by Regine Abel
I then turned my gaze to the patrons. Despite Satos officially being a Narengi town, the diverse population inhabiting it actually surpassed them in number. That diversity could be seen in the club. Despite my mere presence drawing people’s attention, I didn’t feel threatened by the patrons gyrating on the dance floor. However, a couple at a booth and a single male at the bar caught my attention. They were… too laidback.
People in clubs usually displayed an excess of energy in one form or another, or a great mellowness due to excessive indulgence in alcohol or drugs. Sprinkled among those were also the sullen people fighting a heartbreak or nursing an impending monster headache. But generally speaking, even the sitting guests would sway absentmindedly to the music or mark the beat with their foot or with a tapping finger. The body language of those three individuals gave off the perfectly relaxed air, each of their movements studied to give a casual impression. However, their eyes revealed a very different mind-set than their smiling faces.
Like me, they were studying the room, with a particular interest for the executive lounge where Tamryn was still conversing with Haelin. Moments like this made the loss of part of my humanity worthwhile to have become a Cyborg. Aside from allowing me to zoom in on them to read their lips—which revealed nothing—and get a better sense of what they were up to, my enhanced vision also allowed me to use my eyes independently to simultaneously track multiple targets. In this instance, I was literally keeping one eye on the couple and the lone man at the bar.
Their efforts not to look in my general direction made them all the more suspicious. They weren’t part of Haelin’s staff. Those guys I had already identified, even the ones dressed as customers to blend in with the crowd. It troubled me that the trio didn’t seem to have caught the guards’ attention. I didn’t know what those three were up to, but my gut screamed none of it was good.
The female suddenly retrieved a pair of tiny vials. As she was hidden from the waist down by the table, I couldn’t tell if she’d taken them from her pocket or any purse she might have with her. She extended one to her companion, and both poured the powdery contents into their respective drinks—which they had barely touched. They didn’t try to hide what they were doing. Recreational drugs were both legal and a common thing in venues such as this one. Many were consumed that way for a gradual buzz instead of getting too brutally hammered in one shot.
I zoomed in my vision on the woman’s glass, the fingers of her left hand around it partially obscuring my view. With her right hand, she stirred her drink with a gold swizzle stick, her companion doing the same with his drink. My back stiffened seconds later when I realized the substance she had poured in her drink was crystallizing around the stick, forming a blade. I’d heard of such compounds, nearly impossible to detect by most scanners. All they needed was an activating agent—usually merely water. Cold temperatures accelerated the reaction. So, the icy drink was perfect.
As if this had been his cue, the lone man downed his drink and got up from his stool at the bar, slowly making his way to the dance floor. I hadn’t seen him create a similar makeshift weapon for himself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t armed somehow. He stopped maybe three meters in front of me, nonchalantly swaying to the music while staring at a pair of sexy females dancing, as if he intended to insert himself between them. To anyone else, he’d look completely inconspicuous—just another guest trying to see if he could get lucky with a pair of hot women.
Moments later, the couple also rose from their booth before heading to the dance floor as well. This time, they gave away their target whose identity I’d been wondering about, initially thinking it might be me. But from the corner of my eye, I noticed Tamryn and Haelin approaching the top of the stairs. In the seconds it took me to assess the situation and plan a course of action, the couple had advanced through the dancing crowd to a perfect position to launch their attack. However, they didn’t join the lone man, starting to dance instead a good five meters away from him at the edge of the crowd.
Time seemed to slow as Tamryn began descending the stairs, a tense but hopeful look on her beautiful face. I started moving a split second before the couple attacked, my eyes calculating the trajectory of their blades and the speed at which I should launch an obstacle to block it. The woman, pretending to wave her hands in the air while dancing threw her makeshift blade at Haelin at the same time I sent one of the four chairs around me flying in its path. Before I could intercept the man throwing his blade a second later, I barely managed to dodge an incoming blade from the lone man. I never even saw him throw it, so well-choreographed his movement had been. In the half a beat it took me to recover, the man had already lost himself in the crowd.
