The spec ops dude stared at me, cocked his head, confused.
I shot him. Twice. “Just kidding,” I said. “I'll thank you to keep your vibrator away from me. Bad enough you're already after my lady parts, don't try your sonic foreplay on me, Sparky.”
Someone appeared next to me and I nearly shot them, stopping myself just in time to realize it was Jian.
Without clothes.
“Hi!” I said quickly, averting my eyes and covering the edge of the fallen container that the ChiComs were hunkering behind. I had a feeling someone would try and sneak around it soon. “What's up?”
“Wanted to make sure you were okay,” Jian said. “I didn't see a way out of that for you. That was impressively done. This is a well-constructed ambush.”
“Well, I'm not out of it yet,” I said. “They're coming after me hammer and tongs here. Or at least tranquilizers and vibrators. Which is alarming in its own way.” I fired a burst and looked over my shoulder at him. “You hear what they want to do to me?”
He nodded slowly. “This is a government that will inject a crowning baby with formaldehyde before it draws its first breath in order to enforce their population control laws. It surprises you that they would kidnap the most powerful woman in the world in order to try and breed slaves by extracting her eggs?”
I made a face, firing and taking the top of the head off a Chinese operator who stuck his head out trying to pop me with a tranq dart. “When you put it that way, I'm actually kinda surprised no one has tried it before now. Maybe the rest of the world is just wise to the fact that kidnapping me is opening up a Pandora's box of troubles?”
“Very true,” Jian said. “What are you going to do?”
“Slam the lid on their collective kidnapping, human-rights-violating dicks,” I said. The floodlights had me in shadow, and the smoke from all the shooting I'd done was clouding the area. I changed mags, slipping the old one in my tactical belt and checking to make sure my new weapon was still resting in my belt. It was. “What are you going to do?”
“Do you want me to fight with you?” Jian asked.
“Unless that helicopter hung around?” I asked. He shook his head. “Then yeah, I could use a hand, since I have no current method of easy extraction.”
“Try jumping over the rail?” Jian's voice had a note of amusement in it.
“Sure, turn into a dolphin and I'll ride your bare back to the shore,” I said, then blushed because – yeah, dude was naked. “But seriously...”
“You take left flank, I'll go right,” Jian said, and I caught him flashing into the air, flapping up and over the container at my back before I heard a roar, distant and dim, through my ear plugs, as he dropped down on the other side.
“Right on,” I said, popping another Chinese operator as he tried to bring his gun around from behind cover to dust me. Which was fine. At least I knew what I was doing: breaking out of a damned trap set for me. Probably beat the shit out of a quiet day at the office.
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
Somewhere ahead, I knew that I had problems coming up. One big one, at least:
Firebeetle.
Where was he? It was hard to say with earplugs in and my gun going off every few seconds as opportunistic ChiCom spec ops guys would try and cut the pie around the corner ahead, thinking they could shoot my metahuman ass before I dusted them. Sometimes they'd fire blind, and get a bullet in the hand for their trouble. Other times I'd pop them with a shot to the head as they barely peered out, trying to get a line of sight to me.
How many were there? No idea.
Where was Firebeetle? No clue.
Were there any kidnappees onboard? Maybe. But not in the shipping containers I'd knocked over, which (thankfully) were filled with actual shipped goods.
It seemed unlikely they were in containers at all; trying to take someone on a sixty-day journey across the sea in one of these things and have them emerge healthy and alive on the other end seemed low odds. These were people the Chinese government wanted alive. I was guessing they were below decks, probably in an area designed for prisoners.
Bullets whistled to my left, cracking into the shipping container behind me as I squatted, AR raised and waiting for someone to step out into my sights. I'd been in place for a minute or two now, though, and a pile of corpses was starting to accumulate where I'd continually ambushed these guys. They weren't stupid, just bold. They had to be getting the clue that I was waiting, so I decided to change things up, meta-style.
Figuring they were stacked up and ready to rush around the fallen container, I leapt on top of it, landing quietly. I swept my gun around, looking for snipers in high positions.
Nothing. That was an oversight on their part, locking the troops in the arena with the lion(ess) and the tiger.
With a couple steps forward, I found myself overlooking five spec ops dudes stacked up, ready to round the corner and bum rush me – if I'd still been there. I couldn't hear them, but by their hand motions they were counting down.
I fired over the edge, pouring bullets down on them fast and accurately. They slumped and fell under my unrelenting spray; only the last of them managed to get his weapon up and return fire, albeit in the wrong direction, before I got him, too.
With a jump, I dropped down next to the fallen. The burnt smell of gunpowder filled the air. I squatted next to the bodies and searched them quickly for grenades and such.
No joy. They'd been given only guns and sonics and tranq guns for this mission. I did grab the tranquilizer gun from one of the guys, though, and slung it over my shoulder in the event it came in handy.
The container tower I'd kicked over had fallen in a zigzag pattern, end to end. I was pretty sure I could hear screaming somewhere on the other side of them, through my earplugs, though I didn't dare pull them out to confirm. I assumed it was Jian at work. Hopefully it wasn't Jian being worked over.
