Chapter Forty-Three
Several challenges had faced Nadia during her attempt to take the pair of ancient wings from their case. Firstly, it had been incredibly frustrating to find the tiny, non-reflective latch that opened the case without a proper light source. And, true to form, she had been too stubborn to walk the three feet to the desk where she had left her flashlight to make use of it. After fumbling at the sides for a while, she had eventually discovered the latch was set on the top right corner of the glass box; a frankly idiotic place for it to be, as far as her heavily biased and somewhat embarrassed opinion was concerned. This meant, however, that the door to the upright rectangular prism opened towards the wall; instead of meaninglessly out into perfectly useable open space, which redeemed the case. A little.
The second problem she had come up against was her fear of touching the wings in the first place. This was less to do with any bizarre phobia of feathers or leathers, or materials that happened to rhyme, and more to do with the fact that she half-expected the pair of wax-based wings to crumble apart the moment she touched them. After a moment or two spent convincing herself that, if they did fall apart, there was really no point in being upset (because then she wouldn't have to force herself to leap out of a building later in the evening) she finally gave it a try. Unfortunately for her new found hopes, the wings did not immediately crumble away to nothing. The layers of dust on the wings, however, did lead her unexpectedly into her third challenge, which was a fit of chronic, unstoppable sneezing.
Nadia was able to overcome this most recent obstruction to her progress with time, as well as with the assistance of a handily placed Kleenex box. She had located the latter of these inside of one of Miss Fitch's drawers after relenting in her stubborn refusal to use her flashlight. Taking a deep breath and holding it, she had returned to the glass case and carefully plucked the first wing from its place. Giving it a few hesitant shakes to clear the dust from its feathers, she then permitted her lungs the inhaled breath they had begun insistently demanding somewhere in the process. When another round of sneezing was not forthcoming, she nodded in satisfaction and laid the relic out on Miss Fitch's desk so as to keep it from being stepped on. As her luck would have it, however, the second wing appeared to be the dustier of the two and, in her attempts to shake it clean, soon found herself encased in a cloud of the infernal substance.
So it was with a further dose of embarrassment that, after wiping her eyes clean and spluttering incoherently for a few moments, Nadia realized that Tyrone Burgess was standing in the doorway, watching her. She briefly took notice of three other people hidden in the giant's wake, but his suddenly being there was more than arresting enough for her attention. Scuttling back a few feet purely by reflex, she put the second wing on top of the first and fumbled about the desk area for something, anything, to defend herself with. Coming up with nothing more threatening than a pen, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth in preparation for her imminent thrashing.
When one was not forthcoming, she risked opening her eyes again. When she did, she was surprised to find Burgess stooping to check on the still-unconscious Miss Fitch, who had not yet been moved from her position on the floor. Concluding, via her pulse, that the woman was still alive, the hulking fellow plucked her up off of the floor as though she were made of paper; cradling her in his arms like a baby, he nodded in Nadia's direction.
"Lawson."
This was not destined to be one of her better recoveries. "Oh, uh, hi. That is, hello there, Burgess."
Chuckling in quiet amusement at her half-frightened, half-babbling response, he moved aside for those behind him to file into the room. The first was a disgruntled looking Asian woman that seemed vaguely familiar to Nadia; the second was Pasta-Jacket, apparently freed from her handiwork in the stairwell. But it was the third that sent a fresh surge of alarm through her system, particularly when he sauntered into the room while loading a fresh clip into a rather imposing handgun.
"Black? But I thought... I mean, Orion was..." She winced at her own rambling statements as they came tumbling out of her mouth anew; this was something she was going to have to fix if she was ever going to be a reporter. Well, a reporter who was taken seriously, anyway.
The man in question grinned broadly, finishing the task of reloading his gun with a slight flourish. "Oh, he was, you're right. Was being the operative word, of course. He knew I'd be better for something like this, so here I am. Surprise!"
Catching the dirty looks the Asian-featured woman was throwing at Black from behind him, Nadia suspected something had already happened between them; unfortunately, the sound of a bullet biting a perfectly circular chunk of wood out of the office's door put all conversations on hold for the moment.
Burgess handled surprises better than she did, apparently, and his was the first response. "We can't stay in here; we're fish in a barrel!"
Black, so armed with this idea, and of course his borrowed handgun, turned and ran back through the office's waiting room to take up a position against the wall. Staggering his shots so he fired no more than once every few seconds, to preserve his limited ammunition, he nevertheless fired with sufficient accuracy to force their aggressors to take cover. Leading their forced escape, Burgess rounded the corner first, getting himself and the unconscious passenger in his arms out of the line of fire, with Jason close on his heels. Nadia, picking up one of Daedalus' wings in her arms so as not to damage it, looked pleadingly at the only other person left in the room with her. Murakami, assuming the wings were important somehow, at least to the young woman before her, sighed and grabbed the other. Managing to smile gratefully at the other woman's kindness, Nadia sprinted from the room just ahead of her and not more than a few seconds before Black fired the last of his gun's nine bullets.
