by Kyle Aho
Chapter VI
Hive metropolis Vytal was notorious for segregating the wealthy from the poor. It is common for communities to have upper, middle, and lower class castes but on Vytal you were either a mogul or a miscreant. Vytal’s slums were what Alistair had called home since he was a child and this was where he had chosen to make as much of a difference as he could.
Her name was Gayle. She was ten years old, which made her old enough to do just about anything someone would buy her for and young enough to be completely helpless when she was sold. Alistair Preest had been looking for her for the better part of a month and had finally narrowed down the search to a warehouse owned and operated by Viktor Cetti, a notoriously ruthless human trafficker.
Alistair wasn’t ashamed to admit he enjoyed getting rough with the scum of the earth if a situation called for it but when he did it was often in the company of a child he rescuing. The horrified faces of every child he ever saved had been burned into his mind. That moment when they don’t know if you’re there to save them from their torment or if you’re something even worse was an experience Alistair had too many times. It never got easier.
This search had taken longer than usual and Alistair hoped he wasn’t too late. Normally if a week had passed from the day of the missing persons report then the child would already be sold or dead by the time he caught up with them. This was the third week and Alistair was worried his search might be leading him to a corpse. Even worse, he might find nothing at all. That didn’t change the situation, he was still determined to track Gayle down and return her to her parents, assuming they were still alive.
Armed with his trademark incendiary equipment–inferno pistols, nova grenades, and a torch sword–Alistair set out to find poor little Gayle. The torch sword was definitely his favorite weapon for jobs like this but it was a high-risk item. It operated similar to an acetylene torch albeit with a flame that was three feet long and two inches wide and able to cut through almost anything if you had enough fuel and patience. It also made a wicked sound as it devoured oxygen and sliced through the air. The only real problem with a torch sword was the need for an abundant fuel source and the fact that one wrong move could easily sever and cauterize an arm with little to no effort.
Alistair waited for the man guarding the entrance to the warehouse to meander off for a smoke before he crossed the street. Fortunately the man was too interested in his cigarette to notice anyone behind him. Alistair used his forearm and bicep to block both arteries on either side of the man’s neck. He held the choke tight and dragged the guard back into the shadows like a lion becoming territorial over a kill. Another two minutes of squeezing ensured that both blood and air stopped going to the man’s brain long enough to kill him.
Alistair lifted the man’s body into a nearby empty oil drum that smelled of burnt garbage and circled the warehouse for any more guards, careful to avoid windows lest he be spotted by someone inside. Alistair wasn’t surprised when he didn’t find anyone else. More than one person outside a building meant something interesting was inside and most criminals didn’t like to attract too much attention to their affairs.
A few quick glances through windows revealed that most of the defenses were inside. At least a dozen men armed with automatic weapons paced around the inside of the warehouse. There was also a man drinking a beer and lounging in a pop-up chair next to a tripod mounted machine gun a short distance from the main entrance. Alistair didn’t see Gayle anywhere but that didn’t mean she wasn’t stowed away somewhere out of sight.
Peering through the grime-encrusted window Alistair saw that some of the skylights were either open or broken. That was probably the easiest way to get in undetected, since the catwalk of the warehouse was close to the ceiling. Alistair found a fire escape on the side of the building and climbed up to reach the roof. He walked over to a broken skylight and looked around, gaining a better assessment of the interior of the warehouse. Two cranes flanked the main storage area but one crane was obviously broken and the winch was released so the hook and wire lay in a heap on the ground.
The second crane held a crate, suspended in the air above the pacing guards. He noticed that most of the guards used the crate’s shadow as a guide of where not to walk as they made their way around while on patrol. Alistair wasn’t sure if that was intentional, or if the crane had stopped working before anyone could unload it. Regardless of its reason for being there the suspended crate would prove useful in his plan to raid the warehouse. If only it were hanging above someone that he could drop the crate on but then that would be asking too much from Lady Luck.
Upon scanning the thugs in the room several times, Viktor was nowhere to be seen. The thugs he could see were playing multi-level holo-chess, which Alistair found ironic given the uneducated stigma thugs usually had and the pompous stereotype most holo-chess players fell into. He wondered if they were even playing correctly. Some men walked around half-heartedly kicking debris or rocking on their heels while a small group in the corner, apparently invisible to the rest, was brawling.
