Hostiles

by Ethan Johnson

  When Diane ceased trying to crawl toward the lobby doors, the Masked Man nodded to two agents who scooped her up and carried her through the unmarked door. The Masked Man removed the clipboard from the desk and followed the agents without a word.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Diane awoke and found herself in what appeared to be an empty room. She tried to have a look around, but she was strapped to a table, as best as she could tell. She struggled with the straps to no avail. She exhaled sharply and stared at the glowing ceiling. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” she said.

  The Masked Man stepped into view. He looked her over, cocking his head as though she were something inhuman. He raised a gloved hand and pressed a red button on a control wand. Electricity surged through her. Diane let out an involuntary yelp and clenched her fists. The jolt stopped, and she let out a slow breath. No sooner had her lungs deflated than another surge of electric current tore through her.

  Diane didn’t want to give her tormentor the satisfaction of crying out or showing any other signs of weakness, but the jolts kept coming, and she was sure the intensity was being dialed up despite her inability to see what the Masked Man was doing with the control wand. After a particularly cruel blast, Diane pressed her back against the table and spat at the Masked Man. “Having fun?”

  He responded with another burst of electricity. Sweat beaded on Diane’s forehead and ran into her eyes after the shocking stopped. She shook her head in hopes of redirecting the sweat. The Masked Man seemed to take this as an unspoken demand to stop the torture, so he delivered another punishing jolt.

  After several minutes of electrocution, the Masked Man pocketed the control wand and leaned in to speak to Diane. She struggled to slow her breathing. Her entire body ached. She believed she broke bones when she fought against her restraints. Her ribs seemed especially tender. The Masked Man cocked his head. “Were we not in agreement?”

  Diane nodded. “Totally. You and me, all the way.” The Masked Man turned away and unleashed another series of electric shocks. Diane bit her tongue during a prolonged electrocution. She rubbed it against her teeth afterward to assess the damage.

  The Masked Man leaned forward again. “Were my instructions in any way unclear?”

  Diane wondered what brought this on. She thought back to the quarter she took from the gang leader. The only time he had objected to her ritual of taking a token from a fallen adversary, as passed down from her father, was the ring worn by Matthias Booker. If that was his reason for torturing her, she was willing to give the quarter to him and anything else he wanted. Anything to make the torment stop. “N-no, sir. Crystal clear.”

  Diane inhaled to offer the quarter to him and to swear she’d never take anything else, when the strongest burst of electricity ripped through her. She shook violently and sent spittle in all directions. She felt saliva gathering in her throat. The room jiggled and jerked. She vomited down her chin and passed out.

  Diane squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head from side to side. The Masked Man pulled a vial of smelling salts away from her nose and gave her a disapproving head shake. “You have not been dismissed. You will provide answers. You will explain why you directly disobeyed your orders.”

  “It was just a stupid quarter,” she moaned. “Just… stupid.”

  The Masked Man cocked his head at this, then gave her another shock. “Do not waste my time with insignificant nonsense. You were ordered to report to me yesterday at 17:45 hours. You did not comply. You were told your presence was urgently required. You instead opted to indulge in… other matters.” He shocked her again for emphasis. “Much has been given to you. All of it will be taken away, without hesitation. I will neither brook nor countenance insubordination. Honesty is your only currency here. Explain, Miss Pembrook. Why did you renege on your commitment?”

  Diane gasped for air. “I went where you sent me. I always do. You send the car. I get in and go where it takes me. Like you told me to.”

  The Masked Man took a step back. He raised the control wand, eliciting a grimace from Diane. “How do you account for your whereabouts yesterday evening, Miss Pembrook? It was not spent receiving a critical briefing and tactical instructions concerning your next target.”

  Diane saw a vision of the lavish table set before her by Lady Diamond. She recalled the way her gown swished around her long, sleek leg when she walked purposefully into the room. “Lady Diamond.”

  The Masked Man squeezed the control wand. Diane screamed as new worlds of pain opened in her legs and chest. “Confess,” he said.