Their adversaries down the hall had clearly been keeping track of each of Black's shots, however, for the moment his gun had put its ninth hole in the walls around their location, they leaned out of their cover to resume firing. The ensuing horizontal hail of bullets missed the retreating man by approximately the width and breadth of a whisper as he dove across the hall, tucking himself into a roll as he landed. Stopping as his back hit the solid mass of the wall; Black took a moment to snatch up one of the assault rifles left lying on the floor after his and Burgess' previous encounter. Slinging the strap of the weapon over his shoulder he tugged the prostrate form of one of the deceased men further around the corner and rifled through his pockets, quickly coming up with a second clip for his borrowed pistol.
By this point, of course, the armed group had advanced halfway up the hall, with no signs of slowing down. Turning to follow the four, technically five, individuals who had preceded him, Black saw that they were in the process of cramming themselves into the hallway that would take them to the flight of stairs leading to the penthouse upstairs. Apparently they had decided that the main stairwell in the opposite hallway was too great a risk; he supposed it would be rather difficult to run down a lengthy, perfectly straight hallway while dodging bullets. Still, at least some of them would make it that way, which suggested that Burgess knew of other surprises they were likely to encounter during their descent. With the heavy sound of boots approaching and no more time to think about it, Black decided he would have to trust the big man's judgement, at least for the time being.
Sprinting to catch up, he scooted into the short hallway leading to the upward stairwell a few seconds behind the others and a few steps ahead of giving the soldiers a moving target to practice on. Coming to a skidding halt once inside the hall, Black nearly collided with Jason before he was able to come to a full stop. Annoyed at this lack of progress, he stepped back and saw the man was only the group member nearest to the entrance; the others were crammed into the hallway, too.
"What's the matter? Why aren't we moving?"
Burgess, still holding Giselle as though she were made of glass, glanced his way. "There are six soldiers on our tail and six already down. That means their co
mmander is unaccounted for and we'll probably find him upstairs, waiting for us. From what I know of Giselle's apartment, there isn't a whole lot of cover around the door."
Snorting derisively, Black sighed in apparent disappointment. "Is that all? Please. Stand aside, ladies and gentleman, I've got this. Oh, here, Pasta-Jacket, hold my gun."
Passing his assault rifle to the gangliest member of their impromptu team, he loaded his pistol with his freshly acquired clip and squeezed past the others crowded into the hallway. As he turned out of sight, presumably to begin climbing the stairs, Burgess glanced down at Nadia.
"What is it with that guy? I mean, I knew he was a little... out there, but I hadn't realized he was this bad off. He almost seems to be enjoying this."
She prefaced her answer with the best shrug she could possibly manage while holding an ancient, feathery relic in her arms. "He's the physical embodiment of the repressed anger, hate and violence that has built up inside a nearly three-thousand year old man."
With her three conscious companions staring at her, Nadia simply shrugged again. "Hey, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to, but it's the truth."
A strangely high-pitched voice echoed from the far end of the hall. "Did I hear somebody talking about me?"
Turning to tell the self-aggrandizing prick to get himself in gear, Burgess froze as he saw who the voice had come from. There was a little girl standing at the end of the hall, just beside where Black had gone out of sight. She was no more than ten years old, with wide, innocent blue eyes; her blonde, slightly curled, shoulder-length hair framed a face with a button nose, a smile that could melt butter and just the right amount of freckles over her perfect, alabaster skin. She was wearing a pair of tiny yellow boots, the tops of which disappeared under her red, rubber raincoat, the sort with the perfect double column of buttons down the front. A too-large, floppy hat that matched the yellow of her boots sat atop her head, entirely failing to hold in her hair, completing the outfit one would expect on a child just going out to play after a quick springtime drizzle. If Burgess hadn't known better, he would say someone had taken a page from a children-centred clothing store's catalogue and brought it to life.
Grinning broadly at their stunned, silent reaction, the little girl did a quick pirouette, her jacket flaring out to reveal pale purple leggings, and then dropped into a curtsy. "Wish me luck; I'm going upstairs to play!"
Without giving those remaining in the hall any further opportunity to respond, she dashed out of sight and up the stairs just around the corner. The sound of her little feet pattering against the hard, concrete surface of the steps was the only sound left echoing through their cramped hallway until Burgess nodded in the direction she had gone.
"That's supposed to be the embodiment of a man's darkest emotions? A little girl acting like she's going to a tea party? I don't know whether that's funny, sad, or scary."
Nadia chuckled wryly. "Knowing the man they come from and the kinds of things he has repressed? The last one, Burgess. Definitely that last one."
Frowning, the woman holding the counterpart to Nadia's own wing shook her head. "Frightening or not, I don't like this. Even if we trust him to take care of the armed individual upstairs while he's fooling around the way he is, we can't just stand here and wait. This hallway is not going to shield us from our pursuers, or their bullets."
"Murakami's right," Burgess acknowledged, adjusting the posture of the human cargo in his arms to prevent Giselle from falling. "Black can have his fun another time; we're going up after him now."
Nadia sighed as she reluctantly followed them towards the stairway up to the penthouse. She didn't personally disagree with their logic, standing around in a hallway waiting for it to become a shooting gallery for the armed individuals hot on their heels was not exactly what she wanted to be doing right now. Her reluctance was more centred on the rather persistent notion that, whatever Black had time to do before they caught up with him, or her, or whatever, would not be something she had any desire to see. Plus, these events were beginning to seem bizarrely familiar; their present circumstances had some disquieting similarities to the period after Orion had first supplanted Thomas. She sincerely hoped that Black's stay would be less permanent.
In Icarus' Shadow Page 61