Alistair poked his head through the broken skylight to scan the catwalk and came nose to nose with a thug patrolling immediately below him. His hair gel smelled like burnt grease. It was entirely possible that his hair gel was burnt grease. His eyes bugged out and the thug quickly raised his assault rifle to smash Alistair’s nose in with the butt. Alistair tore the weapon from his grip and turned it on him in a swift display of Human Liberation Marines training. Upside down and glaring down the sights of the assault rifle, Alistair contemplated if he should fire and completely blow his cover or try to subdue the man physically, despite his current inversion.
Slowly, the thug inched back along the catwalk with hands raised. He scowled in humiliation and anger. It was a little unnerving that the man didn’t look the least bit scared. As Alistair thought of his next move, the man ended up making the decision for him.
“He’s here! The kid snatcher is-” a gaping bullet wound in his throat left him gurgling. Alistair then found himself annoyed at being called ‘the kid snatcher’ and immediately wondered if they were expecting him.
Alistair fell through the skylight with a half flip and landed feet first on the catwalk. He watched the man who blew his cover fall to his knees clutching his throat. Alistair glanced down at the warehouse and saw that everyone below was mobilizing to attack. He sprinted down the catwalk and jumped off the handrail to launch through the air and land on the suspended crate attached to the crane. Bullets tore up toward him and chewed into the wood of the crate as Alistair ducked and kept as low a profile as possible. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and heard a door slam open at the back of the warehouse.
“No, stop! Stop you frakking morons, don’t shoot!” a voice yelled. It was Viktor.
The thugs on the ground began to argue as they tried to explain who was assaulting them. Viktor made it clear that he knew who it was and that they were still idiots for shooting at him. Viktor ordering his team to cease firing was an interesting turn of events. Alistair took advantage of their momentary confusion and loosened a nova grenade from his belt before pulling the pin as they talked. He tossed it over the side of the crate and listened as it bounced off the concrete.
There was less than a second of complete silence as the room realized what had been thrown. Brief screaming echoed through the warehouse before the grenade incinerated everything in a vehicle-wide radius. It melted through the concrete and formed a searing crater in the middle of the warehouse. Some nearby crates and dust caught on fire. Alistair was used to explosions so he recovered quickly, struggling only to keep his balance on the swinging crate he stood on. The thugs below that weren’t burning husks reeled from ruptured eardrums. They clutched their heads in agony and struggled to regain their senses. One stumbled into a pyre and shrieked as his clothes ignited. Alistair stood up on the crate and fired with his stolen assault rifle at the disoriented thugs, taking a few out before the rest realized what was happ
ening and ran for cover.
A few men ran inside the nearby office to protect Viktor but the rest took cover behind broken equipment or nearby debris. One brave thug even manned the tripod-mounted machine gun and turned it upward to face Alistair. Lining up a quick shot, Alistair smiled at the stupidity of the stationary turret thug before he fired. A hollow click met his ears as the assault rifle he was holding dry fired. The magazine was empty.
“Frak.”
A torrent of machinegun fire ripped toward him in response. He turned around and jumped to the arm of the crane, using it like a ladder to climb down the machine as quickly as he could. Alistair prayed that the turret thug’s accuracy was as notoriously bad as most criminal lackeys. Once the rest of the thugs had joined in and started taking potshots at him, Alistair loosened his grip and squeezed the edge of the crane arm with the sides of his boots to slide the rest of the way down. His knees almost buckled as he landed hard on the crane chassis and jumped off to use its robust bulk as cover.
Alistair fished in his jacket for his inferno pistols and hunkered down behind the crane as thugs laid down sporadic covering fire. If they were smart they would stagger their shots so that one could fire while another reloaded. Fortunately for Alistair, they weren’t smart. As soon as the bursts ceased, Alistair stood up and swung out from cover to unleash two gouts of flame toward a stack of boxes that he knew some of the thugs hid behind. It didn’t take long for the incendiary gel to spray out and drip over the crates, coating the thugs behind it and lighting them ablaze.