  “Lady Diamond,” Diane replied. “She taught me. Like you wanted. I went where you sent—” She was unable to finish the sentence. Another burst of electricity caused her eyes to roll up in her head.

  The Masked Man held the control wand close to Diane’s cheek. His hand wavered in and out of focus as her vision blurred. Though his mask was expressionless she felt unbridled rage radiating from it. The Masked Man kept his voice flat and steady as he spoke. “There is no Lady Diamond. There is only you and me. Teacher and student. Superior and underling.” He cupped her slimy chin with a gloved hand and tilted his head. “Master and servant. And as such, I will not be lied to. I will not be disobeyed.” He gave the wand another squeeze.

  The smell of burning flesh filled Diane’s nostrils. She couldn’t speak as electricity coursed through her skin and bones, but on a basic level she realized he was going to fry her alive. And if he didn’t, she figured, she would be too weak to be of any use to him or anyone else. Maybe even paralyzed. She couldn’t assess the damage she had sustained during her sizzling torture, but she felt a grim sense of finality, regardless of the outcome. The electricity subsided and Diane was left panting on the table.

  “It’s… I didn’t lie. Lady Diamond. She taught me. You sent me to her.” She stared at the place on his mask where his eyes ought to have been. “You sent me.”

  An operative clad in sleek black armor entered the room and handed a document to the Masked Man, who accepted it with a curt nod. He studied the document in silence, then folded it neatly in half, then in half once more. He slipped it into his pocket and gently patted Diane’s forehead.

  “You must always be truthful with me, Miss Pembrook. I will not brook dissent or deceit. The irony of this policy is not lost on me, as I spearhead an organization that deals in secrecy, but this makes honesty the most valuable currency. You have passed my test. I believe you did as you say. You followed your instructions to the letter. You have proven yourself worthy of your next assignment.” The Masked Man turned and waved to the darkness.

  Four technicians stepped forward. One wheeled a stainless-steel cart up to Diane’s table. The Masked Man nodded to them and said simply, “Repair her.”

  The technicians nodded. One of them shined a penlight into her left eye, then the right. She felt a needle slide under the skin of her neck. Something warm traveled through her bloodstream. A moment later, Diane’s eyelids fluttered, and she was out cold.

  Diane inhaled sharply and snapped her eyes open. She was greeted by an empty room with glossy black floors and walls. The ceiling glowed a soft white. Diane lifted her arm to inspect the damage from her torture session. She was dressed in her body armor from the neck down. She got up from the floor and looked around for the door. The sleek walls did not suggest any way in or out. Diane ran her armored fingers over the walls in hopes of triggering an access panel or finding a breach point. Instead, the center of the room hissed softly. A single metal chair was placed in the room by a pneumatic lift. A spotlight shined on the chair.

  Diane nodded to it. The Masked Man liked to keep things simple, she noted. She obeyed the silent command to sit and stared intently at the wall before her. The spotlight turned off and the overhead lights dimmed. Projected images flashed on the wall. A female electronic voice filled the room.

  “Commence security briefing H19-B. Pembrook, Diane positively identified as present.”

  Grainy footage
of a man leaving a neon-covered nightclub flickered on the wall. The man looked both ways suspiciously before ducking into a vehicle. Another sequence showed him in the rear of a restaurant in a corner booth with his back to the wall. An envelope was passed across the table to him. He accepted it with a nod. Diane shielded her eyes as the scene changed to a roaring inferno. Orange flames danced across the screen. Diane made out twisted wreckage and dead bodies through clouds of black smoke.

  “Thomas Denning. Code Name: The Centurion. A mercenary by trade. He is believed responsible for the Belgrade Massacre, and is known to have downed Flight 409 over Azerbaijan. He has recently arrived in the United States and is devising an attack on the financial center. Locate and terminate the target.”

  Thomas Denning’s clear visage was enlarged on the screen. A series of red dots were placed on a map of the eastern seaboard. The last three dots blinked on Manhattan Island. Diane sucked in her breath and looked up at the ceiling, as if to address a hidden camera. “That’s across the Hudson. That’s not my turf.”