To my relief, moments after the woman’s weapon embedded itself in the backrest of the chair, a static effect shimmered alongside the railing of the stairs. Realizing they were being attacked, Tamryn attempted to force Haelin down, but the Narengi resisted. The blade thrown by the woman’s companion all but disintegrated by the energy field Haelin’s people had just activated. By her stoic, but hard expression, the Narengi leader had known herself to be safe.
Alarmed shouts rose from the people closest to us who saw the chair. Their panic spread like wildfire among the crowd who quickly moved to the sides, away from the dance floor. For a split second, the couple also attempted to blend into the panicked crowd, but seeing me barreling down on them set them moving. The Narengi guards zeroed in on my targets, swarming them from every angle. Leaving them to it, I scanned the room, finding the lone man playing a masterful performance of fearful curiosity at the back of the room with the rest of the patrons.
I immediately pushed through the crowd, making a beeline for him, a couple of Narengi guards behind me. To my relief, they didn’t try to stop me, but were backing me up instead—or so I presumed—not that I needed it. The minute the lone man made eye contact with me, he knew the gig was up. While the guards battled the couple, I rushed him. He shoved the people in front of him towards me before trying to make a run for the exit. His victims stumbled to the floor with an alarmed cry. Using my momentum, I jumped over them and kept racing after my quarry, quickly gaining on him.
Without slowing his run, the man threw a makeshift blade backwards at me. This time, I not only saw him initiate the attack but planned my response, catching the weapon by its handle as it flew by my face. I threw it right back at him, the improvised dagger finding its mark in the back of his thigh. The would-be assassin stumbled, limping even as he yanked the blade out. But he didn’t go much farther as I tackled him to the floor. Even without that injury, he wouldn’t have made it far, not with the guards shutting the entrance.
We landed hard on the floor. Most people would have been stunned and winded by such a brutal impact. To my complete shock, he immediately swung his arm back in an attempt to smash my face with his elbow while turning to face me. I blocked his elbow with my palm, the jarring force of the impact resonating the length of my arm. Before I could retaliate, his spit towards my face in a steady stream, while simultaneously swiping the bloody blade at my throat. I barely managed to roll out of the way, allowing him to get back up at the same time I did. The hissing sound of the floor where the fluid he’d projected landed indicated it was some sort of acid.
He attempted to spit it at me again, but I violently backhanded him, dislocating his jaw. The wretch should have been on his knees, crying in agony. Instead, he stood steadfast on his feet, savagely swiping the blade at me. I dodged a couple of his swings, blocked a few more, and threw a flurry of punches and kicks at him, a handful of which he managed to parry—which he shouldn’t have been able to.
By now, the crowd had surrounded us and was cheering the fight as if we were in some sort of a battle arena. The guards stood by, weapons at the ready, but didn’t otherwise intervene.
Is this a test?
It didn’t make sense for my opponent to continue fighting like this. Even if he managed to defeat me—which he wouldn’t—the guar
ds would take him down right after. So, why had he not surrendered?
Despite the couple of openings I could have used to inflict a fatal blow, I timed my attack, waiting for the next time he swiped his blade at me to catch his wrist. I twisted it, anticipating the movement with which he would flow with the attack to keep me from gaining a painful lock on him, and kicked in his knee, busting his kneecap. Stunned, he collapsed with a grunt instead of the screech I’d expected. Nonetheless, he tried to continue fighting. Still holding his wrist, I spun behind him and brought my elbow down hard on his nape, knocking him to the floor. I twisted his arm into his back, pinning him down with my foot between his shoulder blades.
“Enough. You have been defeated, Dokolm,” Haelin said in a casual voice as she walked up to us, Tamryn shadowing her.