Alistair held down the triggers to both guns and spread his arms as if welcoming someone into his embrace as fire roared around him in two cones of searing hot death. As more and more of the building lit on fire, Alistair sweat both literally and figuratively. He put a lot of faith into his fire retardant gear but if he got stuck inside the building while it was crumbling he would still be crushed in the debris like everyone else. He knew he had to find Gayle and get out of there fast.
He made his way to the back of the warehouse and kicked down the door to the office where Viktor was no doubt keeping Gayle hostage. The office was empty. He heard screaming in the warehouse but ignored it as he searched the back office for any sign of Viktor. All he found was a broken window and a computer with a few monitors.
“Coward.”
Alistair cursed his luck and searched through the closet and some nearby lockers for Gayle. As the temperature rose Alistair wondered if Viktor had taken Gayle with him, though it seemed unlikely because she would have slowed him down. A second look at the computer monitors revealed a small window that looked like a video feed. Alistair enlarged the video and saw several children pounding on the walls of their confines. In the last window he saw Gayle unconscious or possibly dead inside what appeared to be a box or crate similar to the other prisons. Something didn’t make sense. Smoke rose through bullet holes in the bottom of the crate Gayle was in. That wouldn’t be possible if she were in a crate resting on the ground.
Alistair had the horrific realization that she was inside the crate suspended from the crane, the very same crate he was standing on minutes earlier. The sound of screeching metal tore through the warehouse as a chunk of the rafters collapsed and slammed into the arm of the crane. Supports broke and the chain shook violently as it whipped the attached crate into the catwalk.
He watched in horror as the crate burst open and Gayle’s body flailed wildly as it fell to the cement below. Even with adrenaline on his side there was no way Alistair could reach her in time. He was forced to watch her fall into a heap of embers, a cloud of smoke and cinder pluming up after her. With his arm up to shield his face, he jumped through open flames and pulled a small extinguishing device from his jacket. Alistair closed the distance between him and Gayle in a heartbeat.
Cool blue foam sprayed out over her and expanded, instantly quenching the flame and preventing further damage to her already battered body. Alistair clawed through the foam and grabbed onto her arm before pulling her out and cradling her in his arms as he searched for an exit. Then he remembered the other kids. It was difficult to hold Gayle with enough grace to not irritate her wounds as he moved through the warehouse and put his ear to nearby crates in hopes of hearing anyone inside. Roaring flames and rapidly depleting oxygen levels made this process all but impossible.
With a swift kick he cracked open the crate closest to him and peered inside. All it contained were some dehydrated food packets. He kicked another and it too had useless objects inside. His lungs burned and the smoke obscured his vision. The sinking feeling in his gut was pushed back in favor of self-preservation. He jumped through open flames and dodged falling debris before he found a broken window. With his arms wrapped around Gayle for protection he lowered his shoulder and jumped through the window, landing hard on the dirt outside. It took a moment to catch his breath but Alistair got up and limped his way back to his sanctuary across the sector with a burned and battered Gayle in his arms.
Upon arrival at the derelict church Alistair had turned into an orphanage he punched in his password on the terminal next to the door. The automated door made a stubborn grinding sound as it opened and hissed shut behind him. He waited for the vitals scanner to register his body and assure the security system that he was indeed himself.
Four automated turrets followed him as he walked through the next and final security measure of his establishment. Three of them didn’t have ammunition but potential infiltrators didn’t need to know that. Alistair pressed the intercom button to speak with Morria, his first rescued orphan and second in command at the orphanage.
“Morria, please let me in.”
There was a pause followed by a hiss of static and the voice of a toddler. “Unkie Al?” the toddler asked incredulously.
“Stella? Is that you? Please go find Morria, right away.”
“Why are you in the wall box unkie Al?”
The sound of a woman running into the room and shooing away little Stella came out of the speaker, followed by a heated protest from Stella who demanded to know why ‘unkie Al’ was in the ‘wall box’.
“Sorry Alistair, buzzing you in now,” the woman said. Seconds later the final door buzzed open and allowed Alistair to enter his sanctuary.