  “You have your orders, agent. Briefing H19-B completed.”

  The front wall turned bright white. Diane raised her hands to shield her eyes. She blinked away a series of blinding spots. When her eyesight returned, she found the front wall had vanished. A gleaming black SUV stood before her with the rear passenger door open. Her rifle leaned against the rear of the vehicle. Diane nodded and stepped forward. She picked up the rifle and slid it across the seat as she climbed inside. The passenger door closed automatically behind her and the SUV roared to life.

  Diane studied her body armor. It gleamed and flickered under the passing streetlights. She wondered what the armor hid. The last words she heard before being rendered unconscious by the Masked Man were, “Repair her.” Repair what? The electric shocks had risen in intensity and she smelled burning skin during her torture, but maybe it was her brain playing tricks on her. Maybe the Masked Man was testing how well she held up under torture, but that didn’t make sense. If that were the case, she reasoned, she should have made up a convincing lie and stuck to it.

  Diane looked down at her freshly lacquered rifle. She was off to kill a man named Thomas Denning. She wondered how she was supposed to find him. She watched her transport vehicle deftly navigate its way over the Hudson to Manhattan Island. She looked down at the water that lapped against a thick seawall. The InTelNet said Manhattan had lost 20% of its usable land to floods. Rents and real estate prices were going sky high in response. The InTelNet said now was the time to invest west of Newark. Diane frowned at the thought. Her apartment was twenty floors over street level. Floods were something other people had to worry about.

  She gave the seawall a devious smirk. Gabe loved New York. There was 20% less of it now. She liked the idea of him slowly losing something he actually cared about.

  Once the SUV touched down in Manhattan, Diane put herself on high alert. Her target could be sighted any time, she told herself. She patted her rifle. One shot is all I need, she affirmed. As if on cue, the SUV stopped abruptly in front of a steel-and-glass building with three revolving doors in front. She looked at the dashboard for a clue as to where to go next, but nothing flashed before her. She checked her comm unit. The screen was devoid of any hints as well. Diane wondered why it was so quick to flash other messages but remained silent when she was in the hot zone.

  Diane huffed and inserted her earpiece. She switched it on with an irritating pop and whispered, “Standing by.”

  “Proceed to target,” replied the Masked Man.

  Diane stared at the building. She assumed he was instructing her to enter it, but she was learning quickly never to assume the Masked Man’s intentions. “Clarify,” she said.

  “Proceed to target immediately,” he said.

  Diane huffed and exited the SUV. She held her rifle close to her body as she hurried to the center door of the tinted glass building. Her knee joints locked up as she attempted entry. She fought to raise her right leg, but her hips froze next, trapping her in place. “Armor malfunction. Abort mission,” she whispered intently.

  “Incorrect, Miss Pembrook. Your orders are to proceed to the target.”

  “I can’t move, sir,” Diane said weakly.

  “Because you are making a grave tactical error. You are an assassin, Miss Pembrook. Do assassins brazenly make a grand entrance in a heavily trafficked office building?”

  Diane shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “It might interest you to know your route is mapped to your heads-up display. If you were wearing your helmet, you wouldn’t be asking for directions like a lost child.”

  “An assassin needs to see everything,” she retorted. “We’ve been over this.”

  “If you can see everything, you know where the target is. Proceed.”

  Diane rolled her eyes and nodded. She struggled to move away from the building, which caused the armor to move freely once more. She walked briskly to the nearest alley and made her way to the back of the building. She slung her rifle across her back and reached up for a painted railing. She hoisted herself up onto a ramp leading to a service entrance. She scrunched her nose up at the plain door. If the lobby was too noticeable, the service entrance would mean other complications. Questions. Confrontation. She noticed a delivery van parked in the rear alley. She rushed over to it and crouched down.