The crowd parted, going quiet as they witnessed the scene. The fight bled out of the assassin under my foot. He ceased to struggle, a stricken expression descending on his face.
“It was a valiant effort, but you were bested. Rest in peace,” Haelin said.
With an eerily calm face, the Narengi leader raised her blaster and shot the man’s face. Under the maximum setting, his head was all but vaporized. Dokolm’s body shuddered then went still. I carefully removed my foot from his back while eyeing the female, baffled by her action.
“You seem confused,” she said to me in a friendly tone.
“Shouldn’t you have interrogated him first?” I asked.
She smiled. “He had nothing to reveal that I didn’t already know,” she said with a shrug. “You tried to save me. Why?”
“You are Tamryn’s contact, and your families are friends,” I said matter-of-factly. “You may also be our only ticket off this rock. I would rather see you unharmed.”
The Narengi leader snorted and gave me a slow once over. The intensity of her stare would have unnerved most people. She was assessing me.
“Tell me, Cyborg, are you here to spy on us or otherwise cause us harm?” Haelin asked, taking a step towards me, her gaze boring into mine.
“No,” I replied without hesitation. “I’m here to help Tamryn safely get back to her family and to find my own way out of a hostile territory.”
She observed me for a few more seconds before abruptly turning her back on me. Tamryn stared at her, wide-eyed, awaiting our host’s verdict. My heart leapt when Tamryn’s shoulders dropped, shedding tension as she cast a victorious sideways glance at me. Without turning to look back at us, Haelin raised her hand and gestured with two fingers for us to follow.
I complied.
Chapter 8
Tamryn
I followed Haelin, feeling both almost faint with relief and utterly confused. The Narengi female had expected this attempt on her life. As Haelin didn’t issue any command once the attack began, her guards had also been aware they were not to intervene in Jarog fighting the assassin. As they couldn’t have known what he would do, they had likely preemptively discussed every possible scenario. When Jarog started fighting that man, I believed this whole thing had been staged. But then she killed him, and the guards executed the couple. What the fuck was going on?
Extremely efficient, the staff quickly disposed of the bodies, while the DJ resumed playing his loud music. In the time it took us to cross the dance floor all the way to the back of the club, to a highly guarded elevator in a discreet corner left of the DJ’s booth, the patrons were back writhing on the dance floor as if no tragedy had just happened. That alone sufficed to confirm what a tough place this was. These guys had seen worse.
To my surprise, Haelin entered the elevator alone with Jarog and me. Although the Narengi female had completed advanced combat training and could mess up any fool who tried to cross her without breaking a sweat, I didn’t believe her capable of defeating Jarog one on one. Granted, she had a blaster. But I’d seen the speed at which Jarog could move. She would never stand a chance. Therefore, the fact that she would come downstairs alone with the two of us spoke highly of the fact that she didn’t deem us—mainly Jarog—a threat to her welfare. Then again, with the elevator stopping us in the bowels of the club, there would be no escaping. Trying to blackmail our way out of this would be beyond suicidal.
Is this another test?
Haelin looked at my companion and me with an unreadable smile that had something annoyingly provoking and taunting. She undoubtedly knew how all this mystery fucked with our minds and was enjoying the heck out of it. While the control panel of the elevator indicated three floors above the ground floor, we went down instead, into the basement. At the end of the short ride, the doors parted, opening onto a small antechamber. Up a couple of meters ahead, a large metal door greeted us. I almost expected to walk into a vault. A laser scan of Haelin’s face triggered the minute we approached the door. The door unlocked with a clicking sound before sliding open with a soft hiss.
I couldn’t say what I had expected when this door opened, but not that we would step inside this fancy suite. A comfortable living area with a set of couches surrounding a coffee table facing a giant screen hanging on the wall, and a dining table laden with food to its left greeted us. A set of double doors undoubtedly led to what I believed to be a bedroom. Haelin ushered us to the circular table, taking a seat before us. We quietly emulated her, still wondering what the heck was going on. However, I welcomed the prospect of a meal, our last one dating back quite a few hours.