A quick change of mags and I was ready to prowl again. I was fairly certain I'd gotten all the spec ops soldiers on my side of the containers. A bloody ooze spreading on the deck coupled with a black-booted foot sticking from beneath a section of corrugated metal siding told me I'd gotten some more with my container drop.
I put my back against the next container, which had fallen diagonally, separating me from the next section of this makeshift arena. I know what Liao had been thinking: trap her in a big, wide open place with clear sight lines and too many guns for her to be able to fight her way out.
Stupid. There was no place on earth where I wouldn't fight my way out, if backed into a corner like this. Harvesting me? Breeding me like a lab rat?
Damned right I'd fight. To the death.
I readied myself. My pulse was racing. I could feel the anger surging through my veins, dulled by the chill of ice water calm. I fought under that shroud of peace most of the time. Mother's teaching in my youth supplemented by all the fighting and training I'd done in my adulthood left me in battles where I felt mostly calm as I went through them.
Not this time. Something about Liao's plan, Liao's threat, had my heart hammering with pure fury.
Take me prisoner? Turn me into a factory for incubi and succubi to be brainwashed into becoming China's army?
Oh hell no you didn't.
I steadied myself, ready to round the corner, lifting the AR–
When the container I'd backed against slammed into me, knocking me over and trapping my AR against it, ripping the gun from my grasp. I thumped to the ground and rolled back to my feet, stinging from the landing.
A shadowy figure rose before me in the pre-dawn light, lumpy in all the wrong places. The scent of hard metal and diesel oil mixed with another familiar scent that I'd run across in the neighborhood in Baltimore. Sharp pains in my knee stung at me as I stared at my new foe, the silence of my earplugs blotting out the sound of a tiger growling in the distance, preoccupied with destroying foes on the other side of the wall of containers to my right.
This fight was mine.
“Hey, Firebeetle,” I said, looking into the shadowy, armored skin of my enemy. “Let's do this thing.”
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
Julie Blair
A yawn escaped her as Julie tapped away at her computer. Darkness still reigned outside the Old Executive Office Building, though sunrise was probably close. It never escaped her that she was technically a White House staffer – except she didn't actually work in the White House.
Oh, well. Future goals. Before she left to work in the private political sector.
The mountain of emails she'd started with was...not dwindling. And about the time she made it through these, a mountain would have washed in. The only benefit to coming in this early was that her email volume slowed between midnight and six AM, making this a peak time to dig before the morning rush started.
Julie sighed, coffee in hand. It'd gotten cold already. Oh, well. Time to–
What was this?
The very first email, the one that had just slid into her inbox was from – oh, her uncle Miles. Man, did she regret ever giving him her work address. He was always forwarding crap. At least his emails were easy to ignore. She'd just hit the delete and be on to the next th–
Well, credit to Miles. This one at least had a catchy header on it. Usually it was something that didn't even register before it landed in the garbage bin. Really, she should just mark his address as spam once and for all and be done with it. But she didn't. Because it was her uncle, crazy as he might be. This one, though...
Sienna Nealon delivers a message about China that everyone needs to hear!
Julie couldn't even help it. She clicked, in spite of the source.
Sure enough, the video was exactly what had been promised. She stood on the edge of a dark harbor or something at night, helicopter in the background, and...
Wow.
Julie looked around. Not too many people here yet, other than her and Betsy. She was probably still digging out, too, or working on messaging for something or the other.
Sienna Nealon was going after a Chinese slaver vessel? Julie blinked a couple times. Kidnapping people and taking them overseas? That sounded like slavery to her. Plus, they'd killed an FBI agent?
A moment's hesitation passed, and Julie hit Forward, sending the email along. Someone else had probably passed this along, though, judging from how quiet the floor was – almost no one was in yet – maybe not. Julie stood, determined to follow it up immediately. Who knew if Sienna had any help coming? Based on her message, it didn't sound like it.
Yeah. Something had to be done. Julie felt butterflies in her stomach as she headed toward Betsy's office for the second time this morning. If no one else was here, it was down to her to be the one to do something about it.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
Sienna
“You cannot defeat me,” Firebeetle said, flexing his beetle chest, talking in an accented tone.
“He speaks!” I made a show of gawking, even as I reached behind me, to my belt, for my weapon. “All these battles and you've been a quiet boy. Now you're deciding to pipe up and it's this bullshit?” I made my voice high and mocking. “'You cannot defeat meeee.' Kinda self-serving message there, sparky. You'd probably like it if I just gave up and came along quietly, wouldn't you? It'd save you the trouble of banging the dings out of your armor later, wouldn't it? Ain't happening, though.” I smiled.
He set his head, glowing eyes staring down at me. “You must see now...I have been going easy on you. Just enough to keep you hooked so that we could get you here, into international waters, away from backup, from the reach of your government. Now, though, you have invaded our ship. Here...you belong to China.”
“I realize maybe you're cool with being the bitch of your bullshit country,” I said, “but I don't belong to anybody. Least of all you and your metahuman slavery and eugenics program.”
He circled, and I matched his movement, resting my hand on the weapon secreted in my belt behind me. “I have bested you every time we fought,” he said.
