiles, a good twenty paces down the hallway, where it would not be in arm's reach. “Who needs accessories? This girl is hot enough without the accouterments.”

  Isara was lying flat on her back.

  The woman curled her legs against her chest and then sprang off the floor, landing on her feet with fists raised and teeth bared. “Not bad, girl,” she murmured. “Seven days of being cooped up must have left me a little off balance.”

  “Yeah…I'm sure that's it.”

  Tilting her head to one side, Isara flashed a smile that was almost flirtatious. “Shall we do it the old-fashioned way then?” she asked, stepping forward, closing the distance in one long stride. “I'd enjoy a good dance.”

  Isara threw a punch.

  Anna ducked and felt a fist pass over her head. She stepped to the left, then popped up and delivered a mean right hook to
the cheek. Isara stumbled, a bright red welt on her creamy skin.

  Anna spun and back-kicked, driving her foot into the other woman's side, right into the rib-cage. The ferocious impact made Isara stumble backward and sideways until her shoulder hit the corridor wall.

  She recovered quickly.

  Isara leaped, doing the splits in mid-air as she sailed through the corridor. In her mind's eye, Anna saw a shadowy figure drop to the floor behind her and turn around to finish this altercation.

  Anna spun to face her.

  Bending her knees, she punched Isara's chest with one fist then the other, then rose to deliver an uppercut to the chin. The impact made her opponent's head jerk back.

  Falling over backward, Isara caught herself by pressing two hands to the floor. She brought one leg up to hook her foot around the back of Anna's neck. Then she flung Anna sideways. Painfully.

  Anna's shoulder hit the wall, her head rebounding off the duroplastic. Pain and dizziness made it hard to think, her vision blurring as she watched the other woman in pop up right in front of her.

  Isara tried to back-hand.

  Anna ducked, evading the blow but just barely. She slammed one fist into Isara's stomach, then pulled back her arm and drove that same fist into the other woman's nose. A sweet crunching sound was her reward.

  Anna jumped and snap-kicked.

  Her opponent leaned back, two hands coming up to seize Anna's ankle and fling it upward. The sudden reversal turned Anna upside-down. She slapped her hands down on the floor and flipped upright.

  Isara moved in closer.

  The woman kicked high, striking Anna's chin with the tip of her boot. Everything went fuzzy, which made it hard to react when she saw the woman's hazy image spin for a hook-kick.

  The heel of a boot came round to clip Anna across the cheek, knocking her sideways, right into the wall. Disorientation set in, and before Anna even realized it, she was falling to her knees.

  Her brain full of fog, Anna watched as her opponent turned and ran up the hallway. Isara threw her shoulder against a door that led to a stairwell, and then she was gone. It took a moment for Anna to let out the breath she had been holding. Isara hadn't even gone for the shotgun that was lying at the far end of the corridor.