“Please, make yourselves at home and enjoy this meal,” Haelin said, already serving herself from the various appetizing dishes laid out on the table. “After all, it will be your dwelling for the duration of your stay with us—at least for now. And it will not be said that I have been a poor hostess to those who sought my assistance.”
Jarog and I exchanged a look but obeyed.
“I realize you have questions about what happened above,” our hostess continued while pouring herself a glass of a greenish liquid that I recalled as being Narengi wine. “But first, I guess I should thank you for protecting me, Jarog Kaijo.”
“Of course. Like I said, you are our host and our possible ticket out of here,” he replied with a shrug while filling his plate as well.
Haelin raised an eyebrow. “What? No pretty statements about doing the right thing?”
He held her gaze unwaveringly. “I do not know you beyond what information is contained in the Mainframe’s general database. Doing the right thing would imply defending the good guys. I do not know if it applies to you. What I do know is that the only person I trust on this planet has a link with you and believes there’s a chance you might assist us. Therefore, and considering our precarious situation, ensuring your safety is a logical priority.”
“Ah! Logic. Often a wise thing to rely on, but not always,” she replied before taking a sip of her drink.
I wanted to intervene but kept my peace. Haelin was currently assessing my companion, and my gut told me Jarog would successfully sway her the way he had done with me, despite his past. Trying to protect him by injecting myself in the conversation would likely only undermine him and imply that I did not trust in his ability to handle himself.
“Although they hid it very well, your security guards knew the attack was imminent,” Jarog continued. “Why did they delay raising the energy wall on the staircase to protect you? Without my intervention, the first blade would have hit you.”
A slow smile stretched Haelin’s lips. “I’m the one asking the questions,” she replied, a slight warning in her voice, “but I will indulge this one. There are far more defense mechanisms in this club than meet the eye. None of their weapons would have ever reached me, assuming you had failed to intercept any of them. But thank you for sparing me from revealing another one of those defenses. The main goal was to see what you would do, and how effective you would be at it. I am slightly disappointed you let one slip through. Still, you did better than most would have.”
I bit my tongue and cast a sideways glance at my companion. To my relief, Jarog didn’t app
ear angered or otherwise slighted by the little jab my friend had taken at him. The Narengi was trying to get a rise out of him, to see how much self-control he possessed. Rather than worrying me, this gave me hope. That she would take the time to evaluate how much she could trust him meant she was considering my earlier comments about him becoming a part of our rebellion. As her people were our allies, she would want to make sure we didn’t have a snake in our midst.
“What, no comments?” Haelin asked, when Jarog remained quiet.
“No. You are right that I failed to stop the second blade. But I didn’t have to overly worry about it since the energy wall went up, allowing me to dodge the attack aimed at me by the third assassin,” Jarog said with a shrug. “Anything I would actually want to say would be a couple more questions. As they are not welcomed, I see no point wasting either of our time with justifications or excuses.”
“Oh, now you have me curious,” Haelin said with a grin. “Ask your question, Cyborg.”
“Why did you execute him and allow your guards to kill the couple instead of keeping them for interrogation? And what the fuck are they?” Jarog asked.
“I’m quite curious about the answer to both of those questions as well,” I said before taking a bite of my food.
Haelin smiled, cut a piece of meat on her plate and slowly chewed it, giving herself the time to reflect on the answer she would give us.
“All three of them were enhanced Ferein agents. Their human appearance could not be more deceiving. Beyond their great physical strength, they are able to produce an adrenaline variant that essentially makes them insensitive to pain,” Haelin explained. “It is quite effective on the field. They are able to remain focused on the battle or on completing their mission despite grievous injuries to themselves.”
“Wait, I thought the Ferein were bald with a series of small, horn-like bone ridges covering their heads, and a thicker, broad spine that extended into a short tail?” I argued.