“You have gotten dragged away by a tiger every time you've ambushed me,” I said. “That's hardly a clear win for you.”
Firebeetle looked toward the fallen containers that penned us in. “Your tiger is otherwise occupied. It's just you and me.”
There was some snarling and a little whimpering going on behind those containers. Hopefully Jian was doing okay, but I didn't have time to worry about him now. “I'm sure he's fine. And this time? I see you coming, so this isn't going to go like it has before.”
“You are as arrogant as any American I have ever met,” Firebeetle said. “It is ill founded. Where from springs this overconfidence?”
“I can't speak for my countrymen,” I said, “but maybe it's because I've flat-out beaten the ass off anyone who's ever challenged me.” I gripped my weapon tighter behind my back.
Firebeetle smiled, and it was an ugly thing; teeth that looked brown, like roach shells. “You've never faced the might of China.” And he lunged at me.
I brought around the striking hammer I'd picked up at Home Depot on the way to the helicopter, crashing it into his jaw and sending him spiraling sideways. He hit the deck and rolled a couple times before popping his head up and shaking it.
His head wobbled, his mandible crushed in. His burning eyes floated, wobbly, like he was having trouble seeing me.
“Yeah, and you've never faced the might of Sienna, dipshit.” I gripped my striking hammer and smiled, sprinting toward him before he could get up. “You're about to, though.”
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
Chapman
CHAPMAN: We need to cut off Bilson's access to President Gondry.
Jaime was typing furiously in about ten different directions. He was giving orders to his companies to keep a lid on the story, he was diving into the Escapade app via his computer screen (a feature only available to him, not the other users), and also texting a couple people to make sure everything was taken care of. He had his headset on, and his plans were coming together quickly.
CHALKE: Already done two hours ago. I own three of Gondry's primary gatekeepers, and I warned them to lock him out as soon as he disappeared from chat.
Chapman nodded. Good for Chalke.
BYRD: u guys is this 4 real
KORY: Can't believe he went this way. Should I cue up some articles about his political activities? Slime him?
Chapman thought about it for a second. The politics of personal destruction was an ugly thing. In this case, it might be a good idea to get rolling on that, in the event it was needed. Or, hell, wanted. He certainly would have liked to see Bilson take a hit for this betrayal.
CHALKE: Write them, hold them. We don't know what Bilson is doing yet, and putting him in the firing line that way will encourage him to escalate this little war. We're not quite to that point yet.
Something about Chalke's calm attitude bothered Jaime. How could they not be at that point yet? Bilson had betrayed them, breaking consensus on China and siding with Nealon, for crying out loud. Wasn't that worthy of some destruction? True, it could cause him to out the Network, but he might do that anyway. Better to neutralize him now.
CHAPMAN: We need to take this guy out of play. He's become dangerous both to us and the agenda. Can you imagine what happens if this China story breaks wide? It could mean war, and not the kind we all profit from. We're talking apocalypse type war. If that means wrecking Bilson, we should do it now and get it over with.
KORY: Might have some bad news. Confirming now.
Chapman's eyes almost popped out of his head. How could Kory post something like that and expect them to just sit idly and wait for his ass to get back to them?
BYRD: ???
FLANAGAN: You can always tell the clickbait site owner by his theatrical headline writing.
JOHANNSEN: I think I know what Kory's got. The story might have gotten to the president.
Chapman's mouth went dry.
CHAPMAN: HOW?!?!?
; JOHANNSEN: Not sure. Someone in the White House elevated it, I think. It definitely came to him via the Chief of Staff. Beyond that, I don't know. Probably what Dave is confirming.
KORY: Yes, that's it. You suck for scooping me on that, Johannsen. I was getting confirmation.
JOHANNSEN: Since when does Flashforce care about confirming reporting?
KORY: Eat shit, Johannsen. How many retractions do you print on the average day?
JOHANNSEN: More than the 'none' that you do, since I care about getting stories corrected when we screw up.
CHALKE: Stop it, guys. We have more important things to worry about right now.
Jaime's head hurt. How could Gondry have gotten the story? They'd done so damned much to quash it. He'd used everything in his power to–
A quick sweep of the other search engines showed...yes, the video was trending. That was twenty percent of the internet he couldn't account for. It was quashed on FindIt and Socialite, but...
CHAPMAN: The Nealon video is circulating on other search engines and social networks. There's no keeping it back now. Especially not if the president has it.
Jaime cursed under his breath, slamming a fist into his desktop. His keyboard jumped on the surface. All the power he'd accumulated and he still couldn't quite tamp down the flow of information the way he wanted to.
CHAPMAN: I'm letting my people take the lid off the story. If I can't suppress it, I need to let it go or it'll spawn conspiracy theories in alternative media about how I'm trying to kill it. We'll just have to manage it from here.
FLANAGAN: How should we do that?
BYRD: I'm not on air until 2nite. Wish I could be live rite now. Wud be amazing. Ratingszzzz!!!!!
CHALKE: We control things the same way we always do. Come on, let's start constructing a narrative that makes sense here. One that minimizes the damage to China – and our interests.
Dragon: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 37) Page 34