The main chapel area had been turned into a makeshift playground. Most of the pews were gone but some had been pulled to the outside edges to allow children to sit and read or draw if they didn’t want to play. A series of tunnels and platforms made out of various salvage created a multi-level fortress for games and exercise. For safety he sprayed the fort with a latex based polymer to avoid any unwanted cuts that might result in tetanus or other infections. Tires were stacked and placed in various areas to simulate towers and tunnels. Ropes hung from several rafters that led to a hive of crash webbing and fishing nets suspended from the ceiling to facilitate another area of play. Many children had toy guns and were shooting small rubber pellets at each other while playing war games.
Alistair knew that on the whole it wasn’t the safest environment for a child but it was the best he could provide with what little resources he scrounged together. He also felt that it served as a sort of training ground for where most of these children would end up and in that way he considered it worth the bumps, bruises and occasional swollen eye. The children were usually pretty good at including anyone who wanted to be involved in the battles and ignoring anyone who didn’t. Even the girls would join in, often working together to overthrow all the lone wolves the boys thought themselves to be. Alistair was proud of the environment he made for them but he always wanted to provide more.
Morria parted the children to make way for Alistair, who was still carrying Gayle. Most of the children, especially the older ones, had seen newcomers in rough shape before and they simply got out of the way but a few gawked and nervously chewed their fingers as Morria, Alistair, and Gayle went into the makeshift infirmary.
It used to be a bathroom but now only one toilet remained an
d only the cold water worked in the sinks. Alistair had made a table out of cinder blocks and stall walls from when his infirmary was still a bathroom and stored supplies on some bookshelves and in an old fridge. Alistair laid Gayle down on the cinderblock table and went to the fridge for some painkilling gel. Morria took a towel from a bookshelf and soaked it in cold water. She dabbed off the blue goo covering Gayle to prevent further burns as she looked down on the poor child. Gayle squinted through swollen eyes and tried to make sense of her situation. She let out a hoarse whisper that neither Alistair nor Morria could understand.
Morria put a cold finger on Gayle’s lips to prevent her from speaking further. “Get some rest,” she whispered as she brushed a clump of hair out of Gayle’s face and further dabbed the blue goo off her body while Alistair injected a sedative mixed with painkillers into her arm.
“She’ll wake up in about twelve hours, make sure she gets somethin’ t’eat,” Alistair said, glancing up at Morria, “Mac delivered th’food today, yeah?”
Morria pursed her lips. Her hesitation told him what he needed to know. Alistair gritted his teeth and walked over to a sink. A swirl of red blood washed from his hands down the drain. He thought about the other kids on the monitors he saw back in the warehouse and hoped they were simply remote feeds from somewhere else because he didn’t want to believe he had been unable to rescue them from the fires he created.
“How much d’we have then?” he asked.
“Maybe two or three days if we skip lunch. We also have to get more rat poison and some propane tanks if we plan on cooking anything. Oh, and the generator is…”
“Enough. I’m workin’ on it,” Alistair said. He dried his hands on his pants and left Morria to tend to Gayle. He knew they were in trouble. Recent gang activity had stopped his supply chain several times now and he couldn’t risk any of the children’s lives to go out and get supplies alone. He was too busy trying to make legitimate money in order to feed the ever growing and already overpopulated orphanage he maintained to run errands by himself all the time.
Alistair knew that the only way out of the slums and give these kids a better life would be to land a large sum of money in a short amount of time. Alistair also knew that the only way to do that was either illegally or by claiming a large bounty. His bounty license had expired long ago but he could still take a CivOps contract if he had to. It took about fifteen minutes to boot up his machine and connect to the CivOps network to check the roster for anything lucrative. One in particular caught his eye. The only information it had was the reward, a very large reward, and the rest was classified until acceptance of the mission.
That meant the job was going to be dangerous and would require a special set of skills from a special team of people, the kind of thing that normally one would hire a legitimate mercenary company. Since this was a CivOps contract that meant the job was either questionably legal or part of inter-corporation sabotage. Either way, it was something Alistair knew he needed to do in order to get his life back on track and put the lives of his orphans in a direction other than the streets where he found them. Alistair applied to the contract and hoped they would accept him.