  Diane thought about what little she knew about her target: He was believed to be plotting an attack on the financial district. The briefing footage showed him accepting an envelope in a secret meeting, then flaming wreckage. Unlike the punks she killed in broad daylight slinging Molotovs, terrorists like him didn’t do their work out in the open. She considered her rifle. It was best for killing at long range. Charging into the office building only meant unnecessary exposure. The Masked Man’s voice echoed in her mind: we know where he is.

  Diane ticked down the list of her prior victories: Matthias Booker was killed beside the river. She shot him from a comfortable distance through the head. Francis Rohrbach was on the balcony of another building. She killed him with a single shot before making her escape. She looked up at the towering edifice beside her. The windows were plate glass. Unless she was going to find him at the other end of a long hallway, he wasn’t in this building. But he wasn’t far away. The SUV was programmed to take her here for quick access and a quicker getaway.

  Diane crept along the back alley to a narrow passageway. She slipped sideways through it to the other end and spotted a section of seawall. It was tall and dark, and already covered in colorful graffiti. She surveyed the seawall and didn’t see any sign of activity. She began to turn back when a sudden movement caught her eye.

  Thomas Denning walked purposefully toward a parked sedan beside the seawall. Three more men formed a triangular perimeter around him, each clutching a submachine gun. One man spat out a toothpick as he scanned the area to his right suspiciously.

  Diane raised her rifle and aimed for Denning’s head. In an instant, she pulled her trigger and splattered his blood across an ornate graffiti design that spelled out SMET. His bodyguards raised their weapons and shouted to each other in another language. Diane tucked her rifle against her chest and slipped back down the passageway. She heard voices getting closer to the opening. She ran as fast as she could to the SUV, which awaited her with its rear door wide open. She chucked her spent rifle into the back seat and the door closed automatically. The SUV pulled into traffic, causing a delivery van to swerve into a lamppost. Diane spun around and caught a glimpse of Thomas Denning’s bodyguards. One of them barked commands into his wrist.

  “Target eliminated,” Diane said urgently as she took cover in the closest alley. “Send the transport unit back. It left without me.”

  “Intentionally, Miss Pembrook. You were seen. Exposure is antithetical to our purposes,” replied the Masked Man.

  “My rifle is in there.”

  “It will be serviced accordingly upon its return. As will you, depending on y
our resourcefulness.”

  Diane heard voices getting closer. She patted her thigh and delivered a fully loaded sidearm to her hand. She ejected the magazine and confirmed its readiness. She snapped it back into place and looked for somewhere to hide. An overstuffed green dumpster provided sufficient cover. “Return where?”

  A bullet whizzed over her head. Diane fired a single bullet in response and sent a husky bodyguard sprawling onto the rough pavement. “To home soil, Miss Pembrook. I will consider that a significant milestone worthy of my attention, and perhaps intervention.” Diane heard a sharp pop as the Masked Man terminated his connection to her earpiece.

  Diane reached up and switched her earpiece off. Fine, if he wants me to find my own way back, I will, she thought darkly. I’ve been abandoned before. This is nothing. The memory of her lone suitcase in the Stickler’s parking lot flashed before her.

  With that, Diane fired a shot and sent another bodyguard face-first onto the street. She heard commands being barked around the corner by the leader of their group. He was the smartest of the three, she noted. He knew better than to stick his head where she could shoot it. Diane picked up a chunk of brick and threw it toward the fallen bodyguards. Before it landed, she started her retreat to a nearby alcove. She ducked into it as a grenade rolled to the dumpster and sent it airborne, dumping bags of trash across the alley.

  A half-eaten watermelon smashed on the street. Diane breathed a sigh of relief. That was supposed to be me, she told herself. She raised her sidearm. I have other plans.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Diane didn’t know much about Manhattan beyond what Gabe told her, but on reflection it wasn’t much to work with. To him, everything was better in New York. That didn’t tell her the fastest way to get back to New Jersey without engaging Thomas Denning’s bodyguards. By her count, one remained, but the way he barked orders into a comm unit strapped to his wrist, she figured he wouldn’t be alone for long. She brushed him back with a shot that nearly grazed his chin. The man yelped and hastily retreated from